Keegan is graduating

I’ve been a little busy lately. Maybe you’ve noticed that I’ve dropped off the face of cyberworld…

The department secretary (and my good work pal) quit several weeks ago. She found greener pastures. In the meantime I’m helping fill the gap her absence has created. The Small University is under a hiring freeze– so her departure has left our department gaping in the face of the the end-of-year tasks that must still be completed.

So I’m working a few more hours than normal which, when added to the usual list, makes me turn over a page on the memo pad to keep up.

Today it hit me that, in three days, Baby Niece graduates from high school. It makes me gasp. How did that happen? Didn’t we just walk, in turns, with her around the room while she wailed as a baby? Didn’t she just grow out of her shiny red shoes?

We’ve seen a new side of Keegan this year with her sister off to college. Nearly always it has been MaddieandKeegan. One word. They are close in age and spirit. When Maddie left for the west side of the state we got to know Just Keegan.

This is how it came out at first from Jack.
As in, “Hey– Jack– we’re going to have dinner with AunT and Keegan tonight!”
Jack: “And Maddie, too.”
Us: “No, baby, Maddie’s at college.”
Jack: “Oh. So dinner with AunT and Just Keegan.”

We fell into a good rhythm– broken only in these last weeks with the me working more, Keegan dancing more, and Momma home from France– of dinner one or two times a week. Sometimes in. Sometimes out. We’ll miss this next fall when she’s off at school, too.

Or we’ll have to drive over to their College more often.

The dinners might not be as frequent but they won’t stop. There will still be Keegy’s goat cheese pasta when we are all together. It’s good that she’s graduating this week. Keegan does everything well. We’re excited to see what she does next.

iBirthday

Another year has gone by punctuated by a lovely birthday yesterday. Lots of happy surprises– bouquets of flowers and cards and lots of Facebook wishes. Wally took me to one of my favorite places for lunch. Momma made one of my favorite meals for supper. The nieces decorated the dining room with photos of me with them, with Jack and Robby, on trips, and among friends… There was an angel food cake with drizzly frosting and 42 striped candles that sent the streamers wiggling in the heat.

It was a good day for presents… From Jack there was a handful of drawings of a stick me and a stick he holding stick hands. He also picked out a brown-haired Barbie doll for his mother who has already taught him to look beyond the usual blond varieties… Anyone can become a blond. But to be a brunette you have to add. Not subtract. The inlaws plied me with two of my favorite things– hand knit socks and tea (better yet– the promise of tea with a gift certificate to our favorite tea house). Momma and Eric gave me a hammock– which is where you will find me most of this summer. Sister and nieces plied me with gift cards and a pouch for the phone when we are on the beach at family camp (my ziplock bag, while clever had made them laugh).

Robby out did himself. He woke me up at 12:01 to unwrap an iPad. We whisper argued about all the things in the Need category– brakes for his car being at the top of a long, long list… He won. His delight was infectious. And he took the precaution of opening the box. (and I took delight in his awe at the ease of a new apple product, “we don’t have to charge it? It’s ready?!?”)

So I tip type on an electronic screen and take joy in the little typewriter sounds.And in a husband that is prone to extravagance occasionally.

In a few weeks this is the plan: come play Barbies on the back deck in the hammock with a new e-book and a cup of tea… If its cold we can share my new socks.

There’s not enough tea or chocolate or oxygen today…

I don’t have a problem with authority. I really never have had a problem with authority. I’m not the kind of adult that will rail against The Man. I wasn’t the type of kid that would protest an injustice.

I turn the channel when people start arguing about the senate or the house or the president or the Kardashians. It has always seemed like too much energy to expend. At heart, when I vote, I do because it’s the dutiful thing to do– not because I believe (or have ever believed) that my one vote will make any difference.

Coworker is driving me nuts today. A series of emails belies coworker’s inability to simply accept authority and do what needs to be done. Coworker will argue every tiny word. Every tiny phrase. Coworker will misquote, mislead, misinterpret and reply all in an attempt to win an argument that only coworker is having.

It’s not a good start to my week. I’m exhausted already and it’s only the first hour.

Sigh.

Long day ahead

I’m dreading tomorrow.

There is a funeral at our church that Robby and I will go to for a friend only three years older than us. His death was unexpected. The grief at church for him is raw and edged with shock. His children are still young.

We believe that he is, truly, in a better place– but it’s hard to remember that in the face(s) of his wife and children and friends. It’s harder to celebrate the homegoing of someone who has not lived a full life.

And then– more grief (albeit different grief) on the last day of my coworker, CarolAnn. I will miss her dreadfully. She is, in addition to ridiculously capable and organized and unflappable… my friend. It will be a different workplace without her.

And then the day will end with Maundy Thursday service– one of my favorites of the year and particularly hard won this week.

If you’re so inclined, please pray for our friends. They’ll need it tomorrow and in the days ahead.

Fire damage

“The school is on fire” is one of those things you really, really don’t want to hear.

Jack’s school had a fire yesterday. It caused a lot of damage to one of the classrooms and one end of the school had a lot of smoke and sooty residue… but the worst of it was contained. The emergency crews that responded took the precaution of knocking down all of the ceiling tiles in the classroom where it started. I saw the room today. Our day custodian, Debbie, let me walk into the strangely quiet room. All of the desks and classroom clutter had been removed when the cleaning crews tackled mopping up the water last night. The walls had a beautiful pattern left from the smoke. The room still smelled acrid. The whiteboards still had yesterday’s lessons written on them but now the boards were gray with a film left from the smoke. A few things that had been taped to the walls were gone leaving dark outlines in their places.

A stack of books will probably be deemed unsalvageable. A lot of homework papers were lost. The exhibition projects the kids were working on were rescued but carry a strong smell of fire.

Just things were lost. All students and staff and volunteers were accounted for… The teachers dropped what they were doing and shepherded the children out and away from the building where they did headcounts (several times, noted Jack’s teacher, still shaken). The fourth and fifth grade girls cried a lot. The second grade boys worried about their lunch boxes left behind.

School buses arrived almost as quickly as the fire trucks to keep the classes together and warm until the parents started to arrive. Our Jack was picked up quickly by our friend, Pammy– she’d gotten a call from a friend who had heard about it on their police scanner.

I’m glad she was there. She is levelheaded and calm in an emergency. She collected her son, our Jack, and a pair of brothers and took them to McDonalds and then the park. Jack was playing on the play structure before the “official” call came to me from school. The Mommy Network, it turns out, is much faster than the official channels of communication.

I worked with Jack’s class and the other second grade class this morning. We’ve been working through a series of art lessons together about shapes. Today we talked about organic shapes and how brilliantly Eric Carle uses organic shapes in his illustrations. And then we made “Carlesque” pictures of our own by tearing up sheets of construction paper and gluing the pieces into shapes on white paper. We made them into “thank you!” pictures for the emergency crews that came to put out the fires and stop traffic yesterday. It was a good thing to do. It gave the 7 year olds something to do and it gave them a chance to talk out the events of the previous day.

There was a clear division in the kinds of pictures that were created. Almost every single one of the boys depicted what they saw. There were several pictures of firemen and flames coming out of black windows. A few did policemen. Almost all of them had some blue construction paper water putting out the orange construction paper flames. A lot of the girls, I noticed escaped entirely and made Indian princesses, flower bouquets, and puppies. One boy, who’s mind always works in a different way, did a pirate ship sailing on the ocean.

Spring Break starts at the end of this week. When they come back the damaged classroom will be put back into order. Hopefully they will be able to hold on to the strong sense of community they have right now. They’re looking out for each other. Sharing more readily– a shortage of glue sticks was not the major ordeal it would have been last week. And they’ll take drills much more seriously.

We all will.

Bar-none

I tried to do a nice thing for Bossman today– and thought it might curb my lingering resentment that he has a groovy new iPad to play with. I offered to bring him back a nice iced tea from the campus coffee bar. The coffee shop is conveniently located in the library. Occasionally I have to take things over to the library, like today, and reward myself with what is (when the right barista is there) “my usual.” (That would be, if you are interested, an iced chai latte.)

Our campus is beyond dry. There are a lot of secular college campuses that claim to be dry. Ours is dryer than dry. Which makes the martini shaker that is used to make iced tea an unending source of glee for me. Martini shakers are sleek and groovy looking. I have never warmed to the taste of a martini– I’ve always liked the apparatus used to make a martini.

My nicely paved path of good intention had a road closed sign on it. The barista wasn’t one I recognized. I ordered off the my map– “One grande banana smoothie and one vente iced tea, please.” (Robby really hates when coffee bars use terms like “vente and grande and tall.” When he orders he refuses to play their game. He orders a small or medium or large. I don’t have that kind of moxie… but I like that he does.)

My first clue that my day was not going to improve immediately was when I realized that my banana smoothie did not contain bananas. I don’t know what magical ingredients went into the banana smoothie– but there was no fresh fruit to be had.

And then he made Bossman’s tea. I selected my teabag choice (Tazo Awake) which he then plunked into a glass of ice water.

He left me to stare at the poor, cold teabag shivering in the cup of icy water while he returned to my smoothie preparation. I waited to see if somehow, in some unforeseen miraculous way the tea would infuse the water– but no. As I suspected two minutes later I still had a cup of cold water and a miserable looking teabag.

I pointed this out, politely, to barista boy. His boss was sitting within earshot. I’d hoped she’d jump up and correct his mistake– bring out the shiny shaker and bring forth a properly brewed cup of iced-tea. She didn’t. He listened skeptically. He made eye contact with the undergrad kid behind me. There was a definite look of “Look at the crazy old lady that thinks I made the tea wrong…”

I smiled and explained, “You need to brew the tea with hot water and then pour it over ice.” He shrugged at his friend behind me. I turned and said, “I’m sorry. This is for my boss. He’ll expect proper tea.” The friend rolled his eyes and laughed. I bit the inside of my cheek and thought about how lovely it would be to slap the smirk off of his face.

Barista boy proceeded to dump out the cold water, ice, and sodden teabag, fill the clear plastic cup halfway with ice. I watched as he then took the cup with ice and filled it the rest of the way with steaming hot water from the coffee machine and plunk another teabag into it, slipped on a lid and handed it to me. The ice probably saved the cup from melting under the hot water.

A third time probably wasn’t going to get us any closer to real tea.

I took what was, within a few steps, neither iced nor hot tea back to Bossman and related the tale. (I prefaced it with “Remember– it’s the thought that counts…?”)

I still can’t figure out what was in my smoothie if there isn’t any fruit.

Catch up

An attempt to catch up/ random thoughts:

Bossman just walked into the office with an iPad. It’s in a groovy leather folio case with a place for a stylus and slim pocket for a wireless keyboard. My envy went over the border into a tiny bit of hate. Okay. Maybe not hate. But there are people out there toting iPads that I’d like to throw my mouse at. Of course, to throw my mouse at them I’d have to unplug it from the keyboard first. Sigh.

Years ago, at the Museum, my only technological wish was for a larger monitor. I did a lot of layout and couldn’t really imagine anything beyond having a monitor that allow me to see the whole shebang at once.

Now I covet my office neighbors’ iPads. (With a screen smaller than the one I had at the Museum. Go figure.)

Jack had spring school pictures yesterday. We all know and understand that school spring pictures are a racket. With the exception of the tiny, tiny population that may have moved into a school after fall school pictures were taken, spring school pictures are just another way of the Lifetouch company to milk us for more money. And perhaps you remember the system– in the fall you pay for unseen pictures. You fill out the little form indicating background color choices and whether you’d like airbrushing. You put in an amount that, for me, is a day’s wages, and hope that your little angel smiles nicely for the Picture Man. You try to block out the very real possibilities that, in the intervening time between dropping your son off at school in the morning with shirt neatly tucked in and the slot that his class is given to file in the hallway waiting their turn in front of the camera, that his collar will still be in it’s proper place, that his shirt will still be of a solid color and not covered in the morning’s art project… That some kind mother-helper will keep him from the water fountain where he inevitably dribbles water down the front of himself… But there’s something about fall school pictures. Some sacred marking of time that bids you to fill out the form and the check and wait for the results.

In the spring it’s the opposite. Pictures, for most of the parents, are an after thought. We remember the morning of Picture Day to throw together some non-uniform outfit and send him off to school. There’s no payment required– not until the pictures come home in the backpack a week later and you feel compelled to pay for the bright way your child is captured– because you feel strange about the matte photos going into the trash bin if you return them.

Our favorite part of the spring photos are the cheesy backgrounds. Gone is the formality of a solid backdrop. Instead there are weirdly staged backgrounds– nine options each slightly odder than the one before it. 1. The seaside. (Maybe this plays better in Nantucket schools?) 2. A row of cherry blossom trees. (Perfect for the D.C. charter kid?) 3. Trees in the background with tall marsh grasses in the foreground. (The perfect dropping point for a body?) 4. A rustic cabin. (The kind in every teen horror movie ever set in a camp. I’m afraid to look too closely at the windows. There might be a machete wielding madman there.) 5. Tall grasses in the foreground and behind it what appears to be a road. Or a curb. (This is especially disappointing. I think I picked this one.) 6. A garden setting. (“Hey, kid! Get off my lawn!”) 7. A church bulletin cover. (Seriously. It’s all mums and trees and shafts of light.) 8. A pristine lake in the background with tall grasses in the foreground. (If they were sitting this close to the edge of the lake they’d be in it.) and 9. A beautiful meadow. (I thought seriously about this one– but only if I could have had him wear an open collared shirt and used glitter to make him into a sparkly vampire. If you photoshopped in Bella and Edward it’d be perfect.)

Our neglected house. After Robby’s long incarceration at the house we let a lot go. Laundry and ironing piled up. Neither of us dusted or vacuumed. The ridiculously good weather has given us all sorts of excuses to be outside. We eat outside. We play outside. We’re avoiding the house. The idea of houseguests is a horror. The idea of overnight houseguests is an impossibility. It’s time to tackle things and get it back in order. We started by creating a bigger mess. When we moved into the house 15 years (!) ago we fitted the kitchen with a bakers rack we’d had in our little apartment. It worked great in the tiny apartment. Not so great in our new kitchen– but, we assured each other– it’s temporary. We’ll fix that soon. Montage of calendar pages flit flitting off the wall… During the long house detention it was the thing that sent me over the edge. So we moved the vintage Hoosier cabinet (which we love) and the bakers rack (which we don’t anymore) to storage and made a trip to IKEA. We bought Billy shelves for the kitchen. Tall, dark Billy shelves with doors. It’s given us lots of new space. But created a huge mess in the meantime. Both the dining room table and the kitchen table are covered in debris, flotsam, jetsam, and cookbooks. The plan is to paint the existing cabinets and rid the kitchen of the cutsey garden-themed wallpaper as soon as possible (which means after Momma comes home from France but before Jack is out of school this summer…). I might love my kitchen again when this is all said and done.

In the meantime we’ll have the cub scouts over for a climb up Mount Laundry and Ironing Peak.

Just another manic Monday

If I don’t crawl out of my own skin by the end of the day it will be a minor miracle. I’m frazzled. And on edge because of it.

My Monday has been notably craptastic thus far… We woke up in the wee smas of the morning to the sound of someone banging on our door. Banging. Robby ventured downstairs while I stood uncertainly at the top unsure if I should try to hide Jack or what.

It was the police. The 5-0. The Po Po. They wanted to know if we were okay. (Well, other than the possible heart attack, sure.)

Turns out that our land line is acting up. Again. It’s crackling and popping. (Really, it’s like a high-volumed Rice Krispie commerical.) And it’s dialing 911. It’s happened a few times before. We’ve had what seemed like random calls from the police asking if we were all okay. A while back we were watching television and an officer stopped by to check on us. Each time we’d apologize and the officer would tell us it happens all the time… but we’d prefer an earlier, less unsettling time– say 9 p.m. and not 3 a.m. to find an officer at our door.

Yikes. Sleep was not found again easily. Which made for a difficult morning for Robby and I (not so much Jack who slept through the entire thing).

Trying to drop off the Rabbit at school this morning was an adventure in not realizing it must be “Every Single Person at the School Take Your Kid to School Day.” I have all the empathy and sympathy in the world for parents and kids but– seriously– if your kindergarten child is crying maybe you need to pull off to the side of the school driveway so that the other parents can get their kids off to school.

I get Jack squared away and get back into the car for the drive to the office– and was almost mowed down by a fierce looking lady in a burgandy Enclave that spent more time on my back end then the nice doctor that did my colonoscopy. I was going the speed limit and there is a long stretch where there isn’t a place to pull off to let her fly past… and by the time I reached an area where I could I didn’t want to. I was going the speed limit. Not ten miles under. Get a grip, lady. She finally whipped around me (clearly going at least 10 miles over the speed limit). I took devilish pleasure in catching up to her at the stop sign. Then the first light. I smiled at her wishing I could congratulate her on her awesome one-car-length-ahead-of-me achievement.

On the edge of the little village where the university I slowed down. The speed limit drops considerably. I’m still wary of the phantom speed traps that linger from my student years. She plowed ahead and careened (yes, careened) left into the strip mall where, I finally figured out, she must have been running late for her 9 a.m. Kettlebell class. Hmmm. 40 something woman driving an Enclave. Angry. Kettlebell class. She probably didn’t eat a real breakfast (too many calories, natch)… Maybe her exhusband just announced his engagement to the 25 year old office manager. Her kids love the new mom. She’s fun. She takes them out for pancakes on their shared custody weekends.

Leaving me to pull into the university on the right. There is a circle drive with a tiny, verboten lot on the right hand side for the Admissions People. On the far bend of the circle there is a lot for staff/faculty/visitors. But What, Ho!?! What is this?! A burgandy mini-van whips behind me into the drive and turns left! into the s/f/v lot. I continue my trajectory and pray through gritted teeth for some kind of divine help– because if that @%$# van takes the last spot after turning left illegally into the lot defying all known rules about traffic circles and roundabouts (drives or otherwise) then I am going to let loose with a fury that has the heat of a 1000 white hot suns.

Okay. There was a spot for me.

Hopefully this day will get better.

Ball Game II

Robby’s recovery from surgery is slow. To say that he is uncomfortable would be an understatement. Even adding the words swollen, tender, sore don’t really come close to an explanation.

And he’s frustrated. He can’t really do anything. He makes the trip upstairs once a day to sleep for a few hours in our bed. Most nights he makes it until close to 5 a.m. before he creeps back downstairs to wait for the next vicodin dose. Last night he only made it until 2 a.m.

We’re usually a pretty decent team when it comes to taking care of the basics. I do the laundry but he carries up the heavy baskets and we fold it together. He can’t carry the baskets or fold right now. He can’t empty the dishwasher or give the dog a bath. He can’t change the sheets or shovel the walks. He can’t drive– so the ferrying of Jack to and from school and to activities is out.

He was able to make Jack’s lunch last night. Which I appreciated. It took him quite a while– but, with Jack’s help getting the stuff out of the bottom drawer of the fridge– they pulled together a nice little lunch.

We’re ridiculously grateful, of course, that this is a temporary condition. That he isn’t going through this much “discomfort” only to have to face a round of radiation in a few weeks.

We’re just tired. I’m tired of being the only ox in the yoke. And I’m sad to see him so frustrated that he can’t do the things he wants to do. The breaking point was the other morning when I could hear him and Jack arguing downstairs. There was a long break of silence. And then, a few minutes later, raised voices again. Jack came upstairs sullen.

“What’s going on downstairs, little man?”
“Dad was trying to snuggle me.”
“And?”
“It didn’t really work.”

Jack can’t crawl up on his lap the way he would normally. So they’d tried to cuddle with Jack balanced on the arm of the leather chair. It was lopsided and awkward.

We’ll be glad to have him back to his old self.

Ball game.

All’s well that ends well. That’s what you need to know.

The silence as of late has been due to a series of unfortunate events. A few months ago we sat in the good Dr. BooBoo’s office trying to figure out why Jack doesn’t have a sibling. I’d think, “ohh I should blog about this.” But then the next thing would happen– and like dominos clacking into each other it seemed like we needed to wait to see what would happen next first.

Dr. BooBoo ordered a round of tests for me. They came back without incident. So it was Robby’s turn to be poked, prodded and assessed. His tests came back waving tiny little red flags. So they ordered an ultrasound. On his testicles. Think about that. I sat in the room while the poor tech squirted the goop and ran the reader over Robby. We laughed because it’s ludicrous to watch the screen for an ultrasound for any thing other than to see a fetus. And, again, there was a poor woman running the scanner over Robby’s testicles. (Suddenly the stack of forms that I had to get signatures on for the registrar didn’t seem like such a bad day at work…)

The ultrasound wasn’t symmetrical. I noticed that one side had a huge black hole. (Well, it was big on the screen. It’s hard to remember how much stuff gets magnified on the small screen.) I racked my brain trying to remember the tiny bit of information I took in about testicles in 9th grade biology. Should one side have a black hole if the other side didn’t?

No. Black holes aren’t good. The results from the ultrasound came back after a long weekend. Dr. BooBoo called personally to say that he was sure it was nothing but that he wanted us to see an urologist. Dr. BooBoo’s expertise, of course, being ovaries. Not testicles. He got us an appointment for later that same week. The unease I had after the ultrasound began to grow. It made me nervous that he’d called us directly– and then wanted to talk to Robby, too. It wouldn’t have seemed so serious if nurse Clara had called.

On a Thursday we sat in the examination room of the recommended urologist. I’d googled him. He had a good reputation and a good website. (But, here’s a tip, be careful when you try to google about mass + testicle + ultrasound. Yikes.) Dr. P’s staff was great. We like the LPN that examined Robby. (Note to self: make sure, in the future, that I check that the laundry is caught up so that Robby isn’t wearing his Mickey Mouse Christmas boxers to the urologist…) She leveled with us– the mass wasn’t something we wanted on an ultrasound. We needed to rule out cancer.

Suddenly we went from worrying over the age of my eggs and the mobility of Robby’s sperm to Cancer? Cancer? She ordered a round of blood tests and apologized that, it being late on a Thursday, we’d have to wait until Monday to get the results/meet with the doctor.

We ate sandwiches in the waiting room of the lab and tried to talk about other things. Mostly we sat still and quiet. I pretended to read on my Kindle. Robby pretended to play Temple Run on the iPhone. It was a very long weekend.

The following Monday we sat again in Dr. P’s exam room waiting. A horribly inept nurse rattled around her laptop keyboard while she asked questions. We were strained. Taut. Robby was reduced to answering her cheerful questions with one or two syllables.
“Has there been any change? I’m not sure why you are here…”
Robby grunted, “Look. You ran the tests.”

She clacked more on the keyboard then said, “oh.” and left the room.

I looked at Robby. We both exhaled. “There is no way we’d get bad news from her. We must be in the clear. God wouldn’t be that cruel.”

She didn’t come back. We heard murmuring outside the door and then the good LPN came in again. She said things about two of the three tests coming back negative– one was still out. We exhaled again. Dr. P came in. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. He examined Robby. Dr. P doesn’t joke. He’s very literal. So when he talked about still needing to do surgery we understood we needed to listen. We asked about the tests and he explained that the results were consistent with testicular cancer and went on to talk about surgery and removing the testicle and radiation.

We were somewhere back on the negative results of the bloodwork really being negative. (Wasn’t negative usually positive?) Dr. P paused and waited for us to catch up. He was, he sorry to say, 96% sure that we were dealing with cancer here. He gave us the good news– it was small. So probably early. The cure rates were good. Great even. Not like it’s ovarian cancer sibling. Robby was a weird age for it– generally it was 15-25 year olds and then, in smaller numbers 35-40…

Ninety six? That left us with four percent? Were we doing the math right? Dr. P said, 93-97%. Seven percent didn’t feel better. We made feeble, pathetic jokes about only having one testicle while we tried to process the information. Dr. P didn’t know us well enough to know that neither of us cared how many testicles Robby has. We just wanted Robby to be fine. Dr. P mentioned that there are prosthetic testicles. Seriously.

He scheduled surgery as soon as possible– so we were given a slot about 10 days out. We left his office silently. Outside there was snow on the ground. We stood in the cold and didn’t look at each other. Eventually Robby decided to go back to work. I went straight to my mother’s house where, because it was MLK day, my sister was home, too. I sobbed and told them what we little we knew.

The next week was a mess. We ate and slept and went through the motions of all of our usual routines. We went to work. We came home. We played games with Jack. When he went to bed we wordlessly put together puzzles. Puzzles with cartoony pictures of different cities on them. We’d finish one and start another– Robby scooping the finished one into a box while I picked out the edge pieces of the next one.

We couldn’t say it out loud. I emailed Chris and Susan. Their reply came back fast– they were circling the wagons. Susan sent links to websites with positive affirmations. Chris called with an endless stream of jokes that made me laugh until I cried. I emailed Sue who checked in with us every day. I told Wally who sent his wife, Katie, in to the office to talk about vitamins and supplements. Robby downed his resveratrol and handfuls of vitamins and minerals. We canceled our plans for the youth group ski trip. Robby lined up people at work to cover for him. We told our pastors who stopped in the moment to pray.

The week of the surgery was a blur of school activities and church meetings. We stumped through Jack’s cub scout ceremony and the an open house at his school. We didn’t tell our school parent friends until the night before the procedure– we wanted their prayers but couldn’t risk Jack hearing more than we wanted.

We also waited until the 11th hour to talk to Robby’s parents. In the end I did that. Robby didn’t like the idea of telling his parents their only child was in danger of something they couldn’t do anything about. I wasn’t too keen on the idea, either, but I couldn’t get past the idea that if it were Jack I’d want to know. They took the news well. I told them most of what we knew.

We all made ball jokes. It’s hard not to. Testicles aren’t an easy thing to talk about. So we reverted to inane references to balls. Junk. Sacks. Trish made a list on her iPhone (all of her lists are on her iPhone) of every ball-related or shaped food we could think of. Turns out there are quite a few: Meatballs, malted milk balls, cheese balls, ice-cream balls, sour balls, Russian tea cakes, doughnut holes, cherry tomatoes…

The morning of the surgery we left the house early and headed to the hospital. The surgery was out-patient so we checked into the surgical center and got Robby into a little gown that left him looking like a German hausfrau. He’s not an attractive woman. My sister followed the sound of our voices back to the curtained area and laughed at Robby who refused to give up his boxers until the last possible moment. We started introducing ourselves as his sister wives.

God sent the perfect nurses. Nurse one seemed gruff at first– but quickly snapped into the perfect tone of sarcasm. We needed that. She delighted over Robby’s huge veins and then, “Whew. First time. Not too bad.” and then deadpanned, “I usually work in maintenance.”

Nurse two’s name was Trish. We reminded Robby that while he was going under the anesthesia he’d have the comforting confusion of hearing the name of Trish.

Dr. BooBoo was in the pre-op area waiting for his own slate of surgeries– we waved him in where he reassured Robby that this was all probably nothing. He joked with us– we had a repertoire of inappropriate ball references honed now. Dr. P came in– our straight man who looked askance at our frivolity. Dr. BooBoo slipped out during Dr. P’s terse review of what we should expect. He was disconcerted that we had not thought to mark the offending testicle. (Actually, Robby and I had considered doing that the night before but thought it would be frowned upon. Of course, we also considered covering Robby’s nether regions in glitter to make things more festive…) Trish brightly suggested that we cover Robby in artwork. Dr. P earnestly replied that we could but that the important thing was that Robby initialed it.

They gave me a pager. The kind that you get at busy restaurants. I kissed Robby and told him I’d see him when our table was ready.

The surgical waiting room is lacking in many things. We have sour memories of the waiting rooms when my father had colon cancer. Trish came armed with Panera treats and hot rooibos tea. We shared the room with one other woman, at first, and we talked the nice attendant into switching the channel from something morning show with a female host in a blaring yellow jacket to the Today Show where Ann Curry wore a blaring yellow blouse. Matt Lauer wasn’t there. The other lady in the waiting room seemed angry with us after the channel switch.

Later some other people came and went. There were two men sitting on opposite ends of the room. One hung his head. The other had charge of a terribly plastic-y looking purse. He seemed agitated. Trish and I wondered about the purse and the kind of woman that would insist on bringing her purse with her. Both of the men were waiting for OB/GYN surgeons to update them. We felt bad for them. They needed a separate space to wait. A room for men with La-z-Boy recliners and sports on the tv.

Our Pastor Sue popped in. She wore her chaplain badge and a worried expression. We made nervous chatter and waited for the pager to beep or buzz. It told us when he went in to surgery. I called Robby’s parents to let them know. We knew we had a slew of people praying for Robby at 8:30. The surgery actually started earlier– but there was a strange calm at 8:30. If you don’t believe in God or prayer you might say it was coincidence– but I do believe in God and prayer and I knew that we had a lot of good thoughts headed toward whatever was happening in the OR.

Other doctors came and went. One of the men was called into the little side room with another OB/GYN in town. We didn’t like the way he made the man close the door behind himself. The man was so alone. We were pleased, somehow, when Dr. BooBoo came to talk to the other man and held the door and closed it behind the nervous husband.

Dr. P came in suddenly. Trish and I followed him in to the little room. I don’t remember who closed the door or who opened it. I only remember thinking that I was afraid that the little room might be where our world would come crashing down.

Dr. P said, “There is some good news.” I braced for what would come next and barely heard him say that there “was no malignancy.”

He blinked. I looked at him and then to Trisha who had the presence of mind to ask him to clarify. He repeated himself. Dr. P might be autistic. I’m pretty sure he is, at the very least, somewhat socially awkward. He repeated that there was no malignancy and then under the sound of my heartbeat there was something he added about Robby having both testicles still.

We all looked at each other. I was still wondering if Dr. P was in some way autistic and he was probably wondering if I was retarded in some way or hearing impaired.

Trish asked, tentatively, “You said is good news. Is there bad news?”

He said there would be discomfort and swelling. (Sorry Robby, but this was the best news we’ve ever heard. The bad news is just discomfort and swelling? We can handle discomfort and swelling.)

I said to the room, “Oh I can’t wait to tell him!” Dr. P, forever the straight man said, “Oh, he’ll know. He’ll reach down. All my patients reach down to check.”

Trish asked the follow up questions. I shook his hand. I said “thank you” a lot. And then he left. Trish and I held each other and cried and laughed.

Out in the waiting room poor Pastor Sue– who’s been in the waiting room a lot– thought that things must have gone especially bad since we were still in there. We relayed the good news. I called Robby’s parents who cheered. I started calling and texting the circled wagons. There was a lot of relieved laughter and tears.

Eventually we were called back to the recovery area. We sat with a loopy Robby who asked the same questions over and over and told really long stories to very patient nurses. I patted his leg and sipped the ginger ale Nurse three gave me. Turned out Nurse three is a parent at Jack’s school so we talked about school while we waited for Robby to pee.

On the way out one of the nurses said something about our luck. That we should play the lottery.

Maybe that’s true, too. But I can’t shake the weird calm at 8:30 a.m. Knowing that the circled wagons were sending up petitions for Robby. For, as Carol Ann said, it all to be a mistake or something in the 4%. Might have been a coincidence but my odds say not.