Solstice 09

Dear Ones:
Another year gone by, another Solstice approaches. Life above the 48th parallel gives Solstice some bite. The sun comes up only briefly, 8a-4p, more or less, with an hour off for lunch, and never really gets very high in the sky. That it comes up at all is usually only a cruel rumor, since the skies are cloudy as nuclear winter, but there does seem to be a part of each day where flashlights are not strictly necessary. Come summer, we will be having a hard time finding enough darkness to sleep in, but that is a long way off. Meanwhile we hunker down, read deep into the pile of unread books at the bedside, watch those classic movies we never actually saw, though we thought we did, and try to find the rhythm of the seasons. Part of that rhythm is recalling old friends and old times, and getting this damn letter out.
The year for us has been dominated by figuring out where, at last, we will settle. We started with listing what we wanted…His List: Small scale, simple, low maintenance, good view of San Juans or ocean. Her List: O give me land, lots of land under starry skies above, but convenient access to Bellingham, Office Room, Sewing Room, guest quarters, and don’t fence me in with a high mortgage. At the end of our lease in the previous house, we still had not found suitable digs to buy, nor even any real common ground as to what. Our poor realtor missed out, not charging for couples therapy by the hour while we looked at houses. So, we moved into a rental log cabin this February, and partially unpacked, while contemplating whether or not to buy the new place. It has a beautiful view of Lake Samish, a narrow, dramatic mountain loch, with us perched 200 feet above it, and only a mile or so away. It has llamas in the front yard, two of them, quite sweet, as llamas go, and a 2600 foot mountain in our back yard, with a very scenic three hour hike to be had, just for the walking. We have availed ourselves of the walking 4 or 5 times. But, it is also ‘spensive, and has way more land than I ever want to try and maintain. The driveway is a long gravelly uphill, and ruts out quickly after a rain. So it needs dragging with a tractor intermittently, and the llama field needs to be bush-hogged, and lawns mowed etc. etc. etc. So after long contemplation, we started house hunting again. We wore out two different realtors, looking at everything conceivable in Bellingham and Anacortes. A couple of possibilities came and went, but it was always something… Catherine preferred Bellingham to Anacortes, for convenience and culture, which is certainly Bellingham’s strength. But we just could not find the right house there. A beauty came available in Anacortes, and Catherine pointed it out and arranged a viewing, and we started to talk. You, know, the BIG PICTURE talk. Ultimately, we agreed that cohabitation continued to suit us, and bid on and bought a 4-bedroom house with a San Juan Islands and sunset view, and will move in the first of the year. Such a deal! Really, it is a buyer’s market, for a change. We have only experienced selling in a buyer’s market before this. It will be nice to have a place of our own, after two years, two rental houses, and three moves. We have been giving tons of STUFF to Goodwill, whittling down down down, as we should have done before departing from Seaford. But it is so hard to part with STUFF. The outcome still hangs on the sale of our Delaware property, slated for the 21st of December, and then our closing on this house the week afterward. House closings are like Sicilian weddings. You bring swords and a pen, and hope only to use the pen. Nothing is for sure until each says “I do,” and the bank does, too. So we wait.
The kiddies are good, scattered far and wide. Michele is still in Columbus, with Eric the Pilot and Jack (4) and Lily (almost 3) the grandchildren, growing up like little weeds. We keep up on Facebook and i-Chat on our Macs. Eric is back flying after the “private jet” political and economic turbulence caused some downsizing in the administration at his company. We hope to attract them out here, as his company does have a base in Bellingham, and it would be great to have them live nearby, here in Paradise. They don’t know it yet, but they are Pacific NW types to the bone. We are working on their knowledge deficit…Plus, we offer free grandparental babysitting.
Nathanael graduated with his BS in Exercise Physiology from Salisbury University, and moved himself and boxer dog Kirby to San Diego with an old Seaford friend, Nate, and is working there at the YMCA, doing personal training, and pondering a masters degree for a next step. He was released completely from the Army, with no more Individual Ready Reserve obligation, so all that is behind him completely. That was a tense process, but he is pretty happy to be done. He is loving southern California. We visited him there this fall, in their neat apartment, and then enjoyed a drive back north in Hannah’s Mini-Cooper. Jeezum Crow, but California is a big state! I had never driven the length of the Central Valley, but it is quite impressive. Glad I got that off my list of things to do. Once was enough.
Hannah is currently deployed in the Persian Gulf, aboard the USS Grace Hopper, (DDG-70) an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer. The ship is named after Admiral Grace Hopper, the first female admiral, and computer whiz, who was the co-inventor of COBOL language, among many accomplishments. Hannah is finding shipboard life a bit dreary and frustrating, marked by lack of sleep, hard work, and constant crisis as a way of being. But she is running on the treadmill, which is apparently quite a trick on a pitching ship, and notching off the days until that assignment is done, and until her time in the Navy is done as well. She ran another hundred mile race in the Cuyamaca mountains east of San Diego, before reporting to Pearl Harbor, her homeport. She did well, finishing in about 29 hours, with Catherine, Uncle Dane, Michele, and Grandma Kathleen in support. Her second cousin Jennifer ran and finished the same race, a couple of hours ahead. Hannah really loves that community of ultra runners. Her graduation from the Naval Academy was great fun, as we were docked in the harbor at the Annapolis Yacht Club, and stayed on the boat for our hotel room. We had a plethora of family and friends gather, to mark her commissioning as a new Ensign, along with her wonderful Classmates and their families. And the new Commander in Chief gave the address, and shook each graduate’s hand, to add to the historicity of the moment.
Everett is deep in the thicket of senior year at St. John’s College, facing the great unknown of “What next?” I am sure we don’t know, just as he does not, but it will come to him, I am certain. He has much to juggle, between finishing classes, taking an alphabet soup of GREs, LSATs or whatever, and work. I remember being DOOMED at all times as a college senior, so I am full of empathy. He has been living in a nice apartment in Annapolis, working part time at the Naval Academy Library for spending money, and generally moving into adult life in sensible stepwise fashion. This next step will be a big leap into the dark, though. We are all curious to see where he lands, though no more so than he is himself.
Catherine has continued full time with Quilts of Valor Foundation, her nonprofit foundation dedicated to covering all those service members touched by war with heirloom-quality quilts. They have distributed 28,000 or so thus far. She is working hard on getting some celebrity participation in the project, perhaps the Obama girls and Michelle. Stay tuned, and again, any and all tax-deductible donations are appreciated. Check her out at www.qovf.org. She drove with fellow quilters across country this summer, collecting enough quilts in their cargo trailer, to cover the entire 1,300-member 3/8 Battalion of Marines at Camp Lejeune, NC, on their return from Afghanistan. That was a spectacular success, and brought good publicity, but the work is never done. I suspect another such trip is in her future, for another returning unit. I am voting for the 10th Mountain Division, the most over-utilized unit in the Army
As for me, I just work. It is a predictable sort of rhythm. I do a mix of nights and days, which is harder than just nights, as I used to do. But it is tolerable. The folks here are very nice, similar in many ways to my old crew. At least they haven’t heard all my tired old jokes (yet). And of course the patients are still just the same. We see the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to renew their Percocet prescriptions. We see old Aunt Bertha, full to the gills with fluid from her congestive heart failure, after a salt overdose disguised as the Friday Night Shore Dinner Special, at the Royal Fork. No worries. A night on the breathing machine in the ICU, on a couple of IV drips and a tube in every orifice she came with, as well as a couple of new ones, and she’ll be right as rain. See you next month, Aunt Bertha. We still see pretend seizures outnumbering real ones about 8:1. No kidding, that is a real number. If I am seeing an adult having seizure activity, it is likely bullshit. Dramatic Fever, as I call it. Real seizures have usually stopped out in the field, and I never actually see them. But folks suffering from Dramatic Fever need Xanax®, and Dilaudid®, and Soma®, or another wonder drug from a host of other popular addictive substances, or they will surely seize again, right before my eyes. They even warn me that they are “getting ready to have another seizure,” just in case I wasn’t watching carefully. And when they do their Daytime Emmy-nominated performance, they just don’t want to hear from me that they are not actually having seizures.
“Are you saying I am a druggie?” they will ask, indignantly, while still trying to feign seizure activity. “Are you saying I am making this up?”
“Oh, no!” I will offer soothingly. “There is a reason this is happening, it is just not from a rhythmic electrical discharge in one part of your brain. The symptom is totally real, but the cause is not the same as Epilepsy. And once we can address the cause, I am sure we can get you better, too.” Now getting better was never the point, but they have a hard time admitting that, so I have them on the run at that moment, and they leave, drugless, and with a detox/mental health referral. I do wish they wouldn’t litter on the way out--we are up to our ankles in crumpled up mental health referrals out there…
I have been trying to tend to my own emotional needs more, since leaving the affect-controlled administrative world. You know, avoid all meetings, eat when hungry, drink when thirsty sleep when tired, have sex when…, oh, well, never mind. But in that self-actualization spirit, I was lonely for a dog of my own, ever since Tig’r died, so I acted on mad impulse and got a bulldog, now named Max. He is very sweet and loving, a Velcro dog, attached to my leg most of the time, or snoring at my feet. He has some breathing issues, and required soft palate reduction surgery, but is otherwise a cool dog. Catherine was away when this impulse hit, and on the theory that asking for forgiveness is better than asking for permission, I got him and brought him home. I didn’t realize he was defective, but he has a great personality. He has slowly won her over, but that was not my high point in the marital consideration continuum. However, it is good to be the leader of my little pack again, and now, only 3 months later, I am even an inside dog again, myself. Just can’t get back on the couch, not yet.
I have slowly worked my way back to running, and am trying to stay with it. I read a neat book called Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall, about how running is innate in human makeup and evolution, and concludes that you don’t stop running when you get old, you get old when you stop running. I am beginning to believe that. Catherine’s wonderful Uncle Albert turns 80 this February, and still runs 5 miles a day, 5 days a week. He is an inspiration to both of us. We both ran today, thinking of him. For comic relief, I have also been trying to learn to play the alto sax. I got an antique one from the 50s on eBay, without a stitch of residual lacquer on it, and then got a starter book and DVD. I have been re-acquainting myself with my old pal from Junior High Band, Doremi Fasolatido. Doremi won’t be my friend on Facebook, so I guess that should have been a clue…I tried to do lessons, but I was unable to keep to a regular schedule, between work and travel, so my music teacher fired me after only a month. A cell-phone breakup—I was crushed. But I am laboring a bit on my own, learning scales, and a simple Miles Davis tune. I am not as good as Lisa Simpson yet, not even close. Poor Tory howls and whines as soon as I blow a note. Not a jazz fan, apparently.
I have been reading a lot of history lately, an affectation of people in their mid-fifties, apparently. With Hannah’s departure to the Pacific on a destroyer, I read a bit on the history of destroyers in WWII. I had no sooner finished several books, including The Last Stand of the Tincan Sailors, and forwarded that to her, when she emailed me in a panic, to send info on the Midway and Leyte Gulf Battles. She had to do a presentation for the brass on the boat, and had no internet resources beyond email, and a lifeline to old Pops. Boy, was I ready for that. So I sent her chapters from a survivor’s book, the Wikipedia article, and some other material, just in time for the required Power Point presentation. The stories of the SS Samuel B. Roberts, the SS Hoel, Johnston and Heermann were so inspiring, that I was only too glad to share. So you see, I am some use, even if a bit bent and decrepit. Just ask the right question.
So what are we to make of our world, and its wobbly course? The political world seems more partisan and poisonous than ever. I can barely stand to peel an eye open when the TV is on. Health Care Reform and universal coverage are so clearly needed, and yet we cannot get that done, even with a super-majority of Dems. So I continue to see people who present to me because they know I must see them with or without insurance, even though they won’t or likely can’t fill the prescriptions I write. If it ain’t on the Wal*Mart four dollar list, fuggedaboudit. When there is no longer any possibility of an elective surgery for their problem, they have an emergency surgery, instead. Their bills mount up, but nobody gets paid, they just get buried in debt, or just plain buried. Meanwhile we endure “Granny Death Panel” distractions by the Angry White People Party, soon to be the third party in the US, lead by Sister Sarah, Brothers Glen and Rush, and the howling mad Teabaggers/Birthers/GrannyDeathers/SwiftBoaters/Whatevers. I wish them luck in proving just how small a minority they really are. I don’t think they ‘get it.’ I don’t ‘get it.’ Michael Steele clearly doesn’t ‘get it.’ (Somebody get that man a mirror.) But I just don’t understand the world, I guess. I missed altogether the “You Are Entitled to Rule the World By Virtue of Your Superior European DNA” orientation in school. Missed the memo, missed the lecture, never saw the notes. Where were my friends? Why was I not paying attention??
Meanwhile we are “surging” into Afghanistan, bringing high tech and high ideals into a fractured medieval world, which wishes to remain infinitely fractured and determinedly medieval. And we still don’t have a plan or target date to end our dependency on foreign oil. If we are on a war footing, as we claim to be, why are we not saving cans and plastic, planting victory gardens of solar panels and wind farms, and taxing the bejesus out of purchases of low mileage vehicles? Why, then, would we care what the piddly tribal Saudis or Iranians or Iraqis do, if we didn’t fund their craziness with our own money, and nobody else did, either? We could count on them to kill each other, and leave us the hell out of it. Why do we not yet have a plan for national service for all citizens, whether Peace Corps, Job Corps, America Corps, CCC or military, and get everyone into the American Dream as a contributor, instead of another piglet on the teat? I dunno.
I pause, breathless, to note the passing of a few notables. Michael Jackson departed as bizarrely as he lived, but man, he could sure dance and sing. Farrah Fawcett gave us some adolescent tachycardia, before becoming a domestic abuse and anal cancer spokesmodel. Going way back, Soupy Sales was an over-the-top, cutting edge entertainer, long before that was boring, and Walter Cronkite actually reported the news, while making us feel it would all work out, somehow. Darrell “Shifty” Powers, of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, and featured in Band of Brothers has made the jump. Riccardo Cassin, mountaineer extraordinaire was both bold and old. Ed McMahon, sadly, no longer has a house in Avalon. So long to Teddy Kennedy, and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and to Andrew Wyeth and John Updike. And from my distant past, and my TV debut (No kidding, same as George Clooney) Uncle Al Lewis, of Cincinnati’s own “Uncle Al Show.”
And so, friends old and new, far and near, pause now and take stock of all you have accomplished, gather close all who are dear to you, banish the ghosts of doubt and fear which haunt the winter darkness, set aside all anger and grudges, seek forgiveness and make amends for past transgressions, and begin anew with resolve and vigor, to be that person you wish you were, and to wish for more. And stop feeling sorry for yourself! That way lies paralysis, and madness…To paraphrase wise Uncle Dane, if you wonder where you are supposed to be, look at your feet. You are supposed to be where you are. You walked there, and you can walk on from that place, to the next place you ought to be. You do not control all that happens, or more accurately, you control very little of what happens, but you do control your feet, and the directions you take, the choices you make. I wish you clarity, and reward for steps in the right direction, and peace for you and all you cherish, and peace even for those we do not cherish, but should.

Cheers, wassail, salud, amor y dinero, and all that jazz,