The Daily Cardiogram, excerpts from MY FATHER'S HEART: A SON'S RECKONING WITH THE LEGACY OF HEART DISEASE

[Steve McKee]

Now through NCTE I will be posting "The Daily Cardiogram," excerpts from my memoir, MY FATHER'S HEART: A SON'S RECKONING WITH THE LEGACY OF HEART DISEASE, to illustrate why at NCTE I will be recommending this book for juniors & seniors in high school.

F.58, Saturday, 8 a.m., Room 107B
Part of the Pennsylvania Showcase: “Coming Home Again”

And here's My Father’s Heart, the Movie!
“Green & Gold: A Run through My High School.”
Click here: http://ncte2008.ning.com/video/f58-green-gold-a-run-through

I hope to see you bright and early Saturday morning to talk about “My Father’s Heart” and its potential as a reading-list book for juniors and seniors. (I’ll provide a complete lesson plan – with vocabulary words.)
In the meantime, please feel free to zap these DAILY CARDIOGRAMS to friends (NCTE and otherwise -- so they can friend me) and fellow educators, school librarians, summer-reading chairs, and to post on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. Thanks, Stv McK

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
This was Tuesday. Dad had died last Tuesday. … Now I had returned to York Catholic High School, in York, Pennsylvania, a senior, and glad to be back, not that it all wasn’t completely weird. My current events had bestowed upon me a strange, unreal status. I was at the center of attention, though students didn't know how to approach me, or what to say if they did. If just for today, I was part of the energy source around which the rest of the school revolved. This wasn't my usual position in the York Catholic High School solar system. Normally I orbited comfortably out around the third or fourth ring -- close enough to feel the glow but not so far as to know the chill. But now here I was, the sun, if for all the wrong reasons. It felt good anyway.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
That first day back at York Catholic High School in Pennsylvania, a week after Dad died, I squeezed myself into the tiny office of the disciplinarian, Coach Forjan. For a long time he didn’t say a word.
Then finally came, “How you doin’?” in that I-could-care tone of his.
“I’m okay, Coach.” I said.
“No you’re not,” he said, swatting my words away. “No you’re not. You’re father just died and you’ll never get over it.”
He leaned back. His declaration – blunt and pointed, breathtakingly honest – somehow took the tension out of the air, out of the past week, and I was grateful for it.
Again he didn't say anything for a while, letting it all settle. I for sure didn't say word one, content to remain forever here in the presence of the truth. How DO you get over this?
When Coach finally did speak, his voice was a kindly whisper, or at least nearly. “But you will get used to it.”

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart:"
What is it about high school and those four years that bend and shape in was you can’t forget and can never escape. For instance, will there ever be anyone more amazingly “cool” in your life than the seniors when you were a freshman? And not just when you were a freshman, but for the rest of your life?

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart"
Once my freshman year, I had to deliver a message to Sister Anne Jerome’s AP biology class at the far end of York Catholic High School. My sister, Kathy, was in there, along with the rest of the really smart kids, dissecting the cats…. That night Kathy told Mom and Dad the story of how I had fumbled my way through the room. And how after I left, Joe Kochansky – “Jumpin’ Joe Kochansky,” senior basketball star! – shouted out to a howling class, “Hey, McKee, did you have any brothers who lived?”

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
How does that happen, by the way? How is it some kids get chosen to set the school agenda for everybody else? My junior year at York Catholic High School in Pennsylvania, a couple of the guys decided that everyone needed a theme song. That way, when we passed someone in the hall we could point to them and shout out the first couple of lines. Only two or three guys could have done that, knowing the rest of us would be thrilled to sing along. Mine was “Steve McKee’s Got a Brand New Bag!” from the James Brown title of almost the same words. I have no idea why that song or whether it mocked me or not. I was just happy to be included.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
Mary Liz, like me a junior at York Catholic High School in Pennsylvania, was not my girlfriend. Certainly not if you had asked her. I, on the other hand, had been wishing only that for months. I was desperately, foolishly, hopelessly in love with her. And there was no way she couldn’t have known it. But now here she was on Wednesday, barely a day after Dad had died, walking up the driveway to my front door. Unbidden -– that’s what amazed me. … I took one step outside, fighting the urge to run right to her. She stopped when she saw me, and there we stood. 'Hi,' I said, exhaling all of the past 24 hours in one short syllable."

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart"
The spring musical my junior year at York Catholic High School in Pennsylvania was 'Brigadoon.' I got the part of the bourbon-loving Jeff Douglas. A no-brainer part, a guaranteed standing ovation. Except that every day in rehearsal I was blowing my last line in the final bar scene – three words for one last laugh, especially when delivered to a high school audience. … Friday, with my junior class in attendance, I was off and running with the first crack. But I knew I would be only as good as those last three words -- and they were out there, lurking. The bar scene played perfectly. I got up to leave, walked across the stage, turned around and fired back: a final admission as to just how drunk Jeff Douglas really was. Then it was exit me, stage left. Before I had disappeared behind the curtain, the audience was howling, clapping, going absolutely crazy. Somehow I had delivered the goods.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
Backstage, I had no desire to bring my arms back to earth. I stood wishing the applause would never end. Everyone should hear that sound once in a life. It was all of an instant, but before it was over, Mary Liz, a Brigadoon townsfolk dancer, ran up to me, threw her arms around my shoulders, and kissed me on the neck. It wasn’t exactly an official backstage, behind-the-curtain tongue session, but still. Before the applause – my applause become our applause – had finally, finally, finally ended, I was head over heels. Twenty seconds before, Mary Liz had been a junior girl I had probably never noticed; she had meant nothing. Now she was everything. At 16, it happens that quick.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
I asked Mary Liz to the York Catholic High School homecoming when she came to see me Wednesday night, the night after Dad died. Honestly? I thought I was lock. She said no. She said had just been asked that day. But as she turned me down she offered hope. The week after homecoming, she said, we’ll see a movie – “Funny Girl,” all the dates were going to it. … When Omar Sharif came to Barbra Streisand before going to jail and said, “So long, Funny Girl,” Mary Liz leaned into me and said, “I’m going to cry now.” The movie ended too quickly after that. ... At her front door I stood helpless in her presence. Any move now was her move. All I could do was wait. She put her arms around my neck, rose on her tiptoes, and kissed me. Long. Well, not long. But it seemed long. Until it was over.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
I was a fool in love, but not an idiot. The guy Mary Liz went to homecoming with, he was the one. I never asked her out again. … It wasn’t until I went off to college the next September that I got past Mary Liz and the startling fact that she had appeared in the window of the door that Wednesday night after Dad died. I finally stopped trying to figure out why. It was enough to remember that she had, and in doing so how her presence had made all else fall magically, blissfully away. In the one moment when I needed that most. Like Dad in all things … she remains for me another lesson in the workings of the heart.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM, from "My Father's Heart":
In the musical “Brigadoon,” the village in Scotland appears only once in a lifetime. I know this. On Saturday night when I finally got back home from York Catholic High School after my final performance of the show, … at the top stair waited Dad, right hand extended. I will never forget the look on his face when our eyes met. … I reached for his hand. I don’t recall that we spoke. Dad’s eyes were a brilliant, cut-glass green, and they talked for us. … “Brigadoon” is the only real accomplishment I got to share with Dad, in that moment when I was beginning to knock around inside the adult I was becoming, the man he had helped create. … So I remember that night and those eyes, once in a lifetime.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
When you’re a kid, the story of how your parents created the union that eventually created you seems a necessary part of the natural order, fated, as etched in stone as the Ten Commandments. Even when you learn it isn’t, when you discover its utter capriciousness, you don’t believe it. You can’t. … My sister, Kathy, and I always knew that for Mom there had been other beaux. Dad hadn’t been the only guy Mom had written to during World War II. … This was not the least bit upsetting to us; indeed, just the opposite. Through it all, despite it all, Dad had won out, creating our destiny.