Three Decades of Fun with Zach

The dashing, young Zach Anner

My son, Zach, is turning thirty today and that’s a pretty significant number. One of the ones where you sit back and assess where you’ve gotten to thus far, how your accomplishments match up to the rest of the world’s and where you still need to go. No pressure, just evaluate and judge yourself and figure out how you’re going to improve on things for the next thirty or so years.

I’m the mom, not the judge, so if all Zach had done and was going to do is sit and smile and laugh his infectious laugh, I’d be really fine with that, as long as it met his standards for happiness and fulfillment. But the person I gave birth to had plans and dreams and has already accomplished quite a bit for a person his age, or any age, for that matter, so let's go back to the beginning and retrace our steps.

It all started on a cool November 17^th evening in 1984 when I was home with my 19 month old son, Aarau, and started to feel a little back pain. I was seven months pregnant with an unknown alien in my womb who decided it would be fun to come out and get this party started two months early. The alien would later be known as “Zach,” and when he was unceremoniously plopped on my belly after three hours of hard labor, (I know, only three, but it hurt!) he lifted his little head and looked around, surveying the doors and windows, plotting his next move after realizing his escape to this cold, light-drenched world had only landed him a few feet from his previous surroundings. This was his first attempt to get away from me. It did not work.

 He was put in a box. I think they called it an incubator, an especially small prison for babies planning to crawl out of the hospital when no one’s looking and have underdeveloped lungs because of their premature births. Weighing in at a whopping 3 pounds, 7 ounces, Zach needed to be maintained in an artificial womb after abandoning the real one, where he could get fat and develop like he would’ve if he’d done the right thing and been born a little later. Now he had a heart monitor, tubes and needles sticking everywhere and little bruises from blood oxygen tests. I wasn’t allowed to hold him or feed him, breast milk had to be pumped and frozen, then thawed and delivered through a feeding tube so he wouldn’t lose calories by suckling. A rough beginning by any standards.

After five weeks in the Intensive Care Nursery, he came home with a heart monitor just in time for Christmas, weighing a little under five pounds. He was about the size of a very skinny football and his brother immediately took to him, referring to his heart monitor as “Zachy’s T.V.” and turning it off. So that was his first accomplishment, surviving his premature birth and making it home after a long hospital stay where he could live a normal life with his family.

Not so normal. His first year was filled with failures to meet every developmental milestone imaginable. He also screamed and cried inconsolably for hours on end which I later learned was an indication of neurological damage, (no Internet in ’84) but he had such a charming personality when he wasn’t crying and such apparent language abilities (I think he was putting sentences together by the time he was one) that we were able to live in comfortable denial that everything was okay and he was just “catching up” until he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at fourteen months.

Fast forward to 29 years later.

A lot has happened since that diagnosis. I think Zach’s first sentence was “I want to be independent” and he’s done a lot to make that happen. He attended college in Buffalo until he escaped to The Disney College Program for a semester in Orlando, first time away from home, broken wheelchairs, hurricanes, every bad and good thing imaginable. He then went to Austin, Texas, knowing absolutely no one, and attended film school where he met friends who produced comedy shows and webseries with him. He then posted his famous audition video and went on a reality show (Your Own Show) and won his own show from Oprah (Rollin’ with Zach). When that show was canceled, he immediately hosted another show (Riding Shotgun) where he traveled across the country using suggestions and meeting people from the Reddit community along the way. He then moved to Los Angeles for a year where he filmed with Soul Pancake (Have a Little Faith) and his own youtube series, (Workout Wednesdays). And along the way he made more friends, had great adventures, and inspired people to lead better lives.

I’ve had the privilege of watching Zach address hundreds of people in cities throughout the country where he makes them laugh and makes them think. He doesn’t have to say much about what having a disability is like because his advocacy is his life. He shows through his humor that using a wheelchair and not being able to walk is not a big thing for him. It’s just one of the many things that can be a struggle and has very little to do with who he is as a person. But I don’t have to tell you about that because he’s writing his own book which will be published next year (If at Birth You Don't Succeed...) and you can see it for yourself when you watch his youtube videos.

He’s doing what we all want to do, using his life to inspire others, changing perceptions through example, and living his dreams by having meaningful work. And building great relationships, being creative and doing what he loves to do most, making people laugh.

Zach is turning thirty today and I won’t be at his birthday party because he’ll be in Austin with friends (and his brother) at The Alamo Draft House screening the long-awaited completion of their mockumentary webseries, "The Wingmen." His girlfriend will be baking him a cake. There’s a lot to celebrate.

Happy Birthday, Zach! I hope I get to stick around to see what the next 30 years hold for you. I can’t wait to see what you do next!

Colorado/Moab Part 2: Where Was I?

When I last wrote for this blog I was sitting in a rented Ford Edge in Arches National Park watching the sunset with a bunch of photographers. Then I came home and got bummed out about being away from all that mad beauty and didn’t feel like writing about how awful it was to be back in real life, so utterly disconnected. So I posted some filler, good writer filler, but nonetheless… 

Now I will attempt to put myself back in that place, to recall without longing, where I was when I wasn’t here.So where was I?

I never finished writing about Estes Park, the climb up to Dream Lake on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in October with the sun shining and just enough clouds to make pretty pictures. It was our first day of hiking so we had to stop every fifty yards or so to take in the incredible mountain vistas and catch our breath as we panted noisily from the thinness of the air at elevations reaching 10,000 ft.

There were stunning lakes and trees, rushing streams, yellow leaves, colorful birds, pebbled paths, and some other folks enjoying the day. A light breeze, about 70 degrees, really couldn’t ask for anything more perfect. 

In the evening the elk gathered in the pastures to feed, the not so tiny young bumping against their mother’s undersides to get milk. They seemed unconcerned with the picture snappers lining up along the road standing sometimes within 5 feet of them while the sun turned the fields to gold as it set behind the mountains.

 Greg and I had come to Estes a few years earlier in the spring and weren’t impressed. I don’t know what the hell was wrong with us, but fortunately we came back and because there was so much we didn’t get to do this time around, we are planning to come back and stay for a whole week next year. The fall colors were lovely, we enjoyed our small hotel on the Fall River and found another great restaurant in “Ed’s Cantina.”

But this time around, after just one Saturday night and full day Sunday, we left for Moab,Utah on Monday morning.

We love Moab, though it’s not easy to get to, about an eight hour drive from Denver through curvy mountain roads, mostly highway 70, but that’s part of the attraction. You have to work to get there! And once you do, it’s like you’re on some crazy rock-walled planet, walking to the ends of the earth, seeing how explicitly a river formed a canyon. So how could that possibly be reasonably close to any airport?

Colorado River on Rt. 128 towards Moab

Our first digs upon arriving were at the Moab Valley RV Resort where we rented a small cottage. By small, I mean tiny, but it had everything we needed, including beds, a kitchenette, and most importantly, a toilet! It’s about the same price as a crappy hotel room in town (think Motel 6) but I love being in the campground without really having to rough it and it also has a pool and a laundry room which we’ve made use of when visiting in seasons when it was too hot to hike mid-day. 

View from Moab Valley RV Resort...seriously!

 We got in late Monday and headed to "Zax" for all you can eat pizza and salad which we were able to eat outside on the terrace on this warm desert evening. The town was full with half marathoners and whoever else has reason to come to Moab in October. With all of its parks and extreme sports, that could mean anybody, including Greg and I.

            After staring at the stars for a bit at our picnic table back at the camp we went to sleep with the windows open to let in the cool night air. Then Greg got up early and took the five minute drive to Arches for sunrise shots while I stayed back and enjoyed the kids and dogs and rocks and trees at the campground.

            Later on we hiked on a path named “Park Avenue” for its skyscraper sized red rock walls, taking both photos and video on another perfect weather day when, oddly, we were the only ones on this wide trail marked by cairns and loaded with small cacti, desert grasses, and twisted burnt looking trees. We’ve been to this same place on several occasions, but every time feels new and humbling and gets us into the proper mindset for connecting and acknowledging this ancient land that belongs to no one, but was fortunately preserved by the U.S. National Park Service.

            We then did a few of the more popular hikes, “Windows,” “Devil’s Garden,” (short version) and “Delicate Arch View” loving the strange formations but feeling a deep awe and reverence for every monumental rock that extends toward the sky and every pebble that rotates under our boots. This happens the next day when we head to Canyonlands and hike the “Grandview Point” in “Island in the Sky.” When we pull over to an unmarked stop and look out over the Green River winding its way through the canyon, we’re in touch with something extraordinary, like no place else on Earth.  

Unmarked pull-off in Canyonlands towards Grandview Point

 There are wonderful restaurants and side trips and fun places to stay I could tell you about here, but the heart of what happens when we go on these trips, is not in those details. It's a transformation of thought and presence and being that transcends travelogue. It's an awakening to an extraordinary past, an understanding of how small we are in the scheme of things, and a window,an arch, a bridge and a canyon that invite us to countless possibilities.
Greg’s way of staying connected is through his photos that he lovingly edits and perfects when we get home. For me, there is no photo that quite embodies the essence of being there and it’s the closest I get to feeling something spiritual. The god thing, I don’t really get, but being lost in nature is where I feel something mysterious, ancient, deep and connected. I haven’t quite figured out how to bring that essence back home with me yet and maybe I never will. So I guess I'll just have to keep going back!

There’s something out there and for me it’s a place. I just have to keep following that path and see where it leads.

           

All photos in this post were taken with my Nokia Windows Phone. Greg's are much better, trust me! Or better yet, get out there and take some of your own!