A Thanksgiving to be thankful for

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend, Nov. 26, 2010

How do I compress a miracle into 850 words? The old, flippant, me would have said such brevity would itself be a miracle. But the new me is tempered and sober. I can no longer take the name of miracles in vain.

My husband, Eldred, turned 53 last week. He was here for this birthday, thank God, having been pulled off of Death’s doorstep three weeks ago. My husband is alive and well and at home, and it is nothing short of miraculous.

He spent twelve days hospitalized: eight in intensive care, and five of those, unconscious. Without the access to technology, skilled personnel, transportation, and communications available in this era and in this area, my husband would not be alive today. Were it not for your ardent prayers – thank you - and those of many others, and sheer divine mercy, he might not be here.


Eldred suffered a massive heart attack and cardiac arrest in the early morning hours on November 8th. Thank God I was nearby. Thank God for the competent and calming woman who answered my hysterical 911 call and walked me through CPR. Thank God he was walking when he collapsed, or he might have expired unnoticed in the chair where he had just finished an email. Thank God he wasn’t driving, or he would surely have lost his life, and possibly taken others with him. Thank God for the EMS who came at once and transported him to Fauquier Hospital as soon as they had him on drips and a ventilator.


While the paramedics worked, I called the Headmaster of my school, Dr. Young Shin. “I’m not coming to school today,” I babbled repetitively. “Eldred…Eldred…Eldred…” was all I could sob before getting any coherent information out to him. That he understood me is amazing. He and the staff and families at Providence Christian Academy have been incredibly good to me.


When I got to the ER, I knew things must be really bad, because they would not let me go to him immediately. The Fauquier Hospital staff were wonderfully supportive, particularly a lady by the name of Ina, who insisted I put graham crackers and juice into my bag, reminding me to take care of myself while medical experts took care of my husband. It was soon decided that he be airlifted to Inova Fairfax Hospital for an emergency catheterization procedure.


My pastor, the ever-loving Dick Wright came to both hospitals. Before “retiring” to pastoral work in 2005, he was the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the US and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His gifted hands held mine in my hour of despair.


“I can’t lose him, right?” I beseeched Dick through tears early that Monday morning in the ER of Fauquier Hospital. Had I ever really appreciated my husband of 24 years? Pastor Dick reassured me I would not lose him and that he himself is a walking showcase of cardiac work.

Before leaving the hospital, I watched from a distance as my seemingly lifeless husband was hoisted from the gurney into the garish, blue helicopter. How our boys would have liked to see such a helicopter from up close in happier times. It was an eerie feeling to be left holding a “Patient’s Belongings” bag that contained all of my husband’s clothes that had been safety-scissored off of him. Please, Lord, don’t let this be my last memory of him. Please don’t let him die.

When I got home, I felt lost and stupid. I needed to notify my husband’s workplace, but what was his director’s phone number? All I had was my husband’s desk number at work. I called it, hoping to get an option to reach an operator, but I got a generic voicemail. I checked my husband’s cell phone, but that was of no use. After Googling and a few phone calls, I left a message explaining my husband’s absence.


I mapped out directions to the hospital, and left money with the children at home. No one would be going to school that day.


Elizabeth Baden, my sweet, bubbly friend from church and several others offered to care for my four children left at home (the two older girls are at college), but I felt comfortable leaving my eldest son, just months shy of 16, in charge.


At worst, he might torture the younger ones with perplexing math problems. Perhaps hygiene would be neglected. Perhaps they would watch too many cartoons. None of those things, ordinarily of great concern, mattered now.


Don’t brush your teeth. Don’t change your underwear. Watch “Kung Fu Panda” all day long. None of it will matter if we lose your father.


Incidentally, the kids performed remarkably well: They cleaned themselves and the house, which had looked like a disaster zone well before my husband’s episode. I’m thankful for my children. I’m thankful to have my husband back.


This is the most thankful Thanksgiving I will ever have had. I plan to treasure each day and each person in my life, including you. Happy Thanksgiving. I plan to give thanks daily.

How to milk rabbits

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend, Nov. 27, 2009

Did you know that you can milk rabbits? A mother rabbit only nurses her kits once or twice a day for fewer than five minutes. Even with such Spartan feedings, these little creatures grow from blind, limp, hairless rats to become small, fuzzy hoppers. In three weeks, they are a perfect miniature of a rabbit. If anything affirms the love of our Creator, it is in seeing new life.


Maybe you can’t milk rabbits, but I know how. This is my fourth (but not final) column on the pet rabbits we had in California. As a matter of fact, today's' column marks my 80th one since coming to Warrenton in 2005. (Not that I’ve been keeping track.)


We had rabbits for eighteen months a decade ago, and now I’m going to talk as if I'm some big rabbit expert. This is the miracle of American marketing. (The “big” part I’ve attained, but “expert” is doubtful.) Soon you are going to believe that I am, indeed, a big rabbit expert. This is the miracle of American consumerism. Someone puts it out there, and many of us gobble it up.


Here's a brief recap of my rabbit columns. (Like I am acquainted with “brief.”) We thought we had three female rabbits, but we had a reverse trio: two males and one female. (Usually a trio consists of one buck and two does.) While under the impression that females were housed together, there was some unauthorized mating. When the males were together, there was unauthorized fighting. No, I'm not talking about dorm arrangements – we are still talking rabbits.


My husband had threatened to do target practice on rabbits if they cost him one second of time or caused him one ounce of sweat. Soon, he was busy building a six-foot hutch with three separate enclosures. The much sought-after female was soon with kits. A rabbits can bear one to fifteen of them in about 31 days. Right after kindling, rabbits are not averse to immediately repeating the cycle.


My older daughters were nine and seven when they marked the due date on the calendar. As they counted down days, the two little Marsha the Milkmaids calculated their profits. They were going to sell baby bunnies, of course.


They set their prices – should it be $ 5 per rabbit, or $ 20, like the pet store? Oh, fine – they could charge like the pet store. Their line of imaginary customers was undeterred by price.


How many bunnies should they bank on? The books said a litter could consist of one to fifteen, so they would be conservative and estimate a dozen. This female rabbit was looking more and more like a cash cow. Her litter could generate $ 240. I tried to inject doses of reality, but it's hard to be the hypodermic syringe in someone's hot air balloon of joy.


As the day approached, we put in a nest box. Sure enough, the morning arrived. The girls came squealing in from the backyard. There were four bunnies. Look, look! My daughters had brought them in. Two that they held out were cold and stiff. “Oh, honey,” I knew they had never touched death before. Fuzzy, the mother, must have kindled in the night, but not into the lined nest box. A kit that has fallen out of the nest box can sometimes be warmed and “brought back,” but these were too far gone. The other two had bloodied forepaws. Had Fuzzy been a little overzealous in cleaning her babies?


We then made the fateful decision to take over the care of the kits. Fuzzy was a novice at this. We should have realized then that so were we. We read up and prepared the substitute formula, complete with bonemeal. We put the babies into little newborn socks. We got droppers out and got busy playing mother rabbit. It didn't take long to find out that the Good Lord has already done a perfect casting job. Real mother rabbits suit that role best. The two little survivors did not make it long under our care. One got too cold, and all our desperate rewarming efforts were of no avail. We overfed the other baby or fed it too quickly. Dropper poised as usual, at the tiny mouth of the newborn, the babe sputtered as it suckled, and formula seeped up out of its nostrils. Death is a terrible enough thing to witness. Worse still is when it comes from your hands.


We were going to have a few more tries before our adventures were over. But at that time, we learned ever so much, far beyond the “don't count and cash in your bunnies before they hatch” aphorism. We learned the wonder and marvel of life itself, and the beauty of the Breath of Life. We learned that we do not hold it in our hands, and we have not the power to give it.


I hope you and your loved ones had a wonderful Thanksgiving together. Thank you, Friend, for being my reader.

Dear Null Null…

Published in Nov. 19, 2010 edition of The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend

“Dear Null Null,” begins an endearing and personalized letter to me. Perhaps I exaggerate when I say “letter.” It’s just an email, since no one spent time or money on a postage stamp.

I know the Bible says that we should humble ourselves, because that is far more pleasant than when others have to do it for us. But being called NULL NULL really hits below the belt. That’s several shades worse than being zero. Zero is at least a number that can be represented, whereas NULL indicates a void – a field in someone’s computer program that hasn’t been given the breath of life of one’s or zero’s or any combination thereof. It hasn’t even been filled – you are empty and nothingness. You are not even zero. Hello, NULL.

Repeating NULL, on the surface, could be viewed as the placeholder for your last name. But the people who sent me this email must know I come from a Hindi-speaking household. In Hindi, to emphasize or express something in its superlative form, you just double the adjective. For example, “garam” means hot, as in temperature – not pungency as in food or in the slang form used by so many tweens to describe the vampire person in Twilight. So, if I want to describe a steaming appetizer, I would say “garam garam samosa.” Or a wonderfully hot cup of tea would be “ek cup garam garam chai,” where “ek” means one, and “cup” said with a non-aspirated, Hindi accented, “k” sound (no puff of air following it) means cup, and of course, chai means “tea.” Please don’t say “chai tea” because you are American, and saying “tea tea” makes no sense.

Being NULL NULL makes me doubly nothing, super-void. This makes me ponder black holes and the like, and since I am not a qualified physicist, I stop that sort of thinking immediately, before I get sucked into something too deep for me to comprehend. I am still trying to understand the complicated system of grocery store coupons.

And I am trying to understand why I keep getting weird communications by email, like the one from the friend of a long-lost relative. I don’t tend to be a terribly suspicious person. This email says it’s from a “Friend of your Late Uncle George” who recently died in some foreign land, and, unbeknownst to everyone else, this Late Uncle George, whom you didn’t even know you had, had a stash of millions of dollars, and this friend will be happy to share half of that with you, because that’s just the sort of person he is.


There’s just one minor complication, however. This was all done in secret, although no one is implying that Uncle George was in any way a criminal. He was the trustee of something, but now power in that country has changed hands (which might imply that money had also changed hands), but the Evil People in charge would now be unwilling to share the funds that Uncle George had so skillfully and shadily acquired. Could you please just wire about $10,000 to this old friend of your unknown uncle, so he can tap into the millions for the both of you? Thank you. He will be in touch as soon as you send all your bank information. Promise. By the way, don’t mention this to anyone, because then the whole deal would be over, and the Evil People would squander the funds by distributing it to the poor. Also, everyone else may have gotten this same email.


Here’s another suspicious thing lately: we’ve received five phone calls from our Ohio bank, “just checking to see if we are happy with everything.” What, are they going to offer me some kind of counseling if I’m not? The first time, as soon as I said everything was fine, they were ready to disconnect. That made me really suspicious. Not so fast. So I asked a few questions about their new features, such as deposits online, just to make sure the person calling me really had some connection to the bank.


Last night, when I got the fifth call checking on my Happiness Factor, I did not bother to hide the irritation in my voice. “Look, I was happy with your service before you started calling me every evening. While this might be a courtesy call, the depth of your courtesy is beginning to grate on my nerves. If you want me to be happy, you need to remove me from the list.”


According to Jim on the other end of the line, that has now been done, which is a good, good thing. After all, there is only so much attention that NULL NULL can handle.

Do Not Be Still, Heart of My Heart

Written 11/11/2010. Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on 12 Nov. 2010

Do I write this or not? I have wrestled with that question, and after thinking and praying, I have decided that my husband, my family, and I, need as many prayers as possible to be lifted to the Lord of Heaven and Earth.


My husband is a very private person. This may surprise you, considering he is essential to my writing, but he’s a good sport, as long as I don’t give out too much information.


He would not want me to relay this, but I am going to be selfish and thoughtless and tell you anyway. If you read my column every week, then we can consider ourselves friends. So this is just between us, as friends. If he doesn’t like it, he’s going to have to regain consciousness and tell me off. I would love that. I’m waiting for that.


Our life has changed dramatically this week. Early Monday morning (Nov. 8th), I was downstairs to prepare for the school day at about 3:00 am. No, it’s not that I’m such a hard worker; it’s that I am a chronic procrastinator. Eldred came down around 4:00 am, asked for Ibuprofen, and went back upstairs to try to sleep. Half an hour later, he came down to ask for another tablet.


“Are you getting the flu?” I asked.


“Just give me the other tablet,” he snapped. I did not take offense, because pain can make anyone snappy, and obviously he was in pain.


Eldred almost always makes the coffee, and brings me my cup in bed. But this time I could offer him his cup. “No, just give me some ice chips and water.” He said he might just take a sick day since he wasn’t feeling well. Ice water in hand, he finished his emails.


Later, he walked into the kitchen to get his coffee. I heard a tremendous crash. It sounded like an entire shelf had fallen off the pantry. I dashed around the corner and was momentarily confused. Where had he gone?


It was then, to my horror that I realized that the crash had been my husband hitting the floor, all six-foot-one-inch and 235-pounds of him, lying there. His head was almost under the kitchen sink, and his feet were toward the pantry. The cup had shattered somewhere along the way, and coffee was spilled on the stovetop and pooled around his feet.


I shrieked, and could get no response from him. I called 911 and cried hysterically into the phone. All of August’s CPR training had fled my mind. I was a wreck. The dispatcher calmed me down, got information, and had me begin with two breaths, followed by 30 compressions to the heart. I counted each pump, crying. On each 30th compression, Eldred took a big gasp of air that both surprised and frightened me. My high school and middle school sons had heard the commotion and came down, along with my second-grader daughter.


The rest was a blur of lights and sirens, paramedics, tubes, shock treatments and phone calls. There was Fauquier Hospital and his airlift to Inova Fairfax Hospital, where we are now. We wait. I wait.


Can life be this fragile? It is here one moment, and then, in an instant, the life we have known and grown accustomed to, and sometimes bored with, is swept away from us. It swoops down upon you in a single devastating moment, and you watch helplessly as the shards and splinters of your life are carried away in the tidal wave.


Is it gone, our life of Saturday mornings together, sneaking out to Panera before the kids wake up? His warm, warm hands and the shared jokes – is all that gone?


Here lies the most brilliant man I have ever known. He cannot share his insights on history or explain that physics problem to our sons. He cannot advise my daughters on their course registration for spring. He cannot tell me what to do about the car, or anything right now except to lie here and, hopefully, heal.


He is sedated. A machine is breathing for him. A tube through his nose is sending his nourishment. He could explain all this equipment to me, this amazing teacher, if only he could get up.


Will he? His life – our life – everything, it seems, hangs on the balance. I think he will be back to his usual self, even if it takes months. I have to believe that, because I can’t do this thing on my own. I really, really, need him. I wish I had ever told him that in a clear and beautiful way before.


Daily, step by step, there is reason for thanks and room for hope. He’s in there, somewhere just below the tubes and pads and medications.


Pray that he comes through unscathed. Pray that the right side of his heart will begin pumping again. Pray that he loses none of his brilliance and humor as he heals. Pray that he be made whole again.


And in case you don’t know this, I really appreciate you, my friend. Thank you.

**********
Update: Nov. 15th, 2010 - Eldred is back! He is himself - laughing, joking, and asking detailed technical questions of the medical team. Thank you, Lord!  Thank you, family, friends, church family, and readers for your love, prayers, and support.

Readers beware. Readers, be scared.

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition of Feb. 6th, 2009:

Peladophobia is becoming a rampant problem with middle-aged men, and if you have been watching cable TV, you will know this well. School and community professionals should employ an early detection system to screen people for this social ill. In case you didn’t know it, peladophobia is the fear of bald people. In our society, it is not technically the fear of bald people, but the fear of going bald ourselves that truly plagues us. The only thing that might be remotely as frightening as going bald is the fear of being too hairy. I would have used the term “hirsute” for “hairy” here, but I am not allowed to.

My children – yes, my own flesh and blood, accuse me of embellishing, sorry, padding, this column with unnecessary vocabulary words when ordinary (pedestrian) ones will do. They do read this column, although it is sometimes under duress. I used to bribe them into reading, but I now find that threatening them is faster, easier, and cheaper (or “more expedient, effective, and economical” if I’m allowed to use my own words). Not only is it easier on the pocketbook, it is quite possibly better for their character development.

When bribes and threats fail to entice them to read, I have two other techniques in my arsenal to encourage them to read my writing.

Scene 1: “Mom, have you seen my physics book?” I survey the seventeen stacks of books that have come to live on every horizontal surface that used to be visible. Only the floor is sacrosanct, and therefore safe from our vertical library piles. (I am afraid I will be one of those people who is one day discovered with books, papers, and Christmas cards from the past 35 years piled knee-high when the authorities are sent in to investigate an unholy smell.)

Even the high chair has been standing sentry for the past two years, its cavern piled high with books, notebooks, and papers from the seat past the height of the little table area which once held small meals on a Cookie Monster melamine plate, waiting for its contents to be dropped below, or ground into the table, or otherwise rejected. Why do we use plates on high chairs at all? I know; you’re going to pull that hygiene argument out of your un-infested, hygienic hat, aren’t you? Well, the little high chair table surface needs no longer suffer these indignities. It has become home to the electric pencil sharpener. I check our bookcases that are stuffed double deep in several places.


“Oh, wow!” I announce triumphantly, pointing to Pile # 13A. This pile has been intelligently stacked, teetering over the edge like an experiment in center-of-gravity by some unknown genius in the house. (This is probably the same character that never reloads the toilet paper, waiting for the empty cardboard roll to spontaneously regenerate itself.)


This pile is an upside down pyramid, massive anatomy textbooks have been stacked atop the tiny, antique math books my husband had used in his school years and has brought back from India for our kids’ training (torture). These tiny tomes don’t mess around. There are no pictures, no colors, and no clever problems involving which country recycles more than others, or which community once served the largest cake that was ever baked. You know the magaziney-textbooks that get swapped out every few years? An entire page is loaded with full-color photographs of the cake, and two ample paragraphs about the community that got together to bake it. Following that is a recipe for their cake, and finally, at long last, there are a couple of token problems on finding the area and perimeter of that cake. Here, imagination must be set aside, and the cake is simplified into a two dimensional rectangle.

No, these books are the size of an adult hand, and were used by the student two years in a row. There are succinct paragraphs on how to do something, like find the least common multiple, three examples, and then, literally hundreds of problems. All of the problems have answers in the back. The author expected the student to know the times tables and squares up to 20, and know what all the primes are up to 100, at least. You would be crazy to use a calculator, because most everything cancels out – as long as you know your times tables.

“Your physics book is right there, of course! It’s just under this week’s column. What? You haven’t read it yet?” Bingo! I have finally snagged a reader. It doesn’t take much inducement to get some people to put off doing their physics homework.

Scene 2: I wait for an audience of a few young people. I walk about, giggling and chuckling to myself. (“This is weird,” they think. Mom is in a good mood, and she hasn’t barked out orders at anyone nor is she lecturing anyone.) Their first response is to run and check the fridge to see whether I might have possibly opened the bottle of mango rum that my sister gave me eighteen months ago. No, it is intact. They are safe. Mom is not intoxicated, but she is acting bizarre and demented, nonetheless. Perhaps it would have been more comforting if alcohol could have been blamed.

My next outburst of maniacal laughter piques their curiosity. “What is it, Mom?” They have finally taken the bait. “Oh, it’s nothing.” We play this game for a few seconds until I finally say, “Oh, I was just remembering what I wrote about you this week.” If that doesn’t send at least one scrambling to read, I threaten them each with some household chore, and that usually does the trick. Yes! I have suckered a couple of other readers.

After all this effort, what do I get from my closest, 24/7 associates? I get constructive criticism, of course. Some of it is valid. For example, I had written about an author who used her husband’s toothbrush to clean up the toothpaste globs he left in the sink. My physics-avoider pointed out that it sound like Toothpaste-Avenger and Laura Doyle, author of “The Surrendered Wife” that I had discussed in the preceding paragraph, were one and the same. In fact, they were not. So she was right, but one should be careful in letting sixteen-year-olds know they are right, because they hold that over your head all the time.

At other times, I get sharp inhalations of breath and accusations like, “Mom! Did you get Isabel’s permission to use her name in here?” Yes, of course, I had talked to sweet Isabel first. Perhaps because my children have routinely witnessed me doing stupid or embarrassing things, they have difficulty believing that I can manage as an adult without their advice.

 Sometimes the writing elicits groans, “Ew! Mom, did you have to say that about the sapling supports not being the only things sagging around here? Some of my friends read this, you know.” Good. First, it helps to know there are other readers. Secondly, I now have ammunition with which to threaten them the next time they’re getting too uppity.

But the most disgusting feedback I get is, “Mom, why do you have to use stupid vocabulary words in there all the time?” Okay, to be fair, this comes from the one that is home-schooled. He keeps a vocabulary notebook in which he enters and defines every unknown word he encounters. Sometimes, it’s a little embarrassing, like when he ran into what he thought was “afro-ha-desic.” Don’t get scared about what we’re learning. We started with an article on Rhodesia, which led to reading about Zimbabwe, followed by wildlife in Africa that are sometimes slaughtered for their parts which are believed to have aphrodisiacal qualities. This requires learning about Aphrodite, as well as how to pronounce the original word. Do you think there is a problem with this sort of stream-of-consciousness learning?

So, you have a problem with the vocabulary, and with stream-of-consciousness? Well, that really puts me into a rebellious mood. I learned a new word this week: prelapsarian. It has to do with the state of things before the fall of mankind. I learned that word, and now, I’m not even going to work it into this column.

Fear of hair, in case you were wondering, is chaetophobia, or hypertrichophobia, or trichopathophobia, or trichophobia. How’s that for vocabulary? Spell check is choking on these. I wonder what home-school boy is going to think when this one prints. Provided, that is, that I can get him to read it.