The night before

July 31, 2007


It’s of no fault of my own that I’m sitting in a hospital atrium, surrounded by green office chairs and clearance store couches, bathed in flourescent lighting that creeps into every corner and eliminates darkness from the bland, tan wallpaper, staring deeply into a computer screen.

I can’t sleep.

Whether it’s from fatigue or from excitement, I can’t tell. All I know is that I needed to grab a piece of Internet for a few minutes and allow myself to think. All I know is that I can’t sleep on the faux hide-a-bed that this hospital has lovingly provided me, and it’s of no fault of my own.

Looking around I find myself swimming in pastels, the predominant color - green - floating amongst an Easter-like palate of decorating genius, colors that have been paired in order to provide peace and comfort to those waiting. To those like me. Waiting for a child. Looking around, wondering if their time is next. Waiting, constantly, the only pasttime worth pursuing in a setting like this.

Back in the room, Kerrie attempts to sleep herself, fighting against the lights that continue to illuminate the room, the computer screen, the baby monitor, the numbers, slowly rising and falling, recreating the yet to be born heart, drawing lines to illustrate the heart rate, showing the slight contractions as mountains, as valleys, as what looks like an unreachable path, a trecherous journey from where we are to where we’re attempting to go.

And even once that baby is born - once we’ve left this pastel cave and returned to our own home, a place where we can sleep comfortably and relax - we’ll face the same mountains. The same valleys. We’ll stare trials down at every turn, scrambling to build ourselves into great parents by grasping at every experience we’ve had, picking up the discarded advice and forcing into place now that we’re the ones responsible for a young child, a new mind, a fresh life.

The plastic of the hospital bed creaks every time Kerrie moves. She can’t sleep either. Neither of us can. We focus on the dimmed lights, the table, the shadows that were familiar just a few hours ago, now retreating into the night.

I wonder what people are thinking - knowing we haven’t had a baby yet. I feel bad for not letting our friends know we went in early, yet I feel comfortable knowing that time, for us, is fleeting, that in no time we’ll be back in action, laboring through birth, preparing to introduce a new family member, and our friends will have spent their time not worrying whether we were doing okay, but wondering when it was all going to happen.

Here we are. The biggest thing that’s ever happened in our lives. Watching nurses in blue scrubs float past, ghosts in a fully lit hospital, bringing healing and life to all corners of the multi-building facility. Serving as beacons. As safe havens. As comfortable reminders that, no matter what happens, we’re safe, surrounded by health personified.

It can’t be fatigue. Fatigue doesn’t make me grin, out of nowhere, like I’ve recieved a gift. Fatigue doesn’t keep me awake out of pure anticipation. Fatigue wouldn’t care about where I was sleeping, would keep me thoughtless, worried, excuriciatingly callous and fidgety.

No. This is excitement. At this time tomorrow, I should be looking at a new baby. Our new baby. We’re just here waiting for the opening gun to go off, to begin sprinting down the track, releasing all of our pressures and embracing parenthood the way billions before us have.

I can’t sleep at all. And these tan walls, as bland as they seem, can’t seem to put me at rest.

It’s so quiet. Yet, how could anyone sleep at a time like this, with all of this noise going on in my head?

Tags: Sierra |

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The waiting game

July 29, 2007


The Waiting CookiesAs I write this, I’m whipping up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I’ve picked up the entire house, Kerrie’s started the laundry, and we’ve both finished the newest Harry Potter book. We’re frantically searching for things to do – ways to keep our minds off of the reality of our situation.

Our child is three days overdue. It’s not bad. But we thought by this point we’d be playing with a baby. Instead, at this point, the only thing we can do is wait.

Not that it’s a horrific thing or anything – I mean, children are born before and after their due dates all the time. It’s an estimate, really – a non-scientific way of saying “your baby should be born on this day,” an advanced warning on which horoscope signs to start paying attention to and a gauge for other people to see if they’ll soon be sharing a birthday with a much cuter, much more exciting human being.

Keep that to yourself right now, thanks. While we might not be beside ourselves or anything, we’re certainly at the peak of anxiousness – a couple of first-time parents-to-be wondering what the hell we’re getting ourselves into, staring around and anticipating anything, but realizing we can’t even begin to start parenting until the damn thing comes out, breathes a few screaming lung-fuls of air and frantically starts to get its bearings in an increasingly complex world.

It’s like the butterflies you get before an important job interview, or the night before Christmas when you were younger. Except those things had definitive dates – the times were set, the action easy to anticipate. And when people call to ask you how it went – did you get the job, or did you get everything you wanted – you have something to answer, because it really happened.

This waiting? It just makes us crabby, really. It makes us answerless, hopelessly unsatisfied and crabby.

So we find ways to bide our time. Extreme Home Makeover never seemed so interesting, and long walks have become necessary, not leisurely. I keep attempting to wrap things up, to have our lives prepared for a new baby, only to realize there’s no new baby yet. I try to be aloof, content, patient, but I’m not.

Kerrie doesn’t even try to be patient. She doesn’t need to be anymore. Patience has never made a baby come out faster.

Eventually, in a few days, we’ll be finished. Our child will have popped out, and we’ll wonder what all of the fuss was about, realizing that it was all worth the wait. The countless You’re Still Here questions at work and Is There A Baby text messages will be answered truthfully, with a confirmation, a baby, with new parents, with new namesakes and grandparents and happy hospital staff and a sigh of relief from our friends who know that this phase of “everyone having babies” is over, ready for a new cycle to begin in a year or so.

Until then, we wait. And bake cookies.

Tags: Vilhauer, Sierra |

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Charles Shultkowski

July 27, 2007


Charles Bukowski's PeanutsI went through a Bukowski-era. In learning to cope with college - in addition to, unknowingly, starting the ball rolling for this writing thing - I took up Bukowski’s drunken anger-ridden prose and discovered the “beat generation.”

I never made it much further in that generation than Bukowski, and I never really cared much for his poetry, but I thought he was incredible. It was raw and different and pulsing with life, like a blood blister ready to pop.

Since then, I’ve moved on. He still contributed, in some way, to my first few years of college, but he’s a niche contribution - the guy I want to read when I’m in a sullen mood or after a fifth of whiskey (which, for the record, I’ve never drank).

So anyone who has dabbled in Bukowski can appreciate this: Charles Bukowski’s Peanuts. It’s hilarious and right in key with Chuck Bukowski’s style. It’s not safe for kids, so don’t read it aloud to anyone. But it’s a perfect mimic of the usual “gambling, drinking, promiscuous sex” themes that resonate through all of Bukowski’s work.

It’s the funniest thing I’ve read all week. Enjoy.

(Thanks to Edward Champion’s Return of the Reluctant for the find.)

Tags: Books, Writers, Literature |

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Crib sweet crib

July 25, 2007


Our future child’s room is finished. Or nearly so. It needs some shelves to be put up, and it needs a mattress pad for the crib mattress.

Oh, and it needs a baby.

It can’t really be the baby’s room until that happens.

I can’t really believe there will be a live baby in that room.

The second we finished the majority of the room – once we had a rug down and a crib up and some decorations adorning the walls – it instantly seemed real. I mean, it’s seemed real for me since I first felt the baby kicking at its womb, forcing its legs against its temporary home in what seemed like a greeting. But with each new concept – the ultrasound, the kick, the baby class, the movement, the stroller, the impending due date – it seems even more and more real.

The room, though – that’s a sight. There it is – our child’s future room, right there next to ours. Someday, those walls will be drawn on, covered with posters, plastered with hobbies and fleeting dreams. The door might be decorated with a Keep Out sign or his/her name. Even now, you can see the plans being made – the books, the animals, the itty bitty clothes that don’t even seem large enough for the $4 Curious George doll we picked up at Hy Vee.

It hits hard, right at home – right IN home, you could say. Whenever I walk by, I can’t help but turn my head and look. It’s the most colorful thing in our home, that room. It’s unlike anything we’ve decorated, yet it looks perfectly at peace with the rest of the décor.

We’re getting closer than we’ve ever considered. We’re getting anxious. We’re ready for the whole thing to be over with so we can meet this new child.

But regardless of all that – regardless of how ready we are and how prepared we can be for labor, for protection, for support – at least we know we have someplace for Baby Vilhauer to lay his/her head.

Tags: Sierra |

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Do you still carry Tetris for Game Boy?

July 24, 2007


I had to laugh at this.

While searching for the proper way to address a food situation on an invitation, I ran into Advice with Dave and Dee, an etiquette site that answers many important frequently asked questions.

I was drawn to the topic “Video Game Gift Depends On Many Factors.” “What does etiquette have at all to do about buying someone a video game?” I thought to myself. The answer surprised me.

It wasn’t so much an etiquette answer as much as it was a look at someone who knows nothing about video games.

pad

Video Game Gift Depends on Many Factors

Dear Dr. Dave and Dr. Dee,

I want to surprise my grandson with a video game. What is the most popular?

Signed,

Unsure

Dear Unsure,

The video game you purchase depends on the computer or type of video game console your grandson owns. Some major brands of computer systems and consoles are PC, Macintosh, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Entertainment System, Wii and Game Boy, Sega Genesis, and Sony PlayStation 3.

Although there are hundreds of video games, your grandson may already have the game. For example, some very popular games are The Sims for PC or Macintosh, Halo 3 for Xbox 360, Super Mario Bros. for Nintendo Entertainment System, Tetris for Game Boy, Wii Sports, Sonic the Hedgehog for Sega, and Grand Theft Auto for PlayStation 2.

In addition, your grandson’s age may determine the type of game that is most appropriate or acceptable for him to play. It would be best to discuss video games with his parents before purchasing. They would know the games that he already has, which games he wants and whether they approve or not.

It’s as if Dave and Dee typed “Popular Video Games” into Google and threw together that list - a list that is as awkwardly humorous as any I’ve ever seen. Instead of passing the question on to someone with any sort of knowledge, Dave and Dee simply found some statistics and assumed that every video game system was still in production, like a “Nintendo Entertainment System” was as interchangeable as a “Television” or “Telephone.”

Of course, the question is hilarious too. “I want to buy someone the most popular video game! I don’t care what it is, just that it’s the most popular! That way I don’t have to take into account any sort of personal taste or the child’s personality - I can just make a safe assumption that he/she will like it.”

My suggestion — if you need help finding a video game for your kid, don’t ask two obviously out of touch, probably fake etiquette personalities like Dr. Dave and Dee. Instead, ask someone who - you know - actually plays video games. Like any twelve year old.

Tags: Random |

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