Presents

It started with an unexpected call from Jen's doctor last Monday night. I had just made it back out to my car after giving up on Best Buy for a last minute gift for Jen when I saw Dr. Cummins' name come up on my Caller ID. It was almost 7:00 in the evening, and I was too surprised by her call to be concerned.

In the next ten minutes she explained to me that the last round of blood tests Jen had done came back indicating an increased chance that the baby would have Downs Syndrome. The first round of tests we had done put our odds at 1 in 1500 or so, but the more recent results brought us down to 1 in 200. She explained that it wasn't time to panic, but she wanted some additional tests done. Resigned to a Christmas in purgatory, Jen and I settled in, trying not to count the moments until the specialist's office would call to schedule the follow up testing.

Tuesday was tough. We knew enough to know we shouldn't be too upset, that results like this are common, but we were regardless.

Wednesday, Jen got the call and learned that they could squeeze us in Christmas Eve if we could be available. We could. We were certain that we'd have to wait a week to be able to speak with the doctor about the test result, but at least we'd get the process started. Plus, if the kid cooperated, we'd be able to find out if it's a boy or a girl.

Thursday morning, the Ultrasound Tech Jill explained some of the things that she'd be looking for, and to our relief explained that we'd get to meet with the doctor after they had a chance to discuss the results. As she worked, Jill pointed things out along the way. She told us immediately that the brain looked perfectly developed. She pointed out the kid's pinkie fingers had three bones, not just two which is a common sign of Downs. She told us enough good news that we were able to relax and just enjoy watching the kid wiggle around on the screen. So much wiggling, in fact, that she had a hard time keeping up with the twists and turns.

She agreed to not tell us what the gender of the kid was, but rather write it down in a card Jen brought along with us and had us look away when she headed south with the camera. A few minutes later and we were finished and in the doctor's office where he confirmed everything Jill had said while she worked. Relieved, we headed out to finish our separate days.

So, Christmas morning, after opening the few presents we bought for each other, we sat down on the love seat, A Christmas Story playing quietly in the background, and opened our card together. There was an arrow pointing to some indiscernible smudge with white text "IT'S A GIRL!" I saw it before Jen did. I said something, but now I don't remember what it was. Then we read the card.

"Merry Christmas! It's a Girl! Congratulations! Have a wonderful Holiday! Sincerely, Jill ____"

The Merryman Family Holiday Letter

Dear Friends, Family, Misguided Internet Trollers, and Virtual Stalkers,

Nearly 365 days have gone by so quickly that it's difficult to believe. It's true that years seem to get shorter the older you get, and I have to admit that I think it's crap. The tendency is to look back over a year when it seems to have passed too quickly and review what you've done, but that's not always the smart thing to do. Especially if you haven’t done anything. As a family, our accomplishments were meager:

Otis played a lot of fetch. Also, when he thought no one was looking, he ate a lot of poop. Rarely did we get to witness it, but we’d often be confused by the lack of waste in the yard when picking things up each evening. He views his buddy Lucy as a big furry Pez dispenser, and he's buying what she's shoveling. We know this is happening, yet somehow we’re able to be surprised when he has a gastrointestinal disaster and winds up at the vet hooked to IV's.

Lucy has found a consistency in her day-to-day life over the years, and rarely does she veer off track. So, while the act of barking isn't anything new to her (any more so than my mentioning her barking in a yearly Christmas letter is), she has refined her approach to the act, and has added lots of new items to her list of things she's barked at. Such items include a rabbit, fluttering leaves, a cartoon hamburger, imagined intruders, and CGI dinosaurs. She managed to work in this barking all the while serving as a mobile buffet line for Otis. We're proud.

For Jen and I, things were status quo for a big portion of the year, and we take a certain amount of pride in being uncommonly common. We lost and gained weight. We started and stopped exercise programs. We bitched about noisy neighbors and dreamt constantly of escaping our house. We yelled at dogs. A lot.

We watched a ton of movies. Some of them weren't all bad (Paper Heart, Away We Go, Up, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, Doubt, Milk, Friday the 13th, etc.). We both are lucky enough to have jobs that we don't completely despise, and as a result, made it to work more days than not. We made a lot of messes and cleaned up a good portion of them.

Then, because things in our lives were too quiet and pleasing, we decided to try getting pregnant. Within just a few months Stephen's super virile sperm knocked the dust off Jen's aging eggs, and immediately our little DNA omelet started to grow and take form. Seamlessly, we became those people. We displayed Ultrasound photos. We read books and articles about childcare and learned to avoid crack cocaine, cold cuts, beer bongs, and over-easy eggs. (Actually, Jen had to avoid those things; Stephen helped himself to most, if not all, of the above.) In short, we became the recipients of indulgent smiles and polite questioning from the people we annoyed with our happiness. Fortunately, we were so secure in our thinking that everyone was as fascinated with the process as we were that we took all their indulgence at face value.

And so that brings us to the last member of the family…the mass of baby shaped cells Jen calls "Bean" and I call "The Kid". Out of all of us, Bean’s had the most interesting year. In five months The Kid crawled from the primordial ooze of Jen's uterus and developed into a clump, then into a tadpole, into what now appears to be a black and white smudge with a giant head (if the pictures are to be believed). It's funny to think that the one person in our family who accomplished the most can't even work the remote control.

It’s annoying if you really think about it. It’s like having to listen to the rich kid from school read their “What I did on my summer vacation report” on the first day of class and go on and on about Paris while you look down at your two paragraphs detailing the joy of making your own Slip ‘n Slide with a water hose and a large sheet of plastic you found on a construction site.

I can imagine the kid being in the womb, saying things like “Today I separated my heart into four distinct chambers and swam a few laps around the pool. So, ah…whatcha been doing to stay busy these days?”

One day we envision this open letter being full of information about Jen and my many work promotions, lottery wins, and a list of everything that our kid can kick your kid’s ass at. We’ll regale you with tales of Stephen’s many arm-wrestling tournament wins, and Jen’s new rock band’s touring schedule, but for now this will have to suffice. We may not be interesting, but we’re happy. That’s good enough.

All sarcasm aside, know that we love you (well, most of you - there’s no way of telling who’s actually reading this thing), and we hope that you have a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah, a rip-roaring Kwanzaa, or whatever it is you and yours get down with. Stay in touch. We like it when you do.

Love,Stephen & Jen

Wisconsin Bound

Jen and I are getting ready to hit the road for another trip to Wisconsin. When she makes the trip solo, we have her fly into Chicago, but when I'm tagging along we always drive it. It's just easier with the dogs and not needing to worry about renting or borrowing a car for the week.

I always complain about the trip, but the truth is I like being on the road. Even when the drive is as uninspiring as rural Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. There's just something about the hum of the car, music on the stereo, Jen asleep in the front seat, and the dogs curled around each other in the back.

But seriously, there is nothing to look at. The sky and the ground seem to be the same shade of gray, and the trees long ago gave up their leaves. It's all wavering lines painted down the sides of the highway, and cigarettes exploding on the pavement, tossed by the cars who lead us across state lines.

She'll bitch about my music, and I about hers. We'll snack from a bag Jelly Belly jellybeans and groan every time we get stuck with one of the buttered popcorn flavored ones. We'll make as few stops as possible, but the dogs usually require a quick jog around a truck stop parking lot while we dodge piles of shit left by travelers who didn't bother cleaning up after their dogs. I'll sing to stay awake, and Jen will ask "Are you OK?" if she thinks I'm drifting. It'll be good to be moving.

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I love best of lists. While I have no plans of doing a full list of my favorite albums from 2009 I thought I would mention a record here or there. Instead of a half-assed review, I thought I'd just tack on a snippet of lyrics and leave it at that.

While I'm fickle and my opinion changes all the time, I think my favorite record of the year was "Hospice" by The Antlers.

"There's a bear inside your stomach / The cub's been kicking from within / He's loud, though without vocal chords / We'll put an end to him"

Old Habits

Greg's words limped from his mouth, smelling of Dewars and the Benson & Hedges menthols. Feeling fine, he let one butt fall to the ground, and immediately reached for the shiny gold and green pack in his shirt pocket. He fumbled with the pack intentionally for a moment, drawing Lisa's attention to it, letting her see he wasn't smoking generics like he used to when they first met. She did glance at his muddling fingers, and when she did, he snuck a glance at her chest thinking she wouldn't notice.

"Jesus, Greg. You're such a boy." Lisa muttered, turning her back to him and stepping further out onto the sidewalk, further out into the rain. Rain is a strong word for this, she thought as the mist swirled around her, making everything damp but not quite wet. It had been doing this since she crossed the state line and didn't seem to be showing any signs of stopping.

"Sorry, Love. Old habits."

"Growing old is getting old." Lisa muttered, turning back to him.

"What's that?"

"Nothing."

Greg felt he had missed something, but he missed lots of things when he was around Lisa. He ran the fingers of his left hand through the black milk of his hair, tucking its length behind his ear, and then ran his hand over his face, wiping across his closed eyes and down over his mouth. He opened his eyes to find her watching him and flashed a smile at her. It was his smile, the one that only she would recognize. Lisa smirked and shook her head.

"You're drunk."

"Working on it, yeah." He let his eyes close again and leaned the back of his head on the cold brick wall behind him.

He's just like this city, she thought, watching him waver in the thin streetlight glow. He looks so good from a distance, but when you get up close it's all burger wrappers in the streets, cigarette butts collected in the scrub grass alongside stop signs, and everything smelling of spent batteries. From the sky though, it's just an orderly series of golden glowing squares stretching to the lake. It's a special kind of punishment to get fooled by what you see, she thought.

"The Chinese were the best at it, you know."

"Hmmm?"

"Calling something by a real nice name, especially when it was for something more terrible than you could imagine. A good old fashioned verbal bait and switch."

Greg managed to tip his head forward towards where Lisa stood. It was the sound of her voice breaking with anger and sadness that brought him back to the stoop, his cigarette, and his ex-wife. Not saying anything, he waited.

"This is the 'Frame of the Furrowing Eyebrow', Greg. That's what the Chinese called it. They'd strap you to a bamboo stand, leaving you to kneel for hours while they tighten the slats that went across your fingers, toes, balls, and neck. Nice and slow, just a nice steady pressure until pieces of you start to give out under the weight of it."

Greg dropped his eyes to the pavement between his feet, and followed a crack that ran from the tip of his dusty boot to where she stood wiping the last of the dozen tears she let herself cry. They stood, listening to the highway rumble and the sounds of Wednesday giving up to the threat of Thursday.

"C'mon Leece, let me buy you a drink."

"Yeah, sure. Just one."

Last of the Porch

It's an amazing fall day in Columbus. Radios and televisions this morning were awash with reports of an Indian Summer, and like a lot of people I tossed on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and headed outside. Jen and I puttered around, working on small projects we had been putting off with her recent sleepiness, my constant laziness, and the cold snap that sent us indoors. We got some dead flowers trimmed, potted plants disposed of and their baskets put away for the season, and I took a broom to the collected cobwebs around our front and back doors.

Now, we're on the porch. Jen suddenly has plans for other projects ("Maybe we should trim these hedges today.") and I agree to all of them knowing that it won't be too long before she runs out of steam and ideas. These days she's still good out of the gates, but not much for stamina.

Out of necessity, cigars are an outdoor vice for me, so this may well be the last good day to sit on the porch, have a beverage and a smoke. The sun warms the lawns, and the winds are strong enough to kick leaves out from under the hedges, rattling them down the street sounding like children playing tag in tap shoes. Planes come and go from the airport, but I've barely noticed them after living here the first month...they're just more background noise, part of the constant hum that surrounds the condo.
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We proctored an SAT Test this morning, a job that allows us to pick up a bit of cash, help out one of Jen's coworkers, and gives me four or five hours to sit and read. It's a fun gig for me, because I get to roam around from room to room and watch kids as they stress over bubbled answer sheets and scribble furiously in the margins of their test booklets. They're all so young, and trying to figure out who they're going to be, but as I watch them I imagine that I already know.

It's easy to pick out the ones that will have too much fun in college. It's also pretty simple to see those who will have too little. The girls are all straight-haired and pony tailed, and the boys are all casually and carefully rumpled. I make up little stories about some of them as I half-heartedly scan the room for cheaters. None of the stories I come up with for them are very nice though, so ashamed I stop and go back to reading.
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Jen and I have had a couple of doctor appointments, and they've gone well. We got to watch the twitching fussing fetus for half an hour on the flat screen in the doctors office as they took dozens of measurements. Jen cried when we saw him reach for his nose. I found myself groping backwards for my chair, not wanting to take my eyes off the screen where she just kicked away from the prodding ultrasound wand. A few days later, in another office, we heard the electronic chugging train of her heartbeat, and we laughed as everything became even more real.
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Fortunately, Jen has forgotten the hedges and suggested a walk. I'm down with a stroll around the woods, so it's time to throw on some jeans and go see the sun while we still can.

I Will Go To Congo

I went for a walk today at lunch at the park across the street. It's a nice little 1 mile loop through the woods, and it's a good way to get out of the cubicle and avoid fast food.

Today, I headed out onto a short boardwalk that leads to an overlook of a little meadow at the center of the park. There I found this carved into the wood:

Stop the war in Congo!

Here I was, thinking I just wanted to take a walk during my lunch break, but now...now I'm thinking I might head to the Congo and see what I can do about this situation.

It's amazing to think that a person, somewhere out there, had the belief that if only they were to get a pocketknife and spend a half hour carving someone might come along and end a lifetime of brutality in Congo. Well, that person was me!

They'll write songs about my lunch-time walk once I've fixed Congo! The city of Westerville will be thrust into the center of global politics, and we'll all mythologize the person who had the foresight and wherewithal to deface my favorite Metropark! Congo, here I come. Watch your ass, cuz I'm packing heavy.

Closed Circuit Future

I can't remember if it's been raining for days, but it feels like it. It's that slow, cold, purposeful rain that soaks through tree bark, and slows everything that ducks and hides from its drippings. I stepped out the door this morning, and immediately smelled the worm holocaust on the sidewalk. Having finally given up going deeper into the earth to hide from the rains, they stretch bloated and dying across parking lots and walkways.

Fall showed up big over the past two weeks. Normally, I'm on the watch, studying tree lines for blotches of yellow and red, but this year the season snuck up on me. Today I noticed the orange along the highway, rich and full as any Bob Ross landscape, and it seemed to be even more noticeable against the dishwater skies.

I've been distracted, to say the least. I've been sitting back watching the cliches shared over the years by parents become a welcome truth. I'm smiling more. I often can't remember what I was working on the moment before. I'm thinking 529 accounts, nurseries, and how old a person should be before they sit down to listen to Kid A.

I've become nothing else but these disjointed thoughts mixed with panicked calls to my insurance provider.

I posted the picture of Smudge, but if it weren't for the doctor's guidance, I literally wouldn't have known the baby's head from its ass. People asked me later if I cried when I saw the heart flickering in glorious black and white, but I didn't. I stood amazed thinking that it was beating just like I had always imagined a hummingbird's heart would.

Jen and I held hands and looked at the screen, and when the doctor stepped out to let her get dressed, we held each other and laughed. Call us victims of our generation, but in some ways the pregnancy wasn't real until we could see it on television.

With all of the recent change, I find myself shutting down in some ways. Until tonight, I've not had the focus to sit and write anything. Instead I've spent hours surfing the web reading about what's going on in my wife's body, or looking at Ramones onesies (hells yeah!), or watching The Big Lebowski for the 400th time. I plot and plan, but do nothing constructive. Yesterday, I got a nice box of new records, so I know I'll be in the den a good part of the weekend lost in all the No Age goodness sent my way.

I'm just waiting. I'm waiting for this suburban life to become amazing. I'm waiting for everything to change, and for the first time, change really is coming.