My Weekly Homecoming

I can boast of having one of the best coming-home-from-work experiences possible: after my three hour commute, sometimes through heavy traffic caused by not-so-sporadic roadwork, I open the door, late at night, to have my two little girls blitz from their bed room for a full-on tackle --

"It's Papa! It's Papa!" they chant as the hop up-and-down and up-and-down, much as popcorn would if it was a 5- and 3-year-old girl.

Recently, my dear wife has gotten a piece of this action. After watching 30 seconds of unending exuberance, she started jumping up-and-down and squawking a pitch-perfect imitation: "It's Papa! It's Papa!"

This display, of course, elicited peals of laughter from the girls, but, did it slow them down? Heavens, no! More bouncing and squawking ensued and they rang around the rosie Papa.

Now, if I can convert these weekly esctasies into daily ones, then I would have the best possible homecoming experience ...

Playing Dr. for real

Little Isabel came up to me Saturday morning: "My hand hurts, Papa, you be the Doctor." A common enough request from our children, as they get into enough scrapes with our fast-and-furious play that my doctoring ("pretend!" as Elena Marie often insists) gets them from pouting to playing in no time.

When I did see that her (right) hand had actually swollen to be about 50% larger than the other, it was time to call in the big guns:

"Go show your mother your hand."

One phone call later, we, Isabel and I, rushed off to the pediatricians' -- Dr. Thiede (not Dr. Lam, as she has now been married two years, people, get with the program!) diagnosed a mild infection, proscribed the usual (hand held above the heart), but changed her mind and sent us on our way to the hospital for X-rays when I recounted a incident a few days prior involving a slammed door and her hand.

The receptionist, like Dr. Thiede, was all kindness: how do these health-care professionals so joyfully sacrifice their lives? And, Isabel, being prepped by moiself (that is French) about having pictures taken of her hand, was completely accomodating. I reviewed the X-rays and observed no fractures (yes, one of my many talents is the ability to read X-ray charts to the utter amazement of the techs), but the tech had the radiologist confirm this. Confirmed.

So, off we skipped to the van via the "secret path" (a flower garden encircling the hospital's sidewalk entrance) but we expedited our skipping with the bees became a little too curious (maybe Isabel looks like a honey pot to the bees? that's the way she looks to me, too ...).

So as per the original diagnosis, a couple of days of rest with an elevated hand produced two effects: reduced swelling and special Papa time.

It's a Girl!

Great news! My friend Mike phoned me yesterday to let me know he and Malou are expecting a little girl in late November. This news is particularly sweet, as they have been trying for 10 years now to conceive. Now with God's blessing, their hopes are coming to fruition.

Rosie in Our Hearts

posted from Diane's blog...

The Princess wants to call her baby sister in heaven, Rosie. We decided then that Rosie is short for Rose Marie, since all our girls have Marie as their second name. Why it's a girl is just their gut feel. I don't mind at all. I'll even venture that the first one we lost in 1999 was also a girl. If we get creative, she'll also have a name by the end of the day.

The little one took it as well as her mind can understand what happened. After I explained that Mama is not pregnant anymore, she replied, Mama, I want to go to the Holy Land!

It was a great journey, this past 7 weeks. To be able to conceive after two years was a miracle! Secondary infertility is something we have to live with but even as we expected to eventually conceive, it still came as a surprise. Then having two children who can talk and understand the magnitude of this event was a big plus. We borrowed tons of books, read about how babies grow inside the mommies, had fun comparing the baby's size to ordinary objects like coffee beans and grains of rice. It could have been a 9-month lesson plan there!

It's easy to move on. The week of waiting between the first and second sonograms allowed me to prepare, pray and accept. If I was anxious at all, it was the night before the second sonogram, when I began to wish and hope for good news to share. Otherwise, there was no surprise at all with the results because my body gave me the appropriate signs. Seven weeks of an easy pregnancy is still seven weeks of carrying a life, and that's a gift, no matter how I look at it.

Third child lost

I regret to write that we have just lost our child. This is the third child we have lost by miscarriage; all three in the first trimester. This loss unites us with many couples we know and many couples we don't know who have lost a child, lost children, through miscarriage. So, a sad loss, but a loss that in which we may reflect with joy in the gifts we do have: each other, my wife, Diane, and I, and our living children: Elena Marie and Isabel.

What Papa Can Do!

(HT: Douglas Wood)

There are lots of things that regular people can do but dads can't.
Dads can't cross the street without holding hands.
They can push, but they can't swing.
When dads play hide-and-seek they always get found, but they have a hard time finding you.
Dads really need to be kissed good night at bedtime.
It's a wonder they make it through life at all!

This book written by Douglas Wood and illustrated by Doug Cushman apparently missed the mark according to the daughters of our Doug the Pirate-Papa.

Papa can cross the street without holding our hands!

He can push AND ride the swing.

Papa can find me when we play hide-and-seek, even when I hide in the bathtub.

We're all good wrestlers.

He's very good at sleeping late. He can shave by himself too!

And he can drive very fast. He goes ZOOM-ZOOM!

He can eat just one piece of cake and one scoop of ice cream.

Papa can read a book by himself.

Does Papa really need a good night kiss?

I give him good night kisses!

He doesn't check for monsters. But we play monsters! And I get scared.

It's what this Papa CAN do that makes these girls wait patiently, sometimes anxiously, for the weekends, when Papa comes home from a long week away from them.

Happy Father's Day, Papa! You Rock!

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I'm currently working in Mt. Laurel, NJ,¹ and one of the many joys of working in Mt. Laurel, NJ² is my reacquaintance with red-wing blackbirds!



This recollects to me Wallace Steven's poem, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", which I shamelessly reproduce here verbatim:⁴

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

A couple of notes about this poem: first, as I understand it, it was actually about red-wing blackbirds as they are common in Connecticut, and, tying into the first note is, second, my high-school compilation text where I first read this poem provided a footnote that "Haddam" in the exhortation to the thin men is, indeed, Haddam, Connecticut.

Take a moment from your busy schedule today and reread this poem. Hold fast to the center.

---

1	No, I do know why, but, yes, I can't believe it, either.
2	It is my duty as pater familias, priest and king of this family, to "count it all joy"3
3	Trust another blogger to snag that quote (James 1:2-3) for their blog-stead: http://countitalljoy.blogspot.com/
4	As the poem is too precious simply to provide a link with the Quixotic hope that my readership will "follow the link"; but here the link is, for completeness' sake: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-13ways.html