PAgent’s Progress

I started taking piano lessons in second grade, and continued through high school. I picked up the trumpet in grade school, and was well on my way to being a band geek when I entered junior high. I dutifully signed up for “C” band (the lowest tier, home to screw-ups and chronically unmusical types) and looked forward to my career blowing brass. The first milestone was going to be testing for chair. I surely didn’t want to be stuck with the boring parts that go to third or fourth chair, so I practiced my scales and worked on my test piece until I had it down cold.

Unfortunately, the poor unfortunate administrator who had been stuck with “B” chorus (home to screw-ups and chronically poor vocalists) learned that I could play the piano. He took me aside and explained that not only could he not play a keyboard, but he wasn’t particularly musically inclined. Looking back to seventh grade, I remember him almost begging me to help him out, but that could the rosy glow of hindsight. Flattered beyond the capacity of a pubescent boy to resist, I told him I’d switch from band to B chorus, and play piano for him.

Ah well, at least I would be leaving band with a bang. My last day in class was the day to test for chair. I sat there, waiting my turn, listening to the older kids play their scales. They were awful. I mean, there was a reason they were stuck in C band. I puffed with pride, knowing that at least I would leave after making a great impression. Then my turn came, and the band director said –

“Oh, PAgent. Since you’re leaving, you don’t need to test. Next!”

Bastard! That, it turns out, was my last experience in band, and my last formal experience as a trumpet player. I had unwittingly set my path, and my path led away from brass instruments, pep band, marching band, goofy-looking shakos, parades, and everything that went with being a band geek. Instead, I would be an accompanist. I would play everything from a beat-up Hammond organ that we inherited from the high school because it fell out of a pickup, to a Moog synthesizer, to a concert grand. I would play for chorus, for choir, for jazz choir, for countless soloists, talent shows, and in rehearsal and in the orchestra pit for several musicals. It wasn’t all bad, the girls were a lot cuter in choir.

Despite my extensive and varied experience making other performers sound good, I didn’t pursue music as a vocation. Sad but true. Nevertheless, old habits die hard. I always pay attention to the piano player. When my children started appearing in school performances, it pained me to see some poor overworked music teacher trying to get all 30 kids to come in at the same time, much less on the same note, frantically directing with one hand while trying to hit as many of the right notes as they could on the keyboard at the same time. I felt genuinely guilty that I wasn’t helping somehow. I was never good at improvisation, and couldn’t play by ear, but I was a hell of a sight-reader, and surely knew how to play with a choir.

Last winter, I accompanied my daughter’s girl scout troop as they sang carols at a local assisted-living center, and it went pretty well considering that we didn’t actually rehearse at all. But when I attended a subsequent performance at their grade school, it was pretty painful. Oh, I know most parents couldn’t have cared less, but I spent years giving pitches, coming in on the downbeat, and banging out the melody line when the sopranos were getting lost. It was painful for me.

So, I told my wife to let the music teacher know that if she needed someone to play during future performances, I’d be willing to help out. This week, I got a stack of Christmas music to review. Although I don’t sit down and tickle the ivories as often as I should, I could still bang my way through all of them. I even had a few alternate arrangements in my library to offer her. I think the actual performance is in a week or two, and while I’m not looking forward to it in the classical sense of giddy anticipation, I am at least…content…that the accompaniment will not be the weak point at this year’s show.

“Quality Time” is one of the cliches of modern parenting. I believe it grew out of the increasing number of separated parents who needed to convince themselves that it wasn’t the number of hours they spent with their child that counted, it was the quality of the time that mattered. This little bit of self-deception gave them carte blanche to throw money at their offspring, telling themselves that the trips to the ballpark, the arcade, the zoo, and the toy store was quality parenting.

I do believe that parental quality time exists. What’s more, I believe it is something my daughter doesn’t get nearly as often as she deserves, but may be the most effective way to improve her behavior. For all her acting out, all her hissy fits, and all the boundaries she stretches until they threaten to fail explosively, she has always responded incredibly well to one-on-one time with a parent.

Her mother and I know this, and have proven it to ourselves time and time again. But this doesn’t mean we can manage to schedule such outings more than once in a blue moon. There are chores around the house, there are appointments to be kept, there is shopping to be done. If we do schedule something fun, it usually involves the whole family. ‘Quality Time’ is in short supply, it seems, at least for our daughter.

However, it has become obvious that my daughter is really in need of some personal attention, some one-on-one time. So, when I got up on Saturday, and the weather didn’t look awful, I asked her if she wanted to go hiking with me. She jumped all over it. I filled my old camelbak for her, and my new camelbak for me, threw a couple of jackets in my backpack, and we hit the road. We stopped at the store for granola bars and beef jerky, and donuts to eat in the car. Then, we drove north to Washington.

I knew of a trail in SW Washington state that was particularly scenic. In fact, once upon I time, my buddy and I had camped along it. It follows an incredibly beautiful creek up a river valley in the foothills of the Cascade mountains. Just the sort of outing we needed. So, we cruised into Washington, up past Battle Ground, through Amboy, and into Chelatchie.

As an aside, I love the town of Chelatchie, Washington. I’ve travelled through Chelatchie often, on the way to hikes and campouts, and it has become not just cozily familiar, but associated with some truly good times in a way that would make Pavlov proud. I’ve spent many hours in the Mt. St. Helens Monument Headquarters parking lot, waiting for a buddy, and cruised the Chelatchie Prairie General Store on several occasions. The best part of Chelatchie is Tum Tum Mountain, a perfectly conical mountain just outside of town, on the way to the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. It looks like a giant gumdrop, and when I see it, I know I am leaving civilization and entering the forest.

As we drove past Tum Tum, I remarked to my daughter that it looked like there was a dusting of snow on top of it. She was quite skeptical, until we climbed up to a pass over a nearby ridgeline. The snow there was fluffy and beautiful.

My daughter was thrilled at driving up into fresh snow. Of course, this should give you an idea how chilly it was, even at lower elevations. We got to the trailhead shortly, loaded up, and hit the trail.

Now, I’m still suffering from asthma from my last cold, plus my lower back was killing me. But I completely underestimated how trashed I was from being sick as a dog for the last several weeks. I felt weak as a kitten, and the gunk in my lungs kept me coughing continuously. Fortunately, my daughter wasn’t interested in going quickly, but instead of a seven mile hike, I quickly decided to make it a five mile hike. Or maybe a four mile hike. When the two of us got to the 1.6 mile mark, we decided we had proven our point, and turned around. But we had a good time. She loved the quiet, the lush green of the trees, the sound of rushing water, all the things that I loved about the forest. I had always hoped I’d have a child that enjoyed hiking as much as I did, and it turns out that I do.

We cruised back home, and had just enough time to get cleaned up before meeting SF SJ downtown for a quick dinner and Puppetz vs. People. Okay, improvisational comedy with puppets may sound odd, but how many live comedy shows can you take a ten-year-old to? And while most of the gags went right over her head, she really enjoyed it.

So, I spent the entire day with my daughter. Driving cross-country, hiking, having dinner downtown, and live comedy. She loved it. Of course, this morning I could barely walk. My lower back is killing me. My thighs are sore. My hip joints hurt. But I created a memory with my daughter, and for a change it was a GOOD memory.

Quality time.

When our children were old enough to make it practical, my wife went to the midwest to visit her family, by herself. She left the children home with me. This not only saved money on airfare, but gave her a critical break from the kids, at a time when she really needed one.

Since we are talking about my wife, you should not be surprised to hear that before leaving, she had scheduled childcare/babysitting for the kids, written down a list of where they had to be, at what time, and had generally foreseen every problem that could arise in her absence.

Well, almost every problem.

We had been without my wife for a couple of days, and I had just put the children in bed, when the phone rang. It was my brother. Our mother had collapsed, and had been transported to the hospital. It didn’t look good. She was still unconscious. He didn’t have any definitive information, but he promised to call back when he knew more.

So, I stayed awake for the next several hours, unable to concentrate on anything, waiting for a phone call. I felt like I should have joined my father at the hospital, but it was 90 minutes away, and I didn’t have anyone I could call in the middle of the night to come watch my kids. I didn’t even know how seriously ill my mom really was. But the phone finally rang, and my brother told me that Mom’s prognosis wasn’t good, but her condition hadn’t changed much. In short, get some sleep, but come down in the morning as soon as I could.

The next morning was a bit of a blur. I hustled the kids off to their childcare provider as early as I could drop them off, then quickly ran to work. I was responsible for an application that had to be filed that day. At this point I wasn’t going to file it myself, but I had to make sure that someone else would take responsibility for it. So, I got to work, ran in, got an associate to cover for me and file the application I had prepared, and ran back to my office to shut down and hit the road. As I entered my office, my cell phone rang. It was my sister, and from the tears in her voice, I knew Mom was gone.

She had started going downhill rapidly in the morning, until she was gone. She never woke up. I hadn’t made it down to see her, and felt badly about it. Maybe not so much for myself, but because I knew my father would have wanted me to be there.

So I drove down and met my family at the funeral home. Mom’s body had been transported there, and we had some time with her. Dad didn’t look good, which was to be expected. I think we went back to Dad’s place and got some lunch. Fortunately, the older siblings were coordinating things with the funeral home.

I don’t remember the details of the next few days, but it was a heck of time for my wife to be 2,500 miles away. I was moving in a bit of a daze, dropping off the kids, going to work, picking up the kids, fixing dinner. I usually took advantage of my wife’s absence by fixing things for dinner that she didn’t particularly care for. It had been a long time since I fixed skillet-fried pork chops, which I liked but she didn’t.

So, after work one night, I found myself fixing dinner. I put some green beans in a steamer, and sliced some onion and potatoes thinly. I dredged the pork chops in seasoned flour, and pan-fried them. I began to fry the potatoes in another skillet, while I made a light roux in the pork chop skillet, then made a batch of cream gravy.

Suddenly, like someone smacking me on the back of the head, I realized what I was doing. Fried pork chops, fried potatoes, cream gravy, and green beans. One of my mother’s favorite meals, and one that I had eaten countless times growing up. I was preparing comfort food, simply enough, but it was even more than that. This meal was a connection to my mother, to the way she had fed me for half my life. Food was how my mother showed love, and how we, in turn, showed our love for those close to us. With no conscious thought at all, I was preparing one of the most appropriate meals I could have envisioned for a remembrance, a farewell, and a consolation.

Upon receiving this epiphany, I could feel my throat clenching, and tears welling up in my eyes. I buried my face in my hands, and began to sob. It was the first time I had cried for my mother, who I would never see again. My daughter, alarmed, came into the kitchen and asked me what was wrong. I told her I was sad because my mom had died. I don’t think she had ever seen me cry like that before, and I think in some way it made her grandmother’s death suddenly more real for her.

Of course, my wife flew back to me, and we had a funeral service for my mother. To no one’s surprise, all of the children spoke of how much she loved her children, how much she loved to cook, and how important food had been in our relationship with her.

As we prepare for Thanksgiving this year, I think about the importance of food in our celebrations. Certainly the food we eat is fuel for our bodies, but it is so much more than that. It is sustenance for our souls, and a comfort for those in pain. You can help endure a nasty breakup with a pint of Haagen-Dazs, or confront the loss of a parent with a menu from your childhood. Food shared is hospitality, food in the pantry is security, and food prepared with love is love.

“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants.

“He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole.

“Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right.

“Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

“Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else.

“But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.”

-Teddy Roosevelt, “Lincoln and Free Speech,” The Great Adventure (vol. 19 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed.), chapter 7, p. 289 (1926).

Big thank you to darkstar for pointing this out.

I grew up along Puget Sound, and part of me, the part that keeps track of where “home” is, clings to a memory of the smell of salt air, the sound of a ferry departing the terminal, and the shifting feel of a rocky beach underfoot. And of course, the sight and sound of seagulls.

Seagulls were a constant presence in my home town, so much so that you rarely even thought about them. They perched on pilings, and raucously called back and forth to one another, giving the impression that most of what they said was obscene. They left deposits of gull crap on top of every playground play structure. And they flew about effortlessly, dancing like ballerinas on the wind.

They could keep pace with a ferry crossing from Seattle to Bremerton without even flapping a wing. You could stand at the railing and be quite literally eye-to-eye with a gull as it cruised alongside the ship, barely moving a feather. On the other hand, if you were foolish enough to be gesturing with a french fry, they could be quick enough to snatch it right out of your hand. If they weren’t getting enough french fries, they picked up clams and carried them high over parking lots, where the long drop to hard pavement provided access to the goodies within the hard shell. The effectiveness of this strategy was evidenced by the fine powder of crushed shells in every bayside parking lot.

As children, we told each other that seagulls were protected species, so if you killed one you would be fined $500. Per bird. Even though there were like, millions of them. We also repeatedly retold the story that if you fed a seagull an alka-seltzer tablet, its stomach would explode. No one I knew ever tested this hypothesis. I suspect that threat of a $500 fine saved many a gull from an agonizing end.

Seagulls were just always there.

Portland is a rivertown, a town full of bridges. Even though the ocean is just over the coast range, you would not mistake Portland for a seaport. But, every winter the seagulls come back to town. I suspect they come inland to avoid the winter storms. When I was attending college in southeast Portland, some chilly morning I would wake up to find the lawn in front of the dorm covered with gulls. They would be spread out evenly across the grass, all perfectly still, like the world’s largest set of gull decoys. Just the sight of them provided a bit of familiarity for a homesick student.

This morning as I walked down the sidewalk, I was surprised by a gull nimbly darting in and out of traffic. It moved with all the grace I so fondly remember, nipping around a city bus, between two lanes of cars, and up and over a bobtail truck. The gulls have come back to town. When I look out my office window, I can see them flying between the tall buildings, pirouetting and gliding. In the morning fog, their streamlined silhouettes pass overhead, silent except for the piercing cry that sounds so lonely by itself, and so gossipy in a flock. The gulls are back, and even though the city of Portland has not moved one centimeter closer to the ocean, I could swear I smell a hint of salt in the air.

My cough has been getting steadily worse all week. Tuesday and Wednesday I was coughing so much it was hard to get any work done. I finished a draft on Wednesday, gave up, and went home. I took my temperature, and it was 102 F. Bleagh.

My cough, which kept getting worse, had reached truly epic proportions. Each coughing fit used very nearly every muscle in my torso, and the cumulative effect was leaving my entire throat raw. Not to mention that an asthma attack had kicked in, making everything just that much more miserable, and my coughing just that much more unproductive.

Wednesday night I slept on the couch, with the cats, on the theory that at least one of us should be able to sleep, and I wasn’t going to get much rest in any event. Overnight, I wasn’t coughing as often, but each cough involved muscles that had been strained and overused so severely that every cough felt like being kicked by several sets of cranky mules. This morning my temperature was 101.6 F.

I have used up my stash of Sudafed Non-Drying Sinus medicine. This wonderful medicine, which contains a decongestant and an expectorant (but not antihistamine) has fended off many a sinus infection for me, and I needed to get some more. Unfortunately, the great state of Oregon has decreed that any medication containing pseudoephedrine now requires a prescription, so as to foil all the wily meth cooks plaguing our fair state. I would feel better if I felt it was going to have a measurable effect on the amount of meth available in Portland.

Although I couldn’t get Non-Drying Sinus any more, I could get phenylephrine tablets, and time-release expectorant separately, so, no harm done. Between the decongestant, the mucous thinner, my bronchodilator (for the asthma), and large doses of acetominophen to bring down my fever and knock back the muscle soreness, I’m a walking pharmacopia. And this is all on top of the handful of drugs I take every day anyway. Hork.

I have been thrilled again at this opportunity to watch daytime TV. This time, I got to see the final episode of “Deep Space Nine”. The wife and I used to watch it, but lost interest before the series wound up. It was kind of nice to get a semblance of closure, even this many years after the fact.

Right now, my son is watching “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” from Netflix. He thinks it’s great, but between my fever, the talking furniture, and seeing Morpheus with a cowboy hat and Jheri curls, it’s pretty surreal.

I’m assuming I will be back at work tomorrow, facing the dirty looks from all the people who hate people like me, who come to work until they are so sick they have trouble standing upright. I’d say it was the effect of a strong work ethic, except I’m too lazy to say that with a straight face.