#sobrero

It started around 3am, when I woke up with a piercing headache. I rolled around until I found a position on the pillow that somewhat alleviated the pain, I convinced myself I didn’t have brain cancer, then I fell back asleep until I heard Gus quietly crying in the next room around 5. I walked by the light of my phone screen from our bed to Gus’s room. When I opened the door, he pushed himself up and looked at me from his crib—he’s a stomach sleeper, like me. I closed his louvered closet doors some so the light wouldn’t be blinding, and I reached in to pull the string so I could see well enough to change his diaper. He stopped crying when I leaned over the crib rail and picked him up. Holding him against my chest in the middle of the night is always a reminder that I have the power to calm him with nothing but my presence and love—a power so raw and wonderful that I don’t understand how any parent ever takes it for granted. Gus cried again when I placed him on his changing table, but I quickly put a pacifier in his mouth, which stopped the crying and allowed me to switch his wet diaper out for a dry one. I put him back on my chest and walked him over to the closet, where I again pulled the light string, but I didn’t rush to place him back in his crib. I walked slowly, stepping side to side trying to rock him back to sleep while his trusty owl nightlight on the table emitted a constant stream of white noise. But even after he fell asleep I didn’t want to put him back down because he felt too precious in my arms to abandon for even a moment. But I did put him down, and he complained sleepily, but then fell asleep again.

I used my phone to light the path to the bathroom, where I stepped naked onto that unforgivable bastard of a scale, which read 195.2 pounds, up a little from Sunday morning because I gorged myself on corn casserole and cherry pie at my grandmother’s house in honor of my family’s plethora of January birthdays. I showered, spending more time than usual letting hot water run over my head because it made me forget about the headache, and I dried off in the dark so my eyes could adjust well when I tiptoed back through our bedroom without waking Liz up. However, when I opened the bathroom door and came into the room, I heard her whisper “Happy birthday” from our bed in the darkness. I felt my way to the side of the bed, then sat. I leaned down and began making kissing noises, which she reciprocated—it’s a game of “Marco Polo” we developed long ago to find each other’s lips when it was too dark to see them—until our lips met. “I hope you have a great day,” she said, before I tiptoed out of the bedroom and into the hall bathroom, where I got dressed and brushed my teeth. I let Suki out into the backyard to pee, put food in her bowl. I let her back in, grabbed my backpack, then went out to my truck.

At the office by 6:30am, I got the parking spot closest to the door, but there were a few cars scattered in the lot. I saw the light on in the gym and wished I had the discipline to develop a regular exercise routine. When I got close enough, I could see Jordan Culver in there like a champion with his headphones in his ears and a kettle bell in his hands. A few minutes after I got to my desk, my sister showed up at my cubicle in workout gear. “I have breakfast for you, but you can’t have it until after I get done in the gym.” “Oooo…” I said. Sometimes my brother-in-law makes breakfast for her and makes enough for me, too. I assumed that was the case. Around 8am, my headache intensified, which reminded me of the promise I made to Liz to call the doctor. I set up an appointment for 1:30. At 8.30, my coworkers gathered in a conference room around a breakfast casserole Chris Nick made and some fruit and they sang happy birthday to me while I wore the designated birthday sombrero and I assured them that—despite the #40andfabulous hashtag Liz used in the Instagram post she made that morning about me—I am not 40 yet.

I worked at my desk until noon, when I drove to Boulevard Bread for lunch. When I got there, I found Clayton Scott Grubbs and Ryan Hitt behind the counter making sandwiches. I asked Ryan what the special was, but he said there wasn’t one. “The first rule of business is to always have a special,” I said in a mock corporate tone the two of us used when we worked together back in 2010 at the now-defunct House Restaurant. I ordered a smoked turkey sandwich and some Zapp’s chips, then sat down until Joshua Asante came over to say hello. He asked me what I’m up to and I told him I was meeting the woman who just walked in. Hilary Trudell runs a storytelling show called The Yarn. We agreed to have lunch because I’m trying to back out of participating in her January 22 show because I don’t think I can tell my story in a compelling way within the allotted time. The show’s theme is “Adoption Stories” and I have a good one about how Lance Lang is my blood, but was adopted by another family at birth, then he sent me an email 52 years later because 23andMe.com said we share some DNA and now he’s family again. Hilary said she really likes the story and she gave me some ideas on how to approach it with brevity. Then we talked about Argenta Reading Series and how she and I are both trying to navigate the waters of nonprofits when neither of us knows anything about it, but we’re both committed to our causes. I promised her I will do my best to get my story where it can be told from her stage, and I’m 50% sure I can make it happen. I want to, and not being able to see the finished product in my head, which aches, so close to the date of the show disappoints me. It makes me feel inadequate as a writer. Like maybe all I’m good at is unnecessarily documenting things—like an entire day—and posting that exhaustive documentation to social media in the hopes of approval from a group of friends and acquaintances who might see it, based solely on some kind of bullshit algorithm that I used to feel I had a grasp of, but now I don’t know.

I drove to North Hills Family Medical Center, watched some sort of house-hunting show on HGTV in the waiting room for 40 minutes while I waited on someone to open a door and call my name, which finally happened. A nice woman in a surgical mask recorded that the scale she put me on read 204 lbs. “The boots,” I told her. She chuckled, and walked me to an exam room, where she declared my blood pressure is great. I told her about how I’ve had a headache since January 1. How the intensity of it comes and goes. The doctor told me a CT scan would be the course of action, but it’s probably just allergy-related, so a scan probably isn’t necessary. “I should tell you my father died of brain cancer in March,” I say. The doctor tried not to react, but his stumbling over words gave him away. “Just to be safe, let’s go ahead and do a CT scan.” And I could feel the pressure of my headache consuming me in that moment as I was reminded of all the doctors’ offices I sat in with my father in those three and a half years that it took him to die.

“If you aren’t in a hurry, he wants you to sit tight while we go ahead and get approval from your insurance to do the CT scan so we can get this going as quickly as possible,” the nurse told me. The urgency. I sat in the exam room and thought about how cruel life is and how I’m already aware that I should’ve met Liz and had Gus a decade ago so I could’ve spent more time on this earth with them as a family. I will be 71 when Gus is my age. To take my mind off of the fact that I may need to gear up for a fight against a brain tumor, I picked up the copy of WebMD Magazine on the table beside me. (How do you have a print magazine when your whole schtick is that you are on the web?) I skimmed it carefully when I read how broccoli might break-down cancer cells. I love broccoli. I should eat more broccoli, I told myself. And then I questioned why in the hell I would be eating turkey sandwiches for lunch when I am smart enough to understand the detrimental effects deli meat has on my body, not to mention the turkey’s. I committed silently to eating nothing but fruits and vegetables and beans and whatever else Clayton Bell's Facebook posts tell me to.

When the nurse came back, she told me the doctor changed his mind about calling me with the results of the CT scan, which will be Tuesday at 2.15pm. Now he wants me to come in on Wednesday so he can go over the results with me personally. It occurred to me that he’s taking the necessary steps to deliver bad news.

Liz wanted me to call her on my way back to the office, so I did. I told her the headache is probably nothing, and she agreed that it’s probably nothing. But she registered my fears through the phone because she picks up on the nuances of my behavior that I am unaware of. It’s a wonderful thing to share this life with someone who loves you enough to notice the subtleties of your voice.

Back at work, my coworkers asked me if I felt better. I can’t remember if I told them about my headache or they deduced that I wasn’t feeling well because I went to the doctor. Either way, I said, “Not really.” The left side of my head pulsated. Around 4:45, Laura messaged to ask me when I was leaving work. She had a gift she wanted to give me before I left. I walked to her office and pulled a box from a bag. Inside was a framed Kodak newspaper ad from way back. “I saw this at an antique store and it made me think of you and Liz.” It’s a black and white photo of a man and woman on snow skis. The man is looking into an old camera and the woman is grinning playfully beside him. It looks like an old-fashioned mirror selfie. “Kodak as you go,” the copy reads. I pulled a card from the box. Inside the envelope I saw Laura’s handwriting on folded up notebook paper. “I wrote some thoughts down on paper when you were in Arizona, I think. August 2016, I think. Dad was sick and you were gone and I know I’ll never do anything with them, but I thought you might like to have them.” I read the small pages. A rare glimpse into my always-professional sister’s emotions. She is my father reincarnate. The note says how she remembers us going to take family portraits in the early 90s, when Dad was preparing to run for the Arkansas House of Representatives. She remembers the man being there that served as Dad’s campaign manager and how she knew from that point on that she wanted to do marketing in some capacity. She and I have never talked about that time, but I tell her, “I think about that guy a lot, too, and what his job was,” but I never thought about the influence he had on my own desire to work in marketing. He was such a minor character in our lives—he had nothing more than a cameo—but then there Laura and I were, sitting in the office where we both do marketing, trying to remember his name. Only now that I write this the next day do I actually remember it. Chuck Hicks.

At home, I found Liz and Gus and Suki on the couch. My head hurt. “Gus is exhausted, I think we can put him down early,” Liz told me. So I took him back to his room, changed his diaper, put him in his pajamas. I turned on the space heater we have in his room, then handed him to Liz, who would feed him in the rocking chair after I turned out the lamp and went outside to throw the tennis ball with Suki until I could see Liz through the window in the kitchen, starting dinner. She bought things to make pad thai for my birthday dinner. I love Asian noodles. While she cooked, we traded stories about what happened during the day. “Oh, God. Were you able to contain yourself?” Liz asked me when I told her about talking to Joshua Asante at Boulevard. I’ve always admired his commitment to his art, and when Liz and I first started dating, I mentioned that I was possibly too intimidated to even talk to him. Now she always ribs me about it. But once she’d had her fill, we agreed that we should go to the gallery opening for his and Matt White’s photography at the CALS bookstore Friday. We decide we can just bring Gus with us. That some art will do him good. And then my head started hurting again, so I sat on the couch and rested my skull against the back of the sofa. After a couple of minutes, Suki pressed her nose against my hand, so I reached down to pet her. I touched dirt on her leg. “How much time do I have until dinner?” I asked Liz. “25-30 minutes,” she said, cutting tofu. “I’m going to give Suki a bath.” I picked all 45 pounds of her up and carried her to the hall bathroom where we have an outdated whirlpool (that I like but Liz says it has to go). I stripped down and got in the tub with Suki. I stood her up under the faucet and shampooed her. She hates baths. When I let her out, she got crazy, as she always does, running around the house spastically, and I tried to rush her into the back yard before she woke Gus up. I closed the patio door behind her and rinsed off in the shower. When I got out and dried off, Liz and I ate pad thai on the sofa while watching The Wire and she said, “I’m sorry the pad thai didn’t turn out better.” She always apologizes that her meals aren’t better, but they’re delicious 95% of the time. I’ve always loved her cooking and I always will. She doesn’t follow recipes.

We were in bed by 9pm, tired, but happy. When my headache surged again, I placed a helpless hand on my head the way my father used to and I tried not to think about it.

“It’s probably nothing, right?” I said.

“It’s probably nothing,” she said.

Dad

North Little Rock, Arkansas. 1.8.2018 - 8.24am.