Karkowski night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.