Family chemistry

In early 1971 when my mother went for her checkup after birthing my older brother Perry, the doctor told her that he wanted to talk to her about birth control. She figured he had some new product she could try since she felt like she'd tried everything out there, but he followed up by saying, "because we don't want this to happen again." My 33-year-old mother gave that doctor hell. She explained that my brother's conception was very much planned and he was not going to be the last pregnancy if she had anything to say about it and he should just shut his trap. Those of you who have met my mother know that she must have said it a bit nicer than that, but her point was made.

And so my parents went on with their lives raising a 12-year-old Doug and a newborn Perry that grew into a toddler that grew into a little kid. They were living in a two bedroom house (the green one across the street from where they live now) and my father was building an addition on it himself. Life was busy and complicated, but it was good.

My parents decided it was time to try again for another child. I learned later that they had read up on what factors could encourage a girl baby versus a boy and did what they could to facilitate that. My father sheepishly said recently, "I tried to convince your mother to douche with soda water but she drew the line there." In December of 1975, Mom was pregnant again.

Next thing you know it was March of 1976, shortly after my mother's favorite aunt Millie had died. She was lying in bed and my father was vacuuming out the floor furnace in the hallway outside their bedroom. She had a horrible belly ache, but figured it would pass. As the evening wore on she thought, "Dear God, I'm going to die. I'm going to die in this bed and George won't even know I've died because he can't hear my moans over that damn vacuum. Yes, I'm going to die." Eventually she made her way into the bathroom and passed a large blob. It was then she realized all those aches were labor pains. She collected the fetus, left Perry with Doug (who was nearly 17 then) and headed with my father to the hospital.

They did whatever doctors do in 1976 after a woman has just miscarried a fetus in her bathroom at four months and were taking their sweet time with paperwork. My father kept asking if they could go home and the nurse kept saying they couldn't leave until the bill was settled. They had insurance but there was a debate over the co-pay or something. Daddy calmly left the nurse station and went to ask Mom if she could walk. She asked why and he explained they were leaving but the nurses might be mad about it. And so they gathered her things and walked out. As they passed the nurse, she said, "You can't leave!"

Daddy: "And what are you going to do about it?" Nurse: "Well ... I'm going to mark your bill UNPAID!"

And she loudly stamped their bill unpaid with a large red stamp as they walked out the door.

Afterward, when others expressed concern or condolences over Mom's miscarriage, she shrugged it off. She casually explained they didn't have time to mourn a blob because they had to get busy making another baby. Mom was 38 and the doctors were getting more and more concerned about her being "high risk."

By August of that same year, Mom was pregnant again. She always said it was a miracle they managed to conceive me because all that summer my parents hosted Daddy's four nieces and nephews (in that same two bedroom house) as Daddy's brother went through a rough spot in his marriage. But miracles happened and I stuck around in her belly for 39 weeks and came out perfectly healthy.

We were then a busy, complicated family of five in a two bedroom house, but we were happy.

I talk about my father a lot on this site, but don't mention Mom nearly as much. Dad is the one raging against nursing staff while my mother is quietly passing a fetus in her bedroom. In many ways they compliment each other well.

My parents don't panic. My amazingly patient mother doesn't make a fuss. And my father shows super-human levels of support for his family, even if he doesn't manifest it in the most mainstream of ways.

A family doesn't just happen out of the blue on a wedding day or in a hospital delivery ward. A family (and in particular our family) grows just like a person does, hopefully taking the best characteristics of each member and blending them together. It's the closest things to magic we get to perform every day.

Shucking corn under the house

Thursday morning Rich flushed the toilet upstairs and the kitchen sink downstairs filled with water. I spent the morning bailing out the sink while he finished his shower. And then I sent an email to my father. Over Thursday and Friday my father and I spent a fair amount of time under the house. The plumbing issues involved moving the clean out from under the house through the foundation, using Daddy's auger to investigate the clog and cutting out a five foot section of iron pipe. But those details aren't very important.

The important parts of this adventure were all the little moments with my father. Daddy has a pretty intense paranoia streak so that when we met a significant resistance in the clean out line, he was convinced that our contractors from eight months ago had sabotaged our plumbing. He went down a list of every worker on that he'd ever had a conflict with, and that's not a short list.

We marveled at the strength of plumbers "back in the day" who could heft length of iron pipe around under houses. I waited while my father straightened pipe edges with the circular saw over and over and over until I worried there wouldn't be much pipe left. I learned that when my sense of smell is this keen, it's not the greatest to spend two days around raw sewage, burning PVC and iron and plumbing cement. And we spent a lot of time "shucking corn."

My father tells a story about a farmer that hired a farm hand to shuck corn. He told him to throw the rotten ears in one pile to be ground up and the ones that were still okay but not edible for people into a pile for the hogs. When the farmer came back at lunch, the farm hand had barely made two pitiful piles of corn. The farmer shook his head and decided to at least let the poor kid finish out the day but told him just to shuck all the ears into one pile. The farmer came back at the end of the day and the farm hand had made a mountain of corn! When he asked the farm hand why he had done so little that morning and so much that afternoon, the farm hand shrugged and said "all those decisions were slowing me down."

In any project our family undertakes we spend a lot of time deciding just exactly what we're going to do and then a smaller chunk of time painstakingly following through with those decisions. I spent a fair amount of time this week just observing and marveling at how my father and I work together.

My father and I never had a father-daughter dance at my wedding. We don't go out for fancy dinners to celebrate special occasions. But when he's lying in a ditch trying to find the plumbing cement I can tell him "Back. Over. Down." and he'll put his hand right on it.

These are the days our memories are made of.

Stories from Denver: the adventures of "hi pockets"

I emailed my parents once we got to Denver this weekend and asked my father for some details on when he had lived there. All I know is that Daddy moved to Denver with his brother's family shortly after high school and eventually moved back to Norfolk in his early 20s. That period of my father's life seems a million miles away to me - a time when he wore jeans and white t-shirts instead of plaid button down shirts and flat-front khakis. These bits and pieces of my parents' lives come out over time. When I was in college and went skiing in West Virginia, I called to lament about how much I suck at skiing. My father mentioned that in Denver he had skied some black diamond slopes but never got much better than that. Here I was getting my ass kicked on the bunny slopes. It was my first memorable experience of realizing my parents have lives before I was born.

As an adult, I relish learning about my family's exploits from long ago. It brings to light so much of how the more things change the more things stay the same. Six months or so ago, Rich's parents came to visit us and we showed them the Wii. Over the course of that afternoon, we learned that Rich's father knows a hell of a lot more about bowling than we ever knew and that Uncle Tommy once managed a bowling alley. It was like a window into their youth. They're also much better bowlers than I am.

While waiting for the plane to take me home, I checked the weather and was shocked to learn it was 18 degrees F outside. I'm always cold and when I walked from the cab to ticketing I didn't even need my hat or gloves. As I sat at the gate, I sent a short email to my parents telling them I was coming home, it was snowing hard in Denver and amazingly I wasn't cold, even without gloves.

By the time I landed in Baltimore, my father had sent me an email with several memories of his time in Denver. By the time I landed in Norfolk, I had received a second email that answered all my questions from when I first got to Denver. For my posterity and your entertainment, I'll provide some snippets of that below. My editorial notes for context are in brackets.

Email #1

While in Denver, in a cold spell my car was being hard to start, so I changed spark plugs (after dark) - soon after I got back in the house, the TV weather said it was 20 below - and I wasn't wearing gloves.

But then, I was not liking to gloves. One of my jobs was at Union Pacific RR, on the loading docks where it got pretty brisk - and foreman kept insisting I get some gloves, but I was adverse to buying gloves - so they called me "pockets" because I kept my hands in my pockets when not using them.

Another young guy hired on - and he wouldn't buy gloves - so they called him "low pockets" and I became "hi pockets." One Monday they called on loading docks loud speaker "Hi Pockets, report to personnel." There was a misunderstanding about working previous Saturday - next thing I knew, I didn't work there any more (that changed my destiny).

On one of the construction jobs, I was called "little George" - our off-job friends were taken aback that I was "little George" - but a new hire named George was about 6' 6" [my father is 6'3" or so, shrinking in his old age]

One morning it was 8 degrees and we began setting rafter trusses on second story - that was quite cold in the wind. We had built a fire but had to get to working - I remember walking the top plate (second story wall) and just seeing the fire was a big consolation (knowing 'twas there if needed)

One of the coldest experiences in my life was minus 10 on the windy ski slopes - before I knew the value of (afforded) liners for my mittens. When I got back inside the ski lodge, it was all I could do to keep from crying, my hands hurt so bad.

Email #2

Just didn't get around to answer this - you know how my e-mails aren't simple - and got busy with Curt & Frankie [his brother and sister-in-law] coming. On top of time getting ready, Curt suggested I meet him at Red Cross to donate platelets. I've been thinking I should donate. They say 90 percent of local platelets go to CHKD [Childrens Hospital of Kings Daughters].

I had heard that Stapleton Airport had move way out - think they renamed it.

Seeing that big sky going from dirt to dirt is beyond words - like seeing ocean for first time (seeing ocean made my stomach giddy - like as a kid going high on a big swing)

I went to Denver with Bill & Flossie [his half brother and sister-in-law] in June '61. It snowed that Memorial day - and also around Labor day. When I got back East I then realized how short the summer is out there - at same time, came to appreciated that song line "...and the skies are not cloudy all day" (unlike the East)

I was there 2 yrs - lived with Bill and Flossie for about 16 months - finally got a room own my own at a divorced guy's house. He took me on his boat water skiing for first and only time.

From Denver, I came back to the farm - razed or renovated out buildings, built a new shelter 22 x 60 and made more improvements to farm house.

Ran low on patience and money, so got a carpenter job in Rocky Mount. Got laid off for few weeks in late winter - built room addition for Uncle Bee (Eva's house) - charged him $70 (to make him feel right)

Got called back to Rocky Mount job, but soon got uncomfortable with the way the whippersnapper "super" praised me and treated labors (Blacks) like dirt.

One morning I went to work in haste and left my prepared lunch on the table - Dad took it to the job site and found the "super" and asked if he had a "labored" named George Powell - the impetuous "super" scolded, "Don't you call him no laborer --- he's the best carpenter I got!"

Mom loved to tell story, but Dad didn't appreciate it (to him any worker was a labored - was unfamiliar with trades designations vs. unskilled "laborer")

I finally got a belly full of the super's disrespect for Blacks and his hurry, flurry mode. I had come across a 5x7 sign "The hurrier I go the behinder I get." I went in at daybreak and taped the sign over the super's desk (doors weren't locked back then) then went home. I went back on payday and got my check - somebody indicated that the super figured where sign came from (torn, it had been ripped down - and somebody had taped it back up).

With a little more than $100, I packed all my stuff in a cardboard box (just a little bigger than a file box) and told the folks I was going North to find work, but wasn't sure how far - told myself, to find a new life (where squeaky sounding small roosters don't crow).

I saw sign on Military Hwy saying ocean front - got a motel room at VB and a job that night - then a room at 24th St and Baltic for $10/wk.

After Pembroke and Malibu, the contractor started Colony Pt. apartments around Wards Corner, so I found furnished apartment at Daniels for $65/mo. [The Daniels owned the house across the street from my mother's house and that's how my parents met.]

When my orthodontics (Pearlman) were finished, I notified the draft board like a good citizen.

I really need to make my father his own blog.