Reading Les Miserables in Chicago

I finally finished reading Les Miserables (an English translation, obvs) this month--more than three years after I started it.

I had such high hopes when I first ordered the free Kindle version. It's only 959 pages, I thought to myself. I can handle that. After all, I'd already plodded through Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame--all 550 pages--including an entire novel's worth of narrative about the history and architecture of the cathedral; and 750 pages of Herman Melville's Moby Dick--including 30,000 words about whale blubber. That is not a lie.

The difference between the reading of those two novels and the latest novel is that I read with others in a reading group, with a deadline. I read Les Mis on my own, with no time constraints; and during the duration of my reading of I Am Miserables, I read 49 other books (according to my LibraryThing book tags), one of which, Kim, by Rudyard Kipling, was almost as unreadable as I'm Still Miserables. 

OK, that's a bit harsh. It's just that I'm a simple person, with lofty intentions but with the attention span of a toddler hopped up on Twix at Halloween. So when I encountered the 19-page table of contents (again, not a lie), I thought to myself, "Oh, crap." 

You know you're in trouble when some of the chapter titles are longer than entire chapters of some books. For example: Volume II, Book Second, Chapter II: In Which the Reader Will Peruse Two Verses, Which Are of the Devil's Composition, Possibly, and also Chapter III: The Ankle-Chain Must Have Undergone a Certain Preparatory Manipulation to be Thus Broken With a Blow from a Hammer.

You also know you're in trouble when you don't understand a single word in some of the lengthy chapter titles, as in Volume III, Book Eighth, Chapter XIII: Solus Cum Solo, In Loco Remoto, Non Cogitabuntur Orare. Apparently, they only had a budget for for French-to-English, not Latin-to-English.

Barnes and Noble claims that Les Miserables is the home of the longest sentence ever written, clocking in at 823 words. But the Victor Hugo Internet Hub debunks this risible impertinence, citing five novels with longer sentences. I remember that sentence, however; it caused my undiagnosed aneurysm to throb.

The beautiful thing about reading on the Kindle is that you can look up words you don't know as you go along, without having to stop and pick up your unabridged Oxford English Dictionary. This is fortunate, because Victor Hugo is a vocabulary beast -- I encountered unknown lexical combinations on virtually every page. I am determined to find many opportunities to use recrudescence and fulgurating and matutinal in everyday conversation.

It was disconcerting, however, that many of the words I highlighted did not have definitions in the Kindle dictionary--such as pterigybranche, poignarded, emphyteuses, and arondissement. As it turns out, Hugo's narrator does not hide his linguistic snobbery, and his disdain for anything but the most precise and standard vocabulary and usage. He refers to 

...that abject dialect which is dripping with filth when thus brought to the light, that  

pustulous vocabulary each word of which seems an unclean ring from a monster of the mire and the shadows. Nothing is more lugubrious than the contemplation thus in its nudity, in the broad light of thought, of the horrible swarming of slang. It seems, in fact, to be a sort of horrible beast made for the the night which has just been torn from its cesspool...what is slang, properly speaking? It is the language of wretchedness. 

Awesome.

Victor Hugo's middle name is digression. He admits this in the third sentence, after introducing the character Myriel, Bishop of D--: "Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous...to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him..." Hugo then spends the next 63 pages introducing the Bishop, who plays a key role in Jean Valjean's life even though he only appears briefly in the book. The Bishop gives Jean Valjean valuable silver, and urges him to use it to become an honest man; and after this encounter, the Bishop never returns to the story. 

The trick with reading Hugo or any prolix classic author is to figure out which digressions you can skim over without losing track of the main characters and plot lines, and which digressions contain indispensable facts and connections. I failed miserably at this task, which is why it took me three years to finish the book. I probably could have flipped past the entire Volume I, Book Third, or at the very least the first chapter of said Book entitled The Year 1817, which is a single seven-page paragraph name-drop. I could have spurned the entire Book First, Volume II, which comprises 19 chapters (47 pages) about the Battle of Waterloo--which the title of Chapter V refers to as The Quid Obscurum of Battles. (I googled quid obscurum. It means something like what darkness. It's also the name of a famous thoroughbred horse.)

Hugo wrote six chapters about the sewers of Paris in Volume V, Book Second. The Intestine of the Leviathan describes in torturous detail the history, construction, geography, and putrescent contents of the French sewer system. There's some interesting, even quotable, material in there--such as the passage that describes the sewer as "the conscience of the city:"

All the uncleannesses of civilization, once past their use, fall into this trench of truth, where the immense social sliding ends. They are there engulfed, but they display themselves there. This mixture is a confession. There, no more false appearances, no plastering over is possible, filth removes its shirt, absolute denudation puts to the rout all illusions and mirages, there is nothing more except what really exists, presenting the sinister form of that which is coming to an end...All which was formerly rouged, is washed free. The last veil is torn away. A sewer is a cynic. It tells everything.

But if I had neglected this section, it would not have diminished my understanding of the story.

Some of the excursus distracted from the heroic storyline but proved germane to contemporary social and political discussions--such as the analysis of the political stage in France in the early 1830s, described in Volume IV, Book First, Chapters I - IV. These are the kinds of passages that get books banned in the red states:

Solve the two problems, encourage the wealthy,and protect the poor, suppress misery, put an end to the unjust farming out of the feeble by the strong, put a bridle on the iniquitous jealousy of the man who is making his way against the man who has reached the goal, adjust, mathematically and fraternally, salary to labor, mingle gratuitous and compulsory education with the growth of childhood, and make of science the base of manliness, develop minds while keeping arms busy, be at one and the same time a powerful people and a family of happy men, render property democratic, not by abolishing it, but by making it universal, so that every citizen, without exception, may be a proprietor, an easier matter than is generally supposed; in two words, learn how to produce wealth and how to distribute it, and you will have at once moral and material greatness; and you will be worthy to call yourself France.

So. I finished reading Les Miserables. I'm glad I read it, in the same way I'm glad I ran a marathon back in the '80s when I was young, energetic, child-free, and motivated by sibling competition. I have earned my bragging rights, but thankthelittlebabyjesus, I will never have to do it again.

What ridiculous book are you laboring to finish?

Eulogy: Alfred Charles Meyer

I’m not an expert on my dad, but I can tell you a few stories that will give you a pretty clear picture of what we have lost and what heaven has gained with his passing.

First of all, we know that dad and mom had the most perfect of marriages, and never had an argument in 64 years, one month, and one week of wedded bliss—or at least, not one that they would admit to. Their marriage was a union of best friends, and they always presented a united front in parenting us five kids. This meant that sometimes they were both wrong.

Dad had some fun dating an identical twin. You’d have to look pretty close at mom and her twin, my Aunt Jean, to tell the difference. Somebody once asked dad, “When you go to pick Joyce up for a date, how do you know you’ve got the right twin?” and dad said, “Who cares? They’re both cute.” Mom hated that story. Probably still does.

Dad was not a believer when he first started dating his cute girlfriend, Joyce. After they had dated awhile, mom told him she could not go out with him any more unless he came to church with her. So he did, and he fell under the spell of the great preacher Donald Grey Barnhouse at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. He heard the gospel, and believed it, and turned his life over to Jesus.

Dad loved to tell the story of how Pop-Pop, mom’s father, gave his permission for dad to marry her. Pop-Pop said he would not give his permission until dad went to Bible college for one year, so mom and dad both enrolled in classes at Philadelphia College of Bible. Dad ended up continuing there not for one year, or two, or three—but for nine years. That nine years laid the foundation for 40 more years of Bible study, and an unshakable faith.

Not only did mom’s influence bring dad to the gospel, but she took good care of him in every other way as well—and even at the very end of his life, as he held her hand in the Intensive Care Unit at Grandview hospital, he wanted to make sure she knew how much he loved her. “I love you, Daddy,” she said to him, and even though his voice was weak and blocked by a tube down his throat, we could all hear him say, “I love you, sweetheart.”

Dad was not a perfect parent, and each of his five children is messed up in his or her own way. But we don’t need him to be perfect to remember him with deep love and admiration, and miss him. He was ahead of his time as a hands-on dad who changed diapers and did housework. He would load all of us into the car on a summer Saturday morning, pack the cooler with sandwiches, fill the thermos with sweet iced tea, and drive us to Ocean City for a day on the beach. Every time he’d bring his garden spade and dig a giant sea turtle in the wet sand, and kids would come from up and down the beach to admire it and climb on it. The day on the beach would be followed by an evening on the boardwalk with bumper cars, skee-ball, Taylor’s pork roll, and salt water taffy.

I’m grateful for these kinds of growing-up memories of my dad. There are other images of dad emblazoned in my mind as well: Dad pulling weeds out of the yard, muttering about “bodacious dandelions” the whole time. Dad playing ping-pong with us in the basement. And then, in December, setting up what we called The Platform—that’s Platform with a capital P—a flat plywood table, with trains and winter scenery and battery-powered racecars with hand-held controllers. Dad setting up the artificial white Christmas tree year after year until it was actually sort of yellow, controlled by the kind of frugality comes from living through the Great Depression.

If you knew dad for very long, you learned that his faith was his top priority. I often found him, in his bedroom, on his knees, praying. Or he was sitting in his chair, reading his Bible, and perhaps referring to a devotional guide. He made some notes about his preferences for how we would remember him after he was gone, and these notes included a reference to I Corinthians 15. This chapter contains an eloquent summary of the gospel: Christ died for our sins. He was buried, and he was raised on the third day. And then this: “By the grace of God I am what I am,” Paul wrote, “and his grace toward me was not in vain.”

Maybe dad was thinking of this chapter in his last hours. He was resting peacefully; his eyes were closed. Mark said, “I wonder what he’s thinking about.” I leaned over Dad and asked him, “Hey Dad, Markie wants to know what you’re thinking about.”

He opened his eyes and looked in mine and said, “The cross.” Maybe he was thinking of these verses in I Corinthians 15:

For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

 “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

 “O death, where is your victory?

  O death, where is your sting?”

Later that same day I asked him, “Dad, are you looking forward to seeing Jesus?” and he answered without hesitating: “Amen.”

Birthdays are not all about presents. But...

I recently celebrated a Major Birthday Milestone. I'm not one to cry over spilt birthdays, and in fact, I attempt to derive as much enjoyment as possible from the things that traditionally go along with birthdays: presents, attention, presents, cards, people saying nice things to me, and presents.
 
Well, as it turns out, I had the best 50th birthday in the history of 50th birthdays. Many people celebrated with me, made noise with me, toasted and appreciated me--and some even gave me presents. Birthdays should not be all about presents when a person is 50 years old--but when said 50-year-old's love language is presents, chances are there will be some unwrapping going on. And there was.


But first: You know what else I love about my birthday? I love it when people write or say nice things to me or about me. My crazy group of Vagina Dialogue peeps wrote me a "screenplay" called "Ten Things About Eve" in which they said things that I am too embarrassed to repeat here because they just totally hyperbolized my good qualities. They also gave me some nipple bling, but since this is a family-friendly blog, we'll just leave that alone.

Even though I actually posted my birthday wish list on this blog, I told Mr. Peevie that the one thing that I really really wanted for my birthday was a hand-crafted card produced by my friend Queen, who's blog nickname I am officially changing to The Producer. I got it--and it was everything I had hoped it would be. Any card that references the music of Hildegaard von Bingen is destined for the Handcrafted Card Hall of Fame.

The actual highlight of the celebration of the anniversary of my auspicious birth came from Mr. Peevie, who always distinguishes himself in the Department of Presents. Mr. P came up with a gift that makes me feel sorry for every man, woman and child who is not married to him. Here it is:

O.M.G. Have you ever seen anything so beauteous? Such an artisanal masterpiece? Such a mother-lode of awesome?


This gift knocked my socks off. Mr. Peevie bought me my accessory of choice, a purse. But What a Purse! Mr. P. heard an interview on NPR about two years ago with Caitlin Phillips of Rebound Designs. He bookmarked it.


As my significant birthday approached, Mr. P. contacted the creative and talented Ms. Phillips and custom ordered this recherché handbag. He specified not only the title of the book to use--my favorite writing resource book, The Chicago Manual of Style--but the particular edition (14th). He also selected the fabric for the lining as well as the handle.


Now that is love, no matter what your love language is. Everywhere my bag and I go, we attract the admiration of others--and I tell the story of the best gift a girl could get for her birthday: love in the form of research, thoughtfulness, and effort; love that feels like being known by the lover.


[Adjectival props go to my frabjous friend, J-Ro, who gave me an autographed copy of Better Than Great: A Plentitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives by Arthur Plotnik. Thanks for giving me a gift that fits my heart and soul--although I may have overdon it a bit in this post.]

Birthday Gratitude

Ahhhh.  I love my birthday.  I wish I could have a birthday every month. 

Oh!  Oh!  We should totally do this.  Let's start a FB page called "I love to celebrate my Monthday!"  You would celebrate your Monthday like a birthday, on the same day of the month that your actual birthday falls on.  So my Monthdays would be the 2nd of every month!  Who's with me?

So anyway, my birthday brought me a great deal of delight this year, as it does most years.  (We won't talk about last year's birthday, mmmmkay?)  My birthday is a day when I get loved on by tons of people.  Some send hilarious or touching cards, some offer friendly birthday wishes on FB or email, and some!  Some give gifts.

Have I mentioned that my love language is gifts? Earlier in my birthmonth (two weeks before and two weeks after my birthday) I posted my birthday wish list.  Everyone should do this.  As Mr. Peevie wisely said, "I like to give a girl what she wants"--and what better way for people to know what you want than to use social media to get it out there?

So at this very moment, I'm listening to my new Bruce Cockburn CD, You've Never Seen Everything.  And tonight I will be creating a delectable dinner in my beauteous oval covered casserole dish, thanks to Mr. Peevie and the kids.

Other birthday highlights included:

• Being serenaded in front of my house by three neighborhood children.
• The softest fluffy pink slipper socks you will ever touch.
• A birthday note from a 10-year-old that read, "you are very nice, pretty, and very good at working things out."  I love that last compliment especially much.
• Reminiscing with a friend at dinner about Howard Johnson's clam strips and chocolate ice cream with tiny ice flakes, served in a chilled metal bowl with a buttery, crispy cookie.
• Having the same friend guess my actual age to be 41.
• Planting my flower planters on the deck.
• 37 birthday greetings on FB, including one in Pig Latin.
• Homemade cards from each of my children, including a promise from C. Peevie that I "get to watch (3) 24 episodes with me without any complaints (any!!)!"  He has started watching season 1 of 24, and for some inexplicable reason, he hates it when I plop down next to him on the couch to watch part of an epi with him.
• $49 from my thoughtful MIL and FIL--one dollar for each year.  You're never too old to get money for your birthday.
• Birthday coupons from M. Peevie, including ones for "unlimited kisses," 1 cuddle," "1 masage [stet] and spa treatment," "1 storybook night," and "1 kick in the butt."  Girlfriend has a bit of an attitude.
• Birthday coupons from A. Peevie, including these: "As many cuddles," "As many free hugs," "5 of anything you want," "20 takings out of the trash," "50 stories," and "30 foot massages."  

A. Peevie," I said, "Does this coupon mean that in 30 years, when you're 42 and I'm 79, you'll still give me cuddles?"

"If you still have the coupon," he said.

When I told Roseanne this story, she laughed out loud and said, "You can't even keep track of your keys for one hour, let alone a scrap of paper for 30 years!"  Ouch!  But I'm taking it to the lock box at the bank today.  So there.

Anniversary

What greater thing is there for two human souls
than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen
each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow,
to share with each other in all gladness,
to be one with each other in the
silent, unspoken memories?
                                                 --George Eliot

"What am I going to do with you?" I would ask Mr. Peevie, before he became Mr. Peevie.

"Fall in love with me and marry me," he would answer every time.  So I did.  I fell in love with him because he laughed at my jokes and made me laugh; he always made me feel like I was the smartest and most beautiful woman in the room; and the way he loved me pointed me to Jesus.

We were impecunious graduate students for whom a ten-year-old Chevy and a stereo symbolized great wealth; and my parents still had one child in college and a house that had lost a significant chunk of its market value--so we did the wedding on the cheap.  My borrowed wedding dress had to be altered for my narrow shoulders and slightly-less-than-average height.  The bridesmaids did not complain (much) about their green polyester skirts and floral blouses with lace around the square necklines, sewn by a local seamstress.

My pastor and my cousin performed the ceremony together, with my pastor doing the homily (I remember something about not fighting over who takes out the trash, but that's it) and my cousin officiated the vows at our church in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma.  We were, I think, my cousin's first wedding as an ordained minister.  It seems to have taken.  So far.

The cake-and-punch-and-little-bowls-of-nuts reception in the church fellowship hall was like something out of Lake Wobegon.  After the photos and circulating and smiling and cake-eating, we headed to my parents' home for cold cuts and ambrosia salad with family and close friends.  It was simple and sweet and slightly dorky.

The next day we headed off to Cancun for our honeymoon.  We both promptly got sick with Montezuma's Revenge, and spent the next week fighting for the bathroom.  "Things can only get better from here!" we assured each other; and they have.

Thanks for 26 deliriously happy years together, honey.  Being married to you is a most excellent gift.  Here is another little poem in honor of me being the lucky one:

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.
                                              --Ogden Nash

Christmas, Aught-Nine: Pekin Edition

The Peevies usually celebrate Christmas twice: once with Mr. Peevie's family, and once with my family. Both celebrations involve lots of eating, the opening of many presents, and irritation levels ranging from the I-will-mention-this-to-Mr.-Peevie-and-then-get-over-it variety to the to the hold-me-back-or-I-will-bitchslap-him/her assortment. More on the lattermost situation later.

Both celebrations also involve the driving of long distances in a tinier-by-the-minute minivan with five persons in varying stages of sleep deprivation, crankiness, constipation, and snot production. These are the times that try men's souls, these times of long-distance auto travel in sideways-blowing blizzards and patches of black ice and frequent pee stops. And the souls of women, as well.

So we have just survived our first Christmas of aught-nine; and after a day of laundry, re-packing, errand-running, and last-minute shopping, we will embark upon our second aught-nine-Noel. (Our house sitters have a large, hungry Dobermann and a loaded Remington, in case any of you Internet Lurkers out there have any funny ideas. Of course, I'm not talking to my loyal Green Room readers, who are all not merely law-abiding, but also above average in intelligence, beauty, and integrity.)

The first Christmas had a minimum of irritation and a high level of kindness, generosity, and sweetness. And--bonus!--there was no bleeding, and no broken bones! So I am bracing myself for Trouble in Christmas #2, because statistically, we are due.

Three kinds of soup simmered fragrantly on the stove, and 17 kinds of holiday cookies awaited us when we arrived in Pekin Friday night. The little cousins greeted us with joyous shouts and enthusiastic hugs. It's always curiously wonderful to me that cousins who see each other maybe three times a year have such warm and close-knit bonds with each other. Why does this happen?

On Saturday we attended the Big Game, in which little cousin Ri-Ri's team narrowly defeated the opposition in a nail-biter, 14-12. These 7- and 8-year olds are seriously cute basketball players, and some of them actually have skills. One tiny point guard on the other team dribbled like a Globetrotter, cleverly stutter-stepping his way around defenders and exploiting inadvertent picks to approach shooting range. (That's the point at which his skills more closely resembled those of a typical 8-year-old. Hence the score.)

After an unfortunate toilet-clogging situation because of yet another gigantic bowellian output from a Child Who Will Not Be Named, in which Roto-Rooter had to be called, but not until after the amateurs tried their hand at unclogging and succeeded in flooding the bathroom with fecal matter--I say, AFTER this unfortunate incident occurred, we took the kids out for some wholesome fun at Striketown in North Pekin.

I have to say--as a girl from the big city, I love this small-town bowling alley. The place was clean and friendly and uncrowded. When we arrived early in the afternoon, only two other customers were bowling in the 20-lane, out-of-the-way stand-alone building. Between the nine of us, we bowled about 16 games, rented eight pairs of shoes, drank a pitcher of Coke and about five beers--and the whole thing cost about $60.

The big winner was six-year-old cousin Tiny, with 112, as compared to my measely 102. I attribute my embarrassing micro-score to my aging, arthritic hips and the bowling ball that I carry taped to my abdomen. Mr. Peevie came through with a respectable 150-something, but he arrived late after some much-needed shoe shopping, so I'm giving Tiny the win.

And it is all about winning, isn't it?

Oh, wait. That's not very Christmasy.

Anyway, we had Christmas dinner at the SIL/BIL's lovely home overlooking a lake. SIL laid out a spread that would feed a small country, and we ate ourselves into comas. Then we opened presents from youngest to oldest, which used to put me in a good position, but now I'm one of the old folks.

The sun set on Christmas number one as we drove the three-hour distance home in about 2:40, unpacked, and got ready to to it all over again 24 hours later.

And then M. Peevie broke her leg.

Update, Plus South Dakota Tales

Mr. Peevie asked me to point you to the update at the bottom of this post.

And I thought I'd also take this opportunity to show you a few photos from my trip to South Dakota. Here are the five kids atop a smallish Badlands formation (l-r: A. Peevie, Samwise, C. Peevie, M. Peevie, and E-Dude):


And here is my beauteous angel, M. Peevie, totally owning the Badlands:


Here's how A. Peevie spent approximately 50 percent of his time in the car. I don't know if you can tell or not, but that's Manny the Manatee in his lap. It's probably the first time a manatee, stuffed or otherwise, has been within 1000 miles of the Badlands.


I wish I had a photo of the Wagon Wheel Bar, in Interior, South Dakota, population 67 according to the sign at the edge of "town." We went there for "dinner" on our first day in the Badlands. To get there, you drive into town on Highway 77, and turn right at the gas station/"mini-mart." You'll know you're headed in the right direction because the sign on the corner points toward the "Business District." Pass the town jail (photo credit: Murrax on Wikipedia), which Dr. Paradigm Shift insists is not currently used as such because "the ACLU would be all over it," but which I think is totally where they throw the obnoxious drunk guy on Saturday night.

Anyway, as we walked into the Wagon Wheel, our feet stuck to the tacky floor and the smell of cigarette smoke immediately saturated our hair and clothing. But we were starving, and the bartender/waitress was smiling and helpful, so we ordered burgers and chicken fingers and home-made pizza, and beer for the grown-ups, and sat down at two small, slightly sticky tables.

The kids asked for money for the jukebox and started playing Johnny Cash songs, plus a little U2, Bon Jovi, and Toby Keith. There were no Killers songs on the playlist, unfortunately, or I'm sure we would have heard Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf, which is absurdly inappropriate for an 8-year-old to sing along with, or perhaps Human.

Anyway, while we ate, a cowboy walked into the bar, followed by his large dog. The dog walked up to us, smelled us, and then strolled over to his water dish and got a drink. Apparently, he's a regular.

Then, a bunch of Native American pool players stopped by the bar for their evening sport. They were wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots, and flannel shirts with the sleeves cut off. They sat around the table talking and laughing and sipping chardonnay from long-stem wine glasses. No lie. It seemed a bit incongruous, but maybe that's just me.

In Which I Take Up Smoking, And Then Quit

I smoked my first cigarette ever on my 48th birthday this week. Boy, did I feel cool. And sexy.

My friend Rock Star had to light it for me, because I had no idea how to do it. I sucked on it a teensy bit, and coughed like a 12-year-old sneaking one of mom's smokes behind the garage for the first time. Even though I watch lots of TV shows where people smoke, I still had to be reminded to tap the ash off before I set myself on fire.

I wasn't planning to acquire a new noxious habit on my birthday; it just sort of happened. We were celebrating Dr. Vespinator's upcoming nuptials with a surprise shower. J. Cool hosted what was supposed to be a "godden potty" on the verandah, but of course this is June in Chicago, so with the wind chill in the 20s, we took it indoors.

At one one point, Rock Star, our resident bad girl and the most fun pastor's wife you will ever hang out with, went outside to smoke. We all decided to go out and smoke with her, sort of as a joke and sort of as a sign of solidarity. ("Smokers are one of the few groups left that it's OK to malign," Rock Star had said. "Yeah," I added knowingly, "Smokers and fat people.") So I grabbed her cigs from her purse and handed them around to the rest of the gang.

We all went outside with a cigarette hanging from our lips or dangling casually between two fingers like Marlene Dietrich. Rock Star was touched, I think; or maybe she was annoyed that we had just wasted an entire pack of cigarettes.

With our cigarettes in one hand, and our glasses of champagne in the other, we went around the circle making toasts to the guest of honor.

"To 50 years of uninterrupted wedded bliss!" I said, and we all clinked our glasses boisterously.

"Move over, Brangelina," toasted Queenie, "Make room for Mixie!" We giggled, clinked, drank and smoked. (BTW, that's funnier if you know Dr. Vespinator and her fiance's real names.)

I got better and cooler with the smoking with every puff; and I even tried to smoke out of my dwindling surgical neck hole* like a tracheotomy patient. But I'm happy to say, for the benefit of the youngsters out there, it was not enjoyable at all. I'll stick to my many, many other vices, thank you very much.

*NOTE: I can't believe I never told you the story of my gigantic surgical neck hole. I'm sure you'll want to hear it, and see pictures. Maybe later, kids. Try to keep yourselves calm while you're waiting.

Love and Marriage

For those of you out there who are starting to believe that marriage sucks, that it always ends unhappily, that the mere fact that Drew Peterson could find four women who wanted to marry him indicates an inherent problem with the institution: don't throw out the baby with the banns.

Yes, it appears to be true that marriage is in trouble. The stats on marriage are not hopeful: The divorce rate (3.6 per 1000) is half that of the marriage rate (7.5 per 1000), according to the CDC. (And why this is a statistic that the Centers for Disease Control collects, I have no idea.)

Please note: This does NOT mean that half of all marriages end in divorce. It means that half as many divorces occur every year as marriages--but that's not the same thing. Do I need to spell it out? Fine. If 1000 people get married, and 500 people get divorced, the divorces don't only come from the 1000 new marriages, but from all current existing marriages. Get it?

So articles like this and this are just not getting it right. This NY Times piece posits that "the statistic is virtually useless in understanding divorce rates." Nevertheless, as The Straight Dope points out, the stats are not good on the marriage survival rate even when they are interpreted logically.

Marriage is hard work even when you're married to a near-perfect specimen, as I am; and the problem is, most of us don't want to work that hard.

Fortunately, Mr. Peevie is willing to work very, very hard to make our marriage blissful; and so far (cross your fingers) he has not indicated that he will be seeking to replace me with a younger, cuter, lower-maintenance model. (Version, not runway.)

Here's a teensy anecdote that illustrates how sometimes, one person is giving, patient and peace-making, and the other person tends slightly toward cluelessness, over-reaction, misinterpretation, and general irascibility:

The day started with ten "Mommies" before 7:30 a.m. "Mommy, can you get me breakfast?" "Mommy, I need help with my math homework!" (Note: I don't do well on math after 10 a.m., let alone before 8 a.m.) "Mommy, what's the temperature going to be?" "Mommy, come look at my ginormous poop!" etc., etc.

Between 3 p.m. and 10 p.m., the "Mommies" expanded exponentially, as though there were 16 kids in the house and not just three. I was sick and tired, SICK and TIRED, of people needing something from me.

Then Mr. Peevie came home late after running a 3.5 mile race downtown and snagging some BBQ at the DePaul post-race chow tent. One of the first things he said were these words: "Did you wash any darks today?"

An innocent question, no? But what I heard was, "I need something from you. I need you to make sure my dark socks are clean." What I heard, my therapist cleverly pointed out to me, was, "Mommy!"

I detonated. "Everybody needs a piece of me!" I snapped. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I did wash darks today. In fact, I washed four frickin' loads of laundry, plus two loads of dishes, plus..."

Poor Mr. Peevie just looked at me. "E. Peevie, I just want to know..." he started.

"Yes, I washed your damn clothes!" I martyred, "and I'll go downstairs right this very second to make sure they're done in the dryer!"

Mr. Peevie, God bless him, chose not to repay evil with evil. This is what makes a marriage work: one person being a peacemaker when the other person is unreasonable and a teensy bit insane.

"Honey," he said gently, "I really just wanted to know the answer to the question. I'm not asking you to do anything for me." Talk about a soft answer turning away wrath! This guy lives the Bible, Old Testament and New, every day with me. Marriage is hard work--for him; but for me, it's easy. (Most of the time.)

His words threw sand on the blazing campfire of my hostility, and finally, I heard what he was really saying instead of what I heard through the filter of the irritating context of my day.

"Um, yes, I did wash darks today," I said cautiously. "I don't remember if the last load is in the washer or the dryer, though."

"OK," said my hero, "Thanks. I'll go check in the laundry room." See how easy that was?

In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage. --Robert Anderson, Solitaire and Double Solitaire

Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century. ~Mark Twain

Happy 25th anniversary, sweetheart. (Almost two weeks late...)

Caitlin's Story, Part One

We sent out hand-lettered birth announcements 15 years ago with these words:

Our daughter, Caitlin Libby Bradshaw,
was born and died on April 21, 1994--
18 weeks premature.

We felt an amazing sense of joy,
in the middle of overwhelming grief,
that we were able to hold her for two hours.

We knew you would want to know,
because she is as much a part of our lives
as if she had lived.

This was our introduction to parenthood--having a daughter who lived for two hours in our arms before her tiny heart stopped beating.

My pregnancy with Caitlin had been high-risk from the start. Since I had three prior pregnancies that ended in miscarriage during the first trimester, my OB/GYN had transferred my care to a practice specializing in high-risk.

I didn't have trouble getting pregnant, just staying pregnant. After dozens of blood tests, ultrasounds, and a very painful X-ray-type procedure called a hysterosalpingogram , ("this might be a little uncomfortable!") the docs decided that my problem was that my body wasn't producing enough progesterone to sustain a pregnancy; this was called a luteal phase deficiency.

Treatment entailed ovulation-inducing drugs, progesterone injections, and tons of ultrasounds. If you have been through infertility treatment, or you're going through it now, you know that there is nothing beautiful, natural or unstressful about making a baby under these circumstances. You want to have a baby, so you're willing to go through it; but it is hard work, emotionally and physically.

And the waiting! Oh, the waiting. It's almost physically painful. I realize that waiting is a fact of life, and everyone, not just the infertile, endure painful periods of waiting. But the specific waiting period between Cycle Day One and Cycle Day 14--when you can test for pregnancy--is such a universal challenge for the hoping-for-a-baby crowd that one of the many web sites for them is called TwoWeekWait.com. There are blog posts and articles and on-line diaries devoted to the 2WW. Googling "two week wait + infertility" produces 365,000 hits.

The waiting ended, the treatment worked, and I stayed pregnant for 15 weeks for the first time ever. We started breathing a bit more easily, and even told a few friends and family members our happy news. We had five weeks of joyful anticipation before we encountered a brand new problem.

The 20-week ultrasound turned up a problem with my cervix. Apparently the little bugger was slacking off on its job, and starting to dilate before it received its dilation orders. The medical community, showing an incredible lack of sensitivity to already hormonally imbalanced and guilt-ridden maternal-wannabe's, calls this condition incompetent cervix. Yeah, thanks guys, for the name-calling. Could you at least come up with a name that sounds like a medical diagnosis, instead of something on a not-so-stellar performance review?

I ended up on the operating table with my legs up in stirrups and my doctor staring up my vagina. The plan was for him to put in an emergency cervical cerclage--stitches to hold the cervix closed and prevent pre-term delivery--a procedure which has a success rate of somewhere in the range of 42 - 60 percent.

"E.Peeeeviiieeee," the doctor singsonged, "We have a little problem." And by "little" he meant "life or death." Apparently my lazy-ass cervix was already five centimeters dilated, and performing the cerclage would increase the risk that I'd go into labor right then and there. I needed to decide, my doctor said, whether to go ahead and do the cerclage, or to just wait it out without the cerclage. He estimated that the longest the cervix would hold without the stitches would be a week, which would put us at 21 weeks gestation--not nearly enough for the baby to be viable.

There I was, lying on the table, pubies to the wind, facing life and death decisions, and Mr. Peevie was nowhere to be found. The doctor even had him paged him over the hospital loudspeaker; but I had to make a decision sooner rather than later.

"Do it," I told him.

Stay tuned for the rest of the story, tomorrow, on Caitlin's birthday.

The Best Thing in the World

A. Peevie takes Verapamil, a medicine that slows his speedy-quick heart-rate down. We try to give it to him in the morning, because he's already got a fairly slow heart-rate at night--but sometimes we forget.

One day last week we forgot, so I had him take it after school. Unfortunately, a few hours later when he took his other meds at bedtime, he took an extra dose of the Verapamil. This caused my own heart-rate to increase significantly.

By the time I learned about the double-dose, it was after 10 p.m. I called the cardiology service, and soon got the cardiologist on the phone. Unfortunately, what we needed was not a mere sub-sub-specialist like him (pediatrics and cardiology), but a sub-sub-sub-specialist, a pediatric electrophysiologist--a physician who specializes in caring for children with heart rhythm disorders. I believe there are eight of these docs in Illinois.

So the docs conferred, and they came up with a plan: They wanted me to check A. Peevie's heart-rate every two hours. If it stayed above 40 beats-per-minute (bpm), I would keep checking every two hours. If it dropped to between 30-40 bpm, I'd check it every hour. If it dropped below 30, I'd need to bring him to the hospital to be monitored for the rest of the night.

By the time we'd worked out the care plan, A. Peevie was already asleep and curled up under his blue camouflage comforter, snoring gently. I checked his heart-rate while he slept, and its strong, regular rhythm (about 50 bpm) soothed my mild anxiety. I crawled under the covers next to him, set my Treo to beep me awake every two hours, and went to sleep.

I am normally a sound sleeper. I can sleep through earthquakes, thunder-storms, most snoring, and early morning radio talk shows which are loud enough to wake Mr. Peevie but never enter my consciousness. But on this night I woke promptly to my Treo singing its descending arpeggio, "Din-ne-ne-ne, Din-ne-ne-ne, Din-ne-ne-ne, Neh" every two hours. Each time, I rummaged under the covers for A. Peevie's skinny wrist, found his pulse, and counted the beats for a full minute. If he shifted, I'd briefly lose the pulse, and I'd start all over again. It usually took me two or three tries--because I felt it would be prudent to be sure I'd gotten it right.

At one point, between Treo alarms, A. Peevie woke up and looked at me. "What are you doing here?" he wondered.

"I'm checking your heart-rate every two hours," I said.

"How come?"

"Because I want to make sure that your heart doesn't slow down too much."

"But you don't usually have to do that," he observed.

"Right," I said. "But you don't usually take a double dose of Verapamil, either."

"Oh," he said; and then he smiled at me, cuddled closer, and went back to sleep.

"Great," I thought. "Now he's going to double-dose himself on purpose just so I have to sleep with him." He's a cuddly ten-year-old who would sleep in my bed every night if I let him. Which I do not. He's far too pointy for comfort.

At every check-point, the tell-tale heart-rate was safely in the mid-40s, so we dodged yet another trip to the ER for this high-maintenance boy.

In the morning as we were getting ready for school, I was kind of a zombie. "What's the matter, mom?" A. P. asked me cheerfully.

"I'm just tired, honey," I told him.

"That's my fault, isn't it?" he asked.

"No, baby, it's not your fault," I reassured him.

"But you had to wake up at night to check my heart because I took an extra dose," he said. "That's why you're tired."

"A. Peevie, it wasn't your fault that you took it," I said. "It was an accident." I looked him straight in the eyes. "And besides," I said, "That's my job--to take care of you, and make sure you're OK. It's the best job in the world."

He smiled at me, the kind of smile that makes my eyes fill up with tears and makes my chest tight with gratitude and love. There is nothing better in the world.

Eulogy

I got a call from a woman I didn't know, asking me to write a eulogy for her brother, whom I'd never met. I've never written a eulogy before, but I knew that I could do it. The bigger question was, what do you charge for a eulogy? How do you charge for a eulogy?

I interviewed the woman about her brother; let's call him Stephen. It turns out he was really a great guy, and in writing his eulogy, I got to know him. You should know him, too. Here's the eulogy his sister gave at his funeral:

I miss my brother Stephen. I’m sure you miss him, too. I think the world is going to miss him, because Stephen was the kind of person that the world needs more of: the kind of guy who didn’t think that love was a weakness or that faith made you a sissy. He knew that generosity made him richer, and making someone laugh was one more way to give a gift.

Stephen, as you know, was a big guy, and in many ways, a tough guy. He served as a sergeant in the Korean War, and led men into battle. Not only did he take his own turn on the front line, but more than once he went to the front line in place of a friend who couldn’t move for fear of the battle around him. It reminds me of a verse in the Gospel of John, John 15:13—“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Stephen was a tough guy, and a decorated soldier—but he wasn’t so tough that he couldn’t care deeply for his parents. He swore my cousins to secrecy when he was stationed right in the middle of a fierce fighting zone, because he knew mom and dad would lose sleep from worrying about him. When they found out, from a cousin who had missed the swearing-to-secrecy ritual, he reassured them as soon as he could that he’d be fine. And then he got wounded. Twice.

Stephen was married to his wife Annie for 54 years, and they had 10 beautiful children together. He instilled in his kids his own values of caring, giving, and respecting other people.

But even as he was being a father to his own kids, he was also sort of a father figure to my sister Kathy and me. When we’d have heavy hearts, we’d go to him, in private, and talk to him about our parents, or about whatever was bothering us. Stephen was a compassionate listener, and would always lift our spirits and help us feel better.

I admire how much Stephen loved and respected our parents. Even after he got married and started having children of his own, he’d still drive up to see them every two weeks. When Stephen was expected, the rest of us were chopped liver—“Stephen’s coming! We’ve got work to do. Let’s get cleaning! Let’s get cooking!” She’d cook—and all of us girls would help—all day Saturday and present a feast for Stephen and his family on Sunday. It was all about Stephen. Not that I ever resented him—I adored him, too.

And by the way, that was back when big families drove enormous station wagons, the kind with fake wood on the sides, and the kids all tumbling around in the back. It seemed like every time Stephen and Annie drove up, there’d be another little head popping up!

Later, after we grew up and moved away, he and Annie would come and visit us in Chicago. Kathy would introduce him to her friends and neighbors, and every one of them, without fail, would tell her later what a wonderful brother she had. Even Kathy's husband Andrew, who is as reticent as they come, always said he wished he had a brother like our brother Stephen. “He is going to be missed very much,” Andrew told me.

Stephen didn’t only care deeply about mom and dad. He loved every single one of his four brothers and five sisters, and none of us ever doubted it. He was the kind of guy who put family and friends ahead of most everything else. When his best friend Joe was getting married, Joe’s brother declined to be his best man because his fiance had the misfortune of not being Catholic. But Stephen stood by him, and stood up for him at the wedding.

Joe isn’t with us anymore either, but he told a story about how honest Stephen was. One time the two of them planned to skip school and go fishing. Joe wrote a note to tell the school that he was sick at home—and he forged his father’s signature. Stephen didn’t write a note, though, and the truant officer came to our house and busted them. What did Stephen say, what kind of an excuse did he make for not being in school? “We were going to go fishing,” he said. He couldn’t even tell a tall tale to the truant officer to get himself out of trouble.

There were thousands of stories—too many to count—that Stephen himself would tell about his youthful outdoor adventures. One time he led Joe and the other kids out to the woods. They were camping and being regular Daniel Boones, living off the land. It didn’t end well, though: Stephen and Joe had brought some bacon with them, cooked it over the campfire, and served it to their young woodsmen friends. I don’t know how you can cook bacon wrong—it’s already preserved, right?—but they all ended up getting violently ill.

Recently, Stephen’s friends and brothers and sisters have been coming from all over to support him, to try and help him heal just by being near him. “Why’d you come so far?” he said to us. “There was no need for that.”

But when our sister Corrie needed surgery, he had climbed in his beat-up hunting truck and drove non-stop across the country to California in order to be with her. You see, he had very high expectations for himself when it came to caring for other people—but he had very low expectations for what other people should do for him. He never gave a seminar on love, or wrote an article on friendship—but this is the way he lived, and as it turns out his life was an eloquent testimony about what love looks like.

I talked to our cousin Jack Bauer in Sydney, Australia last night. This is what he said about Stephen: “He was a true Bauer man, like the Last of the Mohicans: a tall man, a wide man, strong and honest, a man of principle and integrity, of heart and hard work.”

Stephen never complained—at least, not that I ever heard. He worked hard to provide for his family, because ten kids don’t feed themselves. He frequently worked double shifts as a tradesman in the tool and die business—but he never complained about hard work. Stephen would say that he worked himself fortunate.

Instead of complaining, he liked to tell stories and to make people laugh. When Stephen came into a room, you knew that you were about to hear a great story about a 10-point buck or a ridiculously stubborn Northern Pike.

He never lost this ability to make people laugh, even when he knew he was not going to get better. His family stayed close, and did what they could to keep him comfortable—but Stephen, who never missed an opportunity to make a joke, said, “You know what’s worse than dying? Having 10 women hovering around me, asking me can I get you this or can I get you that.”

The author and columnist Anna Quindlen published an essay in the New York Times almost exactly 14 years ago in which she said that her great journalistic contribution to her family is that she writes obituaries. She ponders death, and grief, and loss:

The landscapes of all our lives become as full of craters as the surface of the
moon…I write my obituaries carefully and think about how little the facts
suffice, not only to describe the dead, but to tell what they will mean to the
living all the rest of our lives. We are defined by who we have lost.

When someone we love dies, we grieve—but this is only the first part of our shared experience. This loss, Anna Quindlen says, is a “continuous presence of an absence.”

We have all been touched by Stephen’s excellent life. I think, now that we are sharing the experience of his loss, of the continuous presence of his absence, we should honor Stephen’s memory by being more like him: Complaining less, and laughing more. Giving more than we get. Choosing to do the loving thing, without expecting a payback. Allowing our faith to shape us into better, kinder people.

I’m going to close this with a verse that I think Stephen might have chosen as his final message to us, also from the Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 27: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

We’re going to miss you, Stephen.

In the end, I charged my client a hundred bucks. I remembered that when we dealt with Tohle Funeral Home to have our tiny Caitlin cremated, the funeral director was so kind: he didn't charge us for his time, but only for the costs he incurred. I wanted to offer the same kindness to my client.

It turns out that writing a eulogy is, essentially, story-telling--just like a lot of other rhetorical forms. But I don't really want to add eulogies to my repertoire. It would be a little like ambulance chasing.

But for this once, it was actually an enjoyable assignment. The only downside was that somebody had to die for me to get it.

One Hand, One Heart

Remember, honey? Remember Jim and Susan singing "One Hand, One Heart" from West Side Story at our wedding 24 blissful (ahem) years ago? Does it make you misty to hear these lyrics?

Make of our hands one hand, make of our hearts one heart, make of our vows one last vow: Only death will part us now.

Make of our lives one life, day after day, one life.

Now it begins, now we start: one hand, one heart! Even death won't part us now. Make of our lives one life, day after day, one life. Now it begins, now we start: one hand, one heart! Even death won't part us now.

Me neither. It's a pretty song, but it doesn't really say much. I'd probably choose a different song today to capture our epic love and hopeful future. But my point--and I do have one--is that I'm incredibly glad we hooked up.

I could not have known back then, in my youthful ignorance, that you would turn out to be the kind of husband and father that other women only dream about. I thought I knew; but then again, I thought I knew a lot of things that it turns out I was wrong about. (We won't go into that here--but now that I think about it, that would be interesting, wouldn't it, to talk about the things we were so sure we were right about 20 or 25 years ago, and now it turns out we couldn't have been more wrong?)

And here's the thing: I can't even take any credit for having chosen well. I'm not saying it was luck, of course. I'm much too Presbyterian for that. I'm going with grace, with really and truly undeserved favor. God gave me the best gift that God can give a human being on this pock-marked earth: a spouse who is my my spiritual soulmate, my best friend, my partner in the richest sense of the word.

Henry Ford said, "My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me." You're my best friend; you bring out the best in me, by overlooking or quickly forgiving my faults and weaknesses and inadequacies, and by telling me over and over again what you love and like and appreciate about me.

(OK, hold on. I'm feeling a bit verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves...)

All right, I'm back. You know that DeBeers commercial that always makes me teary? The one where you see an older couple walking along a path, and then a younger couple overtakes them, passes them, and then the woman looks back over her shoulder at them, and you see the older couple smiling and holding hands? I used to identify with the younger couple, but now I'm getting closer to seeing myself, seeing us, in the older couple. We're not there yet--they're probably in their 70s or 80s, probably married for 50 years or so. But we're halfway there, anniversary-wise.

I'm looking forward to the next 24 years, holding hands with you, and laughing.