Jew Eat Yet?

Sick Day: My 1960s TV Sitcom Cure

 

Charlie is sick with a cold. Not a huge deal but with his history we took him to the doctor who prescribed two breathing treatments that we’re giving him every few hours via a panda-shaped nebulizer (we so did not ask for a creepy animal-shaped device!). He’s already had one regular flu shot and we’re waiting for the H1N1 shots to arrive as well as a special series of insanely expensive vaccines he needs to protect himself from the potentially serious RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). Scary when preemies are released from the hospital in the throes of flu season. Especially this year, with the most flu fear-mongering on record since Europe was decimated by the Bubonic Plague. A bunch of people in my extended family (including young children) have already gotten and recovered from Swine Flu. Not to underestimate the seriousness of this illness, especially for people like Charlie, but to hear the news reports, you’d think we’d be tripping over piles of corpses on every corner. Oy.

I was just telling Kendall how much I liked being sick as a kid. Besides the fun of staying home from school, my mother always ordered a new set of Play-Doh from the pharmacy. They would hand deliver it to our house along with the two medicinal staples of my childhood: orange-flavored chewable aspirin and Vicks VapoRub. What a treat to open up the virgin cardboard cans of Play-Doh and behold the untouched blue, red, yellow, and green before my brother and sister could get their grubby little hands on them and mush up the colors into an ugly brown. But the main draw of sick days was getting to stretch out in my parents’ luxurious bed and watch copious amounts of TV.

It’s appalling how much television I watched as a kid. I’ve written often about my TV-saturated childhood. How The Waltons helped get me through my parents’ divorce, how Julie Newmar ignited my sexual fantasies, how Zoom gave me my first taste of fame, how Maude taught me all I needed to know about feminism, how Barney Fife made me feel less alone, how the Magic Door nurtured my Jewish roots, and so on. I’ve written endless posts about the highs and lows of television from the days when there were only three major networks.

Of course TV viewing practices are so different today. I have a few shows that I watch but in most cases I don’t even know what nights they air. Except for one—my favorite show, Mad Men, which concluded its fourth season Sunday night. Kendall and I are so obsessed with this series that we wait breathlessly in front of our TV set for each episode to begin, just like in the old days. I’m always stunned at how much Mad Men reflects my actual childhood whether through the constant references to 1960s pop culture or Betty Draper’s frequent bark to her children to “go watch TV” when she wants to get rid of them. I’ve heard that line has become part of a drinking game on some college campuses. Whenever Betty orders Sally and Bobby Draper out of the room to go watch TV, you have to down a shot.

I never had to be ordered to watch TV when I was the age of the Draper kids, I was already glued to the front of the screen. It horrifies me to remember that I would watch TV before school (Captain Kangaroo, Ray Rayner), while home for lunch (half an hour of Bozo’s Circus and half an hour of Let’s Make a Deal), the minute I got home from school (Garfield Goose, Mickey Mouse Club, etc.), during dinner (we had a small RCA television perched at the end of our kitchen table and would watch nightly reports of the Vietnam War as we ate sweet and sour meatballs), and of course, the full gamut of prime time fare. Yet I also remember spending countless hours outside playing with my friends. Were there more hours in the day back then?

As I think about my brain cell-killing habits today, I am most interested in my memories of the more obscure programs from the 1960s. Sure, I was addicted to top Nielsen family sitcoms such as Mr. Ed, Bewitched, Petticoat Junction, and the Beverly Hillbillies, but how about all the programs that did not withstand the test of time? Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I now present you my Top Ten Obscure TV Shows of the 1960s. There are so many more, but these are the first ten that popped into my head (that have clips on YouTube). They are presented in chronological order:

My Living Doll (1964)

I touched on this show in my old Julie Newmar post but it’s worth mentioning again. It only lasted one season and since I remember every episode (including the one in which Bob Cummings was teaching sexy android Julie how to get into a girdle) I can date the beginning of my sexual education to age five! The premise of the show was the height of Johnson-era male fantasies—developing a uber-sexy robot who will do anything you program it to. Of course much of the series would be considered appalling by today’s standards. In order to become the perfect woman, Rhoda (Julie’s character, also known as AF709) was trained in housekeeping, cooking, and total subservience to men but she often managed to have the last laugh. I remember being sad when the show was cancelled but all was forgiven a few years later when Newmar appeared in her skin-tight costume as Catwoman on episodes of Batman. 

My Mother the Car (1965)

Another show I watched religiously and one that is arguably considered to be the worst sitcom in the history of television. Pretty high concept though, I can just hear that elevator pitch: “a guy’s mom is reincarnated as a 1928 Porter automobile.” Hello? I actually watched a full episode of this series online recently and for such a preposterous premise it was surprisingly watchable (not that I needed to see any more episodes). The series was created by Allan Burns who went on to create true classics such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda. I enjoyed Jerry Van Dyke in the lead (who "auditioned" for this show via a two-episode stint on The Dick Van Dyke Show, the best sitcom of the 1960s). The voice of the car was played by sexy screen star Ann Sothern. This might have been one of the first TV themes I committed to memory (and it’s still there in my brain, taking up valuable space!).

Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1965)

I loved this show, based on the Doris Day/David Niven movie from a few years earlier (and the book by Jean Kerr), about a family who buys a gigantic but somewhat decrepit Victorian mansion in the suburbs. The show starred lovely Pat Crowley as the overwhelmed mother of four boys and Mike Miller (dad to actress Penelope Ann Miller) as college professor Jim Nash. The kids were awfully cute as was the giant sheepdog named Ladadog that made me beg my parents to get us one. Kendall and I referred to this show often when we explained the purchase of our large West Adams home. Just like the Nashes, we couldn’t afford anything smaller!

Love on a Rooftop (1966)

Does anyone remember this one? It starred the late Peter Duel (who killed himself a few years later) as architect Dave Willis and Judy Carne (Burt Reynolds’ wife at the time) as his bubbly free-spirit wife Julie. I haven’t seen an episode of this show since the 60s but I remember the scripts as mini-Neil Simon plays. The Willis’s neighbor was played by Rich Little. The series was cancelled after a year and Duel went on to much bigger fame in Alias Smith and Jones before his untimely death. I think there are still séances here every year in which people try to contact him. Carne went on to become the “Sock It To Me” girl on Laugh-In before descending into heroin addiction. Yikes.

He and She (1967)

I loved, loved, loved this show because I loved, loved, loved the stars, real-life married couple Dick Benjamin and Paula Prentiss. Benjamin played successful cartoonist Dick Hollister and Prentiss his social worker wife. Dick’s main creation, “Jetman,” had become a TV series with the lead played by egomaniacal Jack Cassidy who was perfect in the role. (Cassidy’s character seemed a precursor to Ted Baxter and he ended up playing Baxter's older brother in a few episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.) I was only eight when this show aired but I remember it as one of the most literate shows on TV. The writers (including Allan Burns) won an Emmy that year but the show was stupidly cancelled after only one season.

The Mothers-in-Law (1967)

I never missed this Sunday night sitcom. I have a vivid memory of eating ribs at our kitchen table from the Black Angus restaurant in Chicago while watching the crazy Lucy-like antics of stars Kaye Ballard and Eve Arden. The similarities to I Love Lucy were no accident–the show was produced by Desi Arnaz (now divorced from Lucy) and written by Madelyn Pugh Davis and Bob Carroll of I Love Lucy fame. The show also starred teen actress Deborah Walley (the one-time Gidget sadly died of cancer years ago) but it belonged to those two aging dames. Of course at the time the show aired I thought Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard were positively ancient. Turns out Arden was 59 when the show started and Ballard only 42. The two of them had great chemistry—almost as good as Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance!

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1968)

This was my first exposure to our beloved Charles Nelson Reilly who starred in this sitcom with Hope Lange and Edward Mulhare (based on the 1947 movie) about a house that is haunted by the ghost of a 19th century sea captain. Charles played the bumbling Claymore Gregg, a descendent of the ghost, and Mrs. Muir’s landlord. I remember the great character actress Reta Shaw as the housekeeper (remember her in Mary Poppins?) but did not care for the two child actors who played Lange’s kids. Loved the family dog, though, a wire-haired terrier named Scruffy who had the uncanny ability to cock his head on cue. Not a great show, but Charles excelled. Watching him at the age of nine, I never could have dreamed that 41 years later I’d be naming my son after him.

Julia (1968)

TV was really starting to change in 1968. The Smothers Brothers were presenting controversial political humor, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In was pushing every imaginable envelope, the very hip Mod Squad was taking over crime-solving from the older generation of TV sleuths, and Diahann Carroll broke ground as the first African-American woman to star in a TV series in which she wasn’t the maid. Carroll played Julia Baker, a single mom (her husband had been shot down in Vietnam, a country that had never even been mentioned on a sitcom before this) who was a nurse (okay, it was still 1968, there weren’t too many “lady doctors” on TV yet!) for a craggly old white guy played by Lloyd Nolan. Unlike most black women on television, Julia was actually allowed to have a sex life and got to date African-American hunks Paul Winfield and Fred Williamson. The show was hardly a hard-hitting depiction of life for African-Americans in the 1960s but that was sort of the point—to have Diahann Carroll play a regular non-stereotypical sitcom character. Still, the reluctance to delve into the racial issues that plagued the country at the time brought a lot of criticism by African-American groups. I had a bit of a crush on Julia’s neighbor Marie Waggedorn (played by Betty Beaird) who was the mother of redheaded Earl J. Waggedorn. Always great character actress Lurene Tuttle also starred in this show. Dig the psychedelic opening credits!

The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1969)

“People let me tell you about my best friend, he’s a warm-hearted person who’ll love me till the end…” Anyone who watched TV in the late 60s knew this theme song and I never forgot a single word of it. This was a sweet sitcom trying to be counterculture hip (based on the movie starring Glenn Ford and Ronnie Howard) about a widower named Tom Corbett and his young son Eddie. The show starred a pre-Hulk Bill Bixby and little Brandon Cruz  who later started a hardcore punk band and also sang for the Dead Kennedys. It was one of the first sitcoms to inject some real dramatic moments into the half-hour plotlines and it actually dealt with some serious issues during its two-year run. Oscar-winning actress Miyoshi Umeki co-starred as the Corbett’s wise housekeeper, Mrs. Livingston. I still find myself imitating Umeki’s stilted English from time to time (“Hello, Mr. Eddie’s Father!”) causing Leah to go apoplectic with cries of racism.

My World and Welcome To It (1969)

I would love to see this show again. In my memory, it was way ahead of its time and absolutely brilliant. Based on the writings and cartoons of James Thurber, it starred William Windom as a Thurber-like cartoonist working for a sophisticated New Yorker-like magazine. Windom would frequently have his daydreams and fantasies acted out (using very cool Thurber-ish animation) on this intelligent show that again was inexplicably cancelled after one season. John Hotchkiss played Windom’s wife (she also played Oscar Madison’s girlfriend on The Odd Couple) and their daughter was played by Lisa Gerritsen who went on to play Phyllis Lindstrom’s daughter Bess on Mary Tyler Moore.

So there you have it, kids, your guide to what to watch during your next case of Swine Flu. With the lack of original programming on TV these days, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these old chestnuts remade for current audiences. Let's see...how about Mario Lopez starring in a sitcom in which his deceased mother comes back as an iPod Touch? 

Your Children Are Not Your Children

 

It’s strange having an infant and a teenager at the same time. As a baby, Charlie is completely dependent on us for survival. Though he is no longer hooked up to the ventilators, IV drips, and various machines that kept him alive during his first tumultuous months, it is still essential that we focus on his needs 24 hours a day, there’s no way he could fend for himself in this world. My daughter, Leah, on the other hand, is in the midst of the boundary-shaping stage of adolescence that will ultimately enable her to function as an independent adult. We are still responsible for her physical and emotional well-being, as we are with Charlie, but the goal with Leah is to begin to extricate ourselves as best we can and allow her to make decisions and figure out how to get along in the world—an exciting but frequently painful process to go through as a parent. While offering loving support, we have to let her work through more and more stuff on her own, including feelings of sadness, disappointment, and grief.

Because Charlie is so dependent on us, it’s tempting to think of him as a blank slate on which we can fashion the best person our collective wisdom is capable of. But is this really true? Are we Pygmalion to his Galatea? Henry Higgins to his Eliza Doolittle? Not bloody likely. While I don’t underestimate the important role and influence Kendall and I have as Charlie’s parents, I can also see that there are already aspects of his personality that are all him, not us. As parents, we can work hard to create a loving foundation of support and trust that will benefit our children throughout their lives. We can also fuck up our kids royally and ensure their future presence in therapists’ offices. (I guess most of us do a little bit of both!) But if there’s one thing I’ve learned as an older parent it’s that we are not creating our children out of whole cloth. There is no blank slate on which we can showcase our handiwork.

On the one hand, that realization is a relief (what if that tapestry was fashioned entirely from our neuroses?). On the other hand, it’s an affront to our egos and our narcissistic desires to see our children as extensions of ourselves. I think I did that a lot with Leah which is why the early years of her adolescence were difficult for me. I had to learn not to take it personally as Leah began pulling away and wanting to spend a lot more time with her friends than with me or the other adults in her life. Which, God knows, is as it should be, but it was still a shock since I was so used to being involved in every part of her life and activities. I remember hiding in the bushes at her school when she was in Kindergarten and watching her interact with the other kids, agonizing over every slight. Let’s face it, having kids is a wonderful, joyful, and painful process. Loving anyone that much carries with it the potential for so many different kinds of loss. Even when our kids are happy and healthy, there’s an element of loss we experience every day. I grieve the little girl that Leah was just as I enjoy and celebrate the young woman she has become. After everything Charlie has been through, Kendall and I already feel a bit of a panic that he’s growing up so fast! It’s hard for me to talk about these feelings because I’m happy and excited about all the changes we see every day, but they still represent elements of loss. Do I sound crazy?

I was talking to my dad on the phone yesterday and he said to me, “As a parent, I’m only ever as happy as my least happy child.” What? Of course I understand this sentiment and recognize that it's based in his strong love for his three children, but it is so rife with dysfunction I begged him to write it down and hand deliver it to a therapist. God love him, but it’s the kind of philosophy that has led to us keeping some of our feelings from him for fear of causing too much pain. Who needs that kind of responsibility? Sometimes Leah will want to tell me something that’s going on in her life but she’ll preface it with “Now, Dad, please don’t freak out when I tell you this.” Freak out? Moi? (Hey, stop laughing all those who know me!) I don’t want to be that dad hiding in the bushes crying because some snot-nosed Kindergartener snubbed my child. And I hope I won’t be anymore. Going through the ordeal of losing a child this year and watching Charlie fight for his life made me realize more than ever how we are all on our own journeys and how going through all sorts of painful emotions can lead to many gifts. I've also seen how our own loving actions work in tandem with aspects of our children that have absolutely nothing to do with us.

When Leah was born in 1994, we sent out baby announcements that included the poem “On Children” by Khalil Gibran. I recognized the beauty and wisdom of the words back then but I didn’t come close to understanding the poem the way I do now.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
But seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

First Halloween

 

This is how Charlie woke up this morning, happy as a clam. That is, until we forced him into the requisite baby pumpkin costume.

I wonder what babies think of this strange holiday where they are dressed in some crazy outfit and a parade of terrifying goblins and ghouls come to their door. Can you guess what Leah’s costume is this year? She’s “Where’s Waldo?” Halloween was always a huge deal in our house. My mother would get so into the holiday I’d start to wonder whether the medieval belief that redheads were witches was true. She would decorate every inch of our house and organize the spookiest Halloween party in the neighborhood. I especially remember her scaring the bejeesus out of me and my blindfolded friends by passing around disgusting human entrails such as cantaloupe “eyeballs” and cold spaghetti “veins.” Every year my mother delighted in becoming the ugliest witch possible. She’d spend days dying sheets black in huge pots and fashioning her putty nose, bushy eyebrows, and hairy moles.

Below is my mom before her transformation and then just after. How many times have you seen a witch making a business call? Notice the cigarette in her hand in both pictures—truly the spookiest thing of all considering she would eventually die of lung cancer.

 

We are bracing ourselves for a huge onslaught of trick-or-treaters tonight. Everyone knows by now that Kendall gives out full-size candy bars (she just bought 300 of them—oy!) so at this point I wouldn’t be surprised to see buses of costumed moppets unloading in front of our house.

Here is seven-year-old Leah following in her grandmother's bewitched footsteps. When we were little, we didn’t stop trick-or-treating until we had several grocery bags filled to the brim with candy. It's a wonder I have any teeth left. Luckily, Leah was always into the social aspects of Halloween more than the coma-inducing sugary ones. She recently wrote a post on her blog decrying the holiday for giving girls her age an excuse to dress inappropriately. Indeed, the Halloween party held at her school a few nights ago looked like a dress rehearsal for a Cecil B. DeMille production of “Sodom and Gomorrah.” Leah looked so innocent in her Waldo costume. Not that my actress daughter is incapable of looking far older than her 14 years. Yesterday she received her final lice treatment (talk about spooky ordeals!) which involved yet again forcing a tiny comb through her voluminous red curls. As a result, her hair transformed into a gigantic cumulous cloud of auburn frizz. Instead of freaking out about it, Leah did what any seasoned thespian would do. She slapped on some make-up, grabbed one of her mother's dresses, and organized an impromptu photo shoot. Is this supermodel below really the same little witch from a few years ago? Yikes!

 

Happy Halloween, kids. Save me the Butterfingers.

Half-Birthday

 

Here is Charlie celebrating his half-birthday is an outfit hand-knit for him by the talented Ellen Bloom of L.A. Is My Beat. My son is one of the best-dressed babies in Los Angeles, certainly light years ahead of his dad!

It is so hard to believe that six months have passed since that day last April. We are so very grateful to have Charlie home with us now and that he is thriving after six major surgeries and so many months in intensive care, but I’m still feeling some of the after-effects of the PTSD that resulted from that terrifying time. This morning I was doing some work on my computer at a coffee shop on Larchmont when the clock struck the times our sons were born: 9:46 for Oliver and 9:48 for Charlie. Oliver was first and he was significantly bigger than Charlie. During Kendall’s short pregnancy, Oliver always dominated the ultrasounds, healthy and active and blocking (protecting?) his brother from view. For a while we knew that Oliver was a boy but he kept moving so much he obscured a good look at his Charlie’s parts.

But for whatever reasons, our rambunctious, full-of-life boy was not strong enough to survive premature childbirth. We still don’t know what caused Kendall to go into labor at 24 weeks, there were none of the usual infections and Oliver’s extensive autopsy showed that his body and organs were developing perfectly. But from the second he was born, the doctors struggled mightily to keep him alive. None of the lines were going in as easily as they were on Charlie. Nothing was working and with each passing hour more extreme measures were considered and then rejected as being too invasive in his fragile state. “Let’s wait until morning and see if he stabilizes” was the constant refrain. He died less than 12 hours after he was born. We miss him every day.

If I had to remember one moment from that horrific day, it would be when I had what I'd have to call an out-of-body experience in the operating room. Minutes earlier Kendall and I were in another room discussing the fact that Kendall was going to have to spend the rest of her pregnancy (weeks or even months, we naively thought) at Cedars. What?! We couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t we just go home and take it easy? We tried to bargain with the doctors. “Well, we’ll take another look tomorrow and re-evaluate,” they said as they left the room. Suddenly the contractions monitor that Kendall was strapped to went completely berserk. The needle I’d been watching left the usual position and bounced literally off the chart. And it stayed there. Kendall doubled over in pain and collapsed on the bed causing me to run into the hall and start screaming like Shirley MacLaine. The doctor who had just examined Kendall came back in the room. She put her hands between Kendall’s legs and shouted in panic: “I’M TOUCHING THE BABY’S HEAD! KENDALL, KEEP YOUR LEGS TOGETHER AND DO NOT PUSH!” Kendall was wheeled out immediately and I was told to stay put in the now empty room. The next thing I knew I was pushed into a surgical gown and thrust into the operating room.

The first thing I saw was Kendall on the operating table, her emergency C-section just completed and her internal organs in full view. I spun around to the other side of the small room and saw Oliver and Charles, each on his own surgical table with teams of doctors working around them. Both babies were a frightening color but only Oliver had bruises over much of his body. His sweet little mouth was black. Charlie was covered in bubble wrap and despite the horror of his appearance, someone told me that he was doing okay. This was when I traveled out of my body. I was desperately trying to understand what was happening but it was just too much to take in. I felt woozy and like I was in a dream and I started to bounce about the room like a pinball, coming close to several of the busy doctors who shouted at me to move back. I felt my body rising like a balloon to the ceiling of that cramped room and looking down at myself and the teams of doctors working furiously on my wife and two sons. Our OB/GYN had finally arrived and she was stitching Kendall up. I looked over to Oliver and Charles and couldn’t believe what I was seeing or how such tiny, alien-looking creatures could possibly survive. I felt like if I didn’t stop rising above them I would keep drifting past the confines of Cedar-Sinai and into space. “STOP! Those are your children,” I repeated to myself over and over again. “Your sons. There is your wife. They all need you. Come back into your body. You have to come back.” As I repeated this mantra, I began floating down into the room and back into my body. I still couldn’t process what was happening but I knew I had to be there for my family.

That’s about all of that day that I can handle right now. There’s a lot more but I’ve learned during the past six months when I need to ground myself in the present. We lost so much that day but we also gained our wonderful son who would face endless travails over the next 137 days. I wish I could say that I was always filled with confidence and certainty that Charlie would be coming home with us, but that would be a lie. In those early weeks, I couldn’t allow myself to think such a thing and it made me painfully uncomfortable when anyone said anything about it, even Kendall. But as we got to know Charlie, his wonderful personality, and his incredible drive to survive, the love I felt for him trumped any fears I had about his chances for survival. I unabashedly threw myself into hopes and prayers for the time when he’d be home in our arms. And now that time is here as we ecstatically mark his half-birthday. Never getting to know Oliver’s unique personality other than his playful in-utero antics is a sadness we’ll have to live with for the rest of our lives. But Charlie brings us so much joy and happiness that his brother’s sacrifice was definitely not in vain. Happy Half-Birthday, my beautiful sons.

Ashes to Ashes, Soup to Nuts

 

Soupy Sales died on Thursday. That name is such a part of my childhood I feel compelled to pay tribute. Truth be told, and I guess this is awful to say so soon after his death, I never really “got” Soupy Sales when I was a kid. Today I can see how his physical comedy and wink-to-the-audience hi-jinks paved the way for all sorts of comedians and children’s entertainers that would follow, but back in the 1960s I just didn’t think he was very funny. I was unmoved by his pie-throwing antics and low budget puppets. I was a loyal fan of “Kukla, Fran, and Ollie” and I didn’t think Sales could compete with the Kuklapolitan benchmark, not that he was trying to. There’s no question that Soupy Sales was a phenomenon in the 1960s. And it wasn’t only among kids. College campuses would practically empty out when his daily show was on. He held onto his goofy persona well into senior citizenhood, and like many comedians, occasionally got a chance to show off his acting chops in serious roles, often with a dark twist.

Looking back into the archives and knowing what a huge hit hit he was in various TV incarnations, I was surprised to see how wary the critics were of Soupy Sales from the very beginning. The first mention of him in the New York Times is a sour review from July 1955:

The kiddies, subjected to one abominable television pitch after another, have a new performer trying to woo their favor locally. He is called “Soupy Sales” and he made his local debut on Channel 7 last night.

The show was loud, unimaginative, and annoying. It introduced hand puppets that behaved like seedy relations of those appearing on “Kukla, Fran, and Ollie,” the program for which “Soupy Sales” is a summer substitute. At times, “Soupy” himself suggested a combination of Pinky Lee and Jerry Lewis at their most obstreperous.

For children, too, the prescription would seem to be long hours in the fresh air away from video as long as the summer lasts.

But what could we expect from mid-1950s television, right? All TV back then was sophomoric and unsophisticated compared to today, yes? NO! I was flabbergasted to look at the TV listings from the day in July 1955 when Soupy premiered in New York and realize how much better television was 54 years ago. Take a look at this sampling and tell me if you think today’s idiot programmers would put most of these shows on:

2:30—Youth Wants to Know. Rep. W. Sterling Cole, member of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and the House Armed Services Committee will talk to teens.

3:00—Frontiers of Faith. The relation of churches to urban and rural life will be the theme discussed.

6:30—You Are There. “General Washington’s Farewell to His Officers,” CBS correspondents covering.

7:00—Report from Geneva. Latest news from the peace conference with Howard Smith, Edward R. Murrow, and Eric Sevareid reporting.

8:00—Variety Hour. Jack Webb, Janet Leigh, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, guests.

8:00—Producer’s Showcase. “The Four-poster,” Jan de Hartog’s romantic comedy about married life. With Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn.

8:30—Music ’55. Yehudi Menuhin and Duke Ellington will be the guests.

8:30—Concert. Leontyne Price, soprano, and William Warfield, baritone, guests.

9:00—Television Playhouse. Calder Willingham’s “Incident in July,” with Maureen Stapleton. A young married woman acquires a destructive affection for a seventeen year old boy. With Dick York.

9:00—“Man With Vengeance.” Story about a film director intent on making a superb motion picture while seeking revenge on an actor. With Barry Sullivan and Luther Adler.

10:00—Television Theatre. “Death of Billy the Kid,” with Paul Newman, Frank Overton, Michael Conrad, and others.

10:00—Name’s the Same. Panel show with Clifton Fadiman, moderator. Hildy Parks, Mike Wallace, panelists.

10:30—What’s My Line? Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, Fred Allen, panelists. John Daly is the moderator.

10:30—The Search. A new approach to the diagnosis and cure of deafness in children. Dr. William Hardy will explain the procedure to viewers.

There were so many great shows on that week. Every night featured several original dramatic productions for television starring the biggest stars of the day along with endless variety shows, classic sitcoms, concerts, serious news coverage, and cultural explorations. True, the commercials were mostly ridiculous, and some of the sitcoms would seem hideously dated today, but the overall quality of programming seemed shockingly high.

But back to Soupy. Despite my aversion to some of his antics, he definitely pushed the envelope. A few years later, he was given a night-time slot which featured classy folks like Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, and Shirley MacLaine getting pies in the face. Here’s an L.A. Times review of that 1962 show:

According to reports seeping back from the rest of the country, viewers tuned to the ABC network last Friday evening are still in a state of shock.

That was the night ABC unleashed a character named Soupy Sales. Here in Southern California we are more or less used to Soupy, especially those of us harboring teenagers in our homes.

This marked the first time, however, that a national night-time audience had witnessed Soupy—or anything like him, since Halley’s Comet last passed over.

Those who stayed the full 30 minutes got a bonus shock as Frank Sinatra (in person) came on and broke into “Foggy Day in London Town,” then stepped into Soupy’s alleyway and got pasted in the face with a meringue pie.

To the saner element in TV-land, it just didn’t square that the high-priced Sinatra would be found slumming on what probably is the lowest budget show on TV outside of the nightly weather reports.

Soupy might best be described as the poor slob’s Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. His nighttime network debut inspired many critics to dust off expletives they haven’t used since Ed Sullivan started on TV. “A mishmash of mediocrity,” said Variety. “For kids with low IQ’s,” snapped a wire service critic.

ABC executives so far have maintained a fearful silence. They won’t side in with these critics unless Soupy fails to get a mandate from the viewers, which he is just likely to receive.

After watching Soupy’s show, one gets the feeling that he is at least honest. He is not trying to tell us that TV isn’t a wasteland. He is simply saying, “Try me and see the best waste in town.”

Okay, now I feel guilty. With tributes like this, dearly departed comedians don’t need any enemies. Sorry, Soupy, I really do respect your drive and innovation. Especially after being consistently trashed by the snooty critics. Does anyone even remember that before Johnny Carson began his long stint on “The Tonight Show,” it was Soupy Sales who first took over for Jack Paar?

“Why should I be afraid to follow Jack Paar? I once followed Sharkey the Seal!” This display of reckless bravado comes from pie-in-your-eye Soupy Sales as he departs for New York to tilt at those sacred windmills left on NBC’s Tonight Show by the omniscient Paar.

“I was supposed to hit Paar with a pie when he bowed out on his last show,” Soupy reports. “He thought it would be better than a lot of tears, but he changed his mind. Instead of me, he had Bobby Kennedy and it was all tears. There was even a sign at the end of the show which read, ‘No more to come.’ I guess he figured his leaving would close up the network.”

Soupy may not be what the FCC’s Newton Minow needs to irrigate TV’s wasteland, but with a pie for a lance, he is ready to assault the problem singlehandedly.

When Soupy takes over the help of Tonight he intends to play it “cool, but enthusiastic,” just the way he did on that day he had to follow Sharkey the Seal.

“They’re always giving guys like this Carl Sandburg awards for something he did on TV. Sure, he goes on TV and picks up the bread, then turns around and makes a speech knocking TV. I don’t dig that,” says an indignant Soupy. I wanted to know if he had decided what to do on the Tonight Show.

“Not yet, but I’m not going to solve anything, you can be sure.”

Soupy could turn out to be the hit of the show.

It's not every comedian who has the hubris to publicly insult people like Carl Sandburg! Soupy was born Milton Supman in 1926. His was the only Jewish family in their small town in North Carolina. I can only imagine what that was like for him growing up in the 1930s and I’d guess that this helped lead him into a life of comedy. Soupy's life and career were not without controversy. He was famously fired from one national show in 1965 when he told kids to go into their mothers’ purses and send him all the “green paper” they could find containing pictures of the presidents. Hundreds of children across the children did this causing their parents to go apoplectic when they discovered why their kids had mailed the TV host their cash. Love him or hate him, Soupy Sales was an original. Here is some classic Soupy…

Overlapping Generations

 

I look at my son's face and see the history of my family in his smiling countenance. I never dreamed I'd have a baby a decade into the twenty-first century and I think of all my family members born during the nineteenth century that I knew so well. I wish Charlie could know them, and the ones who came before. On some level, I think he does. 

The last veteran of the Civil War died just before I was born. There were lots of people around during my childhood whose grandparents and even parents had been born slaves. I remember endless lines of old World War I veterans marching in parades down Chicago’s State Street when I was a kid. And since I was born only 14 years after World War II ended, there were obviously plenty of those youngish vets around, as well as survivors of the Nazi Holocaust including a number of my close friends’ parents.

Sometimes when you hear people talking about different generations you’d think that every person born during a previous era dropped dead on the same day, making way for the next group. Of course it doesn’t work that way. Many different generations overlap in one person’s lifetime and the older generations depart so slowly that it sometimes comes as a total shock and surprise when we realize they’re gone.

My great-grandparents, about whom I’ve written often, died when I was 12 years old. As I mentioned in one post about my great-grandfather’s recorded album of Yiddish songs, he was born less than a decade after Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. The year Itshe Meyer Korolnek arrived on this planet, George Eastman invented the first flexible, paper-based film. Republican Chester Arthur was President of the United States, Queen Victoria was in the heyday of her long reign, and Czar Alexander III had recently ascended to the throne to become the Emperor of All the Russias (his virulent anti-Semitic policies would ultimately lead to my family’s departure from eastern Europe). And yet I knew Itshe Meyer and my great-grandmother Alta Toba during most of my childhood. Even though my grandfather was born in 1907 in my family’s Polish shtetl of Staszow, he was only three when they arrived in Toronto and he never had a Yiddish accent or any of the other immigrant trappings. My grandfather died several weeks after Leah was born and most of his seven brothers and sisters died during the 1990s. Of that generation, only my Auntie Anne survives. She lives in Israel and has four great-great-grandchildren. How many people can ever say that?

When Kendall and I were kids, our obsession with old movies was enhanced by the still living stars of yesteryear. Kendall went to an event honoring Claudette Colbert and got to meet the screen legend. Her dad once interviewed (and inadvertently insulted) movie goddess Marlene Dietrich. I ran into Gloria Swanson walking her dog in New York and trailed her several city blocks. On my second date with Kendall in 1989, we went to a charity event attended by a host of MGM stars including Janet Leigh, June Allyson, and Margaret O’Brien. We also went to a Friars Club roast of Ann Miller where we mingled with other stars from our favorite films. One by one, these people started to die off, especially the stars of the 1920s and 30s. Who is left now? Perhaps only the child stars of the 30s—Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, and a few elderly holdouts such as Luise Rainier and sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine. I remember saying (in perhaps one of my gayest moments ever) that I couldn’t imagine living in a world without people like Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn. And now both are gone. Now the stars of the 1940s and 50s have become the Old Guard. Of that group I am grateful that we still have people like our friends Betty Garrett, Barbara Rush, and Eva Marie Saint along with other movie luminaries such as Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas, Jane Russell, Jennifer Jones, Esther Williams, Doris Day, Leslie Caron, and Tony Curtis. By the time Charlie is an adult, who will be the screen elders? Winona Ryder? Claire Danes? Matt Damon and Ben Affleck? Oy.

I don’t know what made me start this stream-of-consciousness rant. I guess it was the recent visit from my dad and the shocking realization that my parents’ generation is now firmly entrenched as our elders. That sort of snuck up on me. I still view my parents as eternally youthful even though my dad is 77 and my mom has been dead for 10 years. Still, comparing them to my great-grandparents' generation, I'd have to say that 80 is the new 50, they DO seem more youthful than their elderly predecessors. I guess some of these issues were bound to come up being the 50-year-old father of a small baby. I see the Facebook pages of many of my old high school friends talking about their adorable grandchildren and I think “Huh? How is that possible?” I start to hyperventilate when I realize that I’ll be 63 at Charlie’s Bar Mitzvah or how unlikely it is that I’ll be around when he turns 50. Then, before I ramp up into a full-blown anxiety attack, I work at bringing myself back to my major lesson of the past six months: LIVING IN THE MOMENT. Today I am perfectly healthy and joyfully able to raise my teenaged daughter and my infant son. Today I have the benefit of my father’s wisdom, love, and neuroses, and I’m able to hear the wonderful stories from people in his generation and a few people from my grandparents’ peer group. And somewhere in the hills of Carmel, California, Doris Day is still singing “Que Sera Sera,” if not to the public at large, then at least to her dogs. Relax, Danny. All is well in the world.

Update: I was reviewing this post last night and clicked on the above link to my great-grandfather's record. As soon as Charlie heard Itshe Meyer's voice, he went nuts—flailing his arms wildly and completely rocking out. You can take the boy out of the shtetl but you can't take the Yiddishkeit out of the boy...

If You’re Ever in a Jam, Here I Am

I just put my father on a plane back to Chicago. He was here this weekend for a wedding and to meet his new grandson for the first time. As you can see from the above photo, it was a real love affair between the two of them. Although my father has been blind for the past ten years, he was able to interact with Charlie at length and sing to him in Spanish, Hebrew, and Yiddish. He also told many of his off-color jokes while holding Charlie, and I look forward to the day when Charlie will be able to fully appreciate my father’s unique talents for accents and storytelling. I definitely see a resemblance between Charlie and my 77-year-old dad and yet marvel at their very different lives. I love hearing stories of my dad’s childhood even though they are usually pretty sad. He had no father, his mother was mentally ill, and they were often homeless on the streets of Chicago. When my dad was 14, his mother was permanently institutionalized. And yet he overcame all that misery, pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and became one of the most loving dads since Robert Young.

This weekend we attended the wedding of a daughter of my father’s oldest friend, the brilliant writer Sam Bobrick. Their friendship has lasted over 70 years and, as far as I’m concerned, is the model for all friendships, past, present, or future. You’ve never seen two people love each other more or be more supportive of each other through two lifetimes of tragedies, crises, and good times. Sam and his wife Julie are two of the nicest people on the planet. Sam was friends with Kendall’s late father and Kendall and I met at Sam’s first daughter’s wedding just over twenty years ago.

Watching my dad with Charlie was fantastic and heartwarming, but it also made me ache for my mother who would be absolutely gaga for him. My mom was such a great Bubbie and it makes me sad that only Leah and my nephew Spencer can remember her and even they were very young when she was died in 1999. But I have to believe that my nephew Sammy and Charlie have a connection to her that defies the physical plane. I also like to imagine our other son Oliver firmly entrenched in my mother’s loving arms wherever they are. I know she is taking care of him on some level.

We’ve been home from the hospital for two weeks now. Dare I risk the wrath of my old friend, the Evil Eye, by saying that we are loving every second of Life with Charlie? Maybe all babies should start their lives with five months in the hospital and six major surgeries, it seems to have done wonders to make Charlie one of the most good-natured babies I’ve ever known. After being poked and prodded and intubated and IVed and cut open over and over again, little seems to faze him now. He is so fun to be around and he spreads his joy to everyone in his presence.

I am so behind in thanking the legions of people who have sent Charlie their good wishes as well as some amazing gifts including a wardrobe of handmade clothes that would make Valentino jealous (fashion show to come in future posts). What would we have done without the support of so many people during this crazy year—people we already knew and loved as well as total strangers who became interested in Charlie and followed his story over the months. These people don’t feel like strangers anymore and all are welcome chez Charles whenever they are in Los Angeles.

Here’s a small sampling of the people our son the social butterfly has taken a shine to in his early life:

Shake Your Lulav!

Charlie is wearing his first yarmulke in this photo but I admit it looks more like a French beret on his small head.  His recent hospitalization coincided with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur but we’re home for Sukkot which lasts all of this week as well as Simchat Torah next week—the “fun” holidays.

Yesterday I was in a Citibank parking lot when a young Lubavitcher approached me with an etrog and lulav, two of the ritual items used by observant Jews during Sukkot. He was part of the Chabad movement, a branch of Chasidic Jews whose mission is to help non-observant Jews return to more orthodox practices. The photo above shows a Lubavitcher approaching a secular Jew in New York. My Chasid was even younger than the guy in the photo. He asked me if I was Jewish and when I said I was, he asked if I’d shaken a lulav yet this year. A lulav is a frond from a date palm tree and you're supposed to shake the lulav each day during Sukkot. I said I hadn’t and he asked if I wanted to. Sure, I said. I always stop whenever I’m approached by the Chabadniks. I’ve written about my fascination with Chasidic culture a few times. I know I could never be part of such a group but I look forward to spontaneous interactions with them (my last encounter was learning how to “lay teffilin” in a “mitzvah mobile” in the theatre district of New York). The Lubavitcher guy in the parking lot gave me his hat and put his hand on his head. “Do I need to do that?” I asked. “No,” he replied, “it’s only because I have to cover my head and I just gave you my hat!” I held the etrog, the yellow lemon-like citron in my left hand, the tall lulav in my right, and recited two prayers. Then I shook my lulav for all it was worth. “You look good in a hat,” he said cheerfully as I was walking away. “A yarmulke would suit you even more!” Here’s a video currently making the rounds of people getting their Sukkot Shake on:

Hey, I didn’t say we weren’t a strange people. Normally, I can’t stand being accosted by people on the street but I’ll always stop and talk to the Chabad folks. It isn’t only because they’re my people, I’m equally fascinated by other religious emissaries who take the time to talk to those with different beliefs. Mormon missionaries are constantly roaming the streets of my neighborhood. You can spot the clean-cut white boys in suits a mile away and for some reason they seem to target African-American homes. They haven’t come to our house yet but I’d definitely invite them in. Except I’d be the one asking most of the questions. What are you trying to do, exactly, get people to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or simply to goose up their Christianity? What is the Mormon Church’s position on Judaism? What do you think about gay marriage? Do you really believe that Joseph Smith found golden plates containing the Book of Mormon buried near his home in New York State? Have you ever seen “Big Love?” An Osmond concert?

This morning we took Charlie, aka Chaim Yehuda Shmuel, to see his neurosurgeon for a post-op exam and to have his stitches removed. All is going well with his new shunt, thank God, and we were out of there in about 20 minutes. (The last time we went to see Dr. Danielpour we were admitted to the hospital for 10 more days!) Charlie remains a constant delight, we love every second of having him at home. I think of all the people who warned us to get all the sleep we could and to do everything we wanted because basically,they said, life as we know it would come to an end as soon as we had a baby. Having already raised a child I knew that wasn’t true. And it’s really not. Which is not to say it isn’t one of the most challenging things any person on the planet could do but I grew tired of all the naysayers during Kendall’s pregnancy. Yes, we’re tired and can’t go out as much as we did before. Big deal!

I can’t wait until Charlie can participate in the activities of our cool synagogue and enjoy the Jewish holidays. I have many wonderful memories of those days from my childhood, even if it takes roving Chabadniks to remind me how to perform most of the religious rituals.

Start peeling potatoes—only 67 days until Chanukah!  

Ease on Down the Road

 

Charlie has been waking up in such a happy mood this week. It’s so fantastic having him at home, I can’t bring myself to stop posting these photos. Please let me know when I turn into that obnoxious parent who can’t shut up about his kid (like I’m not already there?). At least I haven’t put any bumper stickers on my car proclaiming that my child was the Cedars-Sinai Baby of the Month. But oy, look at that punim, how can I not record these delicious stages of development?

We took Charlie to the pediatrician on Tuesday and as we were leaving a woman in the waiting room said, “Wow, he looks like he just came out yesterday!” Really? I was stunned by that comment because to me Charlie looks HUGE and feels like the sturdy five-month-old that he is even though I realize at eight and a half pounds he is the size of a full-term newborn. And of course this woman never saw our son when he weighed just over a pound. Every time someone asks us how old he is we trip all over ourselves. “Well, he was born over five months ago, but he’s really only seven weeks because he was born at 24 weeks, blah, blah, blah.” Too much information for total strangers who are just making conversation?

As I alluded to in my last post, now that we’re not facing imminent crisis (God-willing, pu, pu, pu), I’m experiencing some identify shifts. I’m trying to figure out my next steps in my work life and I’m also wondering what I’m going to write about on here. Scrolling back, I’m stunned at how many posts I’ve written about Charlie. Over the past five months only one post (when Ted Kennedy died) did not mention him at all. But I’ve been writing in this blog for almost five years. What the heck was I writing about before this?

Oh yeah, all sorts of crazy stuff. Old, obscure movies like the weird Ann Blyth film we watched this weekend called “Our Very Own.” Released in 1950, the film treated adoption as a dark, dirty little secret. When 16-year-old Blyth (who was actually 22 when she made the movie—and looked it) finds out she was adopted, her idyllic life falls apart, especially after an uncomfortable meeting with her sweet but wrong-side-of-the-tracks birth mother, poignantly played by Ann Dvorak. These days it’s inconceivable (I hope) to imagine parents not telling their children that they were adopted. Why lovely Jane Wyatt (pre-Father Knows Best) neglected to tell Blyth about her roots is perplexing—apparently she was worried that her daughter would feel “less than” her younger siblings who Wyatt gave birth to. 

The term “birth mother” didn’t exist in 1950 so every time they refer to Dvorak’s character they call her Ann’s “real mother.” Blyth’s spunky youngest sister is played to perfection by 12-year-old Natalie Wood who was such a delight to watch as a kid. 25-year-old Farley Granger appears as Ann’s hunky boyfriend. We met Granger a few years ago when he was here touting his autobiography about his closeted life in Hollywood. Blyth and Granger were huge stars back in the day but I’m not sure either has withstood the test of time. My favorite Farley Granger movie was Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” where he becomes the hapless victim to a sociopath played by Robert Walker. Ann Blyth is best known for her portrayal of Joan Crawford’s horrific brat Veda in “Mildred Pierce.” (Did you know that Kate Winslet is now remaking “Mildred Pierce” for HBO? I can’t wait!) I thought it would have been so cool if the producers of “On Our Own” had hired Joan Crawford to play Blyth’s birth mother. Talk about a satisfying Big Reveal! Joan would have had a field day with her one big scene.

Thank God being adopted is no longer such a big deal. We had a fair number of adopted kids in my family and we always knew who they were, I don’t remember any stigma being attached to it or feeling that they were in any way less than “real” family members. On the other hand, it wasn’t something we ever brought up in casual conversation, it was fairly hush-hush. In Kendall’s family, back in the day, the adopted kids were left off the official family tree because they weren’t “blood.” Yikes.

So much for my writers’ block, it’s scary how quickly this kind of incessant rambling comes back to me. (Are my stats plummeting yet?) Before our hospital ordeal I also wrote a lot about all my “only in L.A.” events such as the “Sing-along Sound of Music” that Leah and I attended this past weekend at the Hollywood Bowl. We’ve gone to this annual event many times and it never disappoints. Watching a film in the sold-out Bowl with 18,000 other enthusiastic fans is something everyone should experience at least once. As always, the original Liesl, Charmian Carr, was there to sing a little “16 Going on 17” for us even though she is now 66 going on 67. Carr was clearly being groomed by 20th-Century Fox to be their next big young star, and she was quite good, having beat out established actresses such as Mia Farrow and Patty Duke for the role, so it always surprised me that she never made another film. She did a few TV things and then retired to raise her children. Can you think of anyone who’s made such a public career for herself after appearing in only one film? 

Carr joined host Melissa Peterman to judge the annual costume contest. This year it was surprisingly light on the drag queens and heavy on adorable young children portraying everything from “tea with jam and bread” (from the song “Do Re Mi”) to the marionettes in “The Lonely Goatherd.” My favorite costume was a family who recreated the entire gazebo scene between Liesl and Rolf complete with a shower-curtain gazebo and the kids who were dressed as trees with dolls hanging from them while another kid zoomed by in a cardboard car with real working lights. This represented the scene where the Von Trapp kids were climbing in the trees as Captain Von Trapp returned home in his car with the Baroness. As usual, I think Baroness Schrader got a bum rap from the hissing audience and I remained the only one out of 18,000 who cheered poor Eleanor Parker every time she appeared on screen. Lucky I wasn’t beaten to death by the crowd.

Oh, and I’m sure I’ll continue to have posts about my more public family members. I was so preoccupied last month that I missed the following cool profile of Wilco on “CBS Sunday Morning.” Much of it was shot at my sister’s house in Chicago (in the heart of the city, not “suburban Chicago” as the host inexplicably states at the beginning of the segment—I’m sure that drove my sister nuts). Check out the jamming in my nephew Spencer’s bedroom:

And yes, I will continue writing about the Magical Adventures of Charlie Miller.

Every day brings new miracles such as his voice suddenly returning earlier this week. I shouldn’t even say returning, he’s been silent since the day he was born. We thought it was just a result of his many intubations and his decreased lung capacity and were starting to really worry about it when all of a sudden he started letting out with major wails. Go, Charlie! His voice is so cute it sounds like an adult voice-over artist playing a baby. We go back to the neurosurgeon next week to make sure everything is kosher with his shunt and we have a range of other appointments coming up from pulmonary specialists to physical and occupational therapists. But we are so, so grateful to have him home with us and he seems to be enjoying every moment. 

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

After a 10-day add-on to his 137 days at Cedars-Sinai, our son Charlie is home again! I was astounded by how fast he recovered from his shunt replacement surgery. When he had the first one last month it took six days just to get him extubated and several more weeks to get him back to speed. But now, less than 48 hours after the surgery, Charlie was being sent home without his oxygen tank, apnea monitor, or any other medical accoutrements. Yippee! On Saturday we were moved from the highly secure PICU to the regular pediatric floor for our last day which is just like regular hospital rooms except all the kids have a lo-jack device on their ankle to prevent any sociopaths from waltzing out of the building with them. There are big signs marking the boundaries of where you can walk around with your child without setting the alarm off. I took Charlie for a little stroll around the floor yesterday morning and as I was heading back to the room I saw a pair of security guards heading our way. “I hope they're not coming for you,” the nurse joked. And yet they were! Somehow I had set Charlie’s lo-jack off and the guards had to examine all of our identification. Oops.

Suddenly, without any of the fanfare or extensive paperwork of the NICU, the nurses came in, snipped off Charlie’s ankle bracelet, took out the PICC line they had put in for the surgery, and said we were free to go. Really? I almost felt like a kidnapper walking out of the building on our own back into the sunlight that Charlie had seen for only six days before landing back in the hospital.

Yesterday was Charlie’s five-month birthday so of course as we left the hospital complex our thoughts were on that scary day last April and our son, Oliver, who never got the chance to feel the warm sun on his skin. It was so great to be home again and though it was only 16 days since our last departure from Cedars, Charlie seemed like a different baby, so much more developed. Our dogs were excited to have us all back and apart from a few enthusiastic licks pretty respectful of the baby. We had a great night. I sang a little bit of the Kol Nidre prayer to Charlie since we were missing our synagogue’s services and also sang a bit of “Let Me Entertain You” in honor of our sacrilegious Yom Kippur Eve performance of “Gypsy” on Broadway last year.

I was on feeding duty last night and today feel an exhaustion I haven’t felt since Leah was a baby back in 1994. But even though I looked forward to complaining about typical new parent stuff like sleep deprivation, I don’t feel like complaining. I can barely keep my eyes open but it is such a happy, grateful exhaustion.

And now, I begin to contemplate my post-hospital life. I MUST get work right away and I have a few writing projects in mind based on our experience over the past five months. What will I write about on this blog now that I no longer (God willing) have complex medical procedures to deal with? I have fantasized about returning to “normal” life for so long and yet it’s a bit unnerving to find myself in the position of having to retool my identity that was so well defined for almost half a year. But I'm thrilled to find myself facing this unknown. Today is the Jewish Day of Atonement but to me it feels much more like Thanksgiving.

If It Walks Like a Duck

Charlie had his VP shunt surgery this morning and is now resting comfortably, still groggy from the anesthesia but extubated again, thank God. It’s funny up here in the PICU (and in the NICU, for that matter). You get so used to your own child’s issues that it’s easy to feel sorry for the other kids facing stuff that you’re less familiar with. You constantly think, “oh, that poor kid and those poor parents, how can they endure that? We are so lucky!” Meanwhile, the other parents are thinking the exact same thing about you.  Isn’t that largely what so-called “strength” is during times of strife? When something is happening to your loved one, you just deal with it, you don’t have any choice. And before you know it, whatever you’re dealing with becomes part of your new “normal.” If I had been contacted by a psychic last December who had given me a list of everything that was ahead for us in 2009, I would have been horrified and terror-stricken and certainly would not have wanted Kendall to get pregnant. Thank God we don’t have the ability to see into the future. As hard as it was, I am so very grateful for everything that has brought this wonderful boy into our lives. But would we have willingly proceeded if we knew we were imminently facing the loss of one child and the life-threatening status of another that included five months in intensive care and six major surgeries?

The latest surgery went very well, thanks to the expertise of our neurosurgeon, Dr. Danielpour and his associates. Charlie’s other surgeon, Dr. Frykman, found a place lower in his peritoneal cavity to place the end of the shunt’s catheter so it would be clear of scar tissue. It took a little while to get Charlie off the ventilator but he’s off it now and breathing easy. Of course a million things could happen that could make the new shunt malfunction and land us back here but what can we do but live in the moment and hope for the best? Once we leave Cedars I don’t plan on being back any time soon but if we have to eventually return for more revisions, so be it. In addition to my endless gratitude for the surgeons’ and the PICU staff’s medical expertise, I remain in awe of Charlie’s will and spirit. His stamina and strength continue to inspire me as he cheerfully endures more than most people have to face in a lifetime. The above photo was taken just prior to surgery, when Charlie was hugging his duck Linda, a gift from the NICU parent organization. We continue to get visitors from downstairs and have now added the PICU doctors and nurses to our list of heroes.

The best news is that Charlie no longer has any external tubes draining fluid from his brain. This means we can hold him again as soon as the anesthesia wears off. And that is definitely something to be grateful for! 

I Had Four Brain Surgeries and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

Whoop-de-doo, it looks like Charlie had no infection after all. Today the neurosurgeon tentatively booked an operating room for Friday morning so he can replace Charlie’s VP shunt. If all goes well on that front, and if Charlie recovers as quickly as he did after his surgery last Friday, we could actually be on our way home as early as this weekend. Hooray! The hardest thing about the past five days in the PICU is that we haven’t been able to pick up Charlie and hold him in our arms because of his EVD that is draining his cerebrospinal fluid or “brain juice” as some of the hospital staff calls it.

But Charlie, ever the trooper, is making the most of his confinement. He’s still receiving his former caregivers from the NICU and continually slays them with his heart-melting smile.Charlie’s brain spigot was turned off long enough today for a relaxing bath and he continues to enjoy the eclectic mix of crazy tunes coming out of my nifty new iPod. Here is “A Day in the Life of Charlie Miller.”

Now the countdown begins for hightailing it out of Cedars-Sinai…again. As much as we worship the staff at that hospital, we really hope that we don’t see them again for a good long while. We appreciate all prayers and positive vibes for Friday’s big surgery.

I Got a Right to Sing the Blues

My new iPod has a built-in speaker and I’ve been playing music for Charlie in his crib in our new digs in the Cedars-Sinai Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. One of the first songs I played for him was our friend Carole Cook singing “I Got a Right to Sing the Blues” written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler. The song has been covered by everyone from Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney to Billie Holliday, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald. Charlie loved it and was moving his arms in beat to Carole’s brassy rendition. And frankly, who has more of a right to sing the blues than our son?

I got a right to sing the blues
I got a right to feel low down
I got a right to hang around
Down around the river

I got a right to sing the blues
I got a right to moan and sigh
I got a right to sit and cry

Say what you choose
I got a right to sing the blues!

Here's our friend Carole letting it rip:

 

We’re still in a holding pattern waiting for the all-clear for yet another surgery in which Charlie will get a new VP shunt. This morning Charlie got a CT scan and he’s due for an ultrasound to check on how the EVD (external ventricular drain) is working and if the fluid in Charlie’s peritoneal cavity has absorbed. Because of all his scar tissue, it’s tricky for the surgeons to find just the right spot to place the catheter on his shunt. If the shunt keeps malfunctioning, the surgeons will have to consider other areas in his body such as the heart or lungs to absorb the cerebrospinal fluid but those carry greater risks so we don’t want to go there. It’s possible if all goes well that the surgery could happen later this week but it’s likely that we’ll have to wait a bit longer. That’s okay—when we leave this time, we want to stay away for more than six days!

The PICU staff couldn’t be nicer. It’s a much different environment than the NICU—eerily quiet much of the time except for the occasional wailing of a child (this unit of only eight beds houses babies to 18 year olds). We have a private room with comfortable chairs and cots and even our own bathroom. One of the unexpected silver linings of being back here so soon is that Charlie is now off oxygen. Since he was connected to all the monitors again, the nurses turned off his low-flow oxygen on Saturday morning to see how he’d do and he’s been off it ever since. The biggest drag of his current status is that he has to spend most of the time on his back in his crib so that his EVD doesn’t fall out or dump too much fluid. The stamina we need is almost harder the second time around even though we know this will be a much shorter stay. At least we still had our September parking passes for Cedars. Maybe Charlie just wanted to be in air conditioning again since it started to heat up significantly in L.A. the day he was re-admitted.

If anyone has the right to sing the blues, it’s our 21-week-old son (with a corrected age of six weeks) who is going on Major Surgery #6 and has shown amazing strength in all he has survived and endured. And yet he ain’t singin’ the blues at all. You’d be hard pressed to find a more good-natured little baby who seems to accept all that life gives him without so much as a grimace. What a teacher and role model he is.

Crossover Event

I remember the excitement in my TV-addled childhood when characters from one of the shows I watched would unexpectedly appear on another one of my favorite shows. 

The first time I remember this was when the folks from “Green Acres” landed in Hooterville and appeared on several episodes of “Petticoat Junction.” Another classic was a bizarre storyline that had the space age Jetsons going back in time and interacting with the Flintstones. Remember when an animated Samantha Stevens of “Bewitched” appeared on “The Flintstones?” Too cool. Often this device was used to test the waters of a spin-off such as when Mayberry’s Gomer Pyle joined the marines and became “Gomer Pyle, USMC” or later when Edith Bunker’s liberal cousin Maude got her own show that began on an episode of “All in the Family.” Ditto “The Jeffersons.” And then Maude’s maid Florida moved to a Chicago housing project with her family and “Good Times” was born. Occasionally these crossovers would even jump genres such as when the doctors of “St. Elsewhere” showed up drinking at Sam Malone’s bar on “Cheers.” This phenomenon is very prevalent today with many crime show casts hopscotching from one show to the next. Last year, ABC heralded “a very special crossover event” when a story arc on “Private Practice” sent the cast all the way from their Los Angeles clinic to “Grey’s Anatomy’s” Seattle Grace Hospital for a highly touted sweeps week stunt.

This week feels like Kendall and I are living a crossover event. Being in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at Cedars, it’s a brand new environment with all new people, procedures, and rituals. But just when we think we’re getting used to all the changes, characters from our previous drama, “Charlie in the NICU,” breeze into view. Oh, look, there’s Rolley, our old respiratory therapist. What’s he doing up here on the sixth floor hooking up those toddlers to oxygen? Hey, check out the cameo appearances today by NICU nurses LaQuel, Jana, and Christine, how odd to see them in this different setting! And there are our familiar surgeons, too. Hey, guys! Wow, get a load of this brand new set. Very glitzy. Oh, but wait, I recognize these old props—they must be recycled from our old show.

So Charlie did have his entire VP shunt taken out today. His third brain surgery lasted over two hours and they discovered that the source of the problem was that the end of the shunt’s catheter was blocked by scar tissue from his two abdominal surgeries. They’re still not certain whether he has an infection but he’s being treated with antibiotics until they know for sure. Charlie now has an external ventricular drain (EVD) that is draining his excess cerebrospinal fluid out of his head and into a bag. The position of the bag to his head is very important so he can’t be moved at all without the nurse’s assistance. They use a leveler to make sure everything is positioned properly. This means we won’t be able to take Charlie out of his crib very much for the next week to ten days which is a major drag. The good news is that he came back from surgery already extubated (yay!!) and already awake. But then he had to be sedated again so a doctor could insert a new central PICC line into his arm. Oy. Been there, done that. But our son is such a trooper. He’s doing well and winning new fans among the PICU staff. After the next surgery to put in a new VP shunt we’ll be moved down to the regular pediatric floor before we’re discharged. Yet another crossover event.

Two people that were important characters in my childhood died this week. Like many people my age, I had the hots for beautiful Mary Travers from Peter, Paul, and Mary. Oh, how I loved her. In her honor, I sang this Bob Dylan song to Charlie after his surgery, remembering Mary’s haunting rendition:.

Actor Henry Gibson also died. Talk about a crossover star! Gibson recited an old poem from the 1920s called “Keep a Goin” on an episode of my all-time favorite sitcom, “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” He performed the same piece several years later on the ground-breaking show “Laugh-In.” Finally, he turned the poem into a country song and sang it in my all-time favorite film, “Nashville.” Way to go, Henry! And though the poem was always a little tongue-in-cheek, I find the words inspirational and extremely applicable to my current life:

If you strike a thorn or rose
Keep a-goin'!

If it hails or if it snows

Keep a-goin'!


'Taint no use to sit an' whine

When the fish ain't on your line
Bait your hook an' keep a-tryin'
Keep a-goin'! 

When the weather kills your crop


Keep a-goin'!

Though 'tis work to reach the top

Keep a-goin'!


S'pose you're out o' ev'ry dime

Gittin' broke ain't any crime
Tell the world you're feelin' prime
Keep a-goin'! 

When it looks like all is up


Keep a-goin'!

Drain the sweetness from the cup

Keep a-goin'!


See the wild birds on the wing

Hear the bells that sweetly ring

When you feel like sighin', sing

KEEP A-GOIN'!

Shana Tova, y'all!

Return to Cedars

I can’t tell you how touched we were to receive so many beautiful comments about Charlie’s return home. The past week has been utterly joyful, one of the happiest weeks of my life. It seemed almost impossible that we weren’t going to the hospital every day as we had for so long. But guess what? We’re baaaaaaaaack. Crap.

Starting last weekend, we noticed that Charlie’s VP shunt seemed larger than it had in the NICU. Were we imagining things? Was his head just changing shape a little bit? Was it because we were seeing him in sunlight for the first time instead of the fluorescent hues of Cedars-Sinai? We knew that infections are always a risk with VP shunts but Charlie had none of the signs—no fever, no change in behavior, no trouble eating or sleeping, and no puking. You couldn’t find a more delightful, happy baby. But by Monday morning, even I had to admit that the back of Charlie’s head was starting to resemble the anatomy of a Ferengi from “Star Trek.” I got an appointment with our neurosurgeon this morning so he could take a look. Kendall and I both fully anticipated that he would tell us that everything was cool and to take Charlie home. We were so sure we’d be back by his next feeding that we didn’t even take any extra formula. Instead, after examining him, the doctor sent us to the emergency room where our son had to have x-rays, CT scans, ultrasounds, and cerebral spinal fluid taps. Turns out his shunt is not working properly, damn it, and the fluid is leaking into his head, creating that Ferengi effect. Before we knew it, after only five full days with no hospital visits, the familiar wrist bands were slapped on the three of us and Charlie was re-admitted. This time we’re in the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) instead of the NICU. Sigh.

Charlie will have his fifth operation tomorrow morning but we’re not yet quite sure what that will be. It’s possible that they will only have to enter through the abdomen to change the location of the catheter that is depositing the fluid in his peritoneal cavity. If that were to happen we could be home fairly soon. But a more likely scenario is that they’re going to have to remove the entire shunt and replace it with a temporary spigot (I forgot the scientific name) that automatically diverts the fluid out of his head into some kind of external apparatus. Then we’ll have to go through a full round of antibiotics to clear any infection (around 10 days), followed by another surgery to place a new VP shunt. I’ll provide an update when I know more but I just wanted to inform you what was going on so you can keep Charlie on those prayer lists a little while longer.

It’s a major drag, of course, but if we got through 137 days in the NICU, I suppose we can get through a few more weeks in the PICU. Our old social worker and several of our beloved NICU nurses came up to see Charlie, shocked that he was back so soon and delighted by how well he seemed to be doing otherwise. I thought I’d be in our synagogue tomorrow night welcoming in the year 5770, but instead I’ll be waiting for the surgical shofar to blow at our well known stomping grounds. Happy New Year to all of you. I know it will a happy year for us…as soon as we get our boy home again. 

Charlie’s First Weekend

I love this photo I took of Charlie yesterday—one of the first to show actual sunlight on his face, not the fluorescent lighting of Cedars-Sinai. Now that Charlie is home from the NICU and I’m still writing about him I feel like I’ve crossed over into the land of true DaddyBloggers, something I was always very self-conscious about. Oh, I’ll be writing about Nazis and Swedish film stars soon enough, but how can I NOT write about this miracle in our lives? And with feedings every three hours, what else IS there in our lives right now? That is not a complaint, by the way, just a joyful realization. For four and a half months I dreamed of being able to moan about sleep deprivation and I’m thrilled to find myself in that place! And it’s really not so bad—I’m taking a lot of naps during the day which is unheard of for me. One thing that is a concern is that Charlie still has no volume. He cries but there is very little sound. The NICU doctors advised us to wait it out and see if his voice comes back after his vocal chords get a chance to heal after all those intubations. To be honest, there’s this small guilty part of me that doesn’t mind the lack of loud crying—I remember those exhausted moments when I could feel the piercing baby wails entering my veins and wreaking havoc on my entire nervous system. But of course I want Charlie’s voice to be normal and it can be a bit tricky hearing him in his crib, even though it’s right next to our bed. We have to use an alarm clock to wake up for those middle-of-the-night feedings.

We had such a fun first weekend at home, the first time I wasn't waking up and driving to the hospital in 137 days. Charlie had all sorts of visitors starting with his Aunties Campbell and Joy and our friend Helena who brought him a giant blue dog we named Hershek. Yesterday a neighbor brought over hot homemade popovers and Grandma came by along with Aunt Brooke and Uncle Scott who brought more grub which we laid out in a buffet in Charlie’s crib (don’t worry, he wasn’t in it at the time!). Brooke and Scott’s daughters, Hallie and Franny, were thrilled to meet their new first cousin for the first time. Taking a page from “Peter Pan” (which is Leah’s next musical she just started rehearsing), they declared their “fairy talent” to be “babies.”

 

Today Charlie had his first pediatrician appointment and we were shocked to discover that he’s gained a whopping 7 oz. since he left the NICU. He’s now 8 lbs. 5 oz. Does Jenny Craig make a formula for preemies? I rarely post current photos of myself because I'm so neurotic but below is a photo Kendall surreptitiously took of me and Charlie during one of our afternoon naps yesterday. If that doesn't make every moment of terror we've lived through over these past months worth it, I don't know what does. 

HOME!!

We finally have our baby home and we are so incredibly grateful. What an amazing, terrifying, wonderful journey it was to get here. As thrilled as I was to leave the NICU, I was a total wreck yesterday, bursting into sobs every time I saw any one of the dozens and dozens of people who have been involved in keeping Charlie alive all these months. I don’t think I’ve had that many tears since this whole ordeal began. As Charlie got placed in the cute departure pram they use to escort the babies out of the building, our nurse Christine paraded him through all six of the NICU bays. In each one, nurses, respiratory therapists, and doctors came rushing over to see him and say good-bye. There were many hugs, tears, and promises to come back and visit. Some of those nurses are so special to me I still well up every time I think of them (tears flowing right now). We got to see many of the talented doctors who saved Charlie’s life again and again. In addition to the nurses, I came to feel like the neonatologists, surgeons, residents, and hospitalists were members of our family. It was hard saying good-bye to our brilliant occupational therapist Jean and our social worker Alva who was there with us every step of the way and who I practically used as my own therapist throughout this process.

It’s now the next morning and I am still too filled with emotion to adequately write about these fantastic people and what they meant to us over the past four and a half months. As Charlie saw them all leaning over him on his parade out the door, he waved and seemed to be sending his own thanks. While there was plenty of paperwork, medications, and follow-up appointments to go over, I was a little surprised at how easy it was to get out of there. “They’re letting us just walk out with him?” I kept thinking to myself. Charlie enjoyed the ride home, his first exposure to sunlight and fresh air, and he seemed immediately at home in our house, even with our excited dogs trying to lick his face at every turn (can I Purell our dogs’ tongues?). Last night Leah cut off Charlie's hospital bracelet and he was a free man for the first time in 137 days! I just gave him his 6 am feeding and he’s now resting happily between me and Kendall who is sleeping after waking up for the 3 am. Charlie’s screechingly loud apnea monitor went off several times during the night (all false alarms) reminding us of the constant barrage of beeps and alarms in the NICU and how great it is to be in such a calmer, more serene environment. Right now Charlie is hearing the morning birds chirping for the first time ever and stretching out on our bed next to his mom, one hand resting on my computer and his little feet hiked up on my leg. It’s a whole new world over here with many new routines we need to figure out along with countless new joys and challenges. Again, I thank all of you for the life-saving support and concern you’ve shown to our family over these months. I am bursting at the seams with gratitude on all fronts.

Charlie Makes His Move!

After 137 days in the Cedars-Sinai Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, our son Charlie is scheduled to come home the day after tomorrow! Woo-hoo! There are a few things that could delay that departure a bit but today was the first time we were given an actual date. The fact that the date is September 11th freaked me out for about half a second, but I guess that infamous spot on the calendar will now have some added (and quite joyful) meaning for us.

The reason the doctors were reluctant to commit to a date until today is that we’ve been playing around with Charlie’s oxygen for weeks. As you can see in the above photo, he’s been off oxygen completely (except during feeds) and they were trying to see if he could go home without any oxygen at all. He’s just on the border of needing it but even though he barely gets a whisper (his flow is 1/16th of a liter for those of you who know what that means) it makes a big difference in his saturation levels. So, finally, minutes after making the decision to try to wean off all oxygen for two more days to see what will happen, the neonatologist said fuck it, she'll just send him home on oxygen for a while so that we can leave this week. (Okay, she didn’t actually say “fuck it” but that was the idea!) The photos here are the last ones you’ll see of Charlie’s unadorned face for a while—he went back on nasal cannulas just after I took them. I’m fine having him stay on oxygen for as long as it takes his lungs to fully develop. It just means that wherever we go we’ll have to shlep along his portable oxygen tank and the apnea monitor that will be connected to leads held in place by a large Velcro belt across his upper chest.

I am so full of excitement and emotion that I can barely speak...or write—I’m headed back to the NICU for our final 48-hour stint. It seems hard to believe that Charlie is finally about to head out into the world after arriving 16 weeks early last April. I will miss so many people in the NICU and am bursting with gratitude for all of the incredible individuals who kept our son alive all this time through their medical expertise, care, compassion, prayer, and positive thoughts. And the journey will continue with Charlie—we already have appointments for a whole new slate of medical professionals outside the confines of the NICU. Kendall and I both had to work through some feelings about leaving the place where our other son died (inches from where Charlie currently resides) but I know deep in my heart that Oliver is not stuck there in that hospital, he will be coming home with his brother in his own way. 

Five-Oh!

Today is my 50^th birthday. Dear God, I am a half century old, how the hell did that happen? Needless to say, the only present I want this year is our son coming home with us and I feel so incredibly grateful that this is finally happening. As of this morning, the plan is for Charlie to be discharged from the NICU in a week to ten days. We’ll have a lot of doctors’ meetings next week to discuss follow-up medications and procedures and we’ll have to learn how to administer the oxygen that he’ll be coming home with for a while. He had his circumcision today which went very well and was performed by the fantastic surgeon who did three of his four surgeries. I said some prayers and sang a bunch of Hebrew songs. Our rabbi is coming by tomorrow morning to do some blessings. I once swore that I’d never bring up circumcision again on this blog because of the attacks I’ve received from Google-crazy anti-circ extremists (note to all members of that group: please do NOT comment on this post!) but I wanted to mark this moment. We didn’t expect it to happen today but the surgeon suddenly had an opening. The crazy thing is that Kendall and I already had a reservation for a birthday dinner tonight at a restaurant we’ve been dying to go to at the Beverly Wilshire hotel. Guess what it’s called? Cut! Oy. Braised foreskin, anyone?

While I’m having a hard time comprehending that I’m 50 years old, I must say that the events of the past four months have made me drop of a lot of my self-consciousness about having a baby in my geezer years. The NICU is the great levelizer—differences in age, religion, race, or economic status don’t seem to matter much when you have a child in jeopardy. Did I already mention one of my favorite NICU moments? It was back when we were in a different bay several weeks ago. Across from us were new triplets, born to an Orthodox Jewish couple from Israel. Next to us was the premature son of two very devout Catholics. One late night found the 50-ish Orthodox father going from incubator to incubator with his siddur chanting prayers in Hebrew. At the same time, the very young father next to us was reciting Hail Marys over and over again. Me? I was holding Charlie and singing…you guessed it…showtunes! It was a great bonding moment for the three of us dads because we realized that we were all doing the exact same thing even though it took a different form for each of us.

For the past five years on my birthday, I’ve been observing the odd tradition of looking at my life through the lens of the Best Picture Oscar winner from the “year “of my age. So, when I turned 46, I contemplated the 1946 winner, “The Best Years of Our Lives.” In 2006, I prepared for 47 by examining the 1947 film about anti-Semitism, “Gentleman’s Agreement.” When I hit 48, I analyzed my connection to a range of dark performances from 1948, from Laurence Olivier’s tortured prince in “Hamlet” to Olivia de Havilland’s descent into mental illness in “The Snake Pit.” Last year, as my 49th birthday coincided with the furor of the presidential election, I looked for personal connections with 1949’s “All the King’s Men,” a story of political corruption and betrayal.

1950 was a banner year for movies. The nominees for Best Picture include three of my all-time favorites: “All About Eve,” “Born Yesterday,” and “Sunset Boulevard.” I also loved “Father of the Bride” starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor but I’m not sure how “King Solomon’s Mines” made the list. Not that it’s horrible and but as far as films shot in Africa go, I much prefer “The African Queen” which came out the following year. I might have given that last spot to “The Third Man” or possibly “The Asphalt Jungle.”

All About Eve” won the Oscar that year. It’s hard to argue with that choice—even though “Sunset Boulevard” probably would have won any other year. I wrote about “All About Eve” following Kendall’s birthday last year. After finding out that Bette Davis was her age when she made the film, Kendall morphed into Margo Channing for several weeks. 

Who am I most like from that film? I'm embarrassed to admit that I can relate to Margo’s paranoia and fears of intimacy but I also understand Bill Simpson’s desire to make everything simpler than Margo allows. Am I more like playwright Lloyd Richards who is so obsessed with his own words that he can’t even see the emotional tailspins happening all around him? Maybe I resemble Celeste Holm’s Karen Richards, too trusting, a bit passive aggressive, never feeling totally part of the group, and bending her natural inclinations to survive the whims of those around her. I’m sure I have a few dabs of George Sanders’ vicious Addison DeWitt coursing through my veins, using my poison pen to eviscerate others (hello Henry Jaglom, Jennifer Aniston, and Ashton Kutcher to name a few just from my previous post!). I don’t feel like I have that much in common with Anne Baxter’s conniving Eve Harrington but part of me wishes I did. I could use a healthy dose of Eve’s unbridled ambition and her uncanny ability to get where she wants to go, at least in terms of career goals.  Maybe my only true soul mate in that film is Thelma Ritter’s Birdy with her world-weary outlook and her use of sarcasm and humor to mask the pain and frustration of her own life. Physically, I’m starting to bear a striking resemblance to producer Max Fabian, played by Russian Jewish actor Gregory Ratoff. I remember thinking how ancient Max was when I watched the film, but when he made “All About Eve,” Ratoff was only two years older than I am now. Yikes! I’m now five years older than Birdy, six years older than Addison DeWitt, eight years older than Margo Channing, 11 years older than Lloyd Richards, 15 years older than Bill Simpson, 17 years older than Karen Richards, and 23 years older than Eve Harrington. Fasten your seat belt, kid, it’s going to be a bumpy decade!

Speaking of my decrepitude, Gloria Swanson, who so brilliantly portrayed the sad, aging, completely delusional former silent film star Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard,” was exactly my age when she shot the film. Help, I AM Norma Desmond! This realization will bring new meaning to the words I always shout from my car window as I pass the spot in front of Paramount every morning where Swanson delivered her famous line: “Tell them without me there wouldn’t BE any Paramount Studios!”

“Born Yesterday” was one of the most sparkling films of 1950 or any other year. What would you expect from a film directed by George Cukor, written by Garson Kanin,  and starring one of the most endearing casts ever to meet on a soundstage? Judy Holliday (age 28!) achieved the impossible and snatched 1950’s Best Actress Oscar out of the hands of Bette Davis and Gloria Swanson for her role as Billie Dawn. It was a surprising upset but who could deny the radiant Holliday any accolade? I'd like to think that I have some of Billie Dawn's innocence and goodness but I know I'm much closer to 31-year-old William Holden's character with all his hopes and disappointments. And remember Holliday’s over-the-hill sugar daddy—corrupt businessman Harry Brock played by Broderick Crawford? Crawford was only 48 when he made this film. Egads, I am older than Harry Brock! Make it stop! Let's not even get into the fact that silver-haired Spencer Tracy was also exactly my current age when he made "Father of the Bride." Where was HIS new baby? 

But again, who cares about age? In many ways, I feel more alive now than I ever did and certainly young at heart. I’m so very grateful for the love of my family and friends and I’m awestruck by the support I’ve received from the blogging community. Thank you all for making the hellish parts of this past year seem more bearable and for for continuing to help me celebrate all the joyful parts. I’ll never forget it. 

Got a Ticket For My Destination

Things are moving quickly with Mr. Charles Oliver Thomas Miller. Above is the first photo ever taken of him without anything on his adorable face. Even when he was briefly off oxygen a while back he’s always had his NG (nasogastric) tube in his nose for feedings but as of yesterday morning he is finally off the tube and eating entirely by mouth. Woop-de-doo!! He’s on such a low flow of oxygen now that the doctors thought he could get off of it for good today and told me to take out the cannula which I did gladly. But after a while his numbers started to drop to the point where they realized he wasn’t quite ready. We’ll see where he stands as the week progresses. The really big news is that as of this morning the neonatologist thinks that Charlie can come home NEXT WEEK!! Not to tempt that damned Evil Eye or anything (I’ve seen many babies in the NICU have a planned departure date delayed because of various issues) but hot damn, we’re beyond excited at this incredible news.

Sometimes Kendall and I lie in bed and wonder how we got to this place. How we survived all of the trauma, grief, terror, and ups and downs of the past 127 days. Charlie’s stamina, strength, and will to live are nothing short of miraculous, in my opinion, and I find myself more and more fascinated by the photos I took at the beginning of this journey as I marvel at how far our son has come. Again, I’m grateful for every positive thought and prayer sent by so many of the people who read this blog and I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that these positive vibes had an impact on Charlie’s progress over the long spring and summer months.

For now, our days still revolve around the Cedars-Sinai NICU but everything is taking on a new tinge as we prepare to leave. Yesterday we took the infant CPR class that is required of departing parents. So helpful and necessary (I can’t believe I didn’t know CPR when Leah was a baby!) but terrifying to imagine such scenarios. Knowing that the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter, I found myself a little more anxious today about something going wrong. Got to get over that. In my zeal to give Charlie as many calories as possible, I overfed him during his 9 pm feeding, ignoring the signs he was giving me (if he drinks it, he wants it, I rationalized) and he ended up hurling on me for the first time. It’s clear that my newfound and often tenuous ability to Live In The Moment will continue to be tested as we go through the joys and challenges of the days, weeks, and years to come.

After such a different existence for so long, Kendall and I can’t wait to return to some new level of normalcy in our house. I am chomping at the bit to start cooking healthy meals again (I haven’t so much as boiled a pot of water in months). Obviously our lives will change with an infant at home and I know there will be difficult moments ahead. I only pray to find myself kvetching about sleep deprivation on this blog in a few months. If that is our biggest problem I will scream “Hallelujah!” to the heavens.

In other transitional news, my daughter Leah started high school today. HIGH SCHOOL! Oy, how is that possible? Wasn’t I starting high school just a few years ago (and by “a few” I mean…THIRTY-SEVEN!)? I arrived early to pick her up from her first day this afternoon and sat in the courtyard of the ramshackle campus watching the students walk by. The new seventh graders seemed like toddlers while many of the older high school kids magically turned into adults over the summer. I love that so many of the kids at Leah’s progressive school march to their own drummers and would probably be considered the oddballs at most of the other private schools in the area. This photo of Leah was taken this weekend. I had just taken Leah to get her hair trimmed and the crazy stylist insisted on blowdrying Leah’s hair straight (against her will) before cutting it. She looks beautiful either way but I’m so glad that Leah doesn’t subscribe to the ridiculous Disney version of beauty where the wannabe princess turns from ugly duckling (curly hair and glasses) to stunning makeover queen (straight hair and contacts) by the end of the film. Yuck. The photo was taken at the Arclight Cinemas, one of our favorite movie theatres in Hollywood. We are all such movie lovers in our family and I can’t wait to introduce Charlie to the classic old films that Kendall and I hold so dear. Leah was barely out of diapers before we were watching films like “The Philadelphia Story” and “The Graduate” together.

Following a few months of a necessary cultural blackout, I’ve been able to squeeze about a dozen movies into my afternoon breaks from the hospital over the past six weeks or so. To show that life is getting back to normal, here are my capsule reviews of those films.

Adam. Sweet and interesting movie about a guy (Hugh Dancy) with Asperger’s Syndrome. Heart-warming and depressing at the same time (a combo I happen to like). I enjoyed Rose Byrne as the girlfriend and it was fun to see Amy Irving and Peter Gallagher as her parents. (Oy, when did Amy Irving move from playing “the girl” to “the mother?” I guess some time during those 37 years since I started high school!) Hugh Dancy deserves credit for tackling this difficult role and playing Adam in an often less-than-sympathetic way. He also did a great job with that American accent. (Is that all that the Brits do these days—play Americans?)

District 9. Very disturbing film about a 20-year-old colony of aliens living in a ghettoized district in South Africa (and, of course, I mean real aliens from another planet, not illegal aliens, but the parallels to apartheid and other forms of Earth-based discrimination are impossible to miss). While I had to turn my head many times to avoid various grotesqueries, I actually thought this was a very well done film with a smart script.

(500) Days of Summer. Clever, cutish film that mostly avoids being cloying by turning the typical structure of a “chick flick” on its ear. I have always liked Zooey Deschanel and think she was perfect for this film (kudos to the filmmakers for not casting Jennifer Aniston in this role) but sometimes I wonder if Deschanel is as annoying in real life as most of her characters are. Joseph Gordon-Levitt survived the transition from child star to adult quite well and was excellent in the lead. (He comes from a long line of movie people. His grandfather Michael Gordon directed “Pillow Talk” and other films of the era but was blacklisted for much of the 1950s.)

Funny People. Wanted to love it…but didn’t. As far as his “serious” roles go, I much prefer Adam Sandler’s performance in “Spanglish” and even “Punch-Drunk Love.” Seth Rogen seems like a super nice guy but I found some of his and the other characters’ actions completely unbelievable. I guess I’m not a huge Judd Apatow fan (and I’m not sure casting his wife in a leade role was such a great idea). But, of course, I loved the subplot of Seth Rogen trying to take his new girlfriend to a Wilco concert. I’m sure Wilco fans noted the partially obscured Wilco and Uncle Tupelo T-shirts Rogen was wearing in the film and Jeff had a song on the soundtrack so I should shut up and stop dissing the film.

Inglorious Basterds. What a surprise! I went to this film dragging my feet and expecting to loathe it since I’m not much in the mood these days for gruesome violence or revisionist World War II history. But I loved every second of this film and thought it was Quentin Tarantino’s best work by far. Brad Pitt was fine but it was the French and German actors who blew me away. Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger, Til Schweiger, Mélanie Laurent, Michael Fassbender, Daniel Bruhl, and others were just perfect. There’s so much about this film that I loved and I can’t believe that a Tarantino movie exists that I could happily sit through again. But why am I so surprised that I liked it—incredibly beautiful women slathered in red lipstick and 1940s couture dresses going around and killing Nazis by the dozens? I’m in!

Irene in Time. Director Henry Jaglom is like a car wreck for me—I know I shouldn’t but I can’t not look. His self-financed, self-distributed films starring his latest protégée-slash-wife (currently Tanna Frederick) always irritate me and yet I’ve never missed an opening weekend. Jaglom does have a knack for attracting good actors (here he gets Victoria Tennant, the luminous Andrea Marcovicci, and a grossly underused Karen Black), but his films often end up being little more than vanity projects, none more than this atrocious monstrosity. As the film blathered on I was riveted to the screen, it was just impossible to believe that anything could be that bad. The tagline should have clued me in: “Time Never Kills the Love of Your Life.” I’d be vomiting right now if I weren’t afraid of being barred from the NICU tomorrow morning.

Julie & Julia. As we all know, Meryl Streep is an acting goddess descended from on high. Her Julia Child is pitch perfect and incredibly poignant. While I usually enjoy Amy Adams, my main complaint about this movie is that the “Julie” half was just so-so. I could have used three hours of Streep’s Julia Child with lots more of Stanley Tucci as husband Paul and Jane Lynch as sister Dorothy. I did leave the theatre ravenous for any French cooking but if I ruled the world I would have sent Julie to the compost heap and lavished way more attention on Julia Child’s fascinating life.

Paper Heart. I liked this fake (I think) documentary a lot and am heartened that someone like Charlyne Yi could get a film made in this town. Michael Cera is always good and here he plays himself (sorta) in a very endearing story that serves to challenge Yi’s stated belief that love doesn’t really exist. We met Cera a few years ago when Wilco appeared on “The Tonight Show” with the three guys from  “Superbad” (who were all big Wilco fans) and when we were in their dressing room I remember meeting Charlyne Yi who really was Cera’s girlfriend. So maybe at least this film is based on fact?

Spread. Oh my God. First of all, when Leah and I went to this film I should have been arrested by Child Protective Services. In my defense, it was a boiling hot day and it was the only film playing at the right time. When I saw that it starred Ashton Kutcher I thought it would be a light little indie comedy. Wrong. Porn is more like it but that’s not even why I was so offended by this piece of drek. It tries to be a modern-day take on “American Gigolo” but only succeeds in finding one excuse after another for the actors (especially Kutcher) to disrobe and start humping the nearest human. Truly the worst writing I have ever witnessed in a film and if I had the energy I would start a campaign to make sure the screenwriter never gets another gig. I actually felt sorry for Anne Heche for appearing in this film (as a creepy cougar—was this the cause of her mental illness?). The film is devoid of any values or moral core. There is no message here, only self-indulgence and a vision of Los Angeles that makes Sodom and Gomorrah look like Victorian England. But wait, that’s actually an undeserved compliment—in this film even the debauchery was boring. Shame on you, Ashton Kutcher! Demi Moore should send you to bed without any supper!

Taking Woodstock. I was so excited to see this film that I was practically lining up at the theatre a week in advance. I have no complaint about any of the acting (loved the whole cast including Imelda Staunton, Eugene Levy, Demitri Martin, Jonathan Groff, Meryl Streep’s lovely daughter Mamie Gummer, and many others) and the look of the film and recreation of 1969 was absolute perfection. But, oy, the truly fascinating story of how the Woodstock music festival was organized takes a nose-dive about two-thirds of the way through the film and peters out in such a disappointing way. It’s still worth seeing, but oh, it could have been so much better with a strong ending. My only other perplexed observation is that, in my opinion, the film sort of glamorizes 1960s drug use. What makes me feel that way? Because I walked out of the film thinking “Gosh, that LSD looks like a lot of fun! Maybe I should get me some of that!” Gulp.

The Time Traveler’s Wife. This was also at the top of my list of most highly anticipated films because I so loved the book when I read it a few years ago (I’m a sucker for time travel stories). I remember wondering at the time how something that complex could ever be made into a film. And guess what? I was right to wonder because it doesn’t work very well. I have no problem with leads Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams in the other films of theirs I’ve seen but I think their chemistry is absolutely nil in this story and that is one of the film’s fatal flaws. I kept wistfully speculating what the film would have been like if it had starred Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes. Oh well, at least it wasn’t Jennifer Aniston in the lead (sorry for my second diss in one post, Jenn) even though she bought the rights to the book when it first came out so that she and then-hubby Brad Pitt could star in it. 

World’s Greatest Dad. Another big surprise. I heard this film was raunchy and over-the-top and in many ways it was but I thought it was excellent. (Don’t be fooled by the Disney-sounding title, by the way, this is a very, very dark comedy that is definitely not suitable for young children.) Robin Williams gives what I think is one of his best (and most restrained) performances ever, he's just great in this part. I can’t believe that his starring performance didn’t warrant a bigger release—the film has been relegated to a few small art houses. And who knew that Bobcat Goldthwait, of all people, was such a talented director and screenwriter? Kudos to Mitzi McCall for her moving performance (which could have easily have been played for freak-show laughs but wasn’t). I remember when I was five years old and Mitzi McCall appeared with her husband on “The Ed Sullivan Show” the very night the Beatles made their legendary debut. There are some extremely disturbing moments in this film (teenage auto-erotica anyone?) but it is a fascinating look at what grief, loneliness, and unfettered ambition can do to a person.

And there you have it. I guess the main lesson of my recent cinematic adventures is similar to the one I’ve been grappling with for the past four months. Whenever I thought I knew how something would go, I was either bitterly disappointed or happily surprised. Moral? Drop the preconceptions, experience things as they come, be open to new ideas, and LIVE IN THE MOMENT! 

These Vagabond Shoes Are Longing to Stray…

Well, don’t “start spreadin’ the news” just yet, Charlie’s not “leavin’ today,” but we’re getting closer by the minute. At our meeting this week with our neonatologist, the main topic at hand was Charlie’s departure. That’s a far cry from the months of meetings where this query was met by the doctors' glassy-eyed automatic response: “There’s no way we can know when that will be, Charlie will let us know when he’s ready to leave.” And now he is…almost. Charlie has passed so many hurdles during the past four months including four major surgeries, a variety of respiratory devices, and learning how to coordinate his breathing, sucking, and swallowing. Now he is an eating machine, taking over 60 cc by mouth every three hours. After so long it’s hard to believe we are moving ever closer to the day when he will leave the confines of Cedars-Sinai. We have every reason to hope that this will happen some time in September (God-willing, pu pu pu) but the next week or two will clarify where we stand. We’re still working at bringing those feeds up, trying to get Charlie off oxygen, and making sure all is well with his shunt and cerebrospinal fluid absorption.

I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps
To find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap…

Too bad Charlie wasn’t quite ready to face the crowds at the Hollywood Bowl last night where he could have heard the originator of that song. Liza Minnelli’s performance there was delayed from mid-July when we thought our twins would be born (we expected them to come 4 weeks early—not 16!). For months Kendall and I had this fantasy in which we’d go to the Bowl to see Liza and then Kendall’s water would break during the show. Liza would notice the ruckus in the audience at which point she’d invite us to the stage and deliver the twins herself in front of 18,000 enthusiastic fans. Okay, maybe Liza wouldn’t have been the ideal midwife and perhaps the Hollywood Bowl wasn’t the perfect sterile environment but it was fun to imagine. As for Charlie, even after he’s sprung from the NICU we’re going to have to be very careful about germs and crowds so he’ll have to settle for my renditions of Minnelli’s top hits, many of which he’s already heard. (Is that why we keep moving from bay to bay? Are parents banding together to sign petitions against my constant warbling of showtunes?)

Charlie hit 120 days earlier this week. Oy Guttenyu, as my mother would have said. The number 120 has special significance in Jewish tradition. Because Moses supposedly lived until the age of 120 (at least according to Deuteronomy 34:7), the number became part of an oft-recited blessing for longevity. “Biz a hundert und zwanzig!” Jews say in Yiddish, or “Ad me’ah v’esrim shanah!” in Hebrew.

More to say but for now I must rush up to the NICU for Charlie’s early morning feed. The more bottles he takes by mouth, the sooner we can blow this popsicle stand.

These NICU blues, are melting away
I'm gonna make a brand new start of it—outside of Cedars!
If I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere
It’s up to me…Charles Oliver Thomas Miller!

Remembering Ted Kennedy

I can't believe it's been 15 months already since Ted Kennedy announced that he had inoperable brain cancer. I haven't counted all the times I've written about the Kennedys on this blog but I remember marking the deaths of three of President Kennedy's siblings: Rosemary Kennedy way back in 2005, Eunice Kennedy Shriver two weeks ago today, and now Ted Kennedy who died just a few hours ago at the age of 77. Like so many Americans, I feel that my life has been inextricably linked to the Kennedys since childhood. As I’ve mentioned, my very first memory is of JFK’s assassination when I was only four years old.  

For almost three decades, my mother was the receptionist at the Kennedy-owned Merchandise Mart in Chicago. She often took calls from crazed Kennedy fans on the anniversary of the assassinations, and she turned over to the authorities gifts that arrived in her office intended for various Kennedy family members. When my mother got sick with lung cancer in 1999, it was the Kennedys who pulled some strings to get her moved to a better hospital and I will always be grateful for that. Two months after my mother’s death I sat glued to the television watching the frantic search for John Kennedy, Jr. and his wife and sister-in-law in the waters off Cape Cod. I kept reaching for the phone to call my mother who would have been blown away by that unexpected tragedy. Uncle Teddy was again called into service to deliver a moving eulogy at John’s memorial service a few days later, just as he had done at the funerals of his two older brothers. About his nephew he said, “We dared to think that this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair, with his beloved Carolyn by his side. But, like his father, he had every gift but length of years.”

When he first announced his diagnosis last year, I found it very touching to hear the reactions of his colleagues in Washington. I was especially moved to hear the heartfelt comments by some of the Republican senators. Though ideological opponents to Kennedy’s liberal views and programs, it was easy to sniff through the layers of politics and see the true respect and admiration that lay at the foundation of some of these relationships. How rare that is these days. Orrin Hatch just issued a statement claiming that "today America lost a great elder statesman, a committed public servant, and leader of the Senate. And today I lost a treasured friend. Ted Kennedy was an iconic, larger than life United States senator whose influence cannot be overstated. Many have come before, and many will come after, but Ted Kennedy's name will always be remembered as someone who lived and breathed the United States Senate and the work completed within its chamber. Nancy Reagan said the following: Given our political differences, people are sometimes surprised how close Ronnie and I have been to the Kennedy family. In recent years, Ted and I found our common ground in stem cell research, and I considered him an ally and a dear friend. I will miss him."

Kennedy has been serving in the U.S. Senate since 1962. He’s been there longer than anyone in history except for Robert Byrd who wept openly when he first heard the news about Kennedy's illness. “I hope and pray that an all-caring, omnipotent God will watch over Ted and keep Ted here for us and for America,” Byrd said at the time. “Ted, my dear friend, I love you, and I miss you.”

Ted Kennedy was clearly one of the most formidable senators who ever served this country, whether or not you agree with his policies. It’s hard to imagine a U.S. Congress without Kennedy in a leadership role. But it wasn’t always that way.

I was wondering how Ted Kennedy’s first Senate campaign, which occurred when I was two years old, was greeted by the politicians of the day and the rest of the country. Looking at the newspaper archives from the early 1960s, I soon learned that his first candidacy was not met with universal excitement. Ted Kennedy threw his hat in the ring for the U.S. Senate the minute he was old enough to do so, when he turned 30 in 1962. His rival in the contentious Democratic primary was Edward J. McCormack, Jr., the popular Attorney General of Massachusetts. At the beginning, McCormack seemed like such a shoo-in that Kennedy’s campaign was considered a joke.

Rumors circulated that young Teddy would drop out of the race. An article on May 7, 1962, stated:

The ambition of Edward (Ted) Kennedy, 30-year-old brother of the President, to be a U.S. Senator is fizzling out fast. With approximately three-fourths of the 1,763 delegates to the June 7-9 Massachusetts Democratic endorsement convention already selected, young Ted is running far behind Atty. Gen. Edward (Eddie) McCormack—858 to 542.

All signs point to McCormack, 39-year-old nephew of Speaker John McCormack, not only maintaining this 8 to 5 margin but probably even bettering it. If young Kennedy doesn’t pull out of the race by the time the convention meets, he will do so immediately afterward.

But there were already signs that the Kennedy family was pulling out all the stops to get their boy the votes he needed.

Kennedy henchmen are striving mightily behind the scenes to swing delegates to young Kennedy. Delegates are daily reporting heavy pressure from White House sources.

McCormack’s slogan during the campaign became “I Back Jack, But Teddy Ain’t Ready.” During one debate, McCormack confronted Kennedy with the charge, “Teddy, if your name was Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a farce.” Other prominent politicians agreed:

Former President Harry Truman is making no secret he does not approve of Ted’s candidacy. 

The Missourian is keeping hands off this fight. But although assiduously courted by the Kennedys, Mr. Truman, with characteristic candor, is frankly critical of Ted’s aspiring to the Senate on what amounts to no other ground than that he is the President’s brother.

An Independence visitor asked the one-time President what he thought of the McCormack-Kennedy race.

“I hope Eddie wins,” was the instant and emphatic reply. “He is entitled to the nomination. He has earned it by conscientious hard work, and by twice being elected attorney general by big majorities. Ted has never run for anything or done very much of anything. His family ought to call him in and pull him out of that race. He doesn’t belong in it. He ought to earn his political spurs first before running for the U.S. Senate.”

Yep, the odds were stacked against poor Ted but he had one thing in his pocket that Eddie McCormack could only dream of—the Kennedy charisma, power, mystique, and millions. There was nothing McCormack could do but watch his numbers plunge in fast order. Ted Kennedy won the party’s nomination by a landslide.

Still, he had a lot of vocal critics leading up to the general election including many public figures and even a prominent Roman Catholic priest who stated in no uncertain terms:

“The candidacy of this boy is both preposterous and insulting.”

The statement refers particularly to Ted’s singular lack of qualifications for the U.S. Senate and to the pressure tactics being used to get him elected.

“When the 1960 Presidential race ended and Ted returned to Massachusetts, he appeared to be a young, clean and active prospect for some political office,” Father McEwan says.

“But when it comes to running for the Senate, that’s going too far. He simply hasn’t the qualifications for the office. “

“Many people apparently are saying: “I voted for President Kennedy and I support his policies, but I won’t take that kid (Ted).”

But the Kennedy machine prevailed, and Ted Kennedy was victorious in November. Both Jack and Bobby often said that Teddy was the smartest politician in the family and they were right. Ted Kennedy may not have had the qualifications for the U.S. Senate, according to many, he may have gotten there because of his last name, but he sure played his cards right in building a solid reputation for himself, beginning with his decision not to capitalize on his connections to the White House.

An article from February 19, 1963, reiterated Kennedy’s low profile in Washington:

Sen. Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy’s struggle for national anonymity is puzzling colleagues who would be delighted to embrace some of the opportunities he rejects.

The Massachusetts senator, who is the President’s youngest brother, is so cautious in his approach to the publicity spotlight he hasn’t even joined middle brother Bobby for a hike.

For Sen. Kennedy, Washington is a place to be seen and not heard—and not too much of the former, either.

He has gone a long way toward making good on his promise in his only speech here to the Women’s National Press Club, that he intends to “stay out of the limelight, out of the headlines and out of the swimming pools.”

In five weeks, Kennedy has introduced only two general bills. One would make Columbus Day a legal holiday and the other would provide mass transportation aid to metropolitan areas.

When Kennedy did speak up, he often disagreed with the White House and he was bolder than either of his brothers in promoting civil rights. In an article he wrote about the space program on July 15, 1963, Sen. Kennedy lobbied for a more diverse team of astronauts.

We should also try to train and orbit an astronaut who is a Negro. Most of the people of the world are non-white. This trip would serve to establish a personal identification between them and our space program.

Ironically, it was President Kennedy’s assassination less than a year into Ted’s first term that really allowed the younger Kennedy to find his place on the national stage.

The President’s death has altered Sen. Kennedy’s position in the sense that he now has greater freedom of action and of expression. When his brother was in the White House, the senator knew that every word he uttered might have been taken as a reflection of the President’s views. Every move he had might have been interpreted as being in line with the President’s wishes.

“He used to walk on tiptoes up here,” a Boston reporter observed this week. “Now he moves right in and gets involved. He’s become a stand-up guy. He’s all muscle now. He can speak out. The difference between Ted Kennedy now and a year ago is the difference between night and day.”

He seems to have lived down much of the public resentment over his plunging into a Senate race at the age of 30. By general consent he has conducted himself well in the Senate. He has not set the place on fire—freshmen senators rarely do—but he has won the respect of many older senators, which is important to him at this stage of the game.

By a curious turn of fate, Robert Kennedy does not now have the firm political base that Ted Kennedy has. If the attorney general’s political future is uncertain, Sen. Kennedy is on a course that seems destined to carry him over the years to growing power in the Senate and growing influence in the Democratic Party.

Browsing through articles about Ted Kennedy in the later part of the 1960s, I am impressed by his chutzpah. His trip to Vietnam, his fight for civil rights and for the rights of veterans, his attempts to protect immigrants, his efforts regarding gun control, there is so much Kennedy has done for which the American public should be grateful. Senator Kennedy voted against giving President Bush the authority to use force against Iraq in 2003 and he was the first Senator to propose legislation opposing the troop surge two years ago. Kennedy has certainly had his fair share of questionable judgment (No Child Left Behind, anyone?) and who knows what led him as a young man to wait a day before reporting that awful accident on Chappaquiddick.

In 1964, Kennedy was in a plane crash in which the pilot and one of Kennedy’s aides were killed. The “Kennedy Curse” yet again? He was pulled out of the wreckage with a broken back and punctured lung by fellow senator Birch Bayh who was also on the plane. There were fears that Kennedy might die from his injuries or be incapacitated for life but it didn’t keep him down for too long. Less than a year later he was at the center of another hotly contested national debate.

Sen. Edward (Ted) Kennedy has surprised a lot of people by becoming the strong man in the Senate liberal bloc’s battle for a tough Negro voting rights bill.

“I never thought Teddy would have the guts to buck Lyndon,” a senior senator said. “We felt he was too soft to try anything like this.”

But the Massachusetts senator, who just turned 33, now has found a major cause—outright abolition of poll taxes in state and local elections. And he is sticking to his guns despite pressure from both the Justice Department and the bi-partisan Senate leadership to accept their ideas on the issue.

His influence and passion remained a constant for so long. Just last month, Kennedy wrote an article for "Newsweek" about an issue that he felt was the most important one of his career—universal health care:

This is the cause of my life. It is a key reason that I defied my illness last summer to speak at the Democratic convention in Denver—to support Barack Obama, but also to make sure, as I said, "that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American...will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not just a privilege." For four decades I have carried this cause—from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society. Now the issue has more meaning for me—and more urgency—than ever before. But it's always been deeply personal, because the importance of health care has been a recurrent lesson throughout most of my 77 years.

Rest in peace, Ted.

Social Butterfly

Now that our son is officially “born” (he’s 118 days old but only 11 days “corrected”), Charlie is really coming into his own as a social creature.  I’ve never seen him more alert, expressive, or interested in his surroundings and other people. He finally just went down for a nap after being wide awake  for most of the day. What a delight he is. No wonder everyone who meets him, including many of the NICU nurses, want to eat him alive. Several have told me how much they’ll miss him when he’s gone.

Yesterday, by contrast, was a terribly sad day in the NICU. That baby I mentioned in my last post died. The family of this baby stood vigil by her incubator all day long but from the looks on their faces and the snippets I heard as the doctors gathered around this poor baby before the family arrived, I knew that the previous night’s marathon emergency surgery in the bay was only of limited help. We all tried to give this family as much privacy as we could but being right across from them it was hard not to steal occasional glances of their stricken faces as they held their sweet baby’s hands. Sometimes I’d see the family members just gazing sadly out of the window, not knowing what to do or say as their little girl was about to exit this world. My assumption is that the staff waited until shift change when no one was around to allow the family to say their final good-byes and stop the machines that were keeping her alive. When I returned after the break, the somber staff was breaking down equipment and scrubbing out the empty isolette. Meanwhile, another new baby in the bay was rushed down to surgery. I was relieved to see him back in his spot this morning.

Such events bring me right back to the day 17 weeks ago when our sons were born and the moment when Oliver died in our arms. It’s why I couldn’t completely turn away from these parents during their first moments of grieving. I felt like we were part of some sad but powerful brotherhood since we actually do know what that horrible moment feels like. And yet, even though it doesn’t take the grief away, we’ve  also had the incredible joy of watching our other son grow and thrive, even though he still faces plenty of issues. I hate most of the clichés about such events such as “What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger” and yet I have to believe  that this axiom is true. I feel so much stronger in so many ways for having gone through this experience and yet there were times when I was in such despair that I thought my life was over.

And now, this week, we can’t wait to get to the NICU to see our happy, alert, and responsive son. Yes, he’s still healing from his surgery, he’s still being treated for a possible shunt infection,he’s still getting over his post-surgery edema, he still has desats and bradies, he still needs extra oxygen, he still has unknown neurological issues, but he is no longer a fragile bird-like patient being kept alive by artificial means in an incubator. He is our beloved, adorable, roly-poly baby boy who knows us, responds to us and others, and has his own very distinct personality, just like the famous YouTube baby Charlie who someone referred to in my last post:

Charlie Says…Love My Good-N-Plenty

Most of Charlie’s nurses in the NICU are young enough to be my children but every once in a while we get one of the old-timers who’ve been at Cedars for the past 25 years. I can always tell when we have an older nurse even before I lay eyes on them because I hear their Baby Boomer-era Charlie references. One nurse calls our son “Choo Choo Charlie” which always causes me to sing that ubiquitous jingle from my childhood:

Today one of the nurses kept saying “Sorry, Charlie!” for no apparent reason until I realized she was mimicking the old Starkist commercial in which Charlie the Tuna tries to show how classy he is in his suicidal quest to have the Starkist corporation kill him for their canned tuna. But they keep refusing him because they “don’t want tunas with good taste, they want tunas that taste good.” Oy, what kind of sick mind came up with that gem? Don Draper?

You can tell things are going well with Charlie this week since I’m focusing on such banalities. We’re finally beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel and even the never-give-a-definitive-answer neonatologists are starting to talk about Charlie’s departure which, God-willing, will be in about a month or so. Maybe less if infections stay away and he continues to take bottles as well he did today. He went from 5 cc yesterday to a whopping 45 cc today and they were able to stop all of his other IV fluids except the antibiotics he’s still on. I realized today how much medical jargon I’ve picked up over the past 116 days when the nurse was testing some levels in Charlie’s blood and I heard myself asking, “Is that for the Amikacin or the Vancomycin? Are they compatible with his lipids and TPN?” As we get closer to leaving we’ll have a better idea of which medications we’ll have to keep giving Charlie, if he’ll need to come home with oxygen, and what treatments he’ll need to continue. A new world awaits us, with plenty of its own challenges, but unlike a few weeks ago when I was feeling fearful about ever leaving the safety of the NICU, now I can’t wait to get home.

We had such a great day with Charlie. This morning it was so quiet in his bay I made the comment, “boy, you can hear a pin drop in this place.” The NICU nurses, no strangers to the Evil Eye, reeled back in horror at my statement. Sure enough, within hours the bay seemed like a sweeps month episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.” One poor baby near Charlie was having major problems and apparently was so fragile he couldn’t be moved to an operating room. Suddenly the bay was filled with surgeons, nurses, screens, and equipment. Then, with great apologies, all of the parents were asked to leave, quite a rare occurrence. I went back tonight and I still couldn’t get in the bay, the surgery was still going on and they said it would last many more hours. The last time I saw such bustling and dour faces in that room was on April 27th when they were working on our son Oliver. My heart goes out to the family of this baby. I can so relate to what those parents are going through right now and I pray that the baby makes it. I know that Charlie, safely in his incubator (and about to go back to a crib) is sending his positive thoughts to his friend and neighbor.

11th-Hour Reprieve!

After having the operation room booked and being prepped yesterday morning, Charlie was saved from several extra brain surgeries at the very last minute by his neurosurgeon who burst onto the scene and declared that he didn’t think our son’s new shunt was infected after all. This could still change but we were thrilled to bits that he was not going back under the knife to undo the surgery he had last week. And the shunt seems to be working much better than it was a few days ago.

Charlie has been pretty out of it since Wednesday morning so yesterday they stopped the morphine and Phenobarbitol. But he was still intubated and every time he came to he completely freaked out from the tube shoved down his throat. To be honest, last night was one of the worst nights I’ve spent in the NICU since this ordeal began, watching Charlie cry (silently because of the intubation) for hours and writhing in misery. I pulled a few Shirley MacLaines begging people to do something, convinced that the fact of being intubated was causing more problems than whatever was making them keep him intubated. Happily, the late-night doctors agreed and said he could probably be extubated in the morning. The problem was, if they knocked him out with more pain medication that would probably delay the extubation so he just had to get through the night, God love him. That boy has the strength of Hercules. I’ve had one surgery my whole life, a lowly appendectomy that I kvetched about for weeks. Kendall’s only surgery was her emergency C-section last April. But our boy has already had four major surgeries and gestationally he's less than a week old!

Thank God the official extubation order came through early this morning. Seeing the respiratory therapist yank that tube out of Charlie’s throat was literally one of the happiest moments of my life. He went back onto the nasal cannulas and it took most of the day to get his blood gases normalized but we talked the doctors into waiting before taking action because we knew Charlie could do it without further intervention which he did. Go, Charlie! Yes, yes, Mr. Evil Eye, you killjoy, I realize that there will be lots more challenges to come—maybe tomorrow, next week, next year, but hey, do me a favor, will you please? Shut the fuck up, I’m talking about TODAY! I’m so grateful for the thoughts and prayers of the many people rooting for Charlie, I truly believe that makes a huge difference. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

The photo above was taken shortly after extubation. Charlie still has a bit of generalized edema from the surgery and currently bears an uncanny resemblance to Jabba the Hutt but that’s already starting to correct itself. They also shaved his head for the surgery so he looks even more like me than usual (and believe me, Jabba and I are peas in a pod these days). But he was so, so much happier today, getting back to his old self, and I can’t wait until we can hold him and feed him again. But right now, I'm just rejoicing in his huge improvement over yesterday. Woo-hoo!

Update: I was surprised by some of the reactions to the above photo and the video—I was so relieved that Charlie was finally extubated that I thought my puffed-up Michelin Man looked so cute afterwards, but on second glance I can see how it seems a bit scary! Especially that position with his head pulled back to open his airway. I just left the hospital at midnight and most of the swelling is already gone, he's cute as a button. And I even got to hold him for three hours tonight after a week of deprivation. Double woo-hoo! And a prize for anyone who can identify who's singing in the video.