Joys of capitalism

I'm just throwing down a quick post before jaunting off to the endotontist to get a root canal done. I kind of feel like Stan Laurel, whimpering and unhappy because of the pain in my tooth (number 31 for those dental types tuning in).

But I am just loving the American system right now. Somewhere in Framingham there is a highly trained dental professional with an office full of expensive equipment designed by experienced engineers and fabricated by sophisticated machinists. All these people have been working for years, for decades, perfecting their art, so that I, a nobody, can call up and make an appointment (and get one that day, if necessary).

I don't need to be handsome, or famous, or even pleasant. I just need to have insurance or a credit card and this life-saving service is available to me.

What a country!

Nice Sunday visit

We had a happy visit this afternoon at the hospital. Marina and her great friend Luana came along. Luanna took photos -- we are making fun of the pictures that the young Brazilian couples get done when they are celebrating their pregnancies. I am supposed to be bragging here about my masculinity, I suppose. Anyway, you can see we are pretty happy (and silly). Luciana is in good shape, very cheerful and full of ideas and preoccupations. We all went down to the only restaurant in the hospital, an abysmally operated Au Bon Pain. Luciana had to stay in a wheelchair. I wanted to get her some fresh air and tried to push her outside through the revolving door, which occasioned a good deal of hilarity. Luana showed us how to use the Blackberry Messenger service, which is pretty much the same as IMing. We are getting to be very digital. It was a happy time.

I see this picture and think of the innocence of these two creatures. To be in our fifties and still able to jump into life with the innocence of young adults. I'm sure this is madness and folly - and essential Life itself. What choice do you have? Keep living or start dying.

Writing this blog, I often have the uncomfortable impression that I will "look at this someday" and feel very differently. I suppose, I fear feeling regret, I fear feeling foolish. So I am going to respond to myself by quoting myself -- this comes from an email I sent my son Felix this morning.

Felix had told me Friday that he was going to participate in a school academic competition on Saturday -- for people who know Felix, the idea of him taking part in an academic (or any) competition is a bit startling. He had to get up at 6 am to catch a 7 am bus. This morning (Sunday) I got in touch to ask how the competition went. "I didn't make it. My alarm didn't wake me up. No one called me until 11 am. I told them how bad I felt for missing it because I really do feel bad."

I IM'ed back a few short phrases, because the MMS message system only allows brief thoughts. I like it because it forces me to come up with fortune cookies:

• Regret is a feeling that passes with time
• Opportunities come and go, never to return
• People remember who shows up for them
• Their memory of you is all they know of you

My effort in life is just to keep showing up when I can, and to take the opportunities as they come, and to let the regret wash past me in waves just as it likes to do.

My amazing wife

When I read the entries in the blog that Luciana writes I am always humbled by her spiritual strength and her beautiful prose. Ila miglior fabbra

The hospital room is an architecture that arranges experiences

What kind of experience is being arranged on this structure?

The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a sting of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

--- From "The Places You'll Go," by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

In that intermediary neither-here-nor-there waiting-for-time-to-pass place, where people's activity consists of "monitoring," "checking," "keeping an eye on" and people are afflicted with sensations of boredom, anxiety, uselessness, fear, annoyance, and confusion. Questions can only be answered over time, situations can only be resolved over time. And while we are waiting, and wishing for waiting to be over, the babies are breathing, drinking, kicking, blinking, touching with fingers and toes, reacting to sounds and pressure, turning in the womb and (recently) putting their heads down toward the exit. They have been waiting too - developing from a single cell!!!!! to these complex creatures -- humans about to begin being with us!!!! In the excitement of it all, that gets hung like a coat on a hook on the wall of this bare utilitarian room, I find myself saying, "Take your time, there's no rush, we can wait two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, get yourself ready, we will be here when you need us." And I find myself feeling, "I can't wait!!!"

But I can. Luciana can. We all can. So we do!

Sing praises of Marina!

Marina has taken a term off from school to stay in Framingham and help Luciana and me get from where we are to where we are going, and we would be completely lost without her!
Yesterday I went to work, and Marina drove Luciana into Boston to Tufts Medical Center. Helped her pack, put her in the Jeep, and got her to the hospital, helped her in. Insisted that the staff get a wheelchair for Luciana so she wouldn't walk through the garage and down the hallways. She is thinking of so many things.
And -- she got the news Friday that she won another scholarship from Dartmouth. She is her second! "It is my pleasure to inform you that you have been selected to receive a second endowed scholarship this year, one of Dartmouth's Kenneth H. and Ruth K. Murray 1927 Scholarships... the late Mr. Murray, a noted alumnus of the Calss of 1927, established this fund. He received his law degree from Columbia University and spent six years practicing law in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil... This honor is bestowed only on Dartmouth's most outstanding students. Your personal and academic achievements demonstrate that you have the potential and promise to make a significant contribution at Dartmouth.... Congratualtions on this fine honor and recognition!"
Awesome!

Just for fun

This morning before I left for work, a tender moment.
I look funny because I'm hugging and also taking the photo.

Here we are -- January 23

This is how we are doing today, January 23rd. It's been a busy week of learning to do less and less, and Luciana is getting better at it. We have all the daily problems of life, but since we seem to be managing them better, they are more or less just a backdrop for our big event. We have been down to one car all week because my car went into the shop last Thursday, and it took them three days to diagnose the problem, and since then can't get the right part. It has snowed several times, so there has been lots of digging, snowblowing and salting. Some neighbor recently figured out they could get on our wireless network and grab tons of bandwith for BitTorrent downloads (I'm guessing) so I had to learn (finally) how to program the router to have a password. In the midst of this, Luciana's computer lost its (tenuous at best) connection to the internet, and we still haven't puzzled that one out. The garbage disposal is jammed, so we are constantly unclogging the sink drain and thinking vaguely about getting someone who knows what they are doing to come fix it. Perhaps on Saturday Varlei will come, as he has promised, to fix the many things. Meanwhile we are learning to move slowly, and we are learning to reassure each other. Last night it turned out that I was not mentally prepared for the day of the birth at the hospital, in that I had always figured I would be there through the whole process, and then when everyone was settled in and safe -- if everyone was settled in and safe -- I would go home for a few hours sleep before coming back in the morning. No! No! No! What kind of husband thinks this kind of thing?!? It must have been my autistic side getting activated. So it turns out the proper plan is -- I will sleep in the chair, ever ready to jump up and make sure the babies are alright so I can return to reassure my poor wife, who will be recovering from major surgery. Of course, if I had undergone major surgery (does appendectomy and gall bladder removal count as major surgery? maybe not) I would just as soon be left alone. But... hey, that's me. Luciana does NOT want to be left alone. Now that I understand that, things are fine.
I think for the first time I began to visualize the situation at the hospital and I realized I will probably be so excited that I will stay up all night anyway!

Thought of the day from SJ

While reading Samuel Johnson's essays in search of lunchtime distraction I came across a useful line:
"Private life ... derives its comforts and its wretchedness from the right or wrong management of things which nothing but their frequency makes considerable."
As my son Felix would say, "Tru dat, tru dat."

Happy

I just got back from my therapy session. Haven't seen the man since July, when I flew down to Rio to begin the IVF treatment, so this was my chance to tell him the big news.
"You seem very very happy," he said. "I am," I said. He grinned at me - complicity and comprehension.
That doesn't say it all, of course. There's so much to deal with: so much to comprehend, so many unknowns to face.
But for me the most salient memory I have of the past week is the few minutes the other morning when L and I danced together in the kitchen before breakfast. No music playing - just a sudden look of joy shared between us, and we fell into our little happy dance. This is the joy I've been missing my whole life, and now I've found it with her.
Her and me, the three embinhos, the three dogs, the dirty house and its endless renovation, her four children, my two children, her ex-husband and my ex-wife, her parents and my parents, her friends and my friends, our colleagues, my patients and her patients. The big vast expanding network of interacting lives.
And at the center, L and me dancing.