Would You Do it Again?

In sorting through some old emails, I recently happened on one I sent a year and a half ago. It was an answer to the question: "Would you have made the decision to take your current job, if you had to do it again?" This is what I said then:

"My answer is equivocal. The alternative at the time of the job choice was a Peace Corps admin job West Africa. It was my dream job; the culmination of my career and training to that point. I would have been very good at it, and it was mine for the asking. The other choice: coming back to my childhood home, to my family, to my very ill father and his business which I did not understand from any perspective, and most certainly not from his.

In retrospect, had I not taken this job, I doubt I would be a mother (the requisite anti-malarials are contraindicated for pregnancy). Which, some days, is the only thing that keeps me from running away screaming very loudly. And then there are the days when motherhood adds to the running/screaming inclination.

There are wonderful things about our small university town that I had not remembered, had never previously discovered, and have yet to discover. I often feel very lucky. But I am not professionally happy, not working to capacity and training here, and unwilling to reconfigure myself to fit better.

This is my mantra: Knowledge is the most valuable commodity, and self-knowledge is its most important subset. The past is knowledge. But the only way is the way forward. Go forward.

Maybe I can get back to Africa later in life."

Eighteen months makes a lot of difference in perspective. The forward path has turned out to have all sorts of sweet roses along the way. My job has blossomed into challenges I can readily accept, and enjoy, too. Motherhood sits much more easily than not (although there's still a running/screaming moment or two in every day).  And yes, I want to go back to Africa. But not so desperately. Not now.

It's important to revisit decisions. Sometimes it's surprisingly uplifting.

And you? Would YOU do it again?

Book Review:  Atwood's Oryx and Crake

He was drinking alone now, at night, a bad sign.  He shouldn’t be doing that, it only depressed him, but he had to dull the pain.  The pain of what?  The pain of the raw torn places, the damaged membranes where he’d whanged up against the Great Indifference of the Universe.  One big shark’s mouth, the universe.  Row after row of razor-sharp teeth.

“Get a grip,” he told himself.  “Get a handle on it.  Put it behind you.  Move forward.  Make a new you.”

Such positive slogans.  Such bland inspirational promotions vomit.  What he really wanted was revenge.  But against whom, and for what?  Even if he had the energy for it, even if he could focus and aim, such a thing would be less than useless.

What do you do if you are the last man on earth -- not the last creature, nor, in fact, the last homid; but the last actual homo sapiens?  And your mind is full of fragments of Shakespeare, and silly references to commercials long since gone, and you wear a tattered sheet and a ballcap and dream of the dead love of your life while cramped in the confines of the tree where you sleep to avoid the ravaging hoards of genetically-enhanced night creatures slavering on the ground beneath you?  And you're not overly bright, nor overly heroic, but just an average man caught in this hideous last dance for which you are woefully unprepared?

On the large scale, this is not what Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake is all about.  On the large scale, Atwood (as ever) explores the human condition, the responsibilities of mankind to the world in which we live, the evils of a society run amok, and the unintended consequences of personal failures and triumphs become global mayhem.

But it is on this individual level that her latest end-game dystopia grabs the reader in the gut and holds on to the bitter end.

Slowly and inexorably unrolls the story of Jimmy, and of Jimmy's lover Oryx, and their best friend, Crake.  Atwood turns and twines her exquisite prose around circumstances both imagined and all too horrifically real; moments that presage the end of the world as Jimmy knew it.  When Jimmy visits Crake at his sumptuous institute of research and higher learning (a sequestered paradise where brilliant minds create altered food and drugs that feed the squalid “pleblands’” demand for full stomachs and fantastical experiences) Jimmy asks wonderingly: 

“What pays for all this?”

“Grief in the face of inevitable death,” said Crake.  “The wish to stop time.  The human condition.”

The world’s downfall hinges on that condition; those human desires and wishes met through the vehicle of bioengineering.   

“Nature is to zoos as God is to churches,” said Crake

“Meaning what?” Jimmy asked.  Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed?  How much is too much, how far is too far?

“Those walls and bars are there for a reason.  Not to keep us out, but to keep them in.  Mankind needs barriers in both cases.”

“Them?”

“Nature and God.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

I don’t believe in Nature either,” said Crake.  “Or not with a capital N.”

The melding of the Big Questions and the most intimate questions are Atwood’s signature tune, and her triumph.  As always, she is a master of deep philosophy, and an equal master of page-turning plot.  And as always, she tricks the reader at the end – because there is no end.  Left hanging with one’s friends in mid-footfall (and her characters always become one’s friends -- difficult, all-too-human friends, but people about whom one cares deeply), the reader is gaspingly aware that life is really like this. 

Which is perhaps the best reason of all to read Atwood.

(many thanks to BettyC for mentioning that her book club just finished this; I immediately assigned it to mine, and have been stealing reading moments ever since)

Silence in Scrubbing

Last night while the girls were finishing up their dinner, I was scouring the stovetop.  This is an extremely rare activity for me, which was perhaps why my five-year-old was attuned enough to it to remark, as I took a little breather:

“Mom?  Why are you having a silence in scrubbing right now?”

The immediate reason for the silence was that I’d let my mind wander from the now-nicely-gleaming stovetop to the rather dingy stoveback, to the really off-color wall behind it, to the vent above, which frankly didn’t merit close attention from anyone wishing to maintain their delusional sense that they lived in a pristine environment.  I was, further into my silence, worriedly thinking that although current scientific studies do indicate that the less aseptic the environment as a child, the healthier the adult’s immune system, there probably is a law of diminishing returns somewhere along the dirt spectrum – and that I’d passed it about fifty scrubbing silences ago.

But my eldest’s delightful turn-of-phrase brought me (quite happily) away from this reverie into another.  I started thinking about all the ‘silences in scrubbing’ in my life.  I’ll be the first to admit that I have a pretty short sustained attention span.  This isn’t too noticeable at home, because with two kids under six, any adult’s average ability to focus on one thing (before being torn, usually screamingly, into another) is approximately 5.2 seconds.  But it’s a bit of a problem at work, where the lines between true “multitasking” and “daydreaming” tend to blur far too often.  I drift from staring at my spreadsheet (detailing twelve months’ level-of-effort for ten employees, three subcontractors and four consultants) to my bulletin board (where there’s a lovely picture of my mother with my two girls on her lap in a field of flowers), to the window (where an exciting summer storm boils through a purple sky and sends rain pelting against the pane) to the interstices of my own brain (where the satisfactory ending to my next short story is just starting to coalesce).

In fact, I’m not really sure how I manage to get any work done at all, what with all my silences. 

May your weekend be filled with your own happy and productive silences in scrubbing!

Due Process

Last night my husband was reading "One Morning In Maine" to our youngest and I was blanching broccoli with our eldest. It was a wonderful, bucolic, family farm-life sort of evening in which, for once, no-one was irritated, scolding, upset or otherwise uncooperative. But I couldn’t keep my mind on the timeless story of Sal and her loose tooth, nor that pungent greener-than-green odor of broccoli.

I was thinking about the woman in the powder-blue jacket.

I was wondering where she was now. Whether she’d shed the nice jacket, and her fancy sandals, stretched out her painted toes, maybe taken off some of the jewelry, maybe actually felt relaxed. Whether the people with her (she wouldn’t be alone; she wouldn’t have chosen that) were telling her she’d done really well; held herself together fine. Whether there was any mention of how it might go tomorrow, or whether people were avoiding that topic. How she really felt.

I first noticed her the way you notice people, casually, when you’re waiting in a large crowd with nothing else to do. She struck me as over-thin and overagitated. "She’s either anorexic or on something," I thought to myself, with that idle cattiness your inner voice develops for the one-glance summation. She rushed through all the people to hug a man in a loud polyester shirt and gold necklace. "That’s her father," someone in the press murmured to someone else, sotto voce.

Then we were all called in, over fifty of us. As we paraded solemnly to our appointed seats, I didn’t even notice, at first, where she was. I don’t think it was until the questioning started that I actually registered that she was the party against whom the State was claiming Count 1: Possession of Cocaine, and Count 2: Aggravated Vehicular Homicide. Beside her sat her senior lawyer, male, in a gray suit. Her secondary lawyer, almost as thin as the accused, wore expensively styled hair that didn’t hide a receding chin, and a miniskirted pinstripe that revealed, under the bare table, quite an expanse of slender leg.

The senior lawyer stood to address us prospective jurors, picking up a wooden yardstick from his table.

"Everyone deserves an impartial jury," he said. "But because of certain personal experiences, preferences or beliefs, not all of you can be an impartial juror in this particular case. What we need to do now is verify that the jury will be impartial. I’ll begin by explaining just a little about the case. You may be surprised to learn that we don’t intend to deny certain events. That my client was driving a vehicle, and that she was left-of-center." He held the yardstick balanced between both hands, and moved one hand to the twelve inch mark. "That her car struck an on-coming truck, and it’s occupant is now dead." Twenty-five inches. "That my client had, as her blood tests show, ingested both cocaine and Valium prior to the accident." He held up the yardstick in one hand, and it was now clear that the end had been chopped off. "A judgement to convict must meet certain requirements. It must measure up. I want a jury who will sit with me until the end, and decide whether the prosecution has met those requirements, or…." He brandished his shattered stick "….not."

There was a pause while he put down his stick and we digested this. The woman in the powder blue jacket looked at our fifty judgmental eyes, shifting her own dark haunted ones from face to face. Her fingers tapped nervously on her leg. I wondered if she still used.

"I’d like to ask a few questions. Mr…." her lawyer consulted the prospective jury list. "…Crawbrook? If you had to tell me, right now, whether my client was guilty or not, what would you say?"

Mr. Crawbrook had two studs in his left ear and a white button-down with the sleeves undone. We’d learned, earlier in the questioning, that he was an interior decorator. He responded inaudibly.

"You’d say you don’t know? That’s very reasonable, Mr. Crawbrook; a logical response. But I’d like to remind you – and everyone – that by law – by the law of the United States – the accused is innocent until proven guilty. I don’t have to prove her innocence. He.... " he gestured toward the attorney for the State "....has to prove her guilt. Is there anyone who is uncomfortable with this? Anyone who doesn’t think they can abide by the judge’s instructions in this regard?"

We all shifted in our seats. The lawyer consulted the juror list again, and as he did so a group of people entered the courtroom. They wore heavy clothing, much of it leather with red wings emblazoned. Their weathered faces were wary. They glared at everyone in general. I glanced at the woman in powder blue, who stared fixedly at the wall above the newcomers. For me, the previously unadorned fact that the deceased was in "an on-coming truck" suddenly had a context. Now I knew what kind of truck. I knew what bumper-stickers. I knew where he fit in the social construct.

The friends and relatives of the deceased shuffled into the remaining seats. The lawyer cleared his throat, rattling his list.

"Ms. Brown? Ms. Brown, I have a very important question for you – for all of you. There is no ‘right’ answer. You have sworn to tell the truth, and I need you to think very carefully about this. Ms. Brown, would you want someone like you to be on the jury, if you were my client, or if your child were my client, facing these charges?"

Ms. Brown, somewhat more self-assured than Mr. Crawbrook, straightened her solid-citizen back, flipped her no-nonsense gray hair, and said stoutly, "Yes. Yes, I would."

The questioning of the jurors took all morning and half the afternoon, and finally the twelve, and the two alternates, were seated. The rest of us, dismissed, mingled in ungainly procession out of the courtroom into the glaring afternoon sun, leaving the woman in the powder blue jacket, and her father and relatives, and the relatives of the deceased, and all the rest of the paraphernalia of due process, in the courtroom.

When I was explaining my experience to a gaggle of curious colleagues at work, a technician passing by suddenly said, "Oh, were you at that trial? Yeah, I know that girl. She was a great friend of my sister’s. God, she got messed up with the wrong crowd. She was one fucked-up chick, she was. She was just over at my place last night. She’s been in rehab since it happened. She said she was left-of-center because he was in her lane, so she swerved into his, then he swerved back – and that’s when it happened." The technician’s boyish face crinkled into a big grin. "That’s her story, anyway. Who knows? I mean – she had her five-year-old in that car, without a belt. The kid just got bruised up, but still – that wasn’t good. The guy she killed was no angel either – he was on the dock himself a couple years ago; shot his friend in the head playing Russian roulette." The technician rolled his eyes. "I mean – would you play Russian roulette? What’s the fuckin’ point, anyway? Who wins that game?"

I walked up the stairs slowly. I stopped to chat with the engineer one cubicle over. I’d been looking forward to telling him the whole thing, since he’s the kind of man – a rarity among them – who not only tells a good tale, but can hear and appreciate one too. I’d just described the woman in the powder blue when he uncharacteristically interrupted.

"Oh – yeah. The guy she killed was my wife’s cousin. He was forty-four – two kids. Yeah, that lady needs to be put far, far away."

"Ohmigod!" I said inadequately. The rest of my story deflated into a mumble or two.

For me, my co-workers’ remarks recreated my courtroom experience. No longer was it just a great story, or a good day’s amusement, but the tangled, sad tale of a man and a woman with histories and connections – connections, if in a tenuous way, to me.

Thinking about the impact I would have unwittingly had on my colleagues’ lives by actually taking part in that jury, I also started thinking about judgement. About the question of "impartiality." About what sort of juror I would want, sitting in judgement of me. I thought how I’d judged the woman in powder blue from the instant I saw her. How I’d judged the other jurors, and the relations of the deceased, and the lawyers. How I’d thrown all those standard, instantaneous first impressions into my judgements: clothing, accent, gesture, manner of speech, the playing of Russian roulette.

I’d judged them on their past and present, their appearance, and their pursuit of happiness.

Judge not, lest you be judged (Mathew 7:1)

Teaching Death

As I write, the soft midnight wind sends the chimes into a tizzy out the night-black window.  And the black goat bawls disconsolately for her dead babies.

We don't know why it happened -- too many babies who came too soon, or bad genetic manipulation by the former owner who oversaw the breeding.  In any case, my five-year-old's excited announcement at the kitchen door turned from a happy rush toward the barnyard into an impromptu lesson about death.

I am not -- perhaps controversially; I haven't sought to find out where I lie on the spectrum -- one of those parents who used the Iraq war as a springboard for sociopolitical lessons for my children.  I chose to let their innocence of the causes and results of evil and death abroad remain, for the time being, complete.

But I am adamant about seizing the teaching moment in the here-and-now, regarding the things they see and touch every day.  So over my husband's objections, to their chorus of interest, I let them both see the first stillborn kid, laid out pitifully wet and limp on the straw. 

My two-year-old looked, registered, and walked away disinterestedly, immediately focussed on the next thing on the agenda (another snack, followed by Easter-eggs).  I was happy with this.  In my opinion, into the mind of the well-adjusted toddler death should be thus unremarkable, and if she continues to be fortunate, empathy and sorrow need not come until much later.

My five-year-old reacted in a way that initially surprised me.  She leaned over the corpse, studied it, then kicked it with her boot.  It was not a gentle, exploratory kick, nor yet a vicious kick.  It was a "hey, what are you loafing around for, get up already" kick. 

I think I understand this.  It's very hard to look at a little creature just like all the other little creatures gamboling around in the beautiful Spring weather and register that this one has no gambol in it.  I carefully instructed her to treat death with respect, and drew her away to a neutral spot where I provided a little lecture on the inevitabilities of farm life.  She was not particularly responsive to the lecture, nor emotional about it, but spent some time thereafter hanging around the barnyard gate watching the goats, which is not characteristic.  She did not speak about it again, although I gave her several openings.

I wonder, but can't know, where this experience is registering in her memory bank.  When I was young, but older than she, I remember waking up in the middle of the night and querying my sad-eyed mother about the long-awaited birth of the calf.  My sorrow at the memory of learning of the death of both mother and baby, in that case, may or may not mirror what I actually felt at the time.

And in any event, with the wind stronger in the chimes now and the goat's bleeting more sporadic, as an adult and a mother myself, I don't know, either, whether the sad lump in my own throat is more grief than the goat herself feels.  Western children's literature teaches us to anthromophize animals to a false degree.  Perhaps she cries only because her udder is full and her belly empty. 

I would guess not, but I do not know.

HEAR YE, HEAR YE!

Everybody's here for their own reasons, and for joint reasons, but some of us need a little more.  Why?  Cause sometimes (but not all the time) we'd like more meat to our meet than friendly smiles and waves and howdy-do's.  So with a little shove and a little great advice and a little behind-the-scenes assistance and a little remembrance of mentors past and a lot of casual chat with a lot of other good folk, I'd like to introduce:

THE CRITWRIT RING

This isn't for everyone, but if every now and then you'd like a good, solid, constructive bit of criticism of your personal best, then join up and let us have at you -- with full rights to similar treatment, of course!

Please note:  there are two rules ("Awww, rules?? Darn!").  You gotta ask for it before it's given, and you gotta give as good as you get.

WELCOME!

De-stressing Via A Non-Seasonal Interlude

Lying in the prickly-soft grass under a puffy-clouded sky, with the clearest of clear warm air entering and exiting the lungs (almost without effort on one’s own part) there is the smell of freshcut lawn, the lazy soaring notes of a fluttering bird and its mate bringing fodder to the second fledglings of the season, the simple susurration of the arbor’s leaves in the just-perfect breeze that stops the clear air from becoming too hot.

Within easy hands-reach, dangling almost beside one’s ear, are the ripe Concord grapes; bunches of them, almost blue-black with dusky rotundity.  Impossible to resist raising a hand (made languid by gravity and the soul-deep laziness of the late morning), pluck just o-n-e, single, lowest-dangler of the bunch, and place it between the lips.

The tingling, too-tart pucker from the broken skin; the smooth aftertaste of the silky green interior from which one seines and spits the seeds.  The effort, almost too great, of rolling onto elbows and lifting the head to pluck the sibling of that first (with one’s teeth this time) -- then another, and another, and another – until, sated but not overfull, it’s possible to roll onto a fresh space of uncrushed grass and close the eyes:  not hungry, not thirsty, not even weary, but merely complacently, completely content.

………there, feeling a little better?

The Child in the Machine

Her 33 inches, although stout, lies dwarfed on the "child-sized" couch, meant also to hold bulky teens. She has been as good-as-gold, but now she is terrified, screaming. I hold her arm, nurses hold her legs and other arm, the anesthesiologist claps the hard plastic mask over her nose and mouth. She is writhing, her screams muffled but only made more distraught by the mask. The anesthesiologist, whose warm personality soothed me in the explanatory call the night before, is now a consummate professional. It’s obvious, as he holds the mask in one hand and regulates the flow of the gas with the other, surrounded by the tubes, wires, bottles and meters of his trade, that he is now on a different plane; a place where his responsibilities include hundreds of dollars-a-minute (in staff salaries, expensive equipment, waiting doctors) as well as the very life of his patient. His kindly baritone switches key and speeds up, in a rote patter obviously unchanged since the first day he sat in this seat of deep power and frightening responsibility: "Itsokaymyloveweloveyouweloveyou Okaytwomorebreaths Andshellbeout……." But he’s wrong; two more breaths and she’s still struggling, still screaming -- just more weakly. "She’s a strong one," mutters a nurse. I am stricken: she’s been prepared; she knew all about this, but her two-year-old instincts have kicked in. "Putting to sleep," I know, is a euphemism for "bringing closer to death." And she is fighting for her very life.

Four more breaths, and she is out – but her still little form is not peaceful. Limp, but battered-looking already, tears streaking her face beneath the mask and her forehead creased.

"OkayMomyoucankissher Weknowyouwantto Thenweneedtodootherthings Justwaitnextdoor," says the anesthesiologist, monitoring the flow as the staff waits poised for his orders.

I lean to kiss her chubby, wet cheek, then – a professional myself; knowing despite all my own instincts, how to move aside and let the work proceed – exit so quickly that the nurse assigned to calm the uneasy parent has to run to catch up.

In the next-door waiting room, my dear friend who left her own significant family duties to spend the day chauffeuring and succoring to me and my youngest, puts an arm around me. The dental nurse in the hallway gives me a hug. But I am not yet seeing or feeling clearly; not yet in a place where I can recognize my own need to be comforted. I am still processing that moment in which I watched my child being smothered and sat quietly by, muttering loving words she could not hear.

The dental repair to my baby’s front teeth (badly decayed enough to be health-threatening, through genetic predilection, and her love -- my permissiveness -- for night nursing) is over within the hour-and-a-half. Various cheerful staff, and eventually the dentist himself, appear to assure me that "everything’s gone very smoothly," and she "is doing wonderfully." Then they call me in for the wake-up.

By the time I arrive, they have removed the tube from her throat, the diodes, the IV, and whatever other equipment touched and entered her, but the marks are there, on her hand and in the rough, red and scratched places around her mouth and eyes. She is disoriented and thrashing, eyes still squeezed shut, perhaps still imagining herself back at the beginning. I cradle her, speak soothingly, but she is not yet hearing. Around me in the cramped room, the staff are preparing for the next patient, putting lengths of surgical tape around the light for easy access, setting out new clean instruments. I am torn between focussing on my baby and on the inexorable operation of the alien machine and its minions around me.

It didn’t take long, in time, for my little one to be back to her cheery self, her memory apparently completely cleared of the event. But mine is not, and never will be.

My heart goes out to all those parents whose children must suffer this so frequently, and for such significantly more serious reasons, than mine.

Hamsters, and the Aftermath

The overwarm smell of old dust in the heating system, snowy mud tracked indoors, the whiff of wool on winter skin…..and I'm back in Mrs. Hebling's sixth grade class, standing uncertain at my rickety wooden desk (the surface furrowed by decades of bored doodles and intentional destruction), toying with the unused inkwell. She's late, and the class is in a bit of an uproar. The mother hamster has just given birth. The kids crowd around the cage, squealing, poking fingers. I'm the last to join, as usual. I skirt around desks, hesitantly approaching the crowd, craning to understand the mounting excitement, when S-U-D-D-E-N-L-Y

"She's coming! She's coming! Quick……..!"

The class, trained, to a kid, to skitter at any sighting of authority, all make it back to their seats in time – except for me. The odd-girl-out, as always, I'm only halfway there (having never actually arrived), when Mrs. Hebling comes storming in. She takes in the scene on her way to the cage, views the devastation therein, and starts her tirade without further ado:

"Class, I am very disappointed in you. It's children like you that cause things like this to happen. Look at this poor mother hamster – she's terrified! She's eating her children because that's what hamsters do when they're terrified. And people like you, like Faith Lastname, who made her eat her babies. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Ashamed."

And I am ashamed. I am in tears. My face is crimson. My hands are shaking. I can't hear a word of the ensuing social studies lesson. I am aghast, in both embarrassment and fury. My definition of "fair" has been completely trammeled; nontheless I feel the guilt to my very soul. I am absolutely at fault – for having wanted to participate, even if I did not. Absolutely. And the guilt is with me, absurdly, to this day. Somewhere in heaven, three or four little hamster babies are still bewailing their precipitous departure from this Earthly sphere, and they are pointing their fingers at ME. To this day.

What was it for you, that taught you about "fair," and "guilt"?

Critical Condition

In the junction between love and the machine, lies the ICU. 

Between all the faults and foibles of one's father – in childhood, the holding of hands and the laying on of hands; the stories “half-true-and-half-not-true” and the sullenly-obeyed peremptory commands; the soaring pride of his praise and irritation at his very paternalism; the letters home and from home, his appalled acceptance of your choice of spouse, his beaming, laughing performance at your wedding ……….

Between that all-too-human richness and this mechanized center-stage, is the crux of the moment. 

In the here-and-now, his very humanity seems dimmed if not diminished entirely.  Where is he, the central figure in this suddenly dramatic act, lying almost obliterated by chrome and LEDs, aseptic bedding and plasticware, tubes and wires and needles and harsh bright lighting rendering the scene stark and grim even without the emotional overlay?  And those hideous beeps and whistles, some marking the frighteningly erratic course of his heart (how could his heart be erratic; it has upheld the very soul of him for a whole-hearted life lived to the fullest); others, to the uninitiated, completely unknown and terrifying – does that mechanical scream, or that, denote the beginning of the end, or just some temporarily failed connection in the interstices of this patchwork machine holding him alive by the merest thread?

Then there is the solemnity of the waiting room, where a random assortment of relatives and loved ones gathers in hope and in fear, eyeing one another's entries to and sorties from the inner sanctum with sympathy and unease.  You need not share stories; you know the essence of them anyway, by overhearing the murmurs between newcomers, the quiet tear-choked commentary into pay phones.  Clotted groups of bleary-eyed folk, made peripheral but essential players in a dear one's drama, huddle at the windows not seeing the weather, sprawl on the cushions with aching feet up, page through tattered address books seeking to notify all others who have not yet become aware of the urgent need to make their appearance on the stage before the curtain call.

But sometimes there is no curtain call.  Sometimes a miracle is wrought – a miracle fashioned of drips and wires, love and attention, serendipity, and whatever external force exists, or is believed in.  Sometimes a man seemingly subsumed beneath the mechanical final rites emerges renewed, resumes life apparently twice invigorated, convalesces and carries on.  Becomes “Poppy” where he was previously only “Daddy,” and brings great joy and laughter to a new generation, born after the critical act.

I would dearly wish this particular joy on all who suffer in the ICU, whether primary player or supporting actor, this season.