In The Weeds

I do not know if it is by mere coincidence, or whether it is due to something slightly more cosmic, but, many of the most important, and in fact traumatic events in my life have happened in August . It was in August at the start of my senior year in high school when my parents decided to up and move yet again, ending the  Beverly to Salem to Beverly loop by moving to Ipswich.  It was in August, 1990 when I received my first diploma. It was in August when my wife and I bought our first home. It was in August when we bought our second home. It was in August when we later sold the first. More recently in August  I received my biopsy results. Ten years ago , on the third of August I became a father. Sixteen days later, a stretch of eight days began that would bring me as close to the title of "single dad" or "widower" than I hope I ever experience again. Our son ,who I am convinced did not want to be born ( he had to be induced twice) finally joined the outside world ...

Thirty-three years ago, on this date, the sixteenth day of August, nineteen hundred and seventy-seven, I remember exactly where I was.  I also remember what I did pretty much the entire day. That summer I was ten years old and my family had just moved from the city of my birthplace , Beverly, across the bridge to Salem. We went from living in a classic "leave it to beaver" kind of neighborhood, unified around a quaint, old-fashioned elementary school at it's center, to one split in half, divided as much by the physical location of the school, if not the socioeconomics of the inhabitants . One half of the neighborhood, the side we were now living, was filled with older Victorian-era homes that had seen better days, with mostly french-canadian names on the mailboxes. The other half was a more urban neighborhood than my young eyes had ever seen. Narrow,litter-strewn, congested streets filled with run down triple deckers, inhabited mostly by recent immigrants from Lat...

Seems I am finally getting my voice back to normal after almost 4 weeks. Sunday marked the first day without any real throat pain. Still feels as if I tied my tie too tight, but the main soreness has dissipated. Seemed to take a lot longer than they said it would. Needless to say, once you find yourself with an altered voice box, you tend to put off verbal communication as much as possible. The less I spoke the better. A week or so ago, I went into Dunkin Donuts for an iced coffee and it took three takes to get my order right. Not terribly enjoyable, but I would be lying if I didn't say it bothered me more that I repeatedly caught the clerk's eyes alternating her glances between my eyes and the bandage on my neck. In this period my main communication has been with my family , and aside from writing, not so much the rest of the world. Time to start getting back to "normal". I realized I was regaining my voice during Donovan's birthday party, which we hosted this ...

Today I had my first-ever, post-op, follow-up. (that has to rank as one of the most hyphenated sentences I have ever written.) Throughout this process ,all the appointments were made for me by the doctor's office month's in advance, completely wrestling from me the ability to delay something I very much wanted to delay, if not avoid completely. These dates seemed so far off that they may as well not even have existed. I received my "packet" three months ago that laid out the pre-op consult , the pre-op physical exam, and the post-op follow-up, along with lots of documentation, needing lots of my closely guarded personal information. It was then I began to realize how much control over "self" you give up as soon as you decide to enter the mechanism known as the "Finest Medical Care In The World". I had just seen Gran Torino when the package arrived and unlike Mr. Kowalski(or is that kwaski?) I filled out all my forms, and kept all my appointments...