I was more than a little preoccupied with my father’s condition this year to give the usual amount of attention to Halloween. What’s more, despite that I take upwards of 500 photos every month and have two camera batteries, my camera battery died and I couldn’t find the spare on Halloween! Of all the days to not be able to photograph my boys! (Fortunately, my sister-in-law saved the day.)

 
Lucas is the Green Lantern! Asher is wearing a too-small dino costume Grandma had.

I did manage to buy tickets in time for the Sacramento Waldorf School’s Pumpkin Path (which I’ve written about in past years), where we enjoyed plays and stories and got little treasures at every station. We were able to visit with our dear friends, Snow, Sun, and

 , and have treats at the end. Mmmm… brownies and pumpkin bread. This year, the various stories were selected to provide a taste of the first- through eighth-grade curriculum. I know this because we parents received a tiny scroll at the end explaining the intention.

Prior to going to the Pumpkin Path, I threw together an impromptu Halloween dinner in an hour with what we had in the house: pumpkin-shaped and ghost-shaped grilled-cheese sandwiches, carrots, hearts of palm (leg bones, ya know), and tiny orange bell pepper jack-o’-lanterns, and monster brain soup (spilt pea from a can). That, plus the orange tablecloth, black dishes, dish full of acorns and a candle, Ian and Lucas’s creepy dingle-ball spiders, fall leaves, and a couple of gargoyle figurines, made for a festive table. "What is it REALLY, mom? It’s not a leg bone. Or monster brains. What is it really?"

Grandma, Aunt Kellie, and Kellie’s boyfriend, Matt, joined us for some trick-or-treating after we returned home from the Pumpkin Path. Grandma brought Tolly, her black Portuguese Water Dog, dressed as a skunk. I’m grateful that Kellie brought a camera!

 
The boys liked playing with Ian’s groovy light toys. Green Lantern got to wear a bunch of green glow bracelets.

We combed the neighborhood for houses with Halloween decorations out front. Kellie was dressed as a giant bottle of mustard. I dunno. Matt’s head was blue: He was "dressed" as a member of the Blue Man Group. Lucas’s stamina for trick-or-treating this year was much improved over last year, and we went all over the place. Surprisingly, Asher did not conk out in his stroller, but insisted on trudging along with us the whole time. We wore out the relatives before the boys were done. Lucas carried the only candy bucket, but the neighbors gave more than enough for Asher, too. We met up with Snow, Sun, and Parnasus again for a little while during our neighborhood romp.

It was much harder getting Lucas to give up some of his candy loot to the Halloween Fairy this year. But he did eventually cull some out, and in return, he and Asher got some goodies: a Halloween activity book, a book of stories for 6-year-olds, a wooden dinosaur puzzle, articulated wooden snakes, and needle-felted pumpkins with crystals inside them.

 It turned out to be a very good time, after all.

Interesting quote by Peter McWilliams (but I don’t know who he is):

"To use fear as the friend it is, we must retrain and reprogram ourselves…We must persistently and convincingly tell ourselves that the fear is here–with its gift of energy and heightened awareness–so we can do our best and learn the most in the new situation."

Dear Well-Meaning Hippy and/or Natural Parents,

Please, please do not give your children colloidal silver as an antibiotic or cold virus treatment or prevention. This is a seriously risky thing to do. I realize that the FDA isn’t the be-all and end-all; I realize that they approve some dangerous medicines and perhaps don’t approve all effective "natural" treatments. But please, at least do your research before you give compounds to your children that could turn them BLUE and poison their brains, kidneys, and liver. Just because a good person you know says it works to shorten the duration of colds—just because some health-food store clerk sells it for $26 per 4-oz. bottle—this does NOT mean it is safe for your luscious babies.
Love,
Papa Smurf

~~~~

OK. What I really wrote to a friend who has been treating her children with this stuff is this letter containing info I culled from half a dozen websites in less than 10 minutes :

My dad is being released from the hospital today!

It’s wonderful, wonderful news!! Mom is going to the patient recovery class today to learn more about how to take care of him at home, and then she’s bringing him home this afternoon. It’s going to be a long, challenging road for him. He cannot drive for six weeks, for example. He’s not supposed to work for several weeks; his job is just to recuperate and heal.

On Monday they decided no pacemaker would be necessary and they removed the "external" pacemaker (and it’s four-inch wires sticking into his heart). He’s doing well, although he’s having some asthma problems. The cardiac doctors don’t want him to take his Advair (inhaled steroid) because they say there is a remote chance of it interfering with his healing. So for the last eight days he has been without his asthma maintenance drug. But, he is allowed to take it when he gets home—go figure. He is feeling pretty well, though, and very eager to come home. It’s extremely sucky to be in the hospital—I know.

This whole time, especially while visiting him in the CSICU, I had awful flashbacks of my own ICU experience almost two years ago. The sounds, the smell, the look of the room, the equipment—everything—brought on waves of nausea and fear. I cried after every time I visited him, even as he was getting better and slowly unhooking from all the devices and monitors and tubes. I know it wasn’t about me, but my PTSD (for lack of a better explanation) reared its ugly, frightened head every time I set foot in his room. It was a very weird experience that I hope never to repeat, just as I hope never to find myself in a CSICU again. Those hospitals do miraculous work, but it’s not easy to be there.

This one goes into his Conscientious Objector file.

What I want to know is, why is it OK for people in other states to donate money to back CA propositions. Shouldn’t we have a rule that says if your money doesn’t originate in CA, you don’t get a say in CA elections?

There is part of me that wants to shield our children from all the fighting and hate-mongering and bad shit in our world. Sometimes I feel that because Lucas is too young to have his own opinion, he doesn’t need to be thinking about this election stuff yet. But his growing awareness of issues is not something we can control. He will observe and learn from everything around him. So I feel it is better that he be very clear about what we believe and value. We must model goodness and fairness, lawful behavior and tolerance.

When we explained Proposition 8 in terms of "fairness," Lucas’s eyes lit up and he burned with his typical choleric fire. Fairness is a concept that is VERY important to a 6-year-old.

What I want my sons to learn in school and everywhere they go is that people are people, that their equal treatment under the law is more important that anything an old book of mythology or a religious leader has to say, and that liberty and justice is FOR ALL, not just for some. Proposition 8 proponents used our children as a pin in their argument. But I can too: Prop 8 should have been defeated for all our sakes, even our children’s, because fairness matters.

I am also deeply disturbed by the ban on gay adoption that has passed in Arkansas. I guess it is Arkansas and should be expected there, but still. Probably this ban exists elsewhere, too, but I don’t know. I just don’t understand how we can deny kids the loving parents they deserve, and deny loving parents the children they desire, when clearly there is so much need in the world.

I’m not sorry I blew raspberries at the Yes on 8 people; I am only sorry that Lucas saw me do it.

My happiness over Obama’s win is greatly muffled today by California’s obvious bigotry.

My life has been very stressful lately. The last week+ has been HELL on my neck and shoulders. The other morning, Ian bend down ever so slightly to kiss my lips and I said, "Ow! Don’t push my head back so far." He really hadn’t pushed my head back at all. It just hurt to raise my chin.

I’ve been tense and anxious about my dad, as you all know, but also about this election. I actually gave Barack money for his campaign this year, something I’ve never done before in any campaign.

Today’s the day. Four years ago today my day ended in tears, as it did for so many people. Ian and I went to "church" services at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento the following Sunday in the hopes of finding other like-minded mourners (outside my chosen family of friends), and to hear a message of hope in the middle of a depressing time. We ended up attending services there fairly regularly and joining that congregation, in part because it was such a relief to me to be around older people who still maintain open minds and open hearts, who hadn’t succumbed to the trend of growing stinginess that I observe so often in people as they reach 40 or 50 years old. I was tired of the prevalent fear, suspicion, bigotry, and miserliness.

Today, I dare to hope for a better, brighter future for all Americans. Not just for "Real" Americans. Not just for "small-town" Americans. Not just for white Americans. Not just for men. Not just for straight "breeders" like me. But. For. Every. Body.

We cast our ballots this morning at 9:00 a.m. at the local middle school. The day is shining and dripping from last night’s downpour. The leaves are sparkling. I am tense, but hopeful.

I’ve been to see Dad every day. Saturday and today were really wonderful, as when we arrived Saturday morning, he was off the IVs and without tubes except for a CVC (I’m guessing at this; stands for central venous catheter) in his jugular, which they were leaving in just in case. He’s puffy and uncomfortable, but his pain is being managed well and he’s moving about and sitting up in his easy-chair for long stretches of time. They have him walking "loops" around the PCU, which is the Progressive Care Unit. Sometime late on Friday night they moved him out of the CSICU and into PCU. He has a private room there, which is far quieter than ICU. They are giving him a blood thinning drug called Heparin. You can see his incision, looking rather like a red zipper in his chest. He is mentally alert and pretty cheerful, except when complaining about the food. They let my children in to see Papa, and that really seemed to cheer him up. He has pictures of the boys and their drawings taped to his walls. He’s getting quite a few visitors each day. All of this is VERY, VERY GOOD.

The one big question at this point is whether they will decide to install a pacemaker. I guess after they open your hood and monkey around with your engine, it can take a while for that engine to find a steady RPM—OK, car metaphors aren’t really my strong suit. They have a small, external "pacing" machine that’s sending little electrical signals to his heart, telling it when to beat. His heart is taking some time finding its own "pace," which isn’t atypical. If it continues to be sluggish, they will slip a permanent pacemaker in under his skin to do that job. They are waiting to see what it does over the weekend before they make a decision. I don’t know if this would extend his hospital stay, but I imagine so. Without this pacemaker, it’s possible they will send him home on Tuesday. TUESDAY?!

So. Fucking WOW. I am amazed and awestruck over what the doctors, surgeons, and nurses have done to him. For him. It is bewildering to consider how on earth someone (many someones) figured out how to perform this modern miracle, over and over and over again. They ripped him open, stopped his heart, repaired it, restarted it, and put him back together again—a mere four days ago. And there his sits—ALIVE—watching TV, reading gun magazines, visiting with his grandsons, teasing the nurses, bitching about the saltless food, and planning to return home.

I didn’t know this little gem until Mom shared it with me during the ride to or from the hospital a day or so ago: The doctors had told my father that he would live only three to four years without having the surgery. Now we just might have him around another twenty.