Putting A Smile On My Face!

Tonight as I drove home from the hospital all I could think about was how much I love my daughter. I have always looked at her as my little girl until this week and now all I see is this beautiful young lady that possesses the brains and determination to do anything she puts her mind to.

Maggie is my first child and will always be my first everything. The first time I ever saw her I almost fainted. Since she was a c-section baby my wife and I had a divider between my wife’s upper torso and myself sitting next to her, on the other side was the doctor, Kathy’s lower torso and the surgery that was going on. When I heard the cry of the baby I told Kathy I wanted to stand and look over at the baby. We did not find out beforehand if it was a boy or a girl so I was very curious. I stood to see a baby with a head covered in red which looked like blood. I was instantly panic struck, what is wrong I thought? At which time the doctor said “we have a beautiful, healthy little redheaded girl!” As the blood rushed back into my head I realized that what I thought was blood was actually hair so I sat back down before I fell down. This was my introduction to fatherhood and life with my daughter.

Now when I say Maggie is a redhead, I mean she is not an average redhead. When she was younger her hair was like fire and keeping a low profile with a child that looked like Maggie was not an option. For Maggie it was just life and she has handled it with grace. 

Her hair was like fire and so is her personality. She was always on the go from day one. She inherited the night owl personality I had developed over years of being a bartender so I spent the first few months of her life playing with her when I would come home from work after a late evening at the country club I was managing at the time. We would play and have our time together as mama would get her sleep after a long day of tending to Maggie’s needs.

As Maggie grew up she displayed the smarts and stubbornness she had inherited from both of her parents and everything always had to be a certain way, the way she liked it, the Maggie way. The funny thing was that my wife and I noticed that she was usually correct in the way she wanted things so the two of us would laugh and shake our heads and give her the benefit of the doubt when she had a request for something.

This is where we come to this past week. Maggie wanted this surgery, she prepared herself for it over the past several months and when it was time to step up and do it she was ready and present. It is hard for us as parents to watch her struggle in pain but she just keeps pushing each day and I have a new kind of love for someone that I never thought I could love any more than I already did. I guess its respect in some ways that adds the new dynamic but it’s also a new kind of beauty I see in her. I have always been attracted to strong personalities; if you know my wife you may understand that statement a little more than others. I now see in Maggie what I have always seen in my wife a strong, now taller, (1 inch) young lady that makes me smile when I look at her.

Tonight as I left the hospital I could not say a word, I could only smile at her. I am not the kind of guy that walks around with a smile on my face but tonight I walked all the way to my car and drove all the way home with a smile on my face.

Thank you God for this gift and for keeping her safe. 

Man vs. Women, Brave vs. Toughness!

Women just put men to shame, I say this because this week I saw something that just convinced me of it and I do not think my mind could ever be changed to thinking differently.

Almost a decade and a half ago I watched my wife experience child birth and after seeing her body change and then have to experience a cesarean (c-section) birth with my daughter I figured we may be one and done. But a few years later she was ready to do it again and could not wait to “experience” it all over. She was told from the beginning that if you have a c-section the first time you most likely will have to have it again with the next and that didn’t even make her flinch.

Could you imagine a man going through child birth? I personally could not do it. I would wager to guess that if it were up to men to populate this world there would be a lot fewer of us running around.

As an athlete growing up I was a pretty competitive athlete and I never seemed to walk away from a challenge. I thought the harder something was the more I would enjoy succeeding at it. My first love was baseball and I was a catcher. The equipment used by a catcher is referred to as the tools of ignorance because you are either as tough as nails or ignorant to want to squat down in front of a guy that is going to throw a hard baseball at you at speeds of 80-100 mile per hour and oh by the way sometimes is curves, slides or knuckles in mid air as its coming at you. Years later I am finding out that I must have been ignorant because compared to what I have experienced lately I was not tough at all.

This past week if you read my last Blog post you know my daughter had corrective surgery for scoliosis. Maggie had a severe curvature of her spine and the doctor recommended she have this procedure. We first noticed the issue when she was about seven or eight years old and my wife made a visit to a specialist north of our home here in Florida.  We went through the process of a back brace for Maggie while she slept for a few years but the issue continued.

We were told that the age of fourteen was the best time to do this so the plan was the summer of her fourteenth birthday she would have this operation done. As the time approached and we made more and more visits to the doctor the reality and the intensity of that reality increased. I could feel myself growing uneasy with concern for my daughter and what she was about to experience.

As we sat in the office with the doctor and he explained how the procedure would be done and then went into the percentages of what could happen I began to worry in particular about the 2% chance of never walking again? When you hear that, you forget about the 98% chance of everything being fine and cannot help but to focus on that 2% and worry. But Maggie never wavered.

During that last week before the operation it really began to hit her and at about this time my wife being the wonderful protective mom she is offered to cancel the operation if she did not want to follow through with it. Maggie once again with all the maturity and conviction of someone, anyone that has ever set a goal said “I am doing this” and that was it.

The day came and at 4:00am we woke and headed to the hospital. After some time registering in and prepping with the nurses it was time to head to the waiting room for the next seven and a half hours. After about six of those hours the doctor came out and told us everything went wonderfully.

That, I was told was the hard part. For me the hard part had just kicked in. No parent wants to see their kid in pain but this was different. When we got to the room, finally, Maggie was a trouper. She was visibly uncomfortable but with all the pain medication she was flying high. Keeping her sense of humor about her with all the sarcasm a fourteen year old could muster she provided us with continuous comedy as she barked out her needs and demands.  Within 24 hours of her operation she stood from her bed as if unimpressed with herself. Within 48 hours she was sitting up in a lounge chair and in less than three days of having her back opened and two rods and nineteen screws placed into her spine she was walking around the hospital floor with ease.

So you want to talk about who is braver, a little girl or a full grown man? Who can handle pain, a female or a male?

I give!

I cannot compete in my own household on either level with the women I live with.

I seem to gain more and more respect for the other sex with every year I grow older. After years of being educated by my wife I am learning from my daughter how to carry oneself with confidence and pride as well the belief that things will work out.  To say that Maggie impressed me this week would be an understatement. She almost seemed to know what she had to do and focused on completing the task at hand even as those around her did not understand what was going on. The nurses told her what was going on with her body and she pushed through any pain and the frustration of the drugs in her system to reach her personal goal.

I was a bouncer for a number of years in a night club in New Jersey and I would like to offer this little bit of advice, the next time someone challenges you and your Machismo just tell them to deal with your woman because they seem to handle everything better than we do.

 I wrote this more as a journal entry for myself to keep as a remembrance of this week because this was the hardest thing I have ever had to do as a father or as a man.  I thank God everything worked out for the best and I am thankful to the doctors and nurses at the hospital for the wonderful treatment Maggie and all of our family has received this past week.  

Maggie, The Apple of My Eye!

Life is getting in the way lately but I am not complaining. For instance I am sitting here at work and can hardly focus on anything because tomorrow my baby girl will have scoliosis correction surgery. There is a much longer medical term for this but I can’t spell it and you can’t pronounce it so I figure why bother.

She is now fourteen years old and braver than I was at her age. This girl amazes me with how calm and focused she is. I am scared to death and she is determined as hell.

Last week, my wife gave her an opportunity to cancel the operation when she finally made mention of her fears and she said “no I want it done”. It is amazing how kids can be so brave and when they should be leaning on their parents for support their parents are secretly leaning on them for the same help. 

It will be a long stressful five hour waiting period tomorrow I am sure but in the end with God’s help I feel confident that all will work out for the best.

My daughter as is my son is everything to me. She is so much like me that it annoys me, but then again she is so very different than I am that I am in awe of her greatness. We have the same sense of humor which absolutely disgusts my wife some days and helps us to relate to each other on a different level other times as we try to out do each other. Basically, she gets me and what else could a father want than to be understood by his daughter.

Most days I can do nothing but shake my head as I watch her grow into a beautiful young lady. I am sure this will be another thing that will keep me awake at night. If my sister thought she had it hard with me looking over her shoulder I can imagine my baby girl will also have a more difficult time of it with any boy that dares to step foot into my house.

Maggie is as smart as a whip and loving, she gets that from her mother, but she is also carefree, confident and above all caring of others at the same time. I cannot wait to see her beautiful smiling face after this is all over with tomorrow and then watch her take on high school over the next four years.

I ask that you keep her in your thoughts and prayers over the next few days. 

On a different subject; I decided to go back to being 100% Primal, and made my adjustments over the weekend to starting today. I feel at my best when I am eating this way and decided it was time to buckle down and get to business. I have become so much healthier over the past few years with Beachbody fitness programs being my primary vehicle toward a better lifestyle. I am stronger and feel much better but nutrition was something I never really totally committed to.

When I did the 21 Day Primal Blueprint in June of 2012 during my transition from my old job to my current job I lost 16 pounds in that twenty-one day period and I should have never stopped.  I spent the weekend putting things in place and I am looking forward to committing and making the next set of changes in my journey.

The goal is to be in better shape at 50 years old than I was when I was 30 years old and sadly I do not think it will be all that hard to accomplish. Maybe I should make that goal 20? Maybe I will. That’s what goal setting is all about.