Go Karts

Yesterday at the go kart place, the boys kept telling anyone who'd listen in line that their mom used to come here. I, of course, was mad at myself for never thinking to take them here with Adri when I had a chance; she'd have loved to see them driving around where she used to drive around.

It's a constant struggle to quell regrets about things I could have done and said when I had a chance. It's not healthy and I usually know that I did all I could do, sometimes more than what would be expected or the norm, but the regrets still creep in and I try to banish them from my mind like some sort of emotional game of whack-a-mole (a game I was never that good at).

At one point a man arrived with his daughter who was about 12. He asked the procedure, where to buy tickets, etc. Then he asked if this was an activity for girls, saying he didn't know what was appropriate since she was his only child. Everyone at that point racing were boys.

 I told him that of course this is an activity for girls, that I had brought my only-child girl here when she was young, and that in fact those two boys were here children.

That made him smile and they decided to stay. 

Endless Summer

The hardest day of the year for me for years and years used to be August 1st, because that was the day that Adrianna would fly back to Louisville after her six-week stay with me in the summer that started the day after her birthday, June 19th, until August 1st.

I tried to enjoy those six weeks, and I did, but at the same time I was constantly aware of the countdown to when she'd leave.

"Now we only have 32 days... Now she leaves in just 24 days..." etc. I tried to live in the moment, and we did. We did a lot together. I found a job that allowed her to come with me so she didn't spend most of those 6 weeks in some day care. At the time we'd drive from rec center to day care to community center each day and I'd teach computer classes. She'd help me set up the computers, hand out papers, and occasionally participate in other activities that were taking place when we were at the location. It was great. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was enough and we were able to spend so much time together.

"Now we only have 12 days left..."

I'd take a week off during July 4th and we'd drive to spend some time at my grandparents' summer cottage in Lake Geneva, WI and also see my dad. It was a 16-hour drive, but she never complained and we had great conversations and listened to music.

"Now just 3 days..."

But then August 1st would come, and I'd take her to the airport and put her on the plane. She'd be quietly crying and I felt terrible for her, having to go back and forth, always missing one parent. I'd remind her that her mother will be so happy to see her. I'd remind her that she'd be back at Thanksgiving, which was "only" 3 months away. I'd usually say that with a catch in my throat, trying not to break down as I was trying to convince myself as much as her that 3 months was nothing. But, of course, it wasn't nothing. It was everything.

I'd stay until the plane took off and then drive home, the car suddenly so empty, trying not to cry but rarely succeeding,

I suffered these little deaths 4 times a year (and I'm sure she did, too), but the end of the summer was the worst. It followed the longest stretch with her that was then followed by the longest stretch without her.

Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.


And they were like little deaths that we both had to endure to survive. I couldn't image anything worse, or at least tried to not allow myself to imagine anything worse. But when something far worse did arrive, it turned out to be several magnitudes worse. Unbelievably worse, which of course isn't surprising and seems self-evident.

I always thought of The Beach Boys' album "Endless Summer," a compilation album released one summer when I was a kid, and I always wished for an endless summer with Adrianna, one that didn't consist of a finite set of days that counted down to zero. I always knew this was a stand in for life itself, whose days slip away one by one no matter what. I just will never forgive life for giving my daughter such a small calendar. 


But I'm thankful for the pages we did have. 

Cards

 Adrianna was the sort that always wrote small novelettes in the cards that she gave me on my birthday or Father's Day. She'd begin under the preprinted text and then continue on the facing page and almost always had to conclude on the back, making it a sort of logic puzzle or game to figure out the intended correct flow of what she wrote.

Like everything she did, she put her all into card giving, and I appreciated it. I'd keep all the cards in a drawer dedicated to them in my desk, and it was overflowing when I went through it afterward. 

However, over the last three or four years I stopped keeping them all, because I was dumb and thought I'd have a lifetime of cards to and from her. I had so many already, I'd have more next year and the year after that. I didn't want to be a hoarder or overly obsessive about her.

It was a terrible decision, because as it turns out, spoiler alert, nothing is guaranteed. There will be no more cards, no more expressions of her love and thoughts. Who cares if it had been a bit obsessive to save everything. Who cares if I had run out of drawer space.

I don't want to give the impression that Adri wasn't appreciative of my support (she was), or that she felt entitled (she didn't), or that she wasn't self-aware (she was). Here's what she wrote in her Father's Day card to me the last year she still lived in Louisville:


"Dad,
I wish I could be with you, see you, hug and kiss you today. I miss you so much. You have always been a strong support in my life. A strong positive role model in my chaotic world.

I appreciate all that you have done, continue to do, and all that you are. You mean the world to me and I love you so much!

I love you always and forever and I hope you know that in your heart. You're a special man, father, and person!


I love you always,
Adri "


This might have been 12 years ago, but I feel like she's talking to me now, and I wish I could talk to her and thank her and make it 100% clear that I feel the same.


tl; dr: save those cards 

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.