Mom – Oh Fair New Mexico

Opting out of Oppenheimer: My Father’s Atomic Obsession

Posted on September 4, 2023September 4, 2023
by Karen Fayeth
No Comments

The American tale of a nuclear family

A color photo of a mushroom cloud from an atomic text at Nevada Test Site in 1957. The photo is very orange with the top of the mushroom cloud in very bright light. — One of many photos of mushroom clouds found in my family’s archives. This one is a rather well-known public photo of a nuclear test done in 1957 at the Nevada Test Site. Here is a link to a color-corrected version found in the University of Las Vegas archives.

—

In July 1945 the first detonation of a nuclear weapon happened in the New Mexico desert. It happened at a place called the Trinity Site. Until just a few months ago, a large part of the modern world had forgotten, didn’t know, or didn’t really care about that fact.

The movie Oppenheimer has brought the story behind the evolution of the atomic bomb back to the mainstream, making it both hashtag-able and trending.

I have conflicting feelings about that.

You see, that horrible, fantastic, historic moment in New Mexico also sparked something important inside my father. A young man of 14 at the time and living in South Bend, Indiana, after the events of that first test of the atomic bomb, my father was enamored with and fascinated by the science and mechanics of both nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.

—

My dad was born smack dab in the middle of eight children. He and his brother Bob were so-called “Irish Twins,” born eleven months apart and inseparable. My dad, named Tom, was small because he had been sickly as a child, and he was awkward. His brother Bob was big and convivial. They were quite a duo. Both smart and funny and full of life. Abbott and Costello of the Midwest.

Tom was not that good in school, mostly likely due to undiagnosed dyslexia, but he had an aptitude for math. After high school, he got a technical certification from DeVry in Chicago. In 1957 he was recruited as an electronic technician by Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

You’ve probably heard of the infamous laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. If you saw the Oppenheimer movie, you may have learned about it there. Oppenheimer’s work built that research lab and he also served as the Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory from 1943 to 1945.

But there is another National Laboratory in New Mexico, and that lab was also engaged in the research and science behind nuclear weapons. Sandia National Laboratory is a larger lab than Los Alamos and is located in Albuquerque.

In the late 1950s, at Sandia, my dad had found his way to the heart of the work being done in nuclear research during the early days of the Cold War.

It was work he would embrace and love doing for more than forty years.

—

My dad was a complete nerd. Glasses, pocket protector, pants too short with white socks. All of that, right to the stereotype.

He was also smart, socially awkward, but gregarious enough. People liked ol’ Tom and he liked people.

In the Fall of 1958, while working at Sandia he met a pretty young secretary (back when that was still the job title). She had moved from Oregon to New Mexico at first to help her brother take care of his kids, and later she was also hired on to work for Sandia.

In Albuquerque in the 1950s, Sandia was a really good employer. Still is, actually.

My mother was young, single, and worked at a job that was located on an air force base. What I mean to say is that she was surrounded by young and available men.

My mom dated a bit and she and her roommates had their youthful fun. Then my beautiful mom met my nerdy dad, and so began their story.

—

After that first nuclear test happened at the Trinity Site, in the years that followed, there were plenty more tests of nuclear weapons. My joke has always been that those years were about, “Hey, let’s blow this up to see what happens,” but all of those tests were nothing to joke about. They really were testing multiple forms of weaponry to better understand the power and capabilities.

Two places where nuclear weapons testing occurred for decades are a group of small islands in the Pacific Ocean and in the desert in a dry lake bed between Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada.

It was in 1958 that my dad found himself out on an island called Bikini Atoll, doing telemetry for several tests of thermonuclear explosions.

After returning home, he then found himself sent out to the Salton Sea, where ballistics tests were being carried out. Family scrapbooks contain really goofy and incredibly embarrassing love letters from my dad to my mom, quick missives sent during the time while they were dating but not yet married. Letters postmarked from the Salton Sea in California.

Once my parents were married and after the birth of my brother, my dad went back to school at the University of New Mexico to complete his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He had been told if he wanted to continue to grow in his career at Sandia, he’d need a full degree. So he worked and went to school. My mom worked and took care of her firstborn.

Later, he got a job opportunity to go to Los Alamos with the hope of improving his career by working on a particle accelerator. He moved his wife and son and began work up the hill and the small but mighty lab. Los Alamos was considered more prestigious.

My mom was also able to get a job at the lab in Los Alamos, and they lived and worked and really enjoyed living there. This was the mid 1960’s and things were hopping. Soon enough, my sister was born.

Then came a job opportunity through a good friend that promised even better career advancement if my dad would move over to the Nevada Test Site, which back then was called the Tonopah Test Range.

While working at the Nevada Test Site, my dad worked in an area of the site called Area 52. You know… just next door to Area 51*?

And it was there in Tonopah that I enter the story. My folks had only really planned for two kids, but oops. I guess I had something to say.

Not long after I was born, the family then moved back to Albuquerque and Sandia National Laboratory, and that is where I was raised. I have only vague memories of Nevada, I was really too young to remember anything.

New Mexico is where I’m from and who I am. Something I remain proud of and always will.

—

Growing up I loved going through my family’s photo albums. My mom was an avid scrapbooker and so I would spend hours poring over all of the bits of bobs of her history.

My dad also kept plenty of photos. He would get unclassified photos from many of the projects he worked on and keep them as mementos.

I guess back then I never thought it was weird that our family photo albums contained images of mushroom clouds. Not just one or two, a bunch. My dad avidly collected images and details of the site and what was tested.

Black and white photos of various equipment were also to be found in those scrapbooks. And brochures and technical manuals. My dad spent a career fascinated with and dedicated to the development of nuclear weapons and later, nuclear energy.

A black and white photo of four columns of old style mechanical equipment with knobs and readout windows. This was likely testing or monitoring equipment used at Bikini Atoll during the many nuclear tests that were conducted. — Photo from my family’s archives found on a CD full of scanned photos, this was in a folder of photos that appear to be from Bikini Atoll. Didn’t everyone have photos like this in their family photo albums?

—

Growing up during the Cold War in New Mexico was maybe a little different than it was for kids in other states. A lot of our playground chatter was about whether or not the Russians would drop a bomb on New Mexico if the so often threatened nuclear war began.

We’d debate the merits of running toward ground zero or running away from it. Was it better to be immediately vaporized, a shadow on a wall like those horrific photos from Hiroshima? Or better to be alive but deal with radiation sickness? Real fun playground talk like that.

These were the topics of debate on the minds of Cold War kids in the 1980s. I think we’ve collectively forgotten that feeling. That fear. I grew up in a town with a big military base and a National Laboratory. I grew up in a state that in the 1990s often showed up in various ways in the stories told on the X-Files television show.

Both of my parents held security clearances, so it wasn’t unusual to walk home from school and see government men in dark suits (so called “G-men”) who were interviewing our neighbors because one or the other of their security clearances was up for renewal. And we answered the door for the G-men because our neighbors worked at the Lab too.

It’s always been strange to me when people think what my dad did or that time in history was cool. It was never cool to me. My dad was obsessed with this stuff and would torment us kids for hours and hours telling the stories. Over and over. It was exhausting.

He’d talk about being out there on the island, and it was time for a test and he put his hands over his eyes and the light from the explosion was so bright he could see the bones in his hand. I always thought that was probably a bunch of bullshit, but over the years I’ve talked to others who were there and they said the same.

He’d talk about weapons and telemetry and words I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. He’d talk even when I didn’t want to hear. He would tell the stories and go on and on and on.

Then for many years, there was a whole lot of backlash about the development of nuclear weapons. For a long time, I didn’t tell people what my dad did for a living because more than one person had given me a long lecture about why what he did was bad and how I should be ashamed.

I was never ashamed. I was just tired of his obsession and being forced to listen to his stories again and again. Those photos of mushroom clouds and everything that went with the continuing development of Oppenheimer’s deadly toy were forced on me, an unwelcome part of my childhood, and now it seems I can’t escape it even well into my adulthood.

—

My father was diagnosed with Pulmonary Fibrosis in 2002. He was given three to five years to live. It took a while for him to reconcile himself to this diagnosis and with time, we came to understand that the irreparable scarring in his lungs was most likely due to the inhalation of beryllium.

Which is to say, it was a side effect of the work he had done for all of those years.

He had also been exposed to a whole lot of radiation, back when they didn’t always know what all of those bombs and all of that radiation would do.He had absorbed so much that my mom said she counted fingers and toes when each of her kids were born because she just wasn’t sure how we’d turn out.

Given all the radiation, one might think that it would be cancer finding its way to my father. In some ways, the pulmonary fibrosis was worse. The ever-lessening lung function took his oxygen and his ability to tell long-winded stories. It robbed him of his voice. The voice used to torment and bore and prattle on for decades. The disease forced him to go silent in order to breathe.

What a strange and cruel irony.

I remember one hospital stay when we’d thought it was the end of his life, but he rallied. When he was sitting up in bed and recovering, I asked him if he wanted us to file a claim along with a group of people who were seeking compensation for their beryllium exposure from doing the same kind of work he had done.

While the United States government would never admit fault, they would admit that maybe there had not been enough safety measures in place over the years. Beryllium is one of the more nasty elements on the periodic table.

My dad said no, he didn’t want us to file. He was proud of the work he did and he accepted the consequences. He said he was proud to have served his country both in the military and with the National Laboratories.

His illness was a price he was willing to pay.

—

It’s a little odd and dislocating to see the word Oppenheimer as a trending topic on Twitter. To hear younger people talking excitedly about going to see the movie and learning about the odd little man who created something so immense and awful.

What was so nerdy and goofy and embarrassing about my dad is suddenly… cool? I did not see that one coming.

I recently heard that there is a waiting list of people who want to go tour the Trinity Site when it opens again in October (it’s only open twice a year in April and October).

My dad used to lead tours at the Trinity Site. He could go and tell all of his old stories to groups of people who hadn’t heard them before.

In retirement, he also was a docent for the National Atomic Museum which is now called the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. I always felt a little sorry for those school kids who went to visit the museum on a field trip and got my dad to lead their tour. Oh god, those poor kids had to listen to him drone on. He loved every minute of it.

I’ve had a few people ask me if I am going to go see the Oppenheimer movie and I usually say no with a quick vigor that raises an eyebrow. If I know the person well enough, I’ll explain that it would be like sitting through three hours of all those stories my dad tortured me and my siblings with throughout our childhoods. If I don’t know the person that well, I’ll just demur and say I think the movie is a little too long and I might catch it on streaming.

The truth is, I am not sure that I want to see it. You see, that story doesn’t hold the mythic sway for me that it might hold for others.

—

I asked my mom, now nearing the age of 89, if she was going to see the movie. She was a lot closer to all of the action than I ever was. She said that she had hoped to see some of the old buildings in Los Alamos in the movie, but once she heard they’d built a set and didn’t film in the actual buildings, she was less interested too.

She told me how she remembered back in the 1940s and hearing about the test at the Trinity Site. Then later how scared she was when the atomic bomb was used in Japan. She would lay awake at night in terror for what it meant for the fate of the world.She said how awful it was that the atomic bomb was used. And how awful World War II had been before the atomic bomb was used. It was all just awful.

Once in the 1980s when I was feeling my teenage oats I asked my mom how she could possibly work at a place that made nuclear weapons. Her reply is something I have remembered for many years. She told me that she didn’t like nuclear weapons either, but other countries had them. Countries that were not friendly to the US. She was able to reconcile it in her mind because, she said, the US needed to be able to defend itself.

I think about what she said quite often. I can both agree and disagree if I think about it long enough.

—

For months it seems that all I see are either photos of bubblegum pink Margot Robbie or black and white emaciated Cillian Murphy.The amount of money spent on PR for these films must be staggering.

I suppose it has paid off, both broke box office records on their opening weekend and spawned a thousand think pieces. Exploration of the history of both a plastic doll and nuclear war. Both are valid, I think. Both have meaning.

Neither is on my list of movies to see.**

I see promotional photos of the actor Josh Hartnett who plays Ernest O. Lawrence in the film. Lawrence was another important figure in the development of nuclear weapons.

Here’s a fun fact: my grandmother grew up in South Dakota and her brothers were in the same class and friends with Ernest Lawrence. My dad used to ask her a thousand questions about what she remembered about the man she called “Ernie.”

So I guess this story, my American tale of a Nuclear Family, began early, back when the key players were just kids and the Great Depression hadn’t even happened.

—

My father passed away in 2005 and I think if he had been alive today he would have wanted to see the Oppenheimer movie, but he would have scoffed at all the ways they got the story wrong, I’m sure.

I’m kind of sad that my enormous nerd of a dad didn’t get his moment in the zeitgeist. He didn’t get to see his lifelong obsession at the center of public discourse, if only for a little while.

I’m sure soon enough, as public interest moves along in Internet time, something new will emerge and the recent interest in Oppenheimer and his work will again wane.

I’ve long thought about writing about my dad and his history, I just honestly never thought anyone would care. Right now, for a little moment in time, my strange, awkward, atomic-obsessed dad and all of those mushroom cloud photos in our family archives are actually at the very height of trendy.

And no one is more surprised than me.

A black and white photo, a man kneels down to touch the ground and the earth is cracked and dry. The sun is in front of the man rendering him in silhouette. His shadow is long and stretches out toward the front of the photo. — Photo from my family’s archives found on a CD full of scanned photos that is titled only “Tonopah” in my mom’s handwriting, meaning the Nevada Test Site. The silhouette sort of looks like my dad, but probably isn’t. I am pretty sure the person is inspecting the glass left after a nuclear explosion melts sand.

—

Footnotes

*While not quite what this story is about, I did ask my dad more than once about Area 51. I’d asked him what he knew, what he saw. I wanted the inside scoop on the whole alien myth. My dad held a significant security clearance for all of his career and in response to my questions, he pointedly told me that there was nothing he could say.

I’ll never know if he knew anything about Area 51. I suspect not. But then again……

—

**Though once upon a time I was entirely all about my Barbie Dream House with the working elevator.

—

This post was originally published on Medium and more of my work can be found over there @karenfayeth.

My Flameless Pants

Posted on August 10, 2023September 4, 2023
by Karen Fayeth
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Telling the truth in a world that rewards fiery pants

A row of denim jeans hanging to dry under a window and against a yellow wall. — Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

—

A friend recently shared an adorable little meme on Instagram. It was really meant to be targeted to the GenX crowd and to elicit a little laugh.

To be honest, the meme made me a little bit anxious. I got the joke, but maybe I didn’t really get it because that meme wasn’t true in my experience.

Here it is:

Meme found all over the place on the web, just Google it

—

My husband is my gauge of what is normal as opposed to whatever weirdness is rattling around in my head. He looked at the meme and he got the joke. A laugh in the form of a puff of air escaped his nose.

“But, that wasn’t me! Was that a thing? Did people really do that?” I was apoplectic at this point.

He told me that he personally did not cheat on his reading log. He didn’t have to because he was then and is now a voracious reader. But he knew plenty of classmates who were not completely honest when they turned in their reading logs.

“People won prizes for how many books they read!” I countered. “How could someone cheat about how many books they read?”

He shrugged in that familiar way he does, which was his way of saying, “I don’t condone it, but it happens.”

Lying is learned

One sunny summer afternoon, after my family had gone swimming at our local public swimming pool, we were back home being lazy on a hot day. My mom had left the front door open to catch what little bit of breeze could be found.

My brother and sister were in the back of the house in their rooms. My mom was taking a shower. On the couch in the front room, I was reading a book. (See! Actually reading.)

An adult came to the door, peered into the house, and rang the doorbell. He saw me sitting there. My parents were very strict and taught all of us kids early on to respect our elders, so I could hardly ignore him.

He asked if my mother was home, and I replied truthfully that she was in the shower. He recommended that it was best to go get her because he needed to speak with her right away. Dutifully, I went to the bathroom where my mom was showering and informed her that someone was at the door and needed to talk to her right away.

She got out, threw on some clothes, and rushed to the door. He was a door-to-door salesman. What was so important was his need to separate my mom from her money. She sent him away with a scolding and slammed the door behind him.

Then she sat me down and began to talk about telling the truth and the times when it is okay to lie. My sister wandered out to see what was all the commotion and she joined in.

They tried to explain that fine line between how important it is to tell the truth but also it’s okay to lie. They really tried to help me understand.

For years my mom loved to tell that story to friends and family. The one about how her youngest kid just couldn’t lie.

Isn’t that a good thing?

Lying to get hired for a really good job

In college I took several classes under my Finance major about investments. The business school was fortunate enough to have one professor who had spent time on the New York Stock Exchange and another who had traded futures in Chicago. They told amazing stories of the investment world and I loved it. It seemed like the place to be.

Nearing graduation, I began applying at investment firms. As a standard part of the recruitment process, applicants would be asked to sit at a computer terminal and answer a long exam with questions like, “If you were not meeting your monthly goal, would you sell to your family? Your friends? Would you sell to your grandma to make your numbers?”

The truthful responses to the questions were no, no and no. I would not shake down my family to make monthly sales goals. It seemed so wrong. Clearly this was an ethics question, right?

The hiring manager laughed when the results of my exam were placed on the desk in front of him. He looked me in the eye and told me it was the lowest score he had ever seen.

Then he said that this just wasn’t going to be the right job for me.

Honesty had cost me a lucrative career. Perhaps that was for the best. I ended up going back to graduate school, instead.

A little more maturity was in order before trying the job market again.

Negotiation and the art of lying

After graduation and working for a year as an unhappy financial analyst, the phone rang with an offer of a job to become a procurement professional.

With zero background in procurement, they offered to train me in the ways of how to be a buyer. It was a desirable employer and an excellent job offer, so I made the move.

Being a quick learner helped me come up to speed fast. Growing into the role I was soon confronted with learning the art of negotiation. The subtle ways of asking for what the company needed and occasionally bending the truth to get there.

Later, my career expanded to what is now one of the largest computer companies in the world. A company that is also well known for their ability to negotiate.

Supporting a robust team of Information Technology professionals, I learned how to negotiate the extensive language of software licensing agreements from some of the most well known and successful negotiators in the world.

Oddly enough, while at the negotiating table I was able to fib, bluff, and occasionally lie my ass off to get what was necessary to close the deal. For some reason, under the context of work, it was fine.

There was no mercy and no remorse for the clueless salespeople on the other side of the table. Soon, I was recognized and well rewarded for my negotiation skills.

Then at the end of the day I would walk out the back door and go back into a personal life where I could not tell a lie if my life depended on it.

A very strange dichotomy that somehow still makes sense.

The problem is that you have to remember what lies have been told

When talking about this with friends, the main reason cited for why I can’t lie is that, honestly, my memory just isn’t that good. Once the lying starts you have to keep lying and then remember all of the lies that have already been told.

Ugh, no one has time for that. Easier to tell the truth and not have to keep track of it all.

And the research agrees:

Telling a lie makes way for the brain to keep lying

That said, when it comes to lying during a negotiation, it helps to take meticulous notes to keep track of what was said so I don’t trip up. Also, it’s best to stay away from saying truly whopper sized lies. The exaggerations that start with a kernel of truth are a lot easier to remember and say without remorse. Much cleaner on the ol’ conscience.

For example, there was a certain dollar threshold where the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) had to approve the deal. The CFO was usually quick to provide approval after hearing the business case. At the negotiation table, I would say, “Well look, if you can’t get the price down, this deal has to go all the way to the CFO’s officefor approval. And you can imagine what that’s like.”

No lies told, but a little creative exaggeration using tone of voice and body language. Any salesperson knew that the more people who have to review and approve a deal, the longer the deal will take. Also more approvers increases the chance for a no.

Magically the numbers would come back just under the approval threshold I had mentioned, making it easier for everyone. Funny that.

With time I also found a really interesting weapon to use in the art of negotiation. Honesty.

When used the right way, dropping the pretense and being bald faced honest can also get enormous results.

Quite a few salespeople have even expressed their thanks for my being straightforward and helping them to understand how to close the sale. Honesty might just be my best weapon.

Which is not the same for all of the members of the negotiation teams back then. More than once I sat there quietly while executive members of the leadership team told some really profound untruths during the course of a negotiation.

By keeping a straight face it could be said that I was also lying by being silent.

Getting smarter with age

Today, all these years later, I still don’t like to lie. It feels icky, but I have gotten smarter about understanding in what circumstances a well-told bluff can help.

Recently the doorbell rang and usually I would not open the door at home if a visitor wasn’t expected. But there I was in a room with the window open to let in a cool breeze. The person at the door could see me in there.

“Helloooo,” they called out.

Feeling cranky, I opened the door. The person on my front porch went through a brief sales pitch and wanted to know which internet provider we were using. Their company’s solution, they said with confidence, would be much better.

Pulling out a clipboard they detailed which internet company each of the neighbors were using, house number by house number. They confirmed that they just needed to know which service this house was currently on.

Well, after working in the procurement world for far too long, I have seen most of the tricks that the sales profession has to offer. This person at my door had no idea whose doorbell they rang.

You see, this salesperson had just tipped their hand. They needed to know who my internet provider was just a little too much. Perhaps they were told to come back with that information for the whole neighborhood.

Slipping immediately into negotiation mode, the mask went on. This was no longer personal, this was business.

“We’re all good here, not looking for a new service, thanks for stopping by.”

“But wait, just tell me what service you are on.” A ballpoint pen hovered over a clipboard anxiously awaiting my response. It seemed so awfully important.

But it just didn’t feel like information I needed to share.

“Thanks again, okay, bye now!” I said, and quickly closed the door.

Through the shade over the window in my front door I could see the salesperson stand there for three long beats, then their shoulders sag, and finally they turned and left.

You see? I’m so much smarter when it comes to handling door-to-door salespeople.

And I didn’t even need to lie.

—

This post was originally published on Medium and more of my work can be found over there @karenfayeth.

Save the Ears, Save the Girl

Posted on March 24, 2021March 26, 2021
by Karen Fayeth
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Learning to manage my audiophobia

Photo by Jaee Kim and found on Unsplash

—

I remember following my mother into a large department store in the Winrock Shopping Mall in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As the doors opened, I winced before stepping inside. I shuddered and pulled at my mom’s hand. There was a high-pitched noise and it hurt my ears. I mean really hurt.

My mom didn’t know what was going on with me on that particular day, but after it kept happening, she figured out that the security alarm in the store gave off a noise that most people couldn’t hear, but I could.

—

I’ve always had sensitive ears. I like to blame it on the fact that I had a lot of ear infections when I was a baby and toddler, but maybe that is counterintuitive. As an adult, I had some ear issues and when an ENT looked deep into my ears they reported that I had a small scar on one of my eardrums. Likely due to all of those ear infections.

Then the doctor looked at my hearing test and commented that I have strange hearing. I hear very well at the very high end and at the very low end, beyond to so-called normal range, but my hearing in the mid-range is far less acute.

This personal auditory feature was endlessly annoying to the musician I once dated. I would pump up the bass and treble on my cheap aftermarket car stereo and drop the midrange. It sounded better to me. He was constantly fiddling with the equalizer to suit his ears dulled by years of standing in front of a guitar amp turned up to eleven. As soon as he exited my car I’d set it back.

—

So to put it blunt terms, I have weird ears. I always have. I figured I would lose hearing capacity as I aged, and I do think that has happened some, but I still have ears like bat. At my, ahem, advanced age I can still hear those so called “mosquito” tones aimed at shooing away teenagers.

This also means that I have to manage my ears, which has come to my mind lately due to working from home every day and spending four to eight hours a day using Zoom. I share a space with my partner, so I have been using a good pair of in-ear headphones for the many, many Zoom meetings I attend each day. Those in-ear devices fit right up in there. Piping the sounds of Zoom very efficiently and forcefully to my eardrums.

At the end of last week I hit an audiophobic wall. After participating in a lot of work meetings it felt like my head and nerves were jangled. I found it hard to concentrate. I found myself restless. I found it hard to understand and respond to simple questions asked by my partner.

My immediate reaction was to chalk it up to stress, anxiety, and fatigue. And that is not completely wrong, but there was something more going on. I realized that my ears, my tender little ears, were overstimulated. I had hosted my coworker’s voices all up in my head all week long and I couldn’t stand one more sound agitating the cilia. Not one more.

Going outside and sitting in the sun for a little while helped. My neighborhood was gracious in its momentary silence, providing a sliver of peace. I could hear the birds in the trees. I could hear the unmistakable “toot toot” of a BART train in the distance. And I could hear no human voices. It was nice. More than nice, it helped me regain some sanity.

—

I realize that Zoom meetings aren’t going away any time soon, and my ears aren’t changing anytime soon either. Better managing these adorable little audio problems on the sides of my head is going to be key.

A new set of over ear and noise cancelling headphones has arrived. Switching the types and timing of using each kind of headphone is being considered. Finding time to rest my ears at the end of the day is also being planned.

—

Next, I need to figure out these hips joints that are tired and cranky from sitting in a not terrible chair in front of a Zoom screen all day long.

I love working from home, but it is not without some costs. Zoom fatigue is real.

—

This item can also be found on Medium, and you can see more of my work @karenfayeth over there

The Ballad of a Walnut Bladder — Tales of a Pressing Need To Go

Posted on November 29, 2019
by Karen Fayeth
No Comments

___

I was born with a troubling affliction. It’s been difficult to manage my whole life, and is embarrassing to discuss. Today I feel is the time to go public with my ailment.

I am affected by a disorder known colloquially as walnut bladder. Yes, it’s true. I so much as look at a glass of water and I have to pee.

In such times that my walnut bladder-itis impacts the life of my husband, he refers to me as a frog. “You know, you pick up a frog and it piddles in your hand?”

That’s me.

As a child I presented quite a challenge to my folks who liked to take road trips. You see, I had the kind of dad who refused to stop once we were on the road. “Gotta make good time,” he’d say.

The average child has to pee frequently but I was even more prone than normal. It was a problem.

We used to spend summers in a small town in Eastern New Mexico. The drive from our home in Albuquerque took about three hours, plus or minus. Even as an adult, three hours is just too long for me without a pit stop.

This vexed my mother terribly as she had to manage both my bladder and my straight-through-without-stopping father. Once she threatened to use a clothespin to clamp off my leaky plumbing.

Well that got my attention.

From that day forward I planned well ahead for any family road trip. My plan was to cease intake of liquids at least a day in advance of the trip and steadfastly refuse to drink any liquid until we arrived and a toilet was in sight.

In hindsight, not having much liquid while living in the high desert probably wasn’t the best idea, but it worked, thus avoiding any clothespin type of situations.

In my adult life I manage my ailment by working a path between my desk at work and the restroom. At home I get up a minimum of once a night to pee.

There was a recent situation where I again recognized the utter torture of a completely full bladder and no good plan to empty it out.

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It was a typical afternoon at work and I was, as usual, drinking lots of good fresh water. Stay hydrated, right? That means ol’ Walnutta has to be actively managed.

Before a work meeting I will use the restroom right before heading into the conference room to help ensure I can get through the hour stretch.

On this day, I was so busy with work and in other meetings that I bumped right up to the top of the hour when my next meeting was due to start. I did an internal gut check and then a clock check and thought, “Yeah, I’m ok.”

Silly, silly me.

At about twenty minutes into the hour and a half long meeting, a job interview with a prospective candidate no less, I had that first twinge of “oh…hmm, I’m going to need to pee here pretty soon.”

As the seconds on the clock ticked by with molasses speed, and the candidate droned on and on and on, things started to get bad.

I began to go through the stages of grief:

First, denial: “Pfft! I’m fine. No big deal. I can make it.”

Then bargaining: “Ok, well, if I can make it just ten more minutes, maybe I can excuse myself and take care of this. Please please bladder don’t let me pee my pants.”

Anger: “Dangblamit why did I drink so much water today! And why is my bladder so tiny? And why can’t I just distract myself and make this feeling go away!?!”

Depression: “Dude, you are such a loser. Look at everyone else at the table, they can hold their liquids. What is wrong with you?”

Acceptance: “It’s going to be ok. I’m going to make it. I’m not going to pee my pants. And if I do, it will be fine, right?”

Over the course of an hour and a half I moved up and down and back and forth through all of those stages while squirming mightily in my chair.

Look, my attention span isn’t that long to begin with, add in a full to bursting bladder and I don’t hear what anybody has to say on any topic.

It was horrible. At one point I thought I might even cry, I had to pee so badly.

And finally! Finally at the hour and forty five minute mark that damn candidate stopped talking and I was free to go use the restroom all the way over on the other side of the building.

Then it becomes that age old question of walking or running in the rain.

As in:

Do I walk to the bathroom thus taking longer and upping my odds for peeing my pants?

Or do I run thus jangling my bladder and making it more likely I’ll pee my pants?

I chose the middle road: a sort of tight-legged shuffle which worked and I made it safely to the bathroom stall.

Once in the safe zone my whole world looked a little brighter. A little happier. A little more at peace.

I know everyone has gone through the ballad of the full bladder at one point or another. When you have a walnut bladder it happens a little more often than I’d like.

For any reader who might have questions about my affliction: it’s been this way since I was a kid, I have discussed it with more than one doctor, and it just happens to be a feature (not a bug) of the big Karen machine.