Happy Birthday, Max

Tags

babies, fatherhood, loss, Max, Maxwell, parenting, SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

Seven years ago today, our first son, Maxwell, was born just before midnight at the end of a very long day at Overland Park Regional Medical Center. We took him home three days later and were amazed at how old he seemed, already mugging for the camera during an impromptu photo shoot in his new crib. Sitting in his bouncy seat on the kitchen table, he often watched us intently, as if he were quietly taking in our dinnertime conversation. We wondered what he was thinking.

Our summer with Max was something of a blur, as the first few weeks usually are with a newborn. I remember a string of 100-degree days, having to wait until the early evening to push his stroller around the neighborhood, Max staring up at the big trees and listening to the eerie buzz of the cicadas. I remember watching him sleep through during a July 4th fireworks display, walking him around the yard so he could feel the cool blades of grass on his feet, I remember letting our dog, Keiko, give him a lick on the face. I remember holding Max and reading him Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, and anything else to lull him to sleep.

That summer ended for us on August 14. Max went down for a nap at day care around noon that day and he never woke up. The medical examiner called it Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which is a common diagnosis when a child under the age of one year dies for no apparent reason. Max was just shy of 11 weeks old.

My wife and I have grieved, struggled to understand, and blamed ourselves for Max’s death. Seven years have passed, and the pain is not as strong, but it is still there. Today, however, is one when we celebrate the time we had with our first son. We will remember Max by releasing some balloons into the sky as we do on his birthday every year, and as we did at his funeral.

Below are a few of my favorite photos of Max. Happy Birthday, little Boo. Mommy and Daddy miss you!

The Story Behind the Photo… Maybe

Tags

1980s, fiction, flash fiction, graduation, high school, humor, myrtle beach, senior, university of alabama

Holy crap, this is really happening, Karen thought as she folded her hands neatly across the front of her laurel green cable-knit sweater.  Three damn years of Drama Club, Anchor Club, Tennis Team, National Honor Society, Drill Team and Latin Club. Three damn years of smiling at everyone I pass in the hallways, staying up past midnight primping the homecoming float, showing up to school 20 minutes early every single morning to prepare the intercom announcements. Three damn years of designated driving, “passing on grass,” and never letting any boy get his hands past second base (not even during those epic make-out sessions with Danny Cruse over the summer at Myrtle Beach). Three years, and I have finally made it. I am one of 20 promising young men and women chosen for Senior Spotlight in the 1989 edition of the Platte Springs High School Lancer yearbook.

It had been hard work but, as she told her best friend Cami over the phone the night before, it was totally worth it. Karen knew she wanted to be in the Senior Spotlight since she was an 11-year-old sneaking into her big sister Beth’s room and leafing through her 1982 volume of the Lancer. These guys, Karen thought as she stared at the glossy grins of 20 good-looking, well-scrubbed high schoolers, really are the best.

Beth had been Spotlighted. So had Karen’s other two sisters, Jennifer and Amy. Now it was her turn. Being part of Senior Spotlight wasn’t just an honor for Karen Cupperman. It was sort of a birthright.

She clasped her hands in front of her, tilted her head and smiled wide for the photographer. This really is happening, Karen told herself. She wanted to be excited. She was excited. But not the way she expected. She expected a wave of ecstasy to wash over and perhaps carry her a few feet above the soggy practice field where they’d decided to take these photos. Instead, she felt little more than a dull pride, then nervousness. Is this all there is to it? she thought. Nobody’s going to give a crap about Senior Spotlight next year at the University of Alabama. What am I going to do then?

Her smile faded a bit. Her mother would describe Karen’s look as “winsome,” when the two of them flipped through the yearbook several months later. Her mom was always dropping these little words and phrases that seemed to come straight out of a Jane Austen novel.

“What exactly does winsome mean?” Karen asked.

“Oh, you know. Fetching,” her mom said. “Winning.”

Karen looked down at the picture and clucked her tongue. Winning? No, that wasn’t it.

 

The Story Behind the Photo (Maybe)

Tags

fiction, guns 'n roses, humor, metallica, olan mills, rock music, rush, styx

Gregg had a dream. That dream was to become the best-known Irish hard rock singer/guitarist since Phil Lynott OD’ed on heroin in 1986. But, unlike Phil, Gregg didn’t have a band. And he lived in Erie, Pennsylvania. And he wasn’t Irish.

“But so what, right?” he said one night over beers with a friend at The Lonely Pin, a popular Erie bar and bowling alley. “I mean, whoever said you have to have a four-piece band to make rock ‘n’ roll music? If you got the chops, who needs a goddamned rhythm section?”

Gregg had the chops. Everyone agreed on that. He could pick up somebody’s six-string and crank out the solo of “Why My Guitar Gently Weeps” in such a heart-rending way that you could swear Clapton was in the room. By all rights, musicians from around the city should have been lining up to jam with Gregg. It hadn’t worked out that way, though. Gregg, it had been noted time and again since he was in preschool, did not play particularly well with others.

“I play what I wanna play,” he told his buddy at the bar. “I bring on some guys, and the next thing you know, we gotta do ‘Just What I Needed,’ because that’s Jim’s girlfriend’s favorite Cars song. Or we have to do eight minutes of ‘By-Tor & the Snowman’ because Jason’s a huge Rush fan. No way. I’m not doing it.”

“I think it’s called ‘By-Tor & the Snow Dog,'” his friend said.

“Well, whatever,” Gregg said, and he finished his Miller High Life. “Rush is dumb, anyway. Their songs make no sense.”

That night, Gregg decided once and for all to go it alone. He took his BC Rich Warlock (the guitar’s distinct, jagged body just screamed heavy metal), a mic stand and a portable amp and started playing the streets of downtown Erie. He spent most of his time outside the Olive Garden, where he could pull in as much as $20 an hour from the high-rollers who were out to impress their dates on a Saturday night. A natural entertainer, Gregg kept his playlist accessible: a little Guns & Roses, some Alice In Chains, a few of Metallica’s more popular stuff. Nothing too hard, nothing too obscure. He wasn’t trying to win someone’s coolness contest. He was trying to make payments on his $200-a-month studio apartment, as well as finance some voice lessons.

Eventually, he made enough scratch to start thinking about a tour. To do a tour, Gregg reasoned, you needed some advance publicity or, at the very least, an 8 x 11 glossy of yourself. So he walked into an Olan Mills studio with his favorite guitar one Tuesday afternoon for a photo shoot. It was September 22, 1992, according to the police report.

“You a musician?” asked the photographer, a pallid, middle-aged man with an unconvincing comb-over.

“Yeah,” said Gregg, thinking that was pretty obvious, what with the guitar and all.

“What kind of music do you play?”

With a bit of a sigh, Gregg listed a few bands that he thought the guy might know. The photographer nodded and kept snapping away.

“So,” he said after a moment, “where are your pals?”

“Excuse me?” Gregg asked.

“Where’s your band?”

Gregg shifted the guitar to his left hand and struck what he hoped was an intimidating pose. “It’s just me. I’m the band.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

The photographer stepped away from his tripod and pushed his comb-over back with a grand sweep of his hand. “There is no way you could do the music of Styx any justice as one guy with a guitar.”

“Wanna bet?” Gregg said with a forced smile. “Besides, I only do one Styx song, and it’s mostly because jack-offs like you ask for it.”

“Which song?”

“‘Come Sail Away.'”

“Of course,” the photographer said, returning his lens. “Of course. And the next thing you’ll tell me is you’ve got the nimble fingers of Tommy Shaw and the angelic voice of Dennis DeYoung.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Blasphemy.”

Gregg was starting to get a little hot. “What is your deal, man? You treat all your customers like this?”

“Only the ones with over-sized egos. I’ve seen you play before. The Olive Garden, right?

“You know what I think?” the photographer continued, still snapping away. “I think you’re not good enough to have your own band.”

The last thing Gregg remembers was gritting his teeth, lifting the white guitar over his shoulder and rushing the middle-aged man and his camera. The rest, he would tell police, was a blur.

Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

Tags

bill clinton, commentary, congress, lewinsky, lying, mark sanford, politics, shame, south carolina, stephen colbert, values

Mark Sanford won back his old congressional seat on Tuesday. Remember him? He was the South Carolina governor who, in 2009, went AWOL for several days after telling his aides he was going for a hike on the Appalachian Trail. Turns out, he was actually in Argentina with his mistress. Unfortunately for Sanford, a reporter with Columbia’s The State newspaper was waiting for him in Atlanta as he stepped off his return flight from Buenos Aires.

A lot of people wanted Sanford to resign after the Appalachian Trail story hit. After all, he had disappeared for nearly a week, lied to everyone about his whereabouts and cheated on his wife, all while on the payroll as chief executive of the state. Sanford, however, stubbornly hung on his job and managed to finish out his term. Politics, it seams, means never having to say you’re sorry.

A lot of people expected Sanford to retire into private life, cash in on his public service with a cushy corporate title, and perhaps write a mostly ignored memoir. Those people, however, know nothing about American politics in the 21st Century. After leaving the governor’s mansion, Sanford immediately began planning his political comeback, which culminated Tuesday with a win in South Carolina’s First District over Stephen Colbert’s sister.

Sanford may never go on to become president (he was considered a strong contender for the 2012 Republican ticket before The Hike That Never Happened), but his return to Congress is another reminder that there is no shame in American politics. Also, there isn’t much talent. How could both parties fail to come up with more viable candidates for a national seat that a disgraced former governor and a comedian’s sister?

The values of our elected officials, while probably never sterling, seem to have nosedived in the past several years. Looking back, Bill Clinton set a bad precedent by not resigning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted and held the government hostage for more than a year. Instead of stepping down, he lied about the affair to Independent Counsel Ken Starr and to the media, then refused to leave even after he was impeached. Was the Lewinksy affair exploited by Republicans determined to destroy the Clintons at any cost? In my opinion, yes. But ol’ Bill didn’t do himself any favors by trying to cover things up. So he should have resigned. The Presidency should have been held a higher standard.

That, of course, was 15 years ago. In today’s world, accepting responsibility for your actions and mistakes is seen as a weakness among powerful people in the public and private sectors. Expressing regret or shame for something you did is considered political suicide. And, more often than not, the public does not hold these scoundrels accountable. That’s how we end up re-electing people like Mark Sanford who lack the common decency to just go away.

Snow in May? Why the Hell Not?

Tags

bizarre, kansas city, may, missouri, snow, spring, weather

Here in Missouri, people boast about the unpredictability of the weather. “If you don’t like the weather, stick around for five minutes,” is a popular phrase in a lot of places. In Missouri, however, they mean it. The climate here really is completely crazy.

Still, there have always been at least a couple of certainties about Missouri weather: 1.) that it will be hot as hell come July, and, 2.) that it will not snow after April. In the more than 20 years I have lived in the Show-Me State, May 1 is the official line of demarcation for winter weather. I have seen a handful of April snows, but never in May.

Well, here it is May 2, and it is snowing. Hard. It’s been snowing since mid-afternoon and the snow is still coming down as I write this post. Yesterday, it was a sunny 80 degrees and I was hitting golf balls on the driving range. Tonight, it is in the 20s. Ah, Missouri weather.

This is, hopefully, the tail end of a long and trying winter in Kansas City. We have seen record snowfall this year, including a couple of storms that dumped a foot of snow. Since January, we’ve enjoyed only a few days of mild weather. This evening, I muttered a few swear words under my breath as my wife, son and I drove through rush hour traffic at a snail’s pace, snow and ice pelting our windshield, all of us thinking that this is only Thursday, and we will have to get up, get dressed and drive through this crap again tomorrow morning. Oh, and by the way, it is May. We should be eating ice cream on the back porch by now.

So, I was less than enthused when we got home and my three-year-old wanted to pull on his boots and march around in the freshly fallen snow. Where, I wondered, was this enthusiasm in February, when we had a foot of snow on the ground and all he wanted to do was stay inside and do puzzles? I reluctantly pulled my winter coat out of the closet and joined my son in the front yard, where he danced around as if seeing the white stuff for the very first time: “Look at the mailbox, Daddy! Look at the tree!”

I looked to where he pointed and I had to agree that it’s pretty amazing to see a leafy, green maple covered in snow. I stared down at the emerald grass, which had just been mowed two days ago and was now frosted with white.

“Can you believe it’s May and we’ve got snow on the ground?” I said.

My three-year-old gave me a funny look. He, of course, has no concept of the calendar, and the fact that the neighborhood pool will open in less than a month. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t. I scooped up some snow, made a ball out of it, and threw it at my son, who dutifully kicked it and squealed with delight.