In December of 2000, my father was in the hospital. He was there for nearly the entire month, accompanied the whole time by his devoted second wife, Amy. I visited nearly every day after work.
Those were to be some of the last weeks of his life.
One afternoon, during this time, my dad said something I will never forget. It was a broken-brained formulation of a short-circuited head, and it was absolutely brilliant.
My dad was living with a couple of kinds of cancer. He had, in fact, been diagnosed with prostate cancer over ten years earlier, so, according to the statistics, he had beat that disease. But, after the bypass surgery he'd managed to avoid for 30 years, with his immune system compromised, things began to pop up. A small mark on his leg, next to the scar where the cardiac surgeons removed the vein, turned out to be melanoma.
What really sent him to the hospital there near the end, though, was a cerebral hemorrhage. He had been driving with Amy one day, when, suddenly as he turned left at an intersection, he complained of being disoriented.
The disorientation continued at home, and eventually he was taken to the hospital.
It took some time to determine the cause of his problem. There were many things going wrong with him at this time. He was actively taking a regimen of chemotherapy for the cancer. And it was a question, should he continue the chemo, now that he was in the hospital for something quite else?
I remember standing by his bed as his oncologist asked this very question. I remember being amazed when Dad confidently and cheerily insisted that the chemo should continue.
At this time, and for weeks, his affect was disarmingly sunny, enthusiastic, attentive, and quite normal. His blue eyes were bright and sharply focused. If anything, he was happier than normal.
He had the TV on in his room most of the times I visited. He loved watching Jeopardy! and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. And we all viewed with disquiet and jokes and growing alarm the election news that grew stranger and more tangled each day.
For this was December of 2000, and the presidential election of over a month before was still up for grabs. The two sides faced off across an unbridgeable constitutional canyon. New nomenclature clogged the airwaves, tutoring us in the differences between hanging, dimpled, and pregnant chads.
Dad had been a lifelong Republican, but the events of recent years had sometimes severely tested his political faith. He had a hard, pragmatic side much stronger than any mere political affiliation and, in the right circumstances, he'd look toward Washington and label the entire crew there a pack of scoundrels.
I visited him every day, if I could, at least for a short time. Amy, bless her heart forever, was essentially living at the hospital, so that eventually the staff offered her a bed of her own to sleep in so she would not have to crash out every night on the room's recliner.
And for a while it was hard to tell that there was anything really wrong with my father. As I said, he seemed bright and chipper, following conversation and his TV game shows with alertness and seemingly normal humor. And his eye seemed just as jaundiced and cynical as ever when the interminable election news wrangled on and on.
I first discovered that things were not as they should be on one visit when Dad wanted to talk about some household business. As long as I was talking to him, as I said, he seemed at ease and attentive. It was when he had to speak to me that he had problems. Big problems. The concepts were there, but he could not find the words. He would stop in mid-sentence. He'd twist his hands in the air in a frustrated search. He'd hold his head, as if the effort hurt him. If Amy or I prompted him with words ("Treasury bills", "file folders", "interest,") his eyes would light up and he would leap on it, his whole being saying "yes, that's it!" But when he tried to formulate these concepts into words himself, it was a big struggle. There was something terribly wrong.
And he knew there was something terribly wrong, and would express it by saying something like "Oh, I am in big trouble now!" He knew his brain was having problems when it came to finding words, and he was understandably scared.
That his ability to turn ideas and pictures in his head into words was badly impaired became more and more obvious now with each visit. It was especially true in the case of more abstract notions. But even concrete nouns, like the Treasury Bills he was desperate to tell us about, were elusive. As soon as Amy or I supplied the word for him, he would say "Yeah!" with a rising inflection that carried a heartbreaking combination of embarassment and bemused anger at himself: "well of course! I know that. Isn't that obvious!"
The more I visited, day after day, the more I saw that my father's brain was deeply affected by what the doctors by this time labeled a cerebral hemorrhage. His problem with words began to seem simple and easily definable compared to other, stranger manifestations.
For instance, I began to think that Dad's brain was often carrying two concepts together at once in a way that the rest of us would find either an effort of will or a scary intrusion. I thought about those times that our brains are slipping into sleep or rising from sleep to full daytime consciousness that psychologists call hypnagogia or threshold consciousness.
We all have experienced--and might even experience nightly--these strange states of mind. For me, they often overlay or blend two types of thought: first, a mechanical operation, like enumerating, or sorting by colors, or making a list, or the like. But at the same time, the colored beads I am sliding along wires, say, are also people's feelings, or worries about tasks left undone, or maybe things I have to do in a certain order before getting out of bed. I often feel frustrated, sliding those beads around, knowing I can never really get them in the right order.
It began to seem, or I began to imagine, that my father's head as he lay there in his hospital bed, was locked in such a state of double-mindedness. Things he said sometimes pointed toward this. He would connect an abstract concept with a concrete one in an alarming shift.
It was during this time when he came out with a statement that still amazes me and fills me with a strange joy.
I had arrived for my daily visit just on the tail end of Dad's meal time. He still had dessert to come, and wanted to see if he could share some with me. Both Amy and he had ordered pieces of pie, and they quickly decided to offer me a piece, instead. I would get Amy's slice.
"Have a piece of apple pie!" said Dad. The pie had not arrived yet. Amy said it was cherry, not apple.
Up in the corner of the room, the TV news was a tangle of move and counter-move in the election crisis. Recounts proposed and challenged, chads flying every which way, lawyers and politicos squaring off.
Dad was gazing at it and shaking his head.
"Those so-n-sos!" he exclaimed.
An orderly arrived with two pieces of cherry pie in styrofoam bowls.
"What. . .chicanery!" Dad continued. Such an interesting word came out of his mouth. It wasn't one I would think of. I looked closely at him.
Dad made a fuss of offering me some "apple pie," handing me one of the bowls as he held the other. He kept looking back up at the TV while fussing with the pie.
"Apple pie!. . .apple pie!" he urged, pushing it at me.
"Chicanery?" I asked, still delighted with the word.
"Yeah!" said my father, gesturing up at the TV with his fork, "Apple pie chicanery!" And laughed.
I laughed too.
I looked at him with wonder, and laughed! He had come out with this amazing statement, this piece of crack-brained poetry, and it delighted me. But had he known what he had said, really?
As if reading my mind, he repeated, "Yeah! Apple Pie Chicanery!"
It was the last, best thing I heard my father say.
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
08 August 2009
04 November 2008
Voting: The Reality
Howdy, folks!
My last, elegiac post gave my feelings about voting. I had written most of that a while back, but had to publish it before actually going out and voting, for goodness' sake.
So, today being THE DAY, I did go out and vote.
I pulled up and parked on the street at 11:27 am. My polling place (always a new one: don't think I have voted at the same place twice!) was the Washington Park Community Center, located in the east side of Denver's park of the same name.
I had wondered where I would park. I had wondered how long the fabled long lines would be. I had expected I would have time to drop a few tweets to Twitter friends, and to read my book, "The Unfolding of Language."
So I walked up the road toward the community center itself, looking for people streaming out, looking for the lines. I love those big black-on-white signs officially announcing 'Polling Place for Precincts . . ." They made it official. This was the place.
I went inside. The place is a community center with a large gym, workout room, and pool. Quite nice, actually.
And I still didn't see the line.
I was standing there wondering where to go when a fellow near me asked, "You here to vote?"
"Yeah."
He pointed me around the main check-in desk and to the left, down to the gym.
I was trembling with excitement.
Followed the short hallway and the ramp down to the wide-open double doors of the gym. There, people were standing around, waiting to greet me.
Waiting to greet ANY voter.
In short, reader, there was NO LINE. Not a line at the table where they look your name up in the voter rolls. Not a line waiting for a voting booth. There were ten or so of these booths set up in the middle of the room, and three or so other people voting at the moment.
I approached the alphabetically correct "line" at the folding tables, and gave the young man my name. Just to make sure, I handed him my official voter card, the thing I got in the mail that told me that this was my polling place.
He riffled through the log. He paged forward, then back.
He looked up at me and said, "Um, I'm not sure. . ."
The guy sitting next to him asked me what my precinct number was. I told him. It was two-nineteen.
"Oh, well, 219 isn't here. You have to go somewhere else," said the second, older guy.
I was dumbfounded. But not convinced.
I knew that it said 219 right on my card, the card the young man still had in front of him on the open voter rolls. And I knew that that card had this location as my polling place. All of which I told them.
Looking behind the election judges, I saw a second row of folding tables. Piled on these tables were stacks of the paper ballots we are using in Denver County this year. They were allocated by precinct number. And right there at the first stack was a small hand-lettered sign that said "219."
As I tried to point that out, the older guy was telling me where I had to go. He insisted that it was not very far away.
He was "sure that 219 was not here."
Then, a breakthrough.
The younger election judge looked back at his computer printout rolls, back at my card, paged a few pages, and found me.
Then they fell into their official mode, the one man writing down my voter number in a log, the other one taking my signature.
"Well, what was this all about?" I asked.
"I was spelling your name with "Ha" instead of "He."
"Oh. That would do it," I said.
The rest of the experience went smoothly. I was handed two large thin cardboard ballot cards. They were inside a plain white "security sleeve." I took them over to one of the "booths," which was a flimsy but official place to write and to shield my ballot on three sides.
Our ballot here in Colorado was long this year, but I was perfectly prepared. I had my cheat sheet with me in my book, and I took it out and filled out the ballot.
These ballots, I assume, are identical to the ones people have been using for some weeks of mail-in voting. Next to each choice, each candidate, or the words Yes and No, is an arrow missing its middle section. To mark your choice, you connect the left and right parts of the arrow. A nice dark, thick pencil for this purpose is wired to the voting booth.
When I was done with that, I was not sure where to take the ballot. Looking around, it became clear. There was a table set up across the room with two large boxes. Somewhat disturbingly, one was red and one was blue, but this had nothing to do with party affiliation! The red one was for mail-in ballots that people were walking in with. The blue one was for people voting today, like me.
Part of this whole experience is the interaction with the people manning the polls. Obviously, it didn't start well for me, with the two somewhat incompetent election judges who were very quick to assume I was in the wrong place. But it ended well, with the pleasant lady standing behind the table with the boxes. We talked a little bit about the light turnout. She supposed it was because so many people voted early or by mail-in ballot.
I fumbled with my cards a bit. She told me that no, the security sleeve doesn't fit in the slot, just the ballot cards do. She told me to just slip them in the slot and tilt them up, so they would slide in.
For some reason I flashed on a death at sea, where the wrapped-up corpse is up-ended into the briny deep.
Erasing that from my mind and laughing at myself a bit, I tipped my ballots up, slid them in, and cast my vote.
My last, elegiac post gave my feelings about voting. I had written most of that a while back, but had to publish it before actually going out and voting, for goodness' sake.
So, today being THE DAY, I did go out and vote.
I pulled up and parked on the street at 11:27 am. My polling place (always a new one: don't think I have voted at the same place twice!) was the Washington Park Community Center, located in the east side of Denver's park of the same name.
I had wondered where I would park. I had wondered how long the fabled long lines would be. I had expected I would have time to drop a few tweets to Twitter friends, and to read my book, "The Unfolding of Language."
So I walked up the road toward the community center itself, looking for people streaming out, looking for the lines. I love those big black-on-white signs officially announcing 'Polling Place for Precincts . . ." They made it official. This was the place.
I went inside. The place is a community center with a large gym, workout room, and pool. Quite nice, actually.
And I still didn't see the line.
I was standing there wondering where to go when a fellow near me asked, "You here to vote?"
"Yeah."
He pointed me around the main check-in desk and to the left, down to the gym.
I was trembling with excitement.
Followed the short hallway and the ramp down to the wide-open double doors of the gym. There, people were standing around, waiting to greet me.
Waiting to greet ANY voter.
In short, reader, there was NO LINE. Not a line at the table where they look your name up in the voter rolls. Not a line waiting for a voting booth. There were ten or so of these booths set up in the middle of the room, and three or so other people voting at the moment.
I approached the alphabetically correct "line" at the folding tables, and gave the young man my name. Just to make sure, I handed him my official voter card, the thing I got in the mail that told me that this was my polling place.
He riffled through the log. He paged forward, then back.
He looked up at me and said, "Um, I'm not sure. . ."
The guy sitting next to him asked me what my precinct number was. I told him. It was two-nineteen.
"Oh, well, 219 isn't here. You have to go somewhere else," said the second, older guy.
I was dumbfounded. But not convinced.
I knew that it said 219 right on my card, the card the young man still had in front of him on the open voter rolls. And I knew that that card had this location as my polling place. All of which I told them.
Looking behind the election judges, I saw a second row of folding tables. Piled on these tables were stacks of the paper ballots we are using in Denver County this year. They were allocated by precinct number. And right there at the first stack was a small hand-lettered sign that said "219."
As I tried to point that out, the older guy was telling me where I had to go. He insisted that it was not very far away.
He was "sure that 219 was not here."
Then, a breakthrough.
The younger election judge looked back at his computer printout rolls, back at my card, paged a few pages, and found me.
Then they fell into their official mode, the one man writing down my voter number in a log, the other one taking my signature.
"Well, what was this all about?" I asked.
"I was spelling your name with "Ha" instead of "He."
"Oh. That would do it," I said.
The rest of the experience went smoothly. I was handed two large thin cardboard ballot cards. They were inside a plain white "security sleeve." I took them over to one of the "booths," which was a flimsy but official place to write and to shield my ballot on three sides.
Our ballot here in Colorado was long this year, but I was perfectly prepared. I had my cheat sheet with me in my book, and I took it out and filled out the ballot.
These ballots, I assume, are identical to the ones people have been using for some weeks of mail-in voting. Next to each choice, each candidate, or the words Yes and No, is an arrow missing its middle section. To mark your choice, you connect the left and right parts of the arrow. A nice dark, thick pencil for this purpose is wired to the voting booth.
When I was done with that, I was not sure where to take the ballot. Looking around, it became clear. There was a table set up across the room with two large boxes. Somewhat disturbingly, one was red and one was blue, but this had nothing to do with party affiliation! The red one was for mail-in ballots that people were walking in with. The blue one was for people voting today, like me.
Part of this whole experience is the interaction with the people manning the polls. Obviously, it didn't start well for me, with the two somewhat incompetent election judges who were very quick to assume I was in the wrong place. But it ended well, with the pleasant lady standing behind the table with the boxes. We talked a little bit about the light turnout. She supposed it was because so many people voted early or by mail-in ballot.
I fumbled with my cards a bit. She told me that no, the security sleeve doesn't fit in the slot, just the ballot cards do. She told me to just slip them in the slot and tilt them up, so they would slide in.
For some reason I flashed on a death at sea, where the wrapped-up corpse is up-ended into the briny deep.
Erasing that from my mind and laughing at myself a bit, I tipped my ballots up, slid them in, and cast my vote.
01 November 2008
Halloween Visitors: A List
Spent Halloween at my stepmother Amy's place.
For the first time in many years, I got to see some trick-or-treaters. I even got to give out the candy. I had a blood-red glass bowl filled with a mixture of "fun size" Snickers, Nestle's Crunch, Kit Kats, and Hershey's kisses.
I expected the little little kids to be coming around with their parents quite early, around 4:30 or so. But really, the first visitors, a small girl devil with her demon mother, came by just before 6:30.
The kids started out very small, like the amazing elfin Spiderman I opened the door to find next, and got bigger as the evening's modest parade went on. In the middle were the middle-school kids, too cool to wear costumes (unless those "cool" outfits they were wearing were their costumes!) They got taller and edgier toward the end, like the young man who announced himself as "a dead skateboarder," and who, indeed, had a full-sized skateboard right through his body!
Four days before Election Day, many of the older kids heartily approved of my "Obama/Biden" t-shirt.
For what it's worth, here is the modest list of trick-or-treaters at Amy's house in suburban Littleton:
- 1 small devil (1 accompanying parent)
-1 small Spiderman
-1 spider baby (in mom's chest harness)
-(2 parents)
-2 slightly older cute witches
-3 young teens, 1 dog. (too cool for costumes. small fluffy dog carried like a baby under a blanket)
-2 small Transformers
-1 self-confessed "homicidal murderer"
-1 girl genie
-(1 parent)
-1 dead skateboarder
-1 Jason
-1 female duck
-1 vampiress
(arrived after 9:00, after we had given up and closed the front door)
-7 assorted older teens: vampires, "a black man," hockey goalie, etc.
For the first time in many years, I got to see some trick-or-treaters. I even got to give out the candy. I had a blood-red glass bowl filled with a mixture of "fun size" Snickers, Nestle's Crunch, Kit Kats, and Hershey's kisses.
I expected the little little kids to be coming around with their parents quite early, around 4:30 or so. But really, the first visitors, a small girl devil with her demon mother, came by just before 6:30.
The kids started out very small, like the amazing elfin Spiderman I opened the door to find next, and got bigger as the evening's modest parade went on. In the middle were the middle-school kids, too cool to wear costumes (unless those "cool" outfits they were wearing were their costumes!) They got taller and edgier toward the end, like the young man who announced himself as "a dead skateboarder," and who, indeed, had a full-sized skateboard right through his body!
Four days before Election Day, many of the older kids heartily approved of my "Obama/Biden" t-shirt.
For what it's worth, here is the modest list of trick-or-treaters at Amy's house in suburban Littleton:
- 1 small devil (1 accompanying parent)
-1 small Spiderman
-1 spider baby (in mom's chest harness)
-(2 parents)
-2 slightly older cute witches
-3 young teens, 1 dog. (too cool for costumes. small fluffy dog carried like a baby under a blanket)
-2 small Transformers
-1 self-confessed "homicidal murderer"
-1 girl genie
-(1 parent)
-1 dead skateboarder
-1 Jason
-1 female duck
-1 vampiress
(arrived after 9:00, after we had given up and closed the front door)
-7 assorted older teens: vampires, "a black man," hockey goalie, etc.
19 July 2008
Emissions Lady
I recently did my stepmother a favor and took my father's car to get its emissions inspection.
(Odd. I just realized that not only do I still call it "my father's car," but I still think of it that way, even though he died in January 2001. But that, perhaps, is another blog.)
As I waited in that place which is either a long, thin building with windows or a hallway with a roof, I saw her.
She wore her blue overall uniform. Her gray hair was gathered back but with streamers flying. Her job is to finish off the inspection, take your cash or check in payment, check the gas cap seal, and send you on your way.
She has worked at this particular emissions inspection facility for years. I've seen her many times.
Standing there and watching her bustle about her business I realized that seeing her is one of the highlights about the yearly trip to the emissions inspection place. I realized that I had missed her when she was not there, that I had wondered about her and even worried a bit that she had lost the job or gotten sick.
My car's test done, she jumped in it, pulled it forward to just outside the building, looked around, and one-arm waved me out.
"Cash or check?" she automatically asked me.
Handing her my cash, I said, "Hey! It's nice to see you again! I've seen you here lots of times. You've worked here for a long time, haven't you?"
She hitched in mid-gesture and her craggy, snaggle-toothed face bloomed. She dropped several layers of formality.
"Hey, yeah. I've seen you here, too. I recognize you."
Suddenly, we were on the same wavelength.
She said, "I always like to go to places where people know me, you know? It's so much nicer when somebody can smile, like at the grocery store, where somebody's not going to raise a fuss when I point out that something is on sale or something."
I had to agree.
As she printed out my paperwork and sent me on my way, she said,"Hey, your car is doing good, there. I looked at the old numbers and it's looking good! See you next time!"
"Yeah. See you!"
Later, I was telling my stepmother about this encounter. As she told me about her own experiences with people she "knows" in the grocery store, the importance of such contact struck me deeply.
Don't we crave such experiences? Don't we want to exchange a few pleasant words with someone we have chatted with before, while they count out our change or scan our items?
Maybe it's just me. But there are places I visit repeatedly in my daily rounds and I do look forward to seeing particular clerks or serving people again and again. I look forward to the little chit-chat conversations about silly things, but silly things we two people share in particular. I look forward to them not only recognizing me as a person, but as a person that they know some little something about.
And I want these little relationships to be real.
There is so much fakery in our society, where a server is trained to say, for instance, "Hi, my name is Josh, and I'll be your server today." This is a corporate, fake attempt to imitate a real relationship between people, since that sort of thing is a rare commodity these days.
But a real relationship can't come from a single managerial-mandated introduction. It takes time and multiple visits and courage on the part of both service person and customer. Courage to not only be observant and recognize something about the person in front of you, but to eventually say something about it, make some little comment that opens up a real connection.
My encounter with the emissions lady just got me thinking about this, and thinking that it is really quite important and much deeper than it might seem at first.
Or maybe it's just me.
(Odd. I just realized that not only do I still call it "my father's car," but I still think of it that way, even though he died in January 2001. But that, perhaps, is another blog.)
As I waited in that place which is either a long, thin building with windows or a hallway with a roof, I saw her.
She wore her blue overall uniform. Her gray hair was gathered back but with streamers flying. Her job is to finish off the inspection, take your cash or check in payment, check the gas cap seal, and send you on your way.
She has worked at this particular emissions inspection facility for years. I've seen her many times.
Standing there and watching her bustle about her business I realized that seeing her is one of the highlights about the yearly trip to the emissions inspection place. I realized that I had missed her when she was not there, that I had wondered about her and even worried a bit that she had lost the job or gotten sick.
My car's test done, she jumped in it, pulled it forward to just outside the building, looked around, and one-arm waved me out.
"Cash or check?" she automatically asked me.
Handing her my cash, I said, "Hey! It's nice to see you again! I've seen you here lots of times. You've worked here for a long time, haven't you?"
She hitched in mid-gesture and her craggy, snaggle-toothed face bloomed. She dropped several layers of formality.
"Hey, yeah. I've seen you here, too. I recognize you."
Suddenly, we were on the same wavelength.
She said, "I always like to go to places where people know me, you know? It's so much nicer when somebody can smile, like at the grocery store, where somebody's not going to raise a fuss when I point out that something is on sale or something."
I had to agree.
As she printed out my paperwork and sent me on my way, she said,"Hey, your car is doing good, there. I looked at the old numbers and it's looking good! See you next time!"
"Yeah. See you!"
Later, I was telling my stepmother about this encounter. As she told me about her own experiences with people she "knows" in the grocery store, the importance of such contact struck me deeply.
Don't we crave such experiences? Don't we want to exchange a few pleasant words with someone we have chatted with before, while they count out our change or scan our items?
Maybe it's just me. But there are places I visit repeatedly in my daily rounds and I do look forward to seeing particular clerks or serving people again and again. I look forward to the little chit-chat conversations about silly things, but silly things we two people share in particular. I look forward to them not only recognizing me as a person, but as a person that they know some little something about.
And I want these little relationships to be real.
There is so much fakery in our society, where a server is trained to say, for instance, "Hi, my name is Josh, and I'll be your server today." This is a corporate, fake attempt to imitate a real relationship between people, since that sort of thing is a rare commodity these days.
But a real relationship can't come from a single managerial-mandated introduction. It takes time and multiple visits and courage on the part of both service person and customer. Courage to not only be observant and recognize something about the person in front of you, but to eventually say something about it, make some little comment that opens up a real connection.
My encounter with the emissions lady just got me thinking about this, and thinking that it is really quite important and much deeper than it might seem at first.
Or maybe it's just me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)