Walking my oldest daughter down her wedding aisle was excruciating!
Never mind the other 23,982 steps my Fitbit recorded that day. Most of the energy was used in the 25 to 30 steps walking down the aisle!
It’s a travesty, really.
I mean, who came up with the rule that the dad has to walk his bride-to-be daughter down the aisle anyway?
It’s not fair. It’s void of all decency of a civilized society! Continue reading The Longest Wedding Aisle, Ever
My wife, Janet, had surgery two weeks ago to remove a kidney tumor. The doctor said it’s an 85% chance of being malignant.
The last two weeks have been fast, and slow, lightening quick, yet forever.
Yesterday was the surgery follow up appointment, complete with the pathology report. It was also Janet’s birthday.
Strange, really. You find out about continued life, one way or the other, on a day designated to celebrate life.
The doctor came in quickly, and asked Janet how she was doing. He sat down. I asked to record the doctor on my phone so we could listen and rehash as much as we needed to later.
He agreed. I pushed the record button. He asked if I was ready, and took a deep breath…
Last Friday I took my wife Janet out on the town! A five-course dinner date! I know! Right!?
But we live in the oldest town in Texas, and there’s not a great deal of five star restaurants in Nacogdoches, Texas. So we created our own “fine dining” experience in a mobile, drive around way.
I wrote down twenty restaurants and fast food joints up and down our hometown main drag. Each place was cut to its own little strip, and I put them all in a styrofoam cup that had all 5 courses scribbled on the outside. Janet blindly reached in the cup and pulled the first slip for the first course.
It was Subway. Janet objected. She said Subway had the most expensive drinks in town, so she wanted to go somewhere else. Eventually, she acquiesced, and we ordered one large half and half tea, two straws.
The second course was Bottle Cap Alley for appetizers. A quarter mile drive and we were there, but they didn’t have many choices. Basically, we settled for fried onion rings. Besides, the next course was vegetables, so we could get something healthy then.
The third course drawn, however, was another fast food place, Taco Bueno! My five-course meal deal idea was falling apart.
We had to be creative, but guacamole with fried chips was as close as we could get to vegetables.
The fourth draw for the main course drew a groan from both of us, and then the laughter. Dominos Pizza!
While they made the extra thin crust vegetable pizza, we munched on the chips, guacamole and onion rings. After that, the pizza tasted like saltine crackers with onions and tomato sauce on it.
There’s a bloated, clog up your arteries with grease feeling that was kicking in, but we were committed to a 5 course meal…
Dessert! Should’ve started there! A quick draw from the cup and it was Whataburger, the Texas standard for fast food burgers. It was a no brainer choice!
But ice cream and milkshakes don’t mix with lactose intolerance, and the scrumptious home style cinnamon rolls were 580 calories a piece! We settled on apple pies that were only 200 calories each. Did I mention they were fried?
It was fun though, and totally random! We’ll do it again, but not tonight.
Tonight Janet will be in the hospital.
We’re in Houston. At this very moment, Janet is in surgery to remove cancer from a kidney. She was diagnosed three weeks ago.
I’m scribbling to redirect my emotions, blind my thoughts, dull the heightened awareness that the future has changed.
How much, and to what extent it’s changed, we won’t know until the pathology report comes in next week.
If all goes well, this will be a one and done surgery.
If it goes really, really well, next Friday we’ll be celebrating the 15% chance that the cancer is benign.
That’ll be worth a five course meal for sure! 
I’ve been thinking back about an older couple I knew when I was in college. Loved them! Great, rock solid, influential people!
He developed cancer. After a valiant fight, Hospice was called. Hospice was there round the clock during his last days at home.
They were always a very kind, loving couple, quite expressive in their love and admiration for each other. They used pet names, like Sweetie Pie and Sugar Plum, Honey Bear and Honey Bunny, along with other pet names as terms of endearment.
They would greet each other, usually in a higher pitch voice with great emphasis on their tones, sounding like they were talking to a bouncing baby or a favorite animal.
Their transparent physical, emotional and verbal affection for each other was fun to watch. I learned a lot from them.
But that was in life. Death was a little different. Continue reading Sweetie Pie
One of my sons, Todd, told me a story that still lingers several years later.
He had several jobs at once in college, but quit them all to work in a college intern. He continued to work, however, for a gentleman in his 80’s he’d met a couple of years before. The man was in great shape, but hired Todd to do heavy labor work around his farm.
As Todd got to know the man and his wife, he really liked them, a lot.
Unfortunately, she had Alzheimer’s, and was getting progressively worse in the short time he’d known them.
One day sitting in the gentleman’s pickup, he told Todd he would need him to work more to help look after the place.
Staring out the front windshield, he spoke quietly, as if thinking out loud. He said his wife’s memory lapses were becoming longer, and more frequent.
Occasionally, she would snap out of it and be back to herself instead of the confused, absent minded stranger. He was was forced to move her to a nursing home for proper care. Continue reading A Thought To Remember
The first time I saw them was when my daughter tugged on my shirt sleeve in church. She nodded slightly to the row over from us or I wouldn’t have noticed.
Everyone was seated, and in the middle of a row of college students, one young lady was discretely using sign language to interpret for the young man sitting beside her.
He was a tall, slender guy, maybe twenty years old, with tiny hearing aids perched on each ear which were almost completely covered by his hair.
He watched her hands from the corner of his eye as she interpreted in sign language to him for the rest of the service. She nonchalantly signed the words occasionally moving her fingers in rapid succession to spell out a word or name. Continue reading Signs To See
Slowly walking with my four daughters through the Houston Galleria, we passed a Zale’s jewelry store.
I’m not sure who first noticed the couple inside, but they quickly captured our attention. The couple was looking at rings, and because they were trying them on her left ring finger, we assume it was a wedding ring.
The guy wore flip flops, blue jean shorts and a nice sleeveless t-shirt showing off his well developed muscles. His hair was stylishly combed straight down on all sides.
She wore a cream colored sun dress with sandals, and her flowing brown hair was curled on the ends.
Everything about this couple was normal, except they were midgets.
(Radio Announcer Voice) People see Santa Claus once a year, Thanksgiving to Christmas. The view of his life and who he is, is so slanted.
If people truly knew the soap opera life Santa lives the rest of the year, they would clamor to charge him with breaking and entering into their homes on Christmas Eve. Instead, they see him as a benevolent hero delivering government subsidized free presents to nice children everywhere. And so today, we continue with another compelling episode of — (pause for dramatic effect) — North Pole Days of Our Lives!!
Santa rolled over wearing nothing but a pair of over-sized boxers that the tooth fairy had given him. He looked at the clock. 11:12 AM. He’d slept in, again, and knew Mrs. Claus wouldn’t be happy about that.
Besides, Santa knew he snored all night because he didn’t use his Cpap machine for his sleep apnea. Worse yet, he had binged on left over eggnog and cookies the night before, which gives him severe flatulence.
He looked at Mrs. Clause’s side of the bed. Nice. Neat. Not slept in.
There on her pillow was a Hawaiian colored envelope with his name on it, not the official candy cane striped stationary authorized by the North Pole Post Office. His chubby fingers trembled as he struggled to open the letter.
He took a deep breath and began to read:
Dear Santa, Continue reading North Pole Days of Our Lives
The bride was beautiful. It wasn’t just her dress, makeup or natural beauty. It was the radiance of her heart from the inside to out. To top it off, she wears beauty, both the inside and out, with a genuine, sincere grace and humility. Her face glows. Her heart shines.
It was the day she’d always dreamed about, and it was glorious. The groom is a top of the line guy, and soon after they met, their spirits danced. They fell in love and quickly grew into soulmates.
Any time you’ve lost a close family member though, there’s always a certain yearning that rustles the memory of those who won’t be there. The bride’s father was a good man, and marked her life profoundly well. He passed away unexpectedly after her 5th grade year, and making it even harder, she and the rest of her family were with him on vacation.
It’s hard for children who can’t touch, hear or talk to their hero. Some children respond negatively and grow up cold, hard and calloused. On the other hand, some choose otherwise. Continue reading The Bride’s Dance
Two of the worst nights of the year are Homecoming and Prom, and Saturday night was Prom. Some people may think that’s an odd thing to say, but to dads of teenage daughters, they get it in spades.
It’s just a snapshot of the future, way, way off in the future hopefully, when a dad has to walk his daughter down the aisle. They’ll be radiant in white flowing gowns, smiling all the way, but the dad walks beside them white faced, grimacing, needing Pepto-Bismol and anti-depressants!
A daughter’s “happiest day ever” is like the most dreaded day to most dads. It’s like taking a rare, precious, porcelain doll worth millions of dollars and handing it over to a gorilla! Continue reading Homecoming and Prom
RabBits 