If you need a refresher on how things change while I drive, I will refer you back to the preface of the post "Special Guest Author presents: 'The Rest'" to get acquainted with the subtle differences in writing style (1).
So... You are probably wondering about the title of the post. If you already know where I'm going with this, then please keep it to yourself and don't spoil the movie for everyone else in the theater by blurting out something like "Wait, that guy's already dead and he's a ghost for this whole movie!" (2). If you don't know where we're heading (or didn't look at the title until I mentioned it), then please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times and try to avoid direct eye contact with the animals.
We begin with an explanation...
Sara and I have four kids. They're pretty much awesome, but they're kids and we're parents, so there are the requisite moments of "This is not awesome at all, what were we thinking." You know: nights when 3 are puking, one just won't go to sleep, or when one of them removes all the keys from the laptop, etc. (yes, all of those are real). The vast majority of the time, though, the scale is tipped firmly to the awesome side. Now, these kids love to play outside, with each other and with friends and with neighborhood kids. It's great. Unless you're the paranoid overprotective parent who has gotten pretty good at hiding the overprotective part (that would be me). I feel overly responsible for everyone's well being. I'm the oldest of seven and have four myself... Let's blame it on that (I know I do). I am constantly taking stock of who is where and making sure that I'm within range to swoop in if there's a fight or problem or someone falls or a swarm of robot ninja sharks attack...
So when the kids are off in the neighborhood, I'm not necessarily freaking out and having a panic attack (3), but I'm concerned and just want to know where they are, what they're doing, with whom, and when they'll be back. They're gonna love me when they're teenagers, I'm sure. There is a natural solution to this, however. It's brilliant. The trick is to be the cool house where everyone wants to come play. It isn't 100% of the time, but most of the time, there's a go-to hangout house in the neighborhood. You can probably still remember that house you went to all the time in your neighborhood when you were a kid. And now that you're an adult, who doesn't want to BE the cool house? Right? So I don't have to be too concerned with where they are and such because, well, you know, they're here.
As with everything else, though, there is a trade-off here. There's the flip side of the coin (ooh, he's alluding to the title of the post, let's pay attention now!). What if you don't like the neighborhood kids? There's only so much you can do when it comes to friends and neighborhood kids when they get older than 6 or 7... In order to be the cool house, you probably have to deal with some amount of annoying kids you don't like or extra kids messing up your yard and your bathroom and eating the snacks you bought for your kids and you have to come up with games for them to play occasionally... You get the picture. If you want heads (kids close by), you have to accept that sometimes it's tails (annoyances of the baggage that comes with it).
What if you flipped a coin and it landed on the table or ground standing on edge? Almost impossible, I know, but I've seen way more almost impossible things happen (2 types of cancer in a non-smoker non-drinker before age 40, anyone?). There's a third side to the coin. No one ever calls "side," it's always heads or tails. But it could, theoretically, land on the side, right? Nobody ever thinks of that. Most would agree that I'm an abnormal person, though, so I do.
Sara has had several surgeries and gotten a lot of treatment over the past whatever amount of time. This will continue for awhile (I'll let her fill you in on the carpal tunnel in BOTH wrists and the non-cancer related possible upcoming ankle surgeries). We get the treatment that helps her out (this is heads), but there are side effects, recovery times, random fatigue (tails). What I never would have called or thought of is how many moments the coin lands on its side for us. The completely unexpected, improbable things that make you remember that there's a third side to the coin. Phone calls from a friend she hasn't talked to in forever change a day. Someone just randomly brings dinner. A few student loans got consolidated and they're lowering our payment. Someone tells Sara that she's inspired them (she's not trying to). These events give an unexpected break to the daily stream of heads or tails. Instead of remembering the hundreds of coin flips we go through every hour of the day that end up good or bad, how many of them end up on the side and throw us out of the routine (in a good way) for a few moments?
There are so many unexpected things that have happened that I can't classify as routine (as if we have one now... ha ha ha) over the last whatever amount of time. Cancer sucks. For everyone involved. Treatment can help, but it brings its own baggage as well. There are good days and bad days. Good moments and bad. The coin flips that land on the side come out of nowhere, and they are really cool to experience. If you know what I mean, then you know what I mean. If you don't... Well, this is the only way that I could think of to explain it.
This concludes today's journey. Once the lap bar lifts, please exit to your left. Thanks for your patronage. Stay random.
-Jeremy
Footnotes
1 - This will probably be the last time I start a post with an explanation of what's different when I'm writing. I mean, I probably don't need to do it at all anyway... I personally just feel like if the pilot of a plane changed while we were in flight, I'd appreciate it if the new guy said "Hi, just an FYI that some other stranger has his hands on the flight stick now." Not sure if anyone else feels this way, but as we've established, I'm driving, so I get to decide what gets written down.
2 - In all fairness, that particular sentence ruins a lot of movies... I can think of 5 off the top of my head. I'm sure an IMDB or Google search for "movies where one of the main characters is dead the whole time and actually a ghost or hallucination" would yield not only a healthy supply of responses, but probably ruin a lot of movies for you. If you don't care or don't like movies anyway, please feel free to go down that rabbit hole.
3 - It's never been that extreme of an overprotectiveness. And I'm not the type to panic externally. I spun out the car on the highway this last winter and maintained a normal conversation with the passenger throughout. Even when the car is spinning, I want to make sure that my passengers feel like I am still in control of the situation (that's probably also a metaphor for my life). Internally, though, yeah, total freakout. I can appear calm, cool, and collected, though. For the record, no accident, I kept the car on the road and we drove away with no incident.
