beyond the pale

Honestly, we are grossing me out a little bit. Can I say that?

I mean, we are now officially precious and I don’t know how to deal with it now that I’m part of The Precious Family. You know how you envision certain things playing out in your life? You think things like, “I will be a teacher.” “I will be a doctor.” “I will be an Olympic curler.” Stuff like that, right? Well, you know, I have to tell you that I have never once thought to myself “I will become precious.” Nope. Not once. I never ever saw that as my destiny. But it’s sneaking up on me, worming its way into my blood like a virus. I’m taking echinacea to build up my immunity, but it ain’t helping.

Now this current precious trend is not coming from my parents. No, they’re not demonstrative AT ALL. My mom is never precious and my dad is mostly inadvertently precious. It’s these damn precious kids tugging at your heart strings and making you cry and making you think you’re living in The Sound of Music and maudlin crap like that. I mean, one thing we all know about me is that I am NOT precious. We know this, right? I am a crankypants. I AM A CRANKYPANTS AND I WEAR MY CRANKYPANTS BADGE WITH PRIDE!!

But now, sheesh. I’m living in a Strawberry Shortcake world and it’s precious and it’s making me confused about my identity, okay? If I become precious, I don’t know what I’ll DO.

So coming up next: “The Precious Family — a Hallmark Hall of Fame Presentation.”

Do sit down.

~ A few days before BIL’s surgery, my sister heard Elder Nephew on the phone, the tail end of his conversation. He was going out of town on a pre-planned church trip, so he wasn’t going to be home for his dad’s surgery.

“Who was that?” My sister asked when he hung up.

“Well, I was calling the church.”

“You were?”

“Well, yeah.”

“What for?”

“I told them I was going to be out of town, so I needed the deacons to come check on my family.”

“Really?”

“Well, yeah. I told them I won’t be here to take care of my family, and that’s what deacons are supposed to do, right?”

You’re right, kid, but damn. Kleenex to Room 212, STAT!!

~ Piper wrote her dad a pre-surgery note about how much she loves him. She drew a sad bunny face.

~ At one point post-surgery, I came home to check on Younger Nephew, the only kid home. Sister said, “Yeah. Please make sure he’s alive.” I told him about his dad — in a roundabout, as-needed way. Then I said, “You know, it might be nice if you wrote your dad a note or something.” Again, he’s monosyllabic these days. He talks to me because we’ve always had a ruthlessly teasing relationship on both sides and that continues apace, but emotional stuff …. uhm, no. Not so much right now.

He responded with a noncommittal shrug and I just figured he wouldn’t do it — that it was too much for him or something. A while later, though, as I was about to head back to the hospital, he said, “Here, Aunt Tracey. Take him this Spider Man bobble head doll.”

I looked at him, looked down at the bobble head doll now in my hands, and furrowed my brow in confusion.

“Well, when I was in the hospital for my tonsils when I was 4, he brought me a Spider Man doll because I was really scared.” He paused for a second, seemed embarrassed. “Well, I just want him to have this.”

Ow, my eyes hurt. It has to be the red eye of Sauron again, right?

Then he handed me a folded piece of paper with a rather long note on it. I promised him I wouldn’t read it and he didn’t believe me even though I didn’t read it. I really didn’t. Of course, my sister read it aloud to her husband at the hospital, so I heard the whole durned thing. (Sorry, kid, but I DID keep my promise.) He relayed the Spider Man story to his dad and told him how much he loved him and how proud he was that he was his dad and how Spider Man would watch out for him.

Again with the stinging in the eyes. Dark side of the moon, my lily white bottom.

~ Elder Nephew was given a Mac Book for high school graduation. Since he was going to be out of town for his dad’s surgery, he used it to record himself singing and playing a song for a pre-surgery DVD for his dad. My BIL watched it alone first and then showed it to my sister, Younger Nephew, and me the night before surgery. We gathered at the kitchen table all hunched around BIL’s laptop and watched it.

I’m telling you, we are officially precious and I’m at my wit’s end about it. Seriously.

Elder Nephew sang the song “Life of a Salesman” by Yellowcard for his dad. It’s a kind of punk rock song thanking a dad for being a good dad. It ends with the line, “Thank you for my life, Dad.”

So Elder Nephew sang the song on his video, a little slower than the original, and the screen faded to black for a few seconds. Then a graphic came up that read “Thank you for my life, Dad.”

A few more seconds of black, then my sister’s voice from years ago, just her voice saying, “Well, J, right now, you like nothing better than imitating your daddy. You copy the way he holds his spoon and fork and you like to eat like him, too. You try to do everything the same as he does.”

You see, since her kids were little, my sister has made regular audio recordings of their lives, what they’re like at a given age, what they like to do, funny things they’ve done or said. She’s saved them all and she gave Elder Nephew his mini cassettes for his graduation. Obviously, he’d listened to them.

My sister’s voice continued, just her voice from the black screen:

“You know, J, you’re so lucky to have a daddy like you do. He plays with you all the time. He’s funny and loves to be with you and talk to you more than anything. He just loves you so much. You are everything to him.”

And at that, my sister, who has not once cried since the diagnosis came down, dropped her head to the table and burst into sobs. Then I burst into sobs. Then my brother-in-law burst into sobs. Younger Nephew, standing at the kitchen counter right then, watched as his mom and his dad and his aunt burst into these massive Hallmark sobs and, well, I’m sure he thought for a second that we were all nutso insane, but suddenly he just jumped across that room and grabbed his mom from behind in a huge bear hug. The room was still for a very long time, the only sound the sound of sniffles. I held onto BIL. Younger Nephew held onto his mother.

And that’s all we did. That’s all we did.

See? What did I tell you?

A “Hallmark Hall of Fame Presentation.”

I am beside myself about it.

Here is a video of the song EN sang. Lyrics below. I will always love this song now, but, frankly, I do worry that it will be part of my insidious transformation from crankypants to preciouspants.

What’s a dad for dad?
Tell me why I’m here dad
Whisper in my ear that I’m growing up to be a better man, dad
Everything is fine dad
Proud that you are mine dad
Cause I know I’m growing up to be a better man

Father I will always be
That same boy that stood by the sea
And watched you tower over me
Now I’m older I wanna be the same as you

What’s a dad for dad?
Taught me how to stand, dad
Took me by the hand and you showed me how to be a bigger man, dad
Listen when you talk, dad
Follow where you walk, dad
And you know that I will always do the best I can
I can

When I am a dad, dad ~(when i am a dad, dad)~
I’m gonna be a good dad ~(i’m gonna be a good dad)~
Did the best you could, dad ~(did the best you could, dad)~
Always understood, dad ~(always understood, dad)~
Taught me what was right, dad ~(taught me what was right, dad)~
Opened up my eyes, dad ~(opened up my eyes, dad)~
Glad to call you my dad ~(Glad to call you my dad)~
Thank you for my life dad

Younger Nephew (C) is almost 16. He’s gone around the dark side of the moon a bit because, well, he’s almost 16. He’s withdrawn, monosyllabic, morose. Your basic teenage boy. Still, my sister has been worried about him, worried that Houston will not be able to bring him back from the dark side of the moon. I try to tell her, “He’ll come back. Elder Nephew came back. He’ll be back. It’s okay. It’s okay.” But she still worries. More so now.

When my sister and BIL sat the boys down last week and told them the grim diagnosis, Elder Nephew was visibly shaken. Younger Nephew was stoic and left the room in silence. About a half hour later, he knocked on their bedroom door. He sat on the edge of the bed with them.

“With everything that’s happening, I think I should quit football.”

Younger Nephew, who will only be a sophomore, was personally recruited by the high school football coach to play next year. He also plays basketball, which is kind of a weird combo, I guess, but he’s just a really good athlete. This summer is consumed with workouts and camps and practices and whatever really good high school athletes do with their summers. He loves football. Loves it.

But he continued.

“I mean, Brother is going away to college in the fall and someone needs to be around to take Piper where she needs to go and, besides, football is pretty expensive, so I just think I should quit.”

My sister and BIL protested vigorously, but Younger Nephew interrupted. He IS going through a stubborn phase. Or, well, maybe it’s not a phase.

“But I’m the one who’s playing, so I think I should decide if I want to play or not.”

My BIL spoke. There’s a reason why the man is a shrink.

“Well, C, if you want to quit because you don’t like it and don’t want to play, then, yes, I’d say it’s your decision. BUT if you want to quit because you think it will help me and your mom right now, then, no, it’s our decision.”

Younger Nephew was silent.

“Look, C, I want my life to go on as normally as possible. I like seeing my boys play sports. It makes me happy. And you love it. So I don’t want you to quit, okay?”

Younger Nephew responded slowly.

“Okaay.”

They both hugged him and thanked him and teared up a bit and watched as their boy — the one who’s gone around the dark side of the moon, you know — walked back to his room.

Oh, he’s coming back.

He never really left.

Such a kid. Such a kid.

Piper’s dad, my brother-in-law, has oral cancer. It’s on his tongue. It’s rare. It’s serious. It’s aggressive. It may be at stage IV already. The mortality rate is high. He’s only in his 40s. He’s never smoked. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t chew tobacco. He doesn’t engage in the “typical” risk factors here. It’s all just surreal.

The last two weeks our lives have completely turned upside down. He is scheduled for surgery next Thursday, July 15 at 8 a.m. We’re not sure of the stage yet. If there’s lymph involvement — which is looking likely — it’s stage III or IV; he’ll need radiation.

If that happens, it will be 7 weeks of hell and that’s just the start. They will make this mask that custom fits his face and bolt him down to the table for those treatments because he is not allowed to move whatsoever. The slightest centimeter of movement means they irradiate something they don’t want to irradiate. It’s delicate and small and they just cannot let him move. He is not allowed to lose weight because it will affect the fit of the mask. He will lose teeth. Hair. Part or most of his tongue. His ability to taste, temporarily or permanently. He will have speech issues. Swallowing issues. He is a psychologist. He makes his living talking and he may not be able to talk well after this. At minimum, he will not be able to work for a few months. Because of the economy, my sister and her husband — both psychologists — have already lost a lot of clients. Things were hard before this. Elder Nephew is supposed to be heading to college in the fall. Who knows now?

I’m sorry to be such a horrible bummer, but the news over the last week has been so much worse than we all hoped for. The kids! Those kids. The boys understand a lot more than Piper, of course. She’s only 9 and they gave her a 9-year-old’s version of things. The word cancer hasn’t been on her radar as a 9 year old. They just gave her the bare minimum.

“Daddy has a growth on his tongue, Pipey, and he needs to have it taken out,” they said.

She was very serious and big-eyed.

“He might have some problems talking while he’s getting better.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Remember when you had your tonsils taken out?”

“Yeah.”

“And you couldn’t talk too well after?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that will happen with Daddy too.”

“Oh.”

There was a pause as she looked at her parents. Then she spoke again, her worried blue eyes on her dad’s face.

“Well, Daddy ….. do you want to borrow my little white board so you can talk to us while you get better?”

That girl. Always looking for the loving thing, the kind thing. Sweetest girl in the world. I can’t bear it.

Will you please pray, pippa? We are scared out of our minds.