Debi Lewis

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The specter that has haunted us humans since the beginning, the dread of losing a child to illness, is mostly unknown to Americans today.

Except when it isn’t.

At our “office” (twelve stools in the window of our coffee shop where they let us sit and work), my friend and colleague Debi Lewis has been chronicling how a family with a member suffering from a disorder of the esophagus and the stomach, experiences day-to-day life.

Writing from a mother’s point of view, Debi’s narrative is primal. She allows us to accompany her from first consultations through testing and procedures all the way to the how-come room. Some examples:

“…Sammi had ten endoscopies. Each time, she fasted from dinner the night before until after her morning procedure. Each time, they held a gas mask over her face in the operating room until she fell asleep, and then, after escorting me out of the room, they inserted an IV with heavier anesthesia and fluids, took a blood sample, inserted a mouthpiece and fed a camera down into her esophagus.”

“…We believed in the power of information sharing among professionals, which was a mistake.”

“…He returned a moment later with a small paper cup filled with something that looked like marshmallow fluff. “It’s sweet, honey,” he said to Sammi. “I want you to swallow just one spoonful of it, and we’re going to see how fast it goes down.”

You can google “Swallow, My Sunshine” or you can use the link in the comment below. Debi’s work is beautiful. I keep it on my bookmarks toolbar.

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quiencieara

On closer look it isn’t a wedding party in the DUMBO district at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. It is a “Quinceañera” or “Fiesta de Quince.”

The girl in her new green gown had reached her fifteenth birthday and was being debuted as an adult — this would be her day. In times past she would have been considered eligible for marriage but things dealing with family, careers and divorce are very different now.

The Quinceañera is a tradition throughout much of the Spanish-speaking Americas — but not in the Old World. There is a formal entrance, toasts, dancing (especially with the Quinceañera’s father), a feast, a 15-candle ceremony followed by cake cutting and then the pulling of ribbons, one of which has a ring tied to it.

Fifteen people who have been important in the girl’s life are formally recognized.

It is a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The Quinceañera party had just come out of the hall. Even from a quarter block away, you could see that the girl is radiant.

 

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Tony Runaways

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As soon as she realized her middle boy was missing, she started calling around. It was a relief to learn that two of his friends were nowhere to be found.

America still held a Tom Sawyer view of boyhood. For better or worse, they didn’t think to put kids’ pictures on milk cartoons.

The three ran away because the parents of one them was in his face about something. The other two went along for the ride. Who would notice, really? School wouldn’t start until after Labor Day.

They weren’t but 14 years old, we think — the details of this story are sketchy.

None of the boys had seen an ocean so they decided on California. There would definitely, absolutely, be an ocean there. They didn’t have a map but one of them was sure west was that way.
On duty that weekend were three crack angels from the Bureau of Mildly Incorrigible Boys — and a good thing too. When the boys found a car with keys, they stopped to consider the pros and cons of Grand Theft Larceny. Miraculously, they decided against it. None of them had a license anyway.

They spent one night sleeping in a rusted tractor-trailer cab in a junkyard. One of them remembers the cold. They survived on snacks from filling stations and country stores. They didn’t steal.

The runaways had gone about 50 miles and were approaching Versailles State Park when a friendly older man pulled over to gave them a ride. He’d seen their kind before. They were in luck. He happened to be going their way.
It wasn’t long until he pulled up to a small-town police station and told the boys he was an off-duty officer of the law. He got on the phone and told their parents the kids were here and they were safe and they seemed like nice-enough young men and you don’t need to be too hard on them.

She sent her oldest son to bring them home. He liked to drive his Mercury and she gave him gas money. None of the boys’ parents bothered to go along. There was silence on the way home.

“Your dad and I were worried sick.” his mother told him.

In return for his solemn promise never to run away again she pulled a baking sheet out of the oven. Drop Sugar Cookies — his favorite — soft, not browned. He hated when they got the slightest bit crispy on the edges. She had made them just right and he told her they were pretty good.

Drop-Sugar Cookies For Runaways
2 cups sugar
1 cup shortening
3 eggs
¾ cup sour milk
1 tbsp baking soda in the milk
2 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp vanilla
¾ tbsp salt
5 cups flour
Cream sugar and shortening. Beat until light/fluffy. Add eggs and mix well. Add remaining ingredients. Drop by spoonful. Bake at 375º until they look right and not a second longer.

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3 generation krafft family

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When friends responded to my email asking for comments for Fathers Day, one thing became obvious. Losing a father at an early age changes just about everything.

Our local coffee joint is something of a petri dish. You can observe that when new friends begin to explain who they are, they often mention that they had lost a father or mother at an early age. It was a powerful, recurring theme for Dickens and Twain. Poor Harry Potter.

Maybe that’s why finding three generations of fathers and sons (Eric, Andrew and Eric) sitting together is something worth noticing.

Eric will emerge from under the tables where spelunkers his age love to explore, and climb onto the lap of his father, Andrew. Eric will lock an arm around his father’s neck, lean over and whisper something important to his grandfather, the man for whom he was named.

One of the three is a survivor of the Holocaust, one flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, one of them Is just now getting himself ready for kindergarten

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BB guns

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The rampage began just past noon on a Christmas Day. It was warmer than it should have been, so blame it on the weather.

One of the two shooters had been given a bb gun that morning. It was a pump instead of the Red Ryder cocking model his friend had.

Their first victim was a robin, age and gender unknown. It survived. The second was an 11-year-old kid riding a new Christmas bike — almost certainly a Huffy — the police report didn’t say.

They were imitating a scene where Davy Crockett targets a Cree through the sight of his flintlock. The boys were stunned that their bbs could travel across two lawns and actually hit the injun from Woodbine Avenue.

Nothing serious, a swollen eyelid, five minutes in the emergency room and out. The victim looked forward to playing with his assailants at school after the holidays. The boys had been lucky.

Police officers arrived just when their families were sitting down to Christmas dinners and collected the bb guns. There would be no charges — those were more forgiving times for children.

What the police and the parents didn’t know is that there had been a shooting a few weeks earlier. A new kid named Chucky ended up with a swollen lip. He was savvy enough not to tell that two boys had shot him — he needed to fit in.

Over the next summers one of the shooters would fire twenty-twos bolted to a booth at his father’s union picnics. Later he would train with an M1 on the firing ranges of Fort Knox He qualified as a marksman. They gave him a badge.

Later still the shooter spent years championing the Bill of Rights and could recite the Second Amendment word for word but he chose not to keep firearms. He figured he had had more than his share of luck.

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