A Year in Body Version 63.0

Safely under the watch of Guard Lamb.

Time. Scientifically, it doesn’t change. But it seems so variable, as in how can my sons be married, thriving adults, when there were interminable minutes when they were children? A year ago yesterday I became paralyzed several hours after surgery to fuse my cervical spine. I underwent a second surgery to drain a large hematoma that was pressing on my spinal cord. The anticipated three-to-five day hospital stay stretched to twenty-three days. Neither those days nor the year since passed comically fast or quicksand slowly. They weren't gone in a flash or interminably everlasting. It was a bumpy lumpy trail whose signposts I didn’t even recognize, let alone know how to interpret. 

Four Grandparents and a Baby

          I have a granddaughter! Since I still look at my sons, now 32 and 29 and on their own since college, and can't fathom where they came from, having a grandchild is truly confounding.

          A few weeks ago, Leah and her parents were coming to the Valley, as Andrew and Emily were going to a banquet. Andrew's best friend since middle school, Joey, er Joseph, was being inducted into their high school baseball hall of fame, as Andrew was last year. Grandpa John, Leah's daddy's dad, and Bonus Grandma Andrea, Leah's daddy's bonus mom, were going to babysit, and Doug and I were to show up the next morning for Leah time. However, as we were just getting back to the Valley from a visit in Seattle with Doug's daughter, Katie, and her husband, Javier, rather than going home to Visalia, forty miles southeast of Fresno, and driving back to Fresno the next morning, we asked John and Andrea if they'd mind if we stopped at their home for the night.