Jim Hare classic posts Archives

Suite Story

I have a wireless laptop now, Walt. The hotel I am in is wired, so I am sitting
in the restaurant to relate recent remarkable events. They “comped” me
breakfast this morning. The table I’m at is a little high for typing, so I have
one leg tucked under me to raise myself up a little. The prices are high too,
eight bucks for a bowl of oatmeal, but that’s OK when you don’t have to pay.
The price is justified, I suppose, because the steel cut oatmeal is topped with
fresh raspberries, boysenberries, strawberries, and dried cherries. The lox
were excellent yesterday morning too, for nineteen dollars, with a side of
chicken leek hash. My daughter, Cindy, calls the menu “she-she”, which must
mean it appeals to the ladies because of the fancy names and ingredients.
How about “fresh fruit tower layered with lemon brittle & peppered crème
fraiche”, or “ginger seared ahi, napa cabbage & bok choy salad in cilantro-
sesame toss”!?

I happened to plan this trip to San Diego the same weekend that Cindy would
be here managing the convention she puts on each year. We are sharing a
top floor suite, and my valet and the high priced food is going on Cindy’s bill,
which she will expense. It reminds me of my corporate days with the bank.
Oh the perks!

I awoke to a reek of cigarette smoke at 3:00 AM today and couldn’t go back
to sleep. The people in the next room were partying and smoking, and
tobacco wasn’t the only smoke I smelled. So I dressed quickly and went
downstairs. At the front desk, I checked to see if the same people would be
staying there tonight. We are on a no smoking floor, and I was going to ask
to be moved, but they said those people would be checking out…good! The
desk clerk was oh so apologetic.

The valet brought the van up, and I drove off into the empty streets of the
still dark city morning, looking for a place to be. Anything is better than a
closed smoky room, even the newspaper and some awful drek to eat in a
Denny’s. All restaurants in California are smokeless.

When I returned, the desk clerk stopped me, apologized again. I felt like
apologizing back for bringing it up in the first place and causing him such
apparent anguish. In order to make the entire staff at the hotel feel better,
they decided to treat Cindy and I to breakfast, a gesture that could easily
amount to forty dollars, just for the two of us. I called upstairs to Cindy, and
she said she felt well enough to come down to collect her guilt breakfast.

She is on bed rest while her staff carries on the trade show they have been
working on for months, though she would much rather be over at the
convention center in the action than on her back in bed.

I arrived late the night before last and crept into my side of the suite without
disturbing her. The next morning I found her lounged in her bed, which sent
signals of strange up my spine. I knew something was up. Cindy does not
lounge when there is a show on. I asked her if she would like to go down for
breakfast. I told her I had already eaten and charged it to her room, but I
said I was willing to go down and visit with her while she ate.

She summoned me to sit on the bed with a wave of her arm and said she had
something to tell me. This was such a grown up gesture, I felt quite the
child. There was a resigned maturity in her voice and manner, so I sat as
commanded, and found myself bracing for bad news, holding my breath in
my best attempt at composure. She did not keep the suspense.

“Well, Dad, I’m pregnant.”

You would have to ask Cindy what I did at that moment. I don’t know. It was
the beginning of a state of shock that I still feel. My mind raced, and we
talked back and forth for a good part of the morning as the tale emerged, a
story of the positive pregnancy tests and the OBGYN’s inability to find a fetus,
even after three ultrasounds, and the discovery of two fibroid tumors. A
month after the first positive test, a fertility specialist found the fetus hiding
behind one of the tumors. Then I learned of the
self-administered progesterone shots, then the bleeding, and now the bed
rest at ten and half weeks.

She didn’t tell us, she said, because what could she say? “Dad, I’m pregnant,
but there is no fetus.”

Then with the complications, she didn’t want to tell us and then disappoint us
if things went badly. Now that it is out in the open, we can all rejoice and
worry together. The complications prompted the doctor to say it would be a
“lively pregnancy”. There are things to pray over, but we are hopeful.

That Cindy is pregnant is not a surprise. At thirty-four and single, she is in a
solid committed relationship. It is a long distance relationship until Beau is
able to sell his business in Baja and relocate in California. In the meantime,
they jet back and forth. I spoke with him, and he tells me they are happy to
be “with child”. This is not how they planned it, but here it is anyway.

I thought I might be writing stories of nostalgia over the great changes I
found in San Diego since my college days, the contrasts and memories long
obscured by urban renewal and faulty recollection. Instead I am making vivid
new memories of “remember when”, being etched deeply in me right now by
the forces of life and fate that one can only propitiate, worship, or marvel at…

I look up and see Cindy making her way across the restaurant to my table. If
you didn’t know her, you probably wouldn’t realize she was walking more
carefully than usual. It is in that same restrained spirit that I now hold the
term “grandfather” gingerly inside me, unspoken. The twin seeds of hope
and worry are hard for me to bear together, but I am inspired by the role of
Grandfather.

* * * *
It is two days later, and I can report that I gave Cindy her latest progesterone
shot myself, without the slightest hesitation, and without showing one bit of
the dread I felt over the fact that I had not ever even held a loaded
hypodermic needle in my hands before. She came down the stairs weepy and
defeated, holding the needle. On this try, she had drawn blood every
contorted time she drew back on the plunger, which, she was told, meant she
had to try another spot. After several attempts, she lost heart and came to
me.

Grandpas have to be rocks of support and harbors of safety. That is what
gave me the courage to perform this scary little task. Luckily the duty and
responsibility of an archetypical role gives great courage to someone like me
with a high wimp factor.

* * * *
One month later, and my grandchild is now inches long. Genetic counseling
and testing has proved negative for birth defects, and the tables say the odds
are only one in ten thousand there will be a problem. I am breathing easier.

I didn’t even know I wanted to be an Opa, Valt, have you had this joy?

Jim

PS My best to you Bliss

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