Thanks to everybody who commented with "get well" messages. I can sit at a computer fairly well now, which is a jolly good thing because I had to return to work today. Mostly, in staying off the computer, I was being a big baby and lying around in bed watching old movies and being waited on hand and foot by my Lovely and Brilliant Wife, whose patience with my whininess knew no bounds.
What happened a week and a half ago was that I had a hernia fixed that I've been carrying around for a decade now. It was a fairly minor operation, but between insurance hassles and work schedule, I just hadn't gotten around to going through with it. In the course of the whole thing, I had a reaction to the anesthetic that caused some sort of heart malfunction, which landed me in the ICU for a night. I don't feel like a guy with a dicky ticker, and I rather suspect it was a trivial thing, but my doctor is a cautious sort who is taking shameless advantage of the situation to insist on certain lifestyle changes. That's okay; I like him being careful, since I tend not to be. Meanwhile, I'm trying to stay on task at work and stay off the painkillers until I get home.
Meanwhile, Christina went in for another ultrasound, and now we know: it's a girl. We decided tentatively on the name "Mona Grace," Mona after my grandmother and Grace because Christina's always wanted a little girl named Gracie to say "good night" to. I'm waiting for a chance to call my brother and sister-in-law, who just got married this summer, to see about godparenting. I've never had to ask a family member to do this before (Dai's godparents were from Christina's family), and it's fortunate that I have two Catholic brothers, all the rest of my family is Protestant. (Except for my Reverend Auntie, who as a Unitarian minister defies all such pigeonholing. Not that pigeons are any less valid than other holeable birds, of course; all are equally holey.)
Finally, it's time to start feeling old and in the way again, as I'm counting down to another birthday. I'll be 38, which seems more significant than it actually is. It's the year that most people have their 20-year class reunion, showing all the former teenagers in their balding, beer-bellied adulthood. I'll have a daughter turning 18 this year, and a son going to college. Within a decade, I'll almost certainly be a grandfather, and a decade isn't as long as it used to be. I'm the age my parents were when they got married. (No, they're not in their 70s; it was a second marriage and they both had teenagers.)
So far I've outlived Janis Joplin (27), Hank Williams (29), Mozart (35), Marilyn Monroe (36), and both Mama Cass and Karen Carpenter (32). I've always held a secret hope that Mama Cass and Karen Carpenter are up in heaven laughing at each other today. (Yes, I know Mama Cass' "ham sandwich" story is an urban myth. Let's not spoil a good image, though, okay?)
At times like this I sit and play Randy Stonehill's song over and over, and remember when turning thirty was just as scary as nearing forty is now:
Well, now thirty ain't like fifteen
And it's not like twenty-five
My back's a little stiff
And there're some lines around my eyes
But I've still got my energy
And I've got most of my hair
And I'm not too old to rock and roll
And I'm not really scared
Of turning thirty...
Or, to quote the song I always play on my birthday,
When just a boy, he left his home
Thought he'd have the world on a string
Now the years have come and gone
Through the streets he walks alone
Like the old dog gone astray, he's just old and in the way
There's truth in both songs, but overall, I like Uncle Rand's vision better. (No, not this Rand! This Rand!) And besides, he's now older than Jerry, who sang about an age he never lived to see. Who died of a heart attack because he couldn't change his lifestyle soon enough. Who left this brokedown palace without ever getting to see his grandchildren. I guess aging isn't so bad after all, when you consider the alternative.
Mama, Mama, many worlds I've come. And there's plenty more ahead.
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