So you want to be an EMT?

So you want a career in EMS? Both of the rural stations where I work have been hiring. You’ll be called for an interview a week or two after you turn in an app, and then set down in our meeting room amidst four very serious faces and asked a host of enlightening questions. Something like this:

Why do you want to do this job?

Tell us about a moment where your training failed you

Do you consider yourself to have good leadership skills?

Etc etc etc.

Good grief, I say to the hubby (also the fire chief) can you not ask a single question that matters?
Such as . . .

1.) Well, can you lift? And I don’t mean a little. The cot alone weighs a hundred and twenty pounds and the majority of your patients will be something more than petite. They’ll be upstairs, all of them.  Or at least those who aren’t in the basement, under the front deck, on the roof, down a well. What they will never be is standing in the front yard waiting for you.

2.) How do you respond to vomit? Projectile. Large quantities. In your hair, on your shoes, down your shirtfront. You’re no help to anyone if the patient causes you to be the second patient.

3.) Can you back up? I know that sounds simple and I’m sure you’ve backed out of your driveway  a gazillion times. But here – can you back an ambulance? Down a narrow twisty farm lane in a blizzard? Up a hill, down a tow path and – most important of all – into the bay at your station?

The chief cries real tears if you ding the rig.

4.) You’re not afraid to go back to school, are you? A lot of us go for the paramedic, but even those of us who don’t are training on a very consistent basis. So – meetings, meetings, meetings. Classrooms, skills tests, recertifications. Even when you’re beat, even when you’re just off shift or it’s supposed to be your free weekend (ha). Even when, God help us, there is no coffee to be had at the station.

5.) Which brings us to – are you a coffee drinker? Please just nod yes. Dunkins, Starbucks, Peets, plain old Folgers. It is the all-important elixir of life. You must brew a pot immediately upon reaching the station and then you must keep it going all day and most of the night. If, Heaven forbid, you should break the pot, you’ll need to get somebody to cover your shift while you run to Walmart. Pick up some Dunkins on the way home so we don’t have to wait for the next pot to brew.

6.) Oddly enough – but you’ll get used to this, trust me – the next question has to do with sleep. Can you sleep any time of the day or night? More or less at the drop of a hat? Oh, and can you rebound from said sleep and be at the rig in seconds flat?

Lift, wipe up the vomit, back the rig, go to meetings, coffee-coffee-coffee, sleep-sleep-sleep. That’s about it! If you’re still with us, welcome aboard.

*Art by MauserGirl

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Halloween Magic: Behind Our Silly Adult Masks

Art by Julie Jamison-Lewis

I’m pretty sure time stands still on October 31^st.

Every Halloween, all of our lives, frozen still in amber. Here we are as little children, grinning behind the old plastic masks – cowboys and Indians, back in the day. Casper and Sylvester the cat.  We lit jack-o-lanterns with tapered candles that our mom had cut into halves, sticky caramel on our fingers, cold wind in our hair. Running, always running, through the crimson blitz of autumn, gold leaves spinning in a smoky twilight sky.

November as far away as tomorrow.

My daughter was a week old on her first Halloween. She wore a teensy black cat costume, and I took her trick-or-treating in her stroller, winding full-speed through our trailer court with maple spinners crunching beneath my tennis shoes. Already smiling, already caught up in the enchantment. The child she was – the child I was – they are still here, suspended in perfect bursts of autumn color.

Three gorgeous kids, years and years of costumes and cookies and scavenger hunts. Bonfires, buckeyes and bob-for-apples. Every year, a year older. Every year, still magic. We did Build-A-Monster, cemetery walks, the town parade - and always, always, the air was crisp as a new apple, the moon a sharp crescent in a broad and purple sky.  Dizzy with laughter, drunk on excitement, we zoomed from house to house and never seemed to touch the ground.

Another year – pumpkins already on the porch, lights strung through the bushes, Jack Skellington climbing the hill again, bony silhouette against the fat yellow moon. Children grown and new steps going up to the cemetery. Endless busy days – work and college and meetings; and nothing has changed at all. Not on Halloween.

On Halloween, the world stops spinning while the moon comes up and the ghouls come out and the jack-o-lanterns leer from the shadows. We hold our breaths while the magic, the never-ever-failing Halloween magic, fills the air and fills us all. For an instant, we are grinning kids again behind our silly adult masks.

And so, my friends, the biggest, the bestest holiday of all is soon upon us. Wishing you all a wonderful, fantastical, beautiful night.

Look Up

“Oh wow, that is magic.”

Just the moon. Set unmoving in a broad and blameless early morning sky; it is perhaps a little red. So we huddle in the parking lot outside our fire station with our chins tipped up like the Peanuts gang on Christmas Eve, and we almost forget to breathe. Such beauty, so undeserved.

I’m not a Doomsday Prepper, but I have to admit to a certain fearfulness lately. Ebola, Isis, D68. Not just the evil that we foist upon each other, but the randomness of catastrophe. It’s a scary world out there, isn’t it? 

We’re hunkered down, frightened, so much of the time.

We have to remind ourselves to look up.

But more than that, we have to look for that same prettiness down here on earth, both boots on the ground.

Well here, it looks a little like this -

“I finally got my student loan money.” Oh yay, she has been waiting for this. Counting pennies, literally. But her voice is hesitant now, so I wait for the other shoe to drop. “I gave five hundred dollars to Operation Smile. It’s a charity that helps kids with cleft palates.”

Ah God, for a moment I am breathless. This girl, my child, isn’t wealthy by any standards; five hundred dollars, to a charity, is a drop in the bucket – to her it is, well, the moon.

I’m made small by this, I really am. I’m humbled by a kid who would give away the moon so another person could have a pretty smile.

And this –

The tones go off at the station, both fire and ambulance needed for a motor vehicle accident. My partner and I jump in the rig, and as we round the corner, here come our new recruits. Three wonderful young men, not a decent vehicle amongst them. They are on foot, running full-out to our station to answer the call. 

They don’t get a paycheck for this.

Wow, right? Are we not better than we give ourselves credit for?

So, here is the awesome news to hang onto today. In the midst of sickness, war, poverty and ignorance, we still exist. And by “we” I mean the cashier who recommended her favorite herbal remedy for your child’s cough. The elderly lady who brought cookies to the kindergarten book fair. The kid who found a twenty dollar bill and tacked it up on the bulletin board at your local convenience store.

Why don’t we look harder at the goodness in each other? And in looking, why don’t we take heart? We’re not small, ignorant, dysfunctional or petty.  We are – or at least we have the capability to be – good, shining and bright.

We just have to look up.

5 Reasons Firefighter Training is Actually Life Training

Firefighting is rife with hard and fast rules. And even though, at any given episode unpredictability can fast become the norm, these rules remain in place – guiding stars, if you will. Wisdom of our fathers and all that.

 But the really cool thing I’ve discovered about the rules is that they cross over. Into motherhood, into friendships, into other careers. In fact, with very little manipulation, the golden rules of firefighting can become the golden rules of life.  

I think it looks something like this:

         1.)  Prevention. Smoke alarms, CO2 detectors, an escape plan.

Mothers, can we apply this to our children?  Feed the dog before you do your homework, so he isn’t tempted to eat your math paper. Tidy your bedroom daily so that it never arrives at Tornado Alley status. As for teenagers and prevention . . . well, you know the drill.

           2.) “Two In and Two Out” is a perfect life lesson. In the fire service, it applies to the way we enter a burning building – which is to say, never alone and never without back-up on the outside. It’s hot in there, you can get hurt.

 Don’t enter life alone, either. Be social able, make friends. Because it’s lonely out there, and you can get hurt. Hug and hold hands and love each other – we all need somebody, and that is as it should be.

           3.) Bring all you’ve got. If the worst happens and the fire is up and running and bigger than anything you’ve ever seen, throw everything at it. All the water, all the manpower and all the equipment. Be strong and be smart and keep working. And don’t be afraid to ask for help. Every department near and far. They want to come, they’re dying to lend a hand.

           So it is in life. In the midst of complete catastrophe, you can’t curl up and die. Stand up and throw everything you’ve got at the problem. All of your brains, your skills, your time and talent.  And it’s okay - it’s good in fact - to ask for help. Call friends and cousins, coworkers, Mom and Father Barron. We’re all here to help each other.

          4.) Remember accountability. When you go into that fire, you’re not only responsible for you, but also for your brother. Be safe, be responsible. Remember that you are valued and very much needed, and always loved.

          5.) Oh, and don’t forget your bunker gear. No sense scraping your knees if you happen to stumble. That Superman costume, real or imagined, can be a total life saver.

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Not Quite Enough

Lately it occurs to me that twenty years in fire/EMS might be enough. Because . . .  well, because here she is.

                Ninety two years old, a simple ground level fall at the local assisted living facility. Possible broken hip. We’ve got her on a backboard with the injury site padded and suddenly she is vomiting. It happens – pain, fear, any number of reasons. My partner pulls over and dashes back to help me turn the board, and the patient just keeps bringing up lunch for what seems like a very long time.

                But that’s not the story, either, not really. Here is what I want to say about her – tiny little thing all alone, her husband gone, children AWOL. In pain. Sick. When she’s not vomiting, she tries a smile out on me, and asks how I am today, do I like my job, am I from the area?

This just hurts my heart; really, it does.

Since Nine-Eleven, we in the emergency medical field have gotten a lot of hero dust sprinkled on us, but I think most of us would agree with this assessment – usually the hero is the one lying on the cot. And this lady, today, is one of them.

                How am I today?

                That’s where the twenty-year part figures in. Because I used to walk away from the lol (little old lady) falls and forget about them even before the run sheet had printed. Anymore, it feels like I leave a piece of myself on every call. The patient has taken on a level of . . . well, humanness, that leaves me smaller than I like to be and drenched in an empathy that frightens me. At some point it all became real, and the enthusiasm and, yes, even jubilation, with which I used to answer the tones has fallen by the wayside, along with the nine digit emergency number and the headlong ride on the back step of the pumper.             

Laying the call aside when it is over has become a larger task than the call itself, and there are sleepless nights when I think about the twenty years gone with something less than satisfaction or even plain old contentment. The early mornings and late nights. The family events where I was empty place at the table. Again. The meetings.  The trainings. The hours spent in ER after a body fluids exposure. The shuttling the kids to the babysitter and cancelling plans with the spouse. Twenty years chucked, for what?

Ah, but then it happens. I mold the SAM splint around a teensy broken arm, and the child quits crying.  I give the glucagon shot and the patient wakes up. I respond to a house fire and join in the beauty of all of us working together like a well-oiled machine. We not only save the house, we rescue the family cat – and the smile of the little girl holding her singed-but-squalling kitty is, you see, the answer to the question.

                Maybe twenty years isn’t quite enough yet.  


*Art by Tsoi (Coxinha)

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Late August at the Lake

August, don’t leave us yet!

It is true that I normally don’t feel that way about this month, but the weather has been kind to us this year, with beautiful sun-soaked afternoons and crisp evenings where the tip of the moon in a boundless pink sky makes you want to live forever.

 

And so, August has that bittersweet feel to me right now, that sense of wanting to cling to something as mutable as heat lightning, or the rush of creek water through grasping fingers.

Don’t go, don’t go.

But isn’t most of life this way?

Late afternoon, and my daughter and I drive to the lake for the first time – yes, probably the only time – this summer. So much of our lives, so many of our memories, are caught up in here in the sun-dappled water, and when I jump in it all washes over me in a rush. A thousand days, a million moments, every summer I’ve ever lived - here in the whoosh of water, the cool green depths.

Don’t go, don’t go.

 

If you’re lucky, raising children gives you a sort of second childhood, so that their “When we were little” meshes almost seamlessly with your own. So much of ours was spent here at the lake. So much made up of sand castles, the raft, sun-brown bodies tumbling in diamond water. Summer air so thick it was like breathing jello through a straw, and a pop machine that never worked.

We loved it here.

 

My kids are grown up now! My daughter, here with me today, is a brilliant, lovely college student. I remember holding her the first time and having this very same awareness of time hurrying on, rushing forward, pushing us onward. I thought then, and I think now – this moment, this here and now, will never be again.

 

But I think it is true that the best moments in our lives, the ones that we cling to the hardest, get stored away somewhere. I think of God keeping a careful tally and stashing those days away in a big boxes with names on the lids. And wow, when you get to open it, there it all will be – the first kiss, the tiny baby, the trillions of sweet and breathless life moments that skitter away faster than you can catch them.

 

This day, here. Late August at the lake.

 

 

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The Summer Slowdown: How to Savor the Season

How is it that the choicest moments in life – the best of the best – are always and inevitably accompanied by the wail, “It’s going so fast!”? Kids shooting up, growing out of dance tutus and baseball cleats. Lilacs blooming sweet and purple, gone in a flash.  Waxing moon turns fat and golden, starts to wane and another month is gone.

 

July near over already! Frogs in full song and lightning bugs hovering over foxtail tips. Lake water beginning finally to warm, sand hot beneath bare feet. Summer hurrying, hurrying, moving past us almost before we know it is here. 

Impossible to keep it, but there are, I think, ways to slow the forward motion. Rum works. No, don’t laugh, I am completely serious. Malibu and Coke, a wedge of lime, plenty of ice – sip slowly. Ah, the drink of pirates, I can practically see Jack Sparrow dancing on the white sand. Don’t drink this inside, though – get out beneath the stars - lakeside, back porch, next to a bonfire. Perfect, you’ve got summer in an eight ounce glass.

Or this –  sprawl on the porch swing with a good book and and read read read while the lovely lemony sun rays bathe you from head to toe. Read exactly whatever you want to read, gooey romances or outlandish Victorian vampires or Russian spy novels. Plenty of time for literary snobbishness this winter. Summer is a time to indulge.

What about an ice cream cone every time the Tastee Freeze changes their special? If you skip lunch you don’t have to worry about your swimsuit.  (Which you should be living in – it is summer, after all, why aren’t you swimming?)

Crank the windows on your way home from work and drive barefooted with your sunglasses perched on your nose. Black Crowes playing on the radio at a teeth-rattling volume.

Hit the beer gardens, the county fairs, the farmer’s markets. Take your fishing pole to the canal in the evening, when the sun is just pinking over the water.

Most of all, take it all in – the lady bugs, the freshly-mown hay, scent of coconut lotion and cucumbers, taste of watermelon and sweet tea. Gorgeous, glorious, perfect time of year – we won’t gripe about the heat until at least August. 

~ Comment below and share how you savor summertime. :) ~

*Art by Paul Meijering 
 

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