JANUARY 2001
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A Master of the Wired World?
I just got my author's copies of a new book from Financial Times Management (London), MASTERS OF THE WIRED WORLD: Cyberspace Speaks Out.
I am only in the hospital room and in a hospital gown for about eleven hours, but I can't communicate how marvelous it feels to be going home. If I was the Pope arriving by jet I would kiss the tarmac. Since Rachel is just giving me a ride home in the minivan, I content myself with patting the pillar on the front porch approvingly.
My head is still sore from the stroke and needs time to mend. But my relationship with my kids also needs work. It has been nearly two weeks since I collapsed in the bed, and both Rachel and I have been very absorbed with me and my problem in that time. Jonathan, 10, is waiting for me at the door when I come in, and he hugs me tenderly. He is a smallish boy, and his hands on my shoulders remind me of his hands when he was a baby, how he would clutch me when I carried him about the house.
It's a nice thing to have a dad who is a writer and therefore always home. You don't go two weeks without seeing him. He becomes something like we used to think of mothers -- as ubiquitous and supportive, happy to be taken for granted. The downside is that he is often writing something, which is somewhat analogous to being in labor, and therefore distracted from your immediate concerns. Oddly, a woman in labor is the closest thing to most dads -- too busy to tie your shoes just now.
My style of fathering is your basic fun dad approach, combining erudite irony with the hearty Polish papooshka humor I cribbed from Dick. It worked great when the kids looked up to me like a god, before they became a certain age. Now, as true sentience kicks in, they are looking for something more intimate and more equal. I have been Jon's baseball coach on all the teams he's been on, going back to first grade.
Jonathan is the kind of kid who is very hard on himself, thinking he is never any good at anything. The truth is that he is not world-class at anything -- which is true of most all of us. He has enough vision to dream grand dreams, but lacks the superpowers to make them come true. It is a formula for unhappiness. I wish I could tap a wand on Jon's head and make him relax, but he'll have to come to it on his own.
I tap him on the head anyway. "You OK?"
He nods anxiously, and runs upstairs to his computer.
Jon looks more like Rachel, but Daniele is all me. We are the sort who can finish one another's sentences, even when they are off to very strange beginnings. Like Jon, she tries to come across as a little tough, but she is soft as syrup inside, and I know she, too, is worried about her old man.
Yesterday, when I was in the hospital, Daniele came home from school to find a locked house. It seemed like a metaphor for what was happening. A key was hidden on the porch in an old galosh, but she didn't remember. So she wandered through the neighborhood in January weather, her spikes and rings clattering in the cold, until a neighbor coaxed her inside, made her tea and warmed her back up. Daniele finally drifts in late in the evening. We hug tentatively, then she too retires to her lair to restore her powers.
I know what's happening. We are walking on eggshells. No one wants to say the obvious, that we are terrified of losing one another.
The first day I am too fragile to give them a pep talk. But I can see the lost look in their eyes. They don't know what to think. I want to give them a briefing that is reliable, but that also gives them hope. I do not want to scare them worse. Problem is, I'm still too rocked by what I have learned to be very reassuring.
The next day, a Saturday, just before lunch, it happens spontaneously, in the kitchen. I see them milling around, Jon with the tips of his fingers in his pants pockets and his shoulders hunched practically over his head -- the very portrait of tension -- and Daniele with a sorrowful expression arcing across her face.
I stand in the doorway and improvise the talk of a lifetime. Instinctively, I do three things: I keep it simple, I focus on the positives, but I don't sweep the negatives under the rug:
"Listen," I say, "there's stuff I got to tell you. And they aren't bad news. Mostly, they're good news. But you've got to be quiet and hear me out.
"Yes, I have a brain tumor. And I know that's a scary phrase, especially since Papa Dick died of a brain tumor.
"But my tumor's not like Papa Dick's. It's dangerous, but it's not a killer like his. We caught mine earlier. It's smaller. Mine is the size of a small bird, Papa's was like a grapefruit when they found it, and then it kept growing.
"Mine is easier to get at. If they need to go in and cut it out, they won't have to cut through the good stuff to get it. Papa's was buried deep in his brain; mine is right up against the skull.
"Best of all, mine looks like it is slow-growing, while Papa's was like a runaway train.
"The other thing to remember is that our circumstances are different. Papa Dick's tumor was discovered a decade ago. Doctors have learned an awful lot about brain tumors since then. Papa Dick never got an MRI scanner until it was too late.
"And Papa Dick and I are different. Papa was 62. I'm younger, and healthier, and better suited to fight the disease. And I'm smarter. Papa Dick refused to go to the city, where the best specialists and equipment were. We live right in the city, and if I have to, I'll get myself down to the Mayo Clinic, the best hospital in the world, just 80 miles down Highway 35.
"There is every reason to think I will do well with this. I'm a little freaked out just yet, because nothing like this has ever happened to me before. But I'm optimistic, in good humor, and I have a ton of people rooting and praying for me. And that's not nothing, is it?
"And doggone it, we've got your mom on my side. She's so smart, and she can think through all the things we have trouble understanding. How many people with this kind of problem have a live-in expert to turn to?"
The talk is going great. Daniele is looking right into my eyes, as if I'm giving her information about saving her life, not mine. Jonathan looks more attentive than I've ever seen him.
"Now, look, you guys," I say to them. "I want you to listen real good. I wish to hell I didn't have this thing, and I am a little bit scared about how it's going to play out.
"But my fears have limits. I swear to you that I am not worried about dying and leaving you. The truth is, I could die any day, from a thousand other causes. That's true of all of us. That's the way life is. A can of string beans could fall from a shelf and hit me. And I will die some day. But I am not going to leave you now, not because of this stupid thing in my head.
"What we have to do now is start thinking in the healthiest way we can. That means we pay attention to our thoughts. Don't keep secrets. Don't hold back. If something's on your mind, I want to hear it. No matter how morbid or scary it sounds. If you're giving up on me in your head, I want a chance to talk you out of it.
"This isn't going to be a cool process. It's going to be hard, because we all try hard to be grown-up and unaffected by stuff. But I can't get better and be cool at the same time, so the hell with being cool.
"And I am putting you two in charge of keeping me in line. I'm guessing there will be times when I'm going to be irritable, or bummed out, and sometimes I'm going to feel sorry for myself. I'm empowering you right now to call me on any baloney I try to slice. All you have to do is say, 'Dad, you're doing it,' and I'll know what you mean.
"The only thing you can't do is keep all your feelings to yourself. Because as long as I'm in this family, I make the rules, and the rules of this family are that we share our feelings.
"And be nice to Mama, because she is going to really need our support."
Suddenly I'm done and we are hugging. I couldn't be prouder of them, or of myself.
A few nights ago, alone in the hospital, I cried for three hours straight. But I'm not alone any more, and we have a plan. We're home, together. And one way or another, things are going to be … all right.
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