Everyone Eats Boogers

This evening is Sunday January 10th. I just put David down after a story, a song and prayers. I grabbed the clicker, but before I turned on the TV I listened to Karen love Camden to sleep. Putting Little C, as we call him, down is a joy because he is virtually impossible to corral during the day, so by bed time 95% of his energy has been spent and he’s calm and compliant. Camden’s routine for bed is a bubba (bottle of rice milk), several stories, a song and then a session of Love and Learning. Love and Learning are passive learning CD’s that repetitively expose Camden to the alphabet, numbers, words and sentences. We owe a great deal of Camden’s verbal progress to these CDs. If you ever get the pleasure of knowing another family or child with a challenge, we highly recommend these.

This time of the evening is always accompanied by a big exhale. One more day with the boys done. One more day of survival complete. One more day of doing the best with what we have brought to a close. I’m beginning to believe that when one approaches mid-life one chooses one of two paths: a mid-life crises or the transition to a mind set of reflection, living and planning. Given that crises will find us when they need to, I’ve selected the latter. I’ve definitely sought the meaning of life and rapidly come to the conclusion that this is a waste of time. What is not so much a waste of time is improving the quality of the life that remains. This isn’t rocket science or deep thought or metaphysics, but much more a desire to be a me that I like first and foremost and that not coincidentally others will like as well. Those that can tolerate me end up being labeled as friends and those that can’t tolerate me I’ll still cordially accept cards and gifts from.

Somehow this paragraph is completely unrelated to and at the same time intricately intertwined with the last. When I was in school I was forced to write. The responses I got were always a collection of adjectives like interesting, different, eclectic while at the same time garnering awards of C, D and F. Before I continue I should call attention to the inherent hypocrisy of a grading scale that follows A, B, C, D and F. I’ve only ever been truly able to write one way: one part insanity, two parts honesty, a dash of self-aggrandizing, a pinch of humor all in a broth of briny genuine. I do my best to make you feel as if I was either reading this to you or actually talking to you. I have gotten much unsolicited feedback regarding the stuff I post here and if I said that the feedback was encouraging that would fall short of accurately describing it. Overwhelmingly humbling with kindness would be a better description. I have a defect. OK, I have many defects, but let’s pretend for a moment that I’ve just one. In a very extroverted way I am publicly intimate with almost everyone I know. I do a very poor job of selecting people with whom I share intimate information. There are good things about this and there are less-than-optimal considerations to be examined. I polled my Facebook friends for the title of my first text and my friends did not disappoint. But like most things on Facebook, humor or sarcasm were a bulk of the payload or the suggested titles were specific to my experience with that person e.g. “Jim Preis Has a Small Penis” or “A Small Penis Jim Preis Has” or “Jim Preis? Small Penis? Yes.” Not surprisingly, I proposed, “Everyone Eats Boogers”. This title actually has insight if you can get past the inherent poor taste, pardon the pun. The human experience is just that; human. Rarely does original thought occur and even rarer is the script of individual existence. Numbers don’t lie. If you’re one in a million in China, there are 1,300 people EXACTLY like you. If we neutralize the cultural deltas and societal memes and erase all the borders, then if you’re one in a billion, then there’s six other people exactly like you on Earth. The point to all of this is that the human experience to me means that everyone else either has or is likely to experience the things I’ve experienced so far in life. Birth, education, struggle, employment, love, marriage, children, catastrophe, recovery, depression, lust, consequence, addiction, embarrassment. By embracing this notion, I can and do eliminate the fear of sharing such intimate details here. Sure, verses or writings or Facebook statuses might be awkward, but they are still in the demesne of the human experience. This notion is captured - if not camouflaged by - the title, “Everyone Eats Boogers”. I’ve often pondered the benefit of peace and I’ve referred to it as the peace dividend. I find great comfort and peace in the fact that everyone eats boogers (don’t lie to yourself) because it represents the commonalities of the human experience. The point of all this blather is that if I admit that I’ve eaten a booger and I assume you’ve eaten a booger, then what we have is two people stripped down to truth and that’s the premise - no matter how yucky - that I write from.

OK, time for status updates.

First, Karen. Keeper of Gravel Brook Court, fixer of boo-boos, petter of dog and wife of mine. Karen’s doing well these days, but the irony is all that new-found time that she discovered when both boys are in school gets filled up with the stuff that simply has to get done all the same. Not to diminish a positive by any means; there’s a significant difference between harried efforts squeezed into random moments and being able to do those same things in a controlled, if not relaxed, manner that allows for a nominal amount of consideration and planning. Karen’s also done a great job of keeping her commitment to getting in some exercise during the week. She rides the rollers for 30 - 40 minutes each night while your’s truly hacks away on this keyboard. In summary, Karen’s gotten a little control back with regard to her schedule and it’s nice to see her out of the red zone. Hell, it’s nice to see her at all, but she has an affinity for cadence and regimen and with that comes back some of the sanity inherently lost as a parent.

I’m hanging in there as well. I’ve been plagued by one illness or injury after another: strep, sore throat, whatever the kids bring home and share, strained back. Fortunately - fingers crossed - I’m looking at all of that in the rear view right now and god health in general is within reach. Even with the strained lower back I managed to get in a ride with the family yesterday and I do believe the fresh air did me good. Actually I think it did us all a world of good. It’s time for a complete disassembly of my road bike, maintenance and then reassembly. I do this about once every 18 months to two years in addition to typical maintenance. I love doing this also. I’ve said before that cycling is in so many ways analogous to living and when I’m riding the bike shares the representation of the body on life’s journey. Certain things on the bike are black and white for example; I put 115 pounds of pressure in my tires. But the rear derailleur is half art and half science. The tension of the cable that controls the shifting of the rear derailleur is not a constant. Once under tension, that cable stretches minimally, but it’s enough to require an adjustment to keep the shifting crisp. And if there’s one thing you want when some steroid infused maniac jumps at 25 MPH, it’s a clean shift into a smaller cog in the back. Not so ironically from where I sit it’s probably time for me to join Karen in her commitment to improving her fitness. I had hoped to be in good cycling shape by this time, but riding out of doors in very cold weather would have only exacerbated my cold(s); and it simply would have been stupid to do with strep. So poised for moderate greatness is how I’ll choose to view my lot. And as always, very blessed and fortunate so long as I can see and love my wife and kids each and every day.

Thing 1, David, is doing wonderfully in transitional preschool. As much as I hate to admit it, his behavior is impacted by the amount of dairy in his diet. This saddens me because dairy with its five letters covers a whole lot of dietary acerage: pizza, ice cream, milk, cheese and the list goes on and on. The trade-off is a no-brainer, but it’s just something that I wish wasn’t. David’s also become quite the social being and we had concerns about that in previous years. Yet another thousand hours spent worrying unnecessarily. Now I know why first and second children are so different. Thing 1 is unknown and assumed to be fragile and gets jacketed by emotional Kevlar. Thing 2? You’ll be fine. David’s best friend in the world is a cutie named Sarah and the two of them together is an experience to put it mildly. It’s a rollercoaster where the peaks are moments when you would have though they hadn’t seen each other in 50 years and the troughs are contemptuous moments of unimaginable depth. But they’re always sad when they part. Perhaps mommy and daddy are already losing their deed to 100% of David’s heart. He’s on his way folks.

Thing 2, Camden, is as happy as happy can be. He’s doing very well at Frankie Lemmon and the changes and improvements we’ve seen him bring home give Karen and I much hope for Camden’s future. He’s already developing an independent spirit and as I’ve mentioned before independence is a critical piece in the challenge that is Down syndrome. His vocabulary is becoming more expansive and he understands the difference between words and numbers. He can count to 10 by himself and his vocabulary is probably between 100 to 200 words. He is also assembling coherent sentences, but not as frequently as we’d like to hear them. We’ll work on that. Camden is a virus magnet and he almost always seems to have a runny nose. It is our hope that at some point he’ll have traversed the complete inventory of common childhood viruses and come out the other side more resistant. If there is a consistent moment of challenge with Little C it would be at dinner when he chooses to fling a utensil - usually adorned with some quantity of delicious food my wife has cooked up - from the table. This will also get better as Karen and I work in concert to implement the tools and techniques that we learned more about this last week at one of the learning session provided by Frankie Lemmon. At the end of the day, it’s simply impossible to look at this little man with anything but unconditional love and the greatest of expectations.

Our family is truly fortunate and blessed beyond imagination. To wit, you’re reading this and we’re so glad you are.

Take care.