Blog 6

I think for now I would much rather prefer to write about my father, and his I feel like I have more interesting stories that I can weave together to find a focus.

Dad shut the truck door and headed for church. The cracked beige leather seats of the white suburban gave little. The radio blared. Naturally being the oldest I always sat in the front seat, my three brothers always sat in the back. I manned the radio. K-Rock constantly played the rock songs we all listened to. On occasion however we snuck Cd's in and played it while the crowds of people passed the rumbling truck on their way to church. Dad was in the choir and it made it a hell of a lot easier to get out of church. He always made us go with him on Sundays and because he had to be there earlier he left us the keys to play music while we waited for mass to start. We never went in though. Not once. We sat in the truck for an hour and a half and listened to music, then he took us to get bagels on the way back home. It was routine. This was our church.

The new MTV show, The Osbournes was on. My mother and I loved that show. We sat watching Ozzy curse and bumble his way through the episode. My father sat in the living room with his head down, pretending not to hear the bleeps every two seconds. Finally he had enough, during a commercial break he came into the living room. "What the hell do you have them watching this shit for? Why the fuck do you have this on? It's trash all they do is curse and I don't want my kids watching this filth." "I'll watch what I want in my house. At least they bleep out the curses on TV!"

I can't remember much about what was taught in CCD. All I could remember was the excitement of seeing Courtney there every week. I remember every week I would wait for her parents green cavalier to drive up, and to see her get out and walk up to the door of St. Mary's where I would attempt what little I knew about flirting. One day I even worked up the courage to ask her for her AIM screenname. She wrote in pink glitter pen on a small piece of paper. Later that night I'd add her and await her sign on every night.

They had a diagnosis. Sydenham's chorea. The doctors and nurses openly admitted they had never even heard of it. They would have likely never even found out about it if it wasn't for my mothers persistence. In the early days of google and yahoo she searched and searched for answers pin pointing one solution and inquiring about it. Mom had to take my brothers to baseball and basketball practices. Dad came in. He had 5 books of word searches and puzzle books, and he brought a movie, a trilogy actually, one I'd heard of but never seen before; Star Wars. I watched it repeatedly. I finished one of the puzzle books while waiting for him to return back from grabbing a bite to eat in cafeteria downstairs. He couldn't believe it. Every day he brought more puzzle books for me to work on, and then he began bringing actual books for me to read along with a bunch of snacks, kit kats and twizzlers.

Steven was the name of the boy in the "room" next to me. A room divided by a thin curtain. Steven was my age, 12. He was struck by a drunk driver shattering his leg. His knee and leg had pins straight through to hold everything together. I remember watching TV with him and walking down to the game center and playing Mario, Mario kart and other video games, despite the wishes of nurses not wanting to continue moving Steven's bed and monitoring me as I walk, so they allowed us to bring the NES into our room along with a few games. One day Steven was just gone. He hadn't healed yet. He was moved to another room and that was the last I heard of Steven.

After fully recovering I remember my father attributing my recovery to God. It was a miracle. That never felt right to me. The fact that my entire struggles, everything I've been through, everything I dealt with credited not to me or the nurses or doctors or medicine, but simply, God; God did it. That was unsettling. It was upsetting to me.