Monthly Archives: March 2007

Hair

Nate

The other day at dinner, Nate announced, “Daddy! Guess what I learned in school today?”

“What, honey?”

“I learned that all boys have short hair, and all girls have long hair.”

I laughed. “That’s not true, Nate! I know lots of girls with short hair, and lots of boys with long hair.”

He squinted at me. “No, you don’t.”

Hm. Okay, time to break out the big guns. “Stay here, please; I’ll be right back.” Down to the basement I went, and returned carrying this picture:

Read

Tim shot this in the mid-’90s as an assignment for his portrait class. I’ve always loved it.

“Do you know who that is, Nate?”

“…no.”

“That’s me, when I was younger.”

He peered at the picture, and then looked at me, doubtfully. “So… you were a girl?”

Heavy Metal

Sarah, Talk nerdy to me

Modern Problems; or, Into each life, some acid rain must fall

As a computer geek, I think I may be a bit more sensitive than the average bear when it comes to the nasty chemicals lurking in our lives.

Old TVs and computer monitors contain cathode ray tubes, which are full of lead. LCD displays, such as you might find in a laptop or a flat-screen TV, are backlit with fluorescent lamps, which contain mercury. Thermostats and watch batteries also contain mercury. Camera batteries contain lithium. Easy to buy; hard to get rid of. You can’t just put heavy metals in a landfill or an incinerator.

When we lived in Salem, they had one “hazardous products day” every year. It just so happened that it was always in the summer, always on a Saturday; in particular, it was always on a beautiful summer Saturday when we’d been invited to go sailing with Sarah’s parents, and we had to leave early to catch the tide through the Hole.

We never did make it to a hazardous products day. Amazingly enough, sailing always won out. By the time we left Salem, we had quite a large collection of old, broken-down TVs, computer monitors, and camera batteries.

Luckily, our new town has a hazardous waste recycling center, open every Saturday from 8 to 3. The guy who runs the place knows me by name. They take CRTs and fluorescent tubes, but they don’t take batteries.

Behind the lens

Last week, my dad discovered that his former place of business has a battery recycling program. I handed him my collection of dead batteries, and I dug out Sarah’s camera bag to see what she had squirreled away. I found another handful of dead batteries, along with (surprise!) her cameras, containing even more dead batteries.

One camera also contained some exposed film.

These were the pictures from our last trip together. We went to Puerto Rico with her parents in January of 2006.

I took the camera to CVS, bought some new batteries, and put them in the camera. I rewound the film and dropped it off to be developed.

There were lots of great pictures of me and Nate.

Not one picture of Sarah.

Hey, Miss, understand me.

Nate

Living with a three-year-old is quite surreal at times. Nate is always so sure of himself, and he always takes it upon himself to correct me. Tonight he was watching Sesame Street and I said something about Kermit the Frog. He said, “No, daddy, it’s Hermit the Frog.” We went around a couple of times, but I think I managed to convince him that it’s Kermit.

Daylight Saving Time is another source of disagreement in our family. He wanted to know why the sun was still out when we got home from school today. I tried to explain that as we get closer to summer, the days are getting longer and the nights are getting shorter. His face lit up in understanding, and he said, “Aha! It’s because boys have shorter hair, and girls have longer hair.” I gave up at that point.

I don’t usually go out of my way to confuse him, but we do seem to spend a lot of time oscillating between him not knowing what the hell I’m talking about, and him thinking that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. So sometimes I simply can’t resist messing with him. I love to use archaic slang, just to see what he’ll do with it. The other morning, I asked him to put on his jacket, and he ran into the family room, laughing and yelling, “No way!”

I put on my best Sheriff J. W. Pepper accent and bellowed, “Boah! You best mind yo’ pappy, or you’ll taste the back o’ mah hand!”

He giggled, ran in to the mudroom, slurped his tongue across my knuckles, and said, “It tastes like chocolate vanilla!”

The Story Goes On

Sarah

Sarah died a year ago this morning.

The following is the e-mail message I sent out that evening. Most of you have seen it before, but I don’t think I can improve on it, so here it is again.

I hope none of you has spent as much time in hospitals as we have these past few months. We have come to know them far too well.

One of the things we’ve gotten used to is the constant presence of the public address system. Rather than an announcer, frequently one will hear a soft “bong” or “bong-bong” over the speaker system to indicate that Doctor Someone should call someone else.

Sarah spent her last 24 hours at Cambridge Hospital, where they make extensive use of these bells. We listened to them ding and bonk all through the long night. As Sarah was breathing her last, the speaker system came on and the bells played “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” softly, once through. It signaled that a new baby had just been born.

Though I’m far away

Sarah

A year ago today, I got a phone call from Sarah’s doctor. Her blood pressure had dropped and they had sent her in an ambulance from the rehabilitation center to the hospital. He implied that I had better hurry if I wanted to see her before the end.

Up until that point, I had been under the impression that she was getting better. I rushed over to the Emergency Department. She was happy to see me, but having trouble breathing. I asked the doctors, “You know she’s an asthmatic, don’t you?” They looked at each other and scrambled to get her some albuterol, which really seemed to hit the spot.

They gave her the usual quiz to determine where her head was at:

“What’s your name?”

“Sarah.”

“What’s the date?”

“March first, 2003.”

She looked at me and smiled. In unison, we said, “Rabbit, rabbit.”

I didn’t mention that she was three years off.

The nurse was completely baffled, and I explained the superstition: on the first day of any given month, if the first thing you say when you wake up is “Rabbit, rabbit,” then you’ll have good luck.

“Who’s the President?”

Sarah looked disgusted and spat, “Bush.” The nurse laughed.

Eventually they decided to intubate her, and threw me out of the room, suggesting that I probably wouldn’t want to watch. She could tell that I was terrified. She grabbed my hand. “Hey,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”