It’s a strange and wonderful thing, helping a parent recover from surgery. “Wonderful” because you’re returning the favor after all those years he or she raised you. Wiping your bottom. Cutting up your steak. Listening to doctors’ instructions, and remembering when you’re supposed to take medicine. Not even trying to duck when you threw up. “Strange” because now it’s you asking things like: “So … uh … you don’t actually need help going to the bathroom, right?” Because I’m sure as heck not wiping any bottoms! Pop got a ride home from the hospital and I’m calling it even.
Father camera units and the great preschool graduation debacle
I do declare … a kindergartner. That’s what my daughter is now. She graduated from Memorial Presbyterian Day School, a wonderful place where she learned amazing things, including how to turn washable paints into permanent ink stains. It was a terrific little ceremony the other night, filled with merriment, songs by children (some whose voices could carve names into glass) and diplomas for little tikes in blue caps and flowing gowns. Precious.
A Dad Working on Emergency Reaction Time
In a brand new hotel in Chapel Hill, N.C., I realized something this summer: My family is woefully un-prepared should disaster strike. In the wee hours of the night, as we slept on virgin pillows and virgin sheets, we were suddenly awoken by the most wretched of noises. It sounded as if a pterodactyl was throwing up in the bathroom. Loud and rancorous, it assaulted the ears — a pulsing, throbbing, piercing noise. BLURT-BLURT-BLURT. My first reaction was anger. How dare some North Carolina pterodactyl disturb my slumber. The nerve! There’s nothing like, and nothing worse, than the disorientating fog of being awoken in the middle of the night. You slowly come to your senses — grab a bit of awareness out of the air — and then remember that pterodactyls are long-since extinct. The blaring noise was really a fire alarm. “How dare the hotel be on fire!” I remember thinking.