COLOR AND PATTERN

The alarm went off at 6:00am Sunday morning. It’s one of those alarms that activates with light not noise. My eyelids have always had the consistency of parchment. It was never the crow of the rooster but the crack of dawn that would wake me each morning. It’s what makes me more a winter person than a boy of summer. The light had already started to part the slates on the white wooden blinds in the bedroom at around 5:30. Anxiety hadn’t been my bed partner that night. I woke up rested and ready to put on yet another hat, one that might pull us closer to recovery. Sometime in March or April when there was still snow on the ground and Emmy was still participating in her skin research study, Rick and I stopped in at Madison’s Pottery Barn. We only had a few minutes before we would have to return to pick Emmy up from her session but it was enough time to go and introduce ourselves to the people at PB. We drove over to the West Towne Mall,. The Pottery Barn is located next to William Sonoma and across from Banana Republic.  This would make the West Towne Mall Madison’s upscale venue. You’re not going to find Armani or Donna Karan here but the vendors here are a step above Walmart and Sears. You are going to have to go to Chicago for real high-end.

We walked in with our portfolio and a couple of brochures. We had heard that the Pottery Barn periodically hosts lectures on everything from arranging flowers to planning your wedding. This was another of my cold call attempts at trying to see what might happen. This time my intuition was right. We met with Jenna, the assistant store manager, and she was thrilled to offer us the chance to do the color and pattern lecture coming up in July.

After the light of the alarm went off my other senses woke as well. Rick was there hacking to beat the band. In the time it takes to go from Saturday night to Sunday morning he had developed the worst summer cold. I was going to have to mount the podium all by myself. After a quick shave and shower I was off to lecture a class of fifty on how to use color and pattern. Here’s how it went:

I arrived in time to stop by McDonalds and treat myself to medium caramel frappe, no whip. Then I met one of the PBers outside the store at our appointed time of eight o’clock. The lecture was scheduled to begin at nine. I spent the hour between arrival and spilling my ounce of knowledge running around the store gathering props to detract the attendees from how much I really didn’t know. Satisfied I had accumulated every pillow in the store I sat back and waited for them to lift the gate to let the women in, well forty-eight women and two men.

I started with a bit of puffery blowing smoke so they wouldn’t see my nervousness. I pointed out our book and told them they could look at it after the lecture, hoping a few of them would still be there and hadn’t collapsed from boredom. Then I dug in my heels and went through what I had rehearsed and outlined.

Color paints the emotion within a home. There are now colorstologists, Michele Bernhardt being the most famous (her website is www.colorstrology.com). Benjamin Moore actually consults with her on new seasonal color trends. I mentioned BM a lot since they are partners with PB. Then it was on to color vocabulary and pulling out examples of color schemes: monochromatic, complimentary and analogous. This is where I got to pull out the props and do some pillow play. This kind of loosened up the whole session. The tongues started to wag and hands started shooting in the air. By the time I got done with color and how it relates to paint and light I was ten minutes away from my allotted hour and I hadn’t even touched on pattern. I did a quick overview of scale and how to mix and match and the lecture was over.

Questions took us way past the hour of scheduled chatter. By the time I left, the store had opened the till and added a tidy sum to the Pottery Barn coffers and I had handed out a half dozen business cards to people interested in consultations. The boys seemed to be my biggest leads.You have to start somewhere. I think we’ve finally started the ball rolling.

THE NAME GAME

Unfortunately, most of us are not a part of our own naming ceremony. After birth itself, it is usually the second most important gift our parents give us. Most parents take the safe route naming their kids from the top of the most popular lists: Mary, Joseph, Charles, Susan or more recently Tiffany, Max, Emily and Jacob. My parents didn’t think that leaving me with a last name of Melahn (it sounds like the city in Italy) was going to be bad enough but they had to pair it with my father’s given name, LeRoy. Yes, capital “L”, capital “R”, LeRoy Carl Fredrick Ludwig Melahn the second. Later, shortened to LeRoy Carl Melahn Jr. I hated my name and I hated the first day of school every year. Every year the routine was the same. Everyone scurried around grabbing a seat or desk then waited for the teacher to walk to the front of the room and begin the first roll call of the year. I’d start twisting my head in various directions trying not to make eye contact with any of the other kids as the teacher started going through her list. Sweat would begin to form on my upper lip. I’d begin gnashing my teeth as the names escalated up the alphabet.  By the time she reached the “H’s” I’d be praying for that imagined hole in the floor to swallow my up. “Steven Hanson”, “Here”, “Susan Johnson”, “Here”, “ Joan Liddle”, “Here” and then here it came.

“Leee-Roy Mel-lah-han.” I didn’t even bother to correct her as laughter catapulted through the room. I rang out my “Here” and hoped she would quickly move on to the next name. No little white kid in the late 1950’s living in a community of over one hundred thousand citizens of which only two were black wanted to be saddled with a handle like “LeRoy”. The undercurrents of racism were always present in the north just as they were in the south, only they weren’t as in your face here. We preached liberalism but the truth was there was a lot of bigotry hidden under those JFK for president lapel pins. It wasn’t until college I finally found the chance to transform myself from “LeRoy” into the more charismatic and less ethnically significant, “Lee”.

Then there were all the permutations of Melahn: Mel-a-han, Mel-lan, Malone and the always useful Melonhead. All my siblings suffered through this last one as the most useful name-calling employed by our friends and enemies alike.

But this wasn’t the end of my name game; at home I had another name making me cringe even more than “LeRoy” did at school. My mother came from a family of nine children, my father from a blended family of ten. They all had their own demons to deal with when it came to names: Agnes, Milo, Melvin, Lucille, Florence, Otto, Rodney and LeRoy to name a few. Then my oldest cousin, and at that time my only cousin on my mother’s side, was already named LeRoy so they had to come up with something to differentiate the group of “LeRoy’s” that had formed under the family tree. When I was born my mom thought I resembled her oldest brother, my uncle Milo. It may have been the baldheads or at least that is my hope. Despite being a golden-hearted bachelor farmer, my uncle Milo was one of the most unattractive men I have ever seen. He was all ears and nose. My mom’s family was famous for their Homburg schnozes, disproportionately large, covering a great deal of the face, and bending down parrot-like toward the mouth. He had very thin lips that stretched across his face in a broad grin running from one Dumbo sized ear to the other. He apparently didn’t like the name Milo any more than I liked the name LeRoy so the family called him “Butch”. This is what my mom decided she would call me but to distinguish me from my baldheaded namesake I became “Butchie”. I don’t think the irony of this ever struck her but a gay boy answering to the call of “Buthchie” just wasn’t right. The name clung to me like a sweaty t-shirt on a hot August day. Even now, some of my aunts still trip over my name when I see them at family gatherings forgetting that I am a grown man and spilling out the dreaded “Butchie” before they remember their error and correct themselves with little laughs of embarrassment.

It’s amazing how much a wrong name can torment a child well into adulthood. I’m sure my parents had no intention of hurting me although after I was named “LeRoy” they followed it up with Steven, Sandra, Debbie and Bonnie, opting for more run of the mill names that blended in with the current mid-western culture. I was able to grow into the name Lee, the name my father went by, and when coupled with the correct pronunciation of Melahn it becomes a series of very soft sounds that suit me. It made me think very carefully about the name we would eventually chose for our child, but like most kids she dislikes her name immensely. 

REFLECTION FOUR - 1996

Fourteen Years Ago Today

The drive back to the B&B was exhausting and yet sleep was unattainable and undesirable. When we opened the doors on the rental car after pulling into the B&B parking lot and turned off the ignition the suppressive heat of south Texas once again punched us in the solar plexus even though the sun was beginning to fade. Once through the doors and into the air-conditioning Janet and Pat were waiting downstairs to meet us. Their curiosity was smeared across their faces as they drew us into the common area just to the left of the long central hall. Exhaustion, exhilaration and nerves were pushing all of our buttons as they pressed us for information about our day. Reliving the day through their questions was almost as exciting as the actual day had been. They calmed our anxiety and suspended time, time that could not pass fast enough.  Janet and Pat had a way about them making them the perfect hosts. Good thing they opened a B&B.

            Sleep came as a sweet gift that night with Rick wrapped up in my arms. Visions of the hospital, Amy’s eyes, the nurse’s soft pink hands with clipped polished nails and Beth’s belly and her back kept drawing me out of sleep. I got up early, shaved and took a long shower. Our first room at the B&B was on the second floor. We would move down to the first floor later on in our stay. The bed was very red, Janet and Pat’s version of a honeymoon suite. The bathroom was small, tiled in black and white with a window in the shower. It didn’t look out on much but it did fill the shower with a beautiful light. I stood in the shower while the window steamed over thinking of Rick asleep in the red satin bed and our daughter sloshing around inside Beth’s womb. The doctor had decided on her time of entry into the world. I kept thinking as the warm water washed over my body it should have been her decision when to come into this world. Questions continued to drip from my head. Could I love this child the way she deserved? Could I make up to her for all of the decisions being made for her, decisions that should have been hers or Gods? Would she grow to hate us for what we had done? Would she have rather not known us at all? Do we deserve this child? When I got out of the shower Rick was up. It was still early and we had time to sit. Last night, before we went upstairs, the girls had given us a basket to take up filled with fruit and breakfast muffins. There was juice in the frig. We sat down to breakfast before Rick took his shower.

            “How are you feeling?”

            “I’m not sure. I don’t know if I can handle being in the room for the birth.”
            “You’ll do it because you have to do it. Beth wants us there.” “I can’t believe how bad I am at that back rubbing thing. I think I was about to break one of her kidneys. I thought the more pressure you rubbed into her back the better it would feel.” “How long do you think it’s going to take?”

            “I can’t say. The inducing didn’t take yesterday. It could take a long time. I don’t know”

            “Rick, do you think we’re doing the right thing?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “We’re two men who are going to try and raise a child. This is real uncharted water. What if she hates us?”

            “These were my questions way back when. I don’t have an answer. We have the support of our friends. Suzanne has been our champion on this and we know we can be good parents. We want this child. That’s about as much as we can give her.” He got up and kissed me and went off into the shower.

            The same heat we had walked into the day before was outside the door again waiting for us and slapping us in the face just as it had done the day before but today we punched it back. We found our way to the hospital and just as it had been the day before, no alarms went off when we went in, there were no police in the neo-natal ward waiting to arrest us. The door to Beth’s room was open when we got there. As we walked into the room the activity of giving birth had already begun. Beth was sitting up in bed taking deep breaths. You could see the strain of childbirth in the shape of her mouth and the beginnings of beads of perspiration along the front edge of her hairline. Amy was squeezing her hand as we got there and the nurse from the day before was just leaving the room. We said hello to all three of them as the nurse brushed by us with a quick turn of her eyes and a small smile of acknowledgement. I thought about a token kiss for Beth but as I approached I decided to hold back. It seemed out of place. Beth gave us her best smile, a strained lifting of the muscles at the corners of her mouth and a barely perceptible shrug of her shoulders. There was no turning back and there was no desire to turn back. Rick and I knew without looking at each other this was exactly where we wanted to be, in this room with this woman who was going to give us a gift that would change our lives.

            We spoke to Amy deciding who would do what and then we all moved into our positions. Rick and Amy were to help with the massaging and when the time came Rick would help push. I had pulled out the still and video cameras. This is the job I was given placing me as far away from Beth’s back as they could get me. I think Beth had had enough of the uncontrollable brutality of my massaging technique. Beth had requested an epidural and they had asked us to leave the room while they hooked her up. The nurse came out right after and told us we could come back in. She had counseled us a bit out in the hall. She tried to sooth our nerves by telling us she thought things were progressing on schedule. I don’t know if its true or not but I think she requested to be with us. She was very protective of us in the way a sports coach is protective of his players. She was encouraging yet distant. It was a message that said she knew we could do this. We would make her proud.

            By this time the room had been fully outfitted for the birth. The warming bed with its heat lamps had been wheeled in, the stirrups had been raised and the epidural apparatus had been connected. The day before we briefly meet the doctor who was going to assist with the birth. He had come in to call off the inducing and then rescheduled the process for today. He had come in now to check on how Beth was progressing. He spoke to us only briefly directing most of his orders and questions to the attending nurses and Beth. There was no small talk. There was no sense of humor. He was there to do his job and to do it professionally and that was where he chose to draw the line. We had been at the hospital for an hour. The doctor had taken his position at the foot of Beth’s birthing bed. He looked to see how she was dilating. It was eleven AM when he said, “Let’s go”. Beth was at eight centimeters. It was time to begin. Two nurses remained in the room with the doctor, Amy, Beth, Rick and myself. There was a sheet draped over Beth’s knees making a curtain over the proscenium of our daughter’s center stage entrance. We had heard so many horror stories of twelve, sixteen even twenty hours of labor. We had no idea what kind of fight this little girl might put up. She hadn’t asked for this entry. Instead the gate holding her in had been artificially unlocked and she would have to decide how much of a struggle she wanted to make. Was there security in that womb or curiosity as to what lay outside? The contractions where now coming fairly rapidly. Rick had been asked to stand behind Beth and help her push supporting her back as she raised up gripping the bed rails and her sheets for strength. I remained removed from reality viewing the whole event through the lens of a camera as if I was watching a movie. The image of Beth so lost in the moment of childbirth and the astonishment painted on Rick’s face was focused within this tiny frame. The camera controlled what I saw. My heart controlled what I felt. It reaffirmed the miracle of birth. The second contraction kicked in. Rick picked up the pillows supporting Beth’s back and gently helped her force her body forward pushing and pushing. I could now see the crown of the baby’s head. The doctor’s hands were busy massaging and probing and easing the baby out of Beth and into the world. Life’s beginnings are frequently a measure of searing pain, an anguishing scream coupled with a slap induced cry. Emmy’s birth came quickly and without any of these. Rick would always say she swam out like a dolphin her eyes open and her arms and legs stroking the air as she glided into our world. The doctor scooped her up into his arms and from over his shoulder he asked if I would like to cut the cord. One of the nurses handed me the scissors. My hands weren’t shaky but steady. I clipped the cord and the doctor passed our child to the nurse. I looked up past the baby and beyond Beth into Rick’s eyes. They were wet with joy.

            The nurse put our daughter on the warming table and began the process of cleaning and measuring. Checking to make sure she had all of her toes and noting her vitals. She quickly swathed her in a blanket. Beth had told everyone she didn’t want to hold her after the birth. She didn’t want the physical contact to change her mind. In a whisper Rick asked if he could hold her. The nurse turned directly to him, “Of course you can. She’s your daughter.”

            Elisabeth Maud Shaver/Melahn, Emmy. We had pulled names from our families. Elisabeth was my mother’s middle name and Maud was Rick’s favorite grandmother’s name. We wanted her to be connected to our families. We wanted her to know her history would be with us. We were where she now belonged. We were her family. We were her future for better or for worse.

We were all exhausted and starving by now. I volunteered to go out and get food for everyone. Beth through her haze of childbirth had said she had a craving for fried chicken. I found the nearest sign for the Colonel and returned as soon as I could. Rick and Amy were waiting in the room. Beth was asleep. We gave the food to Amy who said she would share it with Beth when she woke. It was time for us to separate. As we left Amy handed us a card. I opened it, it was a typical Hallmark card, pink and flowers with a typical rhyme but Amy had added, “Congratulations dads”. It was another moment that made us blush with pride.

Rick had begun fighting for Emmy’s rights from the first moment he saw her. While I had gone out hunting for the Colonel Rick had gone to the nursery to see where they were going to put her. The windows to the nursery were made of glass embedded with wire making all of the babies look as if they were being held in some sort of stockade. When he got there a nurse was finishing checking Emmy out for anything they might have missed in the delivery suite. He jumped into parent vigilante mode when he saw the nurse pushing and prodding in ways he felt were too brutal.  His fists immediately began banging on the glass as he mouthed to the nurse to stop the rough stuff. No one was going to harm this child. The nurse had looked up and smiled at this, thankful the window had sufficient wire to keep Rick far enough away from her endangered throat.

It was becoming clear we had generated a bit of a buzz around the birthing floor. There were a lot of nodding heads and furtive glances cast our way as we made the rounds of the nursery windows and vending machines. We had acquired celebrity status. It was now time to find out which kind of role we had been cast in and it didn’t take long to find out. One of the nurses that had been with us in the birthing room was now in the nursery area. When she spotted us there looking in at Emmy from the other side of the glass window she came out and told us to come with her. It was just about feeding time and the babies would soon be taken to their mothers for some nipple lip lock. Emmy would not be going in to Beth so the nurses had made a special room for us just off of the nursery. They had equipped the room with a changing area and boxes of formula and disposable bottles and nipples. The kindness of all of the nurses at this Methodist hospital was remarkable. They showed us how to change her, how much formula she should take, and what was the proper way to burp her. They did it professionally, with respect and humanity. The first time they brought her in to us was almost more than I could bear. At the moment of birth and even through the wire reinforced glass I couldn’t really get a good look at her. It wasn’t until they laid her in my arms and I could smell her babiness and look into her eyes that I realized what an unbelievable gift she was. She was perfect and beautiful beyond imagination.

“You’ve got a real beauty here.” I assumed the nurse had said this to every new couple when she handed them their child for the first time.

I countered with “All babies are beautiful.”

“No they’re not. We see some really ugly ones. This one really is special.” And of course she was. From that first day you could see her classic beauty, full lips, perfectly spaced eyes, the Gerber baby nose and chin. Emmy’s beauty was the kind that took your breath away. Our job would be to make sure this physical beauty was matched with an inner beauty of kindness, self-confidence and respect.

Months later when we were back in New York I had made plans to meet Rick at a nearby restaurant. It was still warm enough that the outdoor cafe tables were out and people were dining al fresco. I had gotten there before Rick and sat down at one of the outside tables. I had Emmy in her pram and ordered some ice tea. Another couple was sitting at the next table and I could sense them looking at us and discussing Emmy. Since Rick wasn’t there they could not have had any idea she was the product of two dads but I could overhear some of what they were saying. The guy finally couldn’t contain himself any longer. He tapped me on the shoulder and said,  “No matter how hard I tried there’s no way I could produce a baby as beautiful as the one you’re holding in your arms.” I said the only thing I could think of, “Thank you.”

At the hospital we were given a rundown of daily feeding times. We weren’t allowed to be there during the night so until the next daytime feeding came up we decided to go back to the B&B to rest and freshen up. 

WHICH TEAM ARE YOU?

Tuesday night, well according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology I’m really talking about Wednesday morning, at 12:01am the next episode in the “Twilight” series, Eclipse, premiered at a half dozen local theaters. Amazingly the half dozen theaters were not only showing the movie at 12:01 but at 12:02, 12:03, 12:04 and 12:05 and even more amazingly ALL five shows at all local theaters were SOLD OUT. Who knew? Even in a market the size of Madison a half dozen theaters could sell out five midnight showings of team Edward versus team Jacob. I, for one, don’t get it. If I didn’t have a fourteen-year-old daughter I would be completely out of it, but this is the point. I’m working very hard at not being out of it. I figured out if you want to continue to be relevant in a younger world you have to hang with the homies. This continues to be part of my education and awareness of the current culture. There are times where I continue to feel a little like Phil on Modern Family – WTF (Why the face?). So here’s my suggestion to all you over the hillers out there: adopt a child if you want to stay connected to what’s happening on the cultural scene several generations removed from your own. If you’re in the fifty and above segment you should skip the baby stage and go directly for a teenager. You don’t have the time to mess around with a newborn and wait out those years of baby talk where the only insight into their vision of the world is a poopy diaper. You need to get the ball rolling and fast. Miley Cyrus has already gone from cute to sex kitten in the snap of a finger. You'll need the dreamy eyed vision of a Twilight groupie to keep you up to speed on what’s hot and what’s not, someone to explain why a bug-eyed kitten called Hello Kitty makes millions in merchandising dollars or why a sixteen year old baby-faced Canadian kid kicks ass crooning love songs just prior to his balls dropping and his voice changing from a hen’s to a rooster’s.

Having a child is the gift of a small vile from the fountain of youth. You once again get to vicariously feel the joy of new discoveries, first loves and the reasons why Hello Kitty is so cool and Justin Bieber can make a young heart melt, and after the midnight showing of Eclipse why just maybe you might want to switch from team Edward to team Jacob. 

CHICAGO STORMS

We decided to leave around seven in the morning. We wanted to be in Chicago around ten. Friday had started out warm and clear. We hadn’t hit any really hot humid weather yet. I had to remind myself it was still spring, summer wasn’t going to officially start for another couple of days. In New York you could count the number of perfect days in a year on one hand. In New York, even if Al Roker had predicted a sunny day, a grey haze would come hand-in-hand with the sun preventing visibility from extending much beyond the island. In Madison, this year, we’ve already had more perfect days than I could count using both hands. If it’s sunny here you can see miles of rolling hills, painted in amber and emerald green under a cerulean blue sky. This is one of the big differences between New York and Madison, where Madison has the edge.

We had gone on line to rent a car for the day. The Sorency-mobile isn’t trustworthy enough to make the three hundred mile roundtrip journey to the loop and back and besides that it doesn’t have any air-conditioning. We were making our first trip to the Merchandise Mart and neither of us wanted to arrive dripping sweat or looking like a couple of derelects. For the week of Emmy’s graduation we had rented a car from Enterprise. It was an education in debit card etiquette. Since a car rental is open-ended (gas charges, mileage calculation, any damages to the car and various other tiny print stipulations) your actual charges can’t be debited to your account until you return the vehicle. When Rick went to rent the car at Enterprise with his debit card they wouldn’t let him do it without a copy of his utility bill, his most recent pay stub and the results of his last colonoscopy, none of which he was carrying with him when he approached the rental counter. This was a lesson learned. We made a second trip and came back prepared with the proper documentation.  For our Chicago rental we made the arrangements through AVIS. Rick’s wallet was sufficiently stuffed with all his vital information this time, but AVIS wasn’t Enterprise. For them, if you hand them a debit card, they don’t want all the information, instead they do a credit check. No credit card – no rental. It was back to Enterprise and the nice young man who remembered Rick and gladly accepted the clean bill of health documentation and rented us an air-conditioned car more likely to make the round-trip to Chicago and back without breaking down somewhere near the Illinois-Wisconsin border.

The Merchandise Mart is Chicago’s version of New York’s design and gift buildings rolled into one big indoor mall for designers, decorators and retailers.  Unlike the suspicious folks in New York, nothing was asked, no ID required, we just roamed the halls unnoticed, unquestioned and unsupervised on the road to re-establishing our brand under a new moniker. Madison requires a presence in order to get noticed, so we’ve finally bit the bullet and now we’re out to establish our identity through the wonders of retail. This is a blog I’ll save for later.

Chicago, in turn, decided to show its approval of our new venture by presenting us with the most glorious storm Chicago had seen in a long time. When we had finished perusing the halls of floors thirteen through eighteen at the Mart the skies were already broiling to a pre-ignition charcoal grey. Umbrellaless, we decided to make the one and a half block dash to the parking garage and our full size black Ford Fiesta fortress. The prepayment kiosk for the garage was located on the bottom floor. Rick paid the ticket and then we took the elevator to the fourth floor where the car was parked. The garage was one of those open sided structures, By the time we got out of the elevator the wind had climbed to over sixty miles an hour. I, being the coward I am, ran to the car. Emmy and Rick, either through some sort of unbridled courage or extreme stupidity ran to the open ledge, cameras in hand. The rain started pelting them as it shifted to a horizontal trajectory. Lightening was striking everywhere. A canvas sign attached to the side of the building ripped in half. I remained safely inside the car out of the way of flying glass and debris.  Storm chaser is not the occupation I was going to be auditioning for in Chicago.

We waited out the storm until we thought it safe enough to start the ignition and wind our way down from the fourth tier of the parking garage to street level. All systems were set to go until I slipped the parking voucher into the automated gate release. We had exceeded our grace period between having paid the fare and then left the facility. Once again we had to pay up for Mother Nature’s mighty tantrums.

Safely back in Madison the verdict is still out as to Mother Nature’s omen. Was she telling us to get out while we still could or was she encouraging us with a strike of lightening to the branch were standing on to flap our wings once more and take flight?

We’ll see.

MILESTONES

There are points in your timeline that can’t be ignored even in the depths of the most devastating financial situations: birthdays, anniversaries, deaths. You figure out a way, no matter how small, to acknowledge the event. This week it was a graduation. Emmy moved on from middle school to high school. This was not a noted event when I was a kid but now it encompasses a huge ceremony. Our equivalent was the religious milestone: confirmation. Way back when, it was a time boys dressed in suits and ties and girls donned grown-up dresses. We were then encased in virginal white robes and promenaded in front of the congregation for a sip of Morgan David wine and a paper-thin wafer embossed with an image of Christ, our first communion. Emmy’s entry into quasi adulthood would have to be provided by the school system instead of God.

The good people of Glacial Drumlin Middle School sent us a letter providing four printed tickets to the graduation event to be held on June 8, 2010. The letter informed us our eighth grade graduate was to arrive at school at 5;30 pm, the ceremony was to begin a six sharp followed by a dance for the then ninth grade hopefuls. Rick and myself immediately claimed two of the tickets for the ceremony and the other two were left up to Emmy to decide whom she would like to invite. She wanted her nanny, Angelina, and her auntem (Rick’s sister) to be the other two. Both selections said a lot about the kid we raised. Rick hadn’t seen Sandra for three and a half years. Angelina had been the mother figure Emmy had relied on since she was born.

On June eighth the school still made the kids go for a full day of classes so the beginning of the day took on the itinerary of a typical school day. It was up at six, arrival at the rear entrance of Glacial Drumlin at seven fifty-five, and then pick-up at three thirty-three. Unfortunately, this left us less than two hours for hair, make-up and wardrobe. I don’t know how the other parents were planning on pulling this off. At three thirty-three I was right there waiting in the rain to whisk her off to the Boston Store’s Estee Lauder counter and Rick’s friend Ann’s capable hands for the first step: her make-up. We had done a dry run on Saturday to get the age appropriate look. It was transformational for Emmy. You could see how beautiful it made it her feel. Once the make-up was complete and she had successfully dodged the raindrops under my guiding umbrella, it was back to the apartment and Rick’s sister’s expertise with hair. Emmy opted for a simple straight look given the time constraints we were under. Then like Cinderella all us mice scurried around getting her into her dress, sewing on straps and arguing about which shoes to wear. Was it going to be the golden strap pumps or a pair of black flats? We carried both of them to the car as the debate went on between safety and beauty. Then it was off to the event.

Once out of the car and into the school proper we walked through the cafeteria festooned with streamers, colored lights and a banner reading “Good-bye GDS, Welcome MG”. GDS stood for Glacial Drumlin School and MG stood for Monona Grove, the high school all of the kids would be going to as freshmen next year. I thought the banner meant “Good-bye God Damn School, Welcome Mean Girls”. The fear every parent has when you have a daughter entering the ring of teenage bullying. The bleachers in the gym had been pulled out and were almost filled by the time we got there. There was a stage with a podium and screen flashing stills and video of the eighth grade class that you couldn’t see for all the halogen lighting spilling all over the crowd. Given the formal attire I was told the kids would be wearing we thought it appropriate to dress as well. I forgot I was in Wisconsin. We showed up in suits while a majority of the other guests were in either jeans or shorts and their dress tees. This meant they didn’t have the arm holes cut out or slogans stenciled on like, “Wisconsin: Only 2 out of 3 serial killers live here”.

The parade of students began promptly at six, just like they said. Emmy was seated in the second row. She had pleaded with us before we arrived not to embarrass her. This meant we were not to do anything that might reveal us as her parents and she would then do us the favor of not acknowledging our existence. Her future at high school was dependant upon our cooperation, but she was the first to break the rule when she gave us the smallest of smiles as she walked by. The first part of the ceremony began with an invocation from the principal followed by a series of recognitions.

“For each award we will ask the students to please stand and remain standing until all awardees have been recognized. Could you please hold your applause until all the names have been read?”

And the reading began; honors, high honors, math club, music, The Ali Torhorst Award, athletic participation, student council. After we passed the honors award it became clear GDS had a star student.

High honors, math club silver award winner, all state music gold medalist, student council vice president, all-American sudoku finalist, best speller at the Dane County spell-off – Claire Hacker, Claire Hacker, Claire Hacker.

Other than regular honors the only award she didn’t stand up for was the Yahara River Writers Contest, a countywide competition for essayists, poets, short story writers and political cartoonists. Ten students made it to the finals and publication. Emmy was one of them.

The final element of the ceremony had all the students walking across the stage to the traditional handshake and the handing out of certificates. Emmy, in the end, had opted for the pair of black flats. She had succumbed to her fears of tripping in a low heeled shoe. Claire Hacker should have taken Emmy’s advice as she became the only girl to go knee down on the steps on her way to the VIP platform.

Emmy made it through. She shined. She grew. She learned she has a ways to go. She saw she could do it. Another milestone on life’s journey completed.

RECOMBOBULATION

We have opted for Milwaukee as our airport of choice for getting in and out of Wisconsin. It’s an hour and twenty-three minutes from our door to the departure level at General Mitchell International Airport. Madison has a very beautiful airport and it’s certainly more convenient but it costs almost twice as much to fly those extra seventy miles and for a couple of guys counting every penny we’ll take the cheapest means possible when it comes to necessary air travel. Now General Mitchell is no slouch of an airport. It’s very homey in a Midwestern kinda way. The airport interior is housed under an expansive metal grid and skylight blanketing the waiting area and commercial shops with sun in the summer and snow in the winter. It’s the shops under this glass lit dome that make me show up for flight after flight early enough to make the rounds of window-shopping. There’s a Brooks Brothers for the conservative in me, a Harley-Davidson shop for my adventurous side (actually I’d never connect my name and the word “hog” in the same sentence but the leather fashion can be a real turn-on.), and a used bookstore with some rare first additions for my more intellectual travel needs. Weegens, leather jackets and a first addition of Travels with Charley offer enough variety to satisfy most aspects of my schizophrenic personality. But the most amazing bit of Midwestern creativity isn’t in the shopping experience but occurs after having passed through the metal detector machines on my way to my departure gate. After having suffered the humiliation of stripping off my watch, my shoes and my belt, after having to place my computer in a separate plastic bin and then being asked to take off my jacket, after dumping my change in a small plastic cup, after having to walk through the detector for a second time because I forgot I had my cell phone in my back pocket and had to dump it on to the conveyor before I could proceed through the metal detector for the last time, I finally crossed to the other side and what to my wandering eyes should appear but an area with extra chairs and a very official sign  designating it as a legitimate recombobulation area. Now I know the word and I can easily define it but my spell check won’t recognize it no matter how I try to reconfigure it. With my shoes, belt, jacket, watch and change tucked under my chin, wrapped around my arm and grasped tightly in my hand I could think of nothing more likely to put a genuine smile on my face and diffuse any hostility I might be harboring than an area officially designated as a place to recombobulate. I dumped my belongings onto the floor just in time to catch my unbelted pants before they slipped to somewhere above my ankles and below the point of decency and began recombobulating. As I secured my pants and redistributed my worldly wealth of quarters and dimes to their proper pockets I began to relax and reflect. My recombobulating made me wish the world had a recombobulation area, a place where we could all reombobulate. It’s nice to see that even in the most serious of places, an airport screening area, people in this part of the world still have a sense of humor and can have a laugh without feeling as if they are jeopardizing the safety of the planet.

TIP:

“Now you could study Shakespeare and be quite elite

And you can charm the critics and have nothin’ to eat

Just slip on a banana peel

The world’s at your feet

Make ‘em laugh

Make ‘em laugh

Make ‘em laugh

            Donald O’Connor

            “Make ‘Em Laugh”, Singin’ in the Rain