Dad shut the truck door and headed for church. The cracked beige leather seats of the white suburban gave very little. As I watched him walk down the street, I turned the radio on. Naturally, being the oldest I always sat in the front seat while my three brothers sat in the back. I manned the radio. Every Sunday this was the routine. 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 playing rock while 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. We had to go early with him but he trustingly left us the keys to play music while we waited for mass to start. We never went in though. Instead we sat in the truck for an hour and a half and listened to music. When mass finally ended he took us to get bagels on the way back home. It was routine. This was our church.
Something was wrong. I never let a ground ball go through my legs. I made the all-star team every year as shortstop. This is becoming as routine as a fly ball. They put me in the outfield. The yellow FoodTown jersey annoyed me now. I was in right field, and still was having trouble with coordination. My mother kept insisting that I was ‘jerky.’ I never believed her until while at my grandmothers I grabbed for a cup of milk, and spilled it on the ground. Every time my mother insisted we see a doctor though, the twitching stopped. My mother, grandmother and my family were distraught. My Dad told me he was praying for me. That was the only year in Little League that I didn’t make the All-Star team.
The new MTV show, The Osborne’s 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." My mother replied fervently "I'll watch what I want in my house. At least they bleep out the curses on TV!"
It was dark. All I can remember is my mothers hands on my chest pinning me to the floor of the Ford Aerostar. My father was driving. They were taking me to the hospital, and I had refused to go willingly. My mother was crying over me, and I was shouting every vile thing I could think of. “I fucking hate you! I’ll never love you again. I’ll never talk to you ever again. I hate you!” Repeated over and over as my mother cried. All she could say was “I know, I know”
I can't remember much about what was actually taught in CCD. I can’t even remember what CCD stood for anymore. All I know was that it was where we went to learn about Jesus and the Bible after school. We just called it the Central City Dump. The excitement of seeing Courtney there every week kept me from feigning sick. 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 screen name. She wrote in a pink glitter pen on a small piece of paper. Later that night I'd add her and awaited 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.
“You know, you guys should at least get to mass for Christmas and Easter. This is your faith.” My Dad said in that tone that was filled with perpetual disappointment. “Yeah, of course.” We brushed the comment off like a gnat as we watched the Dallas Cowboys game at my Uncle’s house on Thanksgiving. “What days you have work this week Dad?”
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. The months after were filled with my Mother and Grandmother arguing about the past. My Aunt got involved and it was ugly. I was trying to recover, and was doing remarkably well. They were all yelling in the kitchen as me and my three brothers watched TV in the living room, easily within earshot of the shouting. I had an idea. In the movies and on TV when family is shouting a kid runs in, crying and says stop fighting and shouting. I tried it, but it ended with my mother telling them to leave and to never come back; resulting in a 12 year lapse in the relationship with my mothers entire side of the family.
I was never fully comfortable with the Roman catholic version of life. An early fascination with dinosaurs as a child deeply rooted dates in my subconscious. The Cretaceous period was 64 million years ago, the Jurassic before that was 200 million and before that the Triassic was 250 million. There is carbon dating proof, yet I’m told to believe the Bible. 6,000 years ago? Seriously? A book, scribed by mankind, as spoken through God. What about the dinosaurs?
College level Biology. Much more exciting than high school biology. The fact that I paid for my education seemed to make every subject exciting. Evolution. The professor made it a point to continually say he wasn’t trying to question anyone’s faith, but continued to teach evolution also mentioning that there isn’t complete proof that even science is accurate. I didn’t care. It is obvious that we came from apes. We share a common genetic code of 95% to 98%. Why do we have tailbones? Why is our brain wired backwards? Why do we have a pinky? Why do we have an appendix? If we were made in God’s image, then he too must have these things, right? Can God get appendicitis?
“You know I love you guys. It’s good getting out with you’s.” My Dad said with a smile, grabbing my shoulder and patting my brothers on the back. After every round of golf he says the same thing. It’s surer than the sun rising. “I mean I played like crap. It’s not even fun anymore for me. I don‘t even want to play anymore.” He always says it sincerely, but we all know he’ll be asking us in a few days when we are all available for another round of golf.
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