7 lbs. 3 oz. 20″. Happy and healthy.
Tag: Family
-
Joanna at Work
The next issue of UT’s alumni magazine, The Torchbearer, will feature Joanna, so I used the photo shoot as an excuse to play with our new Panasonic GH2.
-
Coolest Wife Ever (part 18)
On Wednesday morning, Joanna and I are headed up to Washington, D.C., where she’ll spend a week at the Smithsonian, reconstructing the faces of two of the original Jamestown settlers. How cool is that? It’s one of several reasons I’m feeling especially proud of her right now. She’s also featured in Bill Bass’s latest book, Beyond the Body Farm, and was spotlighted in yesterday’s edition of the Knox News-Sentinel. Mostly, though, I’m proud of her for telling her story. (That’ll make more sense after you read the article.) She’s an amazing woman.
-
A 10th Anniversary Card
I met Joanna in the back seat of her roommate’s car. We were driving up to Atlanta for the weekend, and — truth be told — I was pissed off about being there. I had a crush on the roommate, see, and had been thrilled when she offered to give me a ride. I don’t remember much about the drive, actually, except that the roommate kept playing a Spin Doctors CD and flirting with the guy in the passenger’s seat, and that my companion in the back seat spent most of her time listening to classical music on her Walkman. I also noticed, for the first time, just how beautiful Joanna was.
The next day she grabbed me and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. We were staying in a hotel near the Perimeter Mall, and she was bored senseless by the other people in our group. It was one of those evangelical retreats we were on, full of singing and fellowship’ing and meaningful discussions. Joanna had no patience for any of it. Still doesn’t. I mean, she sings from time to time (when no one’s around to hear), and she’s a devoted friend with a sharp and witty mind, but she has zero tolerance for pretense. None. Makes her crazy.
So we escaped to the mall, doing for the first time all of those things we’ve done a thousand times since — telling our stories, trying to make each other laugh, carrying on whole conversations in nothing but sarcasm and irony. She made me wait in Banana Republic while she tried on clothes, and at one point a salesman, assuming I was her boyfriend, gestured toward me and said, “She looked great in that suit, didn’t she?” When she came out of the dressing room, I felt nervous for the only time that day. I wanted to tell her that, yes, she did look beautiful — in the suit, I mean — but there was too much at risk. I could cross a line and screw the whole thing up. Instead, she beat me to the punch, made a joke, and put me at ease. The story of my life.
We got married at the Baptist church in her home town. Baptist, rather than Presbyterian, because it was the only one big enough for all the guests. It was one of those big Southern weddings like you see in the movies, with eight or nine bridesmaids and a reception in the back yard of a yellow Victorian house just a block away from the town square. We were married within walking distance of the tree where Boo Radley would have left surprises for Jem and Scout. (I mean that literally. Harper Lee and her sister Alice sent a nice gift.) It was a perfect day. We all woke up terrified because of the rain — my already-exhausted mother-in-law got on the phone and tracked down the biggest tent this side of Ringling just in case — but by early afternoon the sun was shining and the grass had dried out.
Ten years later, this is what I most remember about our wedding. I remember Bryan, one of my groomsmen, sighing and telling me, sarcastically, that he hated me after seeing Joanna for the first time in her dress. I remember requesting that everyone remain seated while Joanna came down the aisle so that I could have a clear view. I remember her laughing and crying, laughing and crying as she walked toward me — almost six feet tall in her heels but still a good four inches shorter than her father. I remember shaking hands and smiling for pictures and eating cake and never wanting to be more than a few feet away from “my wife.” I remember the pack of little girls who walked up to her and asked if she was a princess. And I remember the perfect moment of silence that greeted us as we drove away from the reception, alone together for the first time that day.
The accepted wisdom is that marriage is hard, that it requires “work” from both partners. But that’s never been my experience. (Granted, living with me is no piece of cake.) Life is hard at times — and we’ve experienced the ugliest it has to offer, believe me — but marriage? As far as I’m concerned, Joanna is the only thing that makes the shit and the boredom and the ugliness worthwhile. I’m still not sure why she grabbed me that day or why I’m the one who gets to share life with her. To say I’m grateful wouldn’t come close to expressing the mystery of it all.
Happy Anniversary, Joanna.
-
Aw, dat’s cute
A friend asked for a childhood photo, which was enough to send us digging through old albums. Quite a couple, eh?
-
A Note from Knoxville
Newsday posted a fun article yesterday about the University of Tennessee’s Anthropology Research Facility. Of course, the word “fun” is totally relative when you’re talking about something like the “Body Farm” — a two-acre plot of land just across the river from UT’s main campus, where donated bodies decompose under the close scrutiny of forensic anthropologists.
Some of the 30 to 50 cadavers arriving at the Body Farm each year come courtesy of local medical examiners donating unclaimed bodies. But much more frequently, the arrivals are pre-arranged by consenting donors who have expressed an active interest in the facility’s research and who have completed a biological questionnaire detailing their medical histories. The facility has amassed hundreds of these completed questionnaires by its future donors.
During their talks at a conference held by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, [Dr. Richard] Jantz and fellow researcher Arpad Vass detailed the clues to be gleaned from nature’s disposal process — a process that begins about four minutes after death. Each stage includes its own march of the macabre. Flies begin laying their eggs in available crevices during the fresh stage, said Vass, a forensic scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The gaseous by-products of bacteria lead to bloating during the second stage. In the third, called active decay, the body’s soft tissue liquefies and insect holes proliferate. And in the fourth, or dry, stage, the body becomes little more than bones.
Nice, eh?
In a roundabout way, the Body Farm is the reason that I live in Knoxville. When I was researching doctoral programs, my wife’s ears perked up at the mention of UT. She had been interested for some time in forensic anthropology and forensic art and was well-acquainted with the program here. She’s since taken a bachelor’s degree from them and has developed into something of an asset for the department as well. She’s over there right now, in fact, reconstructing the face of a young girl who has gone unidentified since the early-1980s.
That type of work makes me glad for two things: that there are people out there willing to do it, and that they ain’t me.
