Lessons Learned − 10 July, 2007
The day after my Mom's angiogram, my family was sitting around the dining room table playing Scrabble.
That game has a long history in our family. My wife and I play it a lot, in the evenings, and we even have photos in the album of boards where we scored more than 100 points on a single play. The past year, however, my wife has been -- well, there's no better term for it than the Southern expressing -- my wife has been whoopin me, badly. The sleep apnea wasn't exactly helping my brain function, especially not at night.
There are some families where beating the crap out of someone at a game wouldn't be considered cool, especially not 20 or 30 times in a row. In our family, its tradition. My Mom once played Sorry! with my grandmother for an entire day -- Mom wouldn't quit until she won a game. And my grandmother, well, she was nice, but she would definitely plonk you back to 'start' at every opportunity.
We're a little competitive. Hannah was sort of taken aback when she first saw my parents playing a game called "Slap" (sort of a double version of Solitaire, except it's two partners vs. two partners, and played simultaneously at frightening speed). My parents played my aunt and uncle, and, well, there's a lot of trash talk during the game. Hannah thought my parents were having a real fight and were about to get a divorce. But it's just a game.
Mom had been released from the hospital the previous day. I'd stayed in town, to make sure everything was going to be alright. Also, I really wasn't feeling that well: the stress had just about beaten my immune system down to nothing, and I felt like I was coming down with some illness. (But, as I said before, I was doing a good job at hiding it.) I wasn't looking forward to another drive through the slow zones.
So, as I said, we were playing Scrabble. Hospital patient or no, I clobbered them both the first game by an embarrassing amount. On the second game, Mom came back with a vengeance (it didn't help I got stuck with a pile of vowels early on). However, we kept having problems keeping the score.
When my wife is with us, she usually keeps score. My long term memory is incredible, but since the sleep apnea started (and even now, in recovery), my short term gets scrambled easily. I forget to write things down.
Well, Mom kept forgetting as well, because she was so tired after the hospital stay. My Dad has hearing aids, but they spend a lot of time telling him 'weeeeeeeeeeee' -- things we'd say to him would have to be repeated.
So when Mom got frustrated with forgetting and said someone else should keep score, I looked around the table. Not too many options. I said, "Great. We've got a hospital patient, someone who can't hear, and someone with memory problems all playing Scrabble. What's our next project? Row across the Atlantic Ocean?"
Mom chuckled.
Lessons learned:
Sometimes life keeps beating you, game after game. You have to go on and keep on trying, even if trying means sitting around in a hospital waiting for someone to run a tube up your arteries. Or if it means driving 400 miles through insane traffic conditions. Or if it means running home from the hospital four to five times a day to feed the cat, wash the clothes, and bring needed items.
Second, yes, things generally fall apart, and it's well known the center cannot hold. But I guess the reason you try is that sometimes things do work out, and it would be stupid to let your second chances go by. Mom got a second chance, in a way, because the news from the angiogram could have been much worse. And as for me, well, I dropped everything I was doing and drove up -- even though I was almost certain, from the family history, that this was going to be the prelude to something much, much worse. I was wrong -- and I'm glad to have been wrong.
That game has a long history in our family. My wife and I play it a lot, in the evenings, and we even have photos in the album of boards where we scored more than 100 points on a single play. The past year, however, my wife has been -- well, there's no better term for it than the Southern expressing -- my wife has been whoopin me, badly. The sleep apnea wasn't exactly helping my brain function, especially not at night.
There are some families where beating the crap out of someone at a game wouldn't be considered cool, especially not 20 or 30 times in a row. In our family, its tradition. My Mom once played Sorry! with my grandmother for an entire day -- Mom wouldn't quit until she won a game. And my grandmother, well, she was nice, but she would definitely plonk you back to 'start' at every opportunity.
We're a little competitive. Hannah was sort of taken aback when she first saw my parents playing a game called "Slap" (sort of a double version of Solitaire, except it's two partners vs. two partners, and played simultaneously at frightening speed). My parents played my aunt and uncle, and, well, there's a lot of trash talk during the game. Hannah thought my parents were having a real fight and were about to get a divorce. But it's just a game.
Mom had been released from the hospital the previous day. I'd stayed in town, to make sure everything was going to be alright. Also, I really wasn't feeling that well: the stress had just about beaten my immune system down to nothing, and I felt like I was coming down with some illness. (But, as I said before, I was doing a good job at hiding it.) I wasn't looking forward to another drive through the slow zones.
So, as I said, we were playing Scrabble. Hospital patient or no, I clobbered them both the first game by an embarrassing amount. On the second game, Mom came back with a vengeance (it didn't help I got stuck with a pile of vowels early on). However, we kept having problems keeping the score.
When my wife is with us, she usually keeps score. My long term memory is incredible, but since the sleep apnea started (and even now, in recovery), my short term gets scrambled easily. I forget to write things down.
Well, Mom kept forgetting as well, because she was so tired after the hospital stay. My Dad has hearing aids, but they spend a lot of time telling him 'weeeeeeeeeeee' -- things we'd say to him would have to be repeated.
So when Mom got frustrated with forgetting and said someone else should keep score, I looked around the table. Not too many options. I said, "Great. We've got a hospital patient, someone who can't hear, and someone with memory problems all playing Scrabble. What's our next project? Row across the Atlantic Ocean?"
Mom chuckled.
Lessons learned:
Sometimes life keeps beating you, game after game. You have to go on and keep on trying, even if trying means sitting around in a hospital waiting for someone to run a tube up your arteries. Or if it means driving 400 miles through insane traffic conditions. Or if it means running home from the hospital four to five times a day to feed the cat, wash the clothes, and bring needed items.
Second, yes, things generally fall apart, and it's well known the center cannot hold. But I guess the reason you try is that sometimes things do work out, and it would be stupid to let your second chances go by. Mom got a second chance, in a way, because the news from the angiogram could have been much worse. And as for me, well, I dropped everything I was doing and drove up -- even though I was almost certain, from the family history, that this was going to be the prelude to something much, much worse. I was wrong -- and I'm glad to have been wrong.
Comments:
edunn (July 17, 2007. 08:24pm)
Love your expressions in this! Whoopin is going into my everyday vocab file :)
bmccosar (July 17, 2007. 09:55pm)
;-) Thanks, it's sort of the official word for "beating somebody by so large an amount you can't say the scores without laughing in the middle." As in "What's the final score?" "One eighty six to -- hahaha -- three oh two."