gulf shores plantation

when is a trip to the beach not just a trip to the beach?

this time two years ago, my family and i took a vacation to gulf shores. where we were going to stay was never in question. it was always going to be gulf shores plantation. one of the many traditions we revived and continued while i was on staff at humc for over six years was the senior high/college-age beach trip that closed out our youth weeks. while the junior high group was shuttled off and away (with a beautiful and rotating crew of adult chaperones) to atlanta for a six flags/white water weekend, the elders of our group took to the beach. before we took to the beach, though, we took to gulf shores plantation.

as condos go, i don't guess that the plantation is the most expensive you can find in gulf shores, but far too many memories were made over the years that, if left up to me, we will never consider any other place. why would we when every single trip felt like such a success? the details of those memories, actually, sound like a fun, late summer series that would be worth my time here on HACATLKAM, so i'll leave them be for the time being. as they relate to today's post, all that matters is that the trips we took from 2000-2004 made our family destination decision easy as pie in the summer of 2009.

"the best laid plans"...

the unplanned part about our family vacation in the summer of 2009 is well-documented in these parts. three weeks before we were to leave, in the girls bathroom after a softball game, i peed blood. over the next couple of weeks, we found out that blood wasn't caused by a kidney stone or a urinary tract infection. the blood was being caused by a massive fucking tumor that had been growing inside my right kidney for god knows how long.

many of the pictures that will occasionally flash across our screen saver at home tell a very eery story of that family trip to the beach. i am pretty sure we had a good time. i can remember several things from the week, a couple names of the restaurants we visited, but most of the week is a blur. several pictures that sarah snapped show me looking off into the distance...somewhere, even if that distance was no farther than the wall behind the condo television. it wasn't that i didn't try to have a good time. quite the contrary, i tried really fucking hard, but i couldn't stop thinking about what the tumor meant. was i dying? or was my doctor right when he predicted that i was going to be okay?

it wasn't confirmed cancer until the day after my surgery, after they were able to pull the jacked up organ out of a hole just next to my belly button, slice the jacked up organ open and play around with the tumor. it was that same day and during the same trip to my room that my urologist told me to "celebrate". the cancer was completely contained within the jacked up organ. "you're gonna be really fucking sore for a while, bro, but you are going to be fine." or something like that. 18 long, hard months later, i finally owned that news.

last summer, sarah and i celebrated my cancer(free)-versary with a trip to gatlinburg that, while fun in moments and necessary for the emotional healing, was equal parts haunted. my mind had yet to catch up with my body in the recovery process.

just over a month ago, we went to "the happiest place on earth" only to realize it wasn't. what it was, though, was the first time in close to two years that our family felt whole again, the first time in two years that cancer didn't stain our recall, the first time in two years cancer didn't retard and forecast our future for us.

my mind had finally caught up.

flash back to the future and forward to this weekend.

we are lucky to have friends that care about us and our girls. we are lucky and we'll never be able to properly say "thank you" for their kindness. we are lucky in that they would never expect a "thank you" in the first place.

two of our closest friends have invited us to join them on their own trip down memory lane, to join them at the plantation this weekend. how could we say no?

we couldn't. and we didn't.

thursday evening, we'll head down to the beach for a long weekend that will be much more than just a trip to the beach.

it will be a reminder of the years that i found myself at huffman.

it will be a reminder of how much fun we used to have.

it will be a reminder of how unfortunately forgettable our trip in july of 2009 was.

it will be a reminder of the 18 months of tests and scans, paranoia and anxiety and helplessness that followed my surgery.

it will have been six months removed from the clean scan in january, six months away from the next.

it will be a reminder that life goes on. it just has to. or it will without you.

it will be our last trip with only two baby girls in tow.

it will be many things, in and of itself.

it will be memorable in newer, older, and wiser ways.

it will be...

we can't wait.

hannah and caroline and the little kumquat and me
(part five)
((the one where we found out the kumquat was a girl))


i meant it.

every time i said it.

every word.

of this post. every word.

every time someone made the comment "this one's going to be a boy.", "i know you are hoping for a boy.", "girls are terrible. you need a boy." or anything along those lines, it struck me as asinine in the same way i struck myself as asinine when i was emotionally and visibly shaken after caroline showed herself female.

why would it matter? why should it matter?

i have two living, breathing, beautiful examples of the blessings that are girls, that are daughters in my and sarah's life. in some ways, it would make more sense if i was not only not actively rooting for a boy, but i was, in fact, intensely rooting for a girl. after hannah and caroline, we know (as well as you can know anything i guess) how to "do" girls. we know how girls roll. we know how girls cry. we know how girls react to having their feelings hurt. we know how to hold them, how to scold them, and when to physically fold them in half after they've broken something else in the kitchen. as we age, in general, we all get better at any lot in life after we've known it, practiced it, grown comfortable with it, then mastered it. we aren't masters at having daughters, that's for sure, but we sure as hell are seven and a half years closer to it than we are at doing so with a son.

intellectually, it makes sense what i've been telling myself and other people. rooting for one sex over the other is ridiculous, foolish even. root for health. root for a gentle personality. root for them sleeping through the night the day you come home from the hospital. root for gender? absurd.

ultrasound tech: do y'all want to know the sex?

sarah said, "yes, we do." in that voice of hers that means, "uh, duh. of course we do". so the ultrasound tech started looking around. in that moment, my heart began to flutter. i held sarah's hand. and in spite of everything i said in the first few paragraphs of this post, i wanted "it's a boy." to be the announcement. badly.

i don't know why the want came out from wherever it was hiding. it was obviously always there. somewhere. i just didn't want to talk to it. to acknowledge it was there. because i had been told and told myself it was stupid.

then again, i am stupid (we all know this), so, you know, whatareyougonnado?

the story goes as the story went. we announced last week that we are having a girl. as we left the hospital, sarah could tell that i was all shook up, just like i was with caroline. i couldn't hide it. part of me didn't want to. part of me wanted to vomit it all out so i could get my disappointment out of my system, but a bigger part of me wanted to create as little deja vu to "the caroline incident" for sarah as i could. i did well in the hospital, less well in the elevator, worse still in the parking lot and i was outright rude on the phone from the car.

i am nothing if not predictable in times like those.

this time was different, because it felt like the last time. for something. for what?

for me to have a boy?

for us to have a son?

for our family to expand?

to anticipate that day like last thursday when we find out what "it" is?

i don't know. all of those. some of them.

it's painfully obvious that, over the course of my development and maturation, something was wired deep into my soul that made me think i really wanted a son. and dammit, come cancer or high water, that wasn't going to change.

does this personality flaw make my current daughters any less beautiful, engaging, or joyful? of course not. does this mean that i will be disappointed when the kumquat makes her appearance into this world sometime in october? not a chance.

in the end, i think it means or meant that i thought i would have a lot to offer a son on what it was like to be a boy. i thought i would have really felt proud and honored to give my son my brother's middle name. i thought that it would have been rather slick to call my boy by the same name as george clooney's character in from dusk 'til dawn. and you know what? that's pretty much the list. observing men in and around my life living vicariously through their children kind of makes me sick. what makes me more sick is how i know i would've been just like them.

with my girls, i want what's best for them and i'll always want them to reach their potential, but i have no ridiculous delusions of grandeur to apply to their futures because i haven't walked ahead of them along a path that i wish for them to emulate. that's a good thing for them.

my feelings last thursday in that dark, ultrasound room will never diminish the way i feel for them and care for them or will ever defend my daughters. in fact, the same animal, instinctual, reflexive emotions that i always wondered if i would attach to a son probably goes double for my girls. they won't need me forever, but they'll sure as hell have me.

i hope that's good enough.

while sarah and i were marveling at the surreal images of our growing baby, baby, baby girl moving inside of her belly, my emotions got the best of me...again. just another example of how, oftentimes, i am quite poor at managing my own expectations.

several days removed, though, my perspective has long since changed and the only frustration concerning the kumquat is her call sign or lack thereof. we'll figure that one out, too, soon enough. then, of course, we'll have another girl in our home in october.

and our lives will be better for it.

disney
(a post-mortem)
((hannah and caroline and the little kumquat and me))
(((part four)))

let's get this out of the way first.

in my opinion, walt disney world is NOT "the happiest place on earth".

there, i said it.

how could it be, really? due to the reasons i listed in last week's post, as an adult, #wdw could never even aspire to be my happiest place on earth. too many variables, all of them spelled k-i-d-s.

now, don't get me wrong. as i mentioned several times in either updates or picture captions live and in the moment(s) on facebook, i loved my family being at disney world. the rumors of the #wdw machine being well-oiled were fair and accurate. i give mad props to sarah for doing all of our pre-planning, and, because of it, we rarely, if ever, had need for a car, cash, or worries where our next meal was coming from. it was all laid out in front of us. each night, we had a table service meal planned which would frame our day (admittedly, we changed plans on the fly tuesday). each morning, day, and night, we had buses that ran, at the very least, every twenty minutes from right outside our hotel door to whatever destination we were pursuing (only one exception to this rule. wednesday, there was a hiccup on the pick-up to epcot, which put us to the park shortly after it opened. i was furious for an hour, got over it, and it totally did not ruin the day). those included any of the parks and downtown disney. we chose to drive both times we went downtown, but we didn't have to. inside the parks, the presentation, style, and service were out of control awesome. it is a known fact that each employee of #wdw is hired to play a "role". if the employee can not embrace "the role" and the vision that every experience should be and will be disney-rific, then that employee will not be long for disney. we did not get bad service in line or in restaurants even once. we hardly saw a frown. we even were subjected to conversations that we weren't looking to have with disney staff that were just looking to shoot the breeze. well-oiled, to be honest, is an understatement. i wouldn't call it magical, per se, because magical implies that the experience just happens, and sarah and i were well aware of the amount of effort that must be placed on the presentation, style, and service. we didn't take it for granted, not for a second. we constantly were marveling at all the moving parts. no, the experience wasn't magical. it was efficient, devastatingly so, in the best way possible.

i think my conclusion and opinion of the parks, though, when commenting on it not being "the happiest place on earth" boiled down to this. it was almost too intense. too busy. too "we've got to move to the next ride, the next show, the next sit down and eat, the next nap, the next park, the next parade, the next fireworks fantastical, the next ..., the next ..., the next ...." for four. straight. days. we were constantly in motion. we constantly felt late. we constantly felt like we were missing something. we must have been. because, of course, we were. we didn't make the circle of countries in epcot. we just didn't have the energy, so some things got cut. they had to. if we didn't make cuts, the experience would have felt cumbersome, and the last thing a vacation should ever feel like is a burden.

so cuts were made, and we were happy to make them. we loaded up friday and drove home completely exhausted. worn out from the work that #wdw had required of us all. it wasn't work without fulfillment, but it was work, make no mistake.

now, work doesn't mean unhappy, but work means tired means lack of relaxation means lack of reflection until all is said and done. i am incredibly happy with the status of my store and our performance in the whole of 2011, but i am rarely "happy" in the moment, because i am working. working towards a goal that will only be reached and seen in hindsight and very rarely in that or those moments of actual work.

such was disney world. it is work to make your children feel like they've died and gone to heaven even while they are throwing tantrums, calling you stupid, sitting on your shoulders, covering your eyes, and hitting you on the head. it is work to endure the same shortcomings in other people's children without kicking them in the face and then picking a fight with their super-hairy dad just because your mood is so fucking raw and vulnerable in that moment in time. it is work to take six days, six nights, 20 hours in the car, get home and feel like you barely spoke to your wife the whole trip. why? because her ass was working just as hard, if not more so, as i was.

that's not the happiest place on earth. that's ... something else.

could it have been that we were merely #wdw rookies, not seasoned enough to make the most of our time? maybe. but i don't believe that's the most of it. i believe that anytime your children are involved, it's going to be hard to see the forest for the trees, nor do i believe you should have to visit the garden of eden five times to understand its beauty.

we had a magnificent time on our vacation. we have the pictures and the stories and the memories to prove it. we want to go back. we'd do it again right now. we will do it again in a few years when the little kumquat is ready to ride daddy's shoulders around for four days.

all of this recounting does beg the question. what would be my happiest place on earth? it's a good question, one that i don't know if i have an immediate answer for. a braves or bama game would be a good place to start, but, unless someone could promise me the outcome would favor my braves or my bama or my julio, the result might leave me altogether unhappy.

i suppose i'll keep searching, keep forging ahead on my quest for my holy grail, my happiest place on earth.

i am satisfied that i can scratch disney off my list. i've been there and done that now. and i am pleased that we enjoyed it so much that we would repeat last week as soon as possible.  

what's next?

happiness is hard
(hannah and caroline and the little kumquat and me)
((part three))


on espn radio this morning, colin cowherd cited a 9 year-old study on happiness done by a phd at a chicago university (sorry...i am too lazy to look for something to cite. i am just going to trust that cowherd wasn't making it up.). the study was simple to execute. it went like this. ten couples were randomly selected for a week-long trip to the beach on the university in question's dime. the only catch was this. the phd would place a short phone call to the man and woman of each couple once every waking hour. each hour over the course of the 12 hour period, each participant would rank their happiness on a scale of 1-10. that's it. outside of that one factor, the couples were told to enjoy themselves as best they could. once the vacation ended, the phd allowed three months to pass. he then asked all ten couples to come in, one couple by one, for a one hour evaluation of their experience. as part of the sit down, each participant was asked to rank their happiness for the entire week. to a couple and to a (wo)man, the ranking of the week on the whole was significantly higher than each person's respective average over the course of the 84 phone calls during the actual vacation. the phd concluded what he already suspected, that we, as humans are good at revisioning history and even better at pushing uncomfortable things in our past to the back of our minds so that positive experiences have more room in the front.

after his story, cowherd used the anecdote as a way of bringing up michael jordan and the myth of his awesomeness. if anyone talks about jordan these days, it's all hyperbole. "greatest ever". "never missed a clutch shot." "dunked once over jesus." that kind of stuff. gone from our collective consciousness are all the stinker games he played. all of the last second shots that he took that clanked off and away from the rim sending the bulls into the tunnel hanging their heads in defeat. all of the first six or seven years of his career when he could barely get out of the first round.

such is sports. if lebron can carry the heat to a title this year, looking back twenty years from now, you'll be led to believe that his career started with the 2010-11 season. his struggles and growth will be forgotten, because struggles and growth only make for good stories in the olympics.

such is life, especially when it comes to happiness. oh, happy day. is there a more relative qualifier than the word "happy"? some things that currently make me happy like facebook and twitter and fantasy baseball probably make others roll their eyes or recoil. some things that makes others happy like cooking or doing yardwork or searching for pictures of osama bin laden's shot up face online kinda make my stomach turn over. in life, in our life, though, we know happy when we see it. and we know happy when we feel it. it's no surprise to me to think that our chicago phd called one of his group right after they realized they stayed in the sun for three hours too long and they gave that hour a 2 on their scale because they were burned to hell. what is ever surprising and always disappointing is that we, and by we i mean i, can't interject some perspective into any given moment to realize and own that there are often many, many more reasons for us to be happy versus sad/mad/frustrated.

when i think ahead to my family's disney vacation that is just over a month away, i want to keep colin cowherd's anecdote in the front of my mind. will there be frustrations along the way and during the week? i am sure there will be, several in fact. but, what would happen if i could condition myself with the idea that, no matter what, this will be the BEST. VACATION. EVER beforehand and let that idea vaccinate all my negative thoughts with something akin to a preemptive strike?

my wife and friends know that i can be a fickle little baby. just today, i was totally pissed that amy and katie showed up to uab to run 10 minutes later than we planned. TEN MINUTES. that's it! but i let it ruin the next half hour and i ran with a chip on my shoulder the whole time. never mind that i ran my fifth, yes FIFTH mile in under 8 minutes, which i am pretty sure is the first time i've ran a mile in less than 8 minutes since i started this madness three months ago. never mind that i've lost over 25 pounds and am probably in the best shape of my life at 34. never mind all of that shit. they were TEN MINUTES late. i am such an asshole.

the point is this. i want to get better. and i need to get better. if not for me, for my family and the little kumquat that deserves a father that is at least the same amount of sane as hannah and caroline have had thus far.

i want to be able to own that, goddammit, i should be and AM happy most of the time. why wouldn't i be?

i am challenging myself now. every day for the rest of the month of may, i will log here or write down to log later how i would rank each day in terms of my own personal happiness. the notes will be short and sweet. we'll see if conducting my own personal trial helps my own personal effort to not be such a whiny bitch all of the time.

note: having said all of this, i fully expect caroline to tangle a sucker in her hair on the way home just to test my ass.

"i know you are hoping it's a boy"
(hannah and caroline and the little kumquat and me)
((part two))


cancer is everywhere.

especially if you are looking for it. i don't actively try and look for it as much as i did sixth months ago, but there is still a subconscious part of me that jumps into hyper-aware mode as soon as i read or hear a story of someone struggling with some form of it.

just today, i hopped into the car heading out for a brunch and a run with a friend and i turned on espn radio hoping for some mindless analysis of the nba playoffs or some "expert" to tell me why the braves offense (heyward included) currently makes me want to hide my eyes. instead, what do i get? pat williams, gm of the orlando magic is introduced by colin cowherd's sit-in, brian kenny, and they start off with a short anecdote about pat's son running in the boston marathon yesterday. why was pat's son running in the race? because his dad his fighting something called multiple myaloma. i don't even know what that is, nor am i going to google it because i will then be sure that i, too, have multiple myaloma. pat williams, while talking about his malady, could not have been in better spirits, though. it was unbelievable. he knew he was in for a fight, he admitted it, talked about how proud he was as a dad to have his son run in his place in the marathon that he trained all of two months for (really...that's not even fair. i've been running for three months now, and i am just up to four miles.), and then they rapidly changed subjects to dwight howard and his kind-of impending free agency (he will be after next season). i was floored. i was like, keep talking about the cancer. i need you to talk about the cancer so that it can ruin my day completely. but, they didn't. they spent 90 seconds on it and then moved into exactly what i was looking for. mindless talk about sports.

closer to my life, local, i have 3 friends that have spent time in and around limbo who are in different places with their respective father's battles with the disease. matt and stephanie have been told that they are in their final days with their father here on this earth. rachel's dad is beginning his radiation therapy today. all i or anyone that cares for these people would want for them is take their dads' pain and anxiety and confusion and illness away, but we can't take it away. we are forced to sit idly by and offer our prayers and our support and hope that, in some way, it helps. (i love you, guys.)

in one of my weaker moments a couple weeks ago, i looked around and found that percentage-wise, humans have a 1 in 3 chance of fighting with some form of cancer. cancer is everywhere. if you are looking for it.

in the last couple of weeks since sarah and i officially let the kumquat out of the bag, there is one comment that has been made more often (to me, at least) than any other aside from "congratulations".

"i know you are hoping for a boy."

yeah...

i know where the comments are coming from. if i've shared the story once, i've shared it a hundred times. one of my biggest regrets with our pregnancy experience with caroline was how visibly shaken and disappointed i was when we initially found out she was a girl. for weeks leading up to that special day and ultrasound, i joked with andy and kiker about the idea of having a boy. little league. soccer. pee-wee football. star wars. bmx bikes. hot wheels. we would sit and eat ribs and wipe bbq sauce on our faces and tim allen grunt and i just knew i would have my boy that would carry on the o'kelley name and give our house some macho to balance out all the pink and flowers and gymnastics that hannah sported proudly. alas, it didn't happen. caroline was a girl and sarah didn't have to look hard or long at my face to know that i was bothered.

i am proud to say that i was only bothered for a couple days. i adjusted my expectations. i started mentally preparing for another princess and on august 23, 2007, out she came looking just like, what do you know, me! what we lost in macho-balance we did gain in "hannah looks just like you, sarah and caroline looks just like kevin." yay! i could claim one! caroline looks like me and, today, at three years-old, well, she acts just like me. she's stubborn. i mean really fucking stubborn. she's strong-willed. she's not afraid of anything other than tiny bugs. she doesn't like london on suite life on deck. and she needs the remote...at all times. she and hannah, both very much girls, are both very much my girls, and i wouldn't have it any other way.

when i hear the comment, "i know you are hoping for a boy", i hear what people are saying. they know me. they know my boy name is just waiting to be used just like it's been waiting for the last ten years. they know i'm a freak about sports. they know i would be that dad at the ballpark, but really, this go around, ...

i couldn't give a shit.

i am being honest. i don't daydream about a boy the same way that i once did. what i daydream about is health. and love. and showing my children impactful ways to affect their universe. to not be rude for the sake of being rude. to be caring. to try really hard at always doing their best. to be kind to their mommy. to learn to love guacamole. you know? the important stuff. and i can do that with a girl or a boy. it makes no difference to me.

you probably don't believe me. i don't blame you. it's a shift in the paradigm that is me. that happens, i suppose, when life reminds you of your mortality.

cancer is everywhere. if you are looking for it. and i do, still. i look for it in moments. not to let it scare me. i look to let it ground me and remind me that little league isn't as important as i once thought it was.

i no longer play church basketball or church softball "to win the game". i play to finish the game and find a lesson somewhere wrapped inside the end result.

come boy. come girl. it makes no matter.

i am praying for you, matt. and you, stephanie. and you, rachel. and your dads.

come what may.

hannah and caroline and the little kumquat and me
(part one)


sunday morning, we were heading into firehouse off of highway 11 when sarah's dad, bill, shook my hand and said, "congratulations". i am paraphrasing the next part but it went something like this..., "there is no truer symbol of hope than bringing a child into the world."

i wasn't sure how he meant the comment.

it could've been just from the baby angle. baby=symbol of hope. a new life. completely innocent. completely unaware of how truly fucked up the world is. parents, entirely aware of how truly fucked up the world is, make the intentional decision to create a new life anyway. in the baby growing inside of the mommy's belly is not only a life, but a metaphor. the parents telling the world that they feel that all is not lost, not only for their current children but this child, too, and they are not afraid for this child or this child's future generations. the baby represents optimism, a moment in time flip of the bird to the cynic inside all of us, an expression of belief in the potential good of our fellow man and the goodness of our creator that allows miracles such as human creation to be within our reach and control.

it could've been from the kevin angle. at least, there was a part of me that heard it that way. there have been few people that have been as in tune with my every day anxieties over the last 18 months as sarah's dad. sarah's dad is a doctor, so any time anything odd happened to me, he was one of the first we talked to. a weird feeling i had never noticed or paid attention to before? will you call your dad? an experience relating to my expelling of bodily waste that worried me? will you call your dad? my being dizzy for several months post-operation? will you call your dad? something i read on the internet? i am pretty sure i just found my cause of death on webmd. will you call your dad? each time, he patiently (from what i am told) heard sarah's retelling of my most recent malady and responded back to her in a loving and educated and rational way. he didn't make fun of me (from what i am told). he didn't tell me to sod off (from what i am told). he just told me in so many words the same mantra that my therapist did. is it possible that little bump on your head that has been there as long as you can remember will end up killing you? maybe. is it probable? um, no.

more than likely, some of both of those sentiments were captured in bill's words and, however he meant them, i appreciated it.

in spite of all the clean scans, positive test results, return to health, and encouraging words, there have been many days in the last eighteen months i was certain my fate was in immediate peril. after my late january scan, i put my doctor on the spot.

dr. wade. this is unfair of me to ask you, but you have gotten to know me and my anxieties pretty well over the last 18-20 months. i have two concerns with the idea of having more children. one, i want to be relatively certain that, barring something unforeseen and unrelated to my having kidney cancer, i would like to be around and a part of that child's life for a long time. two, i also am worried about my children now and in the future-tense being at greater risk for having the same issue.

dr. wade: (smiles) that's not how this kind of cancer works. you shouldn't worry about that.

(here's the unfair part) so, if i were you, would you, you know, not try again?

dr. wade: (smiles) i think you should feel good about going on and living your life in whatever way you want to. we're going to see each other for a long time.

the rest, as they say, is now history.

"there is no truer symbol of hope than bringing a child into the world."

sarah is pregnant. twelve weeks on thursday. the due date is one week before my own birthday, october 23rd.

let's do this.