Solstice 2007

Solstice 2007

Dear Ones:
I can’t complain. Does no good anyway. The good news is: I am not in constant, nor even in intermittent pain from last year’s ice skating/surgery/rehab disaster. No drugs, working full time, I hope at a competent and positive level. Sure, I am clumsy. I drop things, I write a pathetic scrawl, interpretable only to MI-5 codebreakers, but I can’t complain. Small inconveniences, compared to our wounded coming back from Iraq, compared to real disasters here and abroad. So our motto remains “NO WHINING!” Just don’t ask me to open a pickle jar.
We are braced here for the last year of the Bush presidency, countdown clock winding down, and thermometer rising. Should be a rollicking year of efforts at locking in the legacy, staying the course, defeating junk science wherever it should rear its ugly head, and packing the courts with young and studly enforcers of living in the 18th century, whether we like it or not. The follies have already begun, of course, totally aggravating to those of us who have given up on any chance of civil discourse and bipartisan public service. I wish for those things, but no longer believe in Santa.
We are now only a one blue-star family, with Nathanael out of the Army, we hope for good. They have a fine print clause in the enlistment contract, the Individual Ready Reserve, where they retain the right to call you back to duty, for three years after your enlistment is up. Lots of folks have been caught up by this, and find themselves right back in digital camo, totin’ a shootin’ iron, and knocking sand out of their boots. He is just hunkered down, waiting it out. Two years of that remain, and it is a bit nerve-wracking. He is in school at Salisbury University, now thinking of doing Social Work, and chafing at being the old guy (at 30), in a universe of mouth-breathing, gum-cracking clueless teenagers. I don’t envy him that…He is working hard to get back into the academic thing, after a long and ugly hiatus, but persevering, and was relieved to get his first report card containing all A’s and a B. Actually, he never did that before, and we were already way proud of him. But now maybe even he is starting to believe…
Hannah is 21, in her 3rd year at the Naval Academy, having signed on for a 2 plus 5 year commitment by beginning that 3rd year. She is still doing Oceanography, and just looking to the finish line. Speaking of which, she has had a great year of running distance races. She did the Shamrock Marathon, 26.2 miles, in Virginia Beach, in mid March, and completed it, in a freezing, blustery day, in just over 4 hours. She then ran the Marine Corps Marathon, in DC, at the end of October, and was 15 minutes faster, at 3:51 or so. That was just a tune-up run, because she did the JFK 50 miler three weeks later, in just under 10 hours. She said she felt great throughout, and her biggest thrill was that by finishing so well, she qualified for a hundred-miler. Her pictures from the race seem to bear that out—she is just smiling and running along, the finish never in doubt. I had planned to run the Marine Corps Marathon with her this year, as proof to myself of my successful rehab, but an unfortunate encounter during a training run with an unfettered specimen of Canis familiaris ssp. horribilis in July left me gimpy for the rest of the summer, nursing a sprained knee. So I cannot claim to be back to baseline. Maybe this year…
Michele has brought forth another grandbaby, little Lily, who is a beauty, natch. She is so happy and placid, but that will change. Two babies and full time mommyhood is a handful for anyone, and Michele is up to the challenge, though not without some gentle coaching (and gloating) from us. We oldsters can’t wait for their adolescence! Little Jack, our other grandchild, is now almost 3, a sweet and happy little boy, currently sporting a red cast on his cracked lower leg, from a little gravity lesson on the stairs. Michele will be quite buff from carrying two kids around for the next 3-4 weeks. No need for an expensive exercise club membership for her. Her husband Eric is home more, flying around less, and all is well enough. The whole gang came out this summer, with Eric’s son Kagan (age 11), for a boat trip and dinghy sailing on the Nanticoke River. Schweeet. We also had a marvelous Chesapeake summer boating adventure with Moms and Pops and their friends David and Kathy Landrey, navigating from Seaford to Tangier Island, and thence to Washington D.C., and the fabled Capitol Yacht Club, home of famous felons Larry Craig, and Randy “Duke” Cunningham. Moms and Pops are faring well, and remain jolly shipmates, with only an occasional lash of the Cat o’ Nine Tails required to keep them in line.
Everett remains at St. John’s College, now a 20 year-old sophomore. He continues to row with the rowing team, the only interscholastic sport they offer there, besides croquet. I am not making that up. They play a croquet match with Navy yearly, and have a winning record. Anyway, he is more settled into academic life, having endured a bruising first year encounter with his professors’ expectations of something considerably better than anonymous mediocrity. And he has risen to the challenge. They (and he) now believe he belongs there. He spent his summer in Beijing, as slave labor for a translating group. They lured him with a free flight, (still waiting for that reimbursement check) and promises of great wages, but neglected to mention the slum housing, the 12-hour 7-day workweek, and the threats to pull his visa if he didn’t knuckle under. Fortunately, his old host family took him in, and he negotiated his situation to a more tolerable one, all part of the lessons one needs to learn. But his Chinese is at its best ever, and he plots a return next summer as a translator and tourguide for somebody rich and famous, for the Beijing Olympics.
Catherine continues to run her non-profit corporation from her sewing room, still organizing quilt-making and quilt-awarding on a grand scale. She has caused over 15,000 Quilts of Valor to be awarded, and the numbers are growing and growing. I will pause for a bald solicitation of support at this point—like the fund-raising segment at NPR. Please check out her website at www.qovf.org and please consider making a tax deductible donation, to help with postage, website expenses, and the like. It really is a barebones operation, and all funds go toward the goal, of covering every soldier, sailor marine and airman, wounded in any fashion by the War on Terror® (Now back to Some Things Considered.) She has been working hard on publicity, fundraising, and the website, and just had a tribute read into the Congressional Record by our Senator, Tom Carper. He came to the house last week to present a copy, and receive a quilt for display in his office. Nice fellow, especially for a politician. The house has never been cleaner, though we basically just raked all the clutter into rooms where NO ONE MAY GO, and gave the illusion, only briefly, that we are not just crazed magpies in human form. Thankfully, nobody in the Senator’s party had to use the necessarium, though Catherine had painted it in their honor the week prior. That is a scary thing…Catherine with a loaded paintbrush. But I digress.
As for me, (yes, it’s all about me, isn’t it?) I am pleased and surprised to report that I passed the California Bar Exam in February, and am now a licensed attorney in the State of California. That, $2.49, and a 15-minute wait in line will get me surly service and a Grande Latte at the new Starbucks in Seaford, but it is still amazing. So now I have a license to kill, and a license to steal. I have done a very little consulting, with hopes for more, but it will be a long time before I ever make back my tuition. I haven’t even earned enough to pay for my trip to Oakland to take the test. It was a three day meat-grinder of a test, with two days of essays and one day of multiple choice. Only 36.8% passed, but I am glad I was one of those lucky few, because there is no way in hell I would have gone back there to do it again. Catherine made me go in the first place, and I was cussin’ her hourly the whole time I was there. The Dean of Stanford Law School, and possible Supreme Court nominee in the next Democratic administration, Kathleen Sullivan, had previously failed it, but was in the crowd with me this time, and passed. Jerry Brown passed on his third attempt, and Pete Wilson, former governor of California, required a couple of tries. I had my swearin’-in day this month, to avoid an extra year of Bar Association fees, and immediate Continuing Legal Education requirements, but it is official—I am sworn to uphold the Constitutions of the United States and California, and to uphold the law to the best of my knowledge and ability.
My real job has had some twists and turns, just to keep me from ever feeling secure and complacent. We have been through two changes in CEO in two years at our little hospital, which always makes for a shiver in The Force. We ER Docs are a contract group, and serve only at the pleasure of the CEO, so it is always an “opportunity”, as we like to phrase it, when there is a change at the top. But at the same time there has been wholesale change at every exec position, so we have a whole new team to meet and greet, every two months, it seems. Meanwhile, the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, (the Joint) is expected to sweep in unannounced in the first couple of months of 2008, and all attention is now turned to getting ourselves presentable. We really are a good little hospital, and I expect we will be OK, but the mood around the campfire is more like Bastogne ’44 than like “Mr. Rogers.” I get to meet a lot of really nice, well-dressed consultants, though, each a treasure-trove of networking potential, so it’s all good. I bought a couple of power suits, just to get ready.
And lest we forget what we really do, the patient care remains the thing. We have continued to be there for the chronically anxious, the depressed of the world, who seem more numerous, more anxious and more depressed. Seems reasonable. We accept all stories with a straight face, including the guy who dodged all but two shots of a 15-shot fusillade, by two unknown assailants, one carrying an AK-47 and the other a .40 caliber Smith and Wesson automatic. The victim was, by his own report, “minding his own business, and just trying to get a hamburger” at our local MacDonalds®, when these two sharpshooters opened up on him in his car. One bullet went across the street, entered a house, and severed the electric cord of a massage pad, then occupied by a little old lady. She couldn’t understand why the soothing Shiatsu massage action stopped, until she spied the plugless cord on the ground, and the bullet hole in the wall three inches to the left of her. Our patient also had $4,000 in cash in his jeans pocket, which is apparently just “carrying around money” in his neighborhood. And he had no idea who these guys might have been. Or why they might have wanted to kill him. Having met him and his family, I have an idea. I was thinking of joining the queue. I can wait my turn, no problem. His problem is, I am a good shot…
One guy came in by ambulance for an ankle sprain, and he was routed to the waiting room, after his initial evaluation. He called 911 from the payphone there, and asked to be taken in the back door by ambulance again, because he was outraged that he had to wait in the waiting room, when he had called an ambulance specifically to avoid that problem. The 911 dispatcher told him he was already at a hospital, and that they wouldn’t be coming out, so he demanded to be taken to another hospital. The dispatcher called us to advise, but needless to say, he didn’t send a crew.
Families come often, with elder members who were reportedly doing differential calculus in two variables until the previous day, but today are gabbling, perseveratively calling out the last name they have heard, responding to all questions in nonsensical gibberish, and urinating and defecating on themselves. The family brings a month’s worth of clothes, including Depends® with them on this emergent visit, and the loved ones, coincidentally, have non-refundable plane tickets to Cancun, booked 6 months ago. “Bon voyage,” we say fondly, as they lay rubber out of the parking lot.
Some of our old standbys have died or departed the area, but we get new ones, don’t you worry. We have a 30 year old, 450-pound guy who runs through his monthly welfare check in a delirious day of State-funded crack cocaine use, and then comes in for a bed, alleging chest pain. He walks in to the window in no apparent distress, drops into our “Hummer” wheelchair, and then never lifts a finger in his own maintenance again. We refuse to lift him, though he tries to insist he can’t possibly move himself. And he demands food within ten minutes of arrival, as you might expect, his hourly caloric needs being what they are. In talking with him, he has basically admitted he just says he has chest pain so we will give him a bed and feed him. And when we decided we could not continue this monthly pattern, he told us he would just go to a neighboring hospital to do the same. So he did. We didn’t see him for a while, until he wore out his welcome over there, too.
My favorite Crack-Ho, who goes by the skreet name Dilly, and who is, by now, pretty well spent by 40 years on the skreet, went to the police station to report that her crack had been stolen, and she knew who did it. She got arrested right then and there, so we didn’t see her for a while, either. I am not sure if they caught the bastard who stole her crack, either. Man, life is just not fair. But I am still the same old “Dr. Roberson”, everybody’s family doctor and work note provider. “How long you been here?” they ask. “Man, I remember you when you had brown hair.” Me, too--I remember brown, and I remember hair, but you didn’t have to bring it up. Now don’t move, I don’t want to hurt you with this needle.
I pause to note the passing of some notables from our midst. How can we possibly go on without Anna Nicole? Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and David Habersham are history, Kurt Vonnegut lived history, told us about it, and left us better for his life, Art Buchwald modeled the gentle sarcasm I could only aspire to, and Norman Mailer beat a new sensibility into us, but couldn’t beat the reaper. Marcel Marceau left quietly, and Luciano Pavarotti will hold that B-flat for eternity. Ingmar Bergman beat Death in The Seventh Seal, and Ike Turner mostly beat Tina, but they are gone now. Paul Tibbets, commander of the Enola Gay, has lifted off for the last time, but unarmed on this mission, and Dick Wilson, better known as Mr. Whipple, has squeezed his last roll of TP. Tropical breezes and farewell to Don Ho, and farewell also to Lady Bird Johnson. We mourn 3,891 killed thus far in Iraq including 3 from little Seaford, and several more from the surrounding communities, and 471 in Afghanistan. I mourn my sweet, beautiful two-year old brindle boxer, Tig’r, who ran out one night this month, and was struck and killed on the road. He never quite understood motor vehicles. Good-bye and basta, to Jerry Falwell, Michael Dever, Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, and Nazi SS trooper recycled into international diplomat Kurt Waldheim.
Well once again we shudder to note the passage of another year, time moving faster and faster as we have more years to look back upon. I swear, it is free-fall after age forty. But the world continues to wobble on, with us or without us. The days grow shorter and shorter, and our primordial doubts that the sun will ever return haunt us in our fitful sleep, but we draw together against the forces of darkness and unreasoning madness, and prevail again over our nightmares. Pity our daymares are even worse…Be firm, my worthy friends, against untruths spoken with supposed good purpose, for lies will ever be but lies. Be stout in your belief that our better natures can overcome our hard-wired tendencies to fear differences, to shun foreign ideas and appearances. Your real friends may, in the end, look very different from yourselves, and your enemies like your brother or sister. Our tribal nature, never buried more than skin deep, may yet be the death of us all, but it is still possible to overcome, and we shall. I wish each of you a year of peace, of small goals set and realized, and progress toward the big goals. Keep in touch, by any of the many means. All sins, real or imagined, are forgiven, and all scores settled.


Love, and whatever else suits,