The image in my mind is still vivid. It is late October 1970. I am sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a hospital room in Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland, coincidentally the same hospital where I almost died in November of last year (due to an extremely low sodium count). I am sitting beside a crib containing our son, Andrew, who is almost five months old. He is sleeping fitfully and Embry and I are taking turns being with him 24/7. This is the third or fourth day that we have been here, knowing that our child is very sick with a raging infection but not knowing a lot more. It was almost exactly a year ago that we lost our first child, Katherine, just short of her first birthday, due to a heart defect.
The door opens and in comes one of his doctors, frowning. “I have good news and bad news, Mr. Howell. The good news is that we have penned down the cause of your son’s infection. It is staphylococcus aureus. The bad news is that we have thrown everything we’ve got at it and have not yet succeeded in killing the infection. We have one more shot at succeeding and are hopeful, but I must warn you, be prepared for the worst.”
I felt my heart stop. This could not be happening. And to make matters worse– no, to make them unbearable: It was almost exactly a year ago to the day that we had lost our first child.
I managed to say only one thing. “Do not tell my wife.”
Medical personnel came back in shortly and took Andrew away. I got through the rest of the day in a stupor, staring at a fuzzy screen on a black and white television where the World Series was on. Embry was due to relieve me around five o’clock that afternoon. I did not know what I would tell her. If you know her, you know that she is one very strong woman. But this would be too much for any young mother to take– a second loss in one year!
The door opened again just before five. I braced myself. What would I tell Embry? But it was not Embry. It was the doctor. This time he had a faint smile. “Mr. Howell, I think we’ve got it under control,” he said, “but we won’t know for sure until tomorrow.” Embry arrived later and we returned home that night hopeful though I did not reveal to Embry the dire warning the doctor conveyed.
Early the next day the doctor called to confirm that Andrew was recovering. The infection was at last under control and that he could be discharged in two or three days. “But” he said, “Would you mind calling your parents, or whoever in Nashville is responsible, and ask them to call off all the doctors there who have been badgering us….” My parents did know a bunch of doctors in Nashville, and I had kept them informed about Andrew, but I had no idea that their medical friends in Nashville were involved.
And talk about breathing a deep sigh of relief!
And four years later, our daughter, Jessica, was born, and it too was a shaky start. She was born six weeks early due probably to our sailing the weekend before she was born, an action which admittedly falls into the category of being irresponsible parents. We were racing our 16-foot, new sailboat, “Mother Courage,” in very rough waters in the Chesapeake Bay in the fall regatta sponsored by our sailing club.
When I first saw Jessica in the hospital, she was tiny and jaundiced, all hooked up with special equipment and we were told there were several concerns, one being a heart murmur. Uh oh. Our first child was born with a heart murmur, which ultimately spelled real trouble. Embry ended up spending six days more in the hospital to be with Jessica before she was released and the heart murmur eventually disappeared. Happy ending but not without taking a toll on Embry.
Whew! Dodged another bullet.
And both children have pulled through life just fine despite the ups and downs that go along with all human existence on the planet Earth. Both children are married to wonderful spouses, have two children each, one a senior in high school and the other three in good colleges or universities. And our children and their spouses have good jobs and have what I would call the right values. Andrew, whose family lives in Maplewood NJ, works for the Environmental Defense Fund, and his wife is a public defender in Newark. Jessica, who lives in Portland Maine, is a career public elementary school teacher (serving low income neighborhoods) specializing in the early grades, and her husband is an environmentalist who was in charge of “natural climate solutions” at the Nature Conservancy and now is starting up an environmental initiative at The National Audubon Society. Jessica once commented that in the Howell family you can say anything you want, do anything you want, and believe anything you want—as long as you don’t become a Republican. I am happy to report there are no Republicans in the Howell extended family.
One can argue whether we were responsible parents or not. We rarely drove our children to or from their schools since all were a mile or less away—and they walked and rarely complained. We did not help them much with homework since most of it was above my capability anyway. But we did attend most of their performances. Jessica once gave me a hard time about not attending some of her dances or the plays she was in. When I vehemently objected that we had seen every play and every performance at least once, she said, “Well, you never came to see me play volleyball.”
“Volleyball?” I said, “You played volleyball?”
Point taken.
“But,” I said to her, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We must have been doing something right. Look how you and your brother turned out.”
I suppose that we also could be Exhibit A of people who had been given much and could be labeled as elites even though we were firmly committed to civil rights, leveling the economic playing field, and trying to address the inequalities that plagued our country then and that are even worse today. Embry had attended public school all the way through high school, but I went to an elite, private school in Nashville though it was the right school for me and I loved it. Yet when it was time to consider whether our own children should attend public or private school, Embry and I both agreed that we should at least give public schools a try. So when the call came that Andrew, who had a very good singing voice and had been in the junior choir at the National Cathedral, had been accepted into the Choir of Men and Boys at the Cathedral, we were quite pleased.
The call went like this.
Choir rep: I have great news for you. Your son has been accepted into the Cathedral Choir which means that he is automatically accepted into St Albans School along with a generous scholarship.
Me: Thanks! Terrific, we will accept the offer but prefer for him to remain in public schools.
Choir rep: Excuse me?
Me: Yes, we accept the choir offer but not the school.
Choir rep, (following a long moment of silence.) So, you are telling me that you are turning down the choir position, which means he won’t sing in the choir because all the choir boys must attend St Albans? And you are turning down what amounts to close to a full scholarship to the best school in Washington? (another long pause followed by a sigh) How long have you lived in Washington?
Me: A while.
Choir rep: Do yourself a favor and ask anyone, anyone what they would do and we will talk again tomorrow.
I called several people and they all agreed: The choir rep was right. I was a complete idiot.
So we accepted the invitation, and that is how Andrew ended up in the Cathedral Choir for Men and Boys and at Saint Albans, a fabulous school for him where he made “friends for life” and lead to a college degree from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by six years in Russia, and an MBA from a French international business school, but that is a story for another post.
Jessica attended the local public school through the fifth grade but as one of the youngest kids in the class struggled a bit and we decided to send her to another neighborhood private school, Maret, where she repeated the fifth grade, flourished, became a student leader, ended up president of the student body her senior year and was accepted at Brown where she met her future husband.
Our mysterious guardian angels were working overtime again. And besides, whoever said parenting was easy?