Rough year for Charger hockey...

But at least our fans are into it.

Because hospital baby pictures suck

Dot, one month old.

My children. Their songs.

There is a power in music. It moves us. Inspires us. Empowers us. I lack the talent to express myself musically, as much as I want to. For no other reason than music can express feeling that mere words often lack.

With Mac, the song came after the end:


Butters, the song was settled early on (I even made a lousy video with it):


And now, with Dot, the song I keep coming back to:


These words and melodies are from people far more talented than I, but what they express is but the tiniest sampling of the love I have for my children. These songs, they belong to them.

September

Just something to pass along on this last day of the month. Enjoy.

History repeats itself

In the final days of September 1976, a Californian (by way of Colorado) found herself traveling fifteen miles of blacktop to a hospital in north central Alabama. All the signs were there, the pain, the pressure, and that sixth sense that women develop in the waning days of pregnancy was screaming, "this is it." Confidently she told the mother of her husband, who at that very moment was thousands of miles away from his still new bride, that it was time to go.

And so they raced to that pillar of hope, anxious and excited at what the coming moments would welcome. Together the woman from California and the mother of her husband entered into the disinfected corridors of the same hospital system that had bore the father of the approaching child, both eager to see the life that was trying to force it's way into an unsuspecting world.

Just as today, paperwork had to be filled out, questions needed to be answered. There were checks, and tests, and the usual assortment of activities that hover somewhere between necessary and obscene that the pregnant must go through. But through it all the woman from California was confident that her child was coming. How could she not be? Hundreds upon thousands of years of evolution and instinct told her so. The woman that accompanied her, the mother of her husband, a woman who had bore numerous children herself, told her so. It was time.

Medical expertise, on the other hand, said otherwise.

In short, the woman from California and the mother of her husband were both told it wasn't time and that they need to go home and return when it was. Rather unceremoniously they were shuffled off, all the while the woman from California launched questions and colorful statements at the staff that so callously told her she was wrong. The mother of her husband, meanwhile, burned with a fire and intensity that matched the red hair that topped her head. She smoldered inside, but through a strength forged by a life filled with immeasurable hardships, she took the wife of her son back to her home.

Less than twenty-four hours later these women found themselves back at that building that had told them to leave only hours earlier. In that period staff changes were made as they do in any structure that provides around the clock medical care. Again she went through the same checks, answered the same questions, signed the same forms. Same pain, same discomfort, same feelings. But the doctore and the staff were now different. The doctor that now examined her said confidently that she was right all along and that she should never had been sent home.

So, in the early morning hours of October the 1st, in 1976, a baby boy was brought into this world by a native of California (by way of Colorado) who was, in a word, furious. But also elated. But a whole lot of furious.

Everyone has endured tales from their parents that have been recited so many times that recollection of them comes only as a result of the repetition one was subjected to. Hardly a thought goes into recitation of them, and more often than not one can easily parrot the tale when it is thrust upon an unsuspecting guest. These accounts of the past are but footnotes in the span of our lives, but every so often, they can take on a greater meaning. They can provide comfort in trying times, or advice courtesy of lessons learned. Or, as was the case yesterday, they can remind you that indeed what goes around, comes around.

Caulk it up to the great cosmic irony that is life, but as an anonymous doctor entered into my wife's room this morning and told her that it wasn't time for our daughter to enter into the world and that we were to go home, I couldn't help but think back to the tale my Mom has told so many times. Granted, a little artistic license may have been taken with a detail or two, but the incongruity of the entire situation was not lost on me.

Suddenly we were in that same situation, facing those same fears and same feelings of rage that my mother had no doubt had all those years before. How could my wife, this amazing woman who bore me my only son not two and a half years before, possibly be wrong? In short, she wasn't. She was in labor. But apparently "not in enough labor that we can really do anything about it but try and prevent it." Apparently, throwing drugs at her through the night we spent there was the prudent course of action. Drugs that did nothing to stop the contractions that she felt, or to lessen the pain she was in.

A few hours later we were shuffled off, sent packing with the caveat that "we'll see you real soon." So, here I sit, putting these words on your screen. Telling you a tale that was told to me. And even now, as my wife tries to sleep through the pain, and the contractions, and the discomfort that she has been feeling for weeks, that tired old cliche, "history is doomed to repeat itself," keeps running through my head. The question I keep coming back to, and the one I leave you with, is who knew that history had such a wicked sense of timing?