April 2015

The part of my brain that’s responsible for logical thinking and reasoning knows that Facebook Gary is right. That damn cardinal was attacking its reflection in my window because this type of bird, by its nature, is aggressive. (Watch them tease your outdoor cats sometime. It makes for cheap theater.)

That’s how Eagle Scout Dad would have explained it. And that’s what my brainy sister, Nicole, would have said, too. And those two would know. Dad really was an Eagle Scout, and Nicole probably really did read an encyclopedia of avian behavior when she was six or seven years old. That’s the type of kid she was.

But the part of my brain that process emotions, as illogical as they sometimes are, says, “Nope. That’s Dad or God or someone letting us know that Dad’s all good.”

Pleas with Dad

Dad had been almost comatose for about 24 hours. We knew he didn’t have much time. When he was “awake,” he’d say things like, “Where’s Mom?” He’d look around the room for his mother, who died in 2009. Or he’d be untangling the fishing line he thought he was entangled in.

I knew for sure he wasn’t coming back. Whether it was oxygen deprivation to his brain, morphine, cancer that likely had spread from his lungs to his brain, we don’t know. But he hadn’t been Dad for several days.

Then one day Nicole texts me and says, “Dad’s awake and talking. He wants you to call him.”

“Are you there?” he asks me on the phone. “Am I supposed to be hearing music?” he asks.

“No, Dad. No music. Just me. I’m here.”

“I’m very sick, Melanie.”

“I know, Dad.”

“Tell me what you need to tell me.”

“I love you so much, Dad.”

“No. Tell me what you need to tell me.”

“It’s OK for you to go, Dad.”

“I understand.”

Before we hung up, I made him promise me to show me some sort of sign that he was OK when he got to where he was going. I didn’t ask for anything specific. Just a sign. He promised me he would.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Nicole and my stepmom, Sherrie, had asked him to do the same thing for them. Show them a sign when he got to where he was going. They asked him for something specific, though. A cardinal.

Do NOT interrupt me

I’ve become increasingly cantankerous about my work lately. I don’t like being interrupted. Charging for my work by the hour means I have to make every hour count. I don’t have time for kids throwing tennis balls against our house, nor for Spanky Mae’s barking when kids throw tennis balls against our house.

This is what started happening yesterday about noon. Every 15 minutes or so, this kid, my neighbor kid, would start bouncing his tennis ball against my house, and Spanky Mae would go nuts barking.

Only it was noon. Neighbor Kid was still in school. Plus, Neighbor Kid has never bounced a tennis ball off my house, so why would he have started now? And why would he do it against my front door?

I finally got curious enough to actually stop what I was doing. When I walked to my door, I saw a shadow in the window. I’m female, so this freaked me out. I figured there was a mouse or squirrel at my doorstep, so I made a noise to make it scurry away. It did.

I opened the door, and there wasn’t a soul outside. No Neighbor Kid. No tennis balls.

This became my afternoon routine. For hours. Every 15 or 20 minutes, the bouncing-ball noise would hit against my door. The bouncing would last for five or six minutes and then stop.

Later in the afternoon, around four, I finally saw it, a cardinal, pecking at the picture window next to my front door. And it stayed there, even though I’m pretty sure it could see that I was standing there.

It was beautiful. Such a saturated, deep red. So I shot a video of him and posted it on Facebook, Vine and Twitter. Covered all my bases.

I tried to be funny about it. “This cardinal really, really wants inside the Medina Estates,” I said on Facebook.

Nicole responds, “You know that Mom and I asked Dad to send a cardinal as a sign, right? This video gave me chills.”

Nicole — at least in my perception of her — isn’t the type of person to believe in signs.

Either way = Awesomesauce

Both sides of my brain are equally pleased with this whole cardinal thing.

The logical side sees the bird and thinks, “How cool is that? You get to see this gorgeous red bird flying around on your porch.” (I also think to myself, “The bird is obviously attracted to MY porch because of the phenomenal blue color of my door.”)

So, I get a glimpse of beautiful bird and that is that.

Or the emotional, spiritual side says, “DAD! Thank you for saying hi. I know that even though you’re not on this earth, your love for your girls is as strong as ever and is eternal.”

Don’t misread this. I don’t think Dad is reincarnated into this idiot bird. I’m saying that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that some force of nature — call it God, call it Dad’s spirit — sent this cardinal to attack itself all friggin’ day long in MY window so that I would get off my rear end and pay attention to it and then tell everyone about it.

If I had kept it to myself, Nicole may not have ever told me that she and Sherrie asked Dad to send a cardinal.

Either way you dice it, it’s beautiful. Maybe it’s just a beautiful bird. But maybe it’s Hi, Dad!

Morphine made me forget my baby girl was on a ventilator. Sorta.

Call it mother’s intuition. Or naiveté. Or maybe it was all the drugs I was on after major surgery, the C-section. But I knew Allie would be OK, despite needing to be on a ventilator in the NICU after she was born.

Sure, I was freaked. Anxious. Scared. No first-time parents want to see their newborn daughter — who they’ve already fallen in love with through Mama’s belly — in an isolette attached to machines, with an NG tube up her nose and bear-shaped heart monitors adhered to her hours-old baby skin. Or an IV stuck into to a vein on her head, taped to her reddish brown hair. (That was a TRIP.)

Still, I knew she would be fine. And she was. The doctor took her off the ventilator after 24 hours. This child is more than fine. She is in charge. Ferociously so.

She was a Daddy's Girl from Day 1. — She was a Daddy’s Girl from Day 1.

She spent seven days in the NICU, during which time Mario and I came up with a number of nicknames for our Baby Alessandra:

∙ Allie Pie (which sounds quite lovely when sung to the tune of the old Spiderman cartoon theme song. Allie Pie. Allie Pie. Does whatever an Allie Pie does.)
∙ Pieface
∙ Piemaster 2000

Since then, we’ve come up with a few more nicknames:

∙ Allie Bear
∙ Allie Boo
∙ Bear

We seem to have settled on:

∙ Boo

We never found out exactly why she wasn’t breathing well when she was born. It could have been a bacterial infection in her lungs. Or that her lungs were underdeveloped. The neonatologists and nurses treated Pieface with IV antibiotics and surfactant, one of which did the trick so that she could come home with us (only to have our beloved pug dog, Momo, try to eat the foot off her right leg. He missed, thank God. But he had to go for a drive after that incident [to a pug rescue]).

AllieCupcakeOutfit — She is always bold.

A natural leader
Yes, she came in to the world with much drama, which, much to our delight and surprise, continues to this day.

As some recent examples, let’s just take Allie’s first experience watching American Idol, which we’ve been following since the start of this season. The first time she saw the show, she said, with such gravitas in her voice, “When I’m on American Idol, I’m going to win it.”

Sure, lots of kids say this to their parents. But several days later, Allie told us about how she’s going to have her own show, where she chooses all the judges and sets up the stage and organizes the contest. This is what I mean by “in charge.” A lot of kids want to grow up to be the winner of American Idol. Not many want to grow up to become Simon Cowell.

And as many of our Facebook friends know because of my recent post, Allie has no qualms whatsoever going online to Amazon and Café Press to order whatever her little heart desires. Cheetah-print iPhone6 cases. “Daddy’s Cutie” T-shirts. $100 bicycles.

She is resourceful, this one. She’s the don’t-ask-permission-ask-forgiveness type.

She doesn’t suffer fools, either. When she was about 2 years old, she told some old decrepit babysitter: “Stop talking, stupid lady.”

Yeah, it was rude. But she had the juevos to say what Mario and I were thinking about this poor old woman who was droning on and on. We were ready for her to leave our house. Allie didn’t waste any time (or courtesy) letting this woman know it was time to see herself to the door.

‘Swinging the world by the tail’
In the first 12 weeks or so of Allie’s life, she’d often start crying right around dinnertime. She was not a colicky baby, but she did start wailing at the witching hour, right on cue, almost every night. I found a simple routine that would calm her most evenings.

She'll drive, thankyouverymuch. — She’ll drive, thankyouverymuch.

I’d swaddle her and we’d go upstairs to her room. I’d pull up the blinds on the window overlooking our front yard. We’d look out onto this huge tree in lawn.

My old stereo with a CD player in it was in Allie’s room, sitting just beneath the window. I’d put on a song called Killing the Blues, from an album called Raising Sand, by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. If you listen to it once, you’ll have trouble not listening to it on repeat. Which is what Allie and I would do.

I’d stand there, rocking my swaddled burrito baby in my arms, holding her so she could see out the window.

Though the song is somewhat sad and haunting and talks about lovers separating (and maybe getting back together?), there’s a verse in there that triggers a vision of my baby in charge.

“Somebody said they saw me, swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud, killing the blues.”

Now, think of a picture of someone swinging the world by the tail. That person, my friends, is my Boo.

She’s a mess sometimes. But if Mario and I, by God’s grace, can steer Allie to use her God-given strengths for good, she will be taking the world by the tail. And we’ll all be the better for it.

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.” (James 1:17) She is a blessing. A firecracker gift from above. Happy 7^th birthday to my Boo.