the Dalaverse

The Christmas without a Santa Claus Daddy continues.

Yesterday we got a shamefully late start to the hospital, arriving just in time for Dad's new pain in his chest. The doctor assured us it had nothing to do with a surgery, that it was a quite common reaction with the sac around the heart and yeeeeah, I stopped listening at that point. So he was sitting in the chair, making terrible faces and clutching his chest and basically looking miserable, and there were things in the room that were beeping, and nuses were rushing around outside, and...I don't really know what a panic attack entails, but I had what felt like one. It was some combination of being in a hospital and seeing my dad in pain and having not eaten. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and I hadn't had so much as a sip of water or a piece of candy all day long. Which I know is stupid, but I hadn't wanted to eat anything because hospitals make me feel sick.

Anyway, I was rocking back and forth because I couldn't sit still, and I felt dizzy and like I was going to throw up, and I had to leave the room. I made it down the hall to the waiting room, where I sat with my head between my knees and willed my vision to stop going black. It didn't subside until I got a Pepsi and put some sugar in my system. Then I had to sit there for half an hour, because they were moving Dad to another room and I didn't know where it was, until my mother came to get me. I saw Sweta from high school working there and said hello. It was Mom's opinion that Dad got himself so worked up the Motrin didn't take effect (he can't take any pain medication with codeine, which means no Percocet or Vicodin or anything stronger), and I agree with her, because he calmed right down once the nurse gave him some more...with Xanax. We hung out there for awhile, opened stockings (which were filled with toiletry stuff and also two pairs of earrings, blue topaz and pearl) before we left for my grandmother's house in NW D.C. I finally got some food -- in fact I ate a third of my Aunt Caroline's baked brie and a giant plate full of honey-baked ham. We didn't stay more than forty-five minutes. The most exciting thing that happened was the somebody accidentally locked the door to the only bathroom. Being eight and a half months pregnant, my cousin Deanna made Eric climb up the tree and through the window, and so the crisis was diverted.

We caught a ride to the Tenleytown station a couple of blocks away and took the Metro to Union Station, which was creepy because everything was closed. Grandma Libby's train was on time.

I should pause her to explain what sort of person Grandma Libby is. Now, Grandma Lorraine is your sterotypical sweet, cuddly, hard-of-hearing, sweater-set wearing granny. Grandma Libby is...not. She is interesting and awesome in many ways -- she's one of the most intelligent people you will ever met, and at eighty-six still writes professionally and possesses a valid driver's license. She raised four children by herself in an era when divorce was pretty much unheard of, and she did it in rural Oklamhoma.

However, she's also extremely set in her ways, crotchety, snobby, and kind of mean. Also she's an alcoholic, which often exacerbates the other traits. Using just examples from my own life: when I was in seventh grade, my mother or I gave her a review I'd written for class (on Gulliver's Travels) and she had only this to say: "Well, it's not really a review, is it?" A few years later, when we mentioned that I might like to go into journalism (her chosen profession), she said, "It's very hard to get a job these days." A few years after than, when we told her of my interest in editing, she said, "You'll never make any money doing that."

Oh, Grandma Libby. At least now my mother and I are getting on splendidly. There haven't been any real problems (yet), except for the stupid pork roast. Last night, Grandma Libby kept saying how she was missing Aunt Nancy's wonderful pork roast. My mother, who doesn't make pork roast because none of us are terribly fond of it, took this as a slight, and you know, with the way Grandma Libby kept harping on about it, it really was. When Uncle Howard and Aunt Nancy called, Grandma Libby dashed off to the phone to discuss dinner. At which point my mother ground her teeth and muttered, "If she mentions that pork roast one more time..."

Now she's trying to get out of going to the movies with us. "Oh, I don't want to see 'Sideways.'" "Yes you do. Trust me." "You know, I could go visit with your father and you could take your grandmother to the movies..." "I won't buy you any popcorn." "Dammit!"

It's going to be a long, long vacation.

After the movie and Hamburger Hamlet's, we're going to go watch the football game with Daddy, who is hopefully coming home tomorrow but maybe not until the next day.

This sucks.