Oops I Did It Again

It was the phone call that every parent dreads.

“You need to take your son to the children’s emergency room at Sunrise Hospital tonight. I will call and instruct them to admit him as soon as you get there.”

 What? Can’t this wait until tomorrow?

 “No. It has to be tonight.”

 A call like that will strike fear into the heart of the strongest of fathers, and I am not the strongest of fathers. I’m a mid-forties desk jockey with a pot belly and male pattern baldness. Working out from me involves pushing away from the dessert tray. So when a pediatric orthopedist calls and tells you that your son has a serious bone infection and that he needs to be admitted to the hospital THAT NIGHT it is terrifying.
 
We called our bishop and our home teacher. Neither were home, so we left messages. Before long we had 6 of the best men I know in my house giving a priesthood blessing to my son.

And then we were off to Sunrise Hospital. The triage nurses gave him THE interview (you know, the one about whether your parents are abusive) and apparently we passed. So that was good. And then they wheeled him off to his room.

For about a week prior to all this Clayton had been dealing with some severe pain in his legs. He would wake up and almost couldn’t get out of bed. Clorinda had dutifully dragged him from doctor to doctor for two days—first to the pediatrician, then to the orthopedist, then back to the pediatrician and off to a lab for blood work. He was poked and prodded and examined ad nauseum. Nobody seemed to have any real answers, but we were hopeful that it was something minor that would soon be remedied.

Hopeful, but very, very scared.

The orthopedist’s opinion was not quite so optimistic.

 He diagnosed that Clayton was suffering from a bacterial infection deep in his leg bones. He would have to be hospitalized for at least two weeks, and would have a PIC line for the whole summer (which is just what a twelve-year-old boy wants to hear one week after school lets out) that would permit a course of very heavy antibiotics. 

Summer. Ruined.

Clayton was supposed to leave the following Monday to head to Brian Head for a week of camping, mountain biking, and fishing with the Young Men from our ward. He was so excited to go, and now he wasn’t going to be able to. In fact, he wasn’t going to be able to do much of anything that summer.

We didn’t really tell him that.

 Despite the pain and he less-than-ideal living arrangements, Clayton fell right in with the Hospital staff. He sweet-talked a nurse into giving him a wheelchair, which he would use to cruise the hallways in the Children’s Hospital. (Sidebar: this is actually an incredible talent this kid has—it really doesn’t matter the setting, Clayton will make friends quickly with anyone. I’ve watched him start conversations and make friends in line at Disneyland, sitting in an airplane, and jumping into a volleyball game in Waikiki. He is everyone’s friend.)

And we’re back. The hospital had Playstations and DVD players for the kids in their rooms, so Clayton was all over that. Some friends lent him an iPod that was loaded with all kinds of music and movies, too. The best part was all the Gatorade he could drink (of course, the flip side was that they wanted to measure the fluid passing through him, so he had to pee in a bottle, which he was not crazy about).

We had a hard time getting his doctor to come visit, but the doctor on staff at the hospital was very attentive. When Clayton’s doctor did finally get there, he asked Clayton how he was doing. Clayton was sitting in the wheelchair at the time and literally JUMPED out of the chair to the absolute SHOCK of the doctor. “Wait a minute—you could barely STAND when you were in my office two days ago! What happened?!”

As it turned out, Clayton was in the hospital only four days. Although he still had to take antibiotics, they were considerably less intense than first expected. And they were oral.

So it was all good.

Clayton was able to go on the bike trip and enjoyed a really good summer. Crisis averted.

Clorinda and I are both the oldest of 8 children. Not the same 8 mind you, and none of them, on either side, are children anymore. At least legally. In fact, not only are we each the oldest of 8, in both of our families there were two girls and six boys. Clorinda’s sister is no. 6. My sisters are no. 6 and no. 8. Both sets of parents had a knack for producing boys, and lots of them.

It was a sign. (It’s a sign alright. Going out of business!)

I mean, Clorinda was reading the (herbal) tea leaves from our respective parents’ teacups and decided that we needed to match their outputs. We would have 8 kids too! (Sidebar: we didn’t—we had 3—but that’s a story for another day.) This shows a serious flaw in her decision to marry me. She needed to marry for MONEY (not the thick wavy hair, perfect smile, and “the most beautiful blue eyes” Jerone (a 6’7” 280 lb straight, married black man) had ever seen). Critical error on her part, but DON’T TELL HER THAT! I’m pretty sure she’s already caught on to a number (a LARGE number) of critical-errors-on-her-part, and I don’t want to overwhelm her.

I had always figured I would have a son. You can read a little about that here. But I’ll be honest, the months before Clayton was born, I was terrified. I didn’t know that I could love someone the way that I loved his sister (no really, go read the other blog entry if this sounds bad), and I was SURE that there was no way I could love another child.

Not that I didn’t want to, or that I didn’t want another baby. I was just convinced that I was physiologically incapable of any more love. I would have to divide my love for Marien, but I couldn’t figure out how that would happen, either.

I learned something, though. God makes room for more love. I COULD love this new baby just as much as I did his sister, and it didn’t require me loving her any less. So that was crazy.

Clayton was big, right from the beginning. When he came out he was seriously cone-headed, like Sloth-from-Goonies cone-headed. But he was happy and content and he brought some real joy to our home. He had caught his sister in height by the time he was 3, and people often thought they were twins. When it came time to start school, Clayton stood a head taller than anyone in the class—and he was the youngest in the class! It was never hard to pick him out of a line-up.

High school meant basketball. Or at least that was Clayton’s plan. As luck would have it, the Freshman basketball coach was also one of the coaches on the Football team, and he promised Clayton a spot on the basketball team if he came out for football. 

You know, because no freshman basketball coach wants a 6’5” kid on the team unless he plays football first.

So Clayton played football. He was a tall receiver on a run-every-down team. And he hated it. Basketball season finally came around, and Clayton (surprise surprise) made the team! Also surprise surprise, the linebacker-coach-turned-freshman-basketball-coach wasn’t a very good fit for Clayton, and the season didn’t go the way Clayton had hoped. In fact, he was pretty discouraged by it all.

Fortunately, the school had just hired a new men’s volleyball coach, and when he saw a 6’5” freshman walking the halls, he knew he wanted that kid on the team. Not to say it didn’t take some convincing—Clayton was of the opinion that volleyball was a girls sport, and that he (Clayton) was destined to play golf during the Spring season. But Coach Davis was persistent, and told Clayton that if he came out to play volleyball, they would win state.

Clayton took the bait.

So here’s a fun story: the men’s volleyball team at Clayton’s high school had something like 2 wins TOTAL over the previous 3 years. They were, in a word, terrible. They were the worst of the worst. But this happened:

• Freshman year: lost in the State Championship game in 4 sets.
• Sophomore year: State Champions.
• Junior year: Back-to-Back State Champions
• Senior year: first ever in Nevada Back-to-Back-to-Back State Champions.

But this story isn’t about volleyball. Well, not directly. It’s about airplanes and school.

A year ago I watched as Marien packed up her car and headed off to college. I cried and fretted, no, I worried, nay, I was PANIC STRICKEN at the thought of my little girl heading off to college. Really, you should read that other blog entry—you'll get the idea.

I’m pleased to report that she had a wildly successful freshman year.

So a year later when Clayton decided to head off for college in Virginia, to play volleyball at Southern Virginia University, I thought I would be cool with it. I'd been through this before, I'd survived it. Here was my son, my boy, going off to college. There was no reason to have those same feelings—I mean, this kid is 6’7”, nobody is going to mess with him.

All of that leads to just one month ago (that's hard to believe in and of itself). I found myself sitting in the airport with Clayton waiting for the announcement that it was time to board. When his turn came, he walked to the agent at the gate and I stood behind, off to the right side just enough, and watched. I watched my boy walk down the jetway and turn, just before he got too far, to waive good-bye to his old man.

And wouldn’t you know it, all those feelings came rushing back. Suddenly he was that fat little coneheaded Sloth from 18 years ago. "Hey you guyyyys!"

No, that’s not quite right. He wasn’t Sloth—no, what he was was the 12 year old kid, getting rushed to the hospital to be poked and prodded and MRI’d. My little boy (who even at 12 was as tall as me) was on his way to more testing, more poking and prodding. And I felt like the helpless dad. Again.

But he was (and is) more than that little boy. He’s also a back-to-back-to-back champion.

I found my way over and took a seat right in front of the plate glass window, looking out at the plane. I fought back tears as the plane backed out, and then turned to take its place in line for take-off. He had barely taken off and I already missed him. 

Clayton had sent me a text a few weeks before he was supposed to head out. He was worried that he didn’t have what it would take to go to college. Some pre-game jitters, I suppose. I don’t think he has too much to worry about though—thus far he’s playing college like a champion. I’m excited for this kid, excited to see what is in store for him in Virginia and in the years to come.

I love you son.