Tickets

 

So I took the boys to Main Event today with a friend of theirs. It's sort of a large arcade, but with bowling, pool and laser tag along with video games. It's one of those places where you accumulate tickets that you can cash in for "valuable prizes." A stick of gum might cost 100 tickets, a plastic comb 500, a set of Beats headphones 50,000. That sort of thing. Tickets are electronic now and added to the card that you had to swipe to play the game.

I used to take Adri to similar places such as Chuck E. Cheese, Showbiz Pizza, and Nickelmania when she was a little girl, and she'd amass the then paper tickets in long ribbons and at the end of the day she'd get a tube of lip gloss or a plastic Oreo cookie keychain for her 3000 tickets. I always tried to get her to save them and get something she'd really like, but impulse control being what it is with kids of that age I was usually not successful. That 10,000 ticket Simba stuffed animal was always just out of reach.

The one "game" that Adri was always really good at consisted of a round table with a glass dome. The circumference of the circle had light bulbs that would light in succession really fast, and your job was to mash down on a button to stop the light at which point you'd receive the number of tickets associated with that illuminated light. Ticket values were in the range of 2, or 4, or 8... but there was always one "jackpot" light that was 500 tickets. For some reason, Adri was really successful stopping the spinning circle of light on this jackpot and won the max more than once.

When I was walking with the boys at Main Event scoping out all the games, I saw the exact same table and told the boys about their mama and how good she was at it. They showed a bit of interest but then ran over to a racing game and I was left to tamp down the melancholy that was welling up inside of me.

Right before we left, however, Wesley wanted to try a similar game. It, too, was a large circle with lights along the perimeter, but this time on a wall, like a giant lighted prize wheel. You pulled a lever to start the lights and mashed down on a button to stop as before. I reminded him that his mama loved this and won often so he wanted to try.

And he did it. He stopped on the jackpot and won the 500 ticket jackpot, and I have a photo to prove it.

A lesser man, one who gave into unseen powers and hopes of having your loved ones looking over you from somewhere else, would have seen this as a sign that Adri was there, showing herself. I wish I was a lesser man sometimes, and for a small moment I let myself enjoy that idea. The boy, after all, was so excited.

And at the end of the day, I convinced them to save their 1300 tickets if they really wanted those Beats headphones, just as I eventually was able to convince Adrianna to do the same.

Of course, as what usually happens, when they're old enough to want to save for something more than a Pixie Stick they're too old to go back later, and that is why I came across a large bag of Chuck E. Cheese tickets in Adri's old room a couple of days ago.

She never did get that Simba stuffed animal, but (maybe?) she helped Wesley towards a set of Beats?

First Father's Day After

 

Adrianna's due date had come and gone a week before she finally decided to begin to make her entrance into this world late Friday night.

We had planned a natural-ish birth at the Children's Hospital in Austin. The room had dim lighting with soft furniture in warm muted hues. A couch, a pullout bed, a changing table, it was like a pretty good hotel room.

However, all that was not to be as a meconium stain followed by an erratic heartbeat necessitated an immediate emergency C-section Saturday morning.

However, I was still allowed to be in the operating room for some reason, begowned and masked and befooted, and saw Adrianna a second after they removed her at 6:45 a.m. that Saturday morning.

She was relatively large at 9 lbs, full of hair, and when they brought her to me a minute or so after cleaning her up her eyes were wide and alert, though I realize at this point they probably could not take in everything properly. Still, I saw joy behind those eyes, or at least my joy reflected in hers.

The next day was Father's Day. My first, and really, a bonus Father's Day, one that squeaked in barely under the wire. I always considered it a freebie, one that I'd bank away "for later," even though I didn't know what I meant by that.

I'm cashing it in today.

And I realize the awkward position those who think about me are in today. I would not know what to say if the situation was reversed. So if this applies to you, please don't worry about it. I did have that extra Father's Day on credit, and Cindy is helping me and things will be okay.

Thank You

Thanks everyone for expressing emotional support for me and my family during all of this. I appreciate it, and I know how hard it is to try to find words of comfort and understanding for someone in pain when you know or fear nothing you can say will be sufficient or adequate. But we try, anyway, because that's what we do for those we care about.

For me, when I have been on the other side, I always look and hope for signs that things are getting better, that the healing has started, that perhaps the pain is lessening a bit. No one wants to see those we care about in pain, and as much as we may try to wish a return of if not happiness than at least some form of calmness into being for that person, we're really powerless.

I'm trying to appreciate that parts of life that are still glorious, and I will try to share that as well. It can't and shouldn't be all doom and gloom.

Still, it's going to be a while before I stop posting my thoughts on Adrianna, my profound sense of loss and the heartbreaking state of helplessness I found myself in these last few years. She always used to tell me that I was her oasis, her calm center with whom she always felt safe, and yet the last few years that ended up not being enough.

I don't have it in me to pretend that things are okay, and I know this will cause some pain to those who care about me, or about humans in general, and for that I'm sorry. But I need to talk like this sometimes, and I need people to see it. I realize that may be selfish on my part, but it helps. Just a small misty droplet of help into a 100-gallon tank that is basically empty but needs to be filled up eventually.

So again I thank you for all your words, and I'd apologize for subjecting you all to this but I won't, because when the shoe has been on the other foot I would tell that person that no apology is necessary, I love you and want you to do or say whatever you need to, that I'm here and understand and to please not worry about that. Still... I'm sorry.

The Music Driving Home

 So today I was finally able to go get Adri and bring her home. The boys have some jewelry and her mom will have an urn made for her in Louisville. I will have a ring made as well. I needed this to happen, because I didn't like thinking of her, or at least what remains of her physically, all alone in some strange place 20 minutes away from anybody.

On the drive there Beethoven's 5th Symphony was on the radio,  at the end of the third movement right before it transitions into the fourth. This has always been one of my favorite moments in classical music. I can take or leave the first movement with its overplayed repeated 4-note motif, but that transition to the last movement? Breathtaking.

However, today it filled me with anger. I was livid. I sang out the different parts with loud and aggressive "dah dah da daaaaaaaah, da da da daaaah"s just full of all the emotion and passion that I was never able to show when playing such things on the violin in orchestra, much to the chagrin of the director who accused me of just going through the motions. To be fair, I was then. But today: Nope. But the anger surprised me. Overcast skies and rain have kept it relativelly cool in Dallas today, so I had the windows partly down at the beginning. Eventually I had to roll them all up to better muffle my vocalizations of the fourth movement. I didn't want to scare anyone at stoplights.

When I left I placed the small box that seemed heavy for its size in the back seat where it was protected and headed home. I turned on the radio and heard the beginning of another of my favorite works: Schubert's Symphony no. 8, the "unfinished" symphony.  This beautiful melody is in stark contrast to the aggression of Beethoven in general, the fourth movement of the 5th in particular. It made me feel better on the drive home, somewhat hopeful, somewhat peaceful, but at the same time melancholy, because Adrianna herself was of course an unfinished symphony. Like Schubert's 8th, sometimes something unfinished can be glorious none the less, but that doesn't stop us wishing and hoping we had more.

Two perfect bookends from two masterworks. It'll have to do.

Just a Few Random Memories of Adrianna

The X-Files

I thought The X-Files was a spinoff of Sightings, where they dramatized “real” UFO stories, and thus had never watched it since that didn’t interest me.

One day Adrianna, who was about 8 at the time, said “Daddy you have to watch The X-Files!! There’s an agent named Scully who’s a girl AND a doctor AND on one episode she ate a bug!!”

So I started watching it so we could talk about the show together, and then found the news group online (sort of community chat boards in the old internet days dedicated to specific topics) and in the process met a lot of people who remain lifelong friends for over 25 years, including my wife, Cindy, chief among them.

That’s my origin story and I thank her.

Summers at the Lake

She loved the sunshine and beautiful days and just loved our summer trips when she was younger to our cottage in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. All she wanted to do every hour of the day was be at the beach, gathering “pet snails” to take home, make new friends, and run as fast as she could from the sand into the water. I’d be lying on a towel ostensibly reading a book but really just watching her, drinking in her revelry and simple love of life. She’d of course come to “check on me” every 15 minutes or so.

When she wasn’t at the beach she would be taking walks with her great grandma and they both seemed to cherish this time together.

Her Boys

Her two boys, Bryce and Wesley, both born on the same day two years apart, were everything to her. She spent half her time planning meals for them, shopping for the ingredients, and cooking. No sooner was breakfast over then she’d start on lunch. Dinner was the same. She was an adventurous eater who liked stuff as a child that most children didn’t: spicy food, sour pickles, rabbit, lamb, sardines, cactus, you name it. While her oldest son Bryce was a bit pickier, she found a kindred spirit in Wesley, who also would try anything and it was one of their special bonds that they just shared.

She always loved that Bryce was so sensitive and caring, and always wanted to get Bryce a puppy since he really connected with animals and was so good with them.  She knew the apartment, however, was no place to raise a dog. She had a goal of at least renting a house one day with a back yard so her boys could be able to have the puppy they wanted so badly. In the meantime, they’d often go to pet stores so the boys, but Bryce in particular, could interact with the animals.

It’s also why she used to take them to the zoo several times a month, even in the heat of the summer, after packing water bottles and snacks for the afternoon with the animals. She’d save money so they could buy the snacks that you could use to feed the giraffes because she knew how much her boys loved that.

She’d spend months prior to Christmas and their birthday (which luckily were pretty evenly divided among the calendar) to save for special gifts for the boys, ordering a game here or a t-shirt there, accumulating the items slowly, wanting to make sure she’d get them the perfect thoughtful presents.

Her phone and Google Home was always full of alarms and appointment reminders, because she always stayed on top of all the various doctor appointments she had for the boys: checkups, dentist, vision, tutors for school.

One of the last things she did for the boys was take them to the trampoline park for their birthday. She had saved and saved for what she thought would be a month pass for them, but it turns out the amount she had in mind was what it had been a couple years back with a Groupon. When they got to the park, she discovered that she didn’t have enough for a whole month, but only enough to pay for a single day pass. But she made the best of it and she and the boys had one of their best days ever as they said.

Always a Caregiver

Adri was a born caregiver, she always was helping others, even if that meant she sometimes shortchanged herself.

Once when Cindy and I were off on one of her trips she called and left a voicemail the day before we arrived. She wanted to tell us that she had made some chili for dinner and there was some extra, and that she’d like to bring it to us so we could have dinner when we got home from our long trip and not have to worry about that ourselves. We were fine financially, Adri and her family not so much, yet she would still always try to do stuff like this.

My grandmother, Adri’s great grandmother, held a special spot in Adri’s heart. The last couple of years Adri would often say that her great grandmother was her best friend. She’d take the boys to see their GREAT great grandmother whenever she could. One time both nonna and great gram were sick at the same time, holed up at nonna’s house, and Adri, with boys in tow, went over there several times and offered to help prepare meals.

When Bryce was born and she was still in the hospital, she would not stay in her bed to rest. She’d keep getting up to bring me a blanket or to get granny a glass of water, like it was her responsibility to do so even though she’d just given birth a couple hours earlier. G.T. had to finally order her to get back in bed and rest. That lasted about 2 minutes and she was up again.

Early on, before I’d met Cindy, her caregiving extended to trying to set me up with every woman she came in contact with when we were together. When the two of us would go out for lunch at a restaurant, if the server met with Adri’s approval she’d ask her, “Would you like to be friends with my daddy?”

Watching Movies Together

When she was little, we used to watch a lot of movies together at night before bed, her favorites being The Marx Brothers oeuvre… Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, The Coconuts, and Monkey Business were her favorites. I was proud that she didn’t care if they were black and white. I made a VHS tape that was just full of Marx Brothers movies, and we’d often put that in while she fell asleep at night in her room.

She also loved, as she called it then, "The Creature from the Black Racoon"

Another of her favorites was the old King Kong from the 1930s. The first time we watched it when she was about 4 she was excitedly explaining the plot to me as if I’d never seen it before. I said something like "Yeah, he sure is one giant ape," and she shook her head and told me earnestly in an attempt to education her ignorant father,

“No, daddy. He’s no ape, he’s a very large monkey.”

I stand corrected, Adri.

Musical

Adri loved all music, loved to sing, loved to express herself. I wrote a few songs for her when she was little, and she'd learn them on her own, via osmosis from listening to the tape of CD I gave her. One of my most precious possessions is a video of Adri and me "performing" one of the songs sitting side by side in an incredibly small studio apartment. She has joy on her face which turns slightly melancholy during a somewhat sad part but then brightens again at the chorus, after first calling out a strumming mistake I made on the guitar.

Classic Adrianna.

Adrianna and Her Joy of Life

 When she was a little girl my daughter could embrace life with gusto, reveling in its simple and uncomplicated pleasures. No matter the storm clouds that might be waiting, no matter the stress that might manifest in her life due to complicated familial relationships, the shuttling back and forth between two parents that lived across the country, she would still always find a moment that would fill her with unabashed joy for simply being alive. It was a gift, and it was contagious.

One moment that will always stick with me that perfectly illustrates this is when I took her to the roller-skating rink, something we did often during the summers when she was with me. She’d skate around the oval making new friends and connecting with old, bopping to the music, partaking in the hokey pokey or limbo contests, making sure to stop every few laps to make sure I wasn’t getting bored.

I was never bored.

I had just watched her skating around with abandon while TLC’s “Waterfalls” was playing, a huge grin on her face, her eyes alive, swaying to the music without a care. She noticed me noticing her and smiled even bigger. She did one more lap and when the song ended stopped and sat next to me and said, “I just love listening to the music and skating really fast, I feel so alive and free and wonderful” and she meant it. Then a new song started up with a bass beat I could feel in my bones and that rattled the bench we were sitting on, and she was off again.

Still smiling.

The Look of Love - Mark Morris Dance Group

 (...in which Hank gives his pedestrian views on The Look of Love - Mark Morris Dance Group performance in Dallas last month at The Winspear as a respite from Yet Another Burrito Missive as a sort of palate cleanser,  because why not):

For many of us late Boomer/Early Gen X’ers, our first exposure to Burt Bacharach, other than hearing his music as the soundtrack in dentist offices and bank lobbies and Dionne Warwick belting out a few numbers from your father’s Dodge Dart’s AM radio while on the way to baseball practice, was a commercial that was everywhere on TV in the early 70s: A sultry Angie Dickinson extolling the virtues of Martin & Rossi at some Malibu club, while sauntering over to a piano where we find Burt, toying at the keyboard. They were married at the time, and let’s just say there was a palpable energy between the two that even this ten-year-old boy couldn’t miss. 

“What do you say to Martini & Rossi?” Angie asks him.

“Yes,” Burt replies, and then starts to sing a melody that is pure Bacharach, “Yes… to Martin & Rossi on the rocks… say ye eh essssss.”

End scene.

The music of Burt Bacharach (and lyrics by Hal David) evidently made a big impact on many of this generation. Choreographer Mark Morris, born in 1956, founded the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980 and has produced numerous works throughout the years as its artistic director. His most recent production is “The Look of Love,” an homage to the powerful melodies and arrangements of Bacharach, with his choreography, along with arrangements by Ethan Iverson and costume and production designs by Isaac Mizrahi. It recently stopped at the Winspear at the AT&T Performing Arts Center thanks to TITAS/Dallas Unbound and executive and artistic director Charles Santos.  

One of the special things about this production is that it features live music rather than something prerecorded, and it makes a difference, bringing a sense of energy and excitement that one just doesn’t get listening to files playing off a hard drive. The mood was set at the lights still hadn’t fully dimmed when a few soft bars of “Alfie” could be heard coming from the piano of Chris McCarthy. It was soft and melancholy, but picked up a bit more energy as the lights fully dimmed and we transitioned to “What the World Needs Now,” sung with passion by lead vocalist Marcy Harriell and backup singers Clinton Curtis and Blaire Reinhard.

The dancers started entering the stage at that point, which was unadorned and simply lit. The dancers totaled about 10 in number, and would weave in and out, Mizrahi’s costumes in different muted pastel tones of light green, burnt orange, yellow magenta and lavender which somehow managed to capture the feeling of the mod 1960s while still remaining modern. 

That song yielded to “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” and the choreography here at times was literal, with sneezes incorporated into the movements. The lyrics here are typical of Hal David’s somewhat bittersweet yet unsentimental lyrics, and the dancers embraced this in physical form.

After “A Message to Michael,” the lighting became a bit more ominous, and a unique arrangement of “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” began, and then we segued into “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” and “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”

Next up was “Walk On By,” which really showed off Jonathan Finlayson’s trumpet as well served as an interesting choreography choice by Morris. With syncopated rhythm and pace, all the dancers again embodied a literal interpretation of the lyrics by walking on by each other, weaving in and out, making quick sharp turns before traveling across the rest of the stage. It was reminiscent of a college marching band, always in movement, marching along to the music and obviously took a lot of skill and timing.

One of our guilty movie pleasures is the 1958 version of “The Blob” starring a young Steve McQueen, and featuring one of the best 50s-era opening credit songs, which it turns out was written by Bacharach, but this time with lyrics by Hal’s brother, Mack. It’s upbeat campy fun, and when we saw it listed on the program we were excited.

However, when the lights turned dark red and the dancers stood posed only in an ominous silhouette, we knew that Iverson had decided to change this up a bit. Instead of upbeat and perky, it was slow and dark, more in keeping with the theme of the Sci Fi movie, sure, but a bit of a disappointment none the less, even though it was expertly presented.

We all needed an emotional pick me up after that, and the production finished strongly with “Always Something There to Remind Me” and “The Look of Love,” before concluding with “I Say a Little Prayer.”

Sure, there’s a whole generation that thinks of “Always Something” as that Naked Eyes song that was in heavy rotation back when MTV played music videos, but it fits in perfectly with the Bacharach/David oeuvre. “I Say a Little Prayer” was a perfect ending as well letting Vinnie Sperrazza’s drums and Simon Willson’s bass shine as well as allowing Morris’ choreography to sparkle through the interpretation of his dance troop. 

We were excited to see a composer’s work being set to innovative dance. Illinoise, featuring the music of Sufjan Stevens and choreography of Justin Peck, was a revelation, but it’s great to see the straight-up pop sensibilities of Bacharach also being embraced by the Mark Morris Dance Group.  And who knows: maybe soon we’ll all be talking about that ballet based on The Ramones music.

Things That Should Be Taught In School

This is something that should be taught in school, along with the quadratic equation, how to diagram  a sentence, and the evils of supply-side economics:

If you're the first car at a red light, whether it be in a left turn lane or going straight, it is your job to be alert, to watch the light like a hawk, to give it  your full and undivided attention with as least as much fervor as when you stare at that waitress to see if she's finally bringing you your spinach artichoke dip.

You are not to play on your phone. Or fix your eyeliner. Or shave. Or get in an animated conversation with a passenger. Or face the back seat threatening to turn the car around if your kids don't settle down.

No. 

Your ONE JOB is to watch that light, and when it turns GREEN to GO. You can take half a second to make sure no one's running the light, but that's it.

Your email can wait. You get the luxury of of downvoting a Reddit comment only if you're several cars down the line.

Okay? Good.

Flows The River

 I drove across the Mighty Mississippi this past week a couple of times for what must be the 500th time. No place to stop for a pic and I was alone, so the pictures are terrible, but what can you do.

I've crossed it several places over the years: a handful of times in St Cloud, MN, a few traverses at Dubuque, IA / Galena, IL, scores of times at St Louis, dozens at Memphis, a couple of times at Baton Rouge, LA and in New Orleans.

It still, somehow, never gets old, and I always think about the great volume of water that has made the almost 2500 mile journey from Lake Itasca in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana and all the people that have seen that water pass them by over thousands of years. 

A river is an apt metaphor for time, always flowing forward, always moving, yet with a path and direction that we sometime fight to overcome or redirect. Cultures, cities, and peoples come and go, streaming through the relentless flow of time, with occasional eddies that may form along the way but which eventually dissipate, giving way, finally, to the flow that is unstoppable before all becomes one again in the vastness of the ocean. It can be at once comforting and terrifying. 

As I crossed this last time from Illinois to Iowa I thought of my great Aunt Elaine, my grandmother’s sister who lives in a house her family built on the banks of the Mississippi near St. Cloud in Minnesota. Both my parents were only children, and thus I have no cousins, aunts, or uncles proper. My grandmother and I were really close, and she loved her sister, my great Aunt. 

They were different in many ways: Elaine more gregarious, gram more withdrawn and quieter. But still I saw aspects of both in each, and to a certain extent my gram still lives on for me via Aunt Elaine, and there she sits in her A-frame house on the very river I’m crossing now, again. 

She will be celebrating her 100th birthday next month and we’re excited to be able to see her to celebrate a life well-lived, a life that has seen a century of the Mighty Mississippi pass her by, the river just chugging along, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. The river endures, and so does she.

 Old Man Baseball Rant

So we went to the Cubs/Rangers game Sunday, the third and final game in the series that was the opener of the 2024 season.

This was our first visit to the Rangers' new ballpark, Globe Life Field or some such. It is the third, mind you, stadium that the Rangers have called home and that I've attended since I've lived here which is kind of ridiculous if you think about it. Stadiums in some cities are becoming disposable playthings for owners probably because they make the city residents pay for it and they have less skin in the game, but that's a rant for another time.

No, what I'm here to complain about is the scoreboard situation in Globe Life Park (or Field? Can't keep it straight.)

There is no permanent scoreboard at *all*.

Now, I'm not expecting a huge thing like in Wrigley where each and every game is updated (by hand). That's not necessary. Nice, but not necessary.

However, some things should always be visible 100% of the time you're at the park.

Such things as the inning, the time, the ball/strike count, at a *minimum* should always be there to see. Now, Globe Life Field (GLF from hereon) has a plethora of "scoreboards": two huge screens in landscape mode in the outfield, a largish screen in thin portrait mode near center, a ring of data that can be lit up that circumnavigates the entire circumference of the field betwixt levels, etc.

They're bright, they're flashy, they have cutting edge graphics that allow you to watch the dot race around the fifth or six inning brought to you by Chick-fil-A (or maybe that's Golden Chick, who can keep up.)

The smiling faces of players still full of optimism and hope at season's beginning along with stats like OPS and moon phases are prominently displayed every minute or so, but if you just want to know what time it is, good luck. No clock anywhere.

If you're between innings and try to determine exactly WHAT inning you're between, you're out of luck. You know how it is... around the fifth or sixth inning one begins to lose track what with the leisurely pace of the game. Can I just look at some scoreboard to figure out if I really need to get some more nachos, or if indeed I have time?

Nope. Unless the Scoreboard Keeper decides to put that graphic up, you will have no idea. You're at their mercy. Instead, while sitting waiting between the fourth (or is this the fifth?) inning, you'll have to watch a Remax commercial or Golden Chick (I'm sure it's Golden Chick.)

And when the game finally gets going again, and they put the box score up on the Big Board for a fleeting second and you see that actually it's only the THIRD inning, and you see Cody Bellinger is at bat again, and if you begin to wonder what he's done so far this game bat-wise: TOUGH.

Instead you'll see what he hit against lefties on the road in 2023, and that for the season he's batting a measly .125 but the season is still young and so maybe that $80 million wasn't a waste let's try to be patient for just a minute, but what did he do last at bat? Who knows.

It took me 7 innings to find where the GD pitch count was for crissakes.

Say what you will about the old Arlington stadium: Sure, you might get second degree burns on your thighs from the aluminum bench seating in the outfield and suffer minor heat stroke, but at least you GD knew what time it was.

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