Darby Sanders

Twins

2011-08-07T00:39:00.003-04:00

Estella looks crazy in this photo. She's the one crouching, with her tongue partly out of her mouth. Luna is the one half-standing, lips pursed.

This photo was taken in the Adirondack chair in our front yard. It was taken in the Spring. You can see the bushes blooming popcorn-like blossoms in the background.

At one point this summer, Tallulah (the seven year old) covered this entire chair with words, in chalk. Then she 'painted' chalk covers all over the chair. Then it rained, and all of the lovely pastel colors washed off into the grass. The grass around the base of the chair was sprinkled with fine, multicolored chalk debris.

Just a few days before this photo was taken (by me), the babysitter Rosie had chopped bangs out of the girl's ragged hair. The bangs have just begun to grow out.

We had a long summer. In two days, it's over.

We'll be feeling like that chalk then.

Good and Bad

2011-08-03T00:01:00.000-04:00

Walter Mosley wrote in his great, little known book about Writing called This Year You Write Your Novel, that the writer is going to have good and bad days, and that the great writer (like some kind of Iron Man racer) manages to have the guts to get through both. Some days are going to be sublime. Some days are going to be crap. Some days are going to be...middling.

Now, honestly, I loathe these types of books. Really the heart of the matter is that you either have the guts to write a book -- and to learn on the way what it takes or what you don't have to give -- or you simply don't. And maybe you can live with that. Or maybe you feel like you can read a little book which will continue your delusion that you're that mystical personality called "a writer." But i have to say, this book has helped me through the dark hours. This book, with just a few simple lines here and there, has articulated the very essence of the struggle to write; and so I like it. I don't think it's for everyone. But it's good, unpretentious, and clean.

The real key is having the patience, the stamina, the heart to write on those days in which you feel like what you're writing is shit, which it very likely is. The number of "great" days is likely hugely less than the number of "crap" days. The thing you've got to remember is that what you're writing is not supposed to go on the bookshelf, in the printed volume, as soon as it leaves your holy/unholy fingertips. I think about this advice all the time. In fact, I think it's saving my life.

Snapshot

2011-08-02T23:32:00.000-04:00

My girls...

From the Bookshelf: The Last Picture Show, by Larry McMurtry

2011-08-01T13:15:00.001-04:00

This is the book cover from my second copy.

One of my favorite books is Horseman, Pass By by Larry McMurtry. The book was later adapted into a film that is nothing like the book - Hud.

The Last Picture Show, which my class and I discussed last week, was also adapted into a film -- an Oscar winning film of the same name, by Peter Bogdanovich. This is one of the few instances in which the film and the book are both extraordinary; and it's one of the few instances in which the plot and characters of the film cling closely to the novel. The film, of course, must move more briskly, but I'm blown away by the film every time I watch it.

And I'm crazy about the book, which I just subjected my class to reading; I think they had mixed reactions. Why read a book about such a desolate place? Why read a book in which there is such sadness and misery? Why read a book about a dying place?

This books was written in the 60's. But there is something prophetic about it. There is a deep, profound commentary here about the changing America of the times, and the changing America to come. The loneliness, the sadness, and the pall of death that hangs over the dead town of Thalia is starting to spread from the abandoned oil towns in the middle of Texas to the rest of America. There is certainly that feeling.

I think the book belongs in the same category as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio, a collection of shorts about a symbolic/mythical American town full of perversion, religious confusion, moral contradictions, and loneliness. Both books believe there is something alienating about the American experience, and in turn, the human experience. There's a whole subgenre here that is worth exploring.

Last Picture Show is replete with sex. The young harlot Jacy Farrow -- daughter of the town harlot before her Lois Farrow -- sleeps with no less than five men. She uses sex in a futile attempt to get...what...we're not sure, and she isn't either. A reputation? A new place in society? The thrill? To break the monotony of the dead world that is Thalia? To woe a man into marriage? She's lost, and the men pursuing her are lost, too. And every sexual encounter ends badly. She never feels fulfilled.

This is a still the film with Sonny and Ruth.

Most of the sex, in fact, ends badly, even the novel's big love affair. At the heart of the book is what we'd now impolitely call a "fuck buddy" relationship between Sonny, a young high school graduate, and Ruth, the bored and lonely housewife of the high school football coach, who's vaguely portrayed as a closet homosexual (a fascinating layer to the novel -- one among many layers). Ruth and Sonny meet regularly in Ruth's house, while Coach is at school, and they carry on a blissful series of romps for months on end. She's twice his age, but he doesn't mind. He doesn't admit to loving her, and she never admits to loving him, but that is the nature of love, as McMurtry sees it. When the affair ends because Duane falls for a ruse by Jacy, Ruth spirals into depression, and Sonny feigns indifference. In a line that breaks my hear, Ruth declares, "I'm around the bend now. It's over." As the novel ends, Sonny attempts to make a painful reconnection with her; but everything is lost. The town movie hall is closing, the town pool hall is deserted, and Sonny's best friend, a daft young boy named Billy who loved Thalia will all his heart, has been killed. This is a book about how difficult it is to cope with a wide range of loss. Once it's gone, it's gone.

Every word, every sentence, every paragraph of this novel is covered in Texas dust, and the language itself -- spare and wispy - feels as abandoned and dead as the town and people it describes. The town was once prosperous, an oil boom town. But now it's dead. There's only one pleasurable thing to do in Thalia: play football. The whole town knows what's going on in the local game, and they all offer advice to Sonny and his buddy Duane on how to play. But when you're done with high school, you're done, and Thalia is your grave.

The novel suggests that we have but one glorious time in our lives -- the high school years -- when love is new and hope is strong -- and then it fades, and then it's gone, but still somehow you've got to find a way to live on. (John Mellencamp?) Sonny seems to cling to whatever shred of pleasure in life he can, and his clings to it in Ruth. But in the end, it slips out of his hand, and he's left cowering in Ruth's kitchen under the crushing weight of some immense and almost unbearable truths about American life. It's a feeling not unlike the one Ruth expresses when her crude, conflicted, and massive husband inflicts on her as he crushes her in an act of loveless lovemaking.

This notion of modern American life is haunting.

Outlining (Process House)

2011-07-30T10:46:00.000-04:00

I don't always outline my projects. But I did for this latest one. Here's a picture of the fifty part outline I wrote by hand one night. I stayed up late drinking wine and scratching out this vision of the book I'd been vaguely turning left, right, up, down in my mind -- but never really fully forming it.

I worried as I started out on the book that the outline would feel too rigid. That's always been my fear, really. You can imagine and plot out the greatest story; but when you sit down to write that sucker, something may happen that you didn't expect, and the whole damn outline is shot to hell. Then what was the point in writing the outline in the first place? The other issue is that great prose has to be spontaneously created. It has to feel as if it's sprung from some place naturally, organically. You can't plan it, and you can't expect it to appear before you just because you're writing to the outline.

All that said, I went to work the other day and photocopied this document. (Later found out that faculty must now strictly limit their use of the photocopier!) I put one copy on the nightstand. I taped one copy to my office desk. Then I brought home the original, done in pencil, and I keep it by my desk. I have to keep a few inches away from the ledge of the desk; if I don't, the twins are likely to grab it and ravage it, tear it to pieces. And you know, that might not be a bad idea, considering my reservations.

But the good thing about the outline is that it forces me to consider how the story must keep going. The story must keep moving forward at regular intervals. There must be what Janet Burroway said "constant discovery and decision making." Sometimes my work gets bogged down in detail or lingers in scene too long as I grope to figure out what should happen next or what's going in a specific character's mind or heart. But this outline is all founded on the notion of continuing revelation and the central character doing something significant.

All the same, if I'm not open to potential changes or moments in the story, as it naturally arises, that don't jive with the outline, the story's going to have that same dead stagnant feeling that's worried me to no end on other projects.

The other thing...you've got to press through. You've got to keep going every day, or you'll lose touch with the story, with the people, with the themes and the whole world you're creating. The outline helps there. I've demanded, of myself, that I get through every numbered section, every day; that keeps the story going forward and it marks progress, about 1500 words a day. After that I'm toast. Also, that takes about ninety minutes, and with all I have to do, that's about the most time I have on my hands, on a daily basis, to write. Yep, it's come down to that.

I've stapled the outline to a few blank sheets of paper. I get ideas about how a certain section should work better after I've written it. But I've got to press on. I've got to shape the whole contraption first, then see if I can tweak the gears or oil the grooves better later on. Pressing on is really a big deal. Get that first draft down; along the way, I'm noticing what could be done better. But I just have this sense that if I go back and try to correct things or reshape things, I'll be writing section one forever. Can't let that happen. This story is potentially the one. Not gonna blow it.

Twins

2011-07-28T16:46:00.000-04:00

Here's a recent picture of the twins...

Blogging Again

2011-07-25T10:14:00.000-04:00

I'm going to start blogging again. I'm working on a new novel called "The Traveling Executioner's Daughter," and I'm writing a great deal. It feels good just to write, even if it's not solely on the novel.

I folded in elements on the project I've been working on for a while, "The Fifty-Two Week Strip," into parts of this new project. So all is not lost on the so-called "...epic stripper novel" that has haunted me for quite some time.

One year

2010-08-20T06:46:00.002-04:00

Put together a video celebrating Luna & Estella's first year...

Home!

2009-11-05T12:13:00.003-05:00

November 5. The twins are home! Writing those words -- suddenly -- it's shocking. I feel a kind of buzz come over me. But they're home, truly home, resting right now in a crib, together, in our bedroom.

We had heard that Stella would be coming home last Thursday, October 29. The factors here were simple: can she maintain her own body temperature, can she keep gaining weight, and can she sleep in an open crib, and can she take a bottle for 3 days? She passed the tests, and we were given the call. Come get your child, the NICU nurse said, it's homecoming day.

I had been envisioning this moment for 11 long weeks. I have not missed a day of seeing them, even if only fleetingly at night, after a busy day in the office. Eleven weeks, or 77 days, or 1,848 hours. And now here was my baby girl, Estella Faye, coming home.

I didn't feel like cracking, though, which is what I thought would happen. No I only steeled myself for more, because I knew the story was not done. Luna would stay for another week or two. They had attempted to keep her in the open crib, but her temperature kept falling.

Jenny & I met the NICU nurse about three in the afternoon. The nurse on duty has been through alot with us -- she'd been the primary nurse. Jenny embraced her, and nearly broke into tears. I couldn't watch. I filled out paper work. I got the car seat ready. I pulled Tallulah's art work off the white boards. Over the course of weeks, Tallulah had put together about a dozen drawings, in various shades of crayon, of us, of the twins, of her, of the NICU, etc.

We left after about an hour, with Estella in her car seat. I carried her. The car seat felt light and vulnerable. I peeked down at her every few strides, nestled in blankets. Only her little scrunched face appeared. I didn't feel great. I felt nervous. I thought a great deal about how much longer we would have, about how many more nights I'd be coming to see Luna.

But it wouldn't be that long. Not at all. It would only be a few days. To our shock, the NICU nurses and docs began testing Luna again, in the open crib, and for this round, she passed. Only two days after Estella was discharged, we got the phone call from the nurse -- it was for Luna to come home as well.

The same routine -- Jenny & I are arriving around 3pm, filling out paperwork, tearing down artwork. I was surprised only to see Luna in her new crib -- if you could call it a crib. They had turned over the large crib to another kid, and Luna was now resting, swathed in blankets, in what was essentially a giant stainless steel pan. So this is where her journey would end then -- from the dozens of wires inside of a incubator, to a cold steel tray, and a waiting car.

This departure from the hospital rocked me more than Estella's. This was it. We would not be coming back. Our time at NICU would be over. We walked slowly out of the pods, and Jenny said good-bye to a few nurses. The primary nurse carried Luna now, and I think it was a moment of pride for her, to see these two girls she'd cared for weeks on end finally end their journey.

I had washed my hands with the blood red soap one last time. I had squirted my hands with the alcohol sanitizer one last time. I'd sat in the green pleather rocker and held Luna one last time while Jenny signed off on some forms. I took a last look around the "pod," where the walls were now occuped with new isolettes, with new kids.

A woman immediately to our left was having pictures of her baby made. She'd been with us since the arrival of the twins. Her boy would be going home the next day, although with an oxygen monitor. She is much younger than us, and I've never seen the father, although he has come in daily. She wears tight jeans and hoop earrings and talks on the cell phone. Her boy is huge, over six pounds. We say our good-byes.

Walking out of the NICU with Jenny and the nurse carrying Luna was a deeply moving experience. But I didn't want to fall apart. I had set a goal of this moment, and now it had come, and I savored it. I don't ever want to go back to that place. I don't ever want to have to go through the agony again. We walked slowly through the lobby, past the sinks. I asked the secretary to buzz the door, and the door opened, and out we walked, for the last time. A few moments later, I'd pulled the car out of the parking deck and idled it in front of the hospital.

It was a Sunday afternoon. We were by ourselves in the driveway. The nurse and Jenny came out and I opened up the back of the car. It was quiet, desolate, and overcast. I clipped the car seat into place. I gave the nurse a hug. Jenny passed along her business card and then gave the nurse a gift, a set of necklaces that she had made -- a moon, and a star, for our kids.

This nurse has been taking care of premature babies for over twenty years. She took the present quietly, and embraced Jenny and told us to call her if we needed anything. Then the double doors of the hospital closed behind her. She moved quickly back into the hospitals, to the elevators I'd been riding for weeks, back to the NICU, back to work.

Then we were on our own. Estella, 5 pounds. Luna, 4 pounds. Ready for living.

*

I had thought very little about what life would be like for us, Tallulah and the twins when we brought them home. I remember mentioning to Jenny that the things most folks complained about when having babies -- the sleepless nights, the dirty diapers, the incessant crying -- all of that seemed like it would be a wonderful experience for us, nothing to complain about at all. Just get the girls home.

I wish I'd thought about it more. Getting the kids home was a revelation. This was going to be serious, twenty-four hour work. The past two weeks have been overwhelming, frightening, and profound. We've endured some frightening choking incidents, several doctor visits, and some long, long nights of wailing and gargling.

A few days ago, we had to take both girls in to a scheduled appointment with a pediatric surgeon.

Luna has a hernia, which she has had for some time. The hernia is actually one of her ovaries, which has popped through the folds of her lower abdomen. Estella is still living (thriving) with a cyst in one of the lobes of her lungs. This will likely require some surgery.

Jenny & I sat together in the small, dank doctor's office with the twins in car seats on the floor before us. We talked, we waited. Every now and then, Luna or Estella would squawk or sigh. They were nestled under blankets, under the hoods of the car seats, only their small pink faces visible. These are our kids. These are survivors, endurance champions. Jenny & I fell quiet, looking down, finally, in a way, willing to believe that we would get through this, and that more, more than we dared to dream was about to happen to us, and happen for a long, long time. It seemed to get very, very quiet in that room just then, and very still, and I thought that so much of what had happened to us was beautiful, lovely luck, and it was all only the start, only the smallest of pivots against the greater, huge wedge of the living to come. I waited. I tensed. I smiled at Jenny. She smiled back at me. We looked at our twins, and just then, there was that knock at the door. And so it begins.

Coming home?

2009-10-27T21:55:00.002-04:00

October 27. October We are lucky. How to be happy? I'm not sure. I don't know what happiness is any longer except the next moment.

The past two weeks have gone quickly, and the news has shifted rapidly. All good news, all the stuff of life, of persistence, of what is to come. The piece of me that was on the floor remains, and I feel scarred, but I'm still breathing, and the girls are all right. More than all right.

In brief, Estella is coming home, in just two short days, if all goes well with this next and final phase of their stay in the NICU. Tonight Jenny is "rooming in" with the twins, at the hospital, in a small hotel-like room down the hall from the NICU. Every few hours, she'll wake up and nurse Estella, and possibly Luna. If Estella does well, she'll come home Thursday.

While Jenny is with Estella, the nurses will be able to monitor Estella from the NICU. Estella will still be hooked up to her leads that keep track of her vitals. If there is a problem, the nurse jogs down the hall to see what's happening. The monitor is a tether, a lifeline.

Really we have been tethered, in so many places (heart, guts, mind) to the NICU itself, for ten long weeks. Amazingly, that's how long this has been going-on. Ten weeks as of tonight. The twins are ten weeks old, which makes them 37 weeks into gestation -- if they'd gone full term.

Estella is almost five pounds. She has been sleeping in the "open crib," and they've removed her feeding tube. No more sinuous orange line tucked into her left nostril, no more giant syringe flowing pumping breast milk from atop the unit. She has been feeding strictly from a bottle for over a week. For five straight nights, I held her in my lap, with her head resting on my knee, and I gave her a bottle. Down the hatch, all of it, every time. "You don't know how lucky you are," a nurse remarked last night. "I don't want to even think about the horrors I've seen," she said, and she shook her head. "I work here," she said. "You come like you guys do, you don't see it all. But I see it all, and it's not pretty." She wasn't articulate enough to describe what she meant. I could only guess. "Most kids born at 27 weeks, coming through here, have severe problems. You don't know how lucky you are."

Is she right? Are the problems -- like Luna's brain bleed -- looming? Will there be one tonight? Or is this something the nurses say to you, to make you feel special, to make you feel as if you've triumphed, either to make you feel as if what you have been through was not ordinary, when in fact it is, or to make you feel extraordinary, because it truly is that type of experience. I'm not sure. I don't want to guess or wager an answer. What is it the writer Gardner said? Revel in the questions themselves, not in the answers.

Stella looks, stunningly, like a small, full term child. Our child.

As for Luna, she is doing very well, too. I don't know what will happen tonight with her. She weighs three and half pounds, much less than Estella. Her body seems smaller (although they look more and more identical), and she may still require some tube feeding. But here is the thing -- the girl is a fighter. "She has come a long way, and she may need more time," the nurse said. "Babies like her rarely go home this soon, but she is doing very well...." When Jenny & I went to the hospital at lunch today, we discovered Luna & Estella in the same "double wide" open crib, decked out in the Halloween costumes that their grandmother from St. Louis had shipped. The adorable factor was thick in the air, almost overwhelming. Trick or treat? The nurse said, "I want her to go home with Stella." So there could be that happening, too, which is both wonderful and frightening.

At some point, in the last few weeks, we have inched from one anxiety and into another. Now that the twins look as though they'll survive, we worry now about our ability to handle them at home. I told a nurse about Jenny's fears, one evening, and she laughed. "We like a paranoid mom," she said. "It's good that she's nervous. That means she'll be a good mother."

I have no doubt of that. And I feel good about my ability to handle what may come, although confidence has nothing to do with the fear I feel.

I wish we could bring a monitor with us, and we may be required to do so. But if we don't, we will just have to be vigilant.

Tallulah

2009-10-17T22:22:00.003-04:00

October 17. Today marked the first day that Tallulah got to meet her sisters. We made some special arrangements with the lead physician, and very early this morning, we took Tallulah to a conference room adjacent to the NICU, where a nurse brought in Estella and Luna to see and hold.

Jenny held both the twins, I snapped pics, and Tallulah scrunched in close, carefully watching her sisters, sometimes holding Estella's head in her hand.

We had a precious ten minute window. This was somewhat of a risky thing to do, but the docs had okayed it, as has the supervising nurse. I was self conscious about having Tallulah in the waiting room, where we're required to scrub down, and where a nurse confronted us about having a child in there -- the rule is, no kids under 16. I wasn't exactly comfortable being the exception.

Lots of folks have asked us about Tallulah, how she is handling all of this. It's been a tough eight weeks for her, no doubt, but I believe she is doing okay. Really I have no way of knowing for sure. She has asked some heart-breaking questions here and there, namely, "Are the twins going to die?" We thought it would be good for her to see the twins and show her that they were living, breathing creatures, her sisters, her future cohorts. She was aglow the whole visit, and very tender and careful with the twins. I know she has wanted sisters for a long while, and I know this wasn't what she expected. It's not the normal routine she had encountered in books, with the sweet fat baby wrapped up and grinning in a crib. No this experience is totally different. All the same, in the end, I think she will be proud of what she'd had to go through, although a great deal of it, if not most of it, has been a struggle for her to understand -- or at least, to articulate.

For the past weeks, she's been making a squishing sound in her cheeks. She'll get preoccupied with a task, like drawing or reading, and while she's doing that, she'll "squish" her cheeks, which is really just forcing air through a clenched pocket of inner cheek. I know she's doing this because she's nervous; when I ask her what makes her nervous, she lowers her head, hiding behind her blond main, and then will mutter that its the twins. Seems she loves them more than we have imagined.

Tallulah has been getting into photography lately. We've loaned her a digital snapshot, and she's taken to photographing with it constantly. The accidental images she captures are stunning. The ones of me bending over to change out a trash bag, not so appealing. She's taken several portraits of Jenny and me, and she loves, of course, photographing the dog.

This morning she crouched over the isolette and fired off a few shots of the twins. I felt happy for her. She liked the whole notion, and while I think some of it was imitating me, I think a big part of it was "articulating" or "understanding" for her, a way of compartmentalizing the experience, of trying to define it for herself. If the camera stops her squishing, so be it. We all need some kind of camera, don't we?

This was also the first moment that our entire family was in the same room, together. This I did not realize until much later. A family of five. I spent the entire time snapping pics. (Not ready to post those yet, too close to the moment) Later I realized what I'd missed, or captured, however you want to look at it.

This was also the first time the twins were huddled close to each, so very close to each other, in the same little crib. They were swathed and on their sides, just centimeters from each other, almost as if in the womb again. We have held them closely, but we have not put them together like this, and here they were. At one point, Tallulah huddled over them, looked down at them, smiled.

She is a good kid, a lovely kid. Today we walked up to a "festival" at the Greek church near where we live. She wore her pink flamingo costume. Literally -- there is a giant flamingo head to this crazy outfit, sits on top of her head; and the arms are wings that she can flap, and there's this cottony pink tail that hangs off her rump. Ridiculous. At the festival, in the parking lot and on the soccer field, there was a moon walk, a cake walk, some bean toss games, etc. Trashy good, giants bags of popcorn, chintzy goods for sale on cart tables, baked goods. We bought mom a scarf, and we racked up a ton of fattening items on the cake walk. Then Tallulah got her face painted. It was a cold, blistery afternoon. The walk back was bitter, into the wind. I gave Tallulah my black coat, and she wore it with relish. She walked between Jenny & me, and I couldn't help up crack up, this cute blond kid in a giant black overcoat -- and cheetah prints stocking, did I mention -- with a flamingo head. She was laughing, kicking her legs, rolling her big blue eyes.

Eight weeks in the NICU for her sisters. I washed Stella tonight in the tub, fed her a whole bottle, then brought her to my shoulder and shuddered. I thought of Tallulah, and I hoped, hoped she was going to be okay. This isn't easy for any of us, most of all her. I can only imagine what is going on in her intense, imaginative mind. All I can do is get home and hold her, too, bring her to the same shoulder her sister had breathed on, rock her until she sleeps, then place her gently down into her bed.

Putting on the Pounds

2009-10-13T21:54:00.005-04:00

October 13. The last two weeks have been the easiest for us, comparatively speaking, and for Luna & Estella. (I say comparative -- imagine having only half your body in flames as opposed to the entire body) They have begun to put on weight, and their "desats" have begun to minimize. Desat is lingo for the measure of their heart rate. When it goes down, trouble. When it stays up, around 90-100, you're golden. You don't get any dings and beeps on the machines, and you don't have fretful nurses tinkering with wires and starting wide eyed at the monitor. We've scaled back on those, the point where some visits, I get none.

Our lives have begun to take on something of a routine, however strange. I visit at lunch, for an hour or so; and then I go back in the evenings for 1-2 hours. Before going back to work, Jenny was clocking 6-8 hours a day with the kids, holding them, rocking them, doing whatever the nurses would let her do.

For Jenny the past week or so has been quite an adjustment, however. She's back at her job, which she loves -- but the stress of worrying about the twins while working is tough. Also there is the question how to balance her time. As of this week, she's getting into a groove, but it hasn't been easy arriving there.

There are time at work, for myself, when I want to get up and go check on them. But I don't. I gut it out. Really you go to see them more for yourself than anybody else. You go to see them to make yourself feel better. No tragedies? Check, I can get on with my life. Tragedy? Okay, all else pales.

I've been holding both of them more. It's a good feeling, the feathery heft of their little bodies in the crook of each elbow. Two lives, I tell myself. I'm holding two lives. When I have them in each arm, I can look from one to the other and compare their appearances. Yes, they're identical, and that is clear, but Luna is much smaller, with a more squished head. The nurses like to crack jokes. "Go ahead and give them your wallet now, Dad," or "We feel sorry for you, Dad." And I think, bring it on, that's fine. They're beautiful, these small blue eyed creatures. They're seeds of life.

Tonight Jenny & I were lucky enough to be able to visit together; and Jenny got to give Stella a bath. She was able to dip our little girl's body into a plastic tartar tub of water, scrub her up with soap, then shampoo her thin, delicate hair. Then Estella was bundled up in blankets so that only her head poked out of cone of linen.

Estella seemed to love the bath. No crying, no kicking, no whimpering -- meanwhile, a kid in the adjacent pod wailed like it was being paddled. She sat in the tub with her eyes open, alert, inquisitive. Jenny held her by her bare back, and I could make out each notch of the small, curved spine, bursting at the seams of the blue skin. Jenny brushed her hair with a small brush when it was done and noted that Estella has a cowlick "....like her daddy once had."

Both Jenny & I have had the chance to feed both girls with a bottle. The techniques for doing this vary. I've settled on holding one of the girl against my knee, with my hand supporting her head. I keep her at about a 30 degree angle, and then I gently press the nipple of the bottle in her mouth. You have to shove the thing in there, basically, which is uncomfortable because the nipple seems much to large for the tot's mouth. But it does in, and once it's in, and the girl isn't gagging, she begins to tug on the nipple. I've done this about three times now, all with Luna, and she's drained every bottle. When she's done, she crashes hard. A little milk seeps out the corners of her lips.

It is a joy, there is no other word for it, to hold her, and to feel her entire body quake with each swallow of milk. I can literally feel the muscles pushing the milk down her throat and into her belly. My hand shakes with each swallow. I picture the milk being absorbed, then somehow, turning into fat; that's all I want for them now, get fat.

Another note of progress; they are both off the canula. They are breathing on their own! Four about five days now. No issues, whatsoever.

To seem their faces without the plastic V's coming out of their nostrils was something of a revelation. They look more like babies and less like pin-cushions. They look alike. They look a little girl, and they look fatter.

To date Stella is showing no side-effects from the cyst in her lung. I asked a doctor about it at noon, and she felt that this was something that could be treated thorascopically at a later date, when Stella is much larger.

This past week, in short, has been remarkable, and although we're not happy or void of anxiety, there is a kind of move, emotionally, towards the next phase of this process, which will be bringing the girls home. You get a certain comfort level in the Special Care Nurseries. These girls have 24/7 care, with very experienced nurses watching them constantly, with high specialized, sensitive machines monitoring an assortment of vitals. Okay great, but what the hell do we do when we get them home? With no machines? No nurses? Just us, in the screaming early morning hours, wondering if this or that behavior is normal.

I have begun to believe that there will never be another normal day in my life with these kids; and, I have begun to accept that I will always, constantly, be worried about them, whatever their condition. I have entered a kind of tense emotional existence that may not end, and that will probably sap me dry. At the same time, I'm sure it will transform me in some positive, wise way that I can't quite comprehend.

Meanwhile we press on everyday, and I think we feel better about the lives of the twins and our chances for them getting home alive and well -- better than we've ever felt. But, God, I hate to say that aloud, I really do.

Jenny & Tallulah were sick, with bad colds, for a five days stretch. Jenny could not go in to visit the twins. Too high a risk for passing on the bug to the twins. So it was just me, alone with them, visiting them, and I tried to visit more and stay longer.

During that time, I told myself I would not get sick. I would not, and I did not. The thought of not one of us being to visit them was too much for me to bear. I could feel a thing here or there threatening me, but I was not going to let it happen. I will not be sick until they are home and well, and I can go off to some remote locale and crawl under a blanket and let all the powerful emotions that have wracked me finally win. But I might not even do that, either. No real point to it other than being self-indulgent.

We've begun to talk to a few other parents. One of them, a young woman, has been there as long as us, and we saw her little boy tonight, in mom's arms, twice Estella's size, plump and satisfied in his mother's arms....and beside them, an "open crib," which means he is regulating his own temperature, a huge step towards heading home. (Our girls are still in climate, temperature controlled isolettes) Her little body, like our twins, were born at twenty-seven weeks. She was very proud of him, clutching him to her neck, grinning at us. He is still wearing his canula, having trouble learning to breathe on his own, "desatting" all the time.

As of tonight, the girls have been in the NICU for eight weeks. As of this Thursday, they will have been "36 weeks" in gestation. Fifty percent of mono mono twins die in utero. Another fifty percent die in the first few weeks of life, when born early. But our girls? They have defied the odds.

I believe we are going to make it.

Milestones

2009-10-01T18:24:00.010-04:00

Oct. 3. If the twins had not arrived early, at 27 weeks, they would have likely been delivered two nights ago, an evening that marks the 34th week of their development. A milestone.

So we have made it this far. Without much to do it other than what we manage to believe we can do, what we manage to do every waking hour, to the best of our know-how.

Another milestone -- Estella has hit 3 pounds. Stella! Stella! That's big news. 3 pounds is a lot different than 2 pounds. The number three, in the mouth, literally sounds larger, feels larger. And the image you might get in your head from a 3 pound baby is somehow much larger and more comforting than a 2 pound baby....Luna remains at 2.5 pounds.

And while that is good, it's been a tough few days. Jenny has been sick. Very sick. A tough cold, which has robbed her of her voice. She speaks hoarsely, and it's like a different person standing there. The voice I am so used to hearing coming out of her mouth is gone. It's disconcerting.

But what's worse is to know that she can not, under any circumstances, visit the NICU now. We can't take any chances. For a few reasons. First, if she transfers the cold virus to a twin, it could endanger the life of the twin. Secondly, if she sees them, and then a twin develops an infection, Jenny won't be able to live with herself.

As hard as it is, she hasn't gone to the hospital in three days. It's been all Tallulah time. But Tallulah is sick, too.

I am not going to get sick. Period. In times like these, I have this peculiar ability. I will not get sick. I will get sick later. I will not get sick.

So I've been the only one seeing them, getting the updates...and holding them. For the first time, last night, I got to hold Luna. But not only my second born; I also got to hold Stella, with Luna, one gal in each arm.

Stella's got a big, round head, and she's heavier than her older sister. But ole Luna, although smaller, has a more intriguing face, at this stage of development. Her head is more narrow, but the eyes and the mouth are unusually expressive. What the personality is, I can't yet find the words to describe. Dare I say there is something wise about sweet little Luna's expressions? The wide, knowing eyes? The dubious, whimsical lips? The amused demeanor? I don't know. It's likely me trying to find something in her small face, some sense of life. But maybe not. Maybe, crazy at it sounds, a human being at such an age, without the cognitive ability, can be someone, can have spunk, can make a mark.

She certainly made a mark on me. As she did on Pops and Gran, who came to see them this afternoon. Pops took lots of photos, and I snapped some shots of the grandparents huddled around the isollettes. Gran took a moment to hold Stella's hand, which was touching, my lovely mother gently grasping the fingers of her grandchild, so tenderly, so much in awe. Click click click went my camera in my hands.

And poor Jenny at home! I wish it didn't have to be this way. But we must be safe.

Stability?

2009-09-28T22:52:00.003-04:00

Sept. 28. We've had a few good days. A few good days! It's startling to say. And although we've sworn off being superstitious, I have to say, I don't like saying that.

Last week, both twins were moved out of the critical unit and to what's known as "intermediate care." Technically, the equipment in this area is the same as what the girls had in critical; but they have less minute to minute attention. Each nurse in intermediate care tends to three babies, while in critical, they watch over two, or less.

There's less privacy in intermediate care. The isolettes are positioned along a wall, not in separate rooms. For Jenny to hold one of the girls, she has to drawn a curtain along a U-shaped track embedded in the ceiling. Even then, it doesn't feel that private. Sitting there, you can easily hear the conversations of the couple next to you or across the pod.

But no matter. They didn't stay here long at all. After three days, they were shipped off to the "C" unit, where they'll likely be for the next four weeks, or until they head home. Until they head home! The very notion makes me squirm. Really? That soon? But what am I saying? That soon. It will be almost 2.5 months by then.

The C room is lousy, in my opinion. The machines feel older, smaller, cruder, less reliable. I get the impression that we're sort of placed in the hallway. The girls are still in their isolettes, but they're sort of jammed along a wall, and the room feels like an add on to the main "pod" area. There are no windows in the space, and there's alot of foot traffic, nurses scurrying here and there. Just across the pod is the main entrance to the "term" baby nursery. Lots of activities there. Lots of fat babies, which used to make us envious.

At noon today I walked in and Luna was being fed by a bottle. Breast milk. The nurse was holding her head in her blue Latex fingers, and holding a nipple attached to a large plastic syringe in her other fingers. Luna, wide-eyed, was gurgling down the milk, the nipple popping out of her lips sometimes, glossy with milk. Luna's lips were dripping with the creamy stuff. Every few seconds, the nurse would gently press the syringe down a notch. I could see Luna's tiny swallowing in her thin neck. She was taking it in. She was swallowing it. Luna was drinking. I had not seen that until that moment.

Stella had done the same earlier, and would do it again later, but I wasn't there to witness it, just Jenny.

Seeing Luna drink was extraordinary, encouraging. Here was a normal thing, here was something simple and beautiful and more like what you'd expect.

A good day. Here's hoping there are more to come.

Luna was awake, vivid, receptive. When the feeding was done, she pawed around the air and complained. She wanted more. She wanted to feed again.

There are moments like these that will define the tenor of my life, I'm sure of it. Jenny said recently, "I was one person before the twins were born, and now I am a different one." I don't doubt that about her. I see it in her. I see the changes. They're good.

As for myself, I'm not sure. I do not want to say until the journey is done; and who is to say when that journey will be done? You get these docs in here saying, 'We'll know how healthy they are when they're eight.' So what do I think? The only rational thing to say is, 'I don't know.' I know that I love them, as Jenny does, but I do not know what meter I am judging my experience by. In the end I think that is the only thing I can do that is honest, for myself. I will take this day by day and hold tight and make the best calls, and maybe in all that, I'll discover what success means for me, for us, for the girls, for this life.

I can say this assuredly, though. We've been lucky so far. Damn lucky. We've gotten help from family, and we've gotten tremendous support from friends and colleagues. My old buds have been critical in their support, and we've been showered with generosity from the folks at the Garden, which is wonderful.

The only thing that is getting us through this experience emotionally is us, Jenny & me. There can be no doubt that this experience has taken a piece out of both of us, and that something is left behind (our youth?) but that is all right. You either endure and learn or you do not. We do, we learn, and we have grown closer because of it, I'm sure. As in all love, that can change, but I think something fundamental has been sealed tighter, and I like that feeling. I am proud of Jenny every time she comes home from the hospital,and I know she has been holding those twins for six hours straight. How to be a mom when you can't bring your kids home at night? How to endure that? I can't speak for her. But I know she is doing all she can do.

I am not a religious person. In the times of greatest worry -- and these may come yet -- I don't find myself reaching out to some supernatural being or god. I believe in love and kindness, and for lack of a better term, careful thinking. It's sounds silly, I know, but that's what I do. A kind of strength kicks in when it has to, and it's all a big mental effort (and who knows, I may wake up screaming in the middle of the night years from now!) And I believe in Jenny, of course, and what we have, and I think we can make it through anything.

Tomorrow night is Tallulah's talent show auditions. Jenny spent the late evening hours making a "sun" outfit because Tallulah is going to sing a solo piece, 'You are my sunshine.' Tallulah, who has probably taken all of this the hardest ('Why is mom at the hospital again? Is Mom okay?), will spend the afternoon with Mom, on a stage in a cafeteria in an elementary school, in a brilliant yellow costume, belting out her little song. Good days, indeed.

Latching On & Holding

2009-09-23T23:17:00.001-04:00

Sept. 23

I’d held Stella briefly a few days back – for about 1-2 minutes, but tonight I had the first opportunity to hold her for an extended period of time, about fifteen minutes.

The nurse wrapped her in a blanket. I sat in a rocking chair and held her close to my chest. She was wide-eyed, and she was active, churning her right arm in and out of the blanket, burrowing into stomach with her feet, flopping her big head left and right.

There is some receptivity, some inquisitiveness, some spark of life in her deep blue eyes, which seem to occupy about half of her face. When she is not grimacing, which is often, and when her eyes are perceptive and clear, her eyes take up half the territory of her meager face.

Big news on the feeding front – Jenny was able to nurse Stella for a while today. According to the night nurse, Stella had “no problem latching on.”

That was the good news. The bad news, kind of worrisome. The cyst that had shown up in Stella's lungs some three weeks back was re-examined by X-ray today, and the results were mixed. The cysts have grown in size slightly. I picture a small, bubble-like mass that develops tinier bubbles on its surface. That is the expanding cyst system....The plan now, which only makes marginal sense to me, is to wait until the twins head home for a follow-up X-ray to see if the problem has gotten worse. If it has, it could mean surgery for the little girl. Can you imagine? Surgery on those tiny lungs? Makes me shudder.

Drops of Milk

2009-09-23T08:57:00.005-04:00

Sept. 22. Probably the best day the twins have had, which gives us great joy, but also tremendous nervousness. What the heck is going to happen next? Everybody is intent on being cautious, constantly. Brilliant performance once day, horrific infection the next. I walk with a cane in my consciousness.

They're both over two pounds, and they're both breathing using only the nasal canula. That's the big news. When their lungs are working reliably on their own, we'll be in great shape, provided we can stave off infections or illnesses.

The only problem, for the time being, appears to be 'pooping,' as everyone likes to call it. (I'm not a big fan of this term, feels too juvenile, but I've got to roll with the NICU lingo for now...) They have to take tablets that encourages pooping. Hoping to get that sorted out.

Best day yet, but as always, there's an asterisk. We live with asterisks sort of constantly hovering over our shoulders. Jenny came home late and gave me the low down on some blood tests that the docs have been running on Stella. These tests seem to indicate that she may have a genetic disorder that prevents her from digesting some particular items -- no way I could possibly recall the exact scientific term for it. If the tests are accurate, then we'll need to take some aggressive action to fix the problem, or Stella could end up some neurological issues, frightening ones.

They've taken blood twice to determine if Stella has this problem. The first time, the result was positive, but the sample was also ruled "contaminated." A second test got the same result. So naturally she's getting a third test, and now we await those results.

Both kids have been stuck repeatedly in attempts to find good veins for IVs. They've had IVs put in both hands, both feet, and now there is talk of shaving Luna's head and going in there. The IVs only last so long before the entry wound threatens to become infected, and infection is a big deal, can be life threatening. As soon as an IV entry point becomes the slightest bit angry or inflamed, they pull the IV and find another vein. But, in Luna's case, we're running out of veins.

One option is to put in a PICC line. Both girls had PICC lines a few weeks back. This is a thin IV line that goes into their foot and gets threaded up their body until it ends up near their heart, in a large supply vein. The PICC line is more invasive but less prone to infection.

I watched a nurse insert a PICC line a few weeks back, on Stella. First, she doped the poor girl with morphine, which made her disturbingly lethargic for days. The nurse covered Stella's body with the trademark hospital blue gown and cloth so that only her little foot stuck out. Then she gently pushed the PICC line into a vein in her heel. She gripped it with a pair of tweezers and kind of coaxed it along. Blood backed into the syringe, from the vein, and this was a good sign. That meant the nurse had tapped into a rich, flowing vein, which meant when they started pumping in fluids, they'd get into the bloodstream easily.

Jenny is exhausted, but doing a great job with the twins. She holds them every day, both of them. She holds them close to her chest, in the dark with the curtains drawn over the unit. Sometimes she reads them books or naps with them.

I like finding them in the middle of the day, when I visit for lunch. They'll be in the corner of the room. I'll sit and bring a chair over and lather my hands up with disinfectant and then pull back the blanket and peer down at one of our daughters, and sometimes, their small blue eyes will be wide open, their small hands grasping Jenny's skin. I'll glance at Jenny, and she'll be smiling.

A couple of days ago, a truly landmark event. The nurse on duty decided that, because Stella was being so vocal during a bath, she might be ready to try some milk from a bottle. So they loaded up a bottle and held the nipple over Stella's confused mouth. They squeezed out a couple of drops, which startled the poor girl. Then, according to Jenny, a few drops meandered into Stella's mouth, at which point her eyes "doubled in size," as Jenny put it. Stella swallowed, and then took a few more drops. Jenny said, "It was the first time Stella looked amazed."

Okay, good news. Maybe, somehow, we're making progress.

Luna and Estella, one month old

2009-09-18T23:05:00.008-04:00

Luna and Estella turned one month old tonight. Their birthday was a August 18, 2009. They've made it about 31 days.

The pictures here are from tonight. Both of them are strapped into their breathing devices. Luna opened here eyes wide. This was right after a bath. There was a teeny glint of life, of passion, in her right eye. She seemed to be staring straight at me, and there was something, I think, inquisitive about it, a bold frank childish curiosity.

I don't know how well they perceive things. I can't picture myself in their isolettes, their little translucent boxes, these giant hands constantly handling them, these faces peering over them every so often, sometimes murmuring; and every once in a while, one of them takes you out and places you against her bare chest and holds you for hours, slowly rocking you.

I decided, tonight, to get a feel for what Jenny must feel when she is holding the girls. After Stella had enjoyed a sponge bath, I asked the nurse if I could hold her. The nurse said sure and wrapped Stella in a small blanket and passed her to me. And, for the first time in my life, I held my third daughter.

I was struck immediately by her weight. I don't know what I'd expected. But she has heft. She has substance. She is is not made of tissue. She is there, more solid than I guess I'd thought. I cradled her head in one hand and her body in the other and held her close to my chest. Her eyes were wide, wide open; I wished my eyes were cameras. I had not seen her open her eyes so wide. I brought her a tad closer to my face. She blinked. She moved her eyes, the darkest blue you can imagine, within their sockets. I just looked at her and felt, very distinctly, that she was looking back at me, and that was a powerful moment, however ambiguous in truth or not.

I think for me, more than any other moment in this long process, that moment of holding her, which stretched on for several minutes, cut deep into me. I felt in tune with something that I should have been feeling for weeks. I'm not saying I haven't felt like her father until now. No it's something different, something more palpable in the act of holding, of touching, of being that close to her, of feeling her exact weight, of seeing her gaze. I think it was, purely, the physical sensation of being a father, not so much the emotional one, and that moved me so much that I was afraid I'd drop her. When it came time for the nurse to take her back, I knew I had to flee the joint. I thanked her profusely, then turned and said good-bye. I felt light. I felt dazed. I played the image of her sweet blue eyes over and over in my mind. There is a chance we will make it through this, but the shape of it all, the outcome, will be nothing like what I've imagined, or what I'm capable of imagining, and I'll be wholly changed. I felt lucky, changed, alone and free. I felt alive.

Infection

2009-09-18T08:29:00.005-04:00

Just when you think things are going smoothly, more trouble. Luna's got an infection.

The infection -- they're common, but not good. One of the nurses had noticed Luna looking lethargic; and she had been having numerous episodes of apnea, where she stops breathing. When this happens, you can look up at the monitor and see her oxygen levels plummet. 90%....85%....70%....40%...And the goddamn thing is ringing like a slot machine. Ding, ding, ding. The nurse goes quiet, won't look at you. Makes you sit up in your chair, or in my case, stand up and pace.

What next? Get in their and do CPR, I want to say. On a baby that size? Wouldn't we crush it? I've pictured myself delicately compressing her chest with two fingers and blowing into her mouth. No, the nurses then have to “stimulate” Luna, which means massaging her and patting her back and shaking her, coaxing her to breathe again. They make some adjustments on the machines flooding air into her, through long pipes. They’ve stopped with the nasal canula and gone back to C-Pap, and they’ve set that breathing device to “push” more air into her lungs with each inhalation.

They have also taken some more blood. When they take blood, they take it out of Luna’s heel. Right now it's the only place on her body with fat. I’ve watched it several times. They bare Luna’s miniature foot into the air and poke it with a syringe, the metal thin as a spider thread. A little blood comes into a tiny stout bottle, which the nurse has to thump or flick continually so that the blood doesn’t clot.

I watched them do this to Luna and then sat in the nursing chair in the room for a good two hours until the docs came back with the results. ‘Abnormal.’

Abnormal. A good word for a teenager to hear when receiving criticism about a poem he’s written; not a good word to hear from your doc when you’re talking about your month old daughter’s blood.

Friday will be critical. Is the infection in the blood or in the stomach? Evidence seems to point towards the blood, which isn’t great, but much better than intestines. They’ve begun to pump her with antibiotics. A nurse told me last thing this afternoon – ‘You’ll have a different baby by tomorrow afternoon.’ What they’re suggesting is that the antibiotics work quickly. We can only hope.

I spent a little time in the evening, in the dark, hunched over Luna's isolette, just staring down at her. Really I think she is going to be all right. In the panorama of problems, this could be thought of as minor. But she has come so far, and done so well, that part of me thinks our luck could not possibly continue. It worried me, I have to say. She was very still, only her ribs moving with each assisted breath. The nurses always commented about her spunk, her fieriness. They've seen none of that today. I walked off and doused my hands with disinfectant and then went back to the isolette and opened one of the small rounds doors. I reached in with one hand (not the hand with my wedding band on it b/c I'm worried I can't clean it free of germs) and fished her hand out of the blankets and waited a few moments until she clenched my finger. Good luck, kid.

Gas

2009-09-14T22:26:00.002-04:00

Minor setback to report this evening. Love those minor setbacks.

Both the girls are suffering from an excess of gas in their bellies. Several theories are being floated as to why, the most likely being Jenny's diet. She was eating some beans & rice recently, and it's thought that the gas off this food was transferred to her breastmilk, which the twins are eating on a regular basis. Possibly, their stomachs can't handle the gassy milk.

Their stomachs are tremendously bloated. There is a fine, fine lacework of veins just under the skin of the tumescent swells. The veins are purplish, red, microscopic. The bellies look painful. Beneath them their legs are very small and bony. I want to squeeze the bellies, gently, ever so gently, and let out the air, give them relief.

I recorded some video of Tallulah the other night on my Flip and took it in and played it to both girls. The Flip video plays back on a small 1 inch monitor, with sound. In the video Tallulah introduces herself to her younger sisters and then tells them to start farting. The sooner they learn to fart, the better they'll feel. Tallulah cracks up giggling at the end of it.

Gotta say, laughing never felt so good. All the same, still worried sick.

Luna, sweet Luna

2009-09-10T10:10:00.003-04:00

September 9. Wish I had more time to write more. I get exhausted at night and end up having a few beers and crashing with Jenny. But it was a great, great day -- can't say that about most of them the past few weeks.

I've been going to the hospital during my lunch hour, which seems to stretch out a little longer than an hour once I get there. Today I got there and visited Luna right off.

The act of visiting is becoming routine. Jenny & I do it differently. She tends to stay for hours, and she holds the girls. She opens her blouse and puts their small warm bodies against her skin, and she'll hold them and rock and talk to them.

When Jenny is holding one of the girls, I can lean forward from my chair and pull back the edge of the blanket and see their small, pinched face up close, very close. Usually they put a hand against Jenny's skin, beside their cheek. Their eyes are large, almost too large for their sockets. The skin over the eyes is almost transparent, reveals the exact shape of the globe that is the eyeball.

The twins seem very happy against Jenny, but it's hard to say what they feel or don't feel, what they know or don't know. The cynic that I am, I tend to think they don't feel much. But the nurses disagree, and there has been some evidence to suggest that mothers who engage in "kangaroo care" tend to have healthier babies that go home sooner.

When Jenny isn't there holding one of the girls, I stand by the isolet and pull back a blanket that covers the plexiglass dome and stare down through the slightly blurry plastic and watch my daughters.

They move, but very slightly. They stick their legs out of the blankets, stretch. They churn a little. The breathing always seems labored.

Sometimes their faces contort, as if in agony. But I don't know if they're feeling pain or if it's just some kind of facial tick. Maybe they're going to the bathroom.

I wish I knew what I felt exactly when I'm standing over the isolet looking down at them. I can say this, I suppose. When I'm looking at Luna, I'm rooting for her. I'm hoping she will make it. When I'm looking at Stella, I'm remarking to myself about her size, much larger than Luna; and I'm wanting her to hang in there, to persist, to keep growing. I worry less about Stella than Luna.

But today was a big day for Luna. I was standing over the isolet, for about a half hour, partly listening to the nurses gabbing in the pod, when a new arrival came. Luna has a new podmate, a little boy across the way. A couple of nurses got busy hooking up the newborn. One of Luna's doctors, who had just been at the delivery, arrived with them. She busied herself with the newborn and then came and talked to me.

I tried to act like it was no big deal. I said something like, 'Looks like you're busy this morning....New arrival and all...' I didn't want to appear too anxious. But she had news, good news. The latest ultrasound reveals that the ventricles in Luna's brain have not increased in size. In fact, they're a little smaller. The PVL has not increased and remains static. The doctor feels good about her condition and doesn't seem too concerned about the bleed.

I had to sit down and think a few moments after thanking the doctor. I could feel a kind of weight leaving me...no it's more like this. The whole drama of the birth and sustaining life just takes a big piece out of you, like you've been bitten by a shark or something. Really, it's silly the way I just put it, but I'm tired, and that's how it feels. Like you've lost a chunk of your left hip, and your own bleeding just gushes, just rolls on out, and you feel yourself getting weaker, but you stagger on. You keep going.

I texted Jenny on the old iPhone, but didn't give her the news because she texted back that she arriving at the hospital. When she came into the NICU, where I was waiting ,the doc gave her the news. 'That's good to hear,' Jenny said. We embraced.

All the same, in the time between when I got the news and when Jenny arrived, I dialed the happiness and enthusiasm down a few notches. I don't want to get excited. I'm more comfortable, it seems like, playing against the odds.

A couple of days ago, while Jenny was holding Luna, the nurse suggested we change the tot's diapers. These diapers are about the size of a playing card. Jenny lowered the squalling bundle off her chest into her lap, wires slung over her shoulder. I peeled back the diaper. It was filthy, an Army-green paste mixed with cakey white diaper creme. It was thick, a mess, up and down her legs. I took about a dozen wipes from the drawer in the isolet and slowly daubed up the waste and the creme from her toothpick legs and crumbled bottom. Jenny peered into the darkness and held Luna tight. We laughed. Something normal, regular, for a change. I clipped on a new diaper. Jenny brought Luna to her chest again, closed her eyes, rocked.

Sept. 5

2009-09-05T22:50:00.003-04:00

It was a good week for us, despite some mixed and once again ominous news about Luna.

The news, as usual, was double edged -- sharp good, sharp bad. The bleeding in her brain had not increased. The PVL matter had not grown in size. In fact, according to the doctor, it was less severe than they had earlier thought.

This is actually stunningly good news. If the bleed had increased, it would have meant some frightening surgery on the brain for our little Luna. Shunting -- essentially, inserting a device into her brain to drain the blood. Would it mean the end of her life? No. Would it mean a change in the quality of her life? Likely. Few kids come out of it without drastic differences in their physical condition. Mentally? Hard to say.

That was the good part. The bad part? There was some anatomical concerns, namely the size of these ventricles. They had increased in size, although only slightly. The doctor said it was a "minimal increase," and she told us how she had looked at the scans "twenty" times before she could reasonably conclude there was a difference in size.

Immediately I had this image of her and the other docs crouched around the monitor, peering into the grainy, blurry black and white images of my daughter's brain. The cutaway view, the various zones, the formations, the cavities, the masses. Did they have a tape measure or something? No I suppose there was some kind of tool in the software that allowed them to measure it on the screen.

We felt all right about it. I wish I'd felt better. Shouldn't I have felt better? Not sure. As soon as the news was out, something in me turned off for a few days. We'd have to wait for the next sonogram to see if the ventricles, again, had changed in size. That looms for Labor Day, two days from now.

So I would enjoy the week, which I did. I postponed any fatalistic worry, and I think Jenny did, too; the girls had a great week, a very stable week. A week of no bad news. It felt good, very good. We still feel like we're on the edge of a cliff, of course. But we're holding on.

Stella and Luna both went on a "nasal canula" for spells, and they both began to put on weight. Now they wouldn't keep on the canula for a while -- a device which all but lets them breathe on their own -- and the weight varied. But that was all right. No calamaties, no awful news. Each good day, we celebrated quietly. They are getting stronger, we tell ourselves. Friday=week 30 of a normal 40 week gestation. Today, their 18th day of life.

One nurse spoke to this afternoon and said, 'Boy, these girls have been there. They've been through it.'

Have they? Or has it only begun? I keep thinking of another nurse's comments...'This is a hellish nightmare. You may need help. No parent comes through this experience okay.' She said it was usually one step forward, two steps...or eight steps back...What a cliche. But damn it, was that true?

I think I can do this, though.

They have begun to change in appearance, ever so slightly. They're still mushed and wrinkled, gray and diminished, small. Their heads, small enough to fit inside the palm of my hand easily, are misshappen (although covered in fine brow hair). But they are more filled out, less withered and dried. They seem on the verge of getting fat on their cheeks.

I walked in one night and Stella was getting a bath. The nurse had taken off most of the leads and stripped her naked and was sloshing her back and arms and legs with a sponge. I had just come in at the right time. I had my Flip handheld camera, and I immediately started recording her, arms outstretched, legs splayed. She cried -- the volume surprised me -- terrific bursts.

I keep thinking about the cyst in her lungs, but why? She doesn't seem bothered by it. Her lungs seem to be working.

The very shape of their rib cage is clearly visible through their skin. The ribs look painful. Their bellies, distended and laced with veins, flex in and out in spasms with each breath. Sometimes, their faces scrunch in what seems like agony.

Are they feeling? Are they in pain, ever? Yes, they are. I have tickled their toes and heard them cry.

Another night, I come in, and Luna's getting a bath. They're holding her over a tub and dousing her hair with a rag, and she's crying, too. The nurse asks me if I want to help but I'm still afraid I'm sick, which I'm not.

Something about the bath gives us comfort, makes us feel that our kids our normal. Of course they're not. They're small, and they're on the edge of death every hour. But you have to take what you can get.

We will enjoy the good days and figure out some way to get through the bad ones....So few bad ones this week, though. So far!

They have the most nimble, delicate fingers imaginable. Stella's toes and fingers are exceptionally long. Tiny, yes, but unbelievably refined. The hand draws our attention so much; it's so damn human, so damn beautiful to look at in such a miniscule size. Sometimes I sat in the chair beside her isolet and peered through the plexiglass and just watched her lift her little hand in the white light and sort of dance her itty fingers, then lower her arm, still for a while, then lift the hand again and twiddle the fingers, experiment with raising this finger or thumb.

Last night, before we left for the evening, the nurse called us into Stella's room from Luna's. When we got bedside to Stella, we saw that she was on her back, on the breathing assistance, and her eyes were wide-open. She was blinking ever so slowly.

Stella and Luna have both opened their eyes, here and there, for brief moments of time. They don't tend to keep them open, though. This wasn't true, not for this instance. Something new was happening. She was keeping her eyes open. Now of course full term new born babes can't seem more than 12 inches or so from their face, so really, what Stella could have seen must have been minimal, but it wasn't so much what she was seeing as sensibility of her gaze. There was something there.

I must sound crazy; I must sound pathetic or desperate. But there was a kind of intelligence there, an awareness, or at least the appearance of it, which in my condition, exhausted and longing for something normal, will suffice for now. Whatever it was, it seemed like a living breathing creature, our creature, looking consciously back at us, thinking about it. Likely it was only the look of it, but it felt very good, and we liked seeing it. We liked standing there beside her as she seemingly gazed with thought or wonder up at us. The eyes did not roll in different directions. They were fixed, unmoving -- blinking calmly -- and the whole visage of her small face seemed, for a few brief moments, fixed on us, although she likely had very little idea what or who we were....Whatever happened, it was a powerful moment. She seemed like an average baby, for a short time, and it gave us hope for the coming weeks.

Skin to Skin

2009-09-05T09:48:00.005-04:00

August 28. Jenny got to hold Luna this afternoon! It was a first. Grandma Ruthie was there, just flew in. The nurse took about ten minutes to disconnect and reconnect some wires, then gently lifted Luna out of the open isolet and placed her on Jenny's chest. Jenny opened her blouse slightly; Luna snuggled in against her chest, and then the two of them were wrapped up in blankets....I held them, but briefly. I'm worried I'm getting sick because my whole body aches, but I think it's just fatigue. Still keeping my distance.

I haven't seen Jenn this happy since the twins were born.

Both the twins now off the ventillators and seemed to have stabilized. No word yet on the ultrasound, but we are taking some heart in that they're stable. Lots of peeing going on now, which is a big deal.....Later in the day Jenny got to hold Stella, too -- but not skin to skin. (pictured)

The fact that the girls have been stable has done a couple of things. First, my body feels utterly different than it did a few days ago. The whole contraption is relaxing. Too much, almost. I'm walking around with mild nausea, and in a strange way, I want to feel like I did a few days ago, alert and tense, ready to pounce. Secondly, it's made us optimistic, even a little high. No drama for few days, small progress, small hope that the bleed won't turn out bad for Luna. How bad can it be if the blood pressure and everything else is normal? I don't want to feel to happy, that's what I keep telling myself. It's ludicrous, but that's what I feel. I want to feel miserable so that I'll either be ready for the next round of challenging news or I'll be truly elated when we get good news.

Jenny held Luna for about an hour, talked to her, grinned.....She told me a few days ago that she woke up and decided to quit feeling sorry herself.

My notes are scattered, a mess. It's all numbers about blood gas and oxygen intake and beats per minutes, etc. That's all you end up thinking about, numbers. We need better numbers.

Waiting

2009-09-05T09:42:00.003-04:00

August 30. Spent the last four days simply waiting. Just waiting. All we can do is wait until Monday when we hope to hear from the docs again about Luna's ultrasound.

Both girls still on the ventillators. Stella having problems digesting. Blood pressure is normal, but not alot of food going in the stomach.

Luna has not urinated in days. Jenny is very upset about the lack of peeing. We check every diaper and hope to see a big yellow stain but nothing.

Jenny's sister Sarah came. Took her to Gladys Knight "Chicken and Waffles" down the street from the hospital. Good stuff. Also had taken Bob there.

I have been eating like a carnivorous dinosaur. Lots of meat, lots of fried crap. Several beers a night, but not tonight. Scaling back. Waiting.

PVL

2009-09-03T22:38:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, August 25. Jenny's sister Becky arrived today and drove straight to the hospital, but when I got there during my lunch break, they were out. I went from Stella's room to Luna's room to Stella's room to Luna's room. Once you're done worrying about one for half an hour, you suddenly realize, you want to go worry about the other one. After Jenny and Becky showed up, I talked with them briefly and asked about the damn ultrasound again. No news, not yet. So I decided to head back to work. I made it down the elevator and off and towards the "Savory Fare Cafe" when Jenny called me on my cell and said the doctors wanted to talk to me and Jenny; they had analyzed the second ultrasound. I turned, went back up the elevator, clipped on my SCN (Special Care Nursery) badge and went through the whole scrub at the sink routine. (You have to wash your hands for a while.) I was so nervous I splashed the blood red soap all over my shirt. To hell with it. I didn't care about the stain.

We met in Luna's room. Becky was with us. I pointed out the slop on my shirt and tried to act cool, but I was anxious. "Well, I don't have terrible news," Dr. Keene said. And she looked at me, right at me, with her head lowered. "But it is a mixed bag." Why I have such an impression of the way she lowered her head and looked at from the tops of her eyes, I don't know. This I will remember. (She has been excellent, no criticisms really, just impressions.)

Here's the deal -- the initial bleeding has not spread or worsened. The ventricles remain the same size. Good news. I could feel palpable relaxation of my spine. But then there's this. The scan revealed more bleeding, in another part of Luna's brain. More bleeding? Jenny latched on to that. Okay, not more bleeding, necessarily, could be something called "PVL," or "white matter." It's a small amount, very small amount. Around the area of her brain responsible for walking, for her legs and feet. The doc described it as scar tissue...

Trying to assess the news, take it all in. We'll have to wait another interminable week for another follow-up ultrasound. If this PVL expands, we'd could be in for quite another situation. If it doesn't, we'll be relieved. At worse, the doc says, Luna may have some trouble learning to walk; or her risk of learning disabilities increases. But here's the rub-- some kids, even with the minor bleeds or PVL, do develop larger problems. Not all of them, not most of them, but some do.

Setbacks

2009-09-03T22:25:00.004-04:00

Monday, August 24. I headed back to work today. Why the hell am I working? Not sure, but I feel like trying to get some sense of a normal life, and things are piling up on the desk at the office.

I tried to get a few things done, but it wasn't easy.

It was a strange feeling talking to folks who knew about the delivery. Word had been sent out via email about Stella and Luna, but no one knew about the preterm delivery and the NICU. I told some folks that the twins were doing fine; I gave other the details.

Sometimes I sat at my desk and lost track of myself. I'd kind of snap out of it and look back at what I was writing. A few times, folks would peek their heads in and say a few words. I liked talking to the people who had no idea the twins had been born. I liked talking about work.

Bob took Jenny to the hospital to visit with the twins. When I got there, around noon, he'd left, and Jenny was in the room with Stella, a wild-eyed look on her face. I had to hold the wall, but I let go when she told me what was happening. Workers had been in the room painting that morning, and when Jenny first showed up, the nurse was changing tubes/wires/etc on Stella while the fellow was in the midst of painting. The fumes were noxious. Jenny was furious, apparently got into a nasty argument with a few folks. I showed up just as the NP rolled in.

I told Jenny not worry about the paint fumes; Stella was getting air out of tank, not out of the room. She was still upset. She insisted to the NP that no painting occur in Luna's room until we had more info about her brain, and the NP agreed.

Stella had been breathing on a canula, which is a step up -- just oxygen in her nostrils -- but they'd put her back on C-Pap, and then back on a ventillator. Luna still on a ventillator. Okay, they're on life support, no other way to put it.

Stella is having trouble going to the bathroom. Fluids are building up in stomach. Her stomach is bloated, stretched, veiny.

Jenny spends time holding the twins minuscule hands, rubbing their arms and legs. I hold them a little bit here and there. At this age, their bodies are covered in lanuga, a fine layer of whitish hair. Their skin feels like felt.

Their heads are wrinkled, squished. I watched a nurse take a crumpled ear and reshape it in her blue latex glove fingers. No kidding, she took this rolled up half inch of skin and ligament and shaped and ear about the size of a dime.

The twins wear little white cotton caps with tassels on the top. Luna wears a yellow tassel, Stella a blue.

Luna's foot

2009-09-02T22:05:00.003-04:00

Here's a picture of Luna's foot. No size comparison here, but it's about the size of Stella's hand.

Stella's Hand

2009-09-02T22:02:00.003-04:00

Here's a picture of Estella's hand gripping my finger.

Stone Mountain

2009-09-02T21:49:00.003-04:00

Bob, Tallulah & I took some time away from the hospital late in the day today. The twins have been alive for almost four days.

Rachel showed up this morning. (Jenny's sister) She flew in with her little boy James. Just showed up on the front steps and called on her cell. Unebelievable.

We had a visit to the hospital, and Jenny started handling the twins. Then it was off to the Varsity, which is downtown, fairly close to the hospital. The place was packed. I kept noticing the hordes of healthy young kids. I couldn't help wondering if Luna would one day be among them.

We hiked Stone Mountain, which felt good. When Tallulah wasn't listening, I asked Bob alot of questions about a "grade three." (Bob's a pediatric neurologist and has seen these cases often through his decades of doctoring.) He told me it was hard to say -- the important thing appears to be the size of the ventricles. If the ventricles increase in size, we're in trouble. If they stay the same, we'll be okay.

There was wild fox ontop of Stone Mountain. Some idiots kept chasing it with a camera. The fox was zig-zagging, panting, looking about wildly. I felt sorry for it. All these clumps of people -- probably hundreds -- milling around the top of this giant rock, and the fox is confused, disoriented. People tried to take pictures. A beautiful animal, deep red fur, quick moving legs. He trotted towards a little boy, and I hope nothing would happen. Would the boy approach it? He did not.

There is nothing we can do but wait on the next ultrasound. It's agonizing. I'm not sleeping well. I keep watching old movies that I like when I can't sleep. I've had alot of beer, but not too much, because I'm worried I'll have to drive into the NICU at a moment's notice.

I went to the hospital late in the evening and huddled over Luna in her isolet.

August 21: Grade 2 or 3?

2009-09-02T21:35:00.003-04:00

Distressing news today. Very upsetting. Docs did an ultrasound on the brains of the twins. Stella checks out fine. Luna, unfortunately, has a small bleed in her brain.

The bleed is in a centralized location of the brain. The doc told me what it was, but I can't remember not. Cortex? Unsure. Here's the deal. It's not a huge bleed, but it's significant. It's located near the "ventricles" of the brain. These are important cavities near the top of the spine. They help to deliver fluid to the spine, help with development, growth, movement, etc.

Dr. Keene called the bleed "a grade two," or "possibly a grade three." This is on a scale of 1-4, with 4 being the worst.

Bob had come in, and met us in Jenny's room. And Jenny had gotten the word privately from Dr. Keene while Bob & I had stepped out to get Tallulah from school. (My folks have gone back to Athens). Jenny tells him, then tells him the grade, and I could see him go gray.

Jenny was tremendously upset as the day wore on. I tried to keep her spirits up. It's hard to know, though, from Bob's take and the doctor's take, what to expect. A grade 4 is like a stroke, and a grade 1 is something most kids recover from easily. But a grade 3? Could mean anything.

But what does it matter? I'm not sure. I'd love her the same, wouldn't I?

We went home today. Jenny was miserable, inconsolable. Bob made a run to Whole Foods with Tallulah, and eventually, Jenny said she was up for a walk. Three days after the C-section, and she wants to walk around the block.

August 19

2009-09-02T21:26:00.003-04:00

I saw the twins for the first time since delivery this morning. Jenny wasn't feeling well enough to leave her bed. I walked down with a nurse. Banner morning, momentous, but I was overwhelmed, tired, unsure of what or how to feel. Hadn't eaten in forever, didn't want to eat. Worried about Jenny.

I had to scrub up my arms and hands with some red surgical soap. The soap was the color of blood. The brush had thin, sharp bristles on one side and a sponge on the other. The nurse supervised my scrubbing. Had to be two minutes. Then it was off into the NICU.

Luna is in one room, Stella a room down the hall. Both are on the same equipment. They're on ventillators and feeding tubes. They're bundled up. They wear tiny blood pressure cuffs and various stickers with wires attached to monitor different aspects of their bodily function. The nurse told me everything, but it's a blur now.

The isolets are like domed cribs. The dome is plexiglass, and clear. There are two holes on either side. The holes have doors on them. To touch the kids, you have to open a door. The nurses typically open two doors and work on the kids with two hands at once.

Later in the day, my folks came by the hospital. I took them to see Jenny, and then I took them to see the twins. They had to go in one at a time with me.

I was worried about how my folks would react. Nothing like this has ever happened to anyone in my family. First, twins. Then the news it was "mono-mono" twins. Then the early delivery. Now the long hard slough in the hospital. The docs told me it would be 2-3 months. That suprised me, but I guess it should not have.

Later in the day I wheeled Jenny down to the NICU and she got to see the twins for the first time. I positioned the chair next to the isolet. A nurse lowered the bed a little bit, for each twin, for Jenny to see clearly. She touched the plexiglass. She talked to them.

Jenny's doing okay, but it's been rough on her. She did not want the pregnancy to end this way. Hoping she's going to be all right, and I'm planning on sleeping in the room again tonight, on the couch under the window. My folks have agreed to take Tallulah again. They'll stay at a hotel. Tomorrow Jenny's dad comes in from Kansas City.

C-Section

2009-09-02T21:15:00.002-04:00

I had to wait outside the delivery room for about an hour before Jenny's C-section. I made a few calls to family, namely Jenny's mother and my folks. Also put a call into Jenny's father but couldn't reach him.

I wore scrubs and paper boots and a hair net (but, I have no hair?) and a surgical mask. I could not sit down. I paced in the small room.

A curtain made a divide in the room between beds. I could hear the folks on the other side of the curtain, a woman and her father. The woman had just given birth. She talked about the birth weight of her boy, Will. He was nine pounds.

We'd been given estimates of the birth weight for the twins: two pounds, and just under two pounds.

As soon as I managed to sit down, a nurse hustled into the room and told me to hurry, it was time for delivery. Next thing I knew we were jogging down the hall. 'They're in distress,' the nurse said. 'We have to hurry.'

Within a few moments of being in the operating room, the delivery occurred. I squatted next to Jenny, who had a curtain across her shoulders that prevented her from seeing the delivery, the open incision on her belly. She'd had an epidural. She was awake. Her arms were spread wide on the bed, and they were trembling, a natural reaction to the dope in her spine.

There were about twenty people in the room. Mostly women, mostly nurses. All the docs were women, two of them very young. Two isolets for the twins had been set-up on one side of the room, giant hot white bulbs above the felt bedding.

I said a few words to Jenny. Then, I looked over the curtain. A tremendous release of amniotic fluid. Just gushed out of the opening, sloshed over the hips of the doctors, speckled their scrubs with fluid. The docs were amazed. 'Never seen that,' said the lead.

They were in a rush. The heart rate of one of the twins had plummeted. The lead reached inside of Jenny's bare belly and pulled back the skin, ever so slightly. Then I saw both of the twins, heads down, ensconced. The lead pulled out Luna, the smaller twin, naked and white as fresh dough. 'Baby A out,' she hollered. She passed Luna over to a tray and a nurse. Her bright white body turned crimson, blood flowing throughout her veins. She was motionless, and I felt my whole body clench. I held Jenny's hand. Out next was Estella, so pale. But neither one of them were as small as I'd imagined, especially Stella. They were long, and from my position even, I could see delicate, long, nimble fingers and toes. 'Baby B out,' the lead hollered, and Stella's body color blossomed into rose.

The next good thing to hear? Baby B is breathing. I swallowed, and it hurt my neck. I sat down for a moment. I told Jenny the twins looked good. We could hear Stella cry, a sound like a baby kitten mewling. Then finally Luna was breathing. 'Baby A breathing,' the nurse said to me.

I got up and went to see them, wrinkled and red, but not all that small. Dark hair, long arms and legs, hard to imagine they were only two pounds. Stella was kicking, kicking. I took a few pics with my iPhone. I went back and sat with Jenny and told her the girls were beautiful.

Tuesday August 18

2009-09-02T21:12:00.001-04:00

Jenny went into painful preterm labor this afternoon. She was frightened. She had driven herself to the maternity center at the hospital thinking that the docs would examine some pain and discomfort that she’d been having and say it was normal. But it wasn’t normal. It was pre-term labor.
When I got to the hospital room, Jenny was in a gown and stretched out on her side on a gurney. Her clothes were in a disorderly pile by the window, along with a stack of Science journals. Two nurses and a doctor were huddled around her and examining her belly with an ultrasound wand. The gel was silver, livid, glowing around her navel. No on was talking. Everyone was looking at the monitor. Jenny was sweating profusely.
Within a few minutes, the doctor gave me the details. “Baby A” was in distress. She wasn’t moving. She seemed pinned within the amniotic sac. “Baby B” was very active, easily detectable. The doctor was deeply concerned with the condition of Baby A.
A couple of other doctors came by and read Jenny’s chart. No one was doing much talking. When they did talk, they sort of muttered to each other self-consciously. What the hell were they saying?? I kept trying to ask politely, and then I wondered, why am I being polite? My wife is stretched out in agony here.
Jenny was tremendously upset. Lying on her back made it difficult for her to breathe; but lying on her side made the ultrasounds difficult. So it was a difficult thing to do but she stayed on her back and sort of panted. No one could see to get a good picture on the device. Lots of whispering, consulting in the shadows, more incessant insider muttering.
Finally one of the doctor’s that had been seeing Jenny gave us a choice.
Really it wasn’t much of a choice. We could continue with the pregnancy and try to minimize the labor pains. This would allow the non-distressed “Baby B” to grow fully, mature more, be more likely to live outside the womb. This would also threaten the life of “Baby A” dramatically. There was a high chance she would die, or perhaps live, but severely disabled, depending on the amount of trouble she was in, which was hard to say. It would also raise the risks to Baby B somewhat, if Baby A deteriorated further, which seemed likely.
Our other choice was to do an emergency C-section and deliver both babies, giving both of them a good chance of living. A second doctor said that babies born at 27 weeks, which was our case, had a 90% survival rate. That seemed good to me. The doctors gave us an hour to make our decision.
We didn’t debate long. Really it didn’t seem like much of a decsion. We were in easy accord. Of course we’d deliver them; Baby B, essentially, would be making a sacrifice to save the life of Baby A. We sat and talked, and when the docs came back, we informed them of our decision. Jenny was immediately schedule for her C-section, for three hours later.
Some time in that spell of time, we called a few people, held each other, and worked out the names for the twins. It was a set of names we’d been discussing but had yet to settle on until that moment. The smaller child would be Luna Dorothy Sanders. The larger girl would be Estella Faye Sanders (Stella).

House Call

2009-08-13T21:27:00.002-04:00

I signed up for a life insurance policy with my new job a few weeks back. I didn’t think anything of it, really. I checked the 3x salary box because it was very affordable. I thought, ‘This will come off really noble if I die.’ I thought, ‘If I die, and Jenny gets this check, she’ll think I did a good thing.’ Then I forgot about it.

Well, I guess life insurance isn’t some cheap thing you sign up for and forget about. No, it’s a little more complicated than that. Is it my age? I’m not sure. But a couple of days after I signed up for this life insurance, I got an email from the HR folks telling me I had to fill out a special health form by such and such a date.

I’m not a big fan of forms. Especially paper forms, where I have to hand write in all this information, which supposedly everybody already knows, like my social security number and birth date and marital status and disease history (which, in case you’re wondering, is totally clear). So I procrastinated and didn’t fill out the damn form until the last possible moment. I filled out the form and turned it into HR, and then I forgot about it.

Well, they wouldn’t let me forget about it. The life insurance company, that is. I’d say it was about a two weeks after I filled out the form that I started getting calls at my desk, at work. I don’t get many calls at my desk. Everyone emails and instant messages these days. Who actually uses the phone? When I got a call, I picked it up and said, ‘This is Darby,’ and I immediately heard that strange background noise that tells you it’s a telemarketing call. You know what I mean? You can hear about a hundred voices in the background, along with keyboard tapping, phones ringing, people talking urgenrly, and a general loud hum. There would be a pause. A long pause, then someone with an accent would start asking for ‘A mister Barbie.’ So I hung up. First off, get my damn name right. Don’t you think I might be sensitive about being called Barbie? Secondly, don’t they have a first and last name designation on whatever form you’re reading? Thirdly, if you can automate the phone call, can’t you automate something whereby there is no tell-tale pause? How about a voice or something that tells me, instantly, what the hell you want.

Well I endured about four of these calls until someone got through to me and told me what was going on. Hats off to this person. No pause, no craziness, just saying my name right off and saying, before I could hang up, ‘You must see a doctor.’ That worked. I had to have a doctor’s exam to be approved for this life insurance. Man, I thought. What a pain in the ass.There was that aspect of it. But, that wasn’t the big problem, not really. No, it’s more emotional than that. I’m the type that usually feels like the next doctor’s appointment will, in all likelihood, result in a dire prognosis. Essentially, I’m living random doctor visit to random doctor visit. I’m sure with each exam that the doctor will discover cancer, or worse, and what measly pleasure I wring out of life currently will be drastically reduced, if not eliminated.

But this got stranger. I learned in the phone conversation that this outfit could send a doctor to my house. Really? Like an in-house visit. It sounded so 1950s. I couldn’t believe it. Really? Sure, they said. Then we discussed visitation times, and eventually, we landed on seven in the morning a week off. That’s where I was a few days ago, bright and early, when the doctor knocked on my door. Somehow I’d managed to get up and put on some clothes.

I escorted the doctor into our dining room room, and we sat a table, and he asked me a bunch of health related questions, i.e. medical history, family history, social security number, etc. The whole thing was very odd, break of dawn, with this pleasant pudgy man sitting at my dining room table and mildly interrogating me. Tallulah stood and watched for a while, a Little Mermaid plate of Raisen toast in one hand and a cup of orange juice in the other. “What’s wrong with you, daddy?” “Where to start?” I quipped. Then I ushered her into the kitchen with Jenny. I had to give a urine sample. Not sure how to explain to a five year old why I needed to give my pee to a doctor. She went, reluctantly. The urine sample was done by going into my bathroom and peeing into a cup and a couple of vials, then placing caps on each vial to seal them. The cup had a thin black line across the bottom of it. Do I keep the cup or give it to the doc? Throw it away, he said when I started to bring it out to him. “What do I want with that?” I felt silly. But there was one thing I had to note. The pee activated something in the line, and a green 94 appeared. What the hell did this mean? The doctor nodded his head and said, “Good.”

Then it was time for the blood test. The doctor moved swiftly, pulling a kit out of a small cardboard mailer box. Talking all the while about Boston, where his son was in school, he plunged the needle and sucked out the blood, all painlessly. He had small, stumpy fingers, and they were adept with the needles, the rubber band around my bicep, and the guaze pad he applied to the teeny wound. The entire time, my hand is lying on his knee, and my daughter Tallulah is calling my name through the closed door.

We talked briefly while the doc held the gauze pad for a few moments to my small blood wound. He seemed impressed that I’d traveled some, earning the remark, “You’re one of the cool guys. People here in the South, they never leave.” He wasn’t from the South himself, not that I could tell, because when I asked him where he was from, he sort of shrugged. He didn’t want to say.

After the doc left, I wondered, for a little while, if he was legitimate. I’d asked for his card, but he’d scrawled out and address and written a new phone number. I could barely read the handwriting. What was happening here? My thoughts raced. He’d just poked me, taken my social, and taken a bunch of my urine. What could a stranger do with this information? I looked the card over intently. Was this a real service or part of some crazy scheme that I’d stumbled into, all under the ruse of “life insurance.” He’d said the blood was for an AIDS test; but what if he was some incredible con man, what if he’d given me AIDS? That was it, surely. The life insurance company sent the man here to give me a disease so…..

Don’t be crazy, I finally told myself, despite the fun I was having. There in the door, watching his headlights back out of the drive, I shuddered. A part of me wanted to run across the lawn, hail him down, and invite him in for breakfast. I needed more. I needed to know more. I needed to trust him. Maybe he could be my doctor in Atlanta? Maybe this whole strange affair could amount to something. But I didn’t move. I closed the door when the headlights faded into the dawn. I picked up Tallulah, and I started answering questions about the thick, blood splotched band-aid in the crook of my elbow. “Daddy, what’s wrong with you?” she kept asking. “Nothing,” I said, finally, lying really. “Daddy’s perfectly fine.”

Twins

2009-08-12T21:57:00.002-04:00

By mid-October, I'll be the father of twin identical girls, names to be determined. Jenny is twenty-six weeks into her pregnancy. At thirty-four weeks, the babies will be delivered.

The whole business is utterly shocking. We wanted another kid. We planned for another one. We got the positive test on the home pregnancy kit. And then a week later, after Jenny visits the doctor, we get floored with the news. Jenny told me in our little bedroom here in North Druid Hills, in the dusk of a Spring day, with Tallulah crawling over the bed and babbling. It's funny when a change in your life occurs like this; the revelation does not come suddenly. It's just a little fact that's kind of attached to you, just attached, barely. You're aware that a huge change has taken place, that it is inside of you and likely irreversible; but you do not understand it. I mean, me, of course. I did not get it. I knew it was happening to us, to me, to Tallulah, to our lives. But I did not feel it, not the way I am beginning to as the moment of their arrival approaches.

When Jenny was being examined by her doctor, he said to her, 'Congratulations.' Then he said, 'Hold on.' He did a little more looking. 'Congratulations, again,' he said. It's not much of a story, really. But it's a powerful one for me. It's funny, and crazy, and deeply personal. A small two word comment that will reverberate for years in my life.

I wish I'd been there. I wish I could have seen the look on Jenny's face. I can imagine it, sure. I've seen her stunned several times. But this just seems like a wholly different enterprise. Twins.

What I always first think about, when I think about these twins, is the total unpredictability of it. Whatever you feel about life and living and all that mess, you have to admit, you don't know what's going to happen next. You really just don't know. It never occurred to me that I would be the father of identical twins.

I should correct myself. The thought did cross my mind, but only after Jenny was pregnant and before her doctor's visit. We were at a Braves game. We were standing in line for the so-called "Running of the bases" on a hot Sunday afternoon. A few places up from us in line was a mother with two beautiful twin girls. Jenny makes light of it now, but this is what happened. I said, 'What would that be like? What if that happened?' She didn't really say anything that I can remember; and I let the thought go, although now I can clearly remember their appearance.

Now I am not one to believe in the things you'd need to believe in because of this incident. I only think it's odd, strangely coincidental. And I didn't consider the twin thing that deeply at that moment. If I think about it now, I only thought, 'Those kids are beautiful.' And they were, two blonde hair tots in plaid green dresses.

What I think about the most now is the fragility of life that Jenny carries in her body. There is a difference in carrying one and multiples. Statistically, of course, it's more dangerous for the life of the babies, what Jenny is undergoing. But that is not what I mean to say. There is something more immediate or visceral about the bodies, the actual twin bodies, inside of Jenny. There are two of them in there, almost like a club of kids, twisting and turning around each other.

Jenny gets sonograms every week. Sometimes I go with her. A few weeks ago, I sat and held her hand while they squirted a gel all over her bare belly and then started probing with the x-ray rod. It's horrible, crude photography, to be honest; but every so often, we could get a glimpse of both of the girls, suspended in the dark amniotic sac. We could see, crystal clear, however fleeting, their teeny hands and feets, or the exact articulation of their small, curved spines. Then the image would shift, or a kid, would move, the whole splatter of shades of gray was turbulent, unreadable. A few moments later, staring at strangeness, Jenny would relax her hand.

The Discussion

2009-02-20T21:53:00.005-05:00

A few days ago I completed writing on "The Discussion." I wrote this novella, if I can term it anything like that, entirely by hand, in a small journal. The pages are about the size of index cards, and in sum total, it's about 300 pages.

I didn't "fill the page," however, which is always a kind of burning desire of mine when I look at blank page. Get something on there, my gut tells me. That page is naked, by god, clothe it.

For some reason, perhaps as a result of all the "challenges" I've done through the years with my good friend Pete Duval, I forced myself to write one sentence paragraphs. So literally, what you have here, is a series of single sentences, which somehow managed to tell an extended story. No kidding, there are no multi-sentence paragraphs here.

I'm reminded, in some ways, of a Larry Brown story from Dirty Work; but that was really a poem, and this has no poetic quality to it.

Anyway I'm pleased that I've finished it, and I wanted to tell you about it. Am I pleased with the story involved? I'm no so sure, but tonight I started a reading of it, like picking up a strange book off a shelf, encountering the thing as it's totally alien to me, as I would any other book; and I've found it curious so far. The whole piece takes place over twelve hours, in essence an intense conversation between lovers on the verge of estrangement, in a remote hotel in the north Georgia mountains. The whole thing is charged sexually, and there's an eerie side story involving the unusual son of the older woman. Okay, it reads like a modern French novel. Does it say as much? Or as little? I'll know on subsequent readings and writing.

The next step is to type the damn weird tale. I've started doing that, and I'm retaining the one sentence graph structure, which is so ridiculous it makes me laugh. But who the hell knows, maybe this is the start of my true nature as a writer -- the essential experimenter. Or, perhaps, it's the start of a new process for me. It does occur to me that the one sentences are nothing more than the beginning of paragraphs I've yet to write.

From the Bookshelf: Michel Rio, Dreaming Jungles

2009-02-20T20:12:00.003-05:00

I staggered across this book by my favorite means of book discovery: browsing in a bookstore. I picked it off the shelf at a new/used shop near Emory University called Eagle Eye Bookshop for $2.99, which was a total bargain.

After finishing the book – and it was quick, though dense reading experience – I surfed around the Web trying to get some info on the author Michel Rio, a Frenchman. I found very little. I don’t know anything about this writer other than a poorly written NYTimes review from the 90’s and a single line in Wikipedia. If I could read French, I’d be better off. Good reason, I think, to take up another language.

This book is almost like a second telling of one of my favorite books of all time, Heart of Darkness. No kidding, literally (it’s in translation) there is a sentence about the narrator “plunging into the heart of darkness.” Coming across that silly line, I was wondering if I was reading a highly sophisticated parody or satire. The plot of this novel involves a young man going upriver to study chimps in the wilds of Africa, and as you might imagine, he loses himself (deliberately, in this case) in the “savagery.”

I think it’s likely the brilliance of the writing that I can’t pin down the tone. Or that could be the flaw of the writing, not sure. I love the setting, and I love the plot, which moves along more rapidly than any novel I’ve ever read. Even though it feels partly like a Conrad rip-off, I was drawn into the jungle narrative, and I was impressed with the intense, carefully constructed diction (obviously an ode to Conrad, unless the translation is embellishing).

The novel is also a peculiar philosophical discussion. Large chapters are simply banter, in that upper-crusty civilized Brit way, about issues of evolution, natural selection, and Art. Sounds like a crazy mix, right? Well, it is damn crazy. Imagine a scene in which several well-to-do explorers are sitting around a campfire, amid pitched tents, in the deepest reaches of an African jungles, and they’re getting drunk, and they’re arguing the finer points of existentialism. That’s what happens in this book, and I supposed it’s a wonder that Rio pulls it off without too much absurdity.

There’s also a pretty ridiculous sexual plot here. I couldn’t reconcile this aspect of the novel. We read lofty paragraphs, in ornate prose, about the nature of man, and then the narrator is caught Peeping-Tom on the lone woman on the expedition, lounging by her candle in her tent. What does she do? Naturally she stares at the narrator, and then undresses and orgasms. Yoo-hoo! Somehow, her behavior, while erotic, doesn’t jive with the tone and topic of the rest of the novel. And indeed, the narrator’s climactic act (sorry about the language there) is to hole up, miles from civilization, in the deepest part of the jungle, alone, for a year. He lives in the treetops, eat only fruit, and studies chimps. When he returns to the camp, he confesses to the woman, a Lady Savile, that he loves her, and that’s why he engaged on such an improbable adventure.

Okay, so it probably goes without saying – this isn’t believable. And I agree. All the same, I was compelled by the unusual “artifact” of this novel. And you know, I’d love to be able to write something so fluid, so concise, and so unusual. It’s an utter Conrad carbon copy, and despite the lovely convolutions of language, it’s worth reading. I’ll never be able to write even poor Conrad, which Rio does; but I do think, now basking in the odd afterglow of this crude African Queen, that I could write an adventure/colonist/turn of the century novel with a more original plot. Really it comes down to one question. I picked the book off the shelf, I read the scintillating teaser, and I read the whole damn thing with a certain amazement. That’s an achievement. I’ll let time figure out the nuances of my reaction and where this book sits critically. In the meantime, I say, plunge into this strange jungle, and enjoy.

From the Bookshelf: Stewart O'Nan's Last Night at the Lobster

2009-02-03T21:12:00.002-05:00

I've already written on this blog about an incredibly moving novel by Stewart O'Nan, A Prayer for the Dying. That book was set at the turn of the century, about a plague in a small town, told in second person. I should haven't been surprised by the turn O'Nan makes in a recent book, Last Night at the Lobster. Utterly different setting, characters, and plot.

This tidy novel is something I wish I'd written. It's a "day in the life" formula -- which is a drawback -- but the setting is so engaging that I'll forgive that tried formula. The plot line is simple. The Red Lobster in a beat, snowed-in New England town is closing, and we're following the store manager on the last day. It's a lovely idea.

But it's a tricky one, too. It's a sort of tragedy, and the book comes off as a near sentimental ode to the "franchise restaurant experience." Really the question becomes 'Were the experiences of the employees (many of whom don't show up for the last day) human enough to warrant this tribute? The dishwasher, the impatient chef, the haggard waitress, the forlorn manager?' That's the challenge before O'Nan.

I think he pulls it off, but not as well as you might imagine. That's all right, because the details he provides for the setting -- maybe encapsulated in his constant reference to a marlin on the restaurant wall -- are stunning. This is a well-observed (if overly researched) book, and although I've been in these kinds of joints too many times, and although I've been in that muggy kitchen, I have to say I was moved by the descriptions, startled by them. In some ways, this is a tribute to that aspect of American life -- the highly commercialized experience, the faux dining, the tinkling muzak, the rich food, etc. I don't think that kind of life is going anywhere any time soon; if anything, we're getting more and more of it -- so it's a little hard to be sad about the closing of the Lobster in that regard.

I think what O'Nan wants us to feel is very nuanced. There's a bit of absurdity in bemoaning the closing of a Red Lobster. But inside of that shallow place are lives, human lives. And even in the dreariest of lives, there is humanity, drama -- life. That's a great notion. I guess the bigger question becomes, do these types of places create those lives? I'm not sure, and I'm not sure O'Nan wants to answer that question. Really his ambitions for this piece are pretty evident and restrained: show us Manny going through every motion (even though it seems silly since the joint is closing), doing his job, hustling through the day. He's a hero because he's doing his job even though the reasons for doing it are all seemingly gone. That's a rich American motif, no doubt. Manny's got the makings of a young Willy Loman.

Two scenes in the novel linger. First -- the last night has no visitors except for a very elderly couple. The few remaining staff tend to them like royalty, and then the power goes off -- the whole story takes place during a raging snowstorm. Secondly -- on his "break" (again, the absurdity is powerful -- why take an official 'break' on your last day when the joint is shutting down?) Manny leaves the Red Lobster and trudges through the snow to a nearby mall. It's one of those sad, nearly abandoned malls, and O'Nan descriptions of the closed shops and pathetic open shops is right-on. Manny ends up at a 'Zales' to buy some diamond earrings for his girlfriend, as a Christmas present, and he ends up buying something out of his price range from a sexy Polish woman who could have easily asked him to chop off his hand, and he would have done it. Then, the sale is over, and Manny's out in the cold again. Really, in a way, the entire novel felt like this. The sexy, but cheap and brief experience -- and it's done, we're out in the cold, out in the snow, which is where the book ends, Manny cranking up his aged car, wishing he'd stolen the marlin out of the restaurant, then drifting off into the snow with the dead lights of the Red Lobster glowing dully behind him.

From the Bookshelf: 25 Novels I Love

2009-01-19T19:21:00.003-05:00

These are all books by men that I admire and that remain on my bookshelf:

1. Waiting, by Ha Jin

2. The Fermata, by Nicholson Baker

3. Post Office, by Charles Bukowski

4. Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien

5. Paris Trout, by Pete Dexter

6. The Music of Chance, by Paul Auster

7. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron

8. Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron

9. Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner

10. A Good Day to Die, by Jim Harrison

11. 92 in the Shade, by Thomas McGuane

12. The Hunters, by James Salter

13. Solo Faces, by James Salter

14. A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter

15. Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

16. Leaving Las Vegas, by John O'Brien

17. Waiting for the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee

18. The Middle Passage, by Charles Johnson

19. Travels with my Aunt, by Graham Greene

20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey

21. The Book of Evidence, by John Banville

22. Feast of Snakes, by Harry Crews

23. Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, by Steven Millhauser

24. The Dog of the South, by Charles Portis

25. Dog Soldiers, by Robert Stone

I only keep book I love on my shelf. The rest, I give to the library. These are some of my faves by literary studs.

Videophile: Movies I Love...

2009-01-17T21:34:00.016-05:00

From the Bookshelf: Sharon Olds -- One Secret Thing

2009-01-11T21:37:00.005-05:00

Ever since I read Sharon Olds’ The Dead and the Living in the hot throes of a single evening, I’ve been an ardent admirer of her work. I’ve long been haunted by many of her poems: the acerbic socio-political scathing of ‘Republican Living Rooms”; the diabolical maternal angst of “Airport Hotel” from Satan Says; the clever loss of illusion in “The Death of Marilyn Monroe”; the sinister family dynamic in any of the ‘father’ poems like “The Eye,” or “Burn Center.” Her work reads like a beautiful nightmare. The poem "The Music" from the series Cassiopeia sums it up in a few breathtaking lines: 'Now I hear the melody/of the one bound to the mast.'

What I admire about Olds, and what is present though this new collection One Secret Thing is her sheer audacity, her total willingness to say what is unspoken or what we’re privately thinking. The work is raw, tender, horrific, and confrontational. She is unflinching.

So much of the experience catalogues in One Secret Thing (and other works) is an open wound. The work truly

seems to bleed from the page. Failed relationships with old lovers, tremendously painful relationships with a dying mother and an alcoholic, cruel father.

The subject matter is often brutal. This doesn’t change with the new work (2008). The method and the style are not too different either. But here is what I find amazing about her work. She takes these raw wounds, the blood and guts of her life, and she transforms them. She uses the poem itself as means of absorbing, understanding, and expanding on these moments of her life – not necessarily into something beautiful, which would be trite, but into something poetic, which is fascinating.

About a quarter of the poems in this collection are about Olds’ dying mother, referred to as "a scrimshaw Crusader." It’s heartbreaking to read them. They are replete with sorrows of the end of the human experience. It’s not pretty. It’s infuriating, nauseating, hard-to-read. I’m not sure if a poem is a way out of that sorrow and misery, but it’s definitely a way to make it through it, somehow with your humanity in one piece, however battered and old. That is what Olds does. To borrow a line from the poem "When Our Firstborn Slept In": 'I walked a like hunter in the horror-joy/of the unattached.' Yes, so do we.

I don’t figure Olds is unafraid. She is not. She is deeply horrified by life, by the degenerative nature of it. She writes poems about looking at her bottom in the mirror, and the lines make you cringe; not from the physical description, but from the grappling of the narrator, as she tries to find a meaning or a beauty in the pockmarks, the sagging, the dying -- "now exhausted, as if tragic.' ("Self-Portrait, Rear View." And you know, she almost pulls it off, and that sense of her trying, of grappling, is deeply moving. She writes, comically, 'I wonder/if anyone has ever died,/looking in a mirror, or horror...."

Like The Dead and the Living, this collection is a mix of personal poems and more socially, collectively conscious poems. There are war poems about sacrifice, and there are vitriolic poems clearly aimed the White House and conservatives. That mix works, to a point, and I get the connection that is trying to be made. The personal poems are much more successful, much more tender and moving. Olds lets us into the rooms where the night lights are on and the mother has forgotten to close her night robe, and that voyeuristic sense is crucial to appreciating or running from her work. She is the 'scout of the mortal, heart breaking into solo.' ("The Music."

Much of the work is a nightmare. Yes, but a beautiful one. I can relate. For every poem about the messiness of death, you’ll find an equally powerful one about the start of life (like “Umbillicus”). It’s the cleverness of the poet that makes us associate the two, that bring them into union. From the poem "Something is Happening": There is something big coming/bigger than love, bigger than aloneness./She's staying up all night for it.....You know, I think I am, too. Bring it on.

From the Bookshelf: James Hilton's Lost Horizon

2009-01-09T20:10:00.006-05:00

I didn’t know anything about James Hilton’s Lost Horizon (1933) before I began reading it. I’d picked-up it up in the bookstore looking for something that resonated with that sense of ‘adventure novel’ that so compels me, and I read the back of the jean-pocket sized dust-jacket, and I was hooked. In a way, I must have been like some airport reader decades ago grabbing what the publishers claim as “the first paperback” and being swept away by the narrative.

I’ve read a couple of reviews of the work, neither of which jived with my take on it, which is that this is a book, essentially, about the ‘dangers of Utopia.’ The plot here is pretty straightforward, although it’s couched in a Conrad-style ‘framing narrative’ in which the narrator is reading a manuscript. The storyline follows a charismatic 37 year old soldier/world-traveler who ends up, after being kidnapped in a small airplane, in a Tibetan village, high up in the Himalayans. This place, known as a Shangra-La, works a peculiar spell on Conway and several of the other members of his party. In time, through conversations with the Kurtz-like head monk of the place – a man who purports to be hundreds of years old – Conway is asked to take over leadership of the monastery and the village, an offer that he finds immensely attractive. The village/lamasery has a spiritually soporific effect on everyone, and supposedly, it gives its inhabitants (although not all) the chance of living for centuries.

The challenge of the book is to create a sense of being pleasantly lost. Is there a place where all of our cares, our desires, our wants, our needs are all moderated? Is there a place where we become at peace, free from the complications of the world, of society, of life. Shangra-La seems to be that place; but of course, as in Utopia-novel, that paradise is of dubious nature. The one member of Conway’s party who seems to recognize this, a crotchety ‘fellah’ named Mallinson, disparages the place and points out that he doesn’t see anything pleasant about hanging out for decades in a remote village with a group of very old men, many of who seem to be in love with one of the few women inhabitants of the lamasery, a cute young woman that becomes the object of both Mallinson and Conway’s lust.

As Utopia novels go, the setting is unique, exotic, and almost believable in a way that other classics of this sub-genre are not. The lama’s belief in “moderation” as a way of prolonging life and of liberating the self from the tensions, passions, cares that hamper so many people’s lives unnecessarily is a seductive notion. And there is a motif here that I'm neglecting -- the ravages of a war just ended and another soon to begin haunt every page and every thought of the castaways that end up, against their will, in a lovely getaway from the cruel, violent world. But I guess the title here holds a lot of info: Lost Horizon.We really do, as humans, need an end, and to live beyond it is to be lost. I’m not sure that paradise, in a sense, isn’t a big loss; the old men who pursue so much perfection so idly (and the monks are highly, diversely educated with so much Time on their hands) seem somehow no longer human. Actually, Hilton is right to paint them as vaguely monstrous. What happens to human beings when such as key part of their character – their mortality – is compromised? What becomes of them? Well, not much. They actually lose whatever iota of ‘humanity’ they had. This is what almost happens to the epic-style hero Conway. Although, it’s curious, we leave the book wondering if after his escape he is venturing back to “Shangra-La.” That was Hilton’s last little bit of genius, I think. Sure, immortality may be a flawed existence; but it’s one that most of us can’t help but pursue. Here's hoping most of us don't get too lost in the chase.

The Great 2009 Push-up Sit-up Challenge

2009-01-02T14:37:00.003-05:00

Last year I resolved that every day of the year I would do a push-up according to the numerical day of the year. So, on January 1, I did one push-up. By December 31, I should have been doing 366 push-ups. The grand total number of push-ups, according to my friend Ransome Coleman, would have been over 65,000.

Well I didn't make it past June, and neither did my co-hort Ransome; but I'm going to try it again. I've resolved, and as of today, I'm golden. January 1, 1 push-up and sit up. January 2, 2 push-ups, 2 sit-ups. Easy as heck. Now let's see how I'm doing when we creep closer to 100, 200, 300...and on and on.

Videophile: Sorcerer

2008-11-29T19:41:00.006-05:00

Roy Sheider is famous for his skittish leading role in Steven Speilberg’s Jaws, and director John Friedkin is notorious for his cult classic horror flick The Exorcist (essentially, a fatuous B-movie) and the classy French Connections, but neither of these guys did better in a movie than the lesser known Sorcerer.

This movie is a remake of the arthouse smoke 'em Wages of Fear, but I can’t stand the original, even though it’s taught in film classes and dissected from opening credits to closing credits. It’s a great movie, in its own way, but it’s a movie that still misses the best story available; Friedkin hits that, discovers that, and does it.

I think this film, while less politically conscious, is far superior; although it was never a blockbuster in the way I think Friedkin might have imagined, much like Francis Ford Coppola’s under-appreciated jazzy classic The Conversation, it’s work in which is able to showcase all his cinema and story talents without the stress of making a movie for Hollywood. He did this after his huge success, and you could tell he did whatever the hell he wanted. (Note Werner Herzog’s diluted new Hollywood movie, the title escapes me, to see what happens when great directors try to make a buck – after they’ve made their slew of independent features.)

The plot here, as always, is what drives me. Sheider plays a crook who ends up in loose ends somewhere deep in South America; he’s given an offer, along with several other low-lifes from various parts of the world, to lead a two-truck caravan down a perilous, mountainous road through a dense jungle. Both of the trucks are loaded with a fragile, highly explosive material; if the trucks bounce too much or overturn, the explosives will go off. They’ve been rigged and positioned very carefully inside the back of these giant old, behemoth trucks. If the motley ragtage collection of desperate, swarthy and unscrupulous men are able to deliver the goods successfully, they’ll be free. But it will take quite a long time, and the money's on the jungle. Over the course of the movie, one by one, each of the men foul-up, and the odds of delivering the goods becomes more and more slim. The most famous scene in the movie involves the passage of one choking truck over a rickety swinging bridge – in a driving tropical storm.

This movie is, in essence, what any half-ass action film can only dream of being; authentic, gripping, compelling, and completely without morals or any notion of good and evil. That seems to be the best environ for fiction. It speaks to me the way any classic narrative does. The only thing to do here is to survive, and in the scenario, the truth of human existence becomes clear, or not. Most importantly of all, to me, is that the film has that dirty 70’s grit; the people here and the story here don’t feel filmed so much as lived. It’s sweat, horrific, and gripping. All great movies grow out of great story, and the truly great ones do what Sorcerer does effortlessly – they tell the story plainly, with splendid human characters, essential details, and unpredictable results.

Special Projects: Two-Dimensional Found Art Journal?

2008-11-25T21:36:00.005-05:00

I think that I’m discovering how much I enjoy these small scale experimental writing projects. There’s a sense of immediate pleasure and satisfaction that comes with making something that I don’t get with the novel work and the stories. It reminds me of the pure satisfaction I used to get from developing photographic prints in the darkroom. I had made something, and it would be there forever, and it was physical and immediate. Writing can be so damn abstract and obtuse. What we need really is writing that has the same effect on the writer and the reader as the chef and the five star meal.

To that end, for our Thanksgiving trip to the desolate urban landscape of Granite City, I’ve been keeping a small ‘found art’ journal. I’ve been working on it every day, at every free moment I get, cutting and pasting with scissors and glue stick, and scribbling with a somewhat leaky blue pen.

Some explanation. Recently we were in arty, cozy Asheville, North Carolina, and there in an art gallery I bought a $6, hand-sized journal, the exterior of which had been made from the cardboard of a Bass Ale beer sixpack. So, the outside of the journal is a partial image of a Bass Ale beer box; the inside is about 60 pages of plain white paper. The whole thing is bound somewhat loosely with very light string.

I’ve used this journal to keep track of our trip; but, I’m not really writing your typical (banal?) journal; I’ve decided to paste small found Art onto page and then scribble something below each item in the remaining white space. For example, I took a receipt from a breakfast we purchased in the airport lounge and wrote a few sentences about the breakfast.

Sounds off, I’m sure, but the experience has been extremely pleasure. I don’t have any idea why, except that it seems like a small project that I can complete; and it becomes a peculiar testament to our trip; and, perhaps most importantly, it makes me realize that incredible things are happening to us all the time.

I ought to explain that last sentence. What I mean is that there is always a gap between when I collect an item to paste into the journal and the time when I actually paste it into the journal and write about it. During that time, something bad happens. I actually forget the context of the moment in which I collected the item. In fact I tend to chalk up every moment, for the most part, as wholly ordinary. But, when I sit down to write about the item, when I sit down to remember the moment, a whole flood of rich memories and stories and observations return to me—and in turn, I realize, that Rilke was right. There is never a boring moment. If you are not poet enough to bring out the poetry of your life, then it’s your fault. It really is.

So, in short, the journal are an act of defiance against ordinary experience; they are testament to Rilke’s idea. Or, of course, I’m seriously deluded, and the little scraps of paper and casual observations I’m making are quaint, and ultimately, banal. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Because, what’s key here is the pleasure I’m taking in the creation. You need to love what you do. Otherwise, give it up, forget everything, and maybe then you’ll fall in love with something totally different in nature.

Travels: Granite City

2008-11-23T20:57:00.004-05:00

We’re spending much of the week in Granite City Illinois, a beat Midwestern town across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. Jenny’s mother lives here, in the town where she was born and raised.

Ruth drove us from the St. Louis airport into town, but before we could swing by her new house, she insisted we get some breakfast at “The Apple Tree Restaurant.” This cozy joint is situated inside a strip mall about twenty yards from the railroad tracks that run parallel to the main drag through town.

The Apple Tree is an old-school American food restaurant. We got these wonderful ‘advertisement placemats,’ and all the plates and cups were of heavy white porcelain. The jelly came in tiny boxes with foil lids that peeled open, and the waitress poured our coffer at the table from a translucent coffee point stained the color of rust.

I got a dish called a “skillet.” Essentially it was ham cubes, onion slices, chunks of green pepper, gooey American cheese, eggs, and stringy hashbrowns all slathered together with grease in a wide low bowl. I also got four triangles of buttery toast, white bread. Tallulah got eggs and hash browns, and the waitress brought out a brand of ketchup I’d never heard of: Red Gold. I tried it. Disgusting, namely because it tasted just like tomatoes.

I scarfed down my skillet and didn’t say a word to anyone at the table. I had the feeling that all of the grease in the dish slicked up my throat, and so the food just toppled down easily. We sat and talked about sports and family, and I sipped on my sugary lemonade and felt the giant slab of warmth in my stomach churning and gurgling.

After breakfast, we struck out for Ruth’s newly purchased house, a quaint two bedroom in a quiet neighborhood. Neighbors were out raking their leaves and picking up fallen branches.

We drove by this one house where about a half dozen young guys were lounging in the front yard around some Christmas decorations – an inflated Frosty, an inflated Santa in a sled, a white Christmas tree. None of it looked in place on the dead yellow grass. Half of the boys had stripped down to their jeans. No shirts. Forty degrees, and they were bare-chested. They were all smoking cigarettes, and a few of them were drinking from brown paper sacks. One kid was trying to do tricks on his skateboards, essentially riding two of them at once and leaping off the curb. When he spilled, his splayed his long bare arms wildly in the afternoon light, and the whole gang behind seemed to lurch with laughter.

Tallulah Video: One Eyed Purple People Eater

2008-11-20T21:41:00.000-05:00

I wanted to see if I could load some video using Blogger....So this is kind of a test. It's a quick little video, fairly low quality, of Tallulah dancing to a musical birthday card she got at Halloween from her grandparents. I'm hoping to add some more videos a little later when I get the hang of things. Meanwhile, check out the youngest Sanders busting a few moves.

The Discussion

2008-11-19T22:46:00.000-05:00

I've been working on a novel for the past couple of years about a so-called Fifty-Two Week Strip; and that project will be complete soon. But I've also stumbled into another project, a kind of creative diversion that I'm grown excited about the last few weeks because it's far more experimental and unusual in nature than work I typically do.

Jenny dug out this little Borders bookstore journal for me from some unpacking we hadn't done until recently. 'Is this yours?' It seemed like it was, although I hadn't used it. I looked at it closer, and I realized that a certain number of pages had been ripped sloppily from the front of it. I hadn't written my name or any project title inside the little canvas cover, lined page journal. So it was still game for something. As for what happened to the earlier writing, who cares.

At some point I hit upon a peculiar idea, and I've been running with it. I decided to write an entire...what to call it?...I don't know, a novella of one sentences; and I'd write the whole thing by hand, in this newly discovered little "star" journal. I carry this journal everywhere with me now, and when I have a free moment or two, I pick it up, and I write out the next line of the novella. Except I have forced myself (not sure why) to write only one sentence paragraphs. So it's an unusual read, at this point, with it's own little rules (which, really, is what all greats work of fiction are) that I'm still trying to learn, even 85 pages (small pages) into the writing. Literally I write a sentence, and then I break the paragraph, and I write another sentence....We'll just have to see what the end results are. I'm assuming I'll finish it, and then I'll type the thing in; will it remain in that one-sentence paragraph form? I'm not sure, but I'm trying not to consider that stage of the writing process. All that matters now is moving forward in the narrative, which I don't want to divulge for fear of gold leaking out of my saddlebag. The title, as it stands now, is "The Discussion." Very Nicholson Baker of me, no doubt.

Videophile: Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

2008-11-14T19:24:00.000-05:00

I heard an actor on Bill Maher’s Realtime remark the other day about how boring the 70’s were, how he had ‘barely survived the most boring decade ever.’ What?! I don’t get it. From my point of view, that was the greatest decade of my lifetime, at least in terms of Rock & movies, and what could be as important as that? This was the real Golden Age of movies (or should I say Paisley Age?), that splendid transition of experimentation between the end of Big Hollywood and the beginning of Independent cinema – before that term became so complex, when guys like Scorcese and Coppola and Lumet and McNally and…Micheal Cimino made their mark. When guys could start redefining what a movie should be, what realism is – grit and street and dirty houses -- slathering two hour productions with broodiness, oversexed stars, silence, remorseless violence, and best of all, clean well lighted plots....Then of course Big Hollywood was birthed again out of many of these same folks.

I bring up Cimino, who most people know from the Vietnam war classic Deer Hunter movie (the second half of which is melodramatic crap), because he wrote and directed this incredible movie I saw the other day for the first time. I’d heard about Thunderbolt & Lightfoot from various cult movie magazines, but I’d never managed to get a hold of it to view until the other day. And man, did this movie impress me. I was not disappointed. There are still treasure troves of cool flicks out there. Dig, man, dig.

I’ve always been a big Jeff Bridges fan, mostly because of the 1978 King Kong, which I think still is the best giant Gorilla movie out there (I’m laughing), even better than the recent Hobbit-inspired version; and while his range as an actor is extremely limited, Clint Eastwood is always appealing to me, probably because of the way he created that incredible killer in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the most enduring and iconic cowboy movie of all time. Gotta love the T.E. Lawrence of the West. These are the two leads in Thunderbolt & Lightfoot. Eastwood plays an itinerant, veteran crook-burglar, and Jeff Bridges latches onto him as an exuberant, footloose sidekick. Together the two manage to avoid pursuit from an old embittered colleague of Thunderbolt’s (Eastwood) and then pull off a classic big bank heist.

That’s the plot, really simply put; but the movie is really about the relationship that develops between the older, wizened Thunderbolt and the reckless, charming young Lightfoot. It’s a buddy movie, that corny Hollywood genre that never dies (think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or more recently the shameless shlock Thelma & Louise), and it’s also an exploration of the depravity of humanity. These are not nice guys, at least not to the people they encounter, like a middle aged tourist couple at a roadside who give over their valuables to the men when the two of them just stare at them – never saying a word, never suggesting anything. The movie really is about the peculiar friendship that springs up between these two. They're nice to each other, and they teach each other something -- first, being on the lamb is rough on the soul, and secondly, friendships are possible. Lightfoot is unabashed in his affection for the older crook, but Eastwood’s character, as you might imagine, is more reticent, more jaded, less inclined to let himself get close to the kid.

But he does get close, close enough to put his life on the line for him. The only thing you wonder in a movie like this, which relies heavily on long car chases and gunfights, is this: are the characters rich enough? That’s a hard call for me because I become so immersed in the sets and styles of these movies. I love the desert setting, and the Pacific Northwest setting, and I love how the whole movie feels shot on location. The Kodachrome ‘grit’ of these blood-splattered, nicotine-stained, plaid framed 70s movies is incomparable. There’s dirt in the lense all the time, but that feels right, that feels like the movie itself is sweating, just like Jeff Bridges as he steals a car. You can lick the perspiration of the window. The movie opens with a car approaching a church, across a wheat vista; the dust kicks up, obscures the car, and then settles around the church. That’s what these movies like, and I love the feeling, the dust and grime, not only of the scenes, but of the people, slowly setting on you.

Quentin Tarantino made what I think is his best movie, by far, recently. Deathproof. I didn’t hear much about this movie, and I’m sure it’s because people wrote it off for the very reasons I’m compelled by a movie like Thunderbolt and Lightning. It was dirty, messy, highly 70’s styled, full of violence and sex, and all about a car chase. It was an ode to the feeling that these movies created in people my age, the matinee rancor of

murder, sex, and desperation. God it was cool. An incredible car chase, which is what many of the 70’s movies like Vanishing Point are all about – the great modern boat voyage up a river or the spacecraft exploration of the depths of space is just like the car chase across the vast diverse American landscape. So much more to say here. Suffice it to say, in brief, that Deathproof was an incredible testament to the spirit, verve, and the hot mood of movies like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Plus, it has an Aussis stunt-girl delivering a two minute monologue about the greatest car chase ever made, Barry Sarafin’s epic masterpiece Vanishing Point. Does it get better? Tarantino’s a mess as a diretor, more about the small moments in movies than the overall movies, but he nailed this one, and I was impressed, bedazzled no less.

Is it cheesy? Of course. But is it rich? You bet. One particular motif comes to mind. Throughout the movie, the smart-ass naive Lightfoot is cracking jokes about the relationship he’s developing with Thunderbolt, pretty harmless homoerotic jokes. And then what happens at the end of the movie? No, it’s not that kind of movie, but Cimino certainly plays with your mind a bit, as Bridge ends up wearing a wig and dress for part of the heist scheme. So, we get treated in one way to Bridges in drag with Eastwood at a drive-in movie theater where they’ve gone to hide from the cops. And to make it more believable, what does Bridges do? He siddles up to Eastwood in the driver’s seat. Think that wasn’t deliberate? What’s being said here? All kinds of things. Pay attention to the soundtrack too, that warm strumming guitar and bluesy beat like some hybrid of Cat Stevens and James Brown.

And that’s what happens in this movie as a whole. Each scene is filled with layers of meaning, style, and point-of-view. It’s about violence, of course, and it’s about men, and it’s a long meditation on desperation, the search for being a hero. As Lightfoot is dying in the car he’s always dreamed of owning, he says, ‘I feel like a hero. I know we did something wrong, but I feel good.’ He's dying of some freak injury to the head he got after he managed to pull of the heist, barely. And there’s Eastwood driving the car with his taut jaw and America sprawling behind him. The Man With No Name has become the Driver, the Journeyman. Still bad as hell, no doubt, but now we get a peak at his heart. His partner's death devastates him (but doesn't stop him).

Why does it work? Still trying to figure out. But I think it all has to do with the notion of realism that a guy like Cimino brought to the movies. Oh, and, there’s a great villain in this movie, too, played by George Kennedy. ‘Red,’ is his name, and he’s a hot-tempered, cheap-suit wearing killer from Thunderbolt’s old days. You know his fuse has been dipped in kerosene, and the longer the film goes, the closer he gets to smoldering, then blowing. He’s also ugly as hell, which I wish more actors wear nowadays. The folks in this movie look like people; that, I guess, is key. Great literature is driven by character, and so, too are great movies like this.

From My Bookshelf: Dirty Work

2008-11-12T20:17:00.000-05:00

Dirty Work was Larry's Brown's first novel, and I don't think he ever wrote something as compelling, experimental, and startling as this book. The plot sounds almost too contrived -- two old soldiers in a VA hospital, one white and one black -- struggle with the horrific wounds they suffered years earlier in the Vietnam War. Slowly they come to tell each other the history of their sufferings and the pain of living with their injuries.

If I remember right, there's some controversy about this book, for a couple of reasons. First, it's a book about the Vietnam War, or at least veterans of that war, written by an author with limited access to the war. Secondly, it's told in alternating points of view -- between the black and white man. So, what you've got here is a white author writing in a black voice, for much of the book.

Well it's an experimental novel all around; it's just not your regular type of novel. (And shouldn't all novels be experimental?) And for that reason alone, I can forgive Brown for any type of transgression he may be making by writing across race. In general, I don't think it's a good idea. But as experiment, I think it's healthy. Now I can't assess whether Brown's black voice here is authentic, but I would argue that's not the point. All novels are artificial, all the voices contrived. The point is not to make something like life; the point is to make something more than life, or what's usually called Art.

This book succeeds in that regard, tremendously. Brown borrows (as so many writers have) from Faulkner with the double-narrator technique. I've always liked this because it gives the narrative such depth; and we aren't challenged to wonder what X character is seeing versus what Y character is seeing. We see the whole story from both sides; and the voices ring true to me, if not too different from all of Brown's voices -- strong, robust short sentences in Southern drawl, unadorned prose, clean, efficient.

The plot is slow-going, but the book isn't so much about what happens as what is said. They talk about religion, culture, sex, violence, their dismal pasts, their injuries, their dreams. These are rough, impoverished, achingly desperate individuals, and the question as a reader is 'How do they go on?' That really is what stuns me about the writing, and about this book. It's about how to go on living, or not, when the suffering is so intense, so void of humanity. You have these two poor souls (not treated with any sentimentality) drinking through a long night of conversation and remembrance, and there they are, struggling with the most base of questions under the direst of circumstances: what makes this life worth living when so much of it is pointless suffering?

From My Bookshelf: A Prayer for the Dying

2008-11-11T21:18:00.001-05:00

Stewart O'Nan's novel A Prayer for the Dying is one of those rare second person novels. I didn't think I'd like this -- I'm always such a conventional writer -- but this is a phenomenal read. The narrator here (second person) is a preacher, mortician, sheriff of a small Civil-War era American town that suffers a horrendous plague which essentially is taking the life of every one. The book is a deliberately paced, hellish account of the town's demise and the narrator's gradual immersion in the death, dying, and suffering.

The challenge, it seems to me, is writing this type of Apocalyptic novel with a heart. I'm a sucker for the dismal, desperate setting, the lone man cast against a bleak universe. That's a classic heroic narrative, and this novel follows that tradition in many ways. The preacher tries to keep his mind and his community together in the face of bleak odds and a rampaging, violent disease. O'Nan does manage to give the narrator (you) a kind of heart; but the overwhelming horror which encounters, scores of dead that include his own wife and child, make it hard for the novel to be about anything but what the narrator witnesses.

That said, I like this book tremendously. I'm impressed by the story, and I'm impressed by the plot, which has a stunning turn near the conclusion. I think as a reader it's less important to me to have that "heart" than to compel the reader in some dramatic human way. There's no indulgence here, no rambling, no moralizing. I also admire the quickness and efficiency of the prose. There's very little wasted here. You (now I'm in second person) could easily see another writer mucking this story up with grand paragraphs on the nature of humanity, sickness, God, morality, etc. But O'Nan doesn't do that. (In some ways, I wonder what Cormac McCarthy would have done with this story.) I think he realized that at some point the most compelling thing about this novel's subject is the clean narrative line, what happens to this preacher/sheriff/mortician as he ambles through this personal hell.

It is a book about humanity that does not romanticize the good or the bad in human beings. It is one of those books which moves me because it's so honest. The preacher is this lone, doubting, forlorn soul grappling with enormous issues of life, death, and sickness. O'Nan does a superb job of describing his thoughts without getting in the way, without being too 'writerly.' That's something I admire. The book speaks, not the author.

Medlock Park

2008-11-11T20:31:00.000-05:00

I’m new to Atlanta, and I have no idea where I’m driving most of the time. But, today, I had a plan for my little girl Tallulah after I picked her up from school. I’d driven by a vast park on the way to the grocery store recently, and I knew she’d love it. I had the directions in my head, and so getting there was no problem.

For most instances, if I don’t have something written down or on the iPhone telling me exactly where to go, I’ll get lost. I don’t have much of a memory and even less a sense of direction.

We got the park around dusk. Tallulah wore this new hat she’d bought with her mom the other day at the massive REI Store off 85-South. The hat is pink, with multi-colored dots, and it has extensive ear flaps. She looks ludicrous in the hat, somehow like an eccentric bag lady.

We did the swings for a while. There was a woman pushing her tiny kid right next to us. This kid was stuffed into his clothes so much we couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl. This kid’s hat made Tallulah’s hat look like a beanie. The hat had about four layers to it, various forms of wool and nylon and moose. Never mind it was fifty degrees.

The whole time on the swing, the mother said only one word: doggie. I couldn’t see a dog any where, and I wasn’t up for small talk. But we were there beside her for a good twenty minutes, and the whole time, it was doggie, doggie, doggie. I wanted to throw in “kitty” but I restrained myself.

When we left, Tallulah asked me about it, and I told her that the woman only knew one word, which was probably not the right thing to say, but it was funny to imagine a person knowing only one word and then passing it on to her child. You’d think it would be a bigger word with more possible meanings, or maybe doggie, depending on the inflection, could have hundreds of different meanings.

Tallulah crawled around on this arabesque plastic marvel of a playscape. She was the only kid now, but no matter. She insisted on playing by herself, some kind of elaborate pirate game, and I took this as a good sign. You have to let them imagine and build their own minds.

In the middle of the playing, however, Tallulah had to use the bathroom. It’s usually at an urgent stage when they can’t walk and they’re walking with their knees are bent at forty-five degree angles. I felt we lucked out because I saw a bathroom in the brick building next to a Little League baseball diamond. We got inside without incident, but the place was a mess. Only one of the four toilets was not overflowing and discolored. I managed to suspend Tallulah over a toilet without her skin actually touching the seat. Tallulah held her hand over her mouth the entire time.

As we were driving home, through some back neighborhood roads, I realized that for the first time in a while, I knew where I was. We were not lost, not even a little. Tallulah was singing some song to herself in the car seat, and then, she’d bring up the stinky bathroom and giggle. I drove slowly, carefully. There were Moms pushing strollers, and there were men with leaf-blowers, and there were joggers out, and they wore reflectors, the luminous strips glowing like warnings in the deepening darkness.

First Day

2008-11-11T13:23:00.000-05:00

I've redone the website, and I've set-up a blog to tell friends and family what's going down with my life and writing.