The nurses came and grabbed my gurney, wheeling me toward a grim date with a doctor whose specialty is one I wouldn't have chosen.
I felt drowsy and told a nurse to feel free to increase the dosage of whatever drug they were pumping through my IV hookup. She smiled, looked at me like I was half wimp and half dummy, and said they hadn't given me any drugs yet.
Oh. Well please do, and don't spare the juice.
Dr. Peter Rosenberg suddenly appeared and asked if I'd ever had a colonoscopy. No, I told him, but I'd had a similar procedure 6 1/2 years ago on a day which, for two reasons, I will never forget. Dr. Rosenberg was smart enough to guess one of them.
"There's generally no drug with that procedure," he said.
Bingo. A technician showed up looking like a Roto-Rooter man and went to town, performing what's called a sigmoidoscopy. I wouldn't recommend having one just for the fun of it.
The other reason I can't forget that day is that as I left the house for the hospital, agonizing over the indignity of turning 50, my wife made the following announcement:
"I think I'm pregnant."
That is a lot to take in one day.
With two grown sons, I felt too old to start over. My wife insisted this was going to be a wonderful adventure, and she gave me hell over my selfish and cranky reservations.
So today, on Father's Day, I want to thank her for getting pregnant and enduring nine months of my dithering followed by 24 hours of labor. I want to thank my daughter for flying into this world as if shot from a cannon, ready to roll. And I want to give two thumbs up to her and the entire cast of the Ivanhoe School kindergarten class for last week's production of "The Rainbow Fish."
This was American theater at its finest, an exquisitely layered and brilliantly executed study of the isolating effects of narcissism and the redemptive power of giving. It worked for this balding graybeard on a deeply personal level, given my reluctant journey into third-time fatherhood, which has led to some of the best years of my life.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's back up to the doctor standing over me last week in Pasadena. I told him the last time someone went to work on me through a gown that opens in back, I'd gotten some big news that same day. This time around, I was happy to settle for the less dramatic news that I wasn't about to
die.
