Ted's Last Christmas

I posted this story before Christmas years ago in a longer form.  These were two pieces recently in our local paper, published two weeks apart to conform with their word limits.  Still shorter than it used to be.  I think this condensed version is better.   

In late 1976 I came back from South America completely broke.  I took the first job offered to me, an aide in a nursing home.  They assigned me to the men’s wing where I made beds, gave showers, emptied urinals and bedpans, and coaxed my guys into signing over their Social Security checks to the home.  I also learned the depth to which some people live alone. 

I met Ted there. Ted was a bachelor farmer, an only child of deceased parents.  Ted was living in a mobile home when he suffered a debilitating stroke.  The right side of his body was completely paralyzed.

The other nurse’s aides claimed Ted was so morbidly obese that EMTs had to enlarge the doorway of his trailer with a power saw to get him out.  Ted never walked or talked after his stroke four years earlier.  He communicated by pointing and grunting.

“Ted was morbidly obese?” I asked.

“Before we put him on a diet.” my co-workers said proudly.  “He was 550 when they brought him in.”

I looked down the hall at Ted slumped in his tall back chair behind a tray.  He couldn’t have weighed more than 175.   That would explain the huge folds of loose skin that hung from his body in the shower.  

“I guess that’s why he’s so hungry,” I said.

Ted was beyond hungry.  He was ravenous.  We watched him closely around the snack cart.  When you did you would see Ted inching towards the cart, pushing slowly with his one functioning foot.

Ted betrayed himself by looking up and smiling.  Ted rarely smiled.  If Ted got his left hand within range of the cart, he attacked it. Within seconds his left hand was furiously stuffing food into his gaping mouth.    

It wasn’t only food.  Ted ate toilet paper, tissues, anything.  Ted was in constant danger of choking.  Ravenous gluttony took over Ted’s life.

At Christmas, visitors to the nursing home increased.  But no one visited Ted.   Mail increased also.  All the other residents got Christmas cards.

I delivered mail to my guys.  Every day Ted watched me from behind his tray.  The skin on his face sagged and made his eyes look bigger.  He looked up hopefully.  

“No mail today, Ted.  Maybe tomorrow.”

On the last mail day before Christmas, there were lots of cards to pass out.  When I came to Ted’s room he was slumped sideways in his chair, his eyes glued to me like I was a pan of brownies.

 “Ted, you got a card.”

His eyes grew big.  I straightened him up in his chair and laid the card on his tray.  He fumbled at the envelope, so I opened it.  It was a card from the nursing home administrator.  Every resident got the same cheap card.  Her signature was stamped inside.  Before the card’s message, she wrote “Ted.”   

“Look Ted, she wrote your name.” 

Ted looked up at me and his eyes filled with tears.  He sobbed openly because he got a Christmas card from someone who rarely left her office and didn’t know Ted from a bale of hay. That was the moment I knew I had to get out of that job.  It was just too sad.

* * * * * * * *

On Christmas Eve I headed to my parent’s farm, anxious to be with family.  Christmas on the farm was special.  As I left town, I stopped for gas near the nursing home.  Under the cash register was a rack of candy bars. 

“Give me a couple of those Snickers, would you please?”

I parked, went in the side door, and up the back stairs. It was after dinner but before lights out.  I went to Ted’s room.  He was still in his chair, slumped to one side, sleeping.  His Christmas card was tacked to an empty bulletin board. 

I turned on Ted’s bedside lamp. It was too hot in there, the radiator cooking, air not moving.  Behind it all was the faint smell of urine.  Christmas Eve in the nursing home.  

“Wake up Ted I’ve got something for you.”

I gave him a minute to get used to the light before straightening him up.

“Ted, I brought you a present, but you got to cooperate.  It’s not on your diet and I don’t want you talking to your buddies about this.  But you’re a guy who can keep his mouth shut, right?”

Ted may have gotten the joke, but I couldn’t tell.  When I took a Snickers out of my coat pocket his eyes lit up.

“OK Ted, you’re going to eat this slowly, so you don’t choke.  You understand?”

When Ted realized what was about to happen, he literally began to drool.  I got tissues off his nightstand and wiped his chin.  Then I cut a piece off the candy bar with my pocket knife and put it on his tray.  His left hand flashed out.  The candy was in his mouth instantly.  He looked at me as if I was going to dig it out of his mouth as I had done so often before with other things.

“Chew that good and swallow it before I give you more.”

He did.  I cut off another piece.  We repeated that five times with the first candy bar. 

“You feel OK Ted?”

Ted nodded enthusiastically.

“You don’t feel sick?”

Ted shook his head vigorously in the negative.  I wiped his chin with the Kleenex again.

I took out the second candy bar.  We did it again. 

“This is the last piece, Ted.”

I laid the final chunk of Snickers on his tray. Ted didn’t take it.

“What are you doing, Ted?”

He stared at me.

“It’s yours, Ted.” 

Ted brought his left hand up, pointed at the candy, and pointed to me.

“What the hell Ted?”

He pointed at the candy again and then at me.

Then I understood.  The guy who would eat the envelope his only Christmas card came in was sharing his candy bar with me.  

I ate it.  Ted smiled at me as I chewed the Snickers, his big old eyes bright.  

I believe people talk with their eyes.  I think Ted said thanks.  And Merry Christmas. 

“You’re welcome, Ted.  Merry Christmas to you too.”

I quit the nursing home in the spring.  Ted died that fall.   Choked on ham sandwiches.  I suspect someone didn’t watch the snack cart closely enough.  I will never forget Ted, or the kindness in his eyes.  If we let it, Christmas brings out the best in all of us. 

I Have a New Gig

 If you read Dave in the Shack by getting this email, you’ve not heard from me since September.  Here’s what is going on.  I have a new gig.  I’ve been writing for the local paper in a program called the Write Team.  My article appears every two weeks and is read by people in the Illinois Valley in their local Shaw Media publications; The News Tribune in LaSalle-Peru and the Times of Ottawa and Streator.  It has brought me new readers, and I post pictures of their articles on my FaceBook page (to get around Shaw Media’s paywall) but I’ve neglected to post them in Dave in the Shack and distribute them through my email list.

You may already have read these articles.  But I slowly realized my error for email-only folks.  I’m trying to correct that today. 

One note about these articles is that I am limited by the newspaper to 550 words (or so) per piece.  That’s been a real challenge.  My blog posts may average nearly 2,000 words, and for years I have written whatever has popped into my mind.  The paper’s requirements have forced me to choose my words much more carefully. Oh, and no pictures.

My journalism friends say that less is more, but I’m not sure I agree.  However, it may be good for me.  I think about us as readers and what is trending these days.  Do we read just as much but in smaller bites?  My kids urge me to shorten my blog pieces.  My daughter would like to listen to my stuff on a podcast while she works.  I’m game to try new formats.  But a podcast?  I have to think about that.

Today I’ve picked some of the short pieces from the newspaper.  See what you think.  If you want to comment, just reply to this email and it comes straight to my inbox.  Try these. 

 

Working the Mid-Term Election  (sneak preview.  Scheduled to be published November 22.)

I arrived at the polls at 5:30 a.m. with snacks, a thermos of coffee, the Tribune, and my kindle reader which I never found time to read.   

The polls open at 6:00.  We were set up the day before, a row of tables for each precinct, polling booths against the wall, tabulator stand in place-but there was more to do.  That morning we hooked up the closed-circuit Wi-Fi, installed and plugged in the tabulator (simply an optical scanner over a locked steel box), connected the tablet computer to the label printer and we were ready to go.  We ran the zero tapes from the tabulator and signed them, signed various other forms, took the oath, and before we knew it the polls were open. 

We had five people waiting to vote before 6:00.  It stayed like that most of the day.  Unusual for a mid-term.  Usually, it takes the draw of a presidential race, like 2020, to bring out the number of voters we saw in 2022.  It was hard to eat lunch, tenderloins cooked and delivered from Ottawa’s American Legion, because of the crush of voters.

We had four election judges at our precinct, as did the other precinct that shared our voting site.  I was glad to see that.  It was slim during the pandemic.  Judges are balanced as to party affiliation, and no judge has more power than another in making decisions. Keeping order, confirming the identity of people requesting ballots, determining they are registered to vote in the precinct, and matching the number of ballots with the number of persons voting at the end of the day are the duties of election judges.

We had few if any problems during a very busy election.  When questions arose, we agreed on the answers as a group.  People who had to cast provisional ballots, produce previously mailed ballots to be spoiled before voting in the booth, or who registered on-site before voting all accepted our decisions calmly.  Our training prepared us to make those calls.  We have good written manuals for reference, and the county clerk’s office is available to help if needed.  Improved technology, especially tablet computers, has helped us very much. 

I became an election judge after I retired in 2013 and have worked at every election since.  I marvel at accusations of voting fraud in America. From my experience, the system works because it is so localized.  I work in the precinct in which I live.  I know many of the voters and am familiar with their addresses because they are my neighbors.  I know my fellow election judges as well.  The checks and balances are baked in.

I don’t doubt for a second the accuracy and validity of the vote totals for my precinct.  I was there from start to finish.  I held the ballots in my hands and counted them with my fellow judges after the polls closed.  The number of ballots scanned by the tabulator and the number of ballots we counted as a group matched. I signed the tapes detailing votes per candidate because I knew they were accurate.

Voter participation was the clear winner in this mid-term election.  It’s the most encouraging trend yet.  We truly have free and fair elections.  Be glad.  Accept the outcomes.  They’re real. 

 

How Do You Like Your Eggs?

I cook breakfast with Steve Malinsky and Nelson Nussbaum at the Ottawa PADS shelter once a month.  It’s not your normal operation.  At restaurants like the Hi-Way and the New Chalet, short-order cooks come and go, but the patrons return to their favorite table for years.  Decades if they’re old-timers in town.  But at PADS the cooks stay the same, at least for our breakfast, while the clientele constantly changes. 

The three of us volunteered at PADS before it had a kitchen.  When it started in the ’90s there were actual pads-portable mattresses that moved from location to location each night of the week. You had to be an organized homeless person to keep track of where to sleep each night.  PADS has come a long way.

Our church, Open Table, provides a monthly dinner Sunday evening and breakfast Monday morning.  The dinner volunteers tell us how many are at the shelter and what food is available.  They look for eggs and orange juice, cheese, sliced bread, potatoes and onions, and breakfast meat.  The breakfast crew arrives at about 6:00 a.m. with whatever is missing. 

Sometimes we get help.  Gary Reardon asked last month if he could supply us with eggs.

“How does 48 sound?”

“60 would be better,” I said.

Monday morning there were two flats of 30 eggs in the fridge with my name on them.

I brought a gallon of orange juice and a loaf of bread.  Steve brought onions and Nelson brought sausage. He’s partial to breakfast links, maple-flavored. They’re a hit, and easy to cook.  The shelter had potatoes.

We serve two eggs to order with toast, fried potatoes and onions, and sausage.  Not everyone eats eggs or breakfast for that matter.  We always put out cold cereal and milk, donuts if they’re around, but eggs to order are not usually on the menu.

It surprises the residents when Steve asks, “How do you like your eggs?”

“What?  However you got them” is a common response.

“No.  We make them the way you want.”

Sometimes they’re puzzled.

“Scrambled I guess.” 

“You sure?  We can make eggs sunny side up, over easy, over hard, poached, cheese omelet.”

If you’re going to scramble eggs you can just as easily let them set up and fold them over some cheese.

Some don’t understand the terms for egg choices.  Scrambled has become the default egg order of America.  “Not runny” is trending. 

We serve them quickly.  Eggs from the stove, sausage from one crock pot, potatoes from another, and toast served hot and buttered.

Last time I found some strawberries in the fridge, stemmed and halved them, and put them in a bowl.

“Let’s give them some fruit,” I said.  “It’ll look good on the plate.”

A woman who ordered sunny side up and one scrambled for her baby came back with the toddler in her arms.  The baby’s face, next to hers, was smeared with red and smiling. 

“Thanks so much for breakfast.  Can I have more strawberries? They were a first for my daughter.  She loved them.”

After the rush, as we cleaned up, I messaged Gary.

“28 breakfasts, 55 eggs.  Thanks.”

PADS residents really appreciate a hot breakfast while temporarily sheltered.  But what they need, desperately, are homes. 

 

Thanking Milt Snow

Recently I was able to thank a former English teacher for helping me develop as a person.  That’s not always possible.  Take Milt Snow for example.  While swimming laps I see his name on a plaque when I take a break at the North end of the pool.

Milt was a major donor to Ottawa YMCA’s swimming pool, built in 1956 along with the rest of the current YMCA building.  If Milt was mature and successful, as most major donors to community projects are, and was say 50 years old at the time, he would be 116 this year.  Not likely alive.  I could only imagine expressing my personal thanks to Milt Snow.  So, I did.

Conversations like these are best done at a cozy diner.  There we are, Milt and I, at the Hi Way restaurant.

“You must be Milt Snow,” I say to the gentleman sitting alone in a booth.  I slide in across from him, introduce myself, and shake his hand.  “I could have sworn I was on time.”

“You are.  I came early.  What can I do for you, Mr. McClure?”

“Call me Dave.  I want to thank you for giving money to the YMCA to build their swimming pool.  It’s done a lot of good and brought a lot of joy to people in the Ottawa area.”

“Oh, for gosh sake.  No need to thank me.  I wasn’t the only one you know.”

“I don’t imagine so, but you’re the only one with their name on the wall.”

“Oh, that plaque.  I was going to donate anonymously, but my family thought I should get some credit.  They supported my idea, so I agreed to let them make my name public.” 

“I’m on the Y board now.  We’re breaking ground for a new YMCA building this week.  There will be a whole bunch of new donors to thank, but we don’t want to forget about the old ones.”

“Do you swim Dave?”

“Gosh yes.  I had a skiing accident when I was young that prevents me from running or walking for exercise.  Swimming laps gives me a good workout and doesn’t stress my joints.  I’ve been swimming laps in that pool since 1978.”

“Never thought of that.”

“How did your gift come about Mr. Snow?”

“A Y board member asked if I would help.  I had the money, and I knew it would do some good. Heck, when I was a kid, we swam in the river.  Every so often someone would drown.  Besides the Pirate Puddle at OHS, Ottawa didn’t have a public indoor pool.  I’ve always been glad I did it.”

“So am I Milt.  Besides swimming laps, I’d give my wife a break and take my kids to family swim one night a week then stop for dessert at Oogies.  Those were great times.  These days the Y gives free swim lessons to grade school kids in the area.  The Ottawa Dolphin Swim Team has developed hundreds of kids into great swimmers.  Seniors use it for water exercise classes.  It’s a busy place.  It’s helped so many people in these last 66 years.  Thanks again Milt, on behalf of everybody that’s benefitted.”

“You’re welcome.”

Naming rights for the new twenty-five-yard eight-lane pool scheduled to be built are still available.

 

JUNE LOVES CHEESE

The words are coming fast to my granddaughter June at twenty months of age.  Who knows how it happens?  Hearing the sound of a word over and over, finally connecting a word to a thing in the world, learning to move your mouth to make the sound you hear?  I’m sure there is tons of research.  But I prefer to simply listen to June talk. 

This weekend her parents are away from her for the first time.  Her grandmother and I are trying to fill in as best we can.  I won’t say it’s been easy.  The morning she woke to find her mother and father gone was a tough one, but we all made it through.  I tried to console her with food, usually a go to distraction, with little success at first.  She ignored a recent go to, peanut butter on toast, and wanted little to do with scrambled eggs.  Finally, June took matters into her own hands.

“Cheese?”  she was pointing to the refrigerator.

She said the word perfectly, the consonant blend in the beginning, the drawn out Z sound at the end, a big double E in the middle.

“Cheese?  You want cheese June?”

“Cheese.” She said, not as a question this time but an affirmation.  A polite request.

As I opened the fridge, found a block of Monterey Jack, and took out my pocketknife to give her a slice, I was newly grateful for language and simple communication.  

June reached toward the white slab of food as I offered it and popped it into her mouth.

She smiled broadly.  “Cheese.”

She said it as she chewed, savoring the flavor linked with this new word she mastered.  Another word under her belt.  June knew what cheese was, how it tasted, and more importantly, how to ask for it. 

It was her first smile of the morning.  I was so relieved.

“Yeah. Cheese.”

I smiled back as I had a slice myself.

“Want more?”

June nodded, still smiling.

“Cheese.”

This went on and on.  June and I both ate too much cheese.   She forgot about missing her Mom, at least for a short time, and I was glad to see her happy.  Would I have given her anything she asked for?  Probably.  But she simply asked for cheese.

I coaxed her into adding reheated eggs to her breakfast and the day was off to a good start.  We followed it up with book reading until her grandma came on the scene and relieved me. 

Things change so fast.  Now June is bringing us favorite books, handing them to us, turning around so we can lift her onto our laps, and paying attention from start to finish.  She points out favorite things on the pages, sometimes small details.  A frog.  A butterfly.

June anticipates and says words.  B is for Baby is a favorite book, a simple list of words that start with B.  Her favorite page?  B is for BANANA!  I’m afraid this fix on food runs in the family.

 

Where I’m From

Written in response to a prompt at an Ottawa writers’ group:

I’m from upstairs at our farmhouse where my older brothers knew all the stories and I just listened.

A gun cabinet, made by my brother Denny in high school wood shop, with standing racks inside and doors that fit tight, stood in an old room with nursery-themed wallpaper.  In it were the pump shotguns, a bolt action .410, a .22 rifle, and old guns that no longer fired.  Tucked away in built-in drawers were treasures nearly forgotten. One was a brown glass bottle filled with seawater and sealed with a rubber stopper.

My brother Darwin held the bottle carefully, took out the stopper, and held it under my nose.

“It’s all the way from the Gulf of Mexico brought back by Uncle Eldon who was too sickly to farm.”

The exotic smell of seawater filled my head.  A present no doubt to all of us who had never left Illinois, tethered as we were to Jersey cows who had to be milked twice a day rain or shine.  That included me, who until age twelve had never been farther from home than Springfield.

I’m from that spot on the wood plank fence where two six-penny nails stuck halfway out at the same height.

Dad taught me to pop the nail heads through the rabbit’s skin, between a leg bone and tendon and dress them out.  The nails were spaced apart to fit the hind legs of freshly shot cotton tail rabbits, hanging downwards, splayed apart, their exposed bellies white and fluffy.  After cutting a circle around each leg, and connecting the circles with a cut in between, you could loosen the skin at the edges of the cut until you had enough to grab onto.  When you pulled down with both hands the skin peeled away from the meat making a sheath like a fur-lined mitten.

Our mom cooked the game.  She fried the rabbits slowly in a covered pan with onions and roasted the pheasants and quail in the oven.  She told us the quail were a waste of time, not enough meat to bother with.  We didn’t bring her many.  They flew fast and were small, hard to hit.  More times than not they flew away unharmed.

The pump shotguns were .12 gauge and held just three shells.  A wooden plug, required by Illinois gaming law then, prevented loading more.

“Why just three shells, Dad?” 

“Well, you gotta remember David that hunting is a sport.  We want to give the birds a chance, don’t we?  I mean if we can’t hit a bird in flight with three shots, we don’t deserve to have them.”

We hunted together for pheasants, spread out in a line, flushing them into the air from fence rows and waterways.  Quail prefer shorter cover, like short-growth alfalfa or clover in winter hayfields.  We took most of the rabbits from the timber in a corner of our farm.  I’d go by myself after it snowed, looking for tracks, kicking them out from bushes and woodpiles.

I quit hunting after I left the farm.  I think we all did.  We ate every animal we killed.  And never did we ever imagine shooting a human being.   

Fishing in the Wilderness

Face Book sends me pictures from my past.  During late August in one (it’s a blur) of the pandemic years a photo I posted years before took me, in a rush, back to a jewel of a lake I’d fished with friends during the same late August week years ago in Canada.  I stared at the image on my phone and wondered if I would ever be there again. For two years all fly in fishing to remote lakes out of Red Lake, Ontario was cancelled. 

And then it was 2022 and we were back.  After a day’s drive to the border and another to the outfitter’s dock, eight passengers lifted off the water aboard a refurbished Otter seaplane, rose into a sun filled blue sky, and landed on Job Lake by the one and only cabin on its shore which would be our home for the next seven days.

Photo by Nathan Robinson

We stay busy on day one unloading the plane, carrying gear up to the cabin, unpacking, getting out the fishing equipment, and finally heading out onto the lake, two to a boat, in early afternoon.  It becomes real when we reach our fishing spots, tip our jigs with a piece of worm, and drop a line in the water, intent on catching that night’s dinner.

The boat driver cuts the motor.  As conversation wanes, the quiet hits.  You think it’s quiet at home, in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep, early in the morning when no one else is up.  But listen closely and there is always something.  A train somewhere, an appliance running, the buzz of a fluorescent light, traffic in the background, maybe a plane.  But up north in the wilderness, quiet takes on new meaning.

Especially on a day with little wind.  The water lies flat and the absence of noise wraps around you like a old quilt.  It’s deeply relaxing.  Astonishing silence happens over and over each day until the sound of the plane coming to take you home is heard in the distance.  I forget from year to year.  And when I remember, I say a small prayer of gratitude for being lucky enough to experience such beauty.

The wilderness lake and the land around it are not frozen in time.  It changes.  Much of the land is actually rock.  We’re amazed that substantial pine trees can grow and thrive with such shallow roots at the water’s edge and beyond.  Fire struck some of the forest around Job Lake and created stark differences from what we remember.  Trees burned up and fell, lichen and other growth was stripped from the rock which changed its color from green to pink.  Charred logs laid at all angles while new seedlings sprouted among them. 

Our first night we compared notes as to where the damage was greatest.  One favorite spot, which we had named “the wall” was nearly unrecognizable.  With little apparent pattern, some islands in the lake burned while others rods away from charred islands remain untouched.  We tried to imagine the day or night the fire struck, and the calamity caused to the wildlife, all without human witness, with the next day dawning as always.  We realize that nature operates on a time frames detached from humans.  In thirty years, after most of the fisherman on our trip are no longer living, all evidence of that fire will be gone.  Forgotten.

We noticed other changes.  We experienced mosquitoes for the first time in memory.  Waiting till late in the season usually brought chilly nights and the absence of insects.  We think it’s getting warmer.  Both the water and the air. 

But the fish seem to have thrived. Two years of no fishing pressure from humans produced fatter, bigger walleye.  We fish on Canada’s conservation license, which demands that all walleye under 15 inches and over 18 inches be released.  Think of walleye under 15 inches as children and over 18 inches as adult breeding stock.  We are allowed to eat the adolescents.  Some days they were hard to find.  Too many big ones.  What a wonderful problem!

Canada allows a daily limit of two walleye per person under this license, which works out to four per boat or sixteen each day for our four boats.  We can’t eat sixteen fish a day.  So, we keep twelve, three to a boat, for eating and release all the rest so they might live and grow and keep Job Lake a productive lake far into the future.

We’re eating walleye in more ways than ever.  In years past we fried them all.  With a little creativity and grizzled fishermen expanding their palates, we’ve taken to baking them and basting them in lemon/butter/caper sauce, making walleye ceviche, and this year for the first time chopping uneaten cooked filets into walleye salad akin to tuna salad.  It’s a feast up there.  Healthy wild caught fish from pristine water eaten fresh each day.  Hard to duplicate.

Laid over it all, this trip was about renewing friendships.  We were separated from each other for so long by COVID.  As we paired up in the boats, switching partners each day, we found ourselves checking in and catching up.

We talked a lot about family and community, sparing each other for the most part from politics.  We’re shut out from the internet on Job Lake, although cellular phone service has nearly reached its shore   I for one appreciate the respite.  I used my phone as a camera, and occasionally compulsively hit my Face Book icon.  Nothing changed.  And In truth, when I did log in after getting back onto WI Fi going south, nothing changed.

Change is relative up north.  The effects of the pandemic and the resulting economy on wilderness outfitters is perilous.  You would think two years with no fisherman would have been an ideal chance to make improvements to our cabin.  Sadly, the cabin is in worse shape than ever.  The bears returned, and although they didn’t bother us in August, they were hell for the fishermen in June.  That cabin was built in the late 50’s.  It won’t last forever.  And forever may be approaching soon.

Though life offers no guarantees I hope to be back next year.  If I do, I’ll give you a report again.  I don’t go back and compare this fishing blog to previous years, but I can’t imagine one is markedly different than another.  It’s a wonderful trip, made better by very good people.  I consider myself lucky to be part of it.

Baby in the Sun - 2011

 Note to readers old and new.  Before Dave in the Shack I wrote a weekly blog at work, as the director of a youth service/child welfare agency, Youth Service Bureau of Illinois Valley (YSB).  I wanted to explain to board members, donors, referral sources, staff, and the community what we did, why we did it, and how we felt in the process.  Writing that blog became all I wanted to do.

I wrote this eleven years ago, two years before I retired.  Besides Dave in the Shack, I have begun writing for the local newspaper.  I'm limited to 550 words.  Here's a short version of an old YSB blog post that appeared in the newspaper.  Still relevant today.  Thought I would share it with you.

Baby in the Sun – 2011

She’d be eleven years old now.  

Jackie showed up in my doorway on her way out the back. 

“You should come see this baby.”

“What baby?”

“We have a newborn in foster care.”

I followed Jackie out the door. 

It was hot.  There were no clouds.  Jami was standing by her van holding an infant carrier. 

“Look,” she said.

We looked at the baby without speaking.

The baby was wearing a lime green onesie.  Her feet were bare.  There were wisps of toenails on each miniature toe.  Her legs were tiny, short shins and knees the size of thimbles.

She slept with her arms folded across her chest. When she breathed her nostrils flared.  Her skin was paper thin and white.  I thought I could see through her eyelids. Each fold in her ear was perfectly formed.  Her dark hair held a barrette with a lime green bow. 

She breathed in, held her breath, and then sighed, her mouth moving.  When we talked, we didn’t look at each other but at the baby.

“She’s beautiful,” I said.  “What’s her name?”

“Doesn’t have a name yet.”

“Why not?”

“The mother hasn’t chosen one.”

“How old?”

“Three days.”

“She seems so small.  Premature?”

“Full term and healthy, just little.”

I didn’t want to learn the rest of the story.  There is a dark side to babies in foster care.

“Her mom?”

“Drugs in the baby’s system at the time of birth.”

“Where is she?”

“With a boyfriend in the shelter.  They were evicted.”

The baby made a fist and touched it to her cheek.  I saw a faint smile.  I thought of my own beautiful daughter, now 28.

“Heroin?”

“Yes.”

It seems like its heroin so often now.

“Mom is afraid she can’t quit.  Said she’s tried before.”

I looked at the baby’s toes.  They moved a little.

“But her mom will name her right?”

“We think so.  She has another day.  If she doesn’t the hospital picks a name.”

“Mom needs to name her.  It may be the only thing she ever gets from her mom.”

“I think she will.  We’ll help.  She talks to us.  She wants drug treatment now, but we’re afraid she’ll change her mind.”

Finding an inpatient bed when you need it, when the addict is ready to go, is a crapshoot.  Successful treatment and months and months of clean random drug tests is the only way mom will regain custody of her baby. 

“The father?”

“Not yet identified.”

“Family?”

“Not coming forward and mom isn’t helping.  The baby went to the doctor and is going back to our foster home.  It’s tough.  She didn’t sleep well last night.  She has a tiny tummy and seems agitated.”

Help us I thought.  Help our social workers say the right things and help the judge make the right decisions as this baby begins her life.

Help her mother and father find the strength to be parents.  Help her foster parents love and care for her but not break their hearts when or if her parents prove able to fill that role.

But most of all help this tiny human.  May she know family, friends, and all the good that exists in the world.  Help us all. 

Minutiae

 I changed my computer equipment in the shack.  A young guy came from out of town to help me set it up.  He’s a whiz at hardware and software and helps me remotely through a program called Team Viewer.  He upgraded my computer to increase its operating memory and fixed me up with a much better monitor.  It makes a big difference.  I’ll share his name and contact info if you message me.  Boomers need all the help they can get.

In preparation of his visit, I cleaned off my desk.  I’d planned to clean the shack, or at least the desk, for quite a while.  Things get dirty more quickly in the shack.  That or they don’t get cleaned as often.  The jury is out on that, though not according to my wife.  When she visits the shack she looks all around, pointing out things like cobwebs.  Her eyes are better than mine. 

I put everything from the desk in a cardboard box.  My desk and the nesting table under it holding the keyboard are made from the same slab of hickory.  I hadn’t seen it by itself, uncluttered, for years.  It was a custom-built gift, like other things in the shack, handmade by a person I know.  It’s a handsome piece of furniture.  When I washed it off and polished it, it looked even better.

After the new computer was set up, I slowly took things out of the box only as I needed them, with the hope that my desk remain relatively uncluttered.  It’s not working because clearly, I don’t need all these things. I want them.  Big difference.  Some things must be there.  Speakers, my web cam, the Alexa puck.  From there it gets fuzzy.

The first things I brought out of the box, tissues, was in response to clear need.  My nose was running.  I brought out one of my mom’s old custard cups that holds paper clips because, you guessed it, I needed a paper clip.

But when getting that out of the box, I saw the cool wooden pencil cup that our old neighbor on the farm, Henry Dunlap, turned on his lathe in his basement.  He gave it to me one day when I was a kid.  I rode my bike down the blacktop to his house to visit him.  I looked at the wooden cup in his woodshop, taking it off a shelf and turning it this way and that in my hands. 

“You like that?” Henry said.

“Yeah.  I like the rings around it.  The different colored wood.”

“It didn’t turn out the way I wanted.  How about you take that home?”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  Consider it a gift from your old neighbor.”

When I left on my bike, I put it the pouch of my hooded sweatshirt for the ride home.  I’ve had it ever since.

I keep binder clips, just another type of paper clip, and a nail clipper in there.  Could I put those things in the custard cup?  Sure.  Why not do that?  Because I like looking at Henry’s wooden cup.  Reminds me of home and him.  And that’s the way it starts.  Not a necessary object.  Desired.  Different standard.

I needed a pencil, so I fished around in the box and got one.  As I did, I saw my single pencil holder.  Everything has a story.  I’ll try to make this brief.

I was cutting up a skinny stick of spruce for my wood stove, and as I did, I saw it had a very small hole running through the center of the stick.  I thought the lead of a sharpened pencil might fit in there perfectly.  And it did.  I cut a short section of it off, stuck a pencil in it, and it fell over.  I made the next one a little taller. It stood up fine with the pencil inserted.

Perfect for keeping your often used Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Soft pencil handy and standing up.  It became a fixture on my desk.  I looked at it for weeks and thought it was missing something.  I looped a rubber band around the stick several times, gathered small feathers I had found in the yard over years and brought into the shack, and stuck them in the rubber band. 

There were the oriole feathers, the cardinal feathers, a very nice Blue Jay feather, and then some nicely striped gray and black feathers I can’t identify.  Maybe from a barred owl.  I stuck them in the rubber band, sticking up like the pencil.  They looked good.  A straight up yellow pencil backed by various colored and similarly positioned vertical feathers.  Hard to keep a thing as good as that hidden away in a box.

Soon after that I brought out my Waffle House coffee mug that holds more pencils, pens, scissors, the magnifying glass, the wrench that adjusts the gizmo that holds up my computer monitor. Think of it as a toolbox.   And where do you want your tools?  Handy.  Right on your desk.  And what better thing to hold them than a Waffle House cup?

Days went by.  I brought out the little wood cone I’d glued to a small piece of walnut.  I have some sturdy plastic toothpicks in there and a good straight pin.  Always good to have those on hand, toothpicks, and a pin.

That’s about it for useful desk items unless you count the paperweights.  I don’t find the need to weigh down paper often, but by God when that need arises, I have three of them.  Together if lying flat, which paperweights are designed to do, they take up too much space.  I want to see the grain of the hickory too.  So, I’ve decided to rotate them.

I’m starting with the heavy glass dome given to me by a family friend named Kerem.  The glass catches light and magnifies a very detailed painted scene plastered to the bottom of the dome depicting five Turkish bigwigs at what is possibly an important meeting in a room with mosaic tiled walls.  Maybe an ancient Turkish castle or mosque.  Very pretty shades of blue.  Seems as if I always see something different in there. 

Kerem is a Turkish man who studied in Chicago and went on to become a successful engineer specializing in metals.  He and my daughter Moe were a big help building the shack.  I don’t see him anymore, but when I see that paperweight, I think of him. 

The other two paperweights are a gorgeous, polished geode and a beautiful piece of green glass which was pressed into an old New Orleans water meter and bears its imprint.  You can’t hide these things away for good.  At least I can’t.

The last thing out of the box is the least necessary and most frivolous.  It’s a cupped piece of red glass that I bought on Bainbridge Island in Washington State from a woman who made various things and sold them in her yard.  She made the cast concrete image of her mother’s face with a bird’s wings wrapped around it which hangs on one of my oak trees.  After I bought that face, I bought a little piece of red textured art glass that reminded me of the tractor seats we sat in on the old Minneapolis-Moline tractors on our farm.

Those seats were mounted on a piece of steel like a diving board between the rear wheels.  When you drove over ridges in the field, like going across corn rows the wrong way, that seat tossed you up and down like a trampoline.  We stood most of the time.  I don’t know why that design caught my eye, but it did.

Today I was washing that piece of red glass (don’t know how it got so grimy) and saw it had cursive writing and a date etched on the back.  It was important to that woman on Bainbridge Island, or she wouldn’t have signed it.  And it’s also important to me or I wouldn’t still have it. 

But in this case, it’s not only the glass, it’s what I keep in the glass that I value.  I have a bunch of little rocks, tiny seashells, various found objects.  Anyone can spot and save big things they see on the beach or in the woods.  Little things are harder.  They’re small treasures.  Here’s a partial inventory.

A dried, beautifully tan, long dead, and complete June bug, a tiny worry doll from Guatemala, a small mottled piece of granite, a rock that looks all the world like a pinto bean, a tiny shard of green glass, a tiny solid metal top (maybe a dreidel) that doesn’t spin very well, various shells, an even tinier shard of white glass, a shell with a hole in it I was going to make a necklace with, a very round blue rock, what I thought was a rock that looked like a piece of wood which turned out to be an old dried half of an almond.  (Upon further review, I threw that away.)  Also in the mix is a miniature grey solid piece of metal that looks like a box and says “Altoids”, a broken piece of a metal gear of some kind, and to top it all off a splinter of wood with a hole in it that makes it look like the profile of a long beaked bird’s head.  An egret.  Maybe a heron.

I had a shiny buckeye in there too, but it was large and out of place, so I put it beside the piece of glass.  We had a buckeye tree in our timber when I was a kid, and I always carried one in my pocket.  You don’t come across a good buckeye like that very often. 

Buckeye and all, that little display is no bigger than your hand.  Lots of things in a small space. I like it.

While I was at it, I also brought out the very neat owl pellet I found under one of my oak trees last year.  I found it fits perfectly on top of a computer speaker.  And aside from the stuff that constantly changes; various notes, scratch paper, miscellaneous mail, scraps of paper kept to remind me of upcoming things, and bills I intend to pay, that is what’s on the desk.

Still in the box are two paper weights awaiting their turn on the desk, a checkbook, other bills I may never pay, and a small number of things headed for the waste basket and not worth mentioning.    

In the end my desk is nearly, though not quite, as cluttered as it was before.  What’s happening here?  What would Marie Kondo, the Japanese woman who wrote a book on tidying up, say about my approach?  She would say everything I keep should bring me joy.  It does. I hope your stuff brings you joy too.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words?

 

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

You’ve heard it right?  Ancient Chinese saying, from Confucius perhaps?  That would be wrong.

Modern use of the phrase is generally attributed to advertising executive Fred Barnard in a 1921 trade journal article promoting the use of images in advertising on streetcars. Fred Barnard is later quoted in 1949 as saying, after the phrase had gone as viral as it possibly could before the internet, that he made it up and called it a Chinese proverb so people would take it seriously. 

But like Trump winning the presidential election of 2020, the myth lives on.  A picture is worth a thousand words.  Sounds deep and prophetic, doesn’t it?  Certainly not something made up by a twentieth century advertising exec getting ready for color printing and television. 

I never believed it myself because you can do a lot with a thousand words.  But then, I’m an English major who’s partial to print.

On July 17 my granddaughter June will be 17 months old.  It’s been a wonderful time for our family.  All of us have learned a lot about child development.  The main lesson is that June changes with every day that goes by.

As early as 3-4 months of age, babies recognize the faces of their caretakers and close relatives.  In fact, babies can process faces long before they recognize other objects.  But the experts say it takes about 18 months for babies to recognize their face as their own.  I think June is slightly ahead of schedule. 

If June had an extensive vocabulary now, which she doesn’t, she might look in the mirror, or into that inset panel on the Face Time call, and say to herself “Oh my God, it’s me. June.”  While she can’t put those words together, I’m pretty sure June knows it’s her. 

June’s grandmother and I Face Time with June nearly every day.  Sometimes June’s Mom calls in the morning before nap time, when June is prone to being fussy.  Seeing her grandparents on the little I Phone screen apparently distracts her and calms her down.  She’s all smiles.  She waves.

We do a lot of waving.  June prefers the flat hand, palm out, moving back and forth like a windshield wiper kind of wave, paired with a big smile and the word “Hi”.  A word and a motion combined. The beginning of something big.  That wave, along with the smile on her face, is pure beauty. 

June shows us things during these short video calls; pictures in books, toys, the two cats that live in her house, flowers, and other things in her recently acquired yard.  And when June comes to our house, we return the favor.  Call it mutual discovery.

In this amazing time when everyone with a smart phone has become a photographer, videographer, and publisher, pictures are everywhere.  I take more pictures now than at any time in my life.  But still, I prefer observing the world head on, unobstructed by a lens and a screen between me and reality.  I lean to making memories not photographs.  And then I try to capture those memories, remembered visions in my head, using words. 

I have a little sign below my web cam with these words.  Wait. Instead of me writing it, let’s communicate with a picture.

 

Was that worth a thousand words?  I think not.  Somewhere between six and fifteen at most I’d say.

Now let me write a thousand words, with a few pictures thrown in.  You judge which is worth more. (608 words of set up.)

 

Sometime in early morning, my daughter, June’s Mom, took June from the portable crib at Papa and Goggy’s house into bed with her, the bed in the room where June’s Mom used to sleep as a little girl.

June’s Dad left the night before, so he could be at work in Chicago early, and June’s Mom could spend time with old friends in Ottawa.  Papa was in the kitchen making coffee when he heard June fuss.  Upon opening the bedroom door, Papa smiled at June.  June sat up and smiled back.

“Stay in bed,” Papa told June’s Mom.  “Sleep longer and I’ll feed June breakfast and entertain her a while.”

Papa and June split a bowl of steel cut oats with raisins, honey, and some milk to cool it down.  June especially liked the raisins.  Because June is not yet proficient with a spoon, she had oatmeal all over her face.  Papa wet a paper towel and came in quickly for the cleanse.   June turned her face away and tried to dodge it.  Papa prevailed.  It was over quickly.

“Let’s go outside,” Papa said.

June responded with a string of sounds that sounded for all the world like a sentence.  Papa, however, could not pick out one word.  Undeterred, Papa kept talking.

“Let’s see what we can find,” Papa said.

Papa opened the patio door with June in his arms.  The back yard stretched from the house to the shack and the ravine beyond the shack.  Morning sunlight made its way through the ravine and fell in streaks across the green lawn.

Now that she can, June prefers to walk.  She squirmed. Papa let June down but kept hold of her hand.  They walked up to one of the big oak trees.  Papa took June into his arms again.

“Look.”

June waved.

“Hi,” she said.

“She can’t talk back June.”

June, her face inches from Papa’s, responded with a string of syllables that rose in the middle, fell, and then rose again at the end.  Like uptalking.

“I don’t understand your question, but she’s not alive if that’s what you’re asking.”

June accepted that. But she wanted down.  Papa walked her to the next oak tree.

"Look."

Papa picked June up and pointed at the tree's face parts; eyes, nose, mouth, then pointed to June’s corresponding parts and named them.  June seemed interested and said so.  At least Papa thought she did.  June touched the side of her head.

“You’re right.  No ears.  Poor tree can’t hear a thing.”

June looked deeply into Papa’s eyes, as if to agree.

Papa put June down, took her hand, and walked her up the shack porch steps. June takes steps straight on, lifting her feet way up, making big strides.  Papa took June in his arms again.

“Look.”

“Hi,” June said, waving.

“What does the bear say?”

June made a fair approximation of a bear’s roar.  "GRRR!"

“You’re right June.  You’re darned smart, you know that?”

Papa walked into the shack with June in his arms.  Her eyes grew wide.  There was a lot of visual stuff going on in the shack that Papa forgot about.  June reached immediately for the thing on Papa’s stereo speaker.

“Don’t touch that June.  Papa found that on a trail in Buffalo Rock years ago.  He thinks coyotes made off with the rest of the deer and left that behind.”

June’s eyes went up and immediately found another face. 

“Hi,” June said, waving.

“That’s Howdy Doody’s head, all that’s left of a ventriloquist doll Papa got for his birthday very long ago.”

June’s eyes went to the gable end of the shack.

“Hi,” June said, waving to the mask at the top of the shack.

Papa turned around.  June’s eyes found another mask.

“Hi,” she said, waving to the mask on the opposite wall.

“Let’s look at the floor June.”

Papa put June down next to his water bottle.

“Watch what happens when Papa pumps this thing.” 

Papa pressed the pump three times and water fell into a stone crock below for a few seconds before stopping.

June put her hand in the stream.  Then in the water in the crock. 

Next, June touched the clenched fingers of both hands together several times.  Papa remembered.

“Oh. You want more.”

Papa presses the pump three times again.  Water falls out.  June signs.  Repeat.  June signs again.  Repeat.  This could go on for a long time, Papa thinks.

June’s Mom and Dad taught her that sign.  It means more. Two weeks ago, June ignored it.  Now she understands.  Soon she’ll learn the word.

Papa’s small crock was filling up.  He picked June up and took her outside.

The sun was higher, shining through the oaks.  A breeze swayed their branches. Shadows and patches of light danced across the lawn.

Papa saw something.  He pointed across the lawn.  June looked and saw it.

“Look June.  There’s a baby bunny.” 

June sees bunnies in books and likes them.  But as far as Papa knew, this would be her first look at a real bunny.

“Hi,” June said, looking at the bunny and waving.

Papa stood June up on the grass. 

“Go pet the bunny June.”

June looked back at her Papa, her eyes wide, then ran towards it. 

The bunny froze.  June never slowed.  Now closer, June waved again.

“Hi.”

Finally, the bunny ran.  But not far.  It stopped.  Froze again.

June ran on, waving.  When the bunny ran, and changed direction, so did June.  Papa became uncomfortable with the distance between himself and June, and he scurried behind them.  

A baby bunny on a morning in its first summer, running from baby June in her second summer, followed by Papa in his seventy first.  A short parade.

Oh, to once again be a baby in a world where every face is worthy of a wave and every new image a discovery.  And thank you God for the moment when an old man lives to once again see the world through the eyes of a child.

 

That was a thousand words.  What’s worth more?  The pictures or the words?