Solstice 2004

Solstice 2004

Dear Ones,
I am starting to believe that instead of 49 years of experience, I have one year of experience relived 49 times. Am I a victim of an early, pleasant dementia, or a selective hippocampal lesion causing short term amnesia, so that I forget that I am reliving the same thing over and over, and do nothing to change the script? Star of “Groundhog Year”? I must be hoping that you are also all pleasantly demented, so at least you don’t realize you have heard this one already. My kind of crowd. Don’t stop me...you HAVE heard this one... Now hear ye, hear ye, all rise for the 13th Annual unsolicited unexpurgated and wholly inexplicable Solstice Rant.
The major theme of the year, from our perspective, has been the events in the Middle East, and the incomprehensible public ratification of our involvement there. It got personal when stepson Nathanael was deployed for a year to Baghdad with the 759th MP Battalion. He has been guarding convoys and such, generally occupying the gun turret of a Humvee, where he gets a great view of skinny little fellows in colorful headgear, bearing AK-47s and RPG launchers, who have not heard the news that we came to help them, and who, inexplicably, want to kill us. Poor ignorant bastards. He has four more months in hell. Despite his perspective, he has no more clue than you about why we are over there in hell. I know why, and I will tell you--Only ask yourself this question—If those people had no oil, do you think anyone in the West would know or care if one medieval tribe slaughtered another medieval tribe by the hundreds of thousands? Let me answer that for you—NO—That would get a byline on page 11, and a half a column-inch of print, along with the rest of the “Bus Plunge Kills 38” stories from the stringers in South America or wherever. They could, and would stay mired in the Dark Ages, and we would not give a rip, except for the unhappy accident of their sitting on the bulk of the world’s oil reserves. And since we continue to burn mega-tanker loads of the stuff in our down-armored Humvees and SUVs, all of a sudden “we care,” and we “want to do the right thing.” My suggestion is we should all go out tomorrow and buy a hybrid vehicle and a bicycle, and ship all the Suburbans and Expeditions to Saudi, and then let them all fight it out to the last Hadji standing.
Meanwhile, the more we fight with them the more we come to resemble them. Our country is now dominated by mullahs in business suits instead of turbans, misquoting Bibles instead of Korans, and we the people have acquiesced to that fact. We have meekly given over our civil rights, and even our ability to express a modest doubt, lest we be branded traitors and hounded out of our tract houses. I saw a survey today that half of the good citizens surveyed believed that all Muslims living in America should have to register, and report their movements to the government. Did somebody replace my fellow citizens with Right Wing Ken and Barbie Dolls while I slept? This was not what they taught me in 3rd grade. We pledged allegiance and we hid under our desks on command for nuclear attack drill, but we didn’t register Muslims. Anyway, we in our teensy tiny Blue State, perched on the edge of the Red Wave down the middle of the country, remain amazed, appalled, perplexed and overwhelmed by recent events, and while I know there is a division of opinion on the subject of the election even among my friends, I am still dumbfounded beyond words.
Catherine has responded to all this anxiety by pouring her considerable energies into organizing people into quilting beautiful quilts for wounded soldiers. She has made, or caused to be made and delivered 181 “Quilts of Valor” to date, distributed by Army and Navy Chaplains at various military hospitals around the country. You can see her in action at www.quiltsforsoldiers.com where she also runs the website from home. She has made a TV appearance, and has had radio and newspaper interviews. This is hard for us to process, when she normally won’t call for pizza, out of shyness. Her other passion lately has been boating, and therein lies another tale. We have, as past readers will recall, a trawler, on which we tour the Chesapeake and its tributaries. This summer I arranged all my work in a three-week straight work-like-a-dog, one week off schedule, and we managed 4 week-long trips here and there, including Washington DC via the beautiful Potomac. On the last one of the season, we stopped in Annapolis, and met up by chance with the broker who sold the boat to us originally. Well the wily villain a had bigger, better boat for us, and one day later a buyer for our boat at about our original price paid, so next thing we knew, we were selling Chance, and negotiating for an older Grand Banks 49. “Black Swan” was the best-maintained and beauteous GB49 one could imagine, and we bit. So we went from boat to boat in a week, with no more intention or forethought than a mayfly on a breezy afternoon. I took our only trip to date across the Bay to lay the boat up for the winter, and we have otherwise been boaters in name and expense only. But it is a nice daydream for those days when it is colder than the gleam in Scott Peterson’s eye. Like today, for instance.
Michele meanwhile has moved off to Chicago with Eric, but has been growing a grandchild, due to see daylight in April. “It’s a boy!” according to the ultrasound gal, who saw his little tallywhacker right there in grey and white. They sent a cool pic of the little guy waving at us in an e-mail. (No, not the tallywhacker one.) Awwwww-- our first baby picture. Eric’s little boy Kagan (8) was out to visit with us for a boat ride this summer, just to break me in gently to the Grandpa thing.
Nat’s world is detailed above. He had a 3 week R and R visit around Thanksgiving, and was remarkably well and serious and mature. It was amazing to see him, and I am so proud of him. How he got on that plane and went back is hard to imagine, but he wouldn’t let his buddies down. He talks about very little except looking forward to having a dog and a wife and a peaceable life on his return.
Hannah is at the Naval Academy Prep School (NAPS) in Newport, RI. It is
basically math, physics and chemistry boot camp for her, since she was already harder than woodpecker lips on the physical fitness side. We have visited there a couple of times for mandatory football games-- “mando fun” for the Candidates. She is doing well, but chafing at the inevitable grind of a regimented military life. She noted with regret that she had some liberty time, and felt uncertain what to do, since no one was telling her. Her Mom continues to refer to the place as “school”, and her living quarters as a “dorm”. “It is not a school, Mom, it’s a BASE. It’s not a dorm, it’s a BARRACKS. We screw up, and people DIE.” Her cussing proficiency is now in the top 1%.
Everett is in China all year, on his Junior Year Abroad, with Youth For Understanding. A slacker in four languages. He is with a family in Beijing, doing very well, getting not terribly much out of math, physics and chemistry boot camp done entirely in Mandarin, but getting along famously in English class. He is reading Mandarin and understanding most of what is going on these days. We get him back in July, when the plan is to go and pick him up, and tour around a bit, with him as tour guide and translator. He has been writing excruciatingly funny letters home, detailing his Ebonics lessons to his Chinese colleagues, among other adventures. (Ebonics being his fourth language) I expect his senior year at home will be, uh, interesting. He should be pretty rammy under house discipline again, but we will see. I suppose Catherine and I will have to stop doing the wild thing just anywhere the mood strikes us, and get back into the routine of wearing clothing and locking the bedroom door again, but I suspect we can adjust. The dogs will surely miss the entertainment.
As for me, I just finished my exams at Concord Law for my third year, and am awaiting grades. My fourth and final year and the Bar Exam a year from February are the last major hurdles. It seems impossible, but it will soon be over. I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I started this...work is work, cramped, busy, and impossible, now the more so in the midst of a year-long construction project leading to a new ER. My patients remain the constant source of amusement you’ve come to expect. I had a visit from “Moondoggy”, a local drunk and crackhead of some regional fame. He arrived by ambulance with his eyes squinched up against the glare of our bare fluorescent lights. “I cain’t see.” was the complaint. “What happened, Moondoggy?” says I. “I got up to pee, and I couldn’t see.” “Did you turn on the light?” I asked, helpfully. “A’course, Motherfucker, an’ I still couldn’t see.” “Have you been drinking?” I asked. “You always ask me dat, Motherfucker.” “That’s only because you seem to be drunk all the time.” “ Yeah, Motherfucker, I been drinkin’, so what?” “How long have you had this problem—just tonight?” “No,” says he, “I done had it a year.” “A Year!” I exclaim. “Did you see a doctor about it ever in that time?” “Yeah. I seen Dr. Smith” (local Ophthalmologist) “And what did she say?” “She say come back in a year.” With that he looked straight at me and vaulted the bedrail like Jackie Joyner-Kersee enroute to gold, and strode out into the night. “I’m going to a real hospital.” I’m not sure, but I think he could see. I meant to correct my name for him for when he wrote to our patient advocate about his unsatisfactory experience in our ER with Dr. Motherfucker, but I never got the chance. Maybe next time. Anyway, nothing else is constant, except that I am no nearer to retiring than last year. The people next door to me won the Lotto for a part of that $210 Million pot you might have seen in the news. So they are all set, but the lightning hasn’t struck here. It struck so close I could smell the ozone, but not here. We send the dogs out each morning with the admonition “Go wake up the millionaires!” (Good Dogs!) I am stuck dealing with the chronically anxious and addicted, for whom “Nothing works but Percocet, Doc.” And, unfortunately, even that doesn’t work. Actually I bless the chronically anxious, because without them, I would have very little to do. As long as that segment of the population is sure that this bump means CERTAIN DEATH if they don’t rush in, there will be work for me. If they ever figure out a cure for anxiety that really works, I am screwed. Speaking of that, I am looking forward, or more accurately backward to my first colonoscopy, a present to myself for turning fifty. That will NOT be on Good Morning America, fear not. Just another notch in the ratchet on the way to oblivion. Can’t wait.
Our one bright spot this year was a cruise on Royal Caribbean. We decided to have a last hoo-hah with the kids before they scattered, and so Hannah, Everett, Shu-Ting Cheung, our exchange student, and Cath and I boarded an enormous floating smorgasbord, rolled up our collective sleeves and commenced to inhaling vast quantities of high calorie food from Miami to Haiti, Jamaica , Caymans, and Mexico and back to Miami. We swam (after waiting an hour after eating, which limited the swimming to one ten-minute session on day 3, after the post breakfast buffet snack and before the pre-lunch appetizer browse), parasailed, dove to 800 feet in a Beebe submersible, rode horses in the surf, scuba-ed and shopped, and generally contributed to the world’s economic recovery for a solid week. That was the first time we ever did anything fun, in the kids’ estimation, so at least we got to mark that in their memory bank on the good side of the ledger, not that it makes up for the lifetime of boredom to which we have otherwise subjected them. Poor ignorant bastards.
And so, dear friends, another spin and another “click” in the wheel has passed, and I find us again struggling to make sense of it all, and to reach out for reassurance that you are just as lost as I am. But the shadows grow darker and the lights more distant and flickering, so we must draw together the forces of reason and decency, though the circle be smaller, and defend what we know is right and true. History tells us that the Dark Ages could descend upon us again, unless we rise from our complacency and resist the barbarians. Who can but thrill at Tennessee National Guard Specialist Thomas Wilson asking Rumsfeld when they could stop scavenging dumps for discarded steel to armor their Humvees, a question for which the only answer may be the resignation of the Secretary of Defense? What cheer can we take from serious consideration by Jerry Springer of a run for Senate? Is that not the Senate we deserve? But hey, at least we have Arnold Schwartzenegger to show us the way in California, a little Austrian discipline for those unruly Left Coasters. (Isn’t Austrian Discipline a little like Yugoslavian Engineering?) And yet the unruly Boston Red Sox have finally triumphed over the so-called curse of the pinstripes—is that a sign from God? Is God a baseball fan? Is she not a hockey fan?? And what can we make of William Hung being spit into the limelight by American Idol? Only that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public? Fortunately we have Lance Armstrong, carrying the hopes of Americans in general and cancer patients in particular, powering his way past the sneering French into cycling history and major endorsements. Perhaps jiggling our yellow plastic bracelets in unison will allow us to purge from our nightmares at last the terrible sight of Janet Jackson’s skewered right nipple. And we cheer the ascent into space of Spaceship One, burning computer money by the boxcar load. Meanwhile we wait in faithful vigil to Free Martha! I pause for farewells to Spaulding Gray, whose monologues made me cry with laughter, and Iris Chang, whose history of Nanking under the Japanese occupation just made me cry, both victims of the “black dog” of depression. So long, and a heartfelt salute to Pat Tillman, who gave up the American Dream of Dreams to give his life in Afghanistan. Hasta la vista to President Ronnie Reagan, and also Yasser Arafat, who each changed our world, for better and worse. Respect, finally, to Rodney Dangerfield, and a big cheery wave to Fay Wray (get your hands off me, you big gorilla!), and to Rick James, ultimate funkster and drug abuse spokesmodel. Congrats on a smooth transit through the five stages to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and “all systems go” to Gordon “Gordo” Cooper, who had the “right stuff” indeed. And farewell and peace to the 1,306 soldiers killed thus far in Iraq.
So let us gather again, at least in spirit, in the darkest days of winter, confident in the return to light and common sense, happy in memories of great people who touched us in one way or another, and moved on. Let us not allow our paths diverge too far, and for gosh sake, write, call, e, visit, or something. (dammit!)

Love, regards, blasé, blasé, blasé, as the homegirls say--