COMMENTARY: Treading Water

Outside, the sky is slate gray — like old metal.

The rain falls steady; a liquid, translucent curtain distorting the world I see through the window.

It’s 9 a.m. I’m sitting inside a creamy yellow waiting room with my wife and our 8-year-old son.

The nurse enters and seats herself at a computer console. Large flat screen monitors surround me. I feel like I’m at NASA.

My wife is lying prone next to the machine.

The nurse takes a probe, slathers conductive jelly on it, and pushes it against Karen’s large, round belly.

We’re here to see images of the newest member of the Carter family. He’s currently under construction deep inside my wife’s womb.

The flat screen monitor at the end of the rooms flicks on and suddenly the screen is filled with grainy, black and white images — they remind me of those radar screens used in submarine movies.

There, I see my child.

He’s (for right now its a “he”) is in his fourth month. The images show his profile, his tiny feet, hands and his face.

I watch him hiccup; then suck his thumb.

Outside the rain falls.

Karen smiles. She places her had on the side of her belly as we see more images of this, our fourth child.

Clay shuffles his feet, he wants to know if its a boy or a girl.

The nurse stops.

She’s trying to get an image of the baby’s heart. She mutters to herself and then asks Karen to turn.

Again, the images on the screen changes. I see a heart. I see beating. The nurse frowns. “I need to get the doctor,” she says.

She leaves the room.

Karen looks at me, her smile fades.

About 10 minutes later, the doctor comes in and seats himself at the ultrasound machine. Again the probe is pushed against Karen’s skin. Again, the images appear on the screen.

“Ahhh…” he pauses.

“There’s…” another unfinished sentence.

Finally, he speaks. “There’s a defect in the heart,” he says. “It’s not…”

The room begins to spin.

I watch my wife’s beautiful face twist in agony. Tears cascade down her soft cheeks like small rivers.

The doctor continues to ramble, something about a protein string. Then, something about high risk. Something about the heart being on the wrong side.

I stopped listening at “heart defect.”

He mentions the possibility of terminating the pregnancy.

My guts twist. Terminating the pregnancy? I just watched my child suck his thumb.

Beside me, Karen sobs.

Clay lays his head against her chest.

The rain continues to fall.

At some point we stand. Karen wipes the blue jelly off her, like she’s trying to remove all traces of ultrasound. The doctors pushes a business card in my hand and tells me to call if we have questions.

We’re ushered out of the office, through a different exit. We don’t even stop to pay. I guess doctors don’t want their other patients to witness the results of pain and fear.

I feel the warmth of Karen’s hand as we walk toward the car. She’s silent. Clay walks in step with her. She cries again and tears mix with the rain on her soft face.

The drive home is surreal — no conversation. No discussion. Just an all encompassing feeling of dread and death.

The car’s windows reflect the light like melted glass, my world is distorted.

I know, now, what it feels like to drown.

At home, Karen lies on the bed and quietly weeps. She tells me she wants to find a rock and hide. She is overcome with fear and grief.

I touch her face and, for some strange reason, I feel guilty.

But God and small babies have plans of their own — agreements made by both that neither I, nor my wife, are privy to.

Karen drifts off to sleep, her face streaked with tears and mascara. I pull the comforter up over her. I go to work and try to focus on the world of journalism for just a few hours.

We talk several times that day via telephone. I can hear the anguish in her voice.

And still, it rains.

Wednesday we’re back, again, in the same office. This time Karen is focused, armed with questions. Inside her the baby moves. She feels him stretch.

We discover quickly just how much the doctor doesn’t know. There is some defect. In the heart. That’s about all he can tell us. But that’s enough to take our joy of a new child and shatter it into a millions of rain-soaked pieces.

The rest is unknown — for now.

There is some comfort: The doctor says the defect can be corrected with surgery.

He didn’t say that last time.

Heart surgery on a newborn. Karen touches her belly. The doctor leaves.

Privately, we both talk to God.

This time, we exit the “regular” exit. Karen writes a check, and for the first time in 48 hours, smiles.

She tells me things will be OK. She tells me she’s tired of being afraid. This time she holds back the tears welling in the corner of her large, brown eyes.

More rain — it feels warm.

I look toward the sky and ask God to look after my wife. The rain splashes on my shirt. Droplets cover my glasses. A tiny spot of blue sky appears.

Hope.

“Small babies and God have their own plans,” I think to myself.

That maybe so, but right now, at this very moment, we are simply treading water.

Two seek County Commission post

About 50,000 registered voters will have the opportunity next Tuesday to choose a new commissioner for Cleveland County’s District 1 seat.

The position became vacant following the death this spring of long-serving commissioner, Bill Graves. Graves died in April from complications following surgery.

On July 10, voters will chose between Newalla Democrat James Earp and Norman Republican Rod Cleveland.

Polls will be open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday. Absentee-in-person balloting will take place beginning Friday and again Monday. Those absentee ballots, Cleveland County Election Board Secretary Paula Roberts said, must be cast at the county election board office, 122 S. Peters Ave., in Norman. Roberts said the office will be open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“In person absentee voters fill out an application form when they arrive at the office,” Roberts said. “They are not required to state a reason for voting in-person absentee.”

However, Roberts said voters are required to swear they have not voted a “regular mail absentee ballot” and they will not vote and their polling place on election day.

County election board records show close to 50,000 registered voters in District 1; of that figure, 27,371 are Republicans, 17,740 Democrats and 5,470 registered as Independent.

And while the district is considered “heavily Republican” neither candidate is taking the race for granted.

GOP candidate Rod Cleveland, 40, said he has spent a majority of his campaign “walking, listening and taking notes.”

Cleveland defeated three other Republicans in a four-way primary in June.

“I had a message,” he said in early June. “I told the voters what I wanted to see Cleveland County be and become, and I think they received that message and rewarded me with the votes.”

In a glossy, four-color campaign handout Cleveland describes himself as “a Ronald Reagan conservative (who) has been a Republican precinct chairman for the past 12 years” and who has “helped elect conservatives for many years.”

James Earp is taking a different approach.

While Earp, 49, said he, too, would be campaigning “eyeball to eyeball” he described his first venture into area politics as a “low key” thing.

“I think you can better understand people face-to-face,” he said in an ealier story. “I want them to vote for me because they think I’m the right person for the job; not just because of name recognition. That’s why I’m walking door to door.”

Yet even with such controversial issues such as the location of a new county jail and the budget for county roads, Roberts remains concerned by the possibility of low voter turnout.

“Low turnout is always a concern,” she said. “We always want the voters to surprise us and turn out in large numbers.”
Come Tuesday evening, both the candidates and election board officials will know just how large those numbers will be.

Cleveland County GOP launches first Web site

Cleveland County's Republicans have gone high tech.

And they did it for low tech reasons.

For the first time in their history, the Cleveland County Republican Party has its own Internet Web site, county chairman Roger Warren said Thursday.

The site -- www.okgopcc.com -- went live on May 14.

"Our main reason to do it was simple," Warren said. "We needed to get Republican voters involved in the county party."

By doing that, he said, local party officials could "divorce the county party from national party politics."

And that, Warren said, would help better protect the local party from the voters' wrath when those voters disagree with national party actions.

"What happens is, politicians will do something on a national level that people disagree with," he said. "And then the voters take it out on us here at the county level, but our guys didn't do it."

Framed in red, white and blue, the Web site features eight sections, including a message from Warren, an enrollment form for volunteers, three separate calendars and links for news, trivia and other political sites.

"This is going to be our main form of communication," Warren said. "It's far cheaper than doing lots of mailings."

The site also offers links to state Republican headquarters.

"Since this is Cleveland County's first site, we wanted to make sure it was connected to the other GOP sites out there," he said.

To build the site, Warren turned to volunteers -- starting with his wife, Cleona.

After he and Cleona developed the idea, they approached the county party's executive committee for approval.

"When Roger was elected county chair, the county party was broke," Cleona Warren said. "And since we didn't have enough money to mail out a newsletter, we though of the Web site."

Once the Warrens received the committee's OK, the pair asked Moore resident Kevin Drury to create the site's design, structure and pages. Drury, who also works as a Web developer for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, said he was happy to help.

"Roger, Cleona, and my family all go to the same church," Drury said. "And when Roger got elected as county chair, he approached me and asked me do the site. I'm a lifelong Republican, and I support them 100 percent, so I told them I would help."

It took the group about a month to wrap up the design.

"We began the process in April," Cleona Warren said. "We started a little bit at a time, then went through the approval process with the executive committee. On April 24, we got our domain name registered and since then, we've just really been building it."

For Drury the site is "kind of a work in progress."

"People are very positive," he said. "Folks will look at it and say, 'I'd like to see this.' We'll take input from anybody."

And while the site's traffic is slowly beginning to increase, Drury said an electronic fundraising component is already in the works.

"We have the beginnings of that out there now," he said. "Eventually we will set it up where folks can do donations through the Internet -- it just depends on the demand."

Both Warrens said with the volunteer labor and a small, $10 per month hosting fee, the new Web site offers Republicans a simple, cheap way to communicate. "It's the most cost-effective way we could think of," Warren said.

And it comes just as county Republicans are working to secure a third seat on the Cleveland County Board of Commissioners.

"We're trying to make people realize you can control local government if you get involved and go vote," Cleona Warren said. "And we want them to do something about it. School boards, city officials, county elected officials, that's what affects your immediate family."

The Cleveland County Web site is one of only a handful statewide, they said. At present, the state's main Republican site has links to GOP sites in Tulsa, Rogers, Oklahoma and Payne Counties.

"If we keep posting new info, and as long as we can keep making it change and update, I think people are going to want to go to it for information," Cleona Warren said. "It's the younger crowd that likes to surf the Internet."