Pictures

Marty will be 60 this year on August 23.  Ten years ago 60 seemed a sure thing.  Nine years ago, after the first stroke 60 seemed possible but for the first time I had doubts.  Eight years ago after the 2^nd stroke, 60, for Marty, seemed doubtful.  

Marty will hit 60 in August and we are going to have a party.  We are going to have a big party to celebrate something amazing, a life continued.  I asked Marty if she wanted a party, she said she didn’t, I said too bad, this is a big deal.  She is on board now and helping with the guest list.

I’m not a party planner but I have picked a date (real hard in that Marty’s birthday lands on a Saturday), a venue, some food and I’m working on an invite list….you’re all invited….all of you.

I’m putting together a pictorial history of Marty for this thing and I’ve had a big time going through old and new photos.  I apparently used to be thinner.  The funny thing is I never thought it so, I always thought I was a bit chunky.  Not so.

Marty never thought she was very pretty but in looking at our photos she was wrong.  I look at all of these old pictures and I see who she once was and when stacked together with current photos you see the evolution, you clearly see the youth, the beauty, the years and the disease.

There’s the picture of the two year old Marty which looks remarkably like our two year old grand-daughter Emma.  There’s the picture of 2^nd grade Marty with the pixie hair cut and the 18 year old hot Marty with the short skirt.  The picture of Marty with her hair pulled back wearing my gray sweater sitting in front of a pile of books really takes me back to when we met.

The picture of Marty with a three day old Matt just blew me away.  I forgot about the photograph and I’m not sure I realized how beautiful it was.  There’s a picture of Marty with a one year Erin, a picture of Marty with Becky, a best friend,  in the desert outside of Las Vegas and several pictures of her with her chin resting in her right hand, a gesture that is and will always be a quintessential  Marty look.

There is a picture of Marty standing between our children with very short hair, with very little make-up; a scant five months after the first stroke almost took her life.  But, there she is standing there victoriously.  It shows a completely different life from the picture taken of her four months earlier, standing, a full head of hair, standing in the kitchen of friends, seemingly healthy and happy without any thought of what was to come.  Our lives shifted massively in the eight short months between photographs.

There are the whole family pictures, the holiday pictures, the snow skiing pictures, pictures in Spain, in London, with babies, with grandparents, all of the images running in a string of time.  All of them separately show a woman, all of them together show a story, a story of a life well lived, a story of a life well loved, a story of a full life, but most importantly a story that continues in spite of life itself.

I see in the pictures that separate what was normal and what is normal today.  I see in the pictures the fragility of life, I see in the pictures a woman who never thought she was very pretty but was and is actually beautiful in so many ways.   

It’s really a hell of a story, August 23^rd, be there.

"Cheese" Won't Cut It

We had our photographs taken last Saturday.  We got all dolled up and made up and went down to our church to get our photo made for the church directory.

I have to say the preparation for the big event took a lot, I mean a lot longer than the actual picture taking took, which tells you how good the photographer was and how much work it takes for us to look purty.

We missed the last church directory but one of our life lines to the church sent me an e-mail and offered to come and take our picture for the directory.  We chose instead, when offered, to make our way down for the official photograph.  I saw it as an outing and an adventure.

Personally I don’t like having pictures taken, they remind me I have aged and I never did much like my picture smile.  When I was younger and full of machismo I could pull off the manly frown or grimace, you do that at 59 it makes me look like a curmudgeon (maybe the truth).  

Marty on the other hand had a great photo smile.  She could paste that sucker on regardless of the preceding circumstances and come off looking positively joyous in any picture taken.  She had it down, just enough teeth without too much of the dental work, the smile turned up at the corners of her mouth in a perfect lip to smile ratio.  

But the strokes affected that too.  Marty can’t move her left arm at all, she can’t use her left leg except spontaneously and she doesn’t have tight small muscle control over the left side of her face.  You can’t see it in normal circumstances but when she tries to do the photo smile it too often looks more like a grimace than a smile.

Now her post stroke spontaneous smile, the smile right before she laughs or if something really lights her up is radiant perfection, it is joy incarnate and covers her whole face from her eyes to her chin.  The trick is finding a way to get that spontaneous smile at just the right time, right before the shutter clicks.

Marty has always tended to the ribald and downright crass parts of life.  That has not changed.  She loves a good dirty joke and for whatever reason potty humor and potty acts cracks her up and sends her to belly laughter land.  

I know this, I’ve known this and any picture you have seen of her post stroke where she has a broad smile on her face, just know, right before the click, I whispered “fart” in her ear.  It works every time.

Knowing the photo session was coming up, in addition to coordinating outfits (something I never thought I would want or need to do); we rehearsed the picture smile with me trying out various words to illicit her genuine spontaneous smile.

“Fart” and she smiled.  “POOOP” got a pretty good smile.  “Diarrhea” cracked her up.  We practiced several times and we were set.

The day of our photo session we got dressed, me in my black suit (hey it’s slimming) and red tie and Marty in her black suit with a red jacket.  She had on make-up and I struggled to control my flop sweat.  We were beaming and a joy to behold.  

Diarrhea….we continued to practice the smile and Marty continued to laugh every time.

We got to the church and Renee helped me get Marty out of the van, I picked up my jacket, my phone, a hankie for the sweat and a brush.  Yes, I remembered a brush.  We walked up to the doors and the photographer opened them and let us in.

The photographer was a member of the church I have known just a little bit for several years.  I think I helped teach his son in junior high Sunday school.  He’s a very kind and quiet man and we followed him down the hall to the nursery where he had set up for the pictures.

Once we got situated in the room, me on a stool to Marty’s right, the photographer’s lights primed and ready and the photographer straight ahead focusing on us, I straightened my tie, smoothed Marty’s jacket and whispered in her ear, “What’s the picture smile word?  You remember?”

Of course she remembered.  Now, Marty doesn’t have a whisper voice anymore; everything she says is at a conversational level.  She blurts out, “Diarrhea, ” I laugh, Marty laughs, the photographer stops, starts, focuses and says, “Well, not cheese, but…..diarrhea.”

We all smiled, the lights flashed, he looked at his camera and lines up to take another picture.  

“Diarrhea.”  There were more broad spontaneous pure smiles walking on the edge of real laughter.

He took a couple more pictures was satisfied with his work and we were done.  It all took less than five minutes and we were rolling down the hall from the nursery back to the front door and the van.  It was quick, painless and hopefully fruitful.

As we drove home that afternoon I thought, "That's just not normal." 

I couldn’t help but wonder if that nice quiet man was standing in the church nursery in front of some stalwart church members and pausing right before the shutter opens saying, “Diarrhea.”

When Plans Come Together

For the most part, the plans of last week moved from theory to reality. We had to make a couple of minor adjustments, buts what life without some minor adjustments? In our life, minor adjustments are easy and frankly expected.

We went to the lake with our caregivers in tow and met daughter Erin and parents Larry and Bettye Lou at our house. On Friday Daddy Larry and I had the pleasure of catching a number of fish while in the company of an illustrious Richland Chambers guide, Cory Vinson, with nofishnocharge.com`. We caught a mess of sand bass, some big hybrid bass and a couple of catfish just to top off the morning. It was a fine morning followed by a big rain in the afternoon. This was a classically good Texas day.

Brother John's schedule and daughter Erin's migraine were the only hitches in this particular plan; they missed a regular fishapoolza; so sorry to you both. Marty was in good hands at our house in the company of Renae and my Mom, so Dad and I enjoyed a wonderful morning on the lake slaying dangerous fish.

The next plan was for pictures with our family and our extended family of caregivers. Our grandson, Noah, showed up right on time. He came in dragging along his parents and Lyle, Erin's boy. We rested Friday evening so we would all look chipper for the photography session. I'm not sure I could get enough sleep to bring beauty but I tried and to quote my mother, "you just aren't ever going to look better than you do right now." Once again Mama speaks truth.

I've been working with Marty on her picture smile. She actually kind of gets into it after a while and starts showing her pearly whites with a smile that's somewhere between laughter and a grimace. It's when her eyes smile, when her eye brows lift, when the corners of her mouth turn up just a bit at the corners that you really get to see Marty, that you get to see the Marty I know. I hope some of the pictures found her.

Lyle's sister and brother-in-law found the lake and, while very hot and sweaty for some of us, the picture taking was quick and painless. Unfortunately, we were sans Nikkie, who was felled by a migraine (a veritable migraine epidemic this weekend), but Renae and Erica were there and Renae almost smiled for one of the pictures. Marty's best smiles came when we started talking about breaking wind; she loves fart humor, but who doesn't?

Marty, as expected was a rock. She was a tired rock, but a solid, cooperating, agreeable rock. As it turns out she was, is a bit sick. Our last sputum sample indicated a pretty substantial upper respiratory strep infection. We knew she had an elevated white count (infection) and she had already started what we hope is the appropriate antibiotic before we got the strep diagnosis. So my rock, in addition to being a sold, cooperating, agreeable rock was a sick rock.

All in all our plans moved smoothly from the theory stage, to hypothesis, to reality. We got to do some things we enjoyed with people we enjoy, very cool. We had to adjust, we had to handle a couple of minor catastrophes, and Marty, as she so often does, pushed through her fog, pushed through her illness to enjoy some simple acts of living. If you watch her, if you understand what she does in spite of, you will learn; through her living, she really does have this amazing effect on you. At least she does on me.