My fifth-grade teacher Mrs. Dean used to get a kick out of me NOT because I played kickball with reckless abandon during recess. She always enjoyed the way I said things. I talked a lot so there were more than a few opportunities to cherry-pick quick quips or keen observations.
Chalk, post-eraser strokes, made the numeral "7" with the assistance of Mrs. Dean's right hand.
"Seven days of school left," every fifth-grader thought on the first morning of June. Seven days until we'd be at the pool or watching VHS tapes of old episodes of "Hey Dude" from 9:30 a.m. until 12:17 p.m. when we'd eat a lunch that included way too many UTZ potato chips and usually a can or two of Coke. Seven days until I became infatiuated with Melody and wondered why Brad got any love at all.
"June 1 is kind of like the beginning of the end," I told Mrs. Dean. "We can see the light at the end of the tunnel."
She laughed. The rest of the dudes looked around to try to figure out which girls were wearing bras.
"What's next for you, Dave? 8th grade?"
No way, I thought. Mr. White teaches sixth grade and he just shows movies all day. I ain't missing that shit.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
June is the horizon for pre-secondary students. Never quite reachable but gorgeous, just gorgeous. The year's calendar ticks down in anticipation. June. He's the best. There's no whiff of fall. There's usually no long family vacations. The days are the longest. Nothing about summer is boring before the 30th. You still haven't gotten to the terrible episodes of "Hey Dude" that revolve around Buddy Ernst, Mr. Ernst's annoying son as if Mr. Ernst isn't annoying enough. Can I get a hell yea?
Summer stops being summer right around the time you finish high school or realize school isn't the most appropriate venue for gaining wordly prowess.
I'm not one on polls. Don't really trust them. Last poll I can take seriously is the one from Nov. 2008 which shows 52.9 percent of Americans are idiots. I can trust a hypothetical poll. If we polled all the twenty- and thirty- (and lower forty-) something Midwesterners, you'd find a vast majority prefer Fall to any other season.
The first Friday in October is my first day of Fall.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
I saw the beginning of the end in my Aunt Colleen's eyes when I exited an elevator on Friday, Oct. 2, 2009 in Riverside Hospital.
"It's not good, Dave," she said, "it's not good."
About two hours earlier my mom had called me to tell me my sister Annie had a baby. They named her Ellie. My mom told me they all couldn't wait to see me.
I ran out the clock on those final few hours of work, bought some flowers and headed to the hospital.
Once in the parking lot, I called my mom to figure out the location of the baby.
"Oh Dave," is what I heard and my heart sank. "Things aren't real good. There's been some problems."
I put on my bravest face which is a tough one because my usual Friday face is my "WHOA! CAN'T WAIT TO GET RIPPED TONIGHT FACE."
Went up the elevator and saw my Aunt Colleen standing there waiting for me.
"It's not good, Dave," she said, "it's not good."
A quick primer on my Aunt Colleen. She's the most positive person
She's the opposite of that annoying guy you know and sometimes call on Friday nights who's convinced Indiana will beat Ohio State in football or that after 37 billion years of sunrises, tomorrow's probably won't come.
In the interest of full disclosure, I did miss an entire's day worth of sun on a Thursday back in November 2004. Went to bed around 5 a.m. and got out of bed around 6 p.m. I had wooden boards over my windows after Hurricane Charlie struck the island in August. Even though I didn't eat Fritos for that entire year, my mouth just tasted like Fritos that entire day. In the interest of fuller disclosure, I'm just lazy and didn't feel like removing the board from the window and in the interest of Fuller, don't drink so much Pepsi before bed.
Buzz's girlfriend? Woof.
To hear Aunt Colleen tell me things weren't good hit hard. There are certain people in your life you look to for strength. She is one of them. My mom's another.
In kindergarten, I heard my mom cry for the first time when the call came that her father had died. It's among my first memories. I remember being scared. Moms don't cry. How is this possible?
Decades later, I found myself in the same shoes (seriously, I really liked Converses) only this time aware of the gravity of the situation surrounding me.
Ellie did not make a sound when born. "Why isn't she crying," my sister remembers asking. "What's wrong, [Husband's name]?"
Born without breathing, paramedics rushed Ellie to Nationwide Children's Hospital. A crowd of 20 or 25 people there to celebrate this birth cried, cried sometimes alone, cried sometimes with each other. Cried.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Ellie remained at Nationwide Children's Hospital for six weeks. Five days into her life, doctors told her mother they didn't think she'd make it. She had problems with her kidneys. With her brain. With her breathing. With swelling. They "froze" her body temperature for 72 hours in an attempt to help.
Who'd help my sister? Those days were long. My mom stayed in Columbus and provided strength I didn't know a 5-foot-4, 120-pound woman could possess although she probably still could kick my ass and sometimes still challenges me to arm-strength battles.
Bawling I told her on Oct. 2 that Annie really needed her. Told her that I knew she (my mother) felt more pain than anyone else but her daughter needed her to be strong because Annie's brother is proving incapable.
I'll never see an another example of greater human behavior.
The work my mom did in those six weeks still shocks me. I can't imagine losing a newborn child and this is stunning because I've dreamed of having a newborn child and this is even before my latest odd Ambien-induced dreams. Every moment during the month of October I dreaded my phone ringing. "Ellie's gone," that's coming I thought and with every passing day I figured the odds of that phrase being delivered lessened.
What are we going to do? How are we going to get through this? Didn't have much time to think about the answer to the second question as I always thought of my mom.
Whatever happens, we'll be OK.
Moving into November we soon learned the beginning of this struggle looked to be heading to an ending of joy.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Think of the things that bring happiness to your life. Do they all make sense? I don't think so. I'm not sure why I love sitting on my couch unshowered on Saturday afternoons drinking root beer and putting peanut butter on a piece of bread and then folding that piece in half and eating it. I don't know why I like going to the High Beck on Wednesday nights to have four or five icy cold Miller Lite drafts. I don't know why I like going to the Little Bar on Sundays so much well actually I do but that's another 10,000 words that I'll one day get into with the help of pictures because that really will sell it.
We all find happiness in our lives. We all have sadness. We all have confusion. We all have heartbreak. We all have insecurity. We all have worry. We all have relief. We all have fatigue. We all have an HD television now because old school TVs just suck.
I never knew joy until spending time with my niece Ellie. She went home for good on November 12, 2009. I held her for the first time. I felt joy. Being with her brings me joy. It's perhaps the only thing in my life to ever do so.
I'll head back to Youngstown, Ohio after work today to celebrate Ellie's 1st birthday. Her family moved to northeast Ohio after her dad got a lawyering job in Pittsburgh.
I'll give her the first of her many birthday gifts. It's awesome. She might not love it but it will reinforce my desire to be the hippest uncle in tri-state area history.
This first Friday in October looks identical to this past year's except I've picked up a new gift.
The gift of joy.
This beginning will have no end.
