The Giver

I thought I'd do a goofy font like "Webdings" in honor of Thie Giver, but it wouldn't do any of us any good. Why is that a font at all?

The Giver is the meaning of the name of you-know-who, my one-and-only, my babies' daddy, NP. Who knew that all his life he would be giving? Giving his parents hell, giving me time to do homework, giving of himself to his daughters, giving in to the people for whom he works, continously.


Nathan has quite a story really. An aggressive, and at times abusive, upbringing on the ranch taught him when to give and when to take. It wasn't until he was out of high school, still not as big as his dad, that he began standing up for himself both physically and emotionally. His biggest life event, until having children arguably, was a car accident his senior year of high school, Super Bowl Sunday after just turning 18, that nearly took his life. A couple times. His pick-up truck collided head-on with the neighbor's front-end loader on top of a small hill not even a mile from the front gate to the Perli ranch. Among other things, his injuries included an avulsion fracture of his left main bronchus, meaning his left lung was torn off the stem that holds it to the trachea. He also broke ribs and had multiple other lacerations, which left thick scars to this day. He spent weeks in the hospital, developed blood clots in his legs from being immobile for so long. The physicians' notes say the first surgery was comparable to a lung transplant, in that it was reattached to his own bronchus as if had been implanted, and he had to recover from the edema, secretions, chest tubes, prolonged ventilator use and all that like those patients do.



He was dismissed to home after only a few weeks, miraculously. He recalls a day when, 15 miles out of town in the basement of his house on the ranch, he thought he heard one of those ridiculous cars teenage boys drive around with the bass pounding, pounding, pounding so loud you can hear it from blocks away. Well, of course, it wasn't a teenager driving by. It was his heart pounding in his chest. His mom took him in to the clinic, where he showed worsening signs of fatigue, tachycardia (increased heart rate), and shortness of breath. He was admitted to the hospital again, and after a few tests, the doctors learned his heart was unable to pump effectively because the sack that holds his heart was full of blood, asserting pressure on his heart from the outside, a condition called pericardic tamponade. He had emergency surgery again where a hole was cut into that sack, allowing it to drain, called a pericardial window. So more chest tubes and wires, another week in the hospital, and recovery from then on. He still deals with a chronic cough, secretions, a sensation that he's always "stuffed up" which is tolerable.

He was allowed to make up most of his schoolwork that spring and graduated with his class in May 1997. Fast forward through a few years of college and a few more years of working in Applebee's kitchens.... until 2000 when he meets his future wife through a coworker. Our first meeting was on his birthday, January 3 of that year when an ex-boyfriend of mine took me to Spearfish to visit some friends. They were old roommates. So we said hello in an apartment complex parking lot and went our own ways for a year or so. When Nathan decided to move to the Rapid City store from Spearfish early in 2001. Maybe he heard I was there. ;) We made eyes at each other for a few months, before actually going out with some friends and a more exclusively that spring and summer. We had many great times that summer that we still laugh about. I knew I had my final semester of college waiting for me in Vermillion that fall, so I wanted to not make too big of a deal of this new relationship. The truth is, though, it was a very big deal. I got pregnant sometime in late July (with Peace you'll recall) and when the time came to leave for school, we left a half-ass break-up... well, half-assed. I told my students that fall I had a wonderful boyfriend at home because, as high school students, they asked every other day. Whether it was true or not I didn't really know, nor did I know, at that point, that I was pregnant.

It didn't take long to find out, in all honesty. I had a school physical for student-teaching soon after I got back to Vermillion. I got a message one day that my urinalysis needed to be repeated at Student Health, that was clue #1. I didn't go back, but I quit drinking and tried to eat better. I was assistant coaching the girls' basketball teams at Akron-Westfield, so that fact that I didn't gain weight until that ended around Thanksgiving time wasn't a huge surprise. I was much more active than I had been in months, thus in better shape. I was in denial BIG-time and didn't seek medical care, mostly because I didn't think anything was wrong. Whether I was pregnant or not, things were OK with me, except that I hadn't talked to you-know-who in a couple months.

Fast forward again to April 18, 2002. I was in labor, admitted to the hospital in Rapid City, where I had moved after finishing school. The first of the loves-of-my-life was born at 2:45 the next morning. Nathan and I moved into an apartment together a month later, got engaged on my birthday of that year, married the next summer. The rest is history, as they say.

When did this turn into a blog about me?

Long story short, Nathan has been giving and giving of himself for a long time, especially to those of us in his immediate life. So as we embark on a new stage of our lives together, I figure it is probably time to give some. I have the best job I can imagine at the best place in the world and am just starting to make something of my career. But it is his turn. And in the year of hope and change and all the rest, it is likely time to make a big change, a move, new jobs, new home. We'll see what happens after this spring. After all, the man just wants to fish.