Cousin Nancy & Tom are grandparents!---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Subject: Elliot Arthur C.
October 29, 2008For the grandparents -- your first baby picture to email around!Born this morning at 4:01 am, weighing 5 lbs and 14 ounces. J. is resting comfortably at Holy Cross and we are up for visitors. More pictures and info to follow.
I almost forgot...
Linda Blake is doing an extremely loooooong bicycle ride to raise money for cancer research.
The Annual4th folks know her well and if you don't know her, she's my cousin.
A looooooong ride. All up hill.
She needs some sponsors, so I've got to go donate right now.
Here's the link Linda Blake Bicyloco Supremo
Go there or be square.
Early December 26th 1986 just past midnight and the anesthesiologist has finally arrived. He is very crabby because it IS Christmas, but the surgeons have spent time warning us that Old Doc Weiderhold is ALWAYS crabby when he is called in for an unplanned surgery, he is really good, but he WILL yell at us. (and he did)
When everyone was ready, the surgeon who had been taking a nap in the little on-call room (where I was figuring out how to tie up my scrubs) suddenly sat up, looked at the clock and said “Good! It's the 26th, the kid gets his own birthday! Everybody should get their OWN birthday.”, and off we went down the hall to surgery. Me and my new surgeon buddy Dr. Brodkin.
At the time I was thinking that it was too bad that things got stuck, I had been counting on the 25th. Beth had been in a lot of pain for a lot of hours, but Derek was inexplicably stuck in the play-doh fun-factory of life and the doctor didn't know why. Plan-B would be a little more difficult to implement than usual because it was Christmas day and the doctors were kind of busy. It would be four hours before they would be in “operating” condition (so to speak).
I should have known.
It had been foretold by Lindsay.
On Christmas Eve we had hosted Joe and Lindsay for a nice dinner. Beth's due date was in January and Lindsay was already a wee bit overdue, and to hear her tell it,
she was months behind schedule. During dinner Lindsay shared her ultimate fantasy with us.
She would go into labor very early Christmas morning but wouldn't tell anyone. She would go to her in-laws to have the traditional opening of gifts and then she would say “I have an announcement to make: We are going to have one more present today... we are going to have a baby!” Everybody would fuss and get excited, and Joe and Lindsay would wave goodbye, go to the hospital and squirt out the kid.
I was horrified.
As I am prone to do, I told her so.
“That is an AWFUL fantasy. No No No” “Your kid would NEVER have a decent birthday!” I had experience with this type of thing because my mother had me induced to beat the tax-break deadline, she was a very practical woman, she saved some cash but she could NEVER remember my birthday.
We had a wonderful evening despite my big mouth, Hours later we waved goodbye as they drove off into the Christmas Eve darkness.
Beth and I finished whatever it is that we used to do on Christmas Eve and went to bed.
Beth didn't think that she could get out of the waterbed to get to the bathroom in a reasonable amount of time anymore, so she wanted to try sleeping in the guest bed.
We tried it. I was sleeping away on the hard mattress, minding my own business when Beth woke me up at two am. She wanted to tell me something.
Her water broke. Once my sleepy brain got wrapped around that, I found that I no longer was sleepy but had developed a sudden, very severe case of Tourette's syndrome. I was only using one word but I was using it continuously. I may have mentioned Lindsay's name and my feelings about her fantasy once or twice also. It totally ruined my ability to sleep for the rest of the night.
We spent the rest of the morning pacing around. OK, I paced and Beth probably did some constructive stuff. When the sun came up we drove to the hospital and after being checked out, we were told to come back later. Then we drove to Keene where Doug, Leslie, and both sets of parents were.
We opened our presents for a couple of hours and then we made the announcement.
Nana (Beth's mom) said “Have you seen a doctor?”
Beth and I started explaining the situation until Nana would interrupt with “Have you seen a doctor?”, we would say “yes” and continue with the story until Nana would interrupt with “Have you seen a doctor?”, and we would repeat as necessary. This continued for quite a while until eventually Nana's question would get a loud “YES” from seven of us in unison each time she asked. Her record was skipping and there was nothing we could do.
Eventually Beth and I packed up to go to the hospital again.
I still remember Leslie standing in the driveway all teary eyed as we drove away.
The damn hospital told us to come back later. Again.
We went to our house in Antrim and Beth handled the pain in her own way, she rearranged the furniture. She was trying to find a comfortable position and it seems that chairs that are uncomfortable in the living room might be more comfortable in the kitchen. Or perhaps not. Lets try a hassock... here... or here...
After several phone calls to the doctor to check on “times between” and other such things, I was just waiting for permission to return to the hospital, every piece of furniture had been moved at least four times and I was afraid that she was going to ask me to paint the house. Finally they allowed us to come.
I don't remember the details, but I am sure it was a pleasant trip.
Finally we were going to get some action. We had great nurses, a great doctor and... nothing.. Things were progressing. We would have a kid by 4pm. OK, Five thirty.
Hmmm.
There's something wrong, not serious mind you, but you will be all done by Seven. The baby monitors reported that everything was okydoky. Beth wasn't. She was tired. She had been pushing for hours. Two shifts of nurses. Other mothers coming and going.
Warren was hungry (of course), we had headed back to Peterborough before Christmas Dinner so I had to forage at the hospital. I had become skilled at racing down to the nursing station, getting cookies, and racing back before the next contraction.
Beth wasn't hungry, she had other things on her mind. We would talk between contractions, but she never made a sound during the pushing. Not a peep.
Hours and hours of pushing. At 8pm they started making arrangements for surgery, and Beth was not supposed to push anymore, which was even harder. We weren't told that it would be several hours before the various people involved with Plan-B could be at the point that we were at now. Beth was rolling on a gurney, and the doctors and I were walking.
Good ol Doctor Brodkin gave the tongs one last try.
If you have never seen a doctor using tongs, it is a sight to behold.
There is a sheet up over Beth's knees and Dr. Brodkin has a different viewpoint than I do.
He holds these two metal salad tongs and surveys the situation.
The tongs are jammed under the sheets and clanked against each other for five seconds and pulled back. Toss the salad and retreat. Stare, toss the salad and retreat. Stare.
No baby popping out, he announces that he is going to start cutting.
Dr. Boxer (with the purple pants) comes over and stands next to me while they start carving. I didn't know who he was, he seemed nice. He was our brand spankin new pediatrician. I didn't know why we needed a foot doctor, but that was because I didn't know what a pediatrician was yet.
Bright lights. I hold Beth's hand and try to explain what is happening on the other side of the sheet where everybody seemed to be so busy. They were busy and they were talking about all kinds of medical type stuff that I didn't understand. Beth wasn't even scared. Something was finally happening. There are a lot of layers to go through. The lights were bright.
The doctors were about two layers from the goal when the Dr. Brodkin said “Hey LOOK, he's looking right up at us!”. Derek was seeing the bright lights and as the layers were being peeled back things were becoming clearer and clearer. The doctors and nurses were all laughing and the mood in the room changed completely. It also explained why things didn't go as expected: Derek was looking UP while the manual says that he should be looking at the floor. Independent Cuss. They had to yank and tug to free the top part of Derek's head that Beth had spent many hours working so hard to push where it was.
Finally the little cone-head popped out. After celebrating for a while I kissed Beth goodbye and carried Derek down the hall to get weighed and measured. I walked very carefully so that I didn't walk into a wall while I was looking down at him. Dr. Boxer used a little tape measure to get the important data. One of the measurements that he was supposed to measure was the circumference of Derek's head. He measured around his eyebrows, he measured up where a beanie would be, and then he put the tape around the waistline of his very long head. Dr. Boxer turned towards me and seeing the look on my face, said “You'd be surprised how fast these things fix themselves...”
Ohhh thaaaat makes me feel better. My kid looked like Yoda with a cone-head. I figured that Beth and I would adapt to having a kid like this, isn't that why they created PhotoShop?
I put out my pinky and Derek wraps his fingers around it. At that instant I became a
dad. Everything will be just fine. The nurses let me sleep with Beth and Derek that night.
Over the next two days all of the Nurses would run up to our floor so that they could see the “adorable little cone-head”. Dr. Boxer was right, it did fix itself.
Beth and I had a very nice week at the hospital. Lindsay baked a cake for my birthday and we had a little party in the “day room”.
Beth, Derek and I all went home for the first time on New Year's Eve 1986.
We all slept in the living room. We woke up at midnight and watched the ball drop on TV. We then promptly went back to sleep.
Our new life. Pretty cool.
A week later Lindsay was pleading with Dr. Brodkin to make her baby happen when she told the doctor how Beth had “stolen” her fantasy. The Dr. Brodkin jumped all over Lindsay telling her that nobody should wish for a delivery like Beth had gone through because it was the toughest he had ever seen. The doctor didn't really seem to understand what part of Beth's ordeal was the “fantasy” that Lindsay was referring to.
That tough day and tougher night gave us the greatest reward.
That was 21 years ago tonight. I remember it like it happened last week.
In fact I remember it better than anything that happened last week, but that wouldn't surprise anyone that knows me.
Twenty One.
It is odd how there are certain MAJOR ages. Derek was convinced that his life was going to change dramatically on his 16th birthday. The world was his oyster, although he was a vegetarian, so the world was his can of chick peas.
The freedom of driving, he would be able to do anything he wanted, etc. etc..
Sixteen really didn't create the kind of radical changes that he was imagining, but Eighteen! Just wait!
I'm sure that twenty-one would be the same type of major event, although I can't really think of ANYTHING that changes at that age except that you can legally drink.
OK.
It's legal. Gee. I guess the thing you would do is buy a beer for your kid. Hmmm.
What a festive occasion.
Derek always went out with us for Chinese Food on his birthday (which we NEVER forgot). Tomorrow/today Beth and I are going to take some of Derek's friends out for Chinese Food again. Should I buy the usual Roy Rogers that Derek always ordered (a non-alcoholic fancy drink) for the center of the table or should I order a Suffering Bastard?
Well I may still order the Suffering Bastard because it is soooo much fun for the guys to hear the waiter repeat “sufffffrin baaaasstahhd” back to me, but I think that I will stick to the Roy Rogers for “Derek's drink”. Who knows what Derek would have ordered.
Happy Twenty First Birthday Dude. Thank You.
This is the Birthday day. December 14th.
J.R. jr. is the young one. Thirteen today. He is a teenager but from what I understand, he is still nice to be around.
Everett is the "middle aged" one. OK, the one-third aged one. Make sure that you talk VERY loudly if you are around him tomorrow. It will help his headache. You may want to call him extra early on the morning of the 15th to wish him a happy birthday. He likes that. He may be older, but at this point he doesn't have to add any coloring to his hair "product". He still loves his mirror.
And then there is David. He is three quarters age. Older than Dirt. That is meant in the nicest possible way, of course. Old, very old. Cranky too. His only thrill in life is that he is so very much younger than Ted. David doesn't like mirrors, they lie. Talk loudly to him too, but not because he has a headache, do it just to get his attention. He enjoys phone calls early in the morning too. Be sure to talk loudly. He likes that. I am not sure, but I believe that by law, he is required to surrender his Massachusetts drivers license because of his advanced age or else he has to take an on-the-road driver's test every two weeks. Please remind him of this. It should be easy to pass since all of the local cops know him by name.
Happy Birthday Boys.
In Freeport Maine today, 1600 miles away from us, our family is having a memorial for Cousin Tim.
As I am editing this, I am inserting this in front of all of my other “Tim” paragraphs, the line below says: “My cousin Tim passed away at 4:30 this morning. His son Karl was with him.”
I have written many paragraphs about Tim since then. Some of them have been coherent and some have been little snippets of memories. I haven't been able to post any of them, and I don't know why. Since today is his funeral, and I can't be there, I will post these now. It still perplexes me why Tim's passing has bothered me so much. I probably got less time with Tim than any of his other cousins, but he had a profound impact on my life that I will never forget. I think that I am so deeply affected because his children, whom I don't really know, would have had more time with him if I had done things differently.
I only got to see Tim up at Roland Park during the rare times that we were up there at the same time, and I saw him at funerals. Tim was ten years older than my sister and I, and from tales that I have heard I get the idea that he was the kid that would tattle on Judy, Betsy, Ted, and David when they were up to no good, which they usually were.
When I was a little kid, one of my biggest thrills up at the lake was going for a ride in Tim's hot-rod boat. Tim had made a very small, very fast, flat bottomed plywood boat many years ago. I wanted to have a little fast boat like Tim's when I became a teenager. When Tim was done playing with it, he took it downtown to the boat dealer to sell it and it was stolen from the boat yard the first night that it was on the lot.
Tim took that as a compliment. He lost the money, but it was a compliment nonetheless.
Birthdays and Funerals
I enjoyed chatting with Tim because we were both engineers, although in different fields (I was into metal cutting and software and he worked with “New and Used Water”).
At group events like birthday parties and funerals I would always seek him out so we could chat. We both were caretakers of cars that were purchased by our Grandfather Percy. I had the Marmon and he had the Ford. We both loved each other's cars and were both glad that the other one had “rescued” them. Tim had also ridden in my car many years ago, and for many years I still had not experienced such a thing, so I enjoyed hearing about his experiences.
Tim still has a couple of small parts that belonged to my Marmon. He would always tell me about them, but when you are getting dressed for Aunt Libby's funeral you just don't remember to put Marmon wing nuts in your pocket. I would always nag him to start working on the station wagon and he would tell me about his basket-case Jeep that he was going to work on someday. We talked about making the Jeep the front part of the “Roland Park large-crowd mass-transit system”, because we both liked jeeps, trailers, contraptions, and the ride to and from the lake more than actually swimming IN the water. Someday he was going to give me the Ford when he was sure that he wasn't going to work on it anymore. He had lost the back seat forever when he was using the car to haul firewood for several seasons. I was suposed to find a grill that got wiped out on the day that Granpa Percy gave up driving forever. You know, all those things that we knew were never going to happen.
With the cars being the reliable ice breaker we would quickly move on to “zen and the art of cottage maintenance” because we were both very involved with this losing battle of cottage life and I would always get some useful nugget from him.
Porch Talk, Chatting with Scorched Earth Tim
I have fond memories of sitting on any one of the cottage porches drinking a beer, and quietly chatting together while everybody else would be making noise at the “kitchen end” of the house, and he would make me laugh so hard with his no-nonsense approach to dealing with things.
I called him “Scorched Earth Tim” which would always make him smirk.
“The trees will grow back faster than you can mow them down.”
”Clear the view!”
“Pine trees rot roofs, cut em down.”
He had radical opinions on the width of roads, drainage, blueberry bushes, porch railings, roofs, sheds, porch steps, and porcupines.
There was no sentimentality when it came to cottages, furniture, barns, trees. If it didn't work, replace it with something that did.
When I was considering building a new cottage to replace our old one that had burned to the ground, Tim shocked me by suggesting a contemporary house. A REAL house, no cottage, forget cottages, they are cold, they are hot, quaint isn't comfortable. Cottages have too many problems. I think Tim would have made a house and furniture out of concrete to reduce maintenance if his family would go along with it. Yessiree, he wasn't afraid of change like some of us in Roland park.
My Last visit
I was very fortunate to sneak in one last visit with Tim before we left on my Adventure this year.
Martha was going to take Edith. I asked if I could hitch a ride.
Then Betsy was going to be able to go too. Martha was overbooked and couldn't go and Edith wanted to “save her visit” until next week. So Betsy and I went together. It was great. Not only did Betsy and I get to answer each other's questions about family history, but we got to see Tim. He was having a good day. He looked good (to me). Betsy asked her brother some technical questions that she had saved up for her visit, which Tim answered for her. Tim was always her “technical” source. We chatted about cottages, kids, vacations, and health. His voice was getting weaker and aimed at the floor, so Betsy was having some trouble understanding him, but I was able to interpret what he was saying without any problem.
Tim wanted to know what my Father had died from.
I told him that it wasn't Parkinsons. “Parkinsons doesn't kill you, it just wears you down.”
My Father had been held down by Parkinsons since he was thirty five years old, by the time he was sixty two, he was very very tired. I asked Tim how old he was and his original answer was too high, which Betsy was exceedingly quick to correct (since Tim's age is related to Betsy's age).
We decided that Tim was about 63, the same age my father was when he passed. He told me that he suspected that the Parkinsons wasn't going to kill him, but boredom would. He was getting antsy to take a nap so we said our goodbyes, I complimented him on his model car on his dresser, and we left.
Betsy was crying like she always did when leaving Tim, but I felt oddly happy. I had a feeling that I would never see him again, so I didn't really understand my mood. As Betsy and I were driving back to New Hampshire I figured out that it was because it was just like visiting my father. Intelligent, fun to talk to, and funny. Very funny. A conversation with Tim was always productive. He didn't talk just to make noise, he talked when he could add something. I felt sorry for Betsy because she had to watch her brother being taken away, but I didn't feel sorry for Tim, he made me feel that he had spent a lot of time reviewing the situation and was at peace with it.
Spotting Parkinsons
The most important thing that Tim had taught me was how I had failed him.
I didn't know him well enough to tell him what he needed to hear and I shortened his life. He would be alive today if I had spoken up. I will never make that mistake again.
My sister Leslie and I grew up with Parkinsons disease. My father was diagnosed at 35 years old, so ALL of my memories of my dad are a picture modified with the broad brush strokes of parkinsons.
You may have noticed that people with downs-syndrome look like brothers and sisters of other downs-syndrome patients more than they look like their mothers and fathers. Well Parkinsons patients all develop the same “look”.
Leslie and I can pick out Parkinsons patients from a crowd. My older brothers can not spot the symptoms because they were already out of the house when the signs developed.
I would see Tim once in a great while at Birthdays or Funerals and it was obvious to me that poor Tim had Parkinsons. What I was too stupid to realize is that just because something is obvious to you, does not mean it is obvious to everyone else. I would see Tim deteriorate and feel sad after seeing him, but I never mentioned it to him because I assumed that he already was being treated.
Then there was the summer of funerals. All of us were getting together once a week to bury another family member and I was spending more time with Tim. I realized that I was never being asked to hold his tilted drink while he fished pills out of his pocket. Was it possible that he wasn't taking pills? Hadn't anybody noticed that Tim was aging at five times the normal rate?
I was still a wimp, so I talked to his brother Wink.
“Isn't Tim being treated for Parkinsons?”
“You DO know he has it, don't you?”
I still remember Wink looking over his shoulder at his brother Tim. At that moment, Tim was standing by himself, hunched over, and trying to juggle a plastic cup of punch while stuffing something sweet up into his mouth trying to avoid having too much falling onto the floor. Wink looked back at me with the lightbulb look. “You know, SOMETHING seemed wrong.” and we started tossing things back and forth. “I told him that Tim should get treatment immediately so that the aging process can be tempered a bit. Wink was still assembling pieces of the puzzle that explained why Tim would take five hours to do something that he used to do in twenty minutes.
That evening I received a phone call from Cousin Ann telling me that they had all discussed Tim that evening and wanted to thank me. I felt good temporarily.
Tim went to the doctor for a “test”.
The doctor asked Tim to walk across the room, Tim did, and the Doctor said “You've got it!”.
Tim started treatment, everyone adjusted to the new Tim. The rapid deterioration was squelched, but a huge amount of damage had been done. He had already skipped thirty years and he wasn't going to get them back. I want to cry when I see the porch pictures of the family hanging on walls of the cottages and comparing them. Tim ages five years while everybody else ages one. If I had spoken up to mention what was obvious to me (but not to anyone else), Tim would have not lost as many years.
During this same time period there was someone in my car club that obviously had Parkinsons too.
I vowed that I would confirm that they knew about it the next time that I saw them, but it was too late. She had a very rare, very aggressive variation that destroyed their life within a couple of years.
Since I learned my lesson with Tim I have been more “aggressive” with my amateur diagnosis.
There is a chance that I am wrong, the person finds out that they are okay and is angry at me for the rest of his or her life that I scared them so much for absolutely no reason, but there is a reason: My cousin Tim. If I spot the symptoms in someone that I know, I WILL tell them. For Tim.
What I am still struggling with is whether I should ever tell people on the street. If they already know, they don't need to be reminded by some jerk walking by, but what if they don't know?
I have never done it, but it tortures me every time.
Parkinsons Symptoms that I see.
A Parkinsons person will hold a glass at a tilt with the liquid almost spilling. Other people would automatically level out the glass, but with Parkinsons, unless it is actually spilling, it is not worth the extreme effort to adjust your wrist.
The Parkinson's mask: Limited facial expressions that limit interactions with new acquaintances. The family doesn't even notice because they read the eyes, which still dance and laugh just fine.
The hunch. People that have always had good posture will start drooping. I think gravity wins and you don't have the energy to keep telling the shoulder muscles to do their job.
The fish was thiiis big. If they are explaining the size of something, a Parkinsons person cannot just hold a finger on each hand six inches apart. They will touch their thumbs to create a bridge that keeps the two hands steady.
Rotating your hand. Try this at home. Hold your hand out with the palm down. Now rotate it to the palm up position. Notice that the whole assembly rotated around an axis that is almost at your middle finger, your “driving finger” if you are a New Yorker. To simulate how Tim and my Father would rotate their hands, try locking your thumb in one spot in the air and rotate your arm and hand around your thumb. Curl your fingers into a cup shape and you will approximate the look of a typical conversation. Both hands are connected by an invisible cable that goes up and over the shoulder so both hands will rotate simultaneously. Isn't that tiring? Are your arms sore? That is how every movement is when you no longer have an auto-pilot. You have to send a message to each muscle to tell it to move. They will still do it, but it is a lot of work. Sitting quietly and listening is much easier.
If you could bring me some food, it is even better.
Tippy toes. The knees bend, the arms reach forward, but you aren't able to shift your weight to actually lift one foot to slide it forward. You end up leaning into a crouch that looks like you are ready to jump off a dock, and then everyone stops and turns around to watch you jump off the dock, which makes it that much harder. Try walking across the room and concentrate on a few steps to take note of how you shift your weight from one leg to the other one, lift, slide, place, shift weight. It's very complicated.
Obstacles. When you have parkinsons you can step up over a curbing, but you can't walk down the sidewalk. A long hallway can stop you cold because there are no obstacles. Walking down railroad tracks would keep your mind from wandering so that you can concentrate on which muscles need moving. When you are in a long hallway, the person next to you will ALWAYS start chattering because THEY have gone into auto-pilot mode, and if they expect a reply from you, forward movement has to stop while you are talking. Very frustrating.
An interesting tidbit: Parkinsons patients do not burn. In nursing homes where parkinsons patients have been bedridden for years, if the fire alarm rings, the patient who couldn't walk will run to the sidewalk. They can't stand up when they are out there and will keep falling down, but they can run down stairs faster than anyone. It seems that adrenaline can make auto-pilot work for anyone.
Intelligence. This isn't official, but most people that I have seen with Parkinsons are very smart and very funny. The kind of people that I like to hang around with.
I am sorry that I couldn't make it to Freeport today. I hope that his entire family knows that we were thinking of you today. I am sorry that I didn't raise my voice sooner when I first spotted the problem, I have learned from it, and I hope it will never happen again.
I will miss Tim. He was fun.
OK, we are on the road again. Sort of.
Headed East to Gainesville for a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. We headed South to Clearwater for another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. and Alice... remember Alice?
Today we headed East to the Atlantic Ocean and I ate Rock Shrimp.
There were pictures along the way and other stuff. Eighty degrees today. They say it is abnormally warm for this time of year. Fine by me.
I was severely stalled by cousin Tim's passing a few days ago, but with the proper editing, I will work through it. The two Thanksgiving dinners with good friends really helped me.
We will be driving a lot tomorrow but I will get back on the stick as soon as we park. Honest.
...but, after I write my column for the Marmon News, then new stuff. Honest.
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I'm so sorry to hear about your cousin.
You are all in my thoughts and prayers.
love chemo sabe November 27, 2007 10:37 AM
Jenny said...
This afternoon, I called (Momma) Mia to catch up on her Thursday afternoon off. She had an important story to share with Beth and Warren. Yesterday at 3 pm, on the 30th, while Mia was at work, a dragonfly, a big blue one, about the size of her palm, flew into the Clinic, down the hallway and fluttered about the nurse's station. Mia held a paper bag open for the dragonfly, and he crawled in. She carried the bag out the door, and he flew away. A patient in the waiting room commented - Why, that nice nurse saved that dragonfly! - not quite understanding what had just happened. Mia was greatly moved by this experience, and was thankful that there were witnesses so she knew she wasn't hallucinating.I hung up with Mia around 3 pm and a call came in. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some leaves clinging to the brick outside the window. Since I am twenty-six floors up, I leaned forward for a closer look. I asked the client if I could call him back. I fumbled with my new camera phone, without any luck. Outside my window, hanging on to the brick of the building exterior, was a giant green dragonfly. He was so big, I thought his wings were plant leaves. The green of his body seemed to be tinged with yellow, and the wings, with blue. I stopped fumbling with the silly camera phone, so I could just be there, while he was there. I took about five deep breaths. He let go and rose up, out of view. Looking at my hand now, I'm sure he was the length of my entire hand. No tall tales here, but no witnesses either.
I called Beth.
A big hello, she said.
Hello, Derek. Hello.
Jenny
