Even though spring break is on the calendar for months ahead of time when the actual week comes it always feels like it sneaks up on us and we are surfing the web to find activities and friends who will be around while we are around to make the week off feel special. Our plan was going well…

Monday David and I took the boys to the Intrepid. We parked the car in Weehawken and rode the ferry over. It was fun even though the guard at the submarine told Dashiell he couldn’t go down below because he was too short, which resulted in a lot, and I mean a lot of tears and was very mean to do a little boy. David reported him to a manager and the Intrepid staff did was tell us that particular guard was a temp. Hopefully the incident will tarnish Dashiell’s infatuation with the military.

That evening David and I went to see the Flaming Lips at the Welmont. I was feeling very much 40-years-old before the concert, wondering how long the warm up band would play and how late we’d get home. I didn’t want to have a drink because I was afraid I’d fall asleep. David suggested we ride our bikes to the show and it turned the whole night around. We parked our bikes in front of the theater feeling very Earth Day friendly, saved on parking and looked rosy cheeked and awake. We overheard a guy scalping tickets say to the owner of a bodega on Bloomfield Ave, “Sold out show tonight, but its a real nerdy weird crowd.” We couldn’t disagree; I was wearing a bike helmet and a girl walked by us wearing a pink tutu. The show was an amazing strobe light, beach ball and streamers spectacle with negative-like images of a naked woman dancing on a video screen with a tattoo or jeweled necklace with the word “BROKEN” scrawled across her chest. There’s something about standing next to your husband of twelve years singing Vaseline that can rehab a marriage that feels distracted and just plain pooped out. But what really got me was when Wayne said, “You know I see a lot of people thinking about how their lives should be and they think and think but all your life is who you kiss and touch and what you taste and what you do.” By the finale of Do You Realize, I was crying. I felt like maybe I’m the only one crying because I’m old, until I saw a younger woman in front of me wiping away tears too. We rode our bikes home and did a few extra loops around the block because we had an extra 15 minutes. It was a breezy night and flower petals were swirling in the street.

Tuesday: My mom called just as we were about to take boys to Applegates for ice cream after dinner. My dad had heart attack and was in the ER at Lenox Hill Hospital. I arrived in the city in less than hour. My mom was smoking outside of the hospital. He was going to have an angiogram tomorrow that would tell us if he was need open-heart surgery again; he had a double bypass 18 years ago. I drove her home to Pleasant Valley. Here’s what I learned: my mother carries at least 7 lighters in her purse at all times. I’ve always known my parents live far out in the boonies of Dutchess County, New York, but when you have to drive about 80 miles to get home from NYC after being in the ER you feel those miles. There is a very discreet and chic hotel called The Surrey that gives discounts if you have a family members staying at Lenox Hill. My mom checked in the next day.

Wednesday: My dad was in the throws of a second heart attack when they were operating on him. His doctor, an attractive Indian man named Dr. Pireack, who is called a cardio interventionist, saved his life on the operating table. He opened one artery that was shutting down by putting in three stents and had pictures to prove it. After the procedure he came into the waiting room and showed us an image of my dad’s heart where his veins looked like tangled shrubbery, small, light and leading to nowhere. Then he showed an image of my dad’s heart after he performed the angioplasty: the shrubbery was cleared to create one large thick dark branch that ran than length of his heart. It was obvious that he was impressed with his handiwork and I was too—he did this laproscopically in less than an hour. I wanted to hug him but I realized he was like a superhero and the one thing I learned from watching Batman with Dashiell is that no one ever hugs a superhero. When we saw Dad in the recovery room, his Casper-like complexion was replaced with the healthy blush of a man returning from a rendezvous with his mistress in St. Barths. He looked downright virile. But it was not an easy day. At 6pm my dad confessed to his cardiologist, Dr. Seinfeld, that he was having pain and had been having it immediately after the surgery but didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to be a party pooper when everyone was so pleased with the success of the procedure. He also tried to get up and popped open the valve that was holding his vein shut. Given that he was on mega doses of blood thinners, blood poured out of his leg onto the floor and three nurses had to clean him up and change the sheets. They kept telling him not to look down but he said that he hadn’t had that much action in below his waist in over a decade and he was not going to miss it, which made him the talk of the floor.

After that incident, there was concern he was rejecting the stents, had a clot and would need to go back in for more stents or open-heart surgery. They paged Dr. Pireack who finally came back just as I was leaving at 9:30, I ran up to him and walked at his brisk pace explaining that my dad was very uncomfortable and rarely complains so if he is having pain he must really be hurting. He sat down listened and then told my dad to eat something and that the pain would subside in the morning.

Thursday: Dad was sleeping.  My mom didn’t think I needed to come so she told me the playroom toys looked disgusting. I didn’t know if she was kidding or not so I cleaned and rearranged it but when I was done I drove into the city. When I arrived at the hospital he was sitting up, reading the paper and explaining what derivatives mean to my mom. I was so relieved, it was as if he was sitting at the kitchen table and relaxed and yesterday never happened only he looked like he had a tan. We talked about my work and brainstormed for ways to me get paid faster now that freelance feels like the new unemployment. My dad has always been someone I could talk to, who would hear me and has a friendly way of suggesting ideas without really telling me what to do. He has fathered me in a way that combines practical advice with confidence in me, and lately I haven’t been feeling so confident and because he talks to me about his work like a friend I always feel reassured.

My dad needed to walk to floor, so he walked me to the elevators. He hugged me and thanked me for coming. I stepped into the elevator and he stood there, slightly hunched in hospital gown, his gray hair splayed flat against the back of his head and smiled and waved. My dad’s health problems, his weakness and arthritis have overshadowed his personality lately, he’s more cranky, tired, exasperated by noise from the kids and not up for a lot of talking during dinner, something he used to love. He has still be there in our lives, but less so and less happy and it’s hard to watch and feel the distance and not really be sure how to connect with him. Sometimes I wonder if it’s been his way of preparing us for his death. Something my mother has been trying to manage without being angry with him.

But today it was as if I was 20 again and he was 60, only I now I’m not taking him for granted. It was a little eerily fitting that this week started with the Flaming Lips show. During the show Wayne talked about a kid who is 16 in his show, one of those people who dances on the side and that his dad died on Chritmas Eve and then he broke into “Do You Realize”.  I will always remember his smile as the elevator door closed. It was today that mattered. I was with my dad again after a very long time of trying to reach him but not being able because I was too busy with the kids and my own life and I was preparing for a separation the more tired and weaker he seemed. Thanks to Dr. Pireack, now his smile, his voice, his whole sense of himself feel lifted, like he got a tune-up on life and that distance is gone. I should have hugged him.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 2:18 pm and is filed under who knew!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.