Spiritual Laundromat

2011

2011-01-01T06:03:00.000-08:00

I celebrated the incoming year by being unconscious. I do not have a hangover this morning. I had a glass of wine, perhaps two, and fell asleep watching Zahi Hawas unveil secrets of the Egyptians. They have a lot of them and Zahi parcels them out one by one. I love his accent.

This morning I am celebrating the incoming year as the only conscious citizen of the house. Walker and one of his friends are determinedly sleeping in the family room. The dogs are doing their level best to disturb them. Never underestimate the ability of a teenage boy to sleep on, sleep on brother! My ritual, of course, involves coffee.

This afternoon we celebrate the last installment of the Divorced Family Christmas, on New Year's Day. Forgive me if it seems like the first item on the New Year's Day agenda is "old business." I'm not really doing anything else. Someone will give me a present. It's no skin off me. It just seems that every year we beat Santa almost to death, crossing the line between celebration and obligation long before the season is thankfully over.

We are compelled to mark passages, and there are a number to mark. We're going to have to fight harder for things we believe in this year. Bob Van Der Plaats will be trying to whip up hatred and bile in order to impeach the Supreme Court Judges who unanimously upheld the equal rights of gay and lesbian couples in Iowa. This man with muppet wig has been running for governor every four years (is that the interval here?) since he had real muppet hair. He thinks he can ride the anti-gay "ew-factor" defense of marriage horse to some sort of prominence. I believe that Iowans will not stand for this, but we may have to sit up and bark about it. Nationally, the rubes who have been stalling everything finally have to fish or cut bait, having come back to some semblance of power via the blatant pursuit of it, above all else. I think it's good that they've elected a bunch of wackos because no one will take them seriously. Of course, I thought Reagan was a wacko and never dreamed anyone would elect him president. I also thought cassette tapes were a fad, and hung on to my eight-track tapes longer than was technologically necessary. What do I know?

It looks like any other morning to me, folks. After we get home from Christmas number three, I'm going to try to scare up some red beans and some rice. I was telling Robyn that this is the good luck meal for the coming year and she pointed out that we haven't been having it recently on New Year's day. Her luck hasn't been so hot lately and she's lining up for beans.

Me, I'm lucky. Job: good. Family: good. I can walk and talk and take care of myself. In fact, I can cross country ski on fine old woodies, play a little guitar, a bit of bad basketball, and raise a ruckus when necessary or desirable. I've got some very fine friends and on most days a sense of purpose, or what passes for one.

A couple days ago, I was invited to contribute to a relatively new blog called Dirt & Seeds. I'm excited to do this. Nathan Bell, a very old musical friend from "the days" in Iowa City hooked me up. It's a little more public, a LOT more public, than I'm used to, and exciting.

http://www.dirtandseeds.com

I'll continue to post here as well. More room to be self-referential and self-indulgent, two of my better things.

I'm not sure why we get so involved in keeping score of how things are going this time of year. It might be a thing to do more frequently, really. I used to work for a woman who talked about "being intentional" about how we do things. Perhaps we should review how things are going on a semi-monthly basis. We could choose to get drunk, or not.

Three years here, three years there, next thing you know: six years.

2010-12-27T06:17:00.000-08:00

I was scrounging about for a memory card for Robyn's new camera when I found this one, full of pictures from 2007. Three years ago, not long, really. My son is still small with round cheeks, my daughter is piling her hair impossibly high for prom or homecoming. There is a Christmas tree, probably the most beautiful yet. It always is.

I thought I would sit down and try to explain how it is those three years seems like such a long span of time to me, but I'm not sure I can. Over this hiccup in time I turned 50, nearly killed myself, watched a friend die, mourned a friend who died by his own fickle hand, watched my mother diminish, brain cell by brain cell. Over this increment, I remembered to be patient (because I had no choice), to grateful (for not having to be so god-damned patient), watched my wife and children with new eyes, learned that I am not invincible, but that I can endure . . . and overcome.

In 2007 I was taller, younger, stronger, and somehow less aware. Had I known what the next three years would hold, I suppose I would have to choose to experience them again, since I am what I've become and the journey has made me thus.

The good thing about the future is that we're ignorant of it. Not knowing what comes next, we begin each day. I think I'll go put some socks on.

Peace incidentally descends.

2010-12-24T13:37:00.000-08:00

It is Christmas Eve and I am sitting pretty. My mother is in a a very well run nursing home. She is dry and warm, comfortable and oblivious. She is the best she can be. She can no longer remember. She cannot count the cost. For this we are thankful.

She is warm and safe.

Robyn and her mother Donna are upstairs wrapping presents. Caitlin is home from school. Soon Walker will be home from work. The dogs are asleep: Maggie on the sofa, Tye on the carpet. Snow falls outside, big as feathers. Caitlin's friend has decided to spend the night here, rather than brave the road to Burlington.

Tonight I notice that I am not in pain, that my movement is not restricted, that I can move about at will. Tonight I notice that the people I love most, my son, my daughter, my wife, are safe and warm. Tonight I notice that peace falls around us, feathered snow, soft, sweet and constant.

Peace be upon you, kind stranger.

We are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the Devil's bargain, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. Merry Christmas.

Do the Tighten Up baby!

2010-12-18T04:40:00.000-08:00

This picture makes me dizzy.

My clients are conspiring to feel well and cancel appointments in favor of other, more positive activities. Since I'm not worrying about how much I bill, I can relax about it and take advantage of a whole Saturday. Sessions on a Saturday morning are really a pleasure. That said, every touchy feely needs a day off once in a while. Families tend to prioritize therapy out this way because they like the security of working with me. At the same time, things are really going well and so wouldn't you really rather watch football than address conflict? Works for me.

I always try to do a "discharge" meeting, though. It's good to get folks to state clearly what they think is working. We all have little signals we send our selves when we start to feel stress and begin to act they way we inevitably act when we begin to lose balance. It's good to clearly state how we think we'll know this is happening. Then, because folks want to be "fixed" and there's no such thing, we rename the discharge a "consultation phase." This makes it fair to check in, ask for a "booster" session. Thus we make room for the next fascinating conundrum, and Sam is endlessly entertained.

I mean this with all respect. There is little in this world more fascinating and inspiring than the therapeutic process. It's a real privilege to get to do it, and when I'm fascinated and absorbed in the process I'm entertained.

How about these shots? I call this series "Cedar Rapids for the Iowa Citian." My take on what denizens of the Athens of the Midwest think when they ponder my fair city.

One of my co-workers pulled me aside and shared a concern yesterday. During our staff meeting I had waxed expansive regarding an incoming corps member who was overcoming difficulties and I gave away more information to my co-workers than was necessary. Allison very discreetly pointed this out, and I thanked her for it. I joke about how many ethics credits I have but ethics is a tricky think. Ethics are a tricky things.

I didn't identify anyone by name, and a case could be made that the details I disclosed would help our empathetic co-workers to better appreciate what some of our incoming corps members are facing. It wasn't my information, though and I shouldn't have shared it in such a way that my co-workers could figure out who was whom. Who. Thus each and every day, just when we need it, we get to dance the "Tighten Up." That really was a dance and there was a song that went with it. I could stand to do the Tighten Up on a regular basis.

It's a good thing when a younger colleague calls you out appropriately. It's a good thing to acknowledge a legitimate concern and adjust one's modus operandi. Operandus. In such ways is trust built.

As I got up to serve my primary function in life, to facilitate the ingress and/or egress of dogs, I noticed a hairy frost in the early morning light. I put on some shoes and joined the dogs out in the snowy yard. It's looking like a pretty good day.

This is what Cedar Rapids looks like to me this morning. Enjoy the frost and the light.

ChristmaHannuKwanzaakah

2010-12-17T04:50:00.000-08:00

My daughter is home from her first semester of college. Caitlin is the Holiday Enforcer. Christmas will now begin. If it doesn't, someone's ass is going to get kicked.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the natural development of families, particularly those families that include children who are my childrens' age. Caitlin going away to live and returning home for the holidays marks a change, the first of some pretty serious structural adjustments we're bound to make in the next few years. Walker's a Junior, giving us one more year of something like the status quo before things get a good deal quieter around here.

More than just the launching, which is good and right, there is something of a generational nature going on. Someone is "coming home" to our house.

Robyn and I come from families that are in many ways very different from one another. For that matter, Robyn's families are very different from each other. I could write a book on this subject, and may some day.

My family of origin is punctuated by distance, physical and emotional. I have four aunts and uncles living nearby and only have contact with one of them. I have a large number of cousins and we're friendly and glad to see one another when we do, but we're just not regularly involved in each others' lives. My mother left her family and never really returned. My Dad had a very strained and difficult relationship, particularly with his mother, and trips to visit his family were tense, filled with anxiety and unresolved sadness. Perhaps this is why we always celebrated Christmas at home.

Robyn's parents divorced when she was young. Her mother is warm and supportive, rather a nut, loves a good scotch, and is very much a part of our family. She can be counted on to make us an odd meal, let the dogs out, get a kid from school, go to a Christmas concert. My mother and I used to describe parents like Donna as "over-involved." Our implication was that it's the natural course of things for family members to grow up and move AWAY. Donna has taught me that families hang together, support each other in all kinds of practical ways. It's not over-involvement. This is involvement.

LeRoy is really a child of the Great Depression. He was raised to work hard and scrap for everything he got. Sports and the arts were frivolities as far as his father was concerned. LeRoy's dad had the contract for county road maintenance in Benton County and if LeRoy had extra energy there was gravel to throw. He's a very accomplished man, very bright, very active. Connecting with LeRoy really requires a project to work on, however, an idea to be analyzed. Let him use that big brain and deliberately think his way through a problem and he's at his best. He has what could charitably be described as great difficulty with emotional connection. Hug him and you can feel his ass pucker. It's hard to get him to hold still and talk to you about anything real. He plays favorites sometimes, has lost contact with one of his (best) children, tends to give with one hand and take a little back with the other. LeRoy's a hell of a lot kinder and gentler than his father was. I think he's doing the best he can.

Christmas has been structured around these two divorced families for years. Years. Donna get's Christmas Eve, LeRoy get's Christmas day, sometimes the following Saturday. As Donna's gotten older and her house had gotten smaller, the large Christmas eve gathering moved to my brother and sister in law's home. The pattern didn't really change, though.

This year Robyn proposed that we have a Christmas Day open house and stay home. Anyone can come visit who wants to. This caused some rumbling in the jungle. It seems to me everyone is pretty tired of the old pattern but no one feels comfortable shaking it up. My gal did it. This year we get to spend Christmas Eve in our own home. We will spend some of Christmas Day at LeRoy's. Couldn't get a consensus on that one, mostly because the step-sister was still locked into divorce era thinking: "He never gets to have us on the real holiday." She's in her late 40's, and well, as my Southern friends say "bless her heart." LeRoy, at 80, has wisely decided just to give us all some money and let us do our own shopping, which is a big change from his perspective. The whole sitting around a circle watching a lot of people open an endless number of presents until we lose the will to live ritual will be a thing of the past.

Tomorrow, perhaps in the morning, we'll go out to the tree farm and take down a small pine to decorate. Christmas Eve is open to whoever wants to share it with us. Now our kids will be coming home to our house. As the year goes by I have some wishes:

I hope that my children look forward to coming to visit us. I want them to come when they'd like to come and feel comfortable when they're here. When they have children (a long time from now, please, God!) I want them to stay home with them when that makes sense. I want to be involved, on terms that make sense for my kids, and for their kids.

I'm no Christian. I can and probably will rant about how many awful things have been done in the name of someone's "truth." I'm not even really a theist. If God's running this he/she has a wicked sense of humor. At the very least, The Plan is much too complicated for me or any other human to understand. What this holiday means to me is not about virgin birth (yikes!). It's not about family traditions that no longer serve anyone. This holiday is about connecting, giving, taking and spending time.

I will be playing the part of the parent no one dreads seeing.

Missing

2010-12-11T04:55:00.000-08:00

God, he was a moody fucker, a human mood swing. Will posed something yesterday which reminded me that Cam killed himself this time last year.

I'm not angry with him now. He was the son of an escape artist, a man who abandoned his family, who Cam almost met, who left a space that could not be filled, and of an undetermined shape.

Cam found a scene from the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt in which Steve and an actress talk in a smoky jazz bar. The man playing the guitar, Cam tells me, is his father. Apparently the director liked the music well enough that what you hear in the movie is actually Cam's Dad playing.

In the scene, we can make out the man's silhouette, but not his face. He sings some scat over the guitar and it's very beatnik and 1960s. A man in those days would perhaps run from Clear Lake, Iowa, from a wife and two kids, heading off to California. . . .

You can hang around this one pump station
I'm going to take myself a lifetime vacation
Next time you see me take a long last look
There'll be one less name in the telephone book

Cam wrote beautifully about images that possessed him. I think his most evocative lyrics are the ballads. Songs about lonely highways, big moons, about being somehow outside things, driving by, hoping someone will burn a candle for him. The boy knew how to write a hook, and in his humorous songs, could certainly twist it. He wrote a song about my first marriage, Bessie's Gone, that still cracks me up. And he took the time to write a song about me. Who does that? Wrote a hell of a good one about our friend Al, too.

Cam's passing taught us another important lesson: Facebook is immortal. Cam's site is still up and people are still posting, although Cam, of course is not. For a while, Cam's site was a pretty strange place. His wife was posting and in a lot of pain, people were reacting to the news, it was raw, even a little creepy. I went there this morning just before I started writing this. It's quieter now. People are still posting, but we've all had some time to get used to this.

Steve Earle wrote "I Ain't Ever Satisfied." The song was about Cam. It was about that part in all of us that whispers to us that our successes aren't real, our better qualities are evanescent, that we are frauds about to be found out. There was no pleasing him sometimes. There was no pleasing himself. I'm not sure if this made it fair. One could safely say that Cam suffered from his moods more than anyone else. That didn't make him any easier to live with. At one point in my life, I backed away from Cam, determining that I could not ride with him, could only step back and watch him go. He was tough on wives, because of the darkness in him at times, but also because he was a very sweet, generous, expansive guy a good deal of the time, and that was real, too.

When Cam died, I wasn't that far from cheating clumsy middle aged death myself. I was watching my mother fight death brain cell by brain cell. The idea that Cam would just step off, take a lot of pills and die, left me grasping. . . .

Here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to take a crack at a really good, difficult book. I'm going to work up a few songs to the point they're worth doing. I'm going to work on laughing and encouraging and being generous of spirit. I can do that.

My Dad was a different sort of cat, too, Cam, but mine stuck around. I knew that whatever I did, he was proud of me and loved me. Because of him, there are times, just some times, but times nonetheless, when I feel full, happy, thankful and at peace. I mutter to my father that I'm sorry and he sighs and says he guesses it will be okay.

I wish he'd called me, called somebody, old Camster. He was, I guess, too much apart from us, from all of us, that night. There was about Cam often a sense that he was present but also was thinking of something else, some next thing. It meant we connected but did not stay connected.

I look out the window, and see you standing in the road.

Today you get Asters

2010-12-05T06:55:00.000-08:00

Will posted a picture a while back that I just love. I think Dan took it. It shows Will and Joe and I sitting on John Keane's porch in Athens, Georgia, taking a break from recording our last, Visiting Normaltown. I tried to paste the picture in here, but it didn't transfer well. Today you get Asters.

At the moment the picture was taken, we were recording in the best studio we'd ever used in our lives, surrounded by beautiful equipment, gold records on the wall, attended to by John, a quiet man with a dry sense of humor, who cut his teeth recording all the early stuff with REM. Locals, including a former member of the band Sea Level, dropped by to listen as we laid down tracks. We played a local watering hole and lots of enthusiastic locals came by to hear this band the Andy Carlson was producing. We got up and did a hot two or three songs and one slightly drunk man came up and grabbed me by the shoulders, got into my face and said: "You are one singin' mother-fuckah!" We laid down all our tracks the third week of December, or maybe it was the second, but it was close to Christmas, and then Andy stayed there (his family live there) and mixed our work with John.

I think at this point Big Wooden Radio was at the top of our game, in our incarnation as a six piece band. We had several other points where we were in similar fettle, once when our first CD came out, again when we added Paul on percussion and went to Telluride.

Soon life intervened, as it will tend to do. We ran into our own limitations. Could we really travel enough to support life at the "next level?" Would one person continue to do the vast majority of the booking (along with tearing down, the most thankless part of playing gigs)? Would years and years of focusing on putting on a show rather than addressing issues between us wear on us? When you're bringing original material, arrangements, and ideas that you care deeply about to a group of peers you care deeply about, a certain degree of emotional turmoil is to be expected. There's a reason most bands break up, often with acrimony.

Merle Haggard, or somebody equally cool, commented "Anyone can be gracious on the way up." After that photo was taken, we learned a lot about our limitations. We did therapy together, for God's sake! Over the coming years, the number of gigs we played diminished. Our lives and band process really did not permit taking the time and making the commitment to make another recording and work together to play gigs and sell it. Much of being a band is working to retain the illusion of some sort of momentum. It helps to be the band that is going someplace. One really has no control over this. What does one do in order to be prom king year after year? Popularity is evanescent. There's even a band by this name, of course, chosen, I hope, with irony.

We continued to make good music together, perhaps not at the level of practice and attention to detail that we brought to our game during the Athens days, or by the end of a summer playing more than 50 gigs, but solid, honest music. We worked as a quartet, the way we started. This was probably our most interesting formation. This isn't a reflection on the other fine musicians we've included in the band. It's just that we were most surprising when we looked like a quaint little bluegrass band, but then played an amazing array of songs. It was great fun to play eight songs in a row, all unlike each other, and watch the audience figure out "what kind of band we are."

I miss playing music in public. So far, I don't miss it enough to book any gigs. I have a standing offer from one of my favorite bar owners at my favorite bar, and on this very computer I have a song list to work on when I pick up a guitar. Playing even two hours in a bar requires arranging at least 40 songs. All my old arrangements have spaces in them for Will or Joe or Andy or Greg or Al to play instrumental solos. My list needs to be rearranged now so that I can do something on the guitar, or scat sing, or tap dance and fart, to fill that space. Because of my association with these fine musicians, I know I can't just fill that space. I need to make it matter, make it my own. I pick up my guitar, not regularly enough, and work through arrangements. One of these days I'll book that gig, providing enough pressure for me to finish the arrangements and learn them satisfactorily.

I don't know who it was, maybe Paul, who introduced the term "clams," to our vocabulary. Making an error in our highly arranged material became known as "dropping a clam." Paul taught us a lot about rhythm and arranging. He also taught us not to make faces when we "dropped clams." "You guys have to learn to smile when your pants are full." He was right. It was not permissible to make a face. It was permissible to turn to one's partner, off mike, and say "this is a real chowder-fest!"

A solo artist is responsible for his own arrangement. He or she can take more liberties with arranging, since changing direction mid-song doesn't cause any trouble for any partners. We're also lonelier. When times are bad, a good band becomes a closed committee. "They sure hate us. Let's crank this out and get out of here!" A solo artist bombing is lonely. He can only rely on the audience or on himself for strength. His clams are his own and he must stand in them. (Standing the Clams! There's a song.) I miss the good gigs. I also remember bombing slowly, a musician on a slow rotisserie, basted with audience disregard.

I'm happy with where we turned out. I'm grateful for those times on the porch, times when our hard work and discipline paid off, when opportunities seemed unlimited, when we found ourselves playing out of our league and doing well. That, my friends, is a really fine feeling.

Hoopla

2010-11-26T15:58:00.000-08:00

Any person who has broken his back and can walk knows what gratitude is. It was a good Thanksgiving. We had a relaxed mid-day meal. The dogs didn't get any of the food.

The food deserves it's own paragraph. We had a turkey basted lovingly in butter and Reisling, covered with cheesecloth until the last quarter hour, as moist as the day it first gobbled. We had a ham, a big local one, cut cross-hatch and basted in brandy and brown sugar and slow baked to let all the wonderfulness soak in. It was pork, as candy. Robyn mixed sweet potatoes and sliced sauteed apples. We had mashed potatoes and green beans with the french onion thing going on and cranberry jello stuff and the traditional Caitlin's boiled cranberry relish, which is actually fabulous, and we had three pies: pecan, pumpkin and apple. John whipped cream, really whipped it with a whisk, and we ate it on our pie, glad to be fat and happy and warm together.

Why, then, did we all go out into the bitter cold and stand outside a Target for two and a half hours? It was windy, too, a breeze that cut through my parka and my stocking cap and reminded me how old and frail and middle aged man can be in the early morning, with no rising sun in sight.

I learned a few things from this adventure:

1. When your son says "I think we should go earlier" he is right. We did and we got the television. Had we come a half our later, our success would have been doubtful. 2. Columbia parkas and stocking caps are great, but nothing beats an old wool blanket held over the head Civil War POW style. 3. Some people need their mommies to dress them. There were a lot of people out there in light coats and no hats. I don't think stupidity entitles you to favors from God, if that's what they were trying. 4. Prepare to be tazed for causing a ruckus. There were lots of cops patrolling and the tiny Target security guy insisted in an adolescent voice he wouldn't tolerate nonsense.

The last time I stood in line for an equivalent period of time, it was 1975 and I got Dylan tickets. It was a great show, the Rolling Thunder Review, and the memories lasted longer than any television I ever owned.

The second Thanksgiving was at my father-in-laws. It's the one I rant about every year. I think we can just replay last year's rant. I did the math this morning, and there were five people there I like, including my father in law. There were six people there with whom I would go to great lengths not to visit. (Notice I didn't end with a preposition!) We sat in a semi-circle around an enormous television. Robyn says I'm focusing on the negative. The whole scene left me in a bad mood even though I was psyched up to be a "sport." I might have made it but the only other company when we got there was the "neighbors," a relatively nice not very bright buy guy with a toupee that would only be more obvious if it got up and danced on his head, and his wife, the alcoholic former prescription drug abuser, who offered up nuggets of wisdom such as "violent videos are just awful," "that dog is going to knock over my wine," and "oh . . . oh. . . my vertigo! (x12)" The social worker in my wanted to suggest that wine and vertigo are perhaps not the best combination, but then neither are abject stupidity and verbal expression, and that never stopped anybody.

I left in a foul mood, no longer thankful for any-fucking-thing. It took me the rest of the day to decompress by myself in the upstairs bedroom, muttering to myself. Today is sunny and stretches out before us filled with possibilities, strengthened by caffeine and foolish optimism.

Nathan Bell suggested yesterday that we all celebrate monkeys, and call it "Thanksgibbon."

SonShine

2010-11-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

I like to get up early on Sunday. I usually drink some coffee, read the paper, then go see Mom. I try to do this every Sunday because Mom can't tell if I'm there or not and I could never go or go twice a day and she wouldn't know which.

Since she's moved to the nursing home Mom has been attending church. Attending is probably the least appropriate term for what she's doing.

Mom's consciousness exists for seconds at a time. These seconds are very seldom connected now. If I sit with her, I often get a glimpse of her, of some familiar neuron firing, perhaps for the last time, and Mom looks at a sleeping old woman and then at me and says sternly: "You should help her." I tell her I will.

This morning I was confronted with very energetic, pretty doggone old volunteers who were busy wheeling residents, except for those who declined, to a room at the end of the hall. I found my mother in her high backed wheelchair, in a line, like a stately old jet at O'Hare, waiting for takeoff. I woke her. She sleeps most of the time and had no idea what she was in line for.

When we moved to Wichita in 1965 we were not a religious family. We'd lived in Illinois, New York, West Virginia and Ohio and it hadn't really come up in our conversation as a family. "Where's God?" I asked once. Mom said "God is everywhere." Mom was a Catholic girl who left the Church and her family to marry Dad, a divorced Non-Catholic. "In the potty?' I asked. I think Mom changed the subject. I was three and she could do that.

Southern Kansas - well, really most of Kansas - follows one evangelical Christian faith or another. Evangelicals must witness to others to fulfill God's plan for them on earth and so I was repeatedly questioned by all my new friends, who wanted me to come to their churches on Sunday mornings, or to Sunday school on Wednesday night. That's "church night." After not very long, my good friend Jay invited me to go to Olivet Southern Baptist Church with him. I was intrigued, and told Mom, who said, not missing a beat:

"Oh, didn't I tell you? We're going to the Unitarian church this Sunday. We already have plans." That's how Mom saved me from the Southern Baptists.

Given this history, I decided that I needed to step out of my comfort zone and see what this service was all about. An energetic old woman had already gotten me a chair right by Mom, who is really slumping in her chair, sawing logs. Big logs. Mom is 5' 10" and I can't lift her up in a chair without hurting her, so I asked one of the energetic old women to help me, but she wasn't allowed. "God will give you strength," I wanted to suggest.

I found some help and got Mom straightened up so she wouldn't be rolling on the floor. I was pretty sure that this was not going to be that kind of service. For a while, the energetic women continued to roll their audience in. Some were cheerful and responsive. Some, like my mother were somewhat less aware, or not aware at all. Mom, for instance was snoozing happily. One wonders why they couldn't have just rolled them from their rooms directly to the church room, without lining them up in the halls first, but I didn't inquire. God works in mysterious ways.

A husband and wife team led the service, eventually Both looked retired and energetic. The woman apologized that there was no piano but let the room in song , referring us to the SonShine Songbook, Large Print Edition. I found it at the SonShine Society website.
The energetic woman began to sing energetically in a voice that was quavery but strong and mostly in tune. Others sang along as best they could, songs about how Jesus suffered and died and how we should humbly glorify him and his Father God, how anyone can be assured of Heaven, how for every instance of pain and suffering there is, somehow a Plan. The plan involves me and Mom joining up, of course. Not much chance of that. Remember the Spanish Inquisition! I'm the strangest creature you ever have heard: my mother's a virgin, my father's a bird! Nananananana! During the second song, Mom woke up, and picked up her side of the Victory Edition SonShine songbook. She looked over at me and smiled a beautiful smile, one I remember from church a long time ago, holding a Unitarian Universalist Hymn-book full of not much better songs. She tried to sing a few words, then flickered out, a brief signal on an old television, and went back to sleep. But what a smile that was! It warms me up just remembering it. The minister talked to us about showing humility and bowing down before God. I thought about Mom's evil illness, how it's rendered her incapable of noticing that she's at a Christian service, or that I am with her. I'm humbled by this terrible disease and it's certain victory over my mother. I wonder how this could possibly be part of a Plan. What an awful plan. New plan, please! Still, that smile. . . the minister wrapped up and we all began to wheel ourselves out of the room. An energetic old woman thanked me for coming and I thanked her for having us.

I wheeled Mom back to her room for a long snooze. Was a time she'd have politely dismissed these folks and spent Sunday morning with a paper, or with a bunch of nerdy Unitarians and me. Now they can't convert her.

Hey, don't forget your SonShine pin!

Perhaps some hope

2010-11-20T05:53:00.000-08:00

There's a fascinating article in this month's Harper's about "prodromal" treatment of schizophrenics. I can see your eyes drifting away, disappointed that I'm not ranting about Thanksgiving yet. I'm sure I will yet rant. Be patient.

The article focuses on treatment of schizophrenia while symptoms are just developing. This requires that psychiatrists listen to their patients with well tuned ear, since early pre-schizophrenic thought is a very introverted process. People ponder whether solid objects are really solid, they focus intently on religious or relational themes, latching onto symbolism or ritual to try to make sense of things that used to be certain. I knew a guy who spent a lot of time wondering whether or not his arms and legs really existed. This can seem "funny" but it's not. Schizophrenia causes the physical deterioration of the brain over time - patients' brain scans reveal widening fissures, significant measurable deterioration over time.

My father and his father both suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Dad's most profound worry was that I too would succumb. My mission in life for a period of time involved the absence of this disease. Accomplishing the absence of something can be a confusing mission. To this end, my father and I had a number of fascinating conversations. We read R.D. Laing, a British psychiatrist who advanced a "behavioral" theory of the evolution of schizophrenia, which is now largely disproven. I was somewhat attached to the behavioral theory, given my dubious inheritance, but Dad didn't buy it.

What Laing did that was brilliant was to record a great number of interviews with individual patients and their families, sometimes scripting family interactions and interviews. This provided Dad and I with a look inside other heads than our own, gave us reference points for comparing our internal states. We were particularly interested in comparing my mental status at the time (an early 20's person) with the mind-set my father had before he had his first full blown episode, nervous breakdown, violent outburst, at the age of 27. Dad's behavior when psychotic was violent and dangerous, and it offered no basis for comparison, no way for me to relate or compare. I've just never thought about grabbing an axe, heading into my wife's bedroom, and accusing her of infidelity.

Dad talked to me about feeling a certain hollowness, emptiness, an absence of self. He was a good student, a talented writer, a decorated veteran and a very good teacher. His accomplishments always seemed hollow to Dad, as though he were playing a role, acting a part, rather than being genuinely present. He talked about no knowing how to love, or to trust the love of others, because of that same hollowness. He was preoccupied with somehow being a "success" in life but had very rigid and unrealistic expectations of what that would look like. He worried endlessly about interactions with other people, what they might have meant, what he should have said. He was a jealous lover, afraid of abandonment. How can you trust or understand others if you have no internal frame of reference? You're left trying to construct theories that somehow match the external world with your increasingly confusing thoughts.

Before Dad was a "mental patient" he suffered for years in this prior state, uncomfortable and uncertain, but not delusional or particularly unstable. At some point stress put him over the edge and he spent a good deal of the rest of his life teetering there, struggling with symptoms he recognized but could not conquer.

Psychiatrists in clinics that use the Prodromal treatment model are intervening with patients before the "big snap," putting them on low doses of the newer antipsychotic medications, allowing them the time space to regain their balance without experiencing the full blown agony of a psychotic break. The editors of the DSM-V, which will be published within the next couple years, are working to quantify this pre-schizophrenic state and define a diagnosis that will make it more recognizable.

It's early to say whether the patients at these clinics will avoid full blown schizophrenia. It's hard to stay on medication. Great stressors may still trigger psychosis. It doesn't sound as though there are definitive studies yet. The patient anecdotes in the article, however, seem to indicate that patients feel more control over their lives and are functioning pretty well.

Dad had fourteen years, corresponding to my later teens and early adulthood, when he was relatively symptom free. He was eccentric and occasionally cantankerous, but he was an active, involved part of our family. He was a wonderful father to me and a great support as I tried to figure out how to be an adult. He learned how to love us, to feel it, and to be loved in return. He has told me several time that this was his proudest accomplishment.

One day, during the time when I was living alone after moving out of the home I shared with my former wife, Nancy, he called me and in a strangely familiar voice asked me if "I had been hearing things about him." His symptoms were back and he could no longer internalize them. I assured him that I was not hearing anything and begged him to contact his doctor, which he did. What ensued was a fruitless painful struggle to find something that worked for him. The meds that bought him 14 years betrayed him, leaving him with nothing but tremors as a side effect. Dad submitted to electric shock treatments, culminating in a particularly barbaric process called "maintenance ECTs" which involved ongoing regular shock sessions, rather than discrete periods of treatment followed by recovery. ECTs scrambled his thoughts and left him very confused. They did not control his symptoms but no one seemed to have any other ideas. Eventually Dad learned about a new trial medication called Clozapine and got himself included in a study. By then we discovered what we thought were neurological side effects of anti-psychotic drugs were actually the early symptoms of ALS. I'm still convinced that the ECTs weakened his neurological system, making him vulnerable to ALS.

When I close my eyes and call my own name, I can feel myself, inside myself. I am a person, responsible for my actions, taking credit and sometimes blame, loving and being loved. When Dad and I talked, I realized that this was the difference between my father and I. I am present in my own body, a self, a soul, and I can feel this. My father taught me how precious this is.

Courage among the severed hands

2010-11-07T06:37:00.000-08:00

On Halloween, my daughter Caitlin comes into her own. She and her mother and Nana have collected a vast array of Halloween related items over the years, all of them tacky (but fun). Caitlin erupts into a frenzy of decoration which always includes stringing fake spider web across the front porch at just the right height to garrote her father.

My attitude toward holidays borders on the curmudgeonly. I like a few simple decorations (particularly if I don't have to do them). I already have my house arranged the way I like it and tripping over pumpkin related items placed inconveniently is not my idea of a restful home life. Put the pumpkin (one pumpkin) on the porch, get a triple bag of Milky Way, pour a scotch and we're set.

This little guy is Cullen. He's the grandson of our neighbor Jackie. He came over to admire the severed hand lights, multiple pumpkin, witch and spook related items, as well as the life-threatening spider web. He was evidently impressed and eventually touched one of the severed hands. I think he could have done Halloween quite successfully as a little skater and not changed a thing. Note the skull and crossbones on his stocking cap. He and his family came across the street to visit our dogs, the next door neighbor's and ours, who were in turn visiting each other in the front yard. After a brief interlude with dogs (dogs is just dogs after all) he went straight for the severed hands. In a very business like tone, he announced several times to anyone within earshot that he was going to be Spiderman. He was of the opinion that it was time to get into that Spiderman costume.

My father was a holiday curmudgeon. His birthday was "just another day" unless you forgot it. He would grumble about Christmas hassle and then get misty watching us decorate the tree. "This is the best tree we've ever had," he would inevitably declare. He and I are still one in spirit in this regard: we like to be taken along for the ride, grumbling. If you listen closely you'll hear small murmurs of enjoyment.

We had a visit from Spidey later in the evening. Here he is demonstrating his web prowess with some minor parental assistance. Note the mask slightly ajar. He's using his spidey-sense.

Some kids approach life with great gusto. There's a clarity to their enthusiasm. Cullen is full of juice and ready for the next moment's wonder. What could be better?

I really like that Spider Man costume. My favorite though is Cullen's natural skater look. I'm going to have to find one of those hats.

History revisions

2010-10-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

This morning the puppy, craving attention, grabbed my freshly addressed bills and ran away. Maggie's quite fond of and adept at shredding paper, so I had to chase her down, although I try not to reward her like that. Payment on time and perforated! That's the way we like it!

After a week of research I was able to find and confirm my father's social security number. This entitled me to copies of his death certificate. I had evidence of the poor man, but nothing that counted with the Federal Government. I am evidence of the poor man, for that matter.

It's an odd thing to have a question about one's family, to think about asking one's parent, to realize again that they can no longer answer. Pieces of our history become unavailable. There was a period of time when my mother and I had some brutally frank conversations about our history together. I think Mom wanted to be sure I got the truth while she could provide it. I still have questions to ask, not the least of which was "Mom, what's Dad's social security number!"

A few years ago while rifling through literally hundreds of saved letters from my father's family I stumbled upon a letter from someone connected with a rooming house who had had a run-in with my father. In the letter, she put together some of my father's history in a way I had never heard, alluding to him as a "spoiled child, indulged, who was reckless, wrecking cars. . . and once shot another kid while hunting." The son of an insane person. My father had written a defensive note on it and given it to his mother, I suspect in response to her inquiry.

Dad was very intense and emotional. He was raised by his mother and grandmother, two world class worriers, while his father was hospitalized in an institution for the insane at Anna, Illinois. His mother, a woman in the early 1930's was assigned a guardian and given an allowance. It was all her husband's money. I'm sure Dad was a handful, and he told me about wrecking his mother's car, about swinging a shotgun around while hunting and blowing the top of a friend's head off. I recall that it was just the skin on his head and that he survived. I'm not sure, though. It was an accident and Dad did no time.

There are parts of our lives we'd just as soon not share with the oncoming generations. I'm sure not telling.

Some of my history, if I'm lucky, goes off into the mists off time unrecorded and unremembered. There'll be a lot of video of me playing in a band outside during the 80's and 90's. There's some stuff on public access video. There's a really embarrassing VHS tape of me drinking many shots of scotch in succession and sustaining an inane monologue for an excruciatingly long time (perhaps that will go un-noticed). Perhaps fairness and balance require that a little poison about us gets passed on, too. Someone's testimonial about what an insufferable shit I am. I suspect there'd be a few volunteers.

Send me some samples for review and I'll let you know.

Yum

2010-10-28T18:30:00.000-07:00

Tye's the alpha dog here. He's nine and he was here first and for now he's bigger. Maggie's already faster, though and has the kind of nature that moves her to grab Robyn's panties and parade around the house with them.

Maggie taught Tye that cool air comes out of the grates. Tye always goes to the grate Maggie showed him. Maggie goes to all the grates.

Tye believes that as alpha dog, he has the right to eat whenever he likes and that he can stop Maggie from eating, even if he really doesn't want to eat himself. Maggie has her ways, though.

Whenever one dog wants out, the other dog goes out, too. I don't know why, but it's some kind of code, like the cliche about women and the powder room perhaps. Tonight Maggie went to the back door and barked. Tye looked up from his food and went to the back door to be let out. I opened the door and Tye went out. Maggie went to the food and started eating. I closed the door, leaving Tye outside watching Maggie eat.

I left him out there until Maggie had finished eating. You have to reward initiative.

You too could be a winner.

2010-10-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

I spent the last few weeks going through boxes of documents, photos and papers in the basement looking for my fathers social security number. I used to have about seven death certificates for him - he died in 2002 - but for some reason I can find nothing now. I finally found an IRS document regarding my parents last joint claim that has an "ID number" that looks like a social security number, and isn't Mom's, so must be his, right?

This is all because now that Mom's in nursing care and almost through the money she got from selling her home, we are putting together something called a "Miller Trust." This trust is designed for people, like my mother, whose retirement income is steady, but not enough to cover the enormous cost of nursing care. The trust pays the care it can cover, and the rest is then covered by Medicaid. This is a good thing because it means Mom's expenses can be covered by her estate and not be passed on to her survivors.

Because Dad served with the Marines in Korea (his last message to me from his death bed was an ironic "semper fi!") Mom is eligible for support from the Veteran's Administration for part of the cost of her nursing care. After negotiating one of the least caller friendly voice mail systems I've encountered since Social Security, I got to Phyllis at the Commission for Veteran's Affairs. (The system is amazing. It says they're open, but no one answers. It give you an employee directory - not much help to a new caller - but no description of what anyone does. Phyllis called me back at one point and left me a message which did not include her extension number, so I had to go to the directory one more time. I couldn't help thinking that if I was a vet with PTSD I might have been tempted to save myself the trouble, hang up, and do something drastic.)

Phyllis was pretty helpful once she understood what I'm up to. People warm up to the only surviving son trying to provide for his dear mother who is in the last stages of an incurable progressive disease, and they should, dammit! After agreeing to send me the paperwork I needed, she hesitated and asked "Do you know how much time you have until she. . . passes?" I told her that Mom was under Hospice care, which implies a "window" of about six months. We agreed that it's really impossible to predict another person's demise, and that she could last quite a bit longer, really. Phyllis said that the thing is, it takes about nine months to go through the funding process. Once she's determined to be eligible, Mom can receive funding retroactively back to the time of application. If she survives that long. If she dies. . . no dice. You must be present to win!

This is one of a number of "systems" that depend on the ponderousness of the process to effectively limit which of many eligible recipients get the benefits to which they're entitled. Social Security Disability is another one. There's an entire industry built around the multiple denial, multiple appeal process that even a wizened quadriplegic in an iron lung must negotiate.

This morning I'm going to meet with a family that has decided to pay out of pocket for my services, rather than using the available therapists on a "list" provided by their insurance company. This company has what is called "a closed panel." The way these panels work is that insurance companies determine how many therapists they need in a given population area. They only "open" a panel when their number of therapists dips. This depends on therapists updating their own insurance information, which we seldom do, because there are a lot of different companies and besides we'd rather talk than do paperwork. In the end, this family couldn't find a therapist they felt their child could relate to, and felt strongly enough about it that they're going to forgo their insurance all together and just pay. This works if you're middle class and have a "cafeteria" health plan. If you're working poor, and happen to choose this insurance company for your Hawk-I (SCHIPS) coverage, you're ham-strung by this "panel" and therapist availability. The effect is that the company controls cost by limiting their customers' access to care. In this case, being alive doesn't necessarily help.

In the case of Mom and the VA, I'm really only going to be saving Medicaid money by going through this process. Mom's going to spend all her monthly income and Medicaid will pick up the remainder. Whether or not VA picks up a part is irrelevant to me. I'm done with those boxes in the basement for a while.

local musical culture

2010-10-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

A sort of dormant musician myself, I nonetheless run into fellow travelers along the road. At work, a Corps Member asked me to jam. I have a cool green electric guitar that hangs out in my office. It's a signal.

I commented to the Corps Member, who we'll call Zekiel, that I'd seen him jamming with another corps member recently. Zekiel looked away uncomfortably and smiled.

"It's hard to find people who can keep a beat."

It's always been my worst thing as a musician: the beat. If I get excited, I tend, like a lot of singers, to kick the beat, trying to pull the band with me. This sort of habit confuses the groove. Because the person kicking the beat is the lead singer, anyone holding the actual beat appears slow. Rhythm is a cooperative thing. My responsibility to the groove is to recognize that I'm racing and correct myself.

My previous musical experience involved singing in choir, solo and duo work. The duos I shared (what does one do with a duo?) didn't prepare me for being part of combo. Duos adjust to each other pretty freely. There's always another note in the chord to take, another way to divide the beat. In a band, I had to learn to accept musical feedback.

This is all a part of trust, the other frequency in the groove. You come to trust that I will make space for you in our music, complement you the best I can, try to make you look good. If you're not aware of how your tendencies affect others within the groove, we can play at music together but we're not really playing together.

Isn't he pretty?

Dormant, but not deceased, thank you, one of my favorite things is local musical culture. Just made that up. Ha.

Every locality has its musicians lurking about. We need a little community and so quickly a local musical culture springs up. Some, like the amazingly talented Drollinger family in Iowa City, have been playing for generations.

We find each other. There is music in us that needs to escape. We need to sit down and play and recognize each other, fellow travelers of the groove.

I think Zeke probably has some music in him that wants to get out, too. We'll see pretty soon.

Mellow

2010-10-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

I took 357 pictures during our kayak trip. We stayed at Volga River Recreation Area and paddled the Turkey and Yellow rivers. The Volga was too low for passage. The weather was warm and dry, crisp at night from the frosts we had last week, warm and breezy by day. I decided that having a cool camera with a zoom lens isn't any good for me if I leave it at home, so I took it along with my in my boat. There are those who assert that I am far too accident prone for such risks. I turn my back on them. We came upon bald eagles on both our paddles. This one is part of a nesting pair we saw on the Turkey. Their next was a huge platform of sticks perched impossibly high up a dead cottonwood. I try to get the kayak going in the desired direction, then stow my paddle and pull out the camera, letting the boat drift closer as I hold still. One bird seemed to notice the rapid clicking of the shutter (or whatever it is on a digital camera), but they let me come quite close. We three busy middle aged men took some time out to paddle in the last of the warm autumn air. Northeast Iowa is a little secret I'd like to keep from the outside world.

Mr. Schaal chose to fish during his paddle, with some gratifying results, including a stickle-backed carp sucker. I did not see this alleged fish, but Carroll was emphatic.

Mr. Rainbow trout was no brooder, but would have presented nicely with crab stuffing.

"Dad takes pictures of flowers," my son sighs. I had to include these photos for him. There are small pieces of beauty in these extravagant late-fall landscapes. Turn the great big lens at the bank and single out a plant.

You don't have to be flashy to be beautiful. Life at stream side is the envy of any terrarium.

The Yellow River was very shallow and had numerous riffles and rapids. One of us dunked, and I won't say who (hint: my camera is dry).

We broke it up Sunday afternoon after a magnificent run on the Yellow River. We ate braunshweiger sandwiches with an old biker dude that Geof picked up. We helped him get his bike on his trailer and next thing you know Geof is consulting with him, invited him to lunch and a beer. I know it must have been an attempt to give back some of the mountainous karma with which we have been blessed. Three relaxed middle aged guys finished their sandwiches, packed our cars, and drove back to our lives.

Not quite all the way back . . . .

Dog look

2010-10-02T06:44:00.000-07:00

Here's to the last warm morning. Weathermen all over Iowa wax philosophical about the last day of what used to be called Indian Summer. Sunny and clear with a deep blue sky as pure as a Mormon heart.

Maggie discovered burrs the other day. I discovered that she photographs well against sunny concrete.

It's going to be a long cold snowy winter. Smudge a little good karma on the people you love. Cut some slack.

When all else fails, give 'em the "crazy dog look."

Salt of the Earth

2010-09-25T05:26:00.000-07:00

It was a whirlwind of a week with my mother sitting confused but tolerant in the middle of it all. On Monday, with the help of Hospice staff and Special K Transportation, we moved Mom into her new, final home at a nursing care facility in near-north Cedar Rapids. Near-north because the last place was so far north that the weather got colder on the way there. Mom stuck her tongue out at the memory care staff who seemed genuinely sad to see her go. The nursing home staff were welcoming and professional. Everyone seems to have worked there for twenty years or more. Watch out for places with lots of turnover on the nursing staff. You're likely to find grandpa on the floor.

My intrepid friend Jeff, who has helped me with every Mom related move since this saga began, helped me clear out Mom's room in a day. I asked Kim, the admissions director, who seemed to be in a hurry to go home, how long we had to move out. She said "It depends on how many days you want to pay for." And don't let the screen door hit you in the wheelchair on the way out.

We got all the stuff out in one day. It's once again sitting in my side of the garage, where all good things rest on the way to where they eventually go. Not sure of what to do with something? Come and put it in my side of the garage! It was good to get it all done, but it meant that I didn't get clothes put away or pictures up in Mom's new room. I guess it's all about real estate. I wanted to ask Kim if I was going to get dinged for the full price of the room, since there would be no actual care involved. I wanted to ask her to jump up my ass, if you want to know the truth. I composed a magnificent poison pen letter on my way home. In the end, I did none of those things, figuring I need all the good karma I can get. Kim will no doubt contract herpes soon.

I really like the nursing home. That says something about me right there. I can now really like a nursing home. Although it's filled with people in various stages of decay, many of whom droop and snooze, the staff are courteous and caring and have been very helpful and understanding. There's a sense of purpose there.

I also talked to our attorney, Jean, about setting up a trust for Mom. She has a steady and tidy income which will continue until she dies and won't run out. This would seem ideal, except that it doesn't cover the cost of her care. Normally a person would "spend down" and then Medicaid would take over.

Let's take a moment and think about what a neat expression "spend down" is. It sounds like we are losing unnecessary weight, or cleaning up something excessive. What it means is that you have depleted every cent of your personal assets and are now indigent for all practical purposes. What a society we have! My mother taught the most disturbed kids in Wichita for twelve years. Then she began to work as a grant writer and program developer for Cerebral Palsy Research in Wichita, where, in her first year (1978) she landed two million dollars in funding. She founded the Independent Living Center for brain injured people. She was an advocate for the disabled. She started the Women's Equality Coalition and Women Art/Women Fair to promote female artists in the community. Now she will spend down.

The trust will reimburse Medicaid for all payable expenses and allow her to use her income for her own support. It's called a Miller Trust and thank God we found it, or I'd be paying for college and nursing care at the same time. Points for the staff of the nursing home, who turned me on to it, and for Jean, who is all over it.

Finally, on Thursday, to complete the "mortality tour," I sat down with Ken, a funeral pre-planner, to work out Mom's final arrangements. I chose a mortuary that used to hire our band on a regular basis. They had us set up in the parking lot behind the building, under the shade of some big trees, and play for the neighbors and whoever came by. They called it a "Celebration of Life." We called it "Opening for the Dead." Michael, the owner, is a very nice man active in local causes, and since he's given me some money and support it seemed fair to have him handle Mom's final business.

Our friend Diana went to this place to handle her parents' arrangements and came away enraged at the expense. I always suspected she was more universally enraged at the time, but I girded my loins nonetheless. Ken was a very nice man, actually, a fan of the band. I let him know what our thinking was: cremation, no viewing, graveside service, burial at the Old Welsh Cemetery near Aunt Joan, memorial service in Wichita at a later date.

Ken was very helpful. We found a very cool biodegradable urn (made of salt). Ken said it was so new it didn't have a name. Michael goes out and finds cool burial accouterments and brings them back. Everything gets a name. The cardboard casket made solely for cremation even has one (the Phoenix). Ken made up a name for the new urn, which was an orangish pink. "How about 'Salt of the Earth'?" I smiled. There's probably not a lot of room for creativity in the pre-planning business.

There was even a cool wicker casket that Mom would have loved, but since she's being cremated without a viewing it didn't make much sense. I could have gotten a cool biodegradable cardboard urn, but I liked Salt of the Earth and I didn't want the whole arrangement to be cardboard. I gave Ken the number for my contact at the Old Welsh Cemetery and left.

I took the rest of Thursday off. As I drove north, I felt the old familiar gloom descending, my old friend, faithful and true, accompanying us through this long journey. I busied myself buying a ridiculously expensive carpet steamer. Robyn came home and pointed out that it was way too expensive and not what she had in mind. I yelled at her to do whatever she wanted with it, that I was through making arrangements. I did not yell all the other angry things I thought, nor did I blame her, although I really wanted to. I went to my room and went to bed. Sometimes having done what we must, there is nothing left to say, nothing good anyway. In truth, I am not angry about carpet steamers or even about Robyn. I'm angry about the decay and demise of my parents, the robbery, at genetic gunpoint, of their old age, their absence in my life, my children's lives. I'm angry about all these things about which there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to do. I'm angry that I've had to grieve now for more than fifteen years, each and every day. I'm angry at myself for not somehow being a better son, whatever that would mean.

A long night's sleep helped. Friday, yesterday, was a good day through which I puttered with little ambition. Today I will hang some pictures in my Mom's room, make sure her clothes are marked with her name. I'll make sure the handful of belongings she retains in her room are properly arranged, deck chairs on the Titanic, to the tune of a fiddle while Rome slowly burns.

Entropy affects all of us. I'm not feeling sorry for myself, just sorry. I'm left with choices: grief and anger, reasonable carrying-on, attempts at feeling peace with it all. . . . I suppose I feel all those things at once. Mom's not hurting now. For her the worst is over. She's no longer counting her losses. I count them for her and remember who she was, a fierce, loyal, intelligent, independent woman of great worth.

Do not go gently into that good night
But rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Personal record

2010-09-19T05:14:00.000-07:00

Robyn and I went to Walker's Invitational Cross Country Meet yesterday. Walker's a junior varsity guy, but the varsity team is ranked number on in the state. It was easy to see why. In a field of 300 or so ripped young men, Prairie runners finished in the top 30 or 35. They won the meet, which by all accounts was very fast. Walker, who has grown legs over the summer, knocked a minute and a half off his personal record for this event. His goal was a sub-20 time and he finished at 18:51. He was surprised, and in true cross-country tradition, vomited nicely at the finish line.

Cross country is a great sport. The kids seem more laid back and are great sports for the most part. I'm still amused by the long lines of young men and women, in grand physical condition, lining up at the porta-potties for their pre-game dumps. Wouldn't want to get to mile eight and have to poop down your own leg. These ordinarily self-conscious young men and women all stand in line together as though they are in the return line at Best Buy. I like that the kids compete against their own previous times (at least on our team) and encourage each other, regardless of how they finish. Walker finished well but did not medal or (I think) score for the team (which took second), but his friends were excited at the dramatic improvement in his time. They all embrace suffering and pain and personal accomplishment. Then, of course, they come home and neglect taking out the garbage. Some generalization of values will surely ensue at some point in time.

I made the final arrangements to move Mom into what seems like a very good nursing facility last week. As I finished the arrangements Friday afternoon, I felt a wave of sadness. When we moved Mom into her current facility - Memory Care - she asked "How long will I have to stay here?" I lied. "I don't know, Mom." The answer, it turns out, is "until you need a nursing home."

Choosing a home can be depressing, to say the least. My point of view has certainly changed, though. I remember being appalled when I visited my Aunt Joan at all the sleeping folks seemingly abandoned in their chairs and in hallways, folks sitting gazing off into nowhere, or sitting in front of televisions in congregate areas noticing little or nothing. I didn't want to think about Mom being one of those people. She is, now, of course, one of those people. They are doing the best they can with what remains of their gray matter, conversing or responding with great effort and then resting, nodding off, gathering wool until called upon to interact again, with great effort. We have found a clean, quiet place full of people who seem kind and knowlegable. Mom will have a room-mate who, like her, needs a quiet place, a radio, some classical music.

Although my first instinct in the face of these things is to purchase and consume expensive and tasty single malt scotch, I have not done so. Nor have I made the pitcher of martinis for which the situation seems to call. I drove down in the rain and saw a client, a woman of some significant insight whose lot seems to be improving. I came home and talked with my daughter who, bored and with a very sore ankle, came home for the night at my invitation. I vacuumed up a lot of puppy hair. It's falling off Maggie in great patches, carpeting our rugs with mismatched fiber. I watched our over-rated football team fall prey to hungry underdogs. Beware the hungry underdog.

I often introduce my young clients to the concept of struggle. Most of them have had to struggle mightily. They see their struggle as an exception. Their future is filled with satisfaction, to which they are no doubt entitled, punctuated by occasional hard times, which they don't really deserve. Why do bad things happen to good people?

I try to tell them that struggle is the known constant. Our lives are full of effort to understand, to cope, hoping to overcome. We struggle for things we believe in, for our truths, our values, for the people and ideas we love, or we struggle to no end, for no palpable reason, to pretend that things are in fact "okay." One way or another, day after day, we push the rock up the hill. I encourage my young charges to find passion, to think about what they believe, to pursue what fascinates them. Struggling for something one believes in, struggling to match our erratic behavior to something resembling our personal values, feels to me more worthwhile, even if I often fail, than struggling for what feels like no good reason.

This is a fine recipe, but the dish is hard to execute. One can blithely turn up the volume on one's own hypocrisy, in front of one or more witnesses, and not see the clarity of one's own delusion. Age does not improve us in this respect. Awareness is a fleeting thing - often appearing only in the rear view mirror, on the embarrassing video tape of memory - in the remonstrations of a close friend, a son, a spouse.

We make coffee and watch the sun rise. We make plans for the day. We think back on what's done, think forward toward what we intend.

Tomorrow, moving day, is all arranged. Mom's current care givers have cut her hair stylishly short and will dress her neatly. Hospice has given me the name of a service which specializes in the smooth transport of the elderly in wheelchairs. Mom's next care givers, specialized in the "next level" of her need, await her arrival. They are prepared to get to know her, to find the spark of preference and desire left between her befuddled and tortured neurons and to make her comfortable.

All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air
With one enormous chair . . . .

Peace.

2010-09-11T06:17:00.000-07:00

The picture of baseball fireworks is not a commentary on 9/11. We've certainly had a lot of fireworks since, but not for such pure enjoyment.

This time 9 years ago I was driving to work listening to very bad things unfolding on the radio, unfolding in the world. This date 9 years ago was a seminal event in that a part of the world from which we thought we were safe inflicted its hatred on us right where we live, terrorizing innocent people, ending their lives, giving our leaders alleged license to commit young men and women to two wars, the benefits of which are at best dubious. I would suspect we have also collected our debt in innocent bystanders in other countries. One man's collateral damage is another man's family, after all.

It doesn't strike me that we've learned very much from all this. A yahoo minister with a wild west mustache and a congregation made up of his own cousins is getting an enormous amount of attention for threatening to burn someone else's holy book. He says Islam is an evil religion. Anyone with the memory of a gnat can recall Christians burning books and records. How many people have been murdered and oppressed in the name of Jesus? Ask the victims of the Spanish Inquisition. Ask Galileo! Ask gay and lesbian couples asking to form families and support each other within the framework of marriage.

Today I'm going to go about my business thankful that my life is not interrupted by the expression of someone else's hate.

Waubeek

2010-09-08T05:34:00.000-07:00

Robyn and I took a young colleague of hers kayaking on the Wapsipinicon Sunday. I started out in a mood, but the flow of the river soon wrung it out of me. We put in in Central City and paddled to Waubeek. Closer to Waubeek, the banks of the river rose and formed old mossy bluffs. Tiny flying bugs danced in the air and the breeze died down, leaving the surface of the river smooth. Robyn's friend was a little chatty and missed the hint that if you're quiet you see more wildlife. He's a pleasant young man, though, and when he and Robyn talked "shop" I paddled ahead a little.

We saw a small gray heron and a great blue one and just as I thought we wouldn't, we saw two mature bald eagles rise from the trees downstream and fly directly over us. We almost always see an eagle or two on Iowa rivers in the summer. It's too early for the Alaska eagles to winter here, but there are always some homebodies living in the river valleys.

We pulled into Waubeek about five o'clock, after about a two hour paddle, and got out of our boats without incident. Faithful friends and readers who have joined me kayaking know that nothing displays my innate grace quite so well as the task of unwrapping myself from the cockpit of a kayak. I was not very coordinated before my back injury and now I'm even less bendable. I'm actually very comfortable while in the boat, but this business of straightening and balancing on the way out is dicey. I was recently assisted -- nay rescued -- by a decidedly middle aged lady who said "oh honey, do you need help?!"

Robyn and I convinced our young charge that stopping at the bar in Waubeek is part of the ritual. It's an ancient stone mill which years ago was converted into a fine old tavern. There's no zoning out in the counties and the bar certainly testifies to that. It has a huge deck overlooking the river and is built of massive sandstone blocks. Inside, it's cool and dark and there are big Gothic stone windows to look out of.

Two women were behind the bar and a handful of decidedly soused regulars were hanging around. One gentleman in camouflage explained helpfully "I'm piss-hammered." A handsome silver bearded man named Jack sat at a table nearby. He was playing Texas hold
-'em with a chubby 9 year old boy sporting a grown-out Mohawk, and also wearing camouflage. One of the women behind the bar was seated and slurring her speech. The other woman waited on us. Robyn ordered a Bloody Mary.

"Bloody Mary!" the slurring woman announced, "Who orders a Bloody Mary at five in the afternoon?" The other woman began building the drink.

"I don't work here but I'm helping out . . . " the woman explained. "She's drunk. . . says it's 'fun-day Monday.'"

"You're a good friend," I said.

"She's my sister." Robyn and Austin (young protege) went to get the car in Central City and I stayed for a shot and beer. The young woman had a shot with me. "I'm going to clean up here and then wake her up. She's lying down in the kitchen." I looked and the slurring woman was indeed gone from her seat at the end of the bar.

"Grandpa cheats!" the boy announced. "I saw him looking at the cards. He looked and saw an ace and put it back!" Grandpa wasn't saying much. His face was very red behind his silver beard and his eyes were glassy.

I went out on the deck with my beer and joined the camouflage man and another gentleman at the rail. We talked about repairing an old water heater that someone's grandpa had wired incorrectly. Camo-man cheerfully stumbled into the bar again and I talked to the other fellow about how he'd survived the farm crisis and bought more land and how land prices had increased so much that he was now very successful on 160 acres. He was drunk but coherent and had a good story to tell. After a while a couple girls who looked to be 11 and 13, and seemed to be related to Mohawk boy, came up and interrupted us.

"Dad, Bert says you need to stop Grandpa." She lowered her voice and looked embarrassed. "He's going to try and drive home." We looked over toward the road and the silver bearded man was in a maroon Buick withe motor running.

"Let me finish my story," my companion said. As he finished, the silver bearded man backed the Buick out slowly as some patrons yelled at him. "Jack! No! Goddammit Jack!"

"He's my father-in-law," the man explained. "He's older than I am." The silver haired man, looking ahead in a blurry determined sort of way, put the Buick in drive and rolled away. My companion shrugged. "He's a grown man. I can't tell him what to do."

The sister who was helping out came out to get my companion and go home. I think everyone in the bar was related somehow. Robyn and Austin came back with the cars and I said goodbye.

"I talked that guy's ear off!" I heard my companion say.

We loaded the kayaks on the car. There was a gentle breeze blowing off the river and the sun was lower over the trees. It was one of those end of summer afternoons that lingers and fades into gray light, rich with the smell of warm fields, late flowers and mowed grass.

What if a Polar Bear wrestled an Eel?

2010-09-06T05:48:00.000-07:00

My colleague and I were in Chicago for a week long training and decided to celebrate completion by attending a Major League Baseball Game. The Cubs were out of town but there were White Sox tickets available for a song - good ones! I haven't really been able to root for the American League since the adoption of the designated hitter rule - Charley Finley's dark legacy excusing pitchers from the batting lineup - but I decided to risk spontaneous combustion and go along. Besides: I have a new zoom lens and baseball games are a primary reason I was longing for one.

It was a cool, clear late August evening. We rode the El in from our hotel in Rosemont and got to the stadium in time for the Orioles' batting practice. Audra, my colleague, invited a young AmeriCorps alumni from the South Side - a known Sox fan. "You don't grow up on the South Side and root for the Cubs," says Jermaine.

I'm a Cardinals fan, although it's hard to be brave with the Redbirds trailing the hated Reds this late in the season. Most of my baseball experience has involved Cubs/Cardinals matches at Wrigley or Busch. The new US Cellular Field was large, beautiful and, from the seventh row in left field, surprisingly intimate. A little too intimate, as it turned out.

Robyn and I were once invited to go to a Cubs/Cardinal game at Wrigley as part of an event sponsored by my brother-in-law's employer. We all boarded a bus in the morning and rode directly to the game. The price was right and the convenience seemed inarguable, so we signed on. At 8:00 a.m. as we boarded, we noticed that a large majority of the passengers were beginning to drink. By the time we got to Rush Street, the cumulative blood alcohol content on the bus had reached near epidemic proportions. At the game, the serious drinking began.

My friends know I don't mind lying around the shanty and getting a good buzz on. At deserted cabins among close friends I might even drink in the morning ("If you don't start in the morning, how can you drink all day?"). That said, the bus ride home was a little excerpt from one of the inner circles of Hell. Robyn and I sat crouched in our seats as people stumbled around the bus, taking turns vomiting in the small bus bathroom, clogging both the toilet and the sink. People would occasionally try to interact with us, urging us to drink, of course. "What is that? A BOOK?!?" To be fair, my brother in law was also appalled by his co-workers and apologized profusely. I will never ride a bus to a Cubs game again. I suspect Redbirds fans would have been more mature.

Meanwhile, back in the relative present, the Sox game was really good, from a Chicago standpoint. Carl Jackson was pitching 98 miles per hour and the Orioles were batting like schoolgirls (apologies to schoolgirls everywhere!). It was a festival of singles and there was plenty of action on the base paths. Juan Pierre stole his 50th base. Behind us, two Sox fans, young men in the obligatory jerseys, were beginning to show the effects of the suds, their comments delivered in clipped Chicago diction.

"If a polar bear got into a wrestling match with a chimpanzee, who doya think would win!"
"I dunno. Is the bear sober?"
"It wouldn't make any fucking difference, you moron!" the first guy explained. He paused. "Fuckin' sober."
"My money's on the bear." Various combination of animal wrestling matches were discussed and evaluated, punctuated by insults and epithets and occasional pity observations. "You're drunk."

They also evaluated the size and shape of various players.

"Juan Pierre is a fuckin' midget. They say he's five foot fuckin' seven but that first baseman towers over him?"
"Konerko's a lazy son of a bitch. He hasn't had an RBI in months and he sits on his fat ass collecting a salary."
"If that fucking midget Juan Pierre wrestled a chimpanzee, who do you think would win?"

I looked around and blessedly there were no children in immediate earshot. Hope springs eternal, though. The boys' volume was increasing with their blood alcohol content.

"You're drunk."
"I'm a fuckin' extrovert. I say what I think. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."
"I can hold it better'n you, you pussy. This is nothin." It was about the 7th inning stretch when the fan told a story about a Sox/Yankees game just after 9/11. The Yankees were ahead and they were apparently "taking advantage" of the disaster to drum up some cheap sympathy. Offended, our hero tells how he addressed the issue.

"I yelled at 'em that I hoped the fucking building fell on 'em. I let 'em have it, the phony assholes. I gave 'em a piece of my mind before they kicked us out. We were drinking vodka lemonade from that thermos I used to carry to school with my name on it and we were fuckin' lit. When they kicked us out of the game, I puked on the El, remember that?"
"You were drunk."
" . . . had to fuckin' evacuate, and left that fucking thermos behind for evidence."
"You're drunk. You talk too much."
"If you catch the next foul ball in your teeth I'll run out on the fucking field and wrestle that midget Juan Pierre to the fuckin' ground."

I can't really do this dialogue justice, since it ran on - wrestling match ups with animals and baseball players interspersed with profanity and surprisingly revealing stories of old revelries delivered without shame or insight - for the better part of eight innings. It didn't ruin our game. We're adults and we showed up with no kids in tow. For some reason, perhaps divine intervention, there were few kids near us and I'm sure these gentlemen were drowned out for most of the kids by the other fans. Had I spent my hard earned money to take my family to a ball game, I would have been forced to wrestle that guy to the ground like a chimpanzee or perhaps that midget Juan Pierre.

Instead, I listened in amazement, in awe. What must it be like for everyone around you to know more about your soul than you do?

A hint of Fall. . .

2010-09-04T05:16:00.000-07:00

I took my camera with me to the Chippewa Flowage but didn't bring the battery charger. This picture documents the edge of our good friend Paul's dock, and perhaps the first hint of autumn.

This has been a week full of highs and lows. On Wednesday I toured three nursing homes on behalf of my mother, who now experiences life second by second and seems to understand it less and less. She must move from her comfortable memory care unit into the final leg of her journey, and a higher level of care.

I remember taking Mom to visit my Aunt Joan, who accomplished her dementia by virtue of the consumption of vodka martinis, at Chatham Oaks, which used to be called the County Home. Mom was in the early stages of her disease and found the visit very sad and difficult. A woman was wandering the halls wringing her hands and pleading "help me, please! Help me!" Mom couldn't abide seeing her like that and pulled a staff person aside and asked her to do something. There was, of course, nothing to do.

The places I visited were only marginally less sad than the County Home. All three seemed well run and the people I met who lived there seemed comfortable. Staff treated them considerately and seemed quite used to this end of other people's lives. In the end I chose a place that was a little quieter, that had a nice room to offer and a quiet room-mate who is "in about the same stage as your mother," the intake director explained.

I have always planned that as Mom's money ran out and her cognition disappeared I would move away from the comparative luxury of the assisted living facilities she nonetheless hated and settle on practical care. There is no reduction in price for this lack of luxury since she requires more staffing and hourly care. There is no fine art and there are no chandeliers in the lobby. We purchase cleanliness, good care, and the absence of the smell of urine, sweat, and the subtle funk of old age left unattended. Mom sleeps wherever she is seated and looks apologetically and confusedly at whoever speaks to her, searching for an answer that comes to her less and less, the end of a sentence begun seemingly eons ago, the identity of a face so familiar and yet infinitely puzzling. I found myself wanting her to have a private room, a little place of her own. What good would that do? She's more likely to be attended to if there's someone else there, if she's out in the common area. The privacy is for me, for who she used to be, for old times.

We're now in a race between Mom's assets and her neurology. Her attorney and I are moving to take advantage of something called a "Miller Trust." This trust is designed for people like my mother with steady income that doesn't cover the cost of nursing care. We put her income and dwindling assets into a trust and make a pact with Medicaid. I think we can protect her life insurance benefits, but I'm not sure. She's "spending down." In the end, I guess we all do, one way or another.

I have been involved as a witness in a trial of a young former youth worker at my former employer who took it upon herself to seduce my 16 year old client who was a resident in her care at the time. This young man initially felt that the incidents in question were his responsibility. I don't know if being a young man, and being offended against by a woman, made his situation worse. All victims start out feeling for their oppression, at least all the victims I've worked with.

This young man was a child witness to horrifying domestic abuse, over and over again. He learned some things about intimate relationships it will take much of his life to unlearn. Our work together centers on how to trust, how to be trustworthy, how to love and be loved. The young woman's need to "fall in love" with her client, to tell him the bad things staff were saying about him during their meetings, to involve him in an attempted cover up of her madness and irresponsibility "proved" to him again that intimacy is inevitably for satisfying the needs of others at one's own expense. It erased the value of his treatment, leaving him as doubtful as he was when he began it.

My client's mother called administrators at the agency. She called the Department of Human Services. She called the Sheriff. They told her that what happened was not a crime, was not child abuse, that the young man was at the age of consent and that there was, regrettably, nothing to be done. She looked up the Iowa Code for herself and found a statute making it illegal for counselors to engage in sexual activity with clients. She copied this statute and sent it to the agency, to DHS, to the Sheriff's office and the County Attorney.

My client was called upon to testify several times. As we worked together and as he gained some distance, he came to see that he needed to face his accuser and tell what happened. To my wonder and amazement he gave a powerful deposition, and appeared as a witness in court, at great emotional cost. The jury found the young woman guilty of "sexual assault by a counselor." She may serve up to a year in jail, may be listed on the sex offender registry, may be on a ten year "special probation." The judge will have some discretion. He also knows that she lied, failed a lie detector test, made a full confession on videotape, and that the videotape evidence was thrown out because she asked to stop and her interrogators insisted she continue.

I know that this mother saw an opportunity, at long last, to defend her son and pursued it. I know that this young man summoned all his courage and faced his abuser and the legal system he has come to hate and fear and gave truthful testimony. I know that now he his making his way from the place of victimization to the place of surviving. I have seen too many young people stumble on this path not to appreciate how miraculous and wonderful this is.

In the paper, and on line, people are speculating about the harshness of the young woman's sentence. The paper reported, falsely, that the young man "initiated" the inappropriate activity. He did not. He initiated the "meeting," wanting to talk about going home. Some on line commentators saw the situation as the enactment of "every boy's adolescent fantasy." Some commented that the young woman wasn't really that attractive. My client and his mother read this stuff. I ask them not to.

At the Jackson Street El stop in Chicago, I saw a busker. We were rushing to a ball game and the people in the crowd were all in a hurry to go some place or another. She was a woman, but it was hard to distinguish her gender. She was neatly dressed and had a violin attached somehow to her neck, a guitar on a strap, some sort of percussion shaker at the end of the guitar's neck, and tap shoes on her feet. The music she made was entirely her own. She bowed the fiddle, strummed the guitar, plucked the fiddle, bowed the guitar, her feet tapping the concrete like castanets. She made an unearthly sound, not jazz, not folk, more performance than interpretation. I went back hurriedly to take her picture.

There in the afternoon bustle in a public place, the busker was making music in her own style, in her own way, and seemed oblivious to the crowd around her. She could have been singing old favorites for the crowd, chasing them with songs they might like, but she wasn't. She stood proudly, making her own strange noise to the counterpoint of crowd and trains.

At the game we met up with an AmeriCorps Member recently graduated from our program. He is from the South Side of Chicago, a Sox fan, and had never been to a game. For 25 dollars we bought him a ticket and we all enjoyed a perfect late summer evening.

Don't mention this in your blog!

2010-08-21T05:58:00.000-07:00

"Please don't mention this conversation on your blog!" My friend is right, of course. It was a personal conversation and very private, about a subject I'm not proud of. Worse yet, he was right and I was messing up - not a situation I'd probably broadcast to the world.

Of course, difficult person that I am, I've been thinking about a way to mention it ever since. This is a place where I claim to "empty out my head" and there was some serious junk in it that needed shaken out. I'll honor my friend's request, for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that he asked. I appreciate that he called me out, although it was not pleasant.

The thing about candor is that there are always limits. I'm willing to be open about a lot of things and so the illusion may be that I am an open book. We extroverts can provide a plethora of information about ourselves, an overload. We suck the oxygen out of the room in our rush to express our rampant personalities. But, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Watch the show, please.

When does the "show" become part of the problem? Careening along on the crest of an unidentified mood, we can do damage and not consider it. We can take risks unthinkingly. We find, once again, that we are not as highly evolved or developed as we thought. We've taken a detour on the road to enlightenment, indulged our darker, more thoughtless selves, or as an old friend said: ". . . let the other guy out."

I'm not really fond of the other guy, but I think he's with me on this journey for the foreseeable future, popping for whatever reason. It's no me or him, it's me and him. I'm fortunate to have a group of friends who know me well enough, and care enough about me, to mention to me when I fall short. Hey! You! Listen! The alternative would be to live in a much sadder, lonelier place where people shrug and write you off.

This week has begun a number of transitions. Caitlin moved into her dormitory at UNI. Moving her was a pleasure, reminding me of how enervating and terrifying freshman year away from home was for me, and will be for my daughter. Walking in and out of the dormitory with boxes of things, we parents were at once necessary and irrelevant. We hooked up the television and the computer, managed the logistics and schlepped, but we are not beginning. We are much farther down this road. I think I was much less tense than a lot of parents, at least from the look of it. There was a lot of grim focus on rolling carts in, setting up bunks. There were terse exchanges between parents and impatient offspring, enduring their necessary but ultimately clueless parents. It reminded me a little of the Disney Channel, where situation comedies involve young people who live in large comfy suburban homes seemingly devoid of adults. This is better than Disney, don't get me wrong. At least I hope it is, considering the price! We are, however, the supporting cast and we leave in the first act. At least we do if we know what our kids need.

On the other end of life's continuum, we were notified that the Bureau of Inspections and Appeals has decided that my mother no longer can be sustained in memory care and have denied her waiver to stay in her very expensive assisted living facility more than about another 30 days. This is less of a crisis than it might be since I was getting ready to move her anyway. The cost is high and ambiance simply no longer matters to my mother, who only occasionally knows me, who forgets the ends of sentences she has begun, who spends most of her remaining moments in a sleep that seems like a rehearsal for the next, much longer one. One day soon she will drift off and not awaken. Our allies at Hospice will administer medication to dull the pain from not being able to eat, and she will begin the hard work of dying, rather than diminishing.

Mom's money is running out and what is left needs to get her to this final act. This is why I was already preparing to hunt for a nursing facility, a semi-private room - who needs privacy when you can't remember from moment to moment? The denial of her waiver is just a marker here, a confirmation. A punctuation. Mom's decline has been precipitous since I asked the doctor to discontinue her Alzheimer's medication. It was time to kick the chocks out from under the wagon wheels. She was in that place she always dreaded - the place of incapacity, of pitifulness, of incompetence - and she's clearly not sampling or enjoying life. Mom can't walk on her own, or stand, let alone be witty or sweet or helpful or knowledgeable. I know what she wanted and I'm trying my best to do it. If I could, I'd press a button and end it all for her. That would be tidy and expedient and that's not how it works.

I suppose this transition has a lot to do with my previous post regarding vodka, but it serves only as a context. There's always something coming up, some grounds for sadness or self-pity to distract us. That's no excuse for indulging the other guy. Life is a very long self-improvement project if it's to mean anything. I have kids to raise, a wife to love, jobs that matter, beauty to appreciate, a wife to love. . .

. . . and I have good friends, keeping me honest, trusting me to listen to them when they speak, and in turn listening to me. I'm a lucky guy that way.

Tolerance

2010-08-01T06:45:00.000-07:00

Vodka. It's pretty good stuff. Good vodka and rocks and a sweaty glass . . . the rapid achievement of elevated mood, the illusion of purity through clear liquid. There was a time when she occupied an honored place in the pantry, roosting above mere food in her own special spot, easily consulted at appropriate times.

The "appropriate times" seemed to come closer and closer together and I found that with practice I could consume ounces and ounces, oodles and oodles of vodka rocks garlic stuffed olive martinis to hell with Vermouth. As I recall morning were not the best, nor was waking in my chair at two in the morning the the remnants of a spilled martini in my crotch with a garnish of sideways glass. The thing about drinking for distance is that hangovers seem to dull as well and I found that a couple tall glasses of water in the morning before coffee and perhaps a couple Tylenol left me fit enough to carry on, particularly as cocktail time came earlier and earlier.

I'm fairly certain I've walked my readers (wake up, you two!) down my own version of the slippery slope a few times in the past. What prompts this is that Friday night I had a couple stiff vodkas - big ones. Spilled one, too. Nothing drastic or awful happened, other than Saturday morning. I woke up when someone began drilling into my forehead with an invisible brace and bit. I woke up with the granddaddy of all dry mouths. I woke up with cotton where my brain used to be and a deeply founded wish for four hours more sleep. I woke with an intestinal tract scored as if by gallons of paint thinner, yelping it's distress and urgency intermittently throughout the ensuing day. It was a stirring reminder.

The photo above is not an image of my coming death, it's an example of the size of the stone shard being driven underneath the top of my eyeballs.

Heavy drinkers do not complain of hangovers. We get up, we drink lots of water, we try to take our Ibuprofen without calling attention to ourselves by too much bottle rattling. If we do the crime, we do our time. After 24 hours, suitably chastised by my own body chemistry, I'm clear on a few things. This morning I feel great, if only by comparison. I remember why I'm not, except by inclination, a heavy drinker these days. I'm on a forced and limited beer diet. I make sure there are days, or two or three, between beers, and although some folks don't have to count and measure these things, I'm resigned that I will always need to manage my intake because I am a Buzz-hound. Loving the righteous buzz as I do, I know that I'm capable of truly impressive consumption, big time chemical tolerance, sloppy and careless excess.

What's particularly notable is that I'm pretty sure I used to consume that amount of vodka nearly every day. Living in supposed harmony with a chemical so simultaneously smooth and corrosive is an art I no longer try to master. A true hangover is a gift from the almighty, routed through perdition via a dry Oklahoma back road to the tune of a jackhammer. It's a tap on the shoulder from a bony insistent finger. It's a long talk, for those who listen, with a lesson already learned - a review session, if we're lucky - prescriptive of a course correction.

Message to hangover: situation noted. There's a kayak trip in the offing, three days with my pals on the Wisconsin River, food exercise, beer iced in little portable coolers, perhaps a bottle of something. I'm going to have some serious fun, assuming the water goes down, the stars stay aligned, and I pay attention. It took some discipline to get my body chemistry back to the point at which I can really appreciate a hangover. I think I'll keep it this way.

On elimination, extortion and heirarchy of need.

2010-07-24T05:23:00.000-07:00

Lying down with dogs, one awakens with fleas. We are living with Maggie, the black curly rapidly growing puppy whose bladder is still roughly walnut sized. In the end, I think she will have trained us to let her out whenever she barks at the door. She rewards us with one of two forms of elimination. For this reward, we also let her sleep with us.

Our rationale for sleeping with a dog is that she doesn't eliminate where she sleeps (except for the first night when she "baptized" my leg not once but twice!). Looked at another way, it's a matter of "let me sleep with you or I'll shit on your floor!" This is a very effective form of persuasion, one I should have considered as a desperate and lonely young man.

Sleeps is a euphemism for what happens, really. Maggie alternates between lying near our legs and lying on our about our heads, on our pillows. It must be difficult to choose, because she alternates these positions with some frequency, occasionally using her scratchy back toenails to push off from our foreheads. This is an effective method of propulsion for her, but for us is a problematic interruption of REM sleep. "Let me sit on your head or I'll shit on your floor!"

This morning, Walker came into our room at 5:30 a.m. in order to iron his shirt for work. He was at a party until midnight last night and so did not have time to iron his shirt at a more traditional hour. "Do you mind if I turn on the overhead light so I can see to iron?" he asked thoughtfully. We declined. Maggie suggested that Walker take her outside for her duties (our reward), and Walker thoughtfully declined, suggesting that he was busy ironing. Maggie began barking at him insistently. Walker submitted to the will of the puppy and took her out. "Let me iron shirts in your room at the butt crack of dawn or I will shit on your floor!"

Soon Walker drove off to work, neatly pressed shirt and all. Robyn fell back to sleep. Maggie and I lay around in bed and she eventually came up and gave me many wet licky kisses. Cuteness, softness and cuddliness are evolutionary adaptations which enable dogs to survive their formative years. (How does this explain the survival Chihuahuas and Yorkshire terriers, or those hideous Chinese Crested dogs with no hair except for a stringy mohawk?)

I got up, made coffee and assisted our canines in once again visiting the back yard. I have diverted Maggie from chewing on multiple household items, including me (reduced as I am to the status of household item). After about an hour of this, both dogs are lying peacefully on the floor, convincing imitations of the reality I dreamed I'd inhabit when we added a puppy. Dogs living in harmony, sprawled on the floor in postures of domestic bliss. Soon I'll drive to Iowa City to see a client or two. I will stay awake for a while due to massive doses of caffeine administered orally.

Later I'm coming to YOUR house. "Let me take a nap, or I'll shit on your floor!"

Dahlia

2010-07-04T19:19:00.000-07:00

Dogs are good for the soul. We felt our souls would benefit from more doggy karma and so we have added another mutt. She's a mix between a large poodle and a lab or a golden retriever. Time will tell, I guess. At any rate she's soft black and curly.

Maggie and Tye are settling in pretty well now. First Tye ignored her and played catch furiously. Next he growled at her when she came near and took all the toys for himself. At this point Maggie realized he was harmless and began to torment him mercilessly. At this point we got to see some fine doggy drama as Tye did his best imitation of a HUGE ALPHA DOG and Maggie yi-yi-yiped her way under the sofa. Balance was soon restored and Maggie was more respectful.

Now we have reached the air humping stage. Perhaps my dog is the only one that does this, but I suspect not. At some point, he will become so overwhelmed and aroused that he gets a doggy erection and humps air right there in the room with you. Tye is now air humping directly above Maggie. My daughter says this is wrong in so many ways. She points out that in dog years Tye is 63 years old and Maggie is 14 months old.

Friends, my dog is a creepy old guy.

Every time I think about where I was a year ago, I shudder a little. Then I stand up, walk across the room, bend over, pick something up, turn my head and smile. Every day this summer feels like a gift. Having sat and looked at summer passed through a series of windows, enjoying it as a participant is gratifying.

I had a flat on the way home Friday afternoon. The flat tire light came on on the console and I pulled over to see a small metal screw punching into my tire. There was a hissing noise as air escaped around it. I figured that I'd had the screw there for a while and that it was probably a slow leak, so I tried to make it closer to home before I ran out of air. It was a sunny afternoon and I pulled way over on the shoulder and changed my tire. I also discovered that my car has a full size spare! Who knew?

Good to change a tire, not to be helpless in an untoward circumstance. Good to feel self-sufficient. Good to go back to enjoying Friday afternoon off.

You just don't realize how fragile it all is. We slip at the top of the stairs, we give in to impulse, we apply the brakes and nothing happens but a fishtail and a sick feeling.

That bastard ahead of me may be doing fifty-five in a sixty-five zone in the left hand lane, holding up a parade of traffic trailing behind, and me trapped in it. I may be tired and hot and maybe even a little sore. . . but. . . my jaw is not wired shut, and if I want to I can go out into the front yard and jump up and down. I can wiggle my toes, ears too, for that matter.

I had lunch and a couple beers with some old friends outside the Bread Garden yesterday. It was sunny and we compared notes as old friends will. The city is putting upright pianos around the pedestrian mall, apparently at the same time they're trying to stop musicians for playing outside and putting out a case for donations. A guy in a ball cap sat down and played some boogie-woogie and the sun shone and children ran toward the play equipment.

I have a list of tasks as long as a leg to which I must attend this week. I have been undisciplined and far too easy on myself. I must get some check-marks put into some little boxes, goddammit! But for the rest of the evening I'm going to lie around the shack.

It's too wet to plow. Too dark to mow. To windy to stack buckshot.

You got to ac-centuate the postive, e-lim-inate the negative, hold on to the affirmative and don't mess with Mr. In Between.

2010-06-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

YIt was a pretty good day out at LeRoy's. I gave us a bit of a pep talk along the lines of choosing one's attitude, to uncertain effect. Robyn had to work at the grocery store this afternoon and so we had a firm exit strategy. We all drove in Walker's new car, Walker proudly at the wheel.

I remember the first weeks I had my '69 Mustang I drove very carefully. After Richard Rivera said I drove like an old lady I began to experiment. Walker is in the careful stage and I hope it lasts a long time. The Forester is kind of "truckish" in a way that discourages sharp cornering. Walker says it goes through mud really well. (I wince.)

After we ate our Amana Breakfast, we went outside to walk around digest and avoid a comatose state. Walker and his cousins Caleb and Noah were playing wiffle ball. More cousins and other kids followed and soon there were two full teams dressed in their out to breakfast best playing wiffle ball in the late June morning sun. We stood and watched and cheered and the big boys were nice to the little boys, let them pitch and bunt and steal and feel like somebody. "Boy World" at its best can be a generous fair and honorable place.

I found that LeRoy's highway patrolman neighbor is an enlightened student of American Popular Music. He saw Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper in Iowa City!

After a while everybody called it a game and we headed over to LeRoy's and sat on his great big deck. We swept the water off the boards and sat in the dappled sun and shade. A doe and fawn ran across the clearing at the bottom of the hill.

The knuckleheads who can make this gathering tedious were not any less knuckle headed than they usually are. I just don't give them any more attention than I have to. My better self tries to find someone interesting to talk to or engage a cousin in a game. My darker self stews and fantasizes elaborate social revenge strategies. We usually try to keep my darker self in the car.

A year ago I was lying in a hospital bed, impossibly bruised and substantially broken, as helpless as the day I was born. Today I'm going to make some coffee and drive to see my mother and pay the bills. This year I've seen my daughter graduate and my son turn sixteen. My wife holds my hand sometimes, when no one's looking. I can wiggle my toes.

We're not going on vacation this Summer. We're going to hang around home and enjoy ourselves doing nothing. Come watch if you want.
Posted here are a couple more portraits from my weekend in Mt Horeb. Kris Rugland took my camera and took the shot of me.

And for my next trick. . .

2010-06-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

A year ago this morning, we were on a 4 day bike trip in Wisconsin. We woke up and biked over to a restaurant in Mineral Point for breakfast.

The night before, we'd run into a bartender who was new on the job and poured "straight" drinks with outlandish generosity. Geof and I ordered Absolut on the rocks. I went the rest of the evening on that huge drink. We talked about divorce. I was chafing and resentful, Geof, a more recent veteran than I, was cautionary.

After breakfast we headed out on a spectacular ride, the sun shining and the wind at our backs. Toward 3 in the afternoon, I missed a curve at the bottom of a hill on the way to New Glarus and flew out in a helicopter, bound for Madison and the world of trauma. My family was thrown into a Summer of stress, drama and interdependence, Robyn and I were thrown, no hurled together at a time when we were emotionally the farthest apart from each other.

This morning, as I wait for the coffee to boil, I'm mindful of all the changes in my life. I'm an inch shorter, a little bent, sometimes I'm stiff. Robyn and the kids and I are close and much, much happier. In a year, I'm recovered to the point that folks are surprised when I mention the accident. We were commenting that it seems more than a year since it happened.

I was talking to Robyn the other day and wondered out loud if we'd have made it through this year as a couple if I hadn't been rendered totally helpless, if she hadn't been forced to care for me, if we hadn't had to spend all that time together with my healing. We don't know.

If God had said, "Hey Tuna, your life will get a lot better if you can fly through the air, break your back in three places and smash your face to bits." I don't think I'd have taken him up on the opportunity.

That's what happened though. Happy Father's day.

An afternoon

2010-06-15T06:32:00.000-07:00

Sometimes technical accidents can masquerade as technique. If I send this picture to Porter's, they'll call me.

"This isn't a standard size photo. How do you want me to crop it?"

"I don't want you to crop it. Fit it into the next largest format."
"That's gonna look funny. I'm just saying."

So, what's "wrong" with the picture here? It's the reason I particularly like it. I am learning that people get used to a camera after a short while. I absolutely didn't give a damn and got a few nice shots, which I think is good, considering the material I had to work with. People stop posing after the camera has been out for a while. They go back to what they were doing. I'm hearing my buddy talk about his mother's terminal, progressive disease. I know from whence he comes, of course and tried to listen well. When the skids finally come out from under a loved one's competence, it's a depressing ride. There are some strategies. . . hanging out with your friends is one of them.

Waiting

2010-05-27T05:27:00.000-07:00

I'm not feeling particularly grim. It's just that the most recent photos I have are of this old graveyard, plopped down in the middle of nowhere and filled with people buried by other people who have long since passed away. I like the sense of distance and flatness behind the attempts at permanence left by those wanting to remember their loved ones. The graveyard also sports a magnificent scary tree.

My friends and I used to take our dates to old Kansas graveyards and use flashlights to read the old stones. It was spooky and the young women stood close to us, which we appreciated. We didn't push any stones over. I'd like to think the denizens of the cemeteries appreciated our youthful vigor (horniness) smiling to themselves and remembering standing close to someone lovely in the dark. An optimist, I always imagine ghosts are friendly.

For reasons I won't go into, I found myself accompanying a young woman to a local woman's health clinic so that she could have an abortion. She has a boyfriend, and was 5 weeks along, and was in no position to carry or raise a child. I found myself acting on my values and supporting this young woman's choice. I also found myself spending the morning in an abortion clinic waiting room, a place where there appeared to be very few middle aged men. Very few. One. Me.

I have been a supporter of this health clinic for many years and was pleased with the care and professionalism displayed by its employees, as was the young woman in question, who opted for an option involving taking some medication and waiting for a number of hours. This was somewhat uncomfortable for her, but certainly preferable to dilation and curettage. We waiting and passed the time with a minimum of angst. This is a very practical and matter of fact young woman.

The waiting room was truly a feast of human interpersonal dynamics. There were a number of couples: mostly young women, college age, and their boyfriends, who sat quietly, dutifully, and held purses. One woman was pretty verbal about the wait, her discomfort, and was accompanied by her grandmother, a very patient older woman very comfortable in her own skin. There were a few daughters and mothers, and a couple whom the staff appeared to know by name, perhaps "frequent fliers" abhorred by anti-abortion activists who claim abortion becomes an "easy" form of immoral birth control. Nobody seemed very comfortable.

Behind us, a carpet of music, a sort of marriage of gentle jazz and Zamfir, master of the pan-flute. It was innocuous and constant, new-age muzak, at once calming and annoying. Best of all, there was a television, large and high on the wall behind me. It was not hooked up to cable or dish and it played, one after another, episodes of "Maude." That's right: "Maude."

Maude was the Norman Lear sitcom in the seventies that was the "answer" to "All in the Family." Maude was supposed to be the liberal foil to Archie Bunker, everyone's favorite bigot. She showed that we liberals could laugh at ourselves, sort of. Maude failed artistically, in my opinion, because it couldn't quite skewer Maude the way Family skewered Archie. Maude tended to teach us things, rather too overtly I always thought. My Mom was a serious politically active feminist and she hated Maude. And here we were, sitting and waiting for the biologically inevitable and preternaturally evasive result of a chemical procedure, listening to episode after mediocre episode of a situation comedy so dated as to be totally irrelevant to all but a couple of the people in the waiting room. Grandma and me.

It didn't take us long to realize that the first episode of Maude playing was - I'm not making this up - "Maude gets an Abortion." Maude, creeping up on menopause, finds herself pregnant, and Arthur, her impossibly patient and long suffering doormat husband, and Maude do an endless dance of "I want the baby because I think you want the baby," when, of course, neither of them want the baby. One direct conversation would have solved the whole issue and saved us from the rest of the episode. No one talked about when life begins or the potential of the alleged zygote sprouting in Bea Arthur's still fertile loins. The plot was more Lucy and Desi meets a controversial issue than any useful explication of what was, and is, a highly charged and difficult moral and religious issue. We sat in a waiting room, securely locked out of the medical and business portion of the clinic, the receptionist tastefully protected behind artful bullet proof glass, our phones and back packs safely stowed in the entry areas, listening to Maude patter on about Arthur wanting a late in life child and so she should want it . . . him . . . her. . . it.

At one point a very cool staff person came out and apologetically changed the CD. Hopes rose and fell. More Maude. She explained that the Board of Directors had discussed music and television in the waiting room and the result was all they could agree upon. Maude and Zamfir. She explained that Maude was historic in that it was the first prime time program to openly address abortion during prime time.

Several seasons later, the young woman and I made our way out of the clinic. Her care was excellent and she was gratified by the treatment she received from the professional staff. These are dedicated activists who risk their lives daily to provide necessary care to women and I'm grateful for their spirit. Activism can often subsume art and insist that art serve mission. Thus it becomes tone-deaf, oblivious to irony, particularly it's own. A little Sinatra, perhaps: The Lady is a Tramp.

Lady Godiva was a freedom rider
She didn't care if the whole world looked
Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her
She was a sister who really cooked

And then there's Maude. . . .

What did Columbus do for his mother?

2010-05-09T06:09:00.000-07:00

Would you tell this guy he didn't discover the route to India? What an opportunist!

I'd add a recent photo, but my last batch was at a local graveyard and while I like those photos I don't feel like a black and white graveyard this morning. I don't feel like extolling the virtues of Mother's Day, either, although we're having quite a nice one. Columbus, if he was here, would no doubt claim to have discovered it.

Celebrating a day without scheduled obligations is what I'm about here. Yesterday I sat among new corps members queuing up for physicals, agonizing over urine tests, quaking over injections, sat through three sessions of therapy in which no one had an epiphany, not even me, dropped by my pal Chris's house after work for a couple beers, reported home to mow the front yard in the crisp, really crisp evening air, did some Mom's Day shopping then came home and went to bed early. I used to get resentful about running around, working Saturdays, sessions without epiphanies, but I can usually talk myself out of that now. I put Beck on the car stereo and cranked him. Very satisfying!

I think there's a point where we don't separate work from home from chores from leisure so much. Barnes and Noble was cool when I got there. The yard looks great. My clients deserve the same right to struggle that you and I deserve. Nothing meaningful comes without some struggle. My privilege is sometimes to sit with them as they struggle. If work is meaningful, does it really take away from my life? I think not. Doing something pleasant for my wife is not so much of a chore, really and I love the way the yard looks when the grass is freshly cut. I even enjoy successful weed whacking. Being with my Mom every Sunday morning has become something of a moment of "worship" for me. As part of a routine, it puts me in a regular place in what's left of her life. Sometimes we have a "moment," what passes for epiphany, and sometimes we don't. She can be unsure of my name, my identity, my place in her shattered history, but she recognizes me and smiles, letting me interrupt her snooze. I take my regular place in the final stage of her journey, however long it is to last. Then I'm going to run a few errands, do the back yard, whack the weeds, make some soup or stew for supper because it's still a chilly spring.

I think I'm through my Spring depression, as predictable as - well - Columbus Day. Depression is an opportunist as well, sliding into the spaces between things, reminding us of the dark places. Dad died about this time six years ago, our good friend Diana died the end of April. Anniversaries are more predictable than epiphanies, but I'm always surprised to recognize that I have again slid into a darker mode. I'm naturally optimistic and always believe I can soldier through. I swear I don't think about the end of April, the beginning of May, in negative terms, at least not in advance. Once I realize that my mood has darkened, I have become better at talking back to myself, at honoring the sad dark earth between the green shoots, and taking in the rhythm and contrast of my moods. Would I avoid this seasonal sadness if I could? How is it not part of me, like my history, like the inevitable losses of those I love? How is it not like meaningful work, necessary chores, rituals of mowing, trimming, repairing? An only child, I have always talked to myself. Now I talk back to my darker self, remind myself to enjoy the sun, the green, my friends, my family and to honor the sad things in life.

David Bromberg wrote "I have somebody else's blues / in the midst of an almost perfect day." My therapeutic self urges him to integrate. One's blues are one's own. One's bathroom, one's laundry, one's work, the closeness and laughter with old friends, the sudden distance between some of us where closeness always seemed inviolable, these are part of life's syncopation. Hop into the conga line and dance!

Holy Ground for Sale, Sunday morning off.

2010-04-25T06:09:00.000-07:00

A church for sale in Maryland - something about God's house as common real estate amuses me - another intersection between the ethereal and the corporeal. How much is God's house worth on the open market? If no congregation is currently using it, has God vacated? Is He a tenant, awaiting the next landlord? What if Hindus buy the place? Will He be a room-mate? Vishnu stays up late and plays the radio loud. There's no cross on that steeple, so they're obviously ready for anything.

This morning the bald woman with the bandanna who delivers our paper has not arrived. We're sitting together, Robyn and I, she with her tea and me with my coffee, enjoying the cool quiet of early morning after a long soaking rain last night. Tye is at our feet. The kids were out late, Caitlin at prom with a friend and Walker up the street with a couple pals (no bonfire last night - only a muddy party in someone's shed, and she's "annoying") and they're sleeping in, looking more innocent than they tend to when awake. As long as we don't disturb them they'll remain children for a while, without the smirks and witticisms that remind us they're approaching the front door of adulthood. The paper woman has many vehicles, most of which idle badly, so we can assume that she'll show up in a while, late, with someone else's vehicle, hurriedly lurching down the street from box to box, making up for lost time while the rest of us sit in our comfy chairs and note the disturbance in our routine. Paper's late. Damn! More coffee. There she is. Same car - maybe she just decided to sleep in a little, too. It'd be a real treat for her. Have one on me, bandanna lady!

On this, the one day that I have no appointments or obligations, I give thanks, primarily for this peaceful feeling I have, this feeling of rested alertness, of transient well being, of right things being in right places, of the world in a certain order. By now a potential congregation has occupied the church, placed an appropriate representative symbol atop the steeple, filled the cupboards of the church school with Tang and Nilla Wafers, and settled it's cumulative rear end in the long dark polished pews which once sat lonely in the sanctuary. God's unpacking his eternally omniscient suitcases in the Upper Room, relieved that the new owner isn't a cult or a hippie co-op. Let the right living commence! We're all ready.

Emotional memory

2010-04-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

The photo here may imply a darker mood than I'm really experiencing. I'm finishing up editing the graveyard photos I took the other day. I jacked up the contrast on this one and now I'm trying to decide if I've gone too far.

Going too far and reeling it back in is a pattern with which I have some familiarity.

It's early Spring and I found myself surprised by the seasonal depression that surprises me every year. Dad died the first week in May. Our good friend Diana died at the end of April. It seems that I conspire with myself to ignore these dates every year. What I notice is that I'm getting angry about things. My attitude becomes more negative. Many of you become more irritating. I don't suppose you'd notice that, being the way you all are, but I lack the patience to tolerate you that I might ordinarily have. So, I ask myself, in some moment of reflection, why I'm so grumpy and a little voice says "It's April, the cruelest month, the season of people wasting away." I realize that I'm dancing familiar steps in a dance that always seems to include a little surprise. Insight and self-delusion doing a tango in the new grass.

I had a physical this week and my doctor helps me manage my depression (actually she manages the treatment - I manage the depression). She went over the challenges in my life that she well knows contribute. How's your mother? How's family life? How much are you working? I tolerate this litany and for a moment realize that my "not that bad, really" approach falls short of the mark. All in all, things are going well. Along the line, though, we pick up a load of grief and loss, sadness that begs to be recognized even though we don't want to give up the time, ruin an otherwise beautiful day by giving in to sorrow.

It's Sunday, my day off. I go to see Mom in a few minutes in her comfortable Memory Care unit to bear witness to her entropy and titrate a little sorrow in what feels like a manageable dose, regular and small in the way that we build up immunity to bee stings or snake bites. It's not that bad. It's the end of a productive life, inevitable as . . . taxes.

I learned at my physical that I'm a little more than an inch shorter than I was before my accident. Now I'm just a little over 6 feet tall. My friend Chris cheerfully announced that we're all getting smaller from here on out "so it's just going to get worse." I was drinking his beer and so I allowed this impertinence. I would have been a lot shorter in a wheelchair.

I read recently that people with Alzheimer's Disease who can't remember anything from minute to minute still benefit from regular visits from loved ones. I know this is true. I still benefit as well. I remember things about Mom and about our lives together. I remember things about myself. The idea, I think, is that emotional memory is longer lasting than conscious memory. I know that when I was injured I didn't see Mom for quite a while. When I saw her again, she couldn't put her finger on it, but she seemed a little hurt . . . or perhaps not hurt, but aware that I had been gone. It could be my imagination, but she seems to be on a more even keel when I go regularly to see her, even though she forgets I'm there each time she closes her eyes.

After I visit Mom, I will work in the sun, in the yard, and bathe in some vitamin D. The answer to the emotional memory of long held sorrow is the sunny morning. Ah.

Sacred Ground

2010-04-14T07:45:00.000-07:00

There's a little old graveyard on my way to work in Vinton, just off Highway 30. Because I pass there every day, and because I love its scraggly tree, I stopped yesterday to take some shots that I've been meaning to take. I think black and white is best for cemeteries.

I just had a little time so I didn't stay long, but these missed opportunities chafe at me, and I've looked at this cemetery all Winter, thinking about how old and lonely it is. A farmer was out in his tractor, plowing the surrounding field. I wonder if he comes and mows. All the graves are old, from the late 1800's, and some have pretty expensive granite stones. This one was more economical.

My Mom and I used to go do grave rubbings. You place a sheet of newsprint against the stone and rub with crayon or charcoal. The result is a negative of what was written on the stone. Another way to read them is to go after dark and shine a light straight down the length of the stone, enhancing contrast.

My love of signs continues. Sacred is where you say it is. A kid asked me one time, "Mr. Thompson, where do you worship?"

"Everywhere I go," I told him. Everywhere I go.

Membership

2010-03-28T05:48:00.000-07:00

The law of unintended consequences: "Any intervention in a complex system may or may not have the intended result, but will inevitably create unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes."

I am working on arrangements for Mom's burial, something which is turning out to be more satisfying than I thought it would be. Trappist monks outside of Dubuque make really beautiful wooden caskets. The people in charge of the Old Welsh Cemetery in Sharon Center are very pleasant and helpful. After the roads dry out I'm going to go out and pick out a spot. "Tell him not to come yet!," Mr. Pate hollered from the background as I talked with his wife, "it's a dirt road. He'll sink to his axles!" The Pates live on a century farm nearby which they'd be proud to show me. It sounds like fun.

My mother's family is prone to hyperbole. Actually, I'm prone to hyperbole. They just lie. If the sentiment calls for it, or if it makes a better story, they just make it up. My Aunt Joan and my mother were close, and they would get together, knock back a few martinis, and tell each other that they would take care of each other. "We promised we'd always be family for each other," Mom told me. It didn't really work out that way. After Aunt Joan retired, she sank into alcoholism and dementia. Her beautiful apartment, filled with marvelous antiques and art, devolved into squalor. She had her groceries and liquor delivered by John's grocery and she didn't leave the place. At the time, I lived three blocks away but she never once visited our home, telling my mother "I can't smoke there." We invited her a few times. I would stop and chat on our way to and from.

At the time, Mom was preoccupied with taking care of my father in their home and had little time for anything, not even grandchildren. She felt guilty and did nothing in response to Aunt Joan's decline. Her relationship with my father trumped all, and perhaps that's as it should have been. They had a unique, intense, and very loyal tie, those two. I remember visiting them after I married my first wife, Nancy, and realizing that I was no longer in that "club." Close, but no cigars. Perhaps that's what growing up means to everybody. To me it was both a sadness and a relief.

Aunt Joan told Mom that she had a "plot" at the Welsh Cemetery and that there was a place beside her when she died. That's where Mom wanted to be. It's a lovely old place, grassy and well kept, with graves dating back to the 1800's and a small church next door. Knowing that things are not always as they seem, I asked the Pates to look and see if there was anything there with my mother's name on it. There is not. What is there is a "plot," which means space for about seven graves.

I messaged my cousin Paul on Facebook to see what he knew about things. He first sent me a medium length message telling me that he was sorry about Mom and that he didn't do messages on Facebook. My email server was down yesterday, so after a while he sent me another rambling message full of good will and some useful contact information for his sister, the cousin with the paperwork for the plot. As his message continued it recounted the recent feuding amongst his clan, full of misunderstanding, spiced with recrimination. I recalled Mrs. Pate saying that Sarah called, very angry, reminding her that "My mother paid for that spot!" (There were some mix-ups with the last sexton, I guess, and the Pates have been organizing the mess, according to Jerry, the minister of the Old Welsh Church.)

Paul told me about Aunt Joan and Sarah going together to the plot and picnicking together. Sarah and Aunt Joan had a close, tumultuous relationship. Aunt Joan was a fierce and angry parent, prone to guilt trips, moody and intimidating. (She was always very kind to me, I must add, but by all accounts as a mom she was a bumpy ride.) I suspect that further inquiry into this plot may lead to more drama and intrigue than I am ready to undertake. I suspect it would make me more satisfied with my status as an only child, now that the logistics of moving, repairing, selling, inveigling and persuading are mostly finished between my mother and I.

Mrs. Pate has explained to me that a person can decide to purchase a "plot," which has room for a number of burials, "more room if you cremate!", she informed me cheerfully, or a person can buy a "membership" in the cemetery, which allows for a single grave. I'm not a big joiner, but there's plenty of room amongst the decaying Welsh folks of Sharon Center, according to the cheerful Mrs. Pate, and I believe a single spot, near Aunt Joan but perhaps not right beside her may be just the thing.

I'm thinking a little bitty graveside service with Jerry, the Congregational minister, with the cool wooden casket, perhaps in secret to avoid family hyperbole, and then a memorial service for Mom in Wichita, where her active life and contributions happened. Funerals are for the living, mostly, right?

dental work and other intricacies

2010-03-24T05:36:00.000-07:00

There was a very popular book in the '80's (I think) called Passages, in which Gail Sheehy outlined the many stages of life. I think I'd better actually read this book. The idea is that there aren't a few - there are many of them. I agree. It's probably on my Mom's bookshelf.

Taking Mom to the dentist yesterday gave me a lot to think about. She can barely stand up and has poor balance these days. Her cognition, such as it is, lasts moments. I had to remind her that it was me pushing her in her wheelchair. At the dentist I stood in front of her so she'd have a frame of reference. Transferring her from chair to car and back was an interesting dance. I learned quickly that you can't muscle her. She moves very slowly and with much anxiety and my urge was just to pick her up and move her. She told me "that feels like knives!" I learned to have her put her arms around my neck and dance with me with slow small steps, explaining each step as we went and praising her. The hug was reassuring and she seemed to calm down.

I prepared the dentist's office for the visit, explaining that Mom was in "end stage Alzheimer's" and thankfully they understood that long term dental prophylaxis made little sense. My once patient Mom now suffers little intrusion and has been known to clock impertinent Summit Pointe staff with her coffee cup. If you leave her alone she's fine in a minute (literally) but woe betide you if you push your luck! Dr. Berst looked into Mom's mouth and found that there are no rotten teeth (the reason for the visit). The exercise in patience ended with the attempt at bite wing xrays. I stepped out of the room for a second and heard Mom: "Get away from me!" The dental tech was good, but she's the loud chatty one. I can't tell you how often I have wanted to say that. Home we went with a new flossing tool and some mouthwash.

What I appreciated about the visit was their understanding that these days it's about making Mom as comfortable as possible. For a while the cardiologist still wanted to see her, the optometrist insisted on running her through a bunch of tests, even though she just needed to replace her glasses. We're not sure how Mom is processing visual input these days anyway, and she's lost those glasses again. If Mom's tooth is not rotten and there's nothing giving her pain, she gets a free pass from dentistry. A major heart attack at this point would not be the worst outcome. Somewhere, the spirit of my Mother, often absent from this withered body these days, is hovering and saying "screw cardiology!" It's my job to remember her, even in her presence, and to be pragmatic.

Mostly Mom sits in a comfy chair and sleeps, waking occasionally. Her hands roam around her lap, feeling and investigating wrinkles and folds in the blanket, her eyes closed. Sometimes she's mutter something. "See you in the morning."

I had forgotten that bedtime ritual from my childhood. Every night when she tucked me in:

"Good night." "Sleep tight." "See you in the morning!"

The other morning I had just helped her sit down in the big chair. She really hates sitting down. She can't see what's behind her and she feels as though she is falling. It feels very out of control and she says "ohh, ohh!" and we have to talk her through it. I forget what she said, but it was something about how pitiful and helpless she felt.

I told her: "Mom, you're a very accomplished person. You taught the most disturbed kids in Wichita for 12 years. You worked for Cerebral Palsy Research and supported hundreds of disabled people through the process of deinstitutionalization. You started the Independent Living Center for brain injured people, the Women's Equality Coalition, and Woman Art/Woman Fair to promote female artists. You took care of me and took care of Dad."

"Thanks," she smiled. "I needed that," and leaned back, and dozed off, hands again wandering her lap. Good night. Sleep tight. See you in the morning.

brief revery - no photo

2010-03-21T06:51:00.000-07:00

It's been an interesting week, full of ups and downs, opportunities to engage my better and "worser" self, to enjoy both Spring and Winter (in that order), and perhaps today more Spring. I left my photo stick at work, and I'm on Walker's computer, so there is no photo today.

I discovered that my camera does not like being cold and demonstrates this by refusing to download pictures. I had to take it out of my car, which is where I like to put it. Now it goes back and I have a lot of shots I have been thinking about taking all Winter. I can feel my thickened blood stirring. I can hear my expanding gut remind me that I vowed never to get to 260 pounds again and urging me to get moving. It's time to pump up the bicycle tires on the mountain bike and see how things work. The road bike has low handle bars and would require me to look up from a very low position. I suspect that this posture is no longer possible. From now on, it's straight handlebars for me! The larger impediment at this point is sloth, and I'm very pleased at this. There could certainly have been more serious impediments than my old familiar one. I'd also like to try and run again, but I think this process will be gradual -- a little walking, a little running, more walking -- because lifting and jarring my spine are still touchy activities. People are now espousing the benefits of running barefoot because people naturally avoid hard heel strikes and use their feet better when they run this way. Except for all the rocks and glass on the road around here, that might be a pretty good idea. I understand that there are shoes being made that imitate the benefits of not wearing shoes. Sounds pretty paradoxical to me. A person could really riff on this concept. Not this morning, though.

My soon had a big party last night at our house and Robyn and I played dead upstairs. It was an enthusiastic event with a lot of singing together and by the sounds of thumping, much romping with the dog. Tye's arthritic foot is acting up this morning and he's limping pitifully. We old dogs need to learn restraint. Good luck with that. This was a "clean" party - no drugs or alcohol - and I am left wondering how loud they'd have been if they'd had beer! I had clean parties at Walker's age, too. My behavior didn't nose-dive, really, until college. It was a fine nose diver and I (mostly) don't regret it. I'm not predicting Walker will meet a similar fate. He seems to have a mind of his own.

As to my better and worser selves, they continue to be in protracted talks. On a good day my better self speaks and my worser self merely mutters. Today looks like it may be one of those days.

inertia and osculation

2010-03-13T04:06:00.000-08:00

We watched a movie about spectacular vengeance last night. I don't even remember the name of it this morning, but the plot is familiar: A man's family is brutalized and murdered before his eyes while he lies on the floor, duct taped and helpless. He is let down by the system and left alone and profoundly let down, everything he's ever had to love in his life destroyed and no justice to show for it, the evil doers plea bargaining their way to easy street. This pathos gives way to massive amounts of vengeance and lesson learning unleashed upon the hypocrites and evil doers by the suddenly empowered and brilliant formerly-helplessly-suffering-guy who has monster abs by the way.

It was very satisfying. It made me want to convene my own military tribunal and railroad somebody.

I fell asleep pretty early and woke up early, here in my somewhat less clear cut world. Winter has thickened my blood and I'm peering out the window thinking about somehow moving more quickly. I'm dragging with me a foggy cloud of ennui that I haven't been able to shake for weeks. When I'm occupied, I'm fine. Things have been busy and so mostly I've been occupied. Sometimes, though, in the silence of an empty cluttered house the fog descends and I look around at all the things to do, tasks not done, riddles unsolved, loose ends untied, and I'm inert. Perhaps I'm an emotional shark and must keep moving to survive. The warm weather reminds me of my bicycle and my running shoes. It's time to test my titanium spinal superstructure and get myself some endorphins.

Today Caitlin flies to Germany for a senior trip. She'll visit Berlin, stay with a host family for three days in a small down to the south, and then visit Munich. All told she'll be gone ten days, which is about as long as she's ever been gone from us, I think. We all view this as a rehearsal for college this Fall. She's a ready as any of us ever are for what passes as independence when you're eighteen. She was taunting her mother last night with threats of "making out with German boys" to "see if they do it differently." A cultural saliva exchange! For peace! Robyn played along threatening dire consequence if Caitlin is flown home in disgrace. I worry for the poor unsuspecting German boys, personally.

I doubt that the Teutonic method for osculation is any different. Lips is lips. I had a girlfriend once who was enamored of the French. It was her major after all, but I was an unsatisfactory boyfriend in that I didn't share her passion and hadn't learned that being supportive is part of the job. My observation was that minus the accent, her French friends were no more interesting than my American ones. There was one really mad fellow named Andre I really liked but he seemed more temperamentally Russian than French. I never kissed any of them, but I think my girlfriend did. I think they supported her passion better than I did.

Soon I'll head to Iowa City and visit with my ornery kids. We step onto the moving sidewalk with little time to reflect, doing and doing. Inertia is like that: it moves until it stops, stops until it moves.

If I can ever lose my blues
Walk on over and turn on the tv
What I'd like to do is lie down on the sofa
Later on
I might walk my dog, baby

--James Taylor

management

2010-02-26T05:01:00.000-08:00

since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you
--e.e. cummings

I avoided funerals for a very long time. I had a good excuse. Dad took 10 years to die of ALS and before he died Mom had Alzheimer's disease. For a long time I hid from death and its trappings. In my cowardice I avoided funerals in particular. It wasn't the reminder of death that scared me, I think, but the intimation of my own enormous grief, waiting patiently for me to finish my dance, my drink, my long rationalization, waiting to enfold me in its inevitable arms.

When Dad died he was in many ways a stranger in town. He wasn't capable emotionally of maintaining many friends. The emotional strains of intimacy and the ensuing analysis of others motivations made it a painful adventure for him. I assumed his funeral would be a small, almost secret affair. What I failed to understand was that my mother and I had brought many people into his world. Those people came and sat with us, showing up for a ceremony that allowed us to close Dad's book. What I expected to be a lonely exercise was about community and appreciation. Even the old veteran with his bugle, who apologized for muffing a note in Taps, cared for us that day.

While I can write about them, I am not very successful in managing my emotions. This is because, I believe, emotions happen first. If we're centered, we sit with our emotions and learn from them, decide what they mean, and perhaps what we need. I've always been an "emotional optimist." It won't be that bad. I'll be fine. See! I'm fine! This isn't bothering me that much at all. Then, a few days later, something hits me like a baseball bat, an assault in the dark and, surprise! My feelings are what they are and I can't manage them. I'm not the only person who has to learn this lesson over and over again, and thus I make a tidy living.

A 16 year old girl dropped dead this week. She was a classmate of Walker's and we have seen her around since Walker was 5 years old. Katlyn was athletic, smart, and genuinely decent. The autopsy was inconclusive. She just died.

I had really planned to avoid her funeral, and did, but my daughter, another Caitlin, asked me to go with her. "It won't be that bad," I thought. . . .

I must say that this was the most emotionally ravaging viewing I have ever attended. After about an hour of standing in line with the entire community, looking at pictures and mementos of this beautiful, vital young woman, we came to her family. They had learned to intercept the conversation and thank us for coming before we could speak, sparing them more memories when they were trying to hang together. They were almost not in their own bodies. The word "devastated" is overused. The casket was open and I won't describe its contents except to say that the contrast with our memories, with the photos, was stark. Punch in the stomach. Hit by a truck, a mudslide, a tidal wave. We winced and moved as fast as we could toward the door.

Yesterday morning I was gripped with overwhelming anxiety over things that don't amount to much. I felt horrible, guilty, angry at myself for saying something minor the night before, all out of proportion to the "crime," which really didn't exist and was easily remedied. After about two hours of misery, it began to dawn on me that I was familiar with this "trip." The dance of deferred emotion, the contrived incident followed by all out of proportion guilt and self admonishment.

I'm sorry that you died, kid. I'm sorry you had the same name as my daughter and dropped dead for no reason. I'm sorry I felt relieved that it was you and not my child lying there, a husk, a corpse that no amount of make up could remediate. I'm sorry that I shied away from your parents visceral pain and rushed for the door gripping my daughter's hand. I'm sorry I don't know your family well enough to do more than show up, witness their pain and run for the parking lot. It was what I could do. I showed up. I can't get them out of my head.

Karkowski night

2010-02-22T04:33:00.000-08:00

It was an interesting weekend, much in the usual way. I saw clients on Saturday morning. They are always interesting and pleasant (no joke - if you see clients and don't find them interesting and pleasant you should find something useful to do - sell shoes!). I drove around in my new Golf, which is mostly a carbon copy of my old Rabbit, with fewer doors and a manual transmission. Anyone who hung with me had to hear about how something is wrong with 2nd gear. One should not have to double-clutch a new Volkswagen. Interesting, but as mundane as a Christmas letter, you're thinking. True.

In the evening I spent some time at a benefit for Russell Karkowski, a furniture builder and craftsman who fell off his roof and landed on his head. Russell is doing pretty well, all things considered. His personality remains, by all accounts, as does his determination to recover. He's learning to speak, to use his body, staying longer in rehab because they believe there's more progress to be made. Apparently if you're discharged quickly from rehab it's because they feel they have achieved what we in the human services used to call "maximum benefits." That's social work speak for "shit, we give up!" Russell, God bless him, has not met Max yet. Good man.

Will and I got together and sang and played a little and then went down to the Mill and sang about a half hour together. It was a loud crowd, not particularly attentive, there for Russell and each other. This is as it should be. Any experienced musician knows that sometimes the crowd is (are?) into each other and not us. We used some tricks to quiet the crowd and create space and had a good time doing duo work, which requires less precision and uniformity than working in a four or five piece group. I love Will and he loves me and I trust and hope that we'll always be able to tune in and make music together. I thought of our friend Cam, who jumped ship this year and the times we spent at the Mill singing as a trio together. In his honor, I mentioned that Cam had no butt. Of course now he's missing more than that, but it felt important to tease him in absentia.

What was most interesting though was that discussion turned several times to my own injury. Now, I'm not 100% yet, but I'm enjoying my life again and exercising the privileges of autonomy and independence. Some would say I'm also recovering my cognition, although that may remain to be seen.

In any case, what's happening to Russell absolutely dwarfs anything I experienced. I had the good fortune of avoiding coma, brain damage, and physical incapacity. We were worried about whether I'd walk, but I walk and I had all my potential gratifyingly in line as soon as I recovered from surgery. My toes wiggled and that was it. After that it has been a matter of endurance. I'll admit to employing some determination. I'll admit to despairing of ever being able to get around by myself again at some points, but those points were located over the span of a few months. Going on about my experience at Russell's party did not feel appropriate.

Faithful readers may recall that as I lay on my back in the hospital, fresh off the helicopter, recently off the side of a county road in Wisconsin, I was told I'd have to wait a day for surgery because I was "stable." They boy scouts riding in an SUV on the highway had not been so lucky and they got to go first. I found I couldn't argue with that. I was very uncomfortable but my condition was not going to deteriorate further. I was able to think and speak (sort of) and feel impatient (then guilty for it). I dozed off into my narcotic haze counting my blessing that I was not a boy scout late of an SUV.

Russell, by all accounts, is showing great attitude, love, and determination each day. His future is uncertain. A master craftsman and furniture builder, co-founder of the Artisan's Gallery, labors on in rehab to master every day tasks. His great courage dwarfs any I might have summoned. Russell and those boy scouts - upstaged again, and grateful for it.

RIP William Morrison

2010-02-13T06:33:00.000-08:00

William F. Morrison died yesterday. He invented the Frisbee, surely the cultural totem of our generation. Morrison had to sue to retain the rights to his invention, which I believe he copied from pie tins tossed around by college freshmen. The work Frisbee was imprinted on the bottom of the tin. If the toy had been invented in Cedar Rapids, it might have been named Kathy's Pies.

My friend Roger comes from a family rife with entrepreneurial spirit. They are successful car dealers and investors, always looking for the next thing. Roger's dream in college was to be the inventor of something like those little spring-loaded hands that everyone in the 80's suction cupped to their car window and imprinted with various slogans. "Honk if you love Jesus." "Baby on board." Roger's sense of irony attracted him to particularly worthless inventions that nonetheless catch on. He now owns a successful Honda franchise in Wichita. The irony, I suppose, is that although he is a success, Honda's are useful, and so his youthful ambition is ultimately foiled.

Morrison, and Wham-O!, working "together," if invention and subsequent theft can be described as cooperation, produced a toy that is wonderfully simple, even tacky. It has spawned any number of wonderful games (ultimate frisbee, disc golf. . .) and given many a boomer an excuse to run and throw and catch without being a "jock" about it. Some of us may have engaged in simultaneous recreational activities that were less than healthy, but we got our hearts moving and we found joy. My old pal and erstwhile musical partner Swinton and I used to spend hours throwing a big frisbee long distances over the lawns of the Oakdale campus, between tall oak trees, working up a sweat and taking intermittent smoke breaks of one kind or another. I cannot help but associate the frisbee with enthusiasm and youthful joy.

My friend Kevin's dog Truly is a champion frisbee catching dog, with several trophies. His teeth are worn down from grabbing and clenching hard plastic in mid air. Truly is a dog obsessed and although he weighs well over 100 pounds, he is so filled with motivation that he can fly. My dog, alas, is more obsessed with tennis balls and crotches than with frisbees, and so athough he has some neat moves in a closed course, he does not compete. At least, not until there is a competition involving tennis balls and crotches.

When I was a freshman living in Burge Hall in Iowa City, my friends Brad and Nick threw the frisbee down the long narrow hall of our dormitory floor. This required a strong, straight side-arm flick that I never mastered. It was very impressive, and we all got used to peeking out of our doors cautiously in order to avoid being incidentally decapitated. Our RA tolerated it amicably until the second time an errant throw shattered a light fixture, something even Brand and Nick could not manage on purpose. Compared to many of our other Burge Hall activities, this was good clean fun. (256 false fire alarms during our first semester . . . the "mercy day massacre" culminating in the frat house across the street with all its window broken out by frozen rock cornish game hens, courtesy the cafeteria work study folks).

My good friend Chris, leader of our pack in age at least, turned 52 yesterday, which means as surely as snow melts that I'll do it, too. I had a conversation last night with a young man who was worrying about where his life was going. He's 24 and I didn't laugh as I told him I still wonder the same thing sometimes. My accomplishments in life have been both tangible and evanescent. Our kids are certainly top notch people. I have been a good therapist and social worker. My friends and I have made some good music together, both literally and figuratively.

I wonder if Mr. Morrison appreciated that his invention was actually pretty profound. It wasn't just a toy that "took off," like the yo-yo and silly string. (There is a case to be made for the profundity of the yo-yo, actually.) The frisbee is an important part of three or four generations worth of lives. My son's favorite part of cross country practice is playing ulitmate frisbee on the fully lit football field after games. Generation after generation, the cheesy plastic disc marches on!

A man could do worse with his life. I'm just sayin'.

Early

2010-02-05T04:20:00.000-08:00

There are times when I wake up very early and my mind begins to work. I begin to list things undone, concerns unresolved, to plan logistics and polish old stones and second guess when part of me knows I'd be better served by another hour or so of rest.

The solution, such as it is, is to get up, make coffee, read, and impose some order on my thoughts instead of letting them run amok.

And so I unpack my head. The psychoprofessionalbabbler in me points out that waking up early is a symptom of anxiety. My prefrontal cortex points out that I was recently on Eastern Standard Time and that I don't usually transition well from time zone to time zone, easily defaulting to the earlier one. When I was in Marin County a few years ago I found it impossible not to awaken at 5 a.m., even though we stayed up late and sleeping in was the rational thing to do. Desirable. Enjoyable, even.

Money. Another trip to Baltimore. More money. How is Walker going to get to work if I see clients and then rehearse with Will for the benefit we're doing? Is Mom really on Hospice's mythical 6 month slide toward home? I have learned not to trust predictions of mortality and yet she's clearly weaker and weaker. Is it acceptable to hope that her end is near? Chris told me the other day that I'm a good son, but it feels like I don't give her enough of my time, and simultaneously it feels as though she's already gone. Student financial aid forms and Caitlin's tuition. Jeff's birthday party Saturday night will be important to attend. Robyn will be gone on a well deserved girl's weekend so how can I go when I'll already have been gone all day? Money. I need a work out. My son went out to supper with an inspirational speaker from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Am I going to have to hire a deprogrammer? What if he becomes all Fundementalist and Inspirational? Euthanasia? Not for Mom, mind you! I enjoyed a regular evening dosage of Scotch in Baltimore. Moderation dictates I go without alcohol for a while. In fact, my cortex points out, the temporary (I assure myself) increase in dosage may account for some of this funk. On the other hand, an early morning Scotch. . . No! No! No! Change the brake light bulb on the Rabbit. Replace the parking light assembly on the Honda. Fix the leaky plumbing in the dining room ceiling, although the hole in the ceiling and the glass underneath to catch the drips have become a permanent part of our decor. Scrape the driveway down to the pavement before the next snow. Call the eye doctor to see if my new glasses came in at 4 then race to get them before 5 because I can't get them Saturday. I have to see clients. But not until 11 so I guess I could squeeze it in. God, I can't wait for my new glasses. The old ones have me cross eyed. Not my best look. Robyn looks so sweet. I wonder if I just tickled her a little. . . . Moving from euthanasia to suicide, eh?

Coffee, the New Yorker and New Republic slowly fill my mind with orderly, reasoned discussions of events. After a while, Robyn stirs, never knowing how close to an amorous assault from an early morning drinker she came. One more trip to Maryland next week and my travel adventuring will be over for the foreseeable future. An amazing number of the things I need to do I will do, each in its time, I suppose.

I trained some young people this week and they seemed to really enjoy it. The looked at me the way young adults sometimes do, as though I was wise and eloquent and responsible. I appeared to have negotiated my rites of passage, to have mastered the secret handshake, to have taken on the mantle of responsible adulthood. I was glib, entertaining, informative and highly caffeinated. That was a good day.

Which is real? Rolling around in bed careening through mental chaos me or eloquent, informative (almost Fellowship of Christian Athletes inspirational) me?

Yes and no.

Baltimore

2010-02-04T04:24:00.001-08:00

I was a stranger in the city . . .

My buddy Chris called me the other night while I was lying on my hotel bed digesting seafood. I ate nothing but seafood while on the East Coast. It was so fresh and a Mid-Westerner forgets how much better fresh fish is. I have similar affections for Mexican food from locales where there is a real barrio.

Anyway, Chris said "you're traveling all over. This is like a real job, isn't it?" I'm helping another site that is currently in between counselors: assisting with interviewing, doing some training, and then orienting the new counselor a bit next week. The novelty of travel is beginning to wear off now after flight delays, time changes, early-bird flights out. It's good to be useful, though, and folks have been very hospitable, feedback for my training was good.

Baltimore has been hit with the poor economy and from the looks of it there may have been some issues when things were better. Caitlin assigned me the mission of finding Charm City Cakes (Ace of Cakes is the reality show), and when I asked around it turns out the location is a big fat secret. There is a false location on Google, but a picture on their web site said 30th street and a helpful check out girl suggested that I go to 30th via Highway 83, so I killed an afternoon driving around urban Baltimore. The 30th Street I found was in a pretty "downscale" neighborhood full of row houses, many of which were boarded up. Still there were people out pushing baby carriages and children running around. My social work street cred tells me that when kids are out it's likely to be pretty safe. Charm City cakes was nowhere to be found and I got good and lost a couple times. My blackberry has GPS and a map program, and so getting lost doesn't really carry the emotional punch that it used to. ("Oh my! I'm off my directions in a bad part of town, going in circles and my wife isn't here to blame!") I just hit the "update from here" button and I get new directions, also confusing, but somehow optimistic. The GPS is paying attention to me, at the very least. I was too busy driving in circles to get good photos of these neighborhoods but they were really interesting visually. Think of hundreds of identical 1920's row houses marching up either side of a narrow street, each porch a small variation on the theme, slight variations in trim, but overall a sense of geometric harmony just short of monotony. Some streets are boarded and sad, others show signs of life, care, and a sense of carrying on.
Baltimore's Inner Harbor is more polished, more of a destination, and I got out and ate some (guess what!) lunch at a seafood joint with a great view. I get the sense that on a sunny day this area might light up with people and events and be a very pleasant place to spend time.

I am interested in urban landscape and would like to get a better view of the industrial part of the harbor. It makes me think of T.S. Eliot.

Gulls are, of course, ubiquitous.

In my pursuit of signs, I found this amusing. I was feeling okay about my life, but had I been feeling otherwise, I suspect I could have availed myself. . . .

I'm not absolutely certain of this, but I think this little person in the cross walk identifies where some poor soul got squished. He's made out of the same stuff the crosswalk lines are made of, and I saw a couple of these. Someone was a bit too far from the life ring, I suspect.

I'm going back next week. I'm now a jaded traveler, making love to my electronic devices in the relative safety of the travelers' zone, all of us vetted by TSA, hermetically sealed off from danger, at the mercy of whatever pilot refuses his jet, the latest storm, the recycled air of the pressurized cabins where every sneeze reminds you that we're all recycling each others respiratory minutiae.

Chris asked me if I was lonely, and until he asked I really wasn't. I like some time by myself and I don't mind finding things to do alone for a while. Right now I'm glad to have spent the night cuddled with Robyn, to have hung out with Caitlin and Walker, to have had my early morning with Tye the wonder dog, always ready for his morning love and his slimy dog toy. Back in my own life ring.

ghosts

2010-01-28T06:07:00.000-08:00

Facebook is a funny thing. I get frequent reminders to send my deceased friend Cam a message, so that we can "keep in touch." I have, from time to time, gone to his page to see what people are saying, and I went there this morning.

What I found was many entries from his newlywed widow, her pain palpable and very much on display: "Cam, I can't live without you. Why did you leave?" "I am devastated that all that is left of you is a box of ashes." "My dear, sweet Cam, I need you so much."

It's incongruous to me that the same medium that provides us with updates from Farmville becomes a venue for the display of such deeply personal emotions. Perhaps now there will be a poll: "Why did Cam kill himself? List your top ten reasons and invite 10 friends!"

This is unkind of me. I spend my days examining the currency of others' emotions, and I'm not ignoring that Cam's widow is in an awful position. When we had lunch with Cam this Spring, he told us about how she took him in when he had ankle surgery and nursed him enthusiastically. He seemed very happy. The "ironist" in my uncharitably points out that Cam was an inveterate hypochondriac. This, I thought, might be a match made in heaven! Hypochondriac meets caretaker. Just might work! Cam disclosed that he had fibromyalgia (of course you do!). His gravestone might well have read "I told you I was sick."

Those of us who "grew up" with Cam knew that his was an exaggerated emotional roller coaster ride. Even a musical partnership with him was fraught with peril, not because he was unkind, but because he had such a difficult time deciding how he felt about anything, or at least deciding for sure how he felt. I reached the conclusion years ago that I would have to let him ride that ride without me. I could stand on the ground and watch him ascend and descend, relieved to be an observer, hoping that the carnies had tightened the bolts sufficiently that he would not go hurtling into space.

That's not to say I don't miss him terribly, that I'm not grateful for his encouragement and support as a musician, a songwriter, a reader of good books and a lover of the well-turned phrase. He was, in his way, a very good friend, and we had some terrific times together.

In the end, it appears that Cam's final marriage was a bond between two good, depressive souls. It looks to have been a tragedy: in which each character brings to the story the seeds of his or her own undoing. My mother's good friend once said "marriage is most often a case of mistaken identity." If it's to last, there is a lot of grinding, difficult work to do. Romance keeps us at it, no doubt, but we must come to terms with who we actually married, not just who we imagined we married. We must see each other, and, alas, ourselves, for who we really are. This is a moving target at best, more akin to a butterfly than a bull's eye.

There is a fable I like to refer to about the woman who picked up a wounded snake on the road and nursed it back to health. When the serpent was well, she held it on her lap as she had grown used to doing, and it bit her. As she died, she asked "how could you do this to me after I took you in and saved you?" The snake replied: "You knew what I was when you took me in."

Cam wasn't cold blooded or serpent like, mind you. He was a brilliant, creative, talented, generous individual. He was also a romantic narcissist of the first order. Abandoned by his father, raised by an alcoholic mother, he found what he could find in life the best he could, trying to fill a glass that that leaked, no matter how much he put in it. He searched for his Dad and found the man's ashes, just missing the reunion he longed for. This life left him ill equipped for the tedious, personal work of marriage and partnership.

My observation was that Cam tended to love and marry very strong people, women with intelligence, beauty, and resilience, who came to understand him and could survive him at the very least. One by one, they let him go. I'm not so presumptuous as to say what they learned.

This time, he left badly, leaving a scathing note to a woman ill prepared to handle it. Getting the last word in the worst possible way. Leaving himself, like debris, in his own living room. It was a terrible way to go, and I can't help feeling that it was unworthy of him.

I'm done with anger (well, maybe not quite). Disappointment lasts a while, and then life calls. The bolt loosened, the carny turned his head away, and the small wooden car careened off the track, sailing into the gray sky, a scruffy missile arcing higher and higher and then plummeting toward the ground.

Yes, well, when you think about it it makes sense. An empty glass lies on its side on the kitchen table. A fine Gibson guitar stands in the corner. Those of us who carry on carry on.

Signs

2010-01-24T05:10:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite times is early morning on Sundays. The paper has come but I haven't gone out to get it. I've got one cup of coffee down and a good refill by my side. The house is quiet. Tye and Caitlin are curled up in her warm bed, Walker is sprawled across his top bunk, and Robyn, fighting off a sinus infection, is curled under layers of bedding, staving off morning a little longer. The house is quiet, and for a little while it's mine.

On Friday, I rode with my friend Chris up to our friend Doug's father's funeral. Whitey was 81, I believe, and lived a long and useful life. Our families spent some time together, years ago, picnicking on the banks of a lake together. Our kids were small and Doug and LeaAnn didn't have kids yet. We really enjoyed ourselves and I decided I liked Whitey and Ardy just fine. Whitey had a stroke a while ago and life hadn't been the same for him. Doug said he was ready to go, tired of illness and limitation. Fair enough, Whitey. That's not why I went to his funeral.

Whitey sang in a gospel quartet. The highlights of his funeral were Doug's loving, humorous eulogy of his father, and recordings of Whitey singing the old gospel standards, a la Eddy Arnold. He had a warm voice and a laid back delivery that belied obvious passion for the music and a sincere belief in the words that his generation could always pull off better than mine can. Whitey, in his own way, was a ham (takes one to know one). He loved to get up there and sing. Singing at his own funeral was right and just and a great way to go out.

I sat in my pew, surrounded by my good friends, and watched Whitey's good friends, a gospel trio now, with some help, stand up for him again as pall bearers. They were gray, suited, solemn, and most of all, present. I turned to my friend Geof and said "that's us in a few more years." Limping a little, creaking here and there, still getting up, doing what we can. . . .

I'm in the process of making arrangement for Mom. She's under Hospice care now, and although their "six months to live" guidelines are not prophetic, she's in the final part of her journey, however long that takes. I have never looked at her last will and testament or her final version of her living will and power of attorney, so I got them out of the safety deposit box and read them through to make sure I was on track. I have started working through the paperwork to establish myself with the company the provides her annuity to see what happens next. I am planning to call the Old Welsh Cemetary at Williamsburg to see if there's really a plot for her there as my Aunt Joan said, or if this is another of her (sometimes) happy fictions. In the event of another fiction, there is money for a plot, near, if not next to Aunt Joan, as Mom requested. I will call to order a lovely hand made Benedictine casket of lovely wood as a hedge against the metal Buick casket industry. I suppose a vault is unavoidable. Mom's memorial service will need to be in Wichita, where the her life, the part of it she really loved, happened. In these arrangements I am finding a surprising sense of peace. Perhaps it isn't her death I fear, but the horror of her decline, molecule by molecule, neuron by tangled neuron.

As I look up from the struggle, I realize that in so many ways her death has already come. When she speaks to me now, still recognizing my face, it is as though she is far away. Because her moments are not connected and her concentration is brief, she is again like a radio signal on a lonely highway, drifting in and out, music I love, perhaps coming through the static a few more times, worth waiting for. So, I show up.

Soon Robyn will come and brew tea, Tye will come for his morning rub, and, much later, the children will creep down the stairs blinking at a morning almost passed. We will resume the rhythm of our day. I hope Caitlin and Walker end up with friends like mine, like Whitey's, witnesses to their alliances, divorces, births, injuries, celebrations and farewells. I hope they come to visit us in our dotage and don't dread the experience as my parents did when they went home, or as I did . . . . I wonder how to keep that from happening.

I am collecting pictures of signs (hence the first picture). Along the road, people have chosen to say so many things, to mark spots for commerce, safety, history, God. My goal is to collect them as I see them, keeping the camera in the car. I will share some of them with you as I go.

There are signs everywhere we go, reminding us who we are and where we are on our journey. We acquire age, if not wisdom. We witness for each other, if not for our own selves (a more difficult task). I still find this journey worthwhile, unlike my poor friend Cam, who went out in a blaze of blindness and spite unworthy of him. I warn myself not to be too quick to judge this, frequently tangled as I am in my own hubris. I am looking forward to this day, and to the next. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. . . .

and so the year begins

2010-01-13T05:36:00.000-08:00

It seems that the direction is once again "forward," wherever that is.

I had my last regular session with my very cool physical therapist on Monday. My back, and all the drama attached to it, chaos, randomized nerve endings, opioids, fear, doubt, pain, waiting, more waiting, appears to no longer be the driving force or the primary limit in my life. By Summer I expect do be doing most of the things I used to do, somewhat more carefully. My grandmother was right. It's all about posture. Keep the head back, the shoulders down and engage those core muscles. If I start to hurt, there are a number of exercises that bring relief fairly quickly, stretching, engaging. Strong drugs do not appear to be necessary, although sometimes they are nice. I'm back in the Tylenol/Ibuprofen zone. I don't seem to look any funnier than most middle aged men, in fact, looking around me, particularly in Cedar Rapids, I might look slightly better than the curve. Imagine!

I find myself stumbling over the loose ends of intentions discarded when I attempted flight. (Actually, I achieved flight. I botched the landing.) Whither now? In retrospect, I find that along with the change of clothes in my panniers I was carrying a load of hubris. The head was in a very different space before I tried to sever it. Without getting into a lot of morose detail, those of us at home were required to confront each other, be with each other, deal with each other, in ways we did not anticipate. It feels to me as though we are dealing with each other more honestly, more directly, and perhaps, overall, with more patience. It was a fumbling, erratic, awkward, difficult journey at times, punctuated by moments of almost incidental clarity.

Looking up, on January 20th, 7 months after my vain attempt at a soft landing, I hope I take a deep breath and revel for a moment in normalcy. Having achieved some semblance of it once again, finding time for work, play, friends and family, able to move about at will and under my own power, whither now? Dedication to a new goal? Celebration of the mundane? Being in the moment? Adventure?

I recall thinking a lot about the idea of balance last year. Ironic, I know. Perhaps that's the lesson to learn. If so, I'm not there yet. Balance requires different things of us on different days. Sometimes a nap, sometimes a rocket up the ass to get me moving, sometimes the snowy branches of a high oak woods and a fresh trail of groomed powder, sometimes a quiet evening stretched out in bed with Robyn, comparing notes (no this is not innuendo). (If we were comparing other things, that would be innuendo.)

My friend Cam, who left this earthly plane ushered out by pills, alcohol, and the darkest of moods, pointed out to me (also incidentally) that the search for balance can be the trickiest of things. I'm beginning to accept that this was his decision to make and that my anger is mostly my own selfishness. I had grown accustomed to him being around, coming up with wit, insight, and an occasional magnificent song guaranteed to make me cry. For that matter, I had grown accustomed to being around myself, and was perhaps less appreciative than I might have been. I forgive you, Cam. From my perspective, it was a lousy decision.

Coming from a middle aged man who allows himself to hurtle downhill at 38 miles per hour on an antique bicycle, ignoring the possible ramifications, I call that big talk.

Trip to get the tree

2009-12-28T08:21:00.000-08:00

I went through the camera and downloaded December's pictures. Most are from our trip to get a tree a couple weeks ago. I just did a little rough editing.

As you can see, other than this nice one of Robyn (see sly smile), I didn't really get any pictures of the actual excursion.

It was cold and the sky was amazing, very dark, with crystals floating around as the sun went down. I snapped all the sky pictures from a moving car while Robyn drove. The consensus was that I am a dork.

Might be something to that. There's no substitute for pressing the shutter button, though. You never know what's going to work.

Who says Winter is depressing? Okay, maybe a little.

I'm going to get a call from the developer on this one. She's concerned that I'm just plain ignorant. These next are all twisty and out of focus in places. I like 'em that way.

I'm hoping that you enjoy looking around you as much as I do. It's possible I value it more after the trials of this year. My trials were not the worst to befall a person this year. A sore back is a badge of honor.

If you're reading this, I'm glad for you. I was going to write a noble exhortation but then the dog gagged.

'Nuff said.

Intrepid

2009-12-26T05:03:00.000-08:00

Walker, Robyn and I went out to see Mom and bring her a warm blanket and soft comforter for Christmas Day. Generally I go see Mom alone. Robyn comes pretty often, the kids seldom. Walker was not sure Mom knew who he was. She wasn't letting on. I am reluctant to take mom out these days. She doesn't walk well and the chaos of gatherings confuses her. I tell myself I'll try to take her out for a drive first. She liked her gifts but I don't think she really connected them to Christmas. Walker said she had tears in her eyes. Why do I always cry when you come? We drove to Papa's for his gift exchange.

My technique these days is to find a good spot on the big sofa (one of the recliner sections), smile, and watch. I'm also on a "no verbal negativity" diet. If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything. Midwestern wisdom at it's best. You don't hate modern art. It's different, is all. I was pretty quiet. My kids came to sit with me, which is never bad. I got a couple hugs from Papa [one forward, one sideways] and a good, very aerodynamic new bicycle helmet.

My sister in law is a sort of holiday equestrian. She comes to these events and rides her kids. "Brent! Get in here and eat some rolls!" "Brent! Does your mother know you're doing that! [Playing with his Nintendo DS.]" "Did you eat?" "Go back and eat some more!" No one will say these kids did anything for lack of supervision. These folks mean well; perhaps that's what's so disturbing.

Papa is glad to have us all around, but dammit he's in his 80's and if he wants to read the incidental cautionary statements on the outside of the box the DVD player came in out loud to all of us, he's certainly earned that right. Back when there were lots of kids of a certain age, nobody could build the suspense like Papa, reading the label on the little bag of silica that came with your transistor radio. I'm not here because I expect a great gift (got one!). I'm here because he built half my last house, and came to problem solve every practical disaster I encountered in the first 15 years I knew him. Papa has his own way of working things out and if you're not along for the ride, you'd best go some place and gnaw on your hand.

Caitlin went off Highway 30 on the way. She got herself unstuck and drove the rest of the way to Papa's very slowly. She did this unsupervised. Probably could have used some oversight. After a while I drove Caitlin home. "Why do these things always make me so grumpy?" she asked.

"Breathe," I said.

Robyn and Walker came home about an hour later. We watched "Up."

At six, it seemed very late, and we each went to our own corner. The falling rain and ice turned to snow. I noticed the garage door was still open and turned off the porch light and the Christmas tree.

I'm trying to remember how I felt last year at this time. It seems decades ago. I bet I wasn't this glad to be here.

Yule

2009-12-24T15:28:00.000-08:00

Cam Waters took his own life, presumably sometime last Saturday, leaving himself for his wife to find. This is a public enough place that more detail should probably not go here and I don't know much detail. Will's on his way to Sue's family Christmas in Ames and we're going over for a family gathering tonight. I want to know what became of Cam, but I'm not in a hurry to mix it with this holiday.

I was picking my way through the usual Alzheimer's Christmas conundrum. Mom qualifies for Hospice now, so I did an intake with them first thing Tuesday morning and then went shopping. This was a triumph of logistical planning on my part.

This season I'm pleased to be here and relatively intact. I spent much of the Summer wondering how I'd end up, and after weeks of PT I'm here to say things are working better than I ever dared hope they would. I had decided to be grateful and try to be in the various moments offered by family ritual(s) present in that gratitude. Really.

Cam's death, particularly at his own hands, presents another challenge to my spirit of gratitude. I don't know what he was thinking. I'm trying to be less judgmental. He pisses me off, though. I know folks who'd have killed to have his talent and intellect. I was planning on him being around.

Over and over I learn that I don't get to control these things. You'd think I'd get better at this. It's Christmas Eve.

Hold close those you love and tell them why. Peace.

Sunday morning

2009-12-20T17:26:00.000-08:00

I stopped in to see Mom this morning, armed with some dwarf daffodils and a variegated poinsettia. Mom was awake and admired the flowers. I took them to her room and we sat a while and talked about nothing. I looked over and there was a tear in the corner of her eye.

"I don't know why I always cry when you come," she said.

"I don't know, Mom." We sat for a little. I held her hand.

"I should go to bed," she said. I offered to help her get there and she said "oh, no, I can do it." We sat a little longer.

"I have to get back to work," Mom said.

I gave her a kiss goodbye. Whatever it was she thought we were doing was over. I could have said "I know why you're crying, Mom." That would have been more honest. I know that she saw me for a moment and realized that we were here in this place, acting out our parts in the dread scene she never wanted to play. The idea was gone fast as it came.

Leaving only a tear in the corner of an eye.

2009-12-02T09:13:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a minute for reflection before I go to work. I spent some time under the hands of my physical therapist today and he did a masterful job on my poor overworked neck. I played basketball yesterday and really wrung myself out and this morning I was in a permanent shrug, with strong Yertle the Turtle style neck thrusting. All my tendons contracted and refused to budge. Nate took care of that. Good man!

He won't tell me not to play basketball either. I think he figures the lack of mobility the next day is its own consequence. I'm so happy to be able to expend strenuous energy again, I'm probably overdoing it. Okay, I AM overdoing it. I had grown very fond of doing something very physical and then feeling the warm, achy glow of having done so. My endorphins battled my darker parts as well as anything can. I'm willing to ache for this. Besides, today's ache is nothing. I haven't taken my opioid in days, and today I haven't even had a Tylenol yet. Just me and my old creaky body! Just like old times.

Almost.

Postscript

2009-11-29T06:09:00.000-08:00

Like living in Cedar Rapids, Thanksgiving was "not that bad." This whole business of not being thankful for a holiday based on gratitude can make irony a full time job. LeRoy's turkey, against all odds, was quite moist (although the composite ham was dry enough to be sliced "paper thin"). The company was friendly enough, although predictably devoid of content, but also devoid of anything patently offensive. LeRoy was glad to have family around him and grateful that Robyn came and helped set up. My brother in law stayed to put up the worlds most complicated artificial tree while I absconded with a large television that LeRoy can no longer use because J.D. moved in with April and already has too many t.v.s and so LeRoy replaced his downstairs t.v. with J.D.'s flat screen one. We got the downstairs t.v. which sits happily in our bedroom in place of the ancient 19 inch television Donna gave us as a wedding present. Are you following this? It's truly an "object" lesson.

I find myself, now, with one more day of a long weekend after a restless night built upon rich food, too much to think about and insufficient exercise. Since I put some money down on a gym membership I'll shortly go try to redeem myself by working out on an elliptical machine. It's low-impact, and since I haven't talked to a trainer yet, I'm trying to be careful. There's a large, hot whirlpool waiting as well.

And what did I think as I lay in bed last night? I thought about money, or the lack thereof. I thought about my mother, whose circle has diminished to almost nil, and wondered how much longer she'll occupy her tiny space. We've cut back on a lot of her medication and her disease will progress more quickly now, it's evident. There's no point in standing with your finger in the dike when the water is up to your chest. I thought about my kids, my marriage, the hole in my ceiling and the leak that made it. I doubted myself in various ways and longed for a large martini, settling in the end for a late night beer.

Today will be about exercise. I'll get my body going. I'll help clean up the house, putting away all the stuff we got out for our guests. I'll go see if my mother can walk any better. I'll go to Iowa City and bother my friends. Doing, to substantiate being, looking for purpose, which is inevitably in my other pants.

Thanksgiving morning

2009-11-28T07:20:00.000-08:00

I went to her room and she was sleeping in her big chair. When I woke her, she smiled at me with recognition.

"It's Thanksgiving. Would you like to come over?"

"Yes, I'd like that," Mom answered, blinking. I got her coat and offered to help her stand. Although I held her hand, she couldn't rise from the big chair. I put my hand under her upper arm and lifted her to her feet. While I put her coat on her arm she sat back down.

"Let's put that coat on while you're sitting." With her coat on, I lifted her to her feet again. "Let's walk to the door." She took small unsteady steps, uncertain, shuffling. It took five minutes to walk to the door of her room.

"I think I need to sit down," she said. We turned around and began to walk back into her room.

"We can sit you in your big comfy chair," I suggested.

"That's not my chair."

"You can sit in it anyway," I said.

"That's what I always say, whose-ever it is." We shuffled toward the chair, Mom becoming incrasingly unsteady.

"I don't know if I'll make it."

"A few more steps, Mom."

"Yes, BIG steps. There we go! At last!" I sat her down, back in the big chair. She closed her eyes. Her hands moved and shook with a life of their own. I helped her get her coat off. After a while I got up to go.

"Stay with me. I'm scared," she said. And so I sat a while in the quiet room as she fell soundly asleep again, the sounds of relatives coming to collect other residents coming from outside the room.

It's a long walk down this hall, Mary.

I'll make it.

Whoo! How much farther?

Turkey with a complicated stuffing

2009-11-26T04:38:00.000-08:00

I was trying to post something on facebook to capture my feelings about Thanksgiving in a few words and realized that it was going to be a disaster. I navigate these holidays like an explorer looking for the Northwest Passage. It's a journey with great beauty, fraught with peril.

Today I will quite literally be "upright and taking nourishment," and after this summer, that's certainly no small thing. I find that I'm very grateful for Robyn, Caitlin, Walker and the many friends and relatives who helped us in so many ways during the very difficult parts of this year. I'm quite literally grateful that I can stand up straighter and straighter and really can look forward to resuming my regular activities, even (especially) the strenuous ones. All these people who know us well, and love us anyway, have helped the nearly unbearable parts of this year pass. Now we can celebrate.

My summer officially "ended" when we paddled down the Upper Iowa river near Bluffton on an impossibly sunny, warm, November Saturday. I can't tell you how many times I lay on my back in that interminable brace and dreamed of sitting in my boat, scooting down a river. I truly felt I had "arrived." By God, I had.

I'll go and get Mom this morning and bring her over early, so that she can get settled here and not be so overwhelmed by all the people arriving. I'm not sure how long she'll last at the party. Holidays are more painful in Alzheimerland because they mark time. Anniversaries remind us of better times, of who Mom used to be, and feed sadness, the guest who never quite leaves. I remember Mom's inventive, elegant holiday tables and the good times with friends we'd invite who for one reason or another had no family and so joined ours. We argued and laughed and debated and felt very pleased with ourselves.

What we have to offer Mom now is inclusion, which is more and more difficult to manage as her once formidable powers continue to diminish. It's hard to be thankful for this. It's difficult to find a lesson to learn. Entropy is its own lesson, I suppose.

On Saturday we'll go to my father-in-law's and sit in attendance on the other Thanksgiving. Robyn goes out early to help LeRoy get the house together. It's far too much house for him now and in the best of times LeRoy had 12 more projects than he could finish. He, too, is diminishing, and Robyn shows her love in ways he can accept. She helps. Exchanging love with LeRoy is a Northwest Passage of its own.

Robyn's relatives will arrive for second Thanksgiving. Her step-sister and brother-in-law, amazingly uptight, snapping at their kids (who, another relative pointed out, wear slippers to keep their socks from getting dirty), will be there, as will some neighbors of LeRoy's. There is nothing to say to these folks, really. Those of us who gathered today, at our house, will smile at each other knowingly (here we are again). LeRoy finds comfort in relationships that don't involve much intimacy. He is a wonderful, helpful neighbor, a builder of projects. He showed his love for Robyn by helping us rebuild a house and being practical in all kinds of patient ways. Sometimes, working on these projects, just he and I, he would open up and tell me things about himself, his life, and we would feel close. Over time, though, I have found his love to be conditional in ways he can't help. While I can't blame him for being who he is, raised by a callous man who had no time for dreams or feelings, I felt myself withdrawing from him. I think he knows this and I don't think he knows what it means. Once, Robyn and the kids went with him for lunch somewhere and he put Caitlin on the phone to ask me why I was not there. Caitlin was terribly uncomfortable, and it made me angry to think he'd use my daughter that way. I got off the phone as fast as I could and apologized to Caitlin for LeRoy. No eight year old should have to carry water like that. Small wonder Caitlin hates Thanksgiving.

Now we count time and talk small. I have found that blaming people for being who they are is a waste of energy and I try not to do it. LeRoy has been good family to us in lots of ways and so we go help him have another Thanksgiving, his way, at his house. The neighbor with the impossible toupee (think opossum) and the inane wife (valley of the dolls meets dumb and dumber) will prattle on, my step-sister-in-law will tell her kids to stop being kids, and my watch will be on the inside of my wrist so I can look at it less obviously. These are the things we do for each other.

I can take my camera and look for beauty. I can remember that I'm lucky I'm not doing the holidays in a wheelchair (talk about being trapped!). We can find the good. It's there. We are lucky people, Robyn and I. It's just that the wisdom conferred by middle age is fleeting, and my better self has a tough wrestling match with that other guy.

Insomnia

2009-11-21T21:35:00.000-08:00

I found a basket filled with odds and ends as Robyn and I cleaned out Mom's closet last weekend. I took it to the car and didn't get around to clearing it out until yesterday. There were all sorts of pictures: an old one of my Grandma Jones standing by my cousins' bunk bed looking quizzical, pictures of my 22 year old Mom holding me as an infant, a picture of Caitlin at about six, leaning her head against my Dad - already gaunt from ALS, pictures of some of the troubled children my mother taught when I was a kid, a picture of Mom at the zoo joyously spreading her arms in front of an eagle exhibit, "prom" pictures of Mom and her friend Ruth at the first old folks home, all dressed up and looking cynical about it. In the basket were years worth of buttons from 15 years of Woman Art/Woman Fair, the exhibition for which Mom worked tirelessly, a set of terrycloth bunny ears, a pin made of a fan-folded dollar bill and plastic flowers, an antique tortoise shell box with unmatched costume jewelry from my Grandmother Thompson, and a good deal of cat hair.

Mom sat and made disjointed small talk with us as we worked our way through the closet, entirely in the moment, one moment at a time. Her last cat, Freckles, went on a one way trip to the vet the week before. One's minutes must be connected to each other for one to notice such things. To Mom the cats are under the bed or in the closet. They'll be out soon.

My mother was a very bright, accomplished woman, immensely generous and understanding and yet proud and aloof, "keeper of secrets," my Aunt says. She raised me with great generosity of spirit and understanding, much forgiveness and a good deal of humor. Now the edifice she occupied is largely untenanted. What remains are manners, the sort of wit that can be captured in thirty seconds, memories strung together at random. She sleeps. She looks out the window, seeing I know not what.

I saw clients this morning and into the early afternoon and the time flew by. It's satisfying work and people are interesting. I came home and found myself exhausted. I took a nap, had supper, and took another nap. Now that everyone else has gone to bed I find myself alone with my thoughts and this keyboard. It's hard to avoid mortality on nights like this. I wonder what will become of us and our busy lives, how we will end up, what will be left of us.

Mom planned for her retirement and had plenty to live on. I fear we have not planned enough or taken enough care to assure security in twenty years. But what good does all this planning do? What good is a hedge against a random future? Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, when all there really is is today. After our fecklessness, we may win the lotto, and my Mother, for all her care saw her well fashioned planning carried away, box by box, down to the last cat, the last basket.

As I sailed over the handlebars of my bicycle this Summer, I didn't consider that I could die. I said "Oh, no!" and didn't have time to put my hands forward to save my face. I thought I had broken my nose (I had not).

A few weeks ago, we paddled the Upper Iowa sipping beers and feeling very lucky on such a lovely day. Each minute connected with another downstream, revealing more November beauty, another gift. I felt very lucky for many reasons. Now I'm thinking of my mother, her long arms spread wide, imitating an eagle and smiling impossibly wide, her long fingers stretching. She is upstream somewhere and I miss her.

. . . other than my physical condition . . .

2009-11-19T05:28:00.000-08:00

Chris sent me a great picture from our recent kayak trip down the Upper Iowa the other weekend. I am standing in the yard at the cabin, coffee in hand, in front of my car which carries two boats, looking relaxed and feeling victorious. He also sent a picture he took of me the day my jaw got wired. I was grimacing to great effect, showing my newly reassembled mouth, looking absolutely hideous.

I posted these on Facebook to great effect.

I also noticed something: I'm getting bored with reports on my own physical condition. If I'm getting tired of talking about myself, I can only imagine how others must feel. (I start PT on the 24th and have cautiously resumed a little light, friendly, co-ed basketball at work. I'm not having any pain this week that can't be managed by Tylenol, although we'll see what a longer b-ball skirmish will do today.) See!! Boring.

I think this is good news. What seems like an eternity was actually only four months. When I look at my grimacing visage, I remember how helpless I felt, how much I longed to be where I am now. The other weekend, I worked on our deck, applying the ceiling tin my Mom had left over when she did her kitchen ceiling 20 years ago. I hauled it all over the place and finally used some of it to make a deck surround. It hurt to do the work, but it was great to be doing something interesting and semi-useful. The pain went away soon enough. This week, I feel far better and I find myself not calculating so much what I will pay later for a given activity.

I have longed for this moment. Time has passed, narcotized, second upon second in a slow motion parade past my window. I have stared at myself in the mirror (what else to do?) trying to imagine how I will turn out (in an ironic revisit of adolescence?), praying to my Agnostic God for a future that is not too compromised by condition.

Now, it would be a good idea to remember just how really lucky I am. To take some care. Damn. Let's get on with it.
Aw, hell.

Couldn't resist.

Spiritual geography

2009-11-06T04:21:00.000-08:00

There are places for all of us that for one reason or another take on spiritual significance. For me, and a number of my good friends, one such place is a cabin on Canoe Ridge, north of Decorah, Iowa. Fish and his Dad rebuilt a pioneer cabin on a new concrete foundation. It overlooks a meadow full of wildflowers and an oak-wooded valley that falls toward the Upper Iowa river valley. There is a waterfall on the property and in the summer bluebirds flit casually from tree to tree. For my friends and I, it's a place we visit to remind ourselves that things are simpler than we often make them. Sitting on the porch and gazing down the valley you can feel your heart rate subside and your blood pressure diminish. The noise in our heads and the anxieties in our hearts subside. There's beer and banter and occasional excess and fishing and kayaking and biking and a sense that we're in on a special secret, a privilege, a gift.

When we went to Southern Illinois, on the Ohio River, to scatter my Dad's ashes, we visited another such place. The river makes a big bend and cuts under the bluff it's made during flood after flood over the eons. My grandfather's cabin sits on that bluff, owned by someone else now, as does the ancient Rose Hotel, build in 1812, where we stayed with my mother, already significantly in decline from Alzheimer's disease. We went to the foot of the bluff and Walker and Caitlin (the grandchildren he was amazed to have) scattered his ashes into the river where Dad learned to swim, to curse, to be a boy. His footprints were all over the bluff, the rocks, the river bottom. The July water was as warm as bathwater and the weather became unusually cool, setting of a show of mist and water in the morning that made me speechless.

My feelings about my father's long death were complicated and contradictory. My grieving (for my father and my declining mother) sent me into a long depression fueled by vodka rocks martinis and self-pity. I chart the beginning of my healing from the moment Dad's ashes, rescued from the top of Mom's old Zenith television and cast in his most favorite spot, touched the water he most loved. We sat for hours on the second floor of the porch of the Rose Hotel and watched the river move and change with each minutes and we sighed. That night Mom went to bed and the kids and I lay on our backs in the grass on the bluff and watched a meteor shower. I think my children felt the magic of this place, rinsed by the river of it's tragedy and turmoil.

Today, as is our custom, we make our way to the cabin in Decorah, my friends and I. There have been months recently when I despaired of ever getting out of the house, or even down the block and this trip feels special to me. Over the summer I have learned that I'm more fragile than I thought, more vulnerable to chaos and entropy (and momentum in particular). I've had to be patient and to confront some of the flaws in my character I'd have preferred to continue to ignore. Also, I think I've become a little more patient, perhaps more grateful.

I've been reading e. e. cummings a little:

. . . for life is not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis.

Life back

2009-10-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

Eons and eons ago, I was moving out of the house I shared with my first wife Nancy. We married very young, she and I, and I was certainly the more extroverted one. Nancy went along for the ride for a while, taking on my interests and generally subsuming her personality in favor of mine. She was a Polish Catholic girl from Niles and this is what you did, as far as she knew.

Since I am prone to center of the Universe behavior, and was REALLY that way at 23, I didn't really notice or catch on to this dynamic. (And there was a good deal more to this, really. I'm simplifying history here. Nancy's family was monumentally scarred by alcoholism and traumas that Nancy only ever hinted at.) As time went by, we grew far apart, having little in common in the first place and things got more and more negative between us. Nancy initiated the divorce discussion, but in the end it was I who moved out, and our discussions continued after.

"I feel like I've got my life back," she announced. I was probably sarcastic about it, since I hadn't knowingly stolen her life and didn't know enough about young women to understand. There was enough collateral damage that I had my own wounds to lick.

Nancy took her own life a couple years ago. Her life, for what it's worth, didn't improve for long. She married a guy we both knew (a friend of ours attended the wedding and wore black, she was so pessimistic about the match), and they had a couple children - a boy and a girl. Eventually she and her husband divorced, but not before he held the children hostage at gunpoint and got the state involved in their lives. Nancy was a very self-conscious, almost paranoid person and I'm sure she was horrified. After her sister died, of years of MS, she said goodnight and apparently took pills she had in her purse. She left her son, estranged from her by all accounts, and a daughter.

As I drove to Iowa City yesterday morning to see my clients (a pleasure as well as a second job) the sun was shining and the last of the leaves were showing their color. I sipped my coffee and listened to music, reveling in my relatively new-found ability to travel independently, and feeling little if any back pain. It's been a long summer and now with the crisp air comes the easing of our burdens, our ability to again look at something like enrichment, something other than survival. And I knew then, how Nancy felt in that time she became more independent and before she saddled herself with an even worse relationship than the one we shared.

"I have my life back," I said, to no one, to everyone, and to Nancy, wherever her troubled soul now lies. I hope, for a while, she felt as good about it as I do.

Saturday night bachache reverie

2009-10-17T17:46:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of my friend tonight who has buried his father, his mother and now his aunt in rapid succession, and who after returning from his aunt's funeral related that he was "beat from a long week (actually years) of mourning," and has disappeared from radar.

I know where he is. He's hunkered down wrestling with that dark inertia that descends on us as we face entropy and know with certainty that it's a matter of time, really. He's chasing everyday life and not looking over his shoulder for the next wave of sadness.

He is, as we will all be unless we pass away before our parents, an orphan. My Aunt Peg said to me after her older sister died "she was the only one left who knew me from the start." A lot of us are these days, orphans, that is. Mom still recognizes me and that is some recompense, but its not really her. We're writing our own histories now, the keepers of the past.

Yesterday I labored over files and to day I helped move a couple chairs and tonight I ache. A wise woman who had a similar trauma to mine said that her pain was her reminder that it's good to be alive. It's my reminder that I'm free again from the confines of invalidism, driving, working, playing a little, and at the end of the day nursing my aches and pains, and glad to have them.

When I had surgery for my fractured face, the surgeon was concerned that I might aspirate into my wired mouth after surgery and either die or aspirate or gross everybody out. My friend organized time off for Robyn and a host of friends to sit by me and then went home, got sick and fell asleep. Didn't come back for his second shift. Left me a text message. Didn't call the our other grumpy friend who felt particularly awkward sitting there with me in a gown, my ass hanging out, taking a dump in the bathroom and him having to listen. I was wishing everyone would just leave at that point and didn't get it. Grumpy friend was disgusted and suggested it was the same old shit, not following through.

That's not the point, though. The point is that I might have died and my friends were afraid for me. That someone would panic over my passing and try to organize me to safety is a beautiful thing. To realize that the crisis is over and fuck up a few details is a small thing.

Love is love. Brush it off and get on with it.

Dog day

2009-10-06T04:27:00.000-07:00

Tye has a number of jobs, but his main job is getting you to throw things so that he can catch them. He will do this at any time and under any conditions, with any item handy. His favorite item to get you to throw is his chipmunk.

The chipmunk is a stuffed pet toy, sufficiently realistic, except that real chipmunks are not covered with dog saliva. It occurs in pet stores, and, if you visit Thompsonville, your lap. If you pick it up and fling it away in horror, the games have begun.

Here are various shots of Tye doing what makes him happiest. Happier than humping. Happier than eating out of the sink. Happier than cheese off the counter.

Caitlin took all these pictures. Good girl!

Again, my son will question my masculinity

2009-09-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

. . . but that's the way it goes. I wanted to get close up pictures of the rose of sharon blossoms last year but there were japanese beetles all over them, munching happily. This year I learned if you put out bug bags with attractant you get bugs from miles away migrating to your yard. More than you could ever catch in bags because it's a sexual pheremone.

I took a really cool picture of a japanese beetle last year, much to the disgust of my brother in law, Greg, who views them as the enemy. Even one's enemy can be attractive. Anyway, since they are not so horny, there are fewer of them this year, which is a blessing.

There's a little robber fly in this one. This fly is colored like a bee, but not really shaped that way. This must work for him. We are not always what we seem and this is usually a survival strategy. I seem to be a harmless middle aged man, so there you go. My goal is to be increasingly less harmless.

I'm well. I have a new non-narcotic pain reliever, which is nonetheless an opioid, and helped me get some stuff done today even though my back began rebelling early. I'm not sure what I did yesterday, other than see two new clients. There isn't a one to one correspondence between when I exert and when I have aches and pains. It was manageable today with a light dose and Wikipedia says this stuff isn't addictive except at the maximum dose, which I am nowhere near. Most of the time Tylenol 500s work well. I helped get the house clean and did some shopping and took little breaks and it all got done. This is more than I can say for my macho son who has done absolutely nothing we have asked him to do today, claiming fatigue. I'm an asshole dad so I suggested that he was too exhausted to do anything with anyone including the Xbox and he seemed to begin to move. It's looking like rain and I don't think the lawn is going to get mowed. Nor is his laundry going to get done or his room clean. His grounding will last until tomorrow when there's probably something he'll want to do. So it goes. Yelling at him doesn't make me feel better and still doesn't get the job done.

Rose O' Sharon was a character in the Grapes of Wrath. She nursed a dying man after her infant died as the family rode from Oklahoma to California, the promised land during the depression. These days there's no place to migrate to, except perhaps Alaska and I don't believe they are promising anything there.

I'd actually really enjoy mowing the lawn. It was one of the jobs I found satisfying, along with shoveling the snow. I liked being strong. Picking up rocks and making walls and shoveling holes and planting things. It has been strange to be weak, anemic. Atrophy has been almost alarming at times. Nowadays, I'm gaining my strength and can see progress. It's easier to have pain when one can see a progression. Robyn's back pain isn't like that and I'm noticing the difference. At some point I suppose I'll come to the conclusion that, in the words of the sage Jack Nicholson, this is "as good as it gets."

I suppose it won't be good enough.

Tough.

Flying dogs observed in Iowa

2009-09-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

Caitlin took this picture of Tye doing his favorite "job." His rule is that he must catch the chipmunk before it hits the ground. Dogs have rules. Don't think they don't. Not bad for a nine year old dog.

Speaking of old dogs, I am feeling a lot better. Back on the campus at work, I'm walking a lot and climbing a lot of stairs and feeling the "burn" less and less. Running will be entirely another matter, but the first day back when I took the stairs I felt like I'd run a few miles. Now they just feel like stairs.

What I'm experiencing these days is more of an ache than a pain. I resort to the "big" drugs at night, but during the day, my aches are very manageable. On days when I "work out" more, I feel more achy at night and I understand that is to be expected. I have the "advantage" of knowing how it feels when all the surgeon's good work comes unglued, and this definitely does NOT feel like that. It feels like progress. I wear my lighter brace as little as possible: when in the car or when doing back intensive tasks such as vacuuming.

I go back to Madison for CT scans and a final pronouncement on October 8th. I expect to go get my license and be back on the road again. It's time. It will be wonderful to have some more independence. My Iowa City caseload is filling up and I'll need more flexibility. The Corps Members will be arriving on campus in a few weeks and we'll be hopping. I'd like to get going with some physical therapy so that I can look left and right without the "full torso pivot" move. I'm not sure how well I'll ever be able to look up. It may be a bend-at-the-waist deal from here on out. We'll see.

Our family is falling back into a more normal routine. Autumn has us in its grasp, getting us back to routine and nudging us with shorter days, foggy mornings, and crisp air. It's good to be alive, active, to wiggle my toes. It's good to value our lives and the good things we do. As I drove to Wisconsin in June I felt I was getting away from the grind of my life. I guess I sure as Hell was.

Having fought like Hell to get my life back, I hope I don't forget how much it's worth.

Merry gold

2009-09-14T17:18:00.000-07:00

I have a great little photo shareware program called Gimp that I'm half way learning to use. I still haven't figured out to do what I set out to do but this one turned out okay. The morning glory was psychedelic all by itself.

The Infectious Disease Clinic at UW called me today to let me know that my labs are normal. This means that I no longer have to wolf down antibiotics for the first time since June. They're going to test me again in a few weeks after no antibiotics and see if seratia has been hiding out and has started growing again. Dr. Mejicano is wily and knows all their sneaky tricks.

It is cool and a little sticky out. The corn is turning brown at the edges and you can hear it rustle now in a breeze. The cicadas are keening, louder and louder in waves and then dying out again. For a moment, everything is just as it should be.

Morning Glory

2009-09-13T04:15:00.000-07:00

I went out to get the paper the other morning and in the middle of the worst of our grass, right down by the curb where all the sand and salt ends up, was a single morning glory.

I got great news in Madison and can now wear my lighter brace or no brace at all depending on my level of activity and on how I feel. Range of motion is a really wonderful thing. I'm miserably stiff and inflexible, particularly my neck. Because my spine is now bent forward, I think I'm having to hold my head up with somewhat different muscles. At any rate the muscles currently engaged were complaining mightily of overwork yesterday.

I've learned that the aches come and go and I can feel myself getting stronger as I "pay" for yesterday's exertion. An ache is certainly better than the sensations I was experiencing in June, or in July for that matter, when complications were arising.

Our friend and sister Katie suggests the pain is a reminder of how good it is to be alive. The man in the Army commercial says pain is the sensation of weakness leaving your body. These days for me an ache or pain is the fee for more freedom and normalcy. I got to sit in a small town bar and look pretty much like the other humans. We were early for a wedding and there were puppies on the floor and children beginning to tantrum because their parents were on beer number two and you know what that means. We enjoyed our drinks and speculated with the bartender about which local wedding we were attending. No one during the entire visit asked what happened to me. I got eye contact!

The young adults are returning to our campus at work. They are full of energy and critical analysis, humor and fun. There's going to be lots of work to do and my motivation is much higher to get my training materials written and polished. Now I have my audience and don't want to disappoint them.

We are bent but we are no longer broken. Knitting together, we piece ourselves into place.

We work to straighten ourselves as we walk and we keep ourselves tidy, the better to be clean and dignified.

To walk along the street and be unremarkable is a piece of luck, not a right. I am lucky enough to have a few upright miles remaining, before I order my online scooter, place a carafe of martinis in the bag, and roll toward the sunset, leaving only a little dust, and a faint whirring noise.

De-friended.

2009-08-30T20:37:00.000-07:00

I've already had a lot of fun with this, but it seems a shame to waste it on Facebook. I made a vow to myself to try to get out of my own head and see what's going on and ever since I've noticed so many things and have had some really exciting experiences. I'm grateful, I'm just sayin'.

I got friended by someone I went to high school with on the aforementioned social network site. Her name isn't important. I'm not even completely sure who she is or was, although I think she ran in a flashier social circle than I. That's how it feels to be that age, so I'm not sure. My classmate is married and considers herself conservative politically (!) and has wonderful grandchildren.

My classmate posted some pictures of things she was doing to get ready for homecoming. There were rows of dresses hanging in plastic in long rows. There were tables of boutonnieres and banners hanging and strangely no people at all. Other pictures showed various people, but no one that I recognized. There were pictures of my classmate but they weren't really close ups and so they didn't help me make out how I was supposed to remember her. But what the heck, right? Wait and see.

My classmate seemed sympathetic when I posted about my adveture at the DOT office. That was nice.

Facebook has inane polls which it uses to mine your personal data for sales and analysis. My classmate answered a poll and indicated to one and all that she did not support removal of "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm not aware that there's anything cooking in this arena -- God removal -- but I'm up for a little discussion.

I'm as big a fan of America as they come, particularly as we seem to have come at least a little to our senses as a nation of late. This Pledge has always bothered me.

I have never been very attached to things as objects worthy of allegiance. It does bother me that the Republic for which it stands gets second billing.

"Under God" was inserted in the '30's or 40's by politicians pandering for votes. One suspects this would be similar to saving Marriage by amending the Constitution.

"Under God" presupposes that we all agree about the Almighty. Religions that evangelize have a natural tendency to minimize the value of other points of view. Because the congressmen were Christian, we are not "One Nation Seeking Nirvana" although undoubtedly some of us are seeking Nirvana, rather than being born again.

Actually our early forefathers were free thinkers, Congregationalists and Unitarians, for God's sake. Their sense of the need for separation of Church and State was palpable.

In 1965, when I used to recite the Pledge, "liberty and justice for all" was just not happening. I knew that. I was a little Unitarian kid.

I commented to my classmate on Facebook that she was reflecting a certain bias. I shared with her my sense of the politicians who inserted God into the Pledge . . . the pandering part.

She commented that I didn't have to say the Pledge if I didn't want to then, did I? I commented that if the Pledge instead demanded that her children stand up every day in school and DENY God, then perhaps she'd feel differently.

And now she is not my friend. Sure was fun. I wonder who she was.

church

2009-08-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

Brief update: the visit to Madison was great, in that Dr. Mejicano, who is great and truly worth the price of admission said my wound was "beautiful," and my labs were "great" and explained very clearly what we're watching and why. He treated us as though we were capable of understanding this stuff and in fact we were. I really love being treated as though I'm capable of understanding my own situation, particularly when the news is good.

As I mentioned, my friend and colleague J.J. is hauling me to work when he can, which is every day this coming week, and that's just the thing for my morale. I work better in my office, get more done, and the interaction and stimulation remind me that I'm part of something that I really love. NCCC is a great place to be these days and soon there will be 160 young people running around our quaint little campus.

The campus is very much like a small college and I have to walk back and forth between my building and our 3rd floor administrative office in the next building. This is more walking than I was doing at home and I can feel it. You don't get stronger if you don't push a little and I was defaulting to the not ineptly named La-Z-Boy far to often.

After a good night's sleep it is easier to have hope and not be so impatient. Yesterday, I went to the DOT to try to get my lapsed driver's license renewed before I passed the 60 day limit. Needless to say, I went as Samatello. I checked in at the desk and got my number, sat in a very uncomfortable chair and waited for an hour, only to be asked if I was under a doctor's care. Good guess, Tonto! I said that I was and that I was not currently driving because of my injury, and would not drive until my doctor released me, but that I'd like to renew my license on time. The woman called the manager.

It turns out that if they suspect you are unable to drive, they put you on a list and require that you fill out a long form, and that your doctor fill it out too, in order to get a license. I suggested that had I not come in in good faith they would never have known that I was not driving because of an injury. The manager agreed, and said that now that she knows, they can't help me. She said if I wanted to take a driving test, I could get a license. I reiterated that I was not driving. She reiterated that I could get a photo ID, but no license. I suggested that this was penalizing me for coming forward and wasting my time and damned poor customer service. "You are free to go," she suggested. I had not been aware that I was in fucking custody, but it was a relief to know. I suggested that it would have been nice if the woman at the first desk, seeing the full body brace I display prominently, could have cued me when I hinted by saying "I am here to renew my license" that this might be a futile mission. The manager again offered me the long form.

After a long night's sleep, I can understand that there are some who will continued to drive when they can look neither left nor right. Most drivers regularly encounter able bodied people who seem to have this disability while driving. As a responsible middle aged citizen who hasn't been behind the wheel since June 17th, I resent being treated as though I am one of these people. I would think that showing up on time to be responsible would count for something. What really makes me mad is the limitation, though. I miss the freedom and independence and the idea that now some dimwit who never met me is enforcing something I am compliant with anyway just adds insult to injury (literally). Having done my best irate citizen imitation I took my fiberglass clad somewhat bizarre form out of that den of iniquity, as the speaker recited "now serving number 657."

I understand that one of the lessons I am to learn here is that, as my son said, I am "not invincible." Apparently, I need reminders. One of these days, I'll be a senior person trying to renew my license and some drone is going to figure out that I'm a hazard to navigation and I'll get my license pulled permanently. I request that my friends and family assure that I am not carrying weapons or sharp objects when that time comes. I may not be entirely cooperative.

Easier to have some faith

2009-08-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

Facebook is ridiculous in a lot of ways, but a lot of folks from my past have found me, and that's mostly gratifying. For those whose gratification escapes me there is the "hide" button. Yesterday, a woman "friended" me and I had to go look to see who she was. One look at her kids and I knew, she was a girl I worked with when I was a new social worker still working at child psychiatry and then doing street outreach.

I won't recount her story here. I'd probably get it wrong, because I wasn't involved in all of it. She experienced unspeakable trauma and for a while used her wit and intellect to protect her awful secrets and her family. Later she used the same wit and intellect to find herself and to heal. The message from facebook was about how she turned out "okay" and had a family and beautiful children who are safe and healthy. She lives nearby and is a professional who works to help children. I am guessing she's on to most of their tricks. I am sure she gives them much of her very large heart.

I used to have an imaginary house on a hill in my mind with a great big porch and a long grassy lawn, and I populated it with kids I knew who I felt needed to escape from their lives and be appreciated. I supposed it was a mental excercise that allowed me to rescue them, even though I could only do a little in real life.

In the end it's not about rescue, of course. I can do what I do because I've been around long enough to observe that people rescue themselves. They grow stronger and healthier and heal themselves. Like the rest of us, they come to approximate normalcy and often to find the things in they long for - family, love, safety, joy.

She thanked me in her message, and she's welcome. I am a priveleged observer.

Road trip

2009-08-28T04:11:00.000-07:00

We're back to Madison for blood (drawn) and twenty minutes with Dr. Infection Control, one George Mejicano. He actually seems to be a very sharp man and is pretty informative. My sedimentation rate and something else are still too high, or were last week, although significantly improved. His job is to get every last one of the bugs that the Ciproflaxin is supposed to kill. My body tells me it's working, but he gets paid to obsess and I'm glad, mostly.

Gets you thinking about what might happen, though, doesn't it? I feel less immune to what might happen than I did this Spring. I'll be happier when the visit with Dr. George is over and I'm walking out, rather than checking in.

I've been back at work for the past two days. A colleague commutes from Cedar Rapids as well and has agreed to let me share gas as he comes to pick me up. What a mensch. He's saving my bacon. (Now there's a sacreligious mix: yiddish, followed by a pork reference. Nasty.) It is great to be back. I have a very nice office and comfy chairs, computer, copier, all the goodies, as well as a sofa to lie down and rest my back on, and permission to do so if need be. Why would a guy NOT go to work?

Because we're on a campus and our administrative offices are in a different building than my office (in the dorm basement, near my people, thank you!) I'm walking a whole lot more than I have been at home. I find I need to rest a while after these jaunts, but I suspect they are just what I need. I can work from home and telecommute if necessary, and I may do so rather than get worn down. Soon our people are coming and we'll have lots to do, so it makes sense to ease back into the groove now.

And, frankly, I'm tired to monitoring my own well being. I would like to expect to be well again, and this requires that I have things to do, to think about, to work on. I fear I'm running the risk of becoming one of those decrepit old goozers who reminisce about their bowel movements and haunt Bishop's, lurking by the cream pie. Get me the fuck off the lazy boy, pretty please.

These days, what I deal with is an ache, not sharp pain, or someone sliced me open pain. It's bone healing pain. I feel it when I remain in a position too long, or after I walk longer than usual. I feel it more as the day goes on. I find changing position, walking, taking short naps, keeping on the Tylenol schedule, and having something to freaking do help a lot.

I am going to have this ache to some degree for a long time, I suspect. On a cold rainy day it may be the cost of doing business. I have it when I stay home. When I go out it goes with me. It says "Why are you thinking about me? Do something."

Cap'n Crunch

2009-08-19T14:26:00.000-07:00


Le Fort I fractures

Le Fort II fractures

Le Fort III fractures

Hey gang! I found my facial fracture on Wikipedia. My documentation says I had Le Fort 1, 2, and 3. Good thing I broke my back for distraction.

It's a good day. Caitlin hauled me to Iowa City and I got organized around my lovely consulting gig. I think I may have a lead on getting myself to and from work, at least some of the time. My office is lovely and I can work better there. I have two sofas to snooze on if I wear out, and permission to snooze to boot. Clocking out, of course.

My back doesn't hurt much today. I believe this will be coming and going.

I love the rain and the cool moist air. Open my windows and let the dust and cobwebs out. Off in the corn, I hear the whisper of October.

Woo-hoo!

2009-08-14T05:38:00.000-07:00

For the first time yesterday, I entered UW Madison Hospital and left on the same day. Stitches are out, the x-rays look good, see you in a month. If they put that to music, I'd sing it. I was in and out in a couple hours and left behind me the enormous feeling of vulnerability I have been carrying around, most obviously since the second, "do over" surgery. The first hint of this, of course, came when I became involuntarily airborne. Details.

This is Walker's kindergarten graduation picture, one of my absolute favorites. He looks about as delighted as I feel. Give hugs.

Retractions, corrections, meas culpa

2009-08-13T05:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a little while since I posted. This is actually good, I think. For one thing, this business of writing about one's self and how one feels all the time can be a bit much. This phase of healing shall be called "enough about me already!" I go to Madison today, tagging along with Geof and Isaac and Bee and they will remove my stitches. I do not anticipate they will keep me, and this is based on some semblance of actual experience, but the fear still lurks, hiding somewhere about mid-spine, that they will. Fear be damned, I am not packing extra.

I have found that working half time, or at least (so far) sitting at my work stating half time waiting for all the right components to show up so I can have a virtual private network, I can manage pretty well. I get sorer as the day progresses, but it's not unmanageable. In fact, it's more managable with reduced pain meds that do not make me feel stoned. You'd think a guy who used to work pretty hard to maintain a buzz would appreciate being stoned on pain meds, but there you go. I guess I like to CHOOSE.

The best and most amusing news has to do with the toilet paper and neighbor confrontation saga. Walker came home from cross country practice the other day with the news that it was HIS friends who had done the dirty deeds, and NOT Bryce, the much maligned neighbor boy. Robyn went over and confessed to the neighbors that they were innocent. I am proud of her. We learned a few things, too.

We learned that the neighbor lady who identified our innocent buddy is not so astute. We know that when things are out of control, identifying local criminals may not be the best diversionary activity. We learned never to discount the capacity of Walker's numbskull cross country team-mates. Ah, karma. Ran over my dogma again!

Think good thoughts. My plan last time was to get the outpatient stuff done and then have my first beer since the wreck. This is still the plan, I think. I hope. Please. It's time to move on. No do overs. Really. I have not pushed limits, I have endured Minerva's determined embrace, I have taken my pills and learned to eat smaller portions, chewing thoroughly. In honor of our old friend Frank, I have glued purple feather to my bum and danced suggestively in the back yard moonlight.

I may continue that one. It was kind of fun.

It's recycled but I like it.

2009-08-07T14:35:00.000-07:00

I won't say which friend described me very gently as "pouty" (but her initials are Dede!). Scared is what I was. I don't like to think of myself has helpless. Thinking that way makes for long nights. So what about this makes me different from anyone else?

So Robyn convinced me that trying to go cold turkey off pain meds wasn't sane and a nurse in Madison explained that both the antibiotics I am on make a person prone to nausea (which is you see also an indicator of increased infection) and the gently blunt Dede has offered her magic skills (and it must mean something that I'm going to take her up on this. I'm still uptight but I've been handled by so many strangers lately this'll be a pleasure, I know). A friend from work came by and caught me up. Brought me the chip I'll use to work from home next week. And so it starts to fit together.

If you page back a few weeks there'll be some doggerel about how I'm going to learn somehting meaningful from all this. True and low hanging fruit, that. You don't get to choose what you learn. That's the deal.

Walker's home!

Low

2009-08-06T07:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of young men eating after Caitlin's prom. Nice. They didn't get anything on their jackets (and, one hopes, on their dates).

I was very excited to get my wires out and my jaw loosened. I didn't count on my jaw getting used to being closed, or on my brace pushing my lower jaw up, keeping my head back. Ironically, my mouth is now NOT big enough. Chewing is strange because my teeth are not quite where they used to be. Close enough, but I'm not chewing on steak yet.

The endless "recovery" is what is getting to me. I get to thinking I'm feeling better and some test tells me maybe I'm not. It gets to the point that I feel like I can't trust my own perceptions. Am I feeling better or am I just telling myself that. Am a nauseous because I'm still infected by something or is it just the two antibiotics, the pain meds and a relatively empty stomach doing it? If I'm sleepy a lot, is that me healing, or my body telling me I'm not really okay?

The little hole in my back that has been a concern is very, very small and does not seem to really be infected. It's an enormously long scar and it makes sense that it all would not be "perfect." I talked to my boss and I'm going to telecommute part time next week, which will be great. I may try to go there and work as well, just to get a feel for how things will work. I told him it might mean that I end up sleeping for a little while on one of my sofas. He's okay with that kind of break. I'm lucky.

Although I'm not hungry enough, not busy enough, and don't have enough energy. I really do think I'm on the mend. Right now. I'm just incredibly, overwhelmingly tired of being in this process. I can usually will my way through most of life's events. Damn.

Worship is good.

2009-08-02T09:39:00.000-07:00

I'm doing some worshiping right now. It's Sunday, after all. Throwing a little worship out your way if you checked in, helped out, offered to help out. Throwing a little good karma back at all of you good karma flingers. I don't have a lot of close family. This must be what that feels like.

We are feeling grateful for the outstanding array of talent, imagination, intelligence and humor you represent. And you appear to be on our side! How fortunate. This has been the first time since childhood when I really needed my people.

And you showed up. Thanks.

Amen.

Amongst the fellowship there has been some controversy. Some of you who have been following our lives through the facebook portal may be aware that we have been t p'd. Caitlin and Walker cleaned it up but really didn't feel as though anyone in their crowds would be doing this sort of thing.
Hey, I'm recovering from surgery! No one's asking me to clean up. Case closed, eh?

I went to bed about 10:00. I'm recuperating. The kids were still out back being good. I was tired. I fell asleep some time after 10:30 p.m. Caitlin came and woke me later to inform me that we'd been t p'd again. I responded "zmoprhg." I looked out, and my kids were cleaning up the mess again! My kids! Wow. Walker said "it's a lot easier now than when it get's dew on it." Wow.

As some of you may know, our neighborhood has some families who have been here a good long time, and we have some homes that are, well, cursed. They sit empty for a long period of time and then someone moves in who inevitably proves to be, well, shall we say further evidence in favor of the curse.

Jackie, who has been here as long as there was a development, lives across the street and is a lawn ranger. She mows twice on the diagonal. An avid mower, she will not let her grown sons mow. One of her sons spends hours and hours out front detailing hiw WR-X. Said twig unable to avoid proximity to well known tree. Jackie was up and saw our next door neighbor kid (from a cursed house) enthusiastically t p'ing our yard. She called Robyn, who was out with her friend, and Robyn called Caitlin. Caitlin went next door and rang the bell until the mother of the house came. Caitlin reported the youmg Bryce had t p'ed our yard, possibly for the second time, and she hoped that their household was now as awake and disturbed as ours was.

Moxie.

The mother said she'd "talk to" Bryce in the morning. However that goes, we have our neighborhood posse on the watch.

I'm smiling, goddammit.

2009-08-01T06:28:00.000-07:00

I got a great shareware photo program called Gimp a while back. It lets me take a second look sometimes. In this case, I was poking through photos prior to deletion. We'd been looking at the brace shots in terms of the brace.

That's how I found the picture Robyn took that turned out to be a very lonely silhouette.

This might be an interesting one to turn black and white.

There. What do you think? I had to sharpen it up a little.

I have increasing amounts of energy and decreasing amounts of pain. I've not messed with the original pain dose for discharge. This was a step down from the hospital dose. I think another step down will be in order tomorrow. I'm hungry. As we all know, Tuesday is the day I get to eat again. I hope someone is telling my stomach. I'm trying to keep him busy.

There is still drainage in the bandage, although far less than in the last one. [Nancy, there is still yellow in the mix. Lots of clear and red tinged as well. ] Minerva constantly rides my back, reminding me that I must comply with the expectations of my healers. If this is really the range of motion I was supposed to have (last time), then I was really out of line. Yo. Because Minerva rides my back, I feel freer to move parts of me she does not control. The safe feeling of the law abiding citizen of an authoritarian regime.

Did I mention the wiring in my jaw comes out Tuesday morning? Dang! No worries after that. I'll eat myself back to good health.

We had a campus clean up day with the Braille School staff in Vinton a few weeks ago. We have a huge campus that we all enjoy and there are not enough hands for a good spring clean up without us. We trimmed 100 yards of hedge and in the process revealed a goldfinch nest with two live birdlets and an egg. The goldfinch is a lovely bird, our State Bird, and so the loss of this nest is, of course, a loss to the entire combined communities, Avian and Human. But I digress.

We lowered the nest into the bush farther, but some wily predators had been watching our work. Note to self: you are not as sneaky as a goldfinch. The nest was scattered. There was no sign of the finchlets. The egg sat here in the bush. I think it was already broken when the nest went down. The predators didn't bother with it. After you've had fresh finchlet, day-old eggs just don't cut it.

A number of people ask me whether I will continue to ride a bicycle. I was not really a bike fanatic. What I was doing was training for the BRMA ride. In my mind it was about not letting my physical conditioning exclude me from having fun with my friends. Riding that road trip was a personal fitness goal. If I could ride up long hills and travel 50 miles per day with my some of my best friends, it would be a pretty good start to the summer. I was looking at biking as another way to get the "run" in that I seem to need three times per week in order to stay reasonably trim and somewhat less crabby. Here's one reason I'd really like to get back on the bicycle:

I only could ever ride half way up the long hills before stopping. There the wind sings and the view is spectacular. It is a view of which one feels a peculiar ownership. Perhaps that's from grinding up this far.

I never thought much about the down hill portion, other than associating it with fun, gliding pleasure. I have a pretty nice old racing bike and high pressure tires and I'm a big guy. Downhill and momentum have been my friends.

I think it was the day before I wrecked that I clipped Chris's rear tire with my front one, in town, and ended up on my back with my bike beside me, on concrete.

Oh, I just can't imagine even being in that position now. Oh. I have to go the bathroom.

Long awaited Minerva Pictures and gross details about wounds

2009-07-31T06:37:00.000-07:00

This is my second full day at home from the hospital. My basic medical goal is to seal up the wound on my back, thus demonstrating that the infection in my back is going or gone. The infection worked its way down the screws in my spine into the bone in my spine. This is osteomyelitis (someone is going to have to help with spelling). I started thinking: infection in bone close to spine. Yikes! The wound looked a little leakier yesterday, the first wound check since the big car ride back from Madison. I think the driving probably accounts for it but . . . it's also yellower. Who knows really? We took 36 hours to get to the bandage so there's no fair comparison over time and it's all subjective. I have no fever. I'm hungry as Hell. I have more energy and I have less pain than last time. My slow healing skin is asserting itself as an actual organ and is going to take it's own sweet time. Dr. George Mexicano at UW Infection Control is my new best friend. I'm making love to a bottle of Cipro. I have promised Robyn that I won't even think about reducing anything or increasing anything until Sunday.

Here are pictures of Minerva, my brace. She is beautiful in that she protects me.

I thought I had a casual expression on my face in these pictures. Hmmm. I'm going to work a little bit with the image on the left. I have many pixels to play with.

A lot of the time, being a patient in this medical system feels a lot like this:

Aw! Great picture, though, eh? S.

Update

2009-07-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

Crappy cameras take good pictures, too.

[Condition update: I'm still draining a little. It's not an alarming amount and I don't have a fever. I have a good appetite this time and am in less pain. We go back to Madison in two weeks to see me again. I slept very well last night and woke in pretty significant pain. After we got the meds on board I was fine. Hell, I took a trip yesterday. Did I mention that on Tuesday at 9:00 I have an appointment to have my jaw un-wired? I probably didn't mention, knowing how withdrawn I am.] Where was I? Looking for a comfortable way to compute.

Crappy cameras take good pictures, too.

Discharge today

2009-07-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

Hey all! I'm awaiting discharge here. Pharmacy is coming and then the nurse will let me go. My status is as follows:

1. Infectious disease has identified the bacteria that was infecting my bones. It came from the swab done at home. They were mostly dead by the time we got here and could not be detected on the swabs done at surgery. This bacteria is best treated by Cipro, which is more effective taken orally, and so the pick line is out. They put it in because they believed they'd be sending me home on IV antibiotics and so it made sense to make things "easier" while I was here, too.

2. I have a new brace that is more awkward looking, but is more comfortable than the other one because it just cradles my back. There is just no way to hurt myself in this thing.

3. My wound is not leaking and looks "beautiful" according to Dr. Mexicano, the infectious disease guy.

4. I feel pretty good. I'm taking less pain med than at the last discharge, my upper fixtures have mostly fused, and I don't have the other fresh trauma and swelling to deal with.

5. My job keeps pumping pooled hours into my benefit package and so I'm still collecting my paycheck and they are telling me not to worry. Wow.

So, better informed and more confident, we return to Iowa. Next big day is August 4, when my wires come out. I'm going to go eat some hummus.

UW nurses definitely nicer

2009-07-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

Well folks, I though it might have been the Oxycodone, but after two visits to UW Hospitals I have to tell you I'm getting great patient care up here. The neurologists are all over me, the pain meds are managed well and, unprofessionally speaking, the nurses are a bunch of babes. I'm not talking just physical qualities, either. My friend Mark Jensen and I used to talk about the "bran muffin" theory of women. The idea was that the dating world was full of "Little Debbies" and even "Ho-Hos" who were sweet and good looking but lacked content and nutrition and thus did not stick with you, left you wanting more. The answer was the "bran muffin." This is a woman of substance, nutritious beauty who invigorates and ennervates you. Lots of bran muffins here on the nursing staff. They like me because I have cognition and say "please" and "thank you." I have not told them about my theory.

Medical update:

- the wound is leaking but for a wound this long this is to be expected. To be exact, it was leaking yesterday afternoon. Does not seem to be doing so now.

- I am on MONSTER intravenous antibiotics which are calibrated to swabs taken from the wound.

- They put in a pick line for convenience. Not a big deal to have done but it involves a catheter that goes down the brachial artery (armpit) to the aorta. Mmmm. Aorta. That's serious. This was actually some time ago, but I didn't mention it. It's really better because they disconnect me from all IV when I'm not getting meds.

My mood is a lot better. I was so very sad when they told me I had to readmit. Kevin, I really did not appreciate how you and Diana felt when you got bad news. My deal is not really life and death, but from this perspective I got a little taste of how it must have felt. It was clearly the right thing to do, though.

I'm sitting in a chair and Robyn is taking a snooze on my bed. The chairs at the UW leave something to be desired. It was R2's turn for the comfy spot.

Back in the saddle

2009-07-26T11:55:00.000-07:00

No need to understand 'em.

I had one of the lowest nights of my life the night I was readmitted here. Go back and start over.

In the end, it was the right thing to do. There was infection in my wound and it weakened the rods and screws' hold. Dr. Silay said the just pulled them out. The upper stuff was fine. They hosed me out and lengthened the reinforcement down my back. You medical folks, it goes down and is anchored at T8, I believe. I've just been fitted for a Minerva brace, which will really not allow me to mess up. I think it will be hot and sweaty, but we can decorate it and stuff.

It's good to be post surgery and back to the big job of healing. I get my wires out of my jaw on August 4th. I think I'll be out of here Tuesday or Wednesday. When the medication is balanced I am not in much pain. It's a big ole wound, though.

I sure appreciate all the love and support coming from all sorts of places. Look around and count the things you're thankful for.

Recycling a cold bird

2009-07-24T06:53:00.000-07:00

I was readmitted to UW hospitals yesterday after an outpatient follow up appointment. The lowest screws on my back are backing out and so it's not stable. The reason for this seems to be an infection that weakened and "annoyed" surrounding tissue. Now the doctors are in the process of figuring out things:

How bad's the infection, is the antibiotic working? (We think so.)

How do you anesthetize someone whose jaw is wired shut? I'm hoping they just take the wires out early, but I don't think they will. This may mean a temporary tracheotomy. I don't want one.

When's the best time to go in and extend the "structure" of rods lower into my back so that it becomes stable and secure. This depends on where the infection is at, both in terms of location and "course" (are you almost done yet, little germs?) Dr. Sillay is willing to hang on to me for a few days to get this right. This is not necessarily the best news but it's probably good practice.

I sat around in despair for a few hours last night, and I can call that up pretty easily right now. It seems like this never ends and something keeps being added. I have been out of work more than a month and there appears to be no end in sight. Or at least it's another month off.

Ended up watching a John Wayne movie. The Duke was wise and strong.

By noon, my understanding is we'll have a much better picture of what the plan is. I suspect I'm coming out of the hospital with a hole in my neck and one of those metal halos on my head. Perhaps we can drape it with prayer flags.

The bird? I only have so many photos on my laptop drive. This month has been a cold bird.

Ah, life!

2009-07-22T06:40:00.000-07:00

With the assistance of my wife and my good friend Seth, I participated in my life yesterday. It was grand. Robyn gave me a ride down to Iowa City and I spent some time at UAY and saw a client of mine, of whom I'm particularly fond. We did talk about me, briefly, but because he is a teen and has troubles, we got down to his business rather than mine. A welcome relief. One doesn't notice one's self so much when one is noticing others. (Just a little truth I thought I'd pass on for you.)

Tomorrow I meet with my brilliant neurosurgeon (the one who put me back together) and we'll see if there's a next phase. I'm a healed unit and more flexible by a long shot than I was even a week ago. I find that mostly it's a matter of endurance. As I get tired, I hurt more. Then I rest. I'd like to work part time and rest when I need to. We'll see friends while we're in Mt. Horeb (not going to do the one day mega-drive this time).

Caitlin's having 10 friends over tonight for a party (and Walker gets one, too, a friend - not an entire party). We will have a chocolate fountain. I'm hoping the rain clears so they can use the back yard (since the deck has been added, it's really nice) but it's looking like more rain. These are great kids and it's good to have them around, reassuring even. Caitlin and her friend were hanging out yesterday talking and soon I became the woodwork - sitting in the other room. Hearing them talk about friends and work and their own lives reminded me that she's not so different from the rest of us, my daughter. She's earnestly trying her best to make sense out of life. She's got good values and humor and intellect. Her friends are similarly reasonable, for the most part, also trying to make sense out of things. Caitlin's parties aren't a lot different from ones my friends and I had when I was a teen. We'd chase the dinosaurs and early mammals out of the back field and away we'd go! My job, as human-back-brace-with-no-jaw-and-man-inserted, will be to wave, smile, and get my muttering ass out of the way. Will do, gratefully.

Somehow, during all the frenzy, I managed to lose both my belts. Maybe Dr. Hamilton will wire my pants up.

following?

2009-07-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

On the other hand, I'm not sure I'd sign up and be listed as someone's "follower." Let's see.

Following

2009-07-20T08:11:00.001-07:00

I was poking around and saw that Kevin has it set up so that he's notified every time I write something new on the Laundromat blog. I added a "Gadget" that will allow you to do this, with this and other blogs. On the other hand, is Kevin stalking me?