Recovery Goals

“I have a wedding in three weeks, what do you think?” I asked the in-hospital physical therapist the day after my double knee replacement. The day that I couldn’t get up without nauseated grimacing. The day I couldn’t lift a toe, let alone a knee, up onto even the lowest of the low stairs in the hallway. 

“Perhaps a bit ambitious, but we’ll see,” she smiled encouragingly. “Every day you’ll see a little more improvement.”

“I’m going,” I said, returning her smile, with a bit of “watch me.” After all, I had proclaimed  in my pre-surgery blog that I’d be dancing with my walker at Kristen and Mike’s wedding. And, I’m not one to make empty promises.

Two days later, I was sent off to Kessler Rehab for a week, where they had me not only climbing stairs but stepping in and out of bathtubs, cars and kitchens. One day, I overheard Jackie, an occupational therapist, say she was going to a wedding on the 19^th. And, because of the  serendipitousness of my eavesdropping, and subsequent barrier-less barging in, I learned she was Kristen’s maid of honor. 

Now, NOTHING could stop me from getting to that wedding.

As anyone who has ever been in rehab of any kind will concur, rehab is easy. You’re safe. You’re monitored. You’re living in an altered reality.  The real work comes when you go home. 

On the eleventh day following my surgery, I was released into the loving arms of my spouse and youngest son. I was petrified. Even though we had practiced in rehab, I had serious doubts that I’d be able to bend my legs enough to swing them into the car (it proved easier than before the surgery), navigate the front porch stairs (piece of cake) or venture up the stairs to my recovery room (did it). 

My ever-loving spouse is as private a person as I am public. Unlike me, he does things out of the goodness of his heart, not for affirmation from the world. He rarely reads my blogs because it’s hard enough for him to have to live through my open-to-all adventures, let alone relive them as I recount them, action-for-action, word-for-word. I try to leave him out of my stories, penning him in as a minor character only when necessary. After all, why waste words of praise that will only fall on blind eyes?

However, I’d be remiss not to give him a shout out for his courage, concern and unconditional love in his recent undertaking of coach and caregiver. A role I’d never in a million years willingly take on. And certainly not with a post-op patient like me. 

I thought I had it good in rehab. But, it was nothing compared to the royal treatment I received at home.  

He took me for walks. He took me for rides in the car. He made me beautiful salads. He doled out pills. He supplied me with endless ice cubes. He pulled those ridiculous compression stockings over my swollen feet in the morning and strapped me into my hideous immobilizing braces at night. And the one time I started whining because I had forgotten my kindle downstairs, he snapped.

“No breakdowns! I’ll get your kindle.”

“But, you just came upstairs,” I sniffled, frustrated at not being able to take care of my own needs.

“I don’t mind,” he said. And he truly didn’t.

But still, I wasn’t going to take advantage. So, every day, I pushed myself a little further and became more and more independent. Before long, the spouse went back to work. Left to my own devices, I found my old self peeking through; picking unidentifiable floating objects out of the dog’s water bowl, braving the stairs multiple times a day, de-crumbing the kitchen counters, driving to physical therapy, bringing in the mail, kicking the walker to the curb, doing laundry and preparing meals.

So, when the wedding day rolled around, three weeks to the day after my surgery, I was revved and ready. 

“We won’t stay late,” the spouse said, always eager to leave a social engagement right when I start hitting my stride.

“Agreed,” I said. 

After all, it was hot as blazes out there. And though I did get special dispensation to ditch the thick, white compression stockings for the day, I still had to wear long, black pants to hide the long, ugly scars that still had remnants of tape and steri-strips dangling from the wounds. I knew I wouldn’t get my much-needed afternoon nap. And, it was a long mass followed by a two-and-a-half hour break before a long reception, far enough away to dabble in Friday night shore traffic. I knew I'd be exhausted half way through my first scallop wrapped in bacon and truly didn’t believe I’d make it to the cutting of the cake. 

Somewhere between First Corinthians and the Holy Gospel, Jackie, the fun-loving therapist and maid of honor, pivoted from her perch at the tail of the bride’s long white veil, and caught my eye, giving me a thumbs up.  

I knew, in that moment, with God as my witness in that cavernous Catholic church, that I was going to exceed my recovery goal.

The reception was perfect. Love and laughter filled the room with heart-felt speeches, family from near and far, and friends who had been through it all with the groom; stealing bases, stealing cars and stealing beers. And everyone in that room knew that Mike had just landed the steal of his career, catching not only a beautiful bride, but a perfect partner for life.

And so, when the music began to blare and the bridal party began slip sliding their way across the dance floor, I knew I was going to do it. 

I looked at my spouse. He looked at me. 

“You sure?” he said. 

I nodded and hobbled to center stage. I don’t remember exactly what songs were playing, but I'm thinking Sweet Caroline, High Hopes or Twist and Shout is what got me out there. I’m not a dancer in the best of shape, let alone with two brand-new knees. But, there was something in the air that made me kick up my cane, find the bride and dance with her on her wedding day.

Another week has passed and I’m doing laps around the neighborhood, carrying my cane merely to ward off rogue pit bulls and small children on scooters. I just finished making sausage and peppers and husking corn on the cob. I vacuumed up dog hair this morning, pulled daughter hair from the bathroom drain, lugged laundry up and down the stairs and wiped watermelon juice from the refrigerator shelves. 

I’m not sleeping well (if at all) at night because of my dang immobilizers (two more weeks!) but I’m getting some really good power naps in my recliner. I ice my knees four times a day, do about 100 heel slides a day and take a plethora of pills ranging from iron to Celebrex. I go to physical therapy three times a week where Brittany cheers me on, buckling my knees back until my eyes bug out and then announces, "You're at 130 degrees!" making the struggle worth the pain. But, I swore off Tylenol last week and just keep bending and stretching and waiting for the day that I wake up and finally say, “I’m SO glad I got my knees replaced!”

In the meantime, I’ll just keep my sights on my recovery goals, modest as they may be. Sleeping when I can. Dancing when I can. And, always remembering that it takes a village. In the meantime, mark my words. I'll be back to raising Cain, without my cane, long before the world is ready. 

A Simple Case of the Kneesles: Rehab Part One

“Just stopping by to ask how your stay at Kessler has been,” the bright and bubbly public, human, customer or some other sort of relations worker asked on my last day at the rehab center. It was hard to keep the multitudes of people swarming my bedside straight. Admittedly, if the name tag didn’t allow the dispensing of pain killers, I was less likely to care who they were. She was not a dispenser. But, she caught me at a good moment.

“I loved it!” I exclaimed. “I would live here forever if I could!”

The bright and bubbly woman paused. 

“Are you messing with me?” she asked.

“I am NOT kidding,” I responded. “This was the best week of my life.” 

OK. That may have been a slight exaggeration. But, not a total one. 

Two-and-a-half weeks ago, I went under the knife. The good doctor fileted my legs from thigh to shin, tore out my old and achy knees and put in new and improved hardware. He closed  me up with thirty staples and four sutures per limb, flipped me onto the “done” gurney and sent me on my way. 

Later that very same day, when the wooziness had worn off and I was safely in my hospital bed, wanting nothing more than to succumb to that blissful anesthesia, Nurse Ratched came in to announce that nap time was over. It was time to get up and walking. 

Imagine that. 

The following day I was doing laps around the nurse’s station with my walker.

And, on the third day, they were ready to discharge me.

“I can’t go home!” I whined. “I can’t do the stairs yet!”

“I’ll take care of you! You can sleep in the living room!” my well-intended, ever-loving spouse proclaimed. 

Visions of my body splayed like a museum piece on display for family, friends and furry dogs infiltrated my psyche and wouldn’t recede.

“I can NOT sleep downstairs,” I declared in a tone so strong the case worker took it to heart and began proceedings to get me to rehab.

I had been to rehab after I had my hip replaced 18 years ago. It was not a happy experience as noted in my past tales. Going in to this thing, I had absolutely no intentions of being incarcerated any longer than I had to. But the thought of those 17 stairs, the rickety bannister and the recovery room that I had created out of my California son’s bedroom (complete with brand new air conditioner and remote-powered recliner) called to me loudly through my fuzzy brain. I was adamant. It was not safe for any of us if I went home. And I wouldn’t go home until I could safely sleep in the recovery room. 

“Listen,” I confessed to one of those people with a name tag who didn’t dispense. “I’m doing this for my spouse, not for me. When I’m unhappy or in pain, I can be pretty unpleasant. But, I promise, I’ll be a model patient at rehab. It’s just not in my nature to be mean to people I don’t know or love.”

And off I went. 

Now, if you’ve never been in the two-new-kneed condition in which I found myself, it may not occur to you that the getting there is almost as scary as the been there. It’s a frightening thing to be carried on a gurney, especially for someone of my girth. But, somehow, these trained professionals are both strong enough and smart enough to move mountains, both physically and emotionally. Thanks to the kindness of the Teaneck Volunteer Ambulance Corps, my friend, Joe Harris, and his perfectly personable assistant, Michael, delivered me in one painless piece to my new vacation home, just two miles down the road from the hospital.

I was deposited, oh so gently, from stretcher to bed in a room divided by a khaki-colored floral curtain just a few minutes before my roommate, a double amputee, was whisked from her window bed and taken back to the hospital for something gone wrong. It was a whirlwind of in and out but I was still too deep into transition to process any of it.

There were new rules at Kessler. I wasn’t permitted to walk to the bathroom alone. I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed without pushing the call button. I had to be transported by wheelchair. I was back in a hospital gown. 

I had to train a whole new flock of people to bring me a constant supply of ice chips, that yes, despite it being 90 degrees outside, I DID want all five blankets and six pillows on my bed and that I would not, could not produce that coveted stool sample as long as they stood guard outside the bathroom door.

And when my roommate was wheeled back in at midnight with the fanfare of a street parade and I laid awake into the wee hours, willing myself not to have to pee, I wondered if I hadn’t made a mistake by not going right home. 

But, when 5 am rolled around and the blood taker came and stabbed my arm and I tore off my nighttime immobilizer braces, trying to un-Velcro the eight-on-each-leg straps as quietly as possible, uncreaked my knees and emptied my throbbing bladder, aide perched outside the door. “Pull the call bell when you’re done!” I knew it was just a matter of getting used to a new routine. And making new friends.

Following my English muffin and bacon breakfast which came hot every morning, I met my first new best friend, Michael, from Occupational Therapy. 

“I’m here to teach you to get dressed,” he said. 

“Joy,” I responded. I barely let my own spouse see me in various stages of undress, let alone a perfect stranger. But, Michael was a professional, staging his act so he didn’t actually see me in any stages of undress. He demonstrated the ins and outs of pulling up pants with a reacher, using an extended shoe horn and even a super cool sock putter-onner. Michael was so good and so congenial that I truly believed he cared about the whole life story that I revealed in my various stages of non-undress. 

At Kessler, the victims have three hours of therapy, scheduled throughout the day in different time increments. Alyssa was my main physical therapist and by the end of our time together she knew 75 percent of my quirks (I always like to keep some close to the vest). Meanwhile, I extracted plenty of personal info about her, her beau, her upcoming nuptials and her family dynamics. Doing chair-to-stands and braving the steps were simple tasks when disguised as buddy bonding.

Christine, my occupational therapist, and I never stopped talking as took me to another floor to practice getting in and out of a fake car, stepping in and out of a bathtub and getting dishes in and out of a cabinet. Through it all, we yakked about the ins and outs of kids' sports and the crazy schedule (believe me, it gets worse, I warned) of her thirteen year-old softball player daughter. Again, we were more like friends than torturer and tortured.

Never one to keep my ears to myself, I heard Jackie, one of the “fun” therapists talking across the room about a wedding she was going to on July 19^th.

“Me too!” I bellowed. “That has been my recovery goal, to make it to a wedding three weeks to the day from my surgery. Hey, maybe it’s the same one!”

“Yeah, maybe,” she said, assuming I was on narcotics.

“Kristen and Mike’s?” I asked, knowing I was on narcotics.

She shrieked. I laughed. She is the maid of honor at the very same wedding. 

“I’m going to be off my walker by then,” I declared.

And, I am.

I had the time of my life at Kessler. I had Emily, the best nurse in the whole wide world. I mean, the whole wide world. Which isn’t to say that Anele wasn't equally as kind and loving, but Emily, I will always hold nearest and dearest to my heart. 

I had great aides like Ivy who never made me feel bad about ringing my bell. And Nick and Rosa. Rosa who yelled at me for throwing my dirty washcloths on the floor as if it were a hotel. Rosa knew what she was dealing with and kept me in line.

And then there was Jack, the MC of the show. He sat at the reception desk and orchestrated the ins and outs of patients and after my roommate went home, I begged him not to let anyone else move in. And, while happenstance kept the other bed empty for four full days, he let me believe it was because I asked.

While it was frustrating not being able to do what I wanted when I wanted, my week in rehab had all the makings of a vacation. In between heel slides and knee bends, I wasn’t cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, going grocery shopping or doing the daily stand-off of refusing to feed the dog before 6 pm. So, when my stay was over and I said goodbye to all my new friends, it was as sad as disembarking from a cruise ship.

I’ve been home a week now and my rehab memories are already beginning to fade. But I'll forever keep in my soul my double amputee roommate who continues to inspire me every single day. I can not moan. I can not cry. I can not complain. 

Because, thanks to the people who motivated me, manipulated me and befriended me, I realize, in the grand scheme of things, my great big personal trauma is nothing more than a simple case of the kneesles.

Some things just kneed to be done

“You’re having BOTH done at once?” I have heard twelve-dozen times since I scheduled my long-overdue double knee replacement. 

“Uh, yeah,” I say, with an uh-duh tenor to my retort. 

I know that if I did them one at a time, it would be another decade before I’d go back to get the second one done. 

It’s not that I’m afraid of surgery. After all, I’ve had three c-sections, one hip replacement, one gall bladder extraction, one hysterectomy, two mastectomies, two reconstruction surgeries, not to mention one ICU-bout with pancreatitis, one cataract surgery, one dental implant, three root canals, one infected bunion, and countless other un-countable conditions.

My friend, Laura, saves emails. She recently forwarded me what may have been the first documentation of my knee issue. I had just returned from an orthopedist who confirmed that I had not one, but two bone-on-bone knees. Ten years ago.

In the decade since, I have done everything possible to avoid the surgery. I dropped enough poundage to ease the pounding pain and have managed to ride my bicycle over 1000 miles a year, walk circles through parks and towns, swim miles of laps, attempt yoga, cheat in spin class and lift weights. Very light weights. And, I have said 10,326 times a year, for a total of 103,260 utterances, “Oh, my aching bones.”

I’ve done physical therapy, gotten shot up with chicken combs, tried expensive topical creams, over the counter pain killers, prescription anti-inflammatories, CBD products (legal ones, of course), and both cheap and expensive bourbons to keep my knees alive.

Last month, in search of the anti-diagnosis I went to yet another new doctor. I explained that I would be spending the summer working on a food truck, standing on my feet for up to 12 hours a day and was wondering if I could get cortisone shots to get me through. 

The good doctor smiled and said, “Tell me more about this food truck.” And, so I launched into all the fun and joy it brings, thinking he had genuine interest in the ups and downs of my food service career. 

He smiled again. 

And then said something on the lines of, “Considering the deteriorating condition of your mind, body and soul, did you ever think it might be prudent to get your knees replaced sooner than later?”

Hmm. Interesting question. 

My friend, Kathy, had her knees (plural) replaced four years ago and it changed her life. About 3 ½ years ago she gave up trying to convince me that it just might change mine as well. 

My spouse used to corner my friends and beg them to persuade me get my knees fixed, knowing I was more likely to listen to them than to him. It wasn’t until I threatened to make him go on a cruise with me that he finally retreated. 

Last year, when visiting my sister, Nancy, in Charleston we took her Prozac pooch, Otis, for a stroll through the neighborhood. Among other exciting topics, I told her how good my knees were feeling. Later, when I did the backwards shuffle to get into the passenger’s seat of her car, manually uncreaking the left knee, dragging the right one in behind it, whooing and sighing until I was in position, she simply looked at me and said, “You’re right. Why would you rush into getting your knees replaced?”

While in Maine, unable to do the annual cliff walk past Homer Winslow's house, unable to tolerate Portland's cobblestoned pavements, unable to navigate a simple trip to Walmart, my friends said, 'enough is enough,' deposited me in a wheelchair and pushed me through the store.

My friend, Grace, who I walk with, and one of the kindest people I know, looks at my limp and my bow-legged in the same direction knees, and wonders with sympathy and confusion, why in the world I would choose to live this way. 

So, no. It had never crossed my mind to get my knees replaced. 

I was born defective. I spent the first nine months of my life in a hard cast that splayed my legs apart to re-socket my dislocated hip. By the time I hit my 40s, that quick fix wasn’t so much of a fix anymore. I was (once again) bone-on-bone in the left hip. Which means, of course, no cartilage and tons of pain. So, I got the hip replaced. 

While in the hospital, I had a nurse who rolled her eyes so blatantly every time I rang the bell that I finally asked her, yes I did, why she chose this particular profession. She laughed and admitted that she hated being a nurse and was in night school, studying to become an accountant. 

I went to rehab for ten days following the surgery. Even my insurance provider knew it wouldn’t be the smartest idea to send me home to five, seven and nine-year-old children and a big barking dog. While in rehab, or perhaps while at the hospital, (culpability denial), I contracted C-Diff. Google it. And multiply it by 100. That’s how pleasant it was. 

Between trips to the bathroom, I did my physical therapy. I was young. Oh, so young. And, was determined that no one 40 years my senior was going to outdo me. I excelled at PT. But, while panting through my ankle pumps and abductor slides, I watched grown men crying real tears as they tried to bend and stretch their brand-new knees.

“Knees are a thousand times worse than hips!” my therapist admitted.

I stored that information in my brain. 

In rehab, I was in a room with five other people. One was a thirty-something woman who had been paralyzed in a skiing accident. One was rehabbing a reconstructed shoulder. And one was a 60 year old woman who, in the prime of her active life, suffered a stroke. She didn’t lose her speech or cognitive functions, but the left side of her body needed a lot of work. When I checked out, Marcia presented me with a fake red rose. 

"Remember," she said with a right-armed hug goodbye. "Hope springs eternal."

On my bulletin board, amidst pictures of Jamal as a baby and as a graduate; Anthony as a baseball player; the girls in the back room of The Post; Patty, Madge and I laughing our fool heads off on a cruise; my favorite birthday card from Margaret; and a tear-off French calendar entry from Emily that translates to “My sister is stronger than I,” that red rose dangles. And, has dangled for 18 years. 

Now, on the cusp of going under the knife once again, I look to that red rose and remember to put it all into perspective. It’s not cancer. It’s not an amputation. It’s not brain surgery. It’s nothing more than getting two more bionic parts implanted into my body. It won’t be pretty, and it won't be pleasant. But I have full intentions of dancing with my walker at Michael and Kristen’s wedding in July and climbing the Rockies with the Chapel Hill gang at Lauren and Rob’s nuptials next fall. 

After all, hope springs eternal.

And if nothing else, I've got high hopes.

pomp, circumstance and m&ms: a throwback

“Are you all excited for Leo’s graduation?” my friends Ann and Gail asked me today at lunch. 

And in typical Betsy fashion I answered in a typically unconventional way.  I went on a long-winded rant about how jaded I am when it comes to graduation ceremonies. After all, I’ve been to fifteen of them between the three kids and their pre-school, kindergarten, elementary, middle school, high school and college graduations. It should have been sixteen but I was blessed with acute pancreatitis and was in the ICU for Leo’s pre-school ceremony. I don’t have a valedictorian like the adorably brilliant Deijah Lee-Carroll and so what if my kid gets to wear Student Ambassador and Honor Roll sashes, I never saw him open a book the entire four years so it makes me wonder if he really earned them or maybe he paid someone, and on and on.

Poor Ann and Gail. They are two of the kindest friends I have and all they did was ask a simple question to which a simple, “yes” would have sufficed. I do this to them all the time and am in constant wonderment of why in the world they continue to open their hearts to a psycho like me. 

I came home from lunch and started a half-hour texting rampage with the daughter who is riddled with anxiety over her upcoming move to New Orleans that we are forcing her to do alone. Not by choice, but by logistics. If I could, I’d be there. I am always there. But, alas, I have to be on a cruise sipping Mai Tais on the Lido deck with my friend Patty while Molly is driving. Alone. To New Orleans. Where she could get lost. Or get a flat tire. Or get held at gunpoint. Or break her ankle. Yes, she said that. 

Which led me to start thinking about packing for my trip. In making my lists I realized I never bought the shoes I absolutely have to have and now it’s too late to mail order and I can’t possibly go to the mall between now and Sunday because I have way too much work to do and it’s the Hearts Tournament in Philadelphia on Saturday and Leo has to go to orientation at Rutgers on Thursday and should I wear white pants to the graduation or will they get dirty on the bleachers and the spouse is going out of town and who will remember to give the dog the Lyme’s disease pills when I’m away and I have to book a flight for Max back to Los Angeles and who’s going to do the grocery shopping when he goes back and my sister is moving to Charleston and where are we going to have Thanksgiving dinner and where is the hidden stash of M&M’s?

M&Ms never lie. When I inhale massive amounts of chocolate without tasting them, without getting a stomach ache, without breathing between gulps, I know it’s time to stop and figure out what’s going on. 

And when I did, that’s when it hit me. 

Tonight is Leo’s graduation. 

And, no I’m not excited for my last kid to graduate from high school. But it has nothing to do with the pomp and circumstance I profess to abhor. 

Actually, I kind of like the ceremonies.

I love seeing the kids. I love their white-toothed smiles. I love when the parents scream “That’s my Baby!” despite being repeatedly told to hold their applause. I even love their stupid balloons they bring to block our view. I love the speeches and the flipping of the tassels and the kids taking pictures with the grandparents who came from Florida even though the Project Graduation buses are beeping their horns the minute it’s over to get going to the overnight party that I love to chaperone. 

I love seeing the future in those graduates’ eyes. I love seeing their hope, their joy, their ambition. I love remembering the shy kindergartners they once were and seeing how they’ve blossomed. And I love thinking about who they’ll be and where they’ll live and what they’ll be doing ten years down the road.  

I love the memories these kids have made. The secrets they have. The friends they cherish. I love the lessons they’ve learned. The heartbreaks they’ve had. The scrapes they’ve escaped. The things we parents will never, ever know.

I’ve loved the slamming of the backdoor as the kids paraded into my house. I’ve loved the pounds of pasta I’ve boiled on the stove. I’ve loved the empty water bottles strewn all over the basement (and yes, I will continue to believe they were never filled with anything but). I’ve loved the hundreds of high school sporting events I’ve watched and the multitudes of PTA and Board of Ed meetings I’ve attended. I’ve loved helping dozens of kids write their college essays and reading them the riot act when they’ve done something they shouldn’t have done (you know who you are).  I’ve loved the commotion, the chaos, the complaining. 

Yes, indeed, just as I once sang along with Billy Joel’s record spinning round and round and round on the turntable in my bedroom, 

“I’ve loved these days.”

And so, my friends, when you asked how I felt about Leo's graduation, I hope you know my lunchtime rant was just for my own protection. 

I’ve had three kids and many, many years to prepare. But now that it’s here, somehow, I’m just not ready. And there's not a thing I can do about it.

So, I’ll snap a picture of my handsome son in his cap and gown, post it on Facebook, swallow another handful of M&Ms and head off to his graduation.

I’ll be the one in the back, wearing the sunglasses to hide my tears.

Mothers Building Character

The daughter spent her early years clinging to the back of my legs like a leech in a Pocono pond. And while I loved her dearly, shaking her loose at Mommy and Me classes and swim lessons and birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese was getting increasingly difficult, not to mention tiresome. I would not, could not, and Lord knows, should not, raise a child who lived in my shadow.

So, I sent her away.

The summer of her seventh year, the daughter joined her cousins, Olivia and Harley, at Victory Valley, a sleep-away camp in the bowels of Pennsylvania. It was dirt cheap, an easy drive and most importantly, allowed her to be in the same cabin with Olivia, who was a year-and-a-half older. 

The fastest week in history later, families were ushered into Victory Hall for the campers’ grand finale. After hearing all about all the wheelbarrow races, scavenger hunts and nature hikes, my sister and I swelled with parental pride and dreamed about sending them for two, or three, or four weeks the following summer. 

“Would all campers who have accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, please come forward to be saved.”

My sister and I nudged each other, holding our collective breaths. Our daughters remained stoically in their seats, but Harley surprised us all by barreling down the aisle for the final save of the day. 

Now, having spent every Sunday in the front pew, poking and prodding and singing Onward Christian Soldiers, my sister and I were both interested in raising faith-filled children. But our idea of religion was, and is, worlds away from a bible boot camp that dangles Jesus as a chocolate carrot. 

But, it was cheap. And, besides, camp builds character.

When my middle child was thirteen, I sent him off to a sleep-away camp in Casco, Maine. My sister’s (another sister) friend had recently renounced his job in corporate America to resurrect a camp that had lain dormant for two decades. Camp Netop was where all the cool guys had gone when we were growing up, and now Steve was bringing it back to life. Always eager to market my kids as cool, I enrolled Max for a two-week stint that inaugural season. Now, Max may be the most social of my children, but he is also the least likely to enjoy roughing it. But, I didn’t care. I was used to sacrificing my offspring to benefit others. So, we hopped in the Old Minivan and took the six-hour trek north. 

Camp Netop was pretty bare-bones that first year with an enrollment of just a few dozen boys spanning various ages. “This will be great!” I effused. “You’ll know every single person here!” But, after depositing him in a platform tent, bath house elsewhere, on a cot next to a nerdy boy strumming on a guitar, and backed away backed away slowly, I knew from the look in his eyes, this was the cruelest thing I had ever done to my jock of a son. 

As it ended up, Max adapted. He even won some sort of award for being some sort of camper of some sort of caliber that I have long since forgotten. Of his own volition, he returned the following year. And, the painted totem pole award is still sitting on his desk, twelve years later. 

Character. 

Leo, the youngest was sent away when he was six. This was another church-based camp, but way more mainstream and way less churchy. We dragged Leo’s best friend, Koree, along because neither one of them would ever have considered going alone. And, both of them flat-out refused to ever, ever go back to any camp, ever, after they were forced to partake in the polar bear swim at the crack of dawn.

My three sisters and I spent several of our childhood summers at Camp Hagan in Shawnee-on-Delaware in Pennsylvania. We wore little tan shorts and stiff white cotton tops, took swim lessons in the river, went on day trips to Bushkill Falls, sang “We’re Hagan born, we’re Hagan bred and when we die we’ll be Hagan dead,” around the campfire, heard scary stories about the Big Black Rock, purchased candy bars with pre-paid tickets from the canteen after supper, and on July 20, 1969, gathered in the dining hall around a black and white television to witness one giant leap for mankind. 

“I hated that camp,” sister Susan announced half a century later.

“Me, too,” another sister claimed.

“Me three,” I agreed.

“YOU chose to go back for one more year after the rest of stopped going!” sister Susan reminded me. “You didn’t hate it.”

“I think I did,” I said. 

But, love it or hate it, camp clearly builds character. Why else would I remember 50 years later, being blasted awake by a recorded rendition of Reveille every morning? Or being forced to complete daily chores that more often than not included cleaning latrines? Getting chewed alive by mosquitos at dusk, drinking distasteful “bug juice” to wash down unidentifiably distasteful food, being forced to partake in team-bonding (before it was a verb) activities like Christmas in July and Camp Olympics? Preparing for cabin inspections, stubbing toes, sleeping in perpetually damp sheets and being way too proud to submit to homesickness? 

I remember being jealous of Marty Conboy’s high cheekbones, Pint’s cute nickname and Jody and Jennifer's close friendship. And to this day, I wonder if eight-year-old Molly Levine was right – that I did have uncommonly tiny lips as well as uncommon and thus despised, frizzy red hair.

There is no doubt that I am a woman of character. Character strong enough to admit that sending my children to sleep-away camp had absolutely nothing to do with building character. 

This is 23

I don’t remember what I did for my 23^rd birthday, but I know for sure that I was surrounded by friends; at a party, at a bar or at someone’s parent’s beach house.Twenty-three was the year before we started the annual Poconos birthday bash with the Hearts gang, and two years after my infamous 21^st at West Virginia University, where, after kicking two kegs of Beck’s Beer, we staggered to the corner bar, snuck in the storage room, nabbed a barrel of Bud and rolled it down the street back to our house. The house that was filled to the gills with dozens and dozens of thirsty friends from many walks of life. Or as many walks of life that I had in my twenties.

I turned 23 in a different era. Michael Jordan was still just a gleam in Dean Smith's eye and his jersey number was not yet a meme. Nor was there a place for exclamatory social media posts: Happy Birthday, Dude!!! It’s your Jordan year!! And, while I truly admire the player, the person is not someone I would want my kids to aspire to be. Though, I certainly wouldn’t turn down the perks that would come along with birthing a basketball legend who wore the number 23 on his back. 

By the time Leo, my youngest, was born, I was old and tired. So old and tired, that at the tender age of 38, an arbitrary passerby remarked on how lucky I was to have such a sweetie-sweetie-pooh-pooh for a grandson. Old and tired. I had no idea. 

Leo, as the third child, has never expected as much as the others in terms of birthday presents or celebrations or attention. To be honest, by the time he was old enough to be aware, I was done with the make-your-own beaded collages and Chuck E. Cheese extravaganzas. He was lucky to get a slice of cake and and pizza in the park with the Preschels. Orchestrated not by his mother, but by my friend, Claire. 

But Leo never cared. He grew up with low hopes for high times on his birthday. He’s had to share his day with Mother’s Day three times, once with the death of his paternal grandmother, and at least twice with his own mother out of town for one good reason or another. 

Leo, whether by virtue of DNA or self-protection, wants and needs very little. One Christmas, after opening a movie camera, purchased because he didn’t want an iPad or an X-box or a ticket to Thailand, he simply said, “Mom, I really don’t need this.” Back it went to Best Buy, never to be replaced by anything but love. And maybe some soggy pasta with vodka sauce. 

Today, Leo turns 23 and I can’t help but wonder how he’ll be celebrating. Earlier this week, the family received a group text with a photo of him from somewhere in Spain. This is the first real proof that we had that he was actually on the 600-mile Camino de Santiago walk. Unless of course, one were to count the $159.00 overage charges on the phone bill. The same phone that he wasn’t going to take, but thank goodness did, because it helped navigate him through a stolen passport, credit card and money debacle. 

True, he had previously sent some photos of landscapes and wildlife and miles and miles of nothing, but he wasn't in any of them. So, for all we knew, Leo was parked on a bench in Madrid, waiting for the bulls to run by. After all, I spent much of my youth pretending to my parents to be one place when I was really in another. 

But, apparently Leo is still walking. 

He’s more than halfway through, and is still alive. And well. And turning 23. 

When I think back to all the many things I’ve done in my life that have made my mother proud (many, many things), nothing comes anywhere close to Leo’s journey. And though I wouldn’t walk a mile in his shoes, he is both an enigma and an inspiration to me.

I shake my head thinking how differently we spent our youth. I marvel at his choice of taking a pilgrimage through Spain rather than blowing his bucks on a beach in Bali. I grimace feeling that pack on his back, the blisters on his feet and the community cots on which he lays his head at night. And I smile knowing that as far as birthdays go, he’ll get what he usually gets, and for Leo, that’s more than enough. 

Still, I hope that he finds a fun friend (or six),with whom to share a bottle (or six), of wine as he kicks off his Jordan year. I hope that he knows we’re all thinking of him with love, amazed by his guts, impressed by his grit and in awe of his adventurous spirit. 

But mostly, I hope he knows that wherever he is, whatever he does, that he's got a mother (though possibly not a father) who would take 23 Leos over one Michael Jordan, any day.

Forever Young Ed

“You’re going to be surprised,” my friend, Nancy, warned me as she attempted to describe her new beau, Eddie. 

“Am I going to like him?” I asked.

“I think you will.”

Nancy, always an astute one, knew from the get-go that Eddie was the last person on earth any of us would expect her to date. Let alone stay with for over 35 years. 

When I was in my twenties, I worked at TV Guide in Radnor, Pennsylvania where I was responsible for the pseudo computer-generated layout of several editions of the magazine. Nancy was one of my best friends there. She was smart and quick and really good at her job. I admired her for her work-life balance, but mostly for the life side of it, which as you might imagine at that age, far surpassed the work side. 

We forged a group of lifelong friends, all of whom had one foot, one partner or one buddy tied to TV Guide. We spent winter weekends at Don’s house in Fishtown and summers in a rented bungalow in Brigantine. We ate dinners in cheap Italian restaurants in South Philadelphia and listened to music in dart board bars in Fairmount. We frequented Phillies’ games and Mummers' parades and celebrated birthdays at the Malley estate in the Poconos. Through it all, we played Hearts. We played a lot of Hearts. 

Like all of us, Nancy was merely biding her time at TV Guide, enjoying the friend-filled, four-day work week job where our sole aspiration was to get out before we got old. Nancy took her not-so-easy out, escaping with a broken heart in tow. She up and left us and moved to our nation’s capital. 

But, that was far from the end of our friendship. We simply added Washington, DC to our weekend adventures list.

Shortly after her move, because things move quickly when you're young, Nancy met a new guy. 

This guy was the polar opposite of the “other” one. And polar opposite of Nancy.

Nancy is an academic. She can, and often does, talk 18^th century literature like there’s no tomorrow. Not content with a simple undergraduate degree from Georgetown, she kept going and going and going until she finished her doctorate and became a highly-regarded professor of English. 

Eddie, on the other hand, was a numbers guy. 

“Are you an IDIOT?” he bellowed when I asked his advice about selling a certain blue-chip stock I had been bequeathed. "It will bounce back. It always does." 

Until, of course, it didn't.

"Are you STUPID? You should have sold it," he said.

Eddie was a New York Jew. Nancy, a Main Line Catholic. And while neither were overly zealous in their everyday lives, their opposing religious upbringings were parentally prohibitive. And so, both of their mothers died, peacefully content in their convictions that Nancy and Eddie were nothing more than just good friends. 

Eddie was casually fashionable, sporting crisp designer shirts and dry-cleaned jeans. Unlike Nancy, he would never in a million years be caught bargain-hunting in an Adams Morgan  thrift shop. Unless, maybe, and only maybe, he was in the market for a Halloween costume. 

Eddie was impulsive. We never knew when we might hear, somewhere around 2:20 am,  “Nan! We’re going. Now.”  He’d get it stuck in his craw that he was going to drive home. That night. After a Hearts tournament in Brigantine. A barbeque in Pennsylvania. Or a basketball game in Chapel Hill. He wasn’t a big drinker, and could drive for hours. In a Porsche. Or a Honda Civic. At 100 mph down Interstate 95. 

Eddie could be quite opinionated and argumentative. But Nancy, a woman of strong convictions herself, knew when to hold ‘em and knew when to fold ‘em. Many a night, she’d corner one of us in the kitchen with a conspiratorial whisper, “Sorry, we have to go. Ed’s just a little…” cranky, annoyed, tired, fill in the blank. 

But she didn’t need to apologize for Eddie. Everyone knew Eddie was a reflection of no one but himself. 

And that reflection could be stubborn. And snarky. And snappish.

Just as it was witty. And warm. And wonderful. 

Not to mention fun. Always lots and lots of fun. 

Eddie loved animals. He loved golf. He loved traveling. He loved his friends. He loved his family. And he really, really loved Nancy.

Nancy is a calming force. She has a soft and soothing voice of reason. Eddie, on the other hand, had an uncalculated crackle, most often infused with multiple exclamation points. 

“I hate you!” he’d roar when someone threw a card he didn’t like. “Not in real life. But in Hearts, I really, really hate you.”

You always knew exactly where you stood with Young Ed, as we called him with kindness.

I don’t remember the origin of the moniker, though I’m sure someone has a reasonable explanation of how the endearment came to be. I suspect it was born oxymoronically, as he was one of the elder members of our group. Or perhaps, it stuck after one of his petulant outbursts. But, I’m thinking it simply stemmed from his impish smile, his exuberant spirit and his devilish demeanor.

Keeping in character, Young Ed got himself caught up in a non-common condition that haunted the last years of his life. Far be it from him to go out with something simple. But, when he did go, he went quickly and unexpectedly. Surprising us all. 

With a lump in my throat, I remember Nancy's warning.  

“You’re going to be surprised."

“But, am I going to like him?” 

“I think you will.”

Surprised, I was, from start to finish. A more unlikely couple I couldn't imagine. And, I was always, always surprised by what came out of his mouth. And, out of his heart.  

But, did I like him?

I loved him. 

After all, he made it pretty impossible not to.