ALS Dan Toch
Garmt is experiencing ALS – so you don’t have to!
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She likes to move
People ask me how come I don't write about Iris so much anymore? Well, that's simple. Like the christian god, I'm jealous, so I want to keep her all to myself. ALL FOR ME MUHAHAHA!
Well, that, and that I have two diseases (note – not the flu). But let me tell you about the best moment of 2014. It's a bit cliche but it's true.
Nekplooimeting. Yes, fuck you, Google Translate, nekplooimeting. I'm not even going to try. I think it boils down to: ultrasonography. We went there for our fourth one, and you know, if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all. Is what you think for the first 25 seconds. And then your… child… pops… up… on…. thescreen. WTF. I'm in love. With pixels. I haven't been in love with pixels since I first managed to execute '10 print "hello" 20 goto 10'. I'm in love. The pixels move and the kid is, what's (s)he doing, jumping? Now (s)he's eating? The thing is 13 weeks old and already has a stomach and a bladder? It's scratching its head? Or is it mimicking holding a smartphone to its ear?
Then – dig this. The outline of the womb is clearly visible. Blood vessels surround it; some of the bigger ones expand and shrink by the heartbeat of Iris. At some points this has the effect of the womb denting in and out in a tiny spot on the rythm or her heartbeat. The baby is just 6.5 cm long but it's smart enough to find that spot and lay its head against it. Its head rocks on the beat of Iris' heart whilke we see its own heart beating, twice as fast, on the same screen. Baby lays its head there and rocks. Is rocked. His head is rocked by Iris heartbeat.
(I didn't want to send out this update. I'm usually content with how I describe with what's going on inside of me. This time it feels like nothing does justice to what's going on inside of me when I remember that picture, his/her head rocking. And at the same time, it's nothing special, people get kids every day, and then, this one is just pixels, and black and white at that, I mean c'mon, CGA has four colors and was invented in '81, what are we talking about here. Well. The untalkable apparently. Here's how I tried anyway)
To say "that rocks" is to make a joke of the images that stay with me, every day and every night, each time something else becomes impossible, each button I can't open or tie I can't tie or bag I can't carry, in bed at night as the memories of the day join up to gang up on me and drag me away from the now. Then I see the baby rocking its head and the belly of Iris can drag me right back to the here. I'm not afraid of anything here next to her. Just afraid that I want too much – I want to be a good father and a super husband and in the time left I wouldn't mind kicking ALS in the balls. In times of stress I revert back to my default behavior, though, and I grew up learning that you spend the least time with the people that are the most important to you, and I try to unlearn that every day, but it's so much easier to pitch our investment fund to a guy who should know this better than me but doesn't and that's why he listens to me and that's how we put another brick in the wall that'll capture this beast so we can kill it than it is to be home in time and be the person you think you'd like to be because if you can't even make your wife the happiest person in the world what business have you got laying a claim to parenthood? Ten points if you didn't have to reread that line.
Are you getting tired of hearing this? It's so silent lately. Like everyone's gotten used to it. Everything back to normal. Yeah, we've heard sappy parent stories before. I know. But seriously, I mean, today Iris' belly POPPED OUT. No joke. You could almost hear it. Up until 8.58AM this morning there was no visible sign of pregnancy anywhere on her (grey hairs on me but I digress) and at 08.59AM she comes up the stairs and says LOOK! And wtf she's looking like a pregnant woman all of a sudden. Seriously, even the most hardcore nerd out there should think that that's cool.
People, a public promise. As of July 1 I will go on 80% leave for at least two months. Why not 100%? Because I don't want to make Iris suffer the burden of having me around 24/7. But the rest of the time I want to be there and drink in every single second of Iris and our child like some of the big men that surround me showed how to do (Ivo, that's you).
