A Valentine Love Story

It has been such a long time since I wrote a portrait story, or blogged about losing my keys while sulking about something silly.  But now the timing is just right - I’ve been saving this story since September, and most of it is written on a napkin from a Wildberry girlfriend lunch. 


Valentine’s Day is about love for more reasons than one.

Joe's hair.  Come on.

Flashback, late 1997.  I had big hair, a tall husband, a giant dog and a baby with a surprisingly round Charlie Brown head.  For five years, I’d worked for my father’s business and it was time to move on.  My husband Joe worked for Hewitt Associates and kept suggesting that I apply.  I’d earn more money, get more benefits for us, we could commute together.  But I was going to break my dad’s heart in the process.  My son Joey came to my father’s office with me each morning.  The gentle beginning to our days was going to become brutal.  It was such an agonizing decision that I used a long spreadsheet to weigh the piles of pros and cons.   In the end, we knew it was time.


I started at Hewitt, staggered and delighted by the shocking change of working for a big company.  I LOVED IT.  I made new friends, including a tiny spitfire of a girl named Tracey.  We clicked immediately, laugh-talking as fast as possible, chirping each other with our Nextel walkie talkie phones, mostly to gossip about coworker drama, sometimes to get work done. I only worked at Hewitt for a year, just long enough to make bonds that lasted through the next six years working downtown, getting fired, and the last ten years of drawing full time.


Tracey and I meet for lunch when we can, especially around our birthdays (the same day, two years apart) so we can catch up about kids (two boys for us both), our siblings (we each have only one brother who each have one son and one daughter) and our parents (who have been married a very long time).  It doesn’t matter how much time goes by between visits, Tracey and I love each other, get each other, root for one another.


I’m always excited to draw for friends, especially dear ones, so I was happy when Tracey asked me to draw a portrait for her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary.  We thought about doing a “then and now” with images of her parents when they first married, and now.  Instead, we settled on a family tree, including both sets of Tracey’s grandparents.  As the portrait unfolded, the future of Tracey’s family hung in the balance.  She looked through photos of beloved, dearly missed grandparents while facing the possible loss of both her own parents.  The portrait was more than just a celebration of 50 years of family love and marriage.  We were hoping against hope that it would be a celebration of life.


Tracey’s parents met at a bowling alley on a blind date set up by friends, both barely into their 20’s.  Her dad became a toy designer for cereal boxes; her mother - a loving homemaker.  We talk together about our parents, how they sometimes drive us nuts and always make us feel loved, how lucky we are to have had them so long, that they’ve stayed together, that they have their health – or what’s left of it. 


“My dad is completely devoted to my mom,” Tracey tells me.  “He’s the most important thing to her, and her to him.  He’s taken such good care of her through two bouts of cancer.  He sat through every chemo.”  Tracey’s mom had a cancerous kidney removed.  For ten years, the remaining kidney has hung on, working overtime.  Its time was up.


“My mom didn’t want to live on dialysis,” Tracey explained.  They went to the Mayo Clinic and began the long, difficult process of trying for a transplant. “She needed a kidney badly. We all got tested, but we weren’t a match. There was a very limited pool of candidates due to her blood type.  We needed more people.” 


They learned about something called “paired donation” that can speed up the process. 


Paired donation is kind of like giving an organ directly to your loved one.  Except you give it to someone else instead.  And someone else’s loved one gives one to someone else and so on until the chain is completed.  The ultimate pay it forward.


Tracey and her brother both jumped up waving their hands to donate a kidney for their mother.  But Tracey’s dad wouldn’t hear of it.  His children were still young, with children of their own to care for.  He was 71 and as always, he was ready to step up to the plate for his darling wife, whatever it took.


Meanwhile, Tracey had been researching online how to find a kidney, trying to speed up the process.  Like her parents, Tracey is a very private person.  But she went public, creating a Facebook page to search for a kidney, imploring friends to share the page with friends of friends.  This is where it comes in handy to be fabulous.  Most of Tracey’s friends responded right away, and those who didn’t got a personal plea from Tracey during her daily campaigning.  In the end, 99% shared, forwarded, cared. 


After waiting many months, a match was found by Mayo.  Everyone rejoiced!  The relief. But then the whole thing fell through.  The match wasn’t made in heaven after all.


Tracey closed her eyes, remembering for a moment. “Everyone was devastated.  Waiting for the kidney was torture; we were on pins and needles.”  Tracey’s mom was very sick.  Time was running out.


As a result of one of Tracey's repeated messages, a friend of a high school alum made a suggestion to contact the Living Kidney Donor Network, http://www.lkdn.org/.  Tracey spoke to the founder, Harvey Mysel, who offered to meet with her parents.  A kidney recipient himself, Harvey told them not to put all their eggs in the Mayo basket, urging them to widen the pool and explore other places, like Loyola. 


Within a month of getting established at Loyola, another kidney was found through the paired donor pool.  Tracey’s mom and dad were scheduled for surgery on the same day, within two weeks of their 50th anniversary.  There was a 20 person chain making up the final list of paired donors.  The logistics of scheduling all those surgeries in different parts of the country was an enormous challenge. The surgery for Tracey’s dad’s kidney recipient was pushed back a couple days. I asked Tracey if her dad could have changed his mind once his wife’s new kidney was snuggled in place.  “The donor can change his or her mind, even on the table up to the moment before anesthesia,” Tracey explained.  “But my dad said he would never back out.  He’d never put another family through the devastation we all felt when the first kidney fell through.”


Both surgeries were ultimately a success, though her mother spent some scary time in the ICU while her family held their breath.  Tracey’s parents ended up recovering on the same hospital floor.  They were each other’s incentive to get out of bed.  Dad painfully walked each day to see his bride and her healthy new kidney.  The nurses thought they were adorable.


Back when Tracey and I were piecing together her portrait, we didn’t yet know how the story would end during such a scary time for her family.  Choosing images of all those beloved faces was bittersweet and more emotional than for most of my portrait clients.  Tracey fretted over every picture being just right, especially those of her grandparents.  Only her father’s mother is still alive - in assisted living.  Tracey’s grandpa was her primary caretaker since she’d had a stroke in her 80’s. Like father like son.  Tracey’s dad took his father’s 2009 death very hard.  He passed with his loving family all around him. 


Tracey’s maternal grandfather, Papa, took Tracey’s brother Michael to his first Cubs game, and Michael took 12 year old Tracey to her first game in his memory – they are life-long, suffering fans.  Papa died when Tracey was four, taken by cancer in his 50’s. The loss devastated Tracey’s mom, who always called him a “gentle man”.  His wife, “Nana”, lived to be 86.  “Putting Papa and Nana together again for my mom will be the crown jewel of the portrait,” Tracey stressed to me.  After all Mom had been through, it would be a beautiful, emotional surprise. 


And then, a happy ending – mom’s kidney came from Pennsylvania, dad’s kidney went to Utah.  On their August 30, 2014 anniversary, Tracey and her brother presented the portrait to her parents: precious children, beautiful grandchildren, beloved parents.  One kidney found, one kidney given, one grateful family.  And now, six months later, everyone is doing beautifully.

Wadded up in my purse for months. 
Nice.

In September, I scribbled the whole story down on a restaurant napkin at lunch, a month after the transplants.  I’d asked Tracey ahead of time if I could write about her story and then I forgot a damn notebook.  And a pen.  And then I forgot to write it. Some things never change.


“While my mom was recuperating in the ICU,” Tracey told me over our lunch salads, “I kept thinking, what if she doesn’t get to see her parents together in the portrait?  What if something happens?  I thought the portrait was going to be big.   But it was so much bigger than I thought.”


Today, Valentine’s Day, is also National Donor Day. 

It’s a good day for a love story.  

http://www.kidneyregistry.org
http://www.matchingdonors.com

With love,
Wendy Zumpano
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Confessions of a Corporate Flirt

During almost all of my corporate life, before I became a full time pencil portrait artist, I worked for, or with, my father.  When I work hard, I feel my dad's influence.  When I play hard, it's there too.    If there is a repetitive ticking noise somewhere, both of us react like we've been poked with a fork.  My son Max has it too... it's cool and a little scary how it works that way. 


Every job I ever had was due to my father's connections or his computer consulting business.  I worked for him summers and weekends from the time I was thirteen and full time for five years after college.  We developed a closeness that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.  At work, you use all your abilities... social, emotional, logical.  While in the trenches, you get to know your coworkers better than you know some of your dearest friends.  I surprised my dad sometimes with the things that I accomplished at work.  I surprised myself.  I'm glad we had that chance to get to know each other so well, even if I still have Vietnam flashbacks about some of it.

Working makes me tired.

Working for family can be challenging.  My dad used to say that somebody was always in the room who shouldn't be... a father when there should have just been a boss.  A crabby teenager or hungover college student when there should have been a diligent employee who wasn't secretly napping on her office floor.  Eventually, the financial and emotional strain was just too much, and I left my dad's business for Hewitt Associates, where my husband Joe was working.  The decision to leave my dad was so difficult, I used a spreadsheet to weigh the emotional toll, money, daycare issues.  How in the hell do you measure hurting your dad?  It was the hardest choice I've ever made.


Karma rewarded my anguish with the best time I would ever have at work for the rest of my life.  That includes my current job which entails goofing around writing stories before I draw pictures in front of the TV.


I started off at Hewitt as an ITS person.  I forget what that stood for, I-something Technology Service? Anyway, I was a computer helper like the Saturday Night Live skit with Jimmy Fallon ("MOVE!") The funniest part of this job was sending official sounding emails to associates about their naughty files cluelessly stored on the network.  People would FREAK. OUT.  "Um, oh, crap, I don't know where that came from, I swear, somebody must have saved it there by mistake, not me, oh God."


My excellent porn sniffing abilities led to a promotion in less than six months to a software specialist. There the real fun began.  I was the resident building expert for Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), which I liked, although I was faking the expert part.  I worked in a big open room with seven guys, all in their early twenties.  I was in my early thirties, but felt fifty sometimes, because young guys are full throttle and I'm no delicate flower.  I had to keep up, no matter how disgusting it got.  Our DTS (desktop services) room was far away from the rest of the work world and it was a nasty slice of heaven.


And in that testosterone soaked room, I fell in friend-love with Jason.


I liked all the guys, but Jason was particularly hilarious (check!), adorable (check!), a former Marine (yum!) and a great talker.  If you know me personally, you might have noticed that I'm a bit chatty.  Jason and I talked our heads off about everything... home, work, rumors, love.  Jason was dating a Hewitt girl named Jennelle and he was a goner.  I gave him advice and drew a pencil portrait of them as his gift to her. 

I am a shameless flirt.  I can't help it.  If I think a guy is funny or smart, I try to rein it in.  But I never had a date in high school, I had ONE DATE in college.  When I wasn't busy slumming it with assholes, I was wondering if I would ever, ever find someone.  Once Joe rescued me, many of my insecurities disappeared.  I bartended for a few years after I discovered that Joe liked sitting at home way, way, way more than I did.  I found my flirt and she's been inappropriately showing up whenever cocktails are involved ever since.


Considering the atmosphere, I'm surprised there wasn't ever alcohol in the DTS room.  But even sober, I was a little more flirty than I probably should have been with Jason.  Work friendships between men and women can be a slippery slope; emotional intimacy can be just as dangerous as physical.  But Jason loved Jennelle and I loved Joe.  So we play-flirted in the sweet safety of our respective, rock-solid relationships. 


Meanwhile, I got a taste of being a 20-something guy.  For a full hour, every day after lunch, we played a video game called Unreal.  I had never been a big video game player, but Unreal revealed to me why it becomes obsessive for some.  Unreal was a shooty, wandering around game that involved finding bigger and bigger guns to blast each other in the face with.

Look at me, I'm a gamer.

The end of your gun was you, and the people running around in the game were the actual guys in our office.  This is an everyday boring concept in the world of gaming, but for me in 1998, it was hysterically new and intoxicating.  

The Zumpinator was awesome.

You picked a character from a few different juiced up robot looking choices. I picked the busty, slutty looking female ones and called myself the Zumpinator. Jason was always hollering "ZUMP!!! I SEE YOU!!!" at the top of his lungs from his cube across the room when I tried to hide and snipe him. Being the only girl and a novice player, I held my own. Our quiet, nice manager tried to ignore that we were totally screwing around, but it must have been hard with the constant yelling and laughing and not even pretending to work even a little.  Sometimes he came out of his office and said, "Guys.  Really?"  There was no stopping us.  Plus, we weren't even supposed to have games loaded on the network in the first place, but everyone in the room was a kick ass tech. So they manipulated the system and nice boss looked the other way as long as we actually got some work done.  Which we usually did.



Every day, I looked forward to going to work.  It was fun and funny and I was proud of my ability to not flinch too much at the absolutely vile atrocities that Jason and his friends would casually show me on the internet.  "Hey, Zump!  Come here a sec," meant trouble.  I pretended that I didn't have nightmares about the delightful video clip they shared entitled Beer Poop.  I'll never look at Braveheart the same way again.  Jason and I were like detectives, keeping a careful log of a married chick's constant visits to one of our married cohorts.  Now they're married to each other.  See?  A slippery slope.


Not long after I left my father's business, my dad admitted defeat after a long, bloody fight against bigger competitors and rising costs.  The timing of me leaving just before his business folded provided great material for my future therapy.  He joined the Chicago consulting firm where I would eventually get fired in six quick years. "They could really use a Wendy," my dad told me, and that was the end of my best job in the world.  The new firm offered me more money and the chance to work from home.  I was about to get knocked up with Max and my little family just couldn't pass that up. 


The day I left Unreal, Jason and all my hilarious boys, my voice choked with tears when I tried to yell, "The Zumpinator has left the building!"  I'd been with them less than a year. 


"Ahhh, Zump," Jason teased as he hugged me good-bye.


Jason and Jennelle had a destination wedding on the beach.  They reminded Joe and me of us... a real team, happy and laughing and made for each other.  They got a house and geared up for the next step.  Jason was a family guy and he was great with our kids when we visited them and they wrote GO BEARS all over his Wisconsin driveway. 




"Your kids suck," Jason cheerfully observed.



When I started my full time portrait thing, Jason asked me to draw his parents for an anniversary gift.  We didn't talk as much as we used to, but all I had to hear over the phone was "Zuuuuuump!" and we were back in Unreal mode.




I don't remember Jason telling me he had cancer.  Maybe I blocked it, because it was way too close to home.  He didn't talk about it much in the beginning, when he and Jennelle were frozen with fear. I sat with him during a chemo session and we laughed and chatted while my stomach was in knots.  Some of the people in the room with him were like living cadavers.  Jason is one of the most full of life people I've ever met.  What if...


Not to worry.  My Semper Fi friend banked some artillery, kicked cancer's stupid ass and their son Callan miraculously came into the world.  Jason and Jennelle were swept into the nonstop grind of working full time and new parenthood.  Joe loved Jason too and saw more of him than I did at poker tournaments and work.   Jason ordered a portrait of little Cal with their big bulldog, Spike.  He nagged me to make sure that he was represented somewhere on my pencil portrait website (right here).  Some friendships don't require a lot of interaction. Our bond has been built and it's there whenever we need it. 


One day, Joe was working in his home office (his lazyboy with his laptop on his lap in front of the big TV) and he stopped rocking with a sudden gasp. 


"Holy shit,"  he looked up at me in shock, "Jason just texted that Jennelle wants a divorce." 


Conversations with Jason were with somebody brand new.  Gone was the happy go lucky, smart ass goofball.  Here was a boy crushed to his core.  The pain in his voice killed me.  And that constant question, "Why?  Why?"  She wouldn't listen, she didn't care.  It was all business now about splitting time with Cal, the house, money.  He beat cancer.  How could he have lost her?


The honeymoon phase doesn't last forever and maybe there had been some signs, some warnings.  When you think you're in it forever, there is all the time in the world to stop playing games, lose weight, quit smoking.  And then forever is gone and there was nothing Jason could do to bring it back.  He begged and opened up to Jennelle in complete vulnerability, admitted his failings, promised the world.  But she was done and forever was ice cold.  She told him that his pleas made him seem weak.   Bitch.



I told Jason that he was funny and true and smart and a great dad.  When we jokingly talked about who we would choose for each other if one of us were hit by a bus, Joe chose Jason for me.  I told Jason that eventually hooking up with someone new was probably going to be fun. I told him, with complete sincerity, that he was a catch. 


"Really?" Jason asked, in pain.  "Do you really think so?"



Yes, I do.


Conversations with Jason are different again, now.  They are with yet another Jason.  This Jason works out constantly and looks more and more like the Marine he once was.  He tells me about girls and asks for my advice sometimes, but doesn't really need it.  Last year he asked if I'd draw another portrait for his parents.  This one was celebrating their new family.  Jason, Cal and his wonderful, supportive parents at Cal's first Packer's game.

Eff off, Jennelle.

Jason was thrilled with it and hung it in his new bachelor pad, a beautifully decorated house just right for a boy named Cal and his dad.  Jason happily pointed the portrait out to his friends at his housewarming party and introduced Joe and me like we were family.  I put together Christmas cards for him blending a photo from the game and my drawing of Lambeau on the front, and the Jason and Cal parts of his parents' drawing inside.

Jason recently had a 4th of July party and told me we needed to come.  "You'll get to meet the girl I've been telling you about!" he confided. 


We didn't make the party and I haven't met the girl yet.


She better be worthy of my friend, because he is one in a million. 



Zumpinator, out.

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