The Golden Age

Behind the scenes

Over at Lawyerish, I let it slip that I took Fashion and Decor in college. It’s true; I was a theatre major. That should help explain the long hair, anyway.

Fashion and Decor was a challenging class. It was basically a world history class from a design perspective. The first time around, I ended up dropping the class midway through the semester; it was hopeless. The second time I took it, somehow it just clicked. For a few glorious months, I had a clear timeline in my head of all the major artistic periods, from paleolithic to postmodern. It was amazing. I had taken social studies in high school, and art history and World Civ in college, but somehow it all came together in this one class.

Of course I’ve lost almost all of it, but I can still occasionally glimpse a flash here and there. I know what a cowl-neck sweater is. I know what an Empire waist looks like, and that it’s named after the First French Empire of Napoleon. I remember the ancient Egyptians wore kohl as eyeshadow to cut the glare from the sun, and perfumed cones on their heads to mask their body odor, because Egypt is very, very sunny and unbearably hot. When Sarah took me to Egypt, and London, and Florence, and Venice, I was able to hold my own next to her Master’s in Art History, all thanks to Professor Jim.

I remember there was a seventeenth-century hairstyle called the fontage, which was always accompanied by Jim’s outrageous faux-French pronunciation and a hand thrown up to the forehead, to suggest hair coiffed straight up, There’s Something About Mary-style.

There was a lot of French terminology being batted around, that semester. When Jim first mentioned L’Eminence Grise, I had no idea what he had just said. I leaned over to see how Dan had transcribed it in his notes:

LEMON-I-SCREEZ

And to this day, if you go up to Dan, or Keith, or Professor Jim himself, and say “lemon-i-screez!” he will laugh, and reply, “fontage!” and put the back of his hand up to his forehead.

Rocket Man

Nate, That Darn Cat

So! I think Nate has allergies.

Shocking, I know. Where could he have gotten those?

Anyway, he isn’t very good at blowing his nose yet. This means that his sneezes are, shall we say, high output. Luckily, I already know a little something about allergies, so there is always a box or packet of Kleenex ready to hand.

Along with various potions and philtres, we are also trying a few anti-cat protocols. These primarily consist of putting clean laundry away, and spreading a towel over Nate’s bed and pillow before we go out.

Tonight when we got home, Nate went upstairs to get a toy. “Dad! I found a lump!” is not what I was expecting to hear. I followed him upstairs and discovered that Figaro had managed to crawl underneath the towel and was simultaneously sleeping and shedding on Nate’s comforter. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look quite so pleased with himself.

Friendly Fire

Nate, Sarah

Nate’s bedtime routine

  1. Put on PJs
  2. Read books
  3. Allergy medicine
  4. Brush teeth
  5. Use the potty
  6. Turn on humidifier
  7. Lights out
  8. Select stuffed animal (using flashlight)
  9. Leap into bed
  10. Request to use the potty again (denied)
  11. Songs
  12. Request to use the potty again (denied)
  13. Goodnight kisses

I’m always interested to see which stuffed animal he’ll select. Pearl sent Sarah a Ty golden lab puppy when she was first diagnosed. Bingo-dog is Nate’s most popular choice, and we always talk about how Mama gave him to Nate in the hospital. A close second is this nasty carnival prize in the approximate shape of Bob the Builder. But recently the opossum has been in heavy rotation.

The last couple of nights, he’s been asking me to kiss his stuffed animal goodnight before I kiss him goodnight. Last night, when I leaned in to kiss the opossum, Nate snatched it away and said, “No, daddy. Possum doesn’t like you that way.”

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.”

He set them all in motion

Nate

The other day, on the way home from church, Nate spoke up from his car seat.

“Daddy? Did God make us?”

Now, I was raised Unitarian Universalist, which is about as close as it can get to not actually being a religion at all, while still qualifying for tax-exempt status. I don’t really know all the answers, or how I feel about, say, the miracle of transubstantiation. God the Creator, though? That’s an easy one for me. Besides which, long before we got married, I had promised Sarah we would raise our child, or children, Catholic. I didn’t hesitate. “Yes, He did.”

“Did he make our car?”

The Drops From The Faucet

Can we build it?

House-hunting is a very strange experience. I believe that this is because people are strange. We looked at some truly ugly homes with some truly inexplicable furnishings, and had a wonderful time mocking the sellers.

When we first looked at the house we would eventually buy, the bathtub faucet was dripping. When we came back for a second look, it was dripping more. When we came back for the home inspection, the inspector naturally turned on the tub faucet to see how quickly the water would drain. He had a great deal of trouble getting the water to shut off.

After our first night in the new house, Sarah let me know that she would quickly go insane if she had to listen to the dripping for very much longer. My first project would therefore be to repair it.

Now, my actual first project whenever I move into a new place is to remove the existing showerhead and install the Waterpik Hand-Held Shower Massage unit. This only took me five minutes, and I turned my attention to the tub faucet. I discovered that there was no cutoff valve for the tub, and so I was forced to turn off the water to the entire house in order to disassemble the faucet.

There were no identifying marks on the faucet, but I could clearly see the source of the leak. One of the rubber seals in the cartridge was worn. Off I went to Home Depot, where their motto is, “Our prices are so low, we can lie to your face and you’ll still come back for more!”

The indifferent Plumbing Sales Associate obviously had no idea what brand my faucet was. He didn’t have any seals that would fit, but he sold me some new springs and told me to use the worn seals with the new springs. The springs were just a bit too big, so naturally when I installed them, the forty-year-old rubber seals disintegrated. The leak was now much worse; in fact it was closer to a gush.

Taking a shower was now a team effort: one person in the basement at the master cutoff valve, and the other person in the tub, yelling OKAY TURN IT ON NOW.

Off I went to the local plumbing supply store. Lots of plumbers were queued up at the parts counter. When it was my turn, I held out the cartridge. The Counter Sales Associate looked at obviously-not-a-plumber me, and said, “What the hell is that?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“No idea. Next!”

One of the plumbers who was waiting for his order to be pulled took pity on me. He said, “I think I have an old part like that in my truck; you can have it if you want.” We went to look. It was exactly the same part, and it was worn in exactly the same place.

“Thanks anyway,” I said. “You don’t happen to know the make and model?”

He grinned. “I sure do. It’s Price Pfister, the pfaucet with the pfunny name. And I got a pfeeling you’re probably pf*cked; nobody carries these parts around here.”

I laughed and thanked him again. I might not be a plumber, but I do have some specialized knowledge of my own. It took me about five minutes on Price Pfister’s web site to track down exactly which faucet I had (The Bodyguard), two minutes to find an exploded-view drawing with part numbers, five seconds to sneer at the idea of ordering parts through the friendly neighborhood plumbing supply store, and three minutes to order a new cartridge from a plumbing supply house in Pennsylvania.

I was feeling pretty proud of my elite Internet skills, until I happened to look under the sink in the bathroom for a bar of soap. I saw the showerhead that I had removed in Chapter One, which clearly said “Price Pfister Bodyguard” on the face.

In due course, the new cartridge arrived and was installed. The leak… continued. I looked more closely at the valve plate, and discovered that the previous homeowner had allowed the worn seal to leak for so long that it had etched a good-sized hole in the solid brass plate. It must have taken years.

I went back to Minnesota and ordered a new valve stem assembly, complete with washers and O-rings. Finally the leak stopped, along with the constant stream of curses. Sarah was most relieved.

We thought that was the end of it, and set about our myriad other home improvement projects.

Almost a year later, there came a knock at the door. It was a friendly young man from the town’s Department of Public Works. He said that his office had happened to notice that the average water bill for our address had dropped significantly, from about two hundred dollars a quarter to just over thirty dollars a quarter. He wondered if we would mind terribly allowing him to examine our water meter for signs of my having jammed a piece of coathanger wire into the impeller, possibly in an effort to lower my water bill. I showed him the worn valve plate, and we both marveled at the strange and wonderful variety of stone-cold crazy people in the world today.

Update: Apparently this post is now the number-one result on Google for people with leaky faucets. Hi there. How are you? I’ve added a couple of links so you can get your own Price Pfister parts. If you have a leaky Water Pik hand-held shower massage, for Pete’s sake, just buy a new one. They’re only twenty bucks.