Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Light Sabers. Paradigm-Shifters. Droids. Kissing Families.

After returning home from the hospital late yesterday morning, Pablo had a great day. He was all smiles, laughter and chat. Just like we like him. He was running around, jumping on our bed, telling stories and recounting plot lines from his shows. Just like we like him.

Jo Ann had invited our new friends Dayla and Paul and their sons Fyn and Felix over for a play date. Fyn is a liver cancer survivor. He was treated at CHLA, by some of the same doctors who are caring for Pablo. Fyn is six now, and he says that Red Devil is what got rid of his tumors. Jo Ann and I spoke on the phone after the play date. She said, 'It's so inspiring to see Fyn. It just helps me to know he went through what Pablo's going through. And he is a beautiful, healthy little boy with beautiful energy and beautiful spirit.' And that, in turn, helped me. I'm looking forward to meeting these guys soon!

Fyn brought Pablo a Star Wars coloring book. I'm not sure that Pablo knew what Star Wars was before yesterday afternoon. When I got home from my day of work and a meeting in Venice, P excitedly named all the characters on the cover of the book.

'Papa, this is Chewbacca. This is C3P0. This is Darth Vader. He has a light saver.'

I told him it was 'light SABER.'

'I know, Papa! Light saver!'

That went on for a while. I love it when he is equally cute and insistent. He shares that with his Mommy!

Anyway, it Pablo wants to be Darth Vader. Jo Ann is Princess Leia. I want to be Han Solo. We'll ask Grady later today who he wants to be.

Normally, we'd be turning him away from all this movie and character stuff. He's starting Waldorf kindergarten in September after all. But, like, seriously, if Pablo wants to watch character-driven movies and shows, that's gonna have to be OK. We are doing it consciously, and that's the point in life for Jo Ann and I. Yeah, I am definitely saying, 'Pablo is fighting a nasty disease. It's a paradigm-shifter. We're gonna roll with what P wants and sort out the rest later.'

To that end, Jo Ann and I tore apart the entire house looking for the 'Star Wars' DVD set. We swore we had one. All we could find was a VHS box set. The DVDs never materialized. So, Pablo and I watched the first half of 'Indiana Jones' before going to sleep. (Harrison Ford is Harrison Ford, right?) He loved it! We're going to watch 'Star Wars' tonight.

We met Dayla, Paul and Fyn through our longtime friend Suzie Vlcek, Jo Ann's colleague from her old company, Production League of America, and the director of Silversun Pickups' first video, 'Kissing Families.' When Suzie heard of Pablo's cancer, she immediately introduced our two families. They live down the block from us. Maybe 27 seconds away. It's crazy how things come together, how close people are.

What's even freakier is that Fyn's dad, Paul, was the cinematographer on the 'Kissing Families' video. I brought Pablo to the shoot (he was about two then), which was at the old SSPU on Westerly Terrace, a few blocks from our house. I recall being there for about 15 minutes. Pablo was climbing on everything. Pablo has a history with SSPU. While they were recording their album 'Carnavas,' I brought little homeboy to the studio. Within 120 seconds, he managed to break the iPod belonging to Joe Lester, the keyboardist (it eventually came back to life lol), and, while no one was looking, he muted the kick drum channel on the Neve console. That one threw Dave Cooley, his engineer and the band for a loop for several hours that afternoon. They thought something crazy had happened to the studio.

Time to go to the hospital. Chemo time!

Oh–my dad flies in today. I have lived in LA for almost nine years. And this is the first time he's coming to visit. We are all excited!

More pics and stories coming soooooon....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dear Pablo,

I am thinking of you on this beautiful day. I hope you are having a summer filled with sunshine, popsicles, play dates, Star Wars, donuts, water play, Batman movies, beach days, Pirate Booty, FroYo's, 3-d glasses, David Bowie songs, and lots and lots of hugs.
If I were there I would give you one, but I'm here so I'll have to use "The Force".....Here goes.....
I'm wrapping you up in "yellow" which is like hugging you with my thoughts and surrounding you with light. I guess it's like a "light saber " that won"t hurt you. It protects you.

Love, Stephen Michael Schwartz