Life on the Edge of Town

 

It was 1976, our first winter in that house between the canal and the railroad tracks.  We were one house away from the dead-end on our side of the street, and on the other side, Harriet’s trailer was dead last. 

If it wasn’t a travel trailer, it was the smallest mobile home I’d ever seen.  A kitchen with living space at one end, a bedroom at the other, and a cramped bathroom in between.  Harriet had a chihuahua named Speedy and diabetes. She wore house dresses, bathrobes, and bedroom slippers.  Her calves were tight and swollen.  There were sores on them. 

Our house was old but had been remodeled before we moved in to create a bathroom.  Modernized to serve as a rental I figured.  It was extremely affordable and perfectly square.  Each of Its four rooms were the same size.  The heating stove was in the living room and the other three rooms were chilly.  But we had each other.

Harriet just had the chihuahua.

It was early December and the forecast called for a big snow.  I was headed for the grocery store in case we were snowed in.

“You should ask Harriet if she needs anything.  She hates to leave the trailer if there’s snow and ice.”

“I will.”

We tried to keep an eye on Harriet.  Seemed no one else did.    

When I pounded on the trailer door, she yelled for me to come in.  I stepped inside.  Harriet had her electric space heater cranked up and it was terribly hot.  The air smelled of Pine-Sol.

Harriet was sitting on her love seat with Speedy curled up beside her.  Harriet’s heels were together on an ottoman, but her toes pointed out diagonally.  The soles of her slippers were dirty and scuffed, forming a dark V.  She turned her gaze from the TV to me.  Harriet’s glasses had thick lenses that magnified her eyes.

She was saying something to me, but I couldn’t hear her. It was very quiet outside with the snow but extra loud in the trailer.  I tried to talk over the TV.

“THEY’RE SAYING WE COULD GET SNOWED IN HARRIET.  I’M GOING TO THE STORE.  WANT TO SEE IF YOU NEED ANYTHNG.”

She cupped her hand behind her ear and yelled back.

“TURN THAT THING DOWN WILL YOU?”

I found the volume knob and turned it down.  So much better.  I repeated my offer of help.

“Well, ain’t that nice, youse thinking of me like that.  Let me see.  I was just to the store Tuesday.  I better check.”

With effort, she moved her feet from the ottoman to the floor.  Then she grabbed the arms of her chair and began to push herself up. She strained, her face got red, she sat back down.

“As long as you’re here, give me a hand up will ya?”

Harriet stuck her arm out towards me.  I pulled hard and she stood, letting out a big groan.  She stood there a moment, straightening and gathering herself, then shuffled towards the refrigerator and opened the door.  I looked over her shoulder while she scanned the shelves.

Baloney, eggs, white bread, ketchup, oleo, pickles, three packages of cheap hot dogs, orange juice, assorted condiments and a big jar of Miracle Whip.  There was lettuce in the crisper getting brown on the edges.

Harriet was able to walk slowly to the convenience store, up and over the tracks, a few blocks away.  She pulled a wire basket on wheels.  Not much choice there.  They didn’t carry dog food, so Harriet had taken to feeding Speedy their cheap wieners.

“I’m pretty well fixed for a few days Dave.  Enough to get through a storm I figure.”

“OK.  Just thought I’d ask.”

Speedy was at Harriet’s ankles looking agitated.

“He thinks I’m gonna feed him.”

Harriet got her finger inside an open package of hot dogs and fished one out.  Speedy stood on his hind legs and turned around in a circle.

“Look at the little guy,” Harriet said. 

She broke the wiener in half, stooped over, and held it in mid-air.  Speedy jumped, snagged it, and disappeared into the bedroom.

“You two getting along OK over there across the street?”

“We’re fine Harriet.  Nice and quiet down here.  We like it.  We’re busy working most days.”

Colleen was teaching at an alternative school and I was working as an aide at a nursing home. 

“Yeah, when your cars leave of a morning its dead silent down here on this end of the street.  Just me, Speedy, and the birds.”

She looked longingly at her chair.  Speedy came back and looked up at Harriet expectantly.  She tossed the second half of the wiener on the floor. Speedy grabbed it and ran back to the bedroom.  Harriet plopped into her chair.

“Say, you wouldn’t be going downtown to the D&S would ya?”

The D&S was the closest thing to a supermarket that little town had. 

“Yeah.”

“Well, if that’s the case, I might ask you to pick me up a quart of Old Thompson.  If I’m going to get snowed in, I might as well have something to help me pass the time.”

“I can do that Harriet.  What if they don’t have it?”

“Oh, I think they will. But if they’re out, Kesslers will do fine.”

Old Thompson and Kesslers were favorites of the dive bar shot and a beer crowd.  The old guys would order a shot and a short one or a shot and a wash.  Some skipped the shot after they’d had a couple and switched to beer only.  Others kept right on.

“Just the whiskey then Harriet?”

“Yeah, just the whiskey.  Thanks.  Let me get you some money.”

“Don’t get up.  I’ve got money.  You can pay me when I get back.”

Harriet’s feet were on the floor.  Speedy had come back.  When I looked down at him, I saw Speedy licking a sore on Harriet’s ankle.  Harriet looked up smiled.

“OK Harriet.  I’ll be back soon.”

 

When I got back the snow was falling harder.  Big flakes.  I knocked on the trailer door.  No response.  Finally, Harriet yelled, and I stepped in.  The TV was off.  Looked like she had been sleeping.  Speedy was on her lap. 

I sat the Old Thompson, in a brown paper bag, on her TV stand.  I kept the door open, intending to leave quickly.

“There you go Harriet.  Let us know if you need anything else.”

“Hold on now.  I’m going to pay you.”

She handed me a five and two ones.

“Does that cover it?”

“Yeah. That’s good.”

It was more than that, but I let it go.  I didn’t want to see her try to get up again.

I turned to go.

“Wait. I want to tell you something.”

I stopped and turned.

“I never lock that door you know.  If you ever get lonely yourself or need some company, you could come over here anytime. We could have a drink.  Maybe a little party.”

She flashed her biggest smile and arched her eyebrows.  Speedy picked up his head and looked first at Harriet, then at me.

“I’ll be going now Harriet.  You take care.”

 

That night after supper, across the street, Colleen and I sat together on the couch listening to albums.

“How was Harriet today?”

“Oh, you know.  The same.”

“Did you pick up groceries for her?”

“No.  No food anyway.  All she wanted was a quart of whiskey.”

“Whiskey?  Really?  A quart?  I didn’t know she drank like that.  Did you get it for her?”

“Yeah.”

“I hope she doesn’t get loaded and fall down in there.”

“Me too.”

The record stopped.  I got up and turned it over.  It was James Taylor’s One Man Dog album.  I sat back down and put my arm around Colleen.

“Let’s make a deal.  Want to?”

“What kind of deal?”

“A long-range deal.  Let’s not get old.  What do you say?”

“I don’t think we can stop that.”

“No?  Well, if not let’s make sure we’re not alone when we get there.”

“That we might be able to pull off.  If we’re lucky.”

She hugged me. 

“What brings this on?”

“Harriet’s life.  It’s so sad to watch. “

“Did something happen when you went over there?

“Nothing you want to hear about.  She’s OK, I guess.  But I don’t want either of us to go through what she is by ourselves.”

“That we might be able to do.  We can try hard anyway.”

The music stopped and the room was quiet.  Snow was still piling up.  We could see it falling through the yellow cone under the streetlight outside, the last one on the edge of town. 

The needle on the turntable got to the next track, and “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” began to play.  The smooth voice of James Taylor at the start, that sweet tenor sax at the end.

When the song finished, we went to bed. On the way, I looked across the street.  The inside of Harriet’s trailer was lit only by her TV, glowing in the kitchen.  I looked away. 

(To listen to the song, press CTRL and click the link below)

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgLKqwU45Jw

In Gratitude

I want to tell you about my eyes. 

I’ve been thinking more about eyes since I first held my granddaughter June and looked into hers.   She has big blue eyes, that I’m told could yet change to brown.  I’ve also learned newborns don’t see much besides shapes and light for a while.  I don’t know how babies think, but by June’s face, it appears she is fascinated by what she sees, however vaguely, and thinks deeply about the world around her.  But then I’m biased about my first granddaughter. 

I may think more about eyes than most.  My vision has been a challenge not only for me but the doctors who have tried to help me since I was in my teens. 

After finals were over at ISU in the spring of 1972, I made an appointment with my optometrist at the Gailey eye clinic in Bloomington. I was convinced the nagging blurriness I was experiencing while studying was caused by scratches on my contact lenses.  No matter how much I soaked and cleaned them nothing changed.  I figured they needed to be buffed up, maybe replaced.  Instead, I got bad news. 

My optometrist said it wasn’t my contacts that were damaged, it was my eyes.  My corneas to be exact.  While I was in the exam room, he brought in another doctor to look at me.  Never a good sign. 

Seven days later I was examined by an ophthalmologist.  When he finished, he took me to a small conference room where my optometrist and another doc were waiting.  They explained I had a condition called keratoconus, in which my corneas become cone-shaped.  As the corneas change, warp if you will, they create scars akin to stretch marks.  Corneal scars can’t be buffed out.  Plus, the uneven shape of the cornea, bumpy instead of a normal smooth arc, distorts your vision.

They laid out a plan for me. They would fit me with new contact lenses that would touch the cornea in the center.  The plastic discs would hold back the cone forcing it into a more normal shape.  My optometrist, who had seen me through several corneal abrasions since I began wearing contacts at sixteen, assured the other doctors I tolerated pain well.  They wouldn’t be comfortable, they explained, but they would help me see better, and I would pass my driver’s test.

The eventual fix, the ophthalmologist told me in a serious tone, was a corneal transplant.  I remember that conversation well.

“Why not do the operation right now?” I asked.

”Because we can still correct your vision within a normal range without surgery.”

“But I would see better with the surgery, right?  Isn’t that the point?  Being able to see as well as possible?”

“It’s not that simple.  You’ll function fairly normally with new contacts.  You would be hard-pressed to find a surgeon to do that operation now.  It’s risky.  The longer you wait the better.  Researchers are better procedures and materials all the time.  We’re learning more all the time.  Trust me.  It’s better to wait.”

I must have looked like I needed more convincing. 

“Recovery from a corneal graft, once a donor cornea becomes available, means lying in a hospital bed for perhaps weeks with sandbags around your head waiting for the incision to heal.  The cornea is held in by only a few stitches.  Patients don’t always achieve the results they want.  Neither do surgeons.” 

That was a kick in the head.  I developed a fatalistic attitude.  What if reading became even more of a problem?  Reading was already tiring, wearing my eyes out, and I was an English major headed toward a career as a teacher.  Who in their life ever heard of an English teacher who couldn’t read for extended periods of time?  Grading papers? Hello? 

Ironically, 1972 was the year Jackson Browne made his first album and recorded what would be his best-selling single “Doctor My Eyes.”  Check out these lyrics.  When I first heard it on the radio it was like he was talking directly to me.  Click this link for the whole song on audio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEDUFgCK_1g

Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
And the slow parade of fears without crying
Now I want to understand.

I have done all that I could
To see the evil and the good without hiding
You must help me if you can.

Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long?

In spite of my doctors’ assurances, I secretly feared blindness or something close to it was in my future. I taught high school English for a year, went to Europe, resigned by telegram from Spain, and began a period of my life where I traveled extensively.  I was intent on seeing everything I could while I still could.  Call it 22-year-old drama, fear, or whatever you want.  I racked up a lot of miles.  Mostly by hitchhiking.

“Take it Easy”, a song Jackson Browne and Glenn Frye wrote, and The Eagles made famous, became the song that played most often in my head when I had my thumb out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMA3lIeqV8M

              Well, I’m a standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona

              And such a fine sight to see.

              It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford,

              Slowing down to take a look at me.

Come on baby, don’t say maybe,

I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me.

 

We may lose, and we may win,

Though we will never be here again.

So open up I’m climbing in,

So take it easy.

 

Take it easy, take it easy.

              Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.

              Lighten up while you still can,

              Don’t even try to understand.

              Just find a place to make your stand and take it easy.

 

I took it very easy for a year and a half, or so I said.  Parts of the trip were desperately difficult.  I limped home from that eighteen-month trip to Europe and North Africa having lost my original left contact lens in Chefchaouen, the blue Moroccan city in the Rif mountains.   

I lost the spare left in a hammam in Benghazi, Libya.  When I reached Egypt and looked at the pyramids in Giza, it was through two right contact lenses.

When I got back to the states, I went straight to the Gailey clinic. The keratoconus was status quo.  I resupplied myself with newly fitted contact lenses, worked and saved money, bought another spare pair, and set out for South America within a year. 

When I got back from the second trip, profoundly and utterly broke this time, I had it in my mind to accomplish whatever I could by staying in one place.  I moved into a tiny Illinois Valley house by an abandoned canal and grudgingly entertained the notion that work might turn out to be more than a means to get money to do other things.  That felt somehow like admitting defeat.

Jackson Browne recorded an album in 1977 with another song that spoke directly to my new situation called “The Pretender.”  Were we living parallel lives this Jackson Browne guy and I?  Or was he that good at naming the times we all were living in?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqRvJLH_-vU

              I’m going to rent myself a house,

              In the shade of the freeway.

              I’m going to pack my lunch in the morning,

              And go to work each day.

              And when the evening rolls around

              I’ll go on home and lay my body down,

              And when the morning light comes streaming in,

              I’ll get up and do it again.

              Amen.

              Say it again.

              Amen.

 

              Caught.

  Between the longing for love

              And the struggle for the legal tender.

              Where the ads take aim and lay their claim,

              To the heart and the soul of the spender.

              And believe in whatever may lie,

              In those things that money can buy

              Though true love could have been a contender.

             

              Are you there?

Say a prayer.

              For the pretender.

Who started out so young and strong,

              Only to surrender.

        

Life changed.  I moved to a better house and got increasingly more meaningful jobs.  I borrowed money to buy a car that was not a beater.  And in one dizzying year, 1982, I got the job I would keep for the next 30 years, married the woman I loved, and we had our first child.  There are times in life when everything seems to happen at once.

My vision was still corrected fairly well, though my astigmatism continued to increase. 

Both before and after being diagnosed with keratoconus, I suffered collisions with immovable objects.  I ran full tilt into a fire hydrant while throwing a football around in college. I slammed into a set of concrete steps while playing frisbee on a Chicago lakefront beach.  I skied into a wooden fence in Wisconsin having no idea where it came from. Had I seen it coming, I like to think I would have fallen down on purpose before I hit it and broke my leg.  I always blamed those accidents on wonky vision, though I could have taken too many risks.  People who know me well contend I am afflicted with both problems. 

When I began taking trips with optometrists hosting volunteer eye clinics in Mexico and Central America, I roomed with my brother-in-law Tony Ortiz, an optician who taught me his craft in that first clinic in Queretaro, Mexico.  One morning before breakfast he became alarmed watching me fumble around on a tabletop trying to find my contact case.  I had stopped going to the Gailey clinic in Bloomington and relied on whatever optometrist was convenient.  Tony suggested I see his optometrist brother Phil. 

“You need somebody that knows what they’re doing to look at those eyes.”

At my first appointment, when measuring my astigmatism with a keratometer, Phil had to get auxiliary lenses for his instrument.

“You’re not doing so good,” Phil said.

He put me in recently developed gas permeable contact lenses that allowed more oxygen to my corneas and experimented with different fits.  He helped me a lot.  Then I flunked the vision portion of my driver’s test.  They explained I would need to have a letter from a licensed optometrist before they would issue me a license.

Phil gave me that letter but in exchange for a promise.

“You may be at the end of your rope with those corneas.  I’ll sign this form so you can drive, but you have to promise to see a friend of mine who is an ophthalmologist and a surgeon.  It may be time for a cornea transplant.”

“How are they doing with corneal transplants these days?”

My consultation with the docs at Gailey Eye Clinic came back to me in a rush.   

“Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but this guy is doing really well.”

That guy was Jim Noth, an ophthalmologist and surgeon working out of Hinsdale.  The year was 1990 and I was 39.  Dr. Noth and I had kids the same age - seven and five. 

Dr. Noth explained the process to me.

“While you’re sedated, I secure your eyeball on something of a stage and, working under a microscope, take out a small circle of the damaged cornea covering your pupil and iris.” 

“What do you do that with?” I asked.

“Something like a tiny and very sharp biscuit cutter.”

“Sounds tricky.”

“It’s not that bad.  I cut the donated cornea to fit the hole I create and sew it on with thread thinner than your hair.”

“How many stitches?”

“Usually about 12.  Each one has a separate loop and knot.  You stay in the hospital overnight, I look at your eye in the morning, and if everything is OK, you go home the next day.  I remove the stitches one or two at a time, depending on the shape your eye takes, over a period of six months or longer.  There’s no blood in the cornea and no nerves to worry about.  Your eyelid feels the stitches at first, but you get a callous.  There’s not a lot of pain.  You’ll start noticing improvement in the first month.  Dr. Ortiz can  put you in corrective eyeglasses, the prescription in the right eye will change as the cornea changes, and after a year or so you’ll stabilize.”

“What can go wrong?”

It’s a transplant, so your body can reject the tissue.  Pretty rare in the eyeball, but it happens.  Even if it does, we have great drops now that help us save the procedure.  Not always though.  I’ve only had it happen a couple times.”

“What if it fails?”

“We do it again.”

His staff gave me a beeper. When I reached the top of their list and an appropriate cornea from a cadaver became available, they would beep me.  I had to respond within an hour by phone accepting the cornea or they went to the next person on the list.

That was the right cornea.  A year later Dr. Noth replaced my left cornea.  After the second operation, I went home the same day.  And for the next 25 years, I had the best vision I’d had since I was a teenager. 

But the keratoconus never left me.  I had hoped when the old corneas were removed the disease would go with it.  Not so.  Destroying corneas is what the eyes of those afflicted with keratoconus do.  Over time my vision began to worsen, primarily in my right eye.  I saw it coming (pun intended).  It got harder and harder to find my golf ball.  I once again depending heavily on STOP AHEAD signs, and it seemed not long at all between brake replacements.  I struggled to read the numbers in the crossword puzzle.  My optometrist saw it too.

It was Phil’s son Tim, who took over is father’s practice at Ortiz Eye Clinic in Morris, who told me once again he could no longer improve my vision.

“I think it’s time to see Dr. Lubek again.”

Dr. Noth retired about the same time I did.  Dr. Lubek is a younger ophthalmologist who removed my cataracts and replaced them with corrective lenses.  He also did some radial keratotomy on my corneas to relieve growing astigmatism.  He knew my eyes.  At a recent visit, he examined my right eye, checked out a printed colored topographic image of the cornea created by a great new diagnostic machine, and told me I needed a new cornea.  There was no fixing the one I had. 

“How soon can you get it done?”

“We’ll find out.”

I had my right cornea replaced for the second time on March 23^rd.  I was in and out of the Center for Minimally Invasive Surgery in Mokena in under five hours. 

They gave me valium and a little something to put me under.  I woke up sometime after the halfway point of the procedure.  I looked up into a gauzy whiteness, all with my left eye I’m sure, as they worked on the right.

“How’s it going?”

“Good.  I’m putting in stitch number ten.”  It was Dr. Lubek’s calm voice.

“How many more?”

“I’ve got it planned for sixteen.”

“Good cornea?”

“Great cornea.  I’ll tell you about it later.”

“You’re busy.  I’ll be quiet.”

“Thanks.”

He and the nurse had a moment.  He asked for something and she gave him the wrong thing, or from the wrong tray.  Whatever happened, he didn’t like it.  He told her calmly but firmly.  She apologized.  I think I dozed off after that.

I saw him the next day.  After he took off the shield and the patch and examined my eye he leaned back on his stool.

“What do you think?”

“You can’t tell, because I’m wearing a mask, but I’m smiling in a big way.  I mean its swollen, and we’ll know much more in the weeks to come, but after less than twenty-four hours, it’s fitting very nicely.  I’m really pleased.”

“Can you tell me anything about the donor?”

“72 -year- old male, died of natural causes, from the Midwest.”

“72?  Last time I got a cornea they said they would never give me a cornea from a donor older than me. I’m 69.”

In 1990 and 1991, the corneas I received were from people in their 20’s. 

“That’s an old assumption.  We have much better ways of determining the quality of corneas now. They go by cell count, elasticity.  That 72-year-old gave you a great cornea for me to work with.  Really.”

“I forget about the recovery.  What’s going to happen?”

“You won’t see much through that eye for two weeks. Your eye has to make the new tissue its own.  But when it does, it goes faster.  Tim Ortiz will hopefully give you a corrective lens after a month or two. You’ll have several prescription changes over twelve months, I’ll remove stitches slowly over that year, and then it will settle down into a smooth and hopefully much less astigmatic cornea.”

“Thanks, doc, for making this happen for me.”

“You’re welcome.’

He paused.

“This is one of the procedures I enjoy most.  Someone donates a cornea, maybe knowing how valuable it is or maybe not.  I act as the bridge, making the best use of the donor’s gift as I can, giving it to someone who needs it.  Like you.  I know how much you needed this cornea.  Hopefully, you will make use of it for a long time.  Something could still happen you know.  Rejection is the biggest risk, but it’s very small odds.  I think you know that.  But I’m pretty sure your vision will improve a lot.”

He stood up. 

“I think corneal transplants are a great thing for all three of us: the donor, the surgeon, and the recipient.”

 

Old singer songwriters; Neil Young, John Prine, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, my friend Jackson Browne, and a whole list of others tend to write their best stuff, or maybe their most famous and frequently heard, at the beginning of their careers.  But they have such long careers.  How could they possibly sustain their popularity?  We expect so much from them.

Jackson Browne, now in his 70’s,  recorded his last album in 2014.  No hits that I recall.  You would not likely recognize the song titles.  I listened to it to see if we are still on the same road.  We are.  I found these lyrics in a song called “Standing in the Breach.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeErlCbO2mM

And though the earth may tremble, and our foundations crack
We will all assemble, and we will build them back
And rush to save the lives remaining still within our reach
And try to put our world together standing in the breach.

So many live in poverty while others live as kings
Though some may find peace
In the acceptance of all that living brings
I will never understand however they've prepared
How one life may be struck down and another life be spared

I want to think that the earth can heal
And that people might still learn
How to meet this world's true challenges
And that the course we're on could turn

And though the earth may tremble and the oceans pitch and rise
We will all assemble, and we will lift our eyes
To the tasks that we know lie before us
And the power our prayers beseech
And cast our souls into the heavens, standing in the breach

You don't know why it's such a far cry
From the world, this world could be
You don't know why but you still try
For the world, you wish to see
You don't know how it's going to happen now
After all, that's come undone
And you know the world you're waiting for may not come
No, it may not come
But you know the change the world needs now
Is there, in everyone.

 

All that poetry and beautiful guitar besides.  Thanks, Jackson Browne.  Thanks, Drs. Ortiz, Dr. Noth, Dr. Lubek.  Thanks especially to the three donors I’ll never know who gave me their corneas after they had left the stage.  I’ve been blessed by your gifts.  I’ll try to use them well.

 

Donate your eyes when you’re done with them.  Someone will see you as their hero.

Spring Cleaning

This spring is different.  Not only are we busting out of darkness and cold, like all northerners who winter at home, we’re leaving behind the year-long isolation of a global pandemic.

I approach St. Patrick’s Day with relief and joy.   After shaving my beard and digging out my favorite green shirt I tell myself “I can do the rest of winter standing on my head.”

Let it snow, it’ll be gone in a day.  Screw the snowblower, the cosmos is taking care of us.  Every day our hemisphere tilts closer to the sun, lengthening the days at a rapid clip.  You can’t stop it.  Take that winter.

Every spring is a fresh start but this one is transformational.  I am deep into spring cleaning, approaching it with a vengeance.

After a year of hunkering down in the shack, with visitors numbering less than the fingers on one hand, I accumulated all kinds of things.  In the house, we threw away things we were trapped with for years, but in the shack, the piles grew. 

Most of it was articles clipped from newspapers that still show up on our driveway.   Others were digitally copied, pasted, and printed from the internet.  I’m trying to beat this addiction to ink and paper, to be satisfied with computer files pasted to my desktop, but it dies slowly.  Something about seeing words while holding them in my hands comforts me.  I laid them out on my futon and tried to organize them.  Lots defy categorization.  

Why are they there?  Each was a potential blog post.  One day, for a brief moment each was considered write worthy.  Now, I’m not so sure.  I set the wastebasket close, determined to ruthlessly toss them.  But I realize I can’t possibly let go of some without at least a mention.

An eight-word headline from the Chicago Tribune:

Survivors hanuted by loss of smell and taste

Hanuted?  The Chicago Tribune editors missed the misspelling of the word haunted in an article about the effects of coronavirus IN THE HEADLINE?  I quickly consulted my friend, a retired newspaper editor.

“That kind of mistake occurs more often than you think.  Miss a misspelled word once and you miss it every time.  And in fairness, the more important copy, the copy that contains the most errors, is typically in the body of the article.  Headlines tend to be overlooked.  Once upon a time, several technologies ago, the typesetters would catch those errors.  Not so now.  Expect more.  It happens.”

 

I found two pieces by Tribune columnist John Kass.  I don’t even like John Kass.  Let me rephrase that.  I don’t like his politics.  But as a writer, he still gets it done.  Connects with his reader.  One article from August 2018 was a review of a great movie called “The  Rider” by a Chinese director I’d never heard of named Chloe Zhao, who recently directed “Nomadland.”  Based on his recommendation I watched it.  It’s a simple story filmed in the Badlands of a young man changed forever by his experience as a rodeo rider.  Simplicity can be hard hitting and emotional, as this movie was for me.

The second Kass article was a March 5, 2021 tribute to a colleague who passed away, yet also somehow about fishing, lent and prayer, and the damned screens in front of our face (like this one ironically) that now dominate our lives.  It was a piece that wandered yet strangely came together in the end.  Both articles reminded me that when we stop thinking of our political differences and allow ourselves to be quiet, admitting what we feel, we create ways to find what we have in common.

 

I could not throw away a short 350-word article about Dion Callaway, the California man who lost his prosthetic leg while skydiving.  Ironically, he lost his God-given leg while skydiving also.  He shattered his heel attempting a high-speed parachute landing and after a year of rehab and complications opted to have the leg amputated below the knee.  He resumed skydiving as soon as possible.   

As luck would have it, he jumped from 10,000 feet without realizing there was a tear in the compression sleeve that keeps his stump and the prosthesis connected.  Air filled the sleeve, the artificial leg was torn away, and it sailed to earth who knows where.  Callaway tried to follow the falling leg but lost track.  He eventually landed, successfully, on one leg.  Immediately he launched a four-hour search on crutches through Russian River vineyards to find the missing leg. No luck.

Turns out his leg blew a half-mile south into a lumber yard.  It was discovered and turned over to the local sheriff, who asked around, and was connected to Callaway by the airport from where he jumped.  The artificial leg was in perfect condition. Dion Callaway resumed skydiving immediately, this time with his name and contact information plastered to the device.

I identified with the story because like Dion I have a bad leg due to an injury.  There was a time I considered having it taken off but was talked out of it by physical therapists and surgeons.  Mostly though I clipped the article because I liked Dion’s spunk, as represented by this quote about the sensation of jumping out of airplanes and falling to earth.

“It’s a sensation of floating, and it’s a lot of fun.  You’re up there with your friends, playing around two  miles up.  It’s like you’re Peter Pan.”

 

I saved no less than twelve pieces about America and its four year far-right policy shift against immigrants and refugees.  Included were stories featuring national actors who exploited the issue for political reasons; Jeff Sessions, Steve King of Iowa, White House speechwriter and policy advisor Stephen Miller, and his infamous boss.

I saved stories from good reporters who went to the border and recorded the awful results their policies created, including 450 migrant parents deported without their children.  Every time I tried to write about the story it changed.  It deserves to be a book, not a blog piece.  But what is most needed is comprehensive immigration reform and a conclusion to the mess we’ve created around immigration issues.  We need to write an ending to that story for which America can be proud.

 

I saved a bunch of articles about things I could, and may still, do (although I admit prospects appear dim some days.)  Imagining them got me through some of the worst pandemic days.  I’ll sum them up in bullet points.  Call it a fantasy To-Do list. 

·       Amtrak’s Writer Residency Program once offered free round-trip tickets on 15 long-distance routes to authors.  Unsold sleeper car spaces were given to writers in hopes they would share their experiences on social media and elsewhere.   

·       A Rick Steves European tour of artist’s residences, including that of composer Edward Grieg’s one-room studio on a Norwegian fiord, Rembrandt’s studio in Amsterdam, and Salvador Dali’s studio overlooking the port in Cadaques, Spain.

·       A scheme for making small homes out of cargo shipping containers.

·       The annual Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest at Sloppy Joe’s bar in Key West.

·       Companies that hire retirees to shuttle cars to vacation destinations for senior citizens complete with paid one-way return airline tickets.

·       Abandoned railroad corridors turned into bike paths across Illinois.

·       The growing trends for more natural human burial and other alternatives to the traditional disposal of human remains, including composting.

 

Owing to my former life in social work, I save various articles on issues that affect young people and their families including the rise of suicide rates among not only young people but all of us during the pandemic, the looming housing crisis, food insecurity, how the sex offender registry negatively impacts young offenders for the remainder of their lives, and the condition of our juvenile detention and correction facilities.  These issues live in darkness as a forgotten world.  Any news item that claws its way into the media and our consciousness is notable. 

 

And I am always on the lookout for news about Marilyn Hartman.  For Chicago Tribune reporters, Marilyn Hartman is the gift that never ends.

I encountered Marilyn for the first time in a February 2018 Trib article titled “Serial stowaway grows agitated at court hearing.”  It was an account of her appearance the previous day after being arrested at O’Hare Airport twice in two weeks.  Her agitation stemmed from the way her court appointed lawyer was answering the judge’s questions.  When the judge asked if Marilyn had family the lawyer said yes.

“No, I don’t!” Marilyn protested loudly. 

When the judge later asked if Marilyn was under the care of a medical professional, the lawyer began to reply in the negative and Marilyn interjected “Yes!!”

Facts are often in dispute in matters regarding Marilyn Hartman.  Her career as a serial stowaway was first officially noticed in 2014 when she made it through the San Francisco Airport and onto a plane bound for Hawaii.  She was busted when the real ticketholder tried to claim her seat.  But according to Marilyn, she hopped her first plane in 2002.

“The first time I was able to make it through I made it to Copenhagen,” she said.  “The second time I flew into Paris.” 

Only Marilyn knows the true extent of her adventures.  And for the most part, she is not talking.

At that February 2018 court hearing in Chicago, her fourth in two weeks, the judge ordered her three separate times to stay away from O’Hare Airport.  And for good measure he ordered her not to go to Midway either.  Just a month earlier Marilyn managed to get by British Airways ticket agents and a Customs and Border protection officer to occupy an empty seat and fly to London’s Heathrow Airport where she was arrested and returned.  TSA began investigating how she was able to do so but came up with no clear answers. 

In a later hearing the judge ordered Hartman released on her own recognizance but ordered psychiatric treatment.  In the kind of statement journalists cannot possibly pass up it was reported that the same judge told Marilyn’s attorney the following for the court record.

“This is no pun intended for your client, but she is a flight risk given her number of offenses.”

The number of successful trips Marilyn has managed to take is unknown, but she has been arrested 22 times.  She has been involved with both the criminal justice and the mental health systems, placed on probation, labeled homeless, and housed in various residential settings.

Electronic monitoring has been especially useful.  Just Tuesday of this week while writing this blog post, Marilyn popped up again when she was reported missing from the group facility where she has lived without incident for the past year and a half.  Her ankle bracelet, serving as a tracking device, revealed a straight path to O’Hare airport.  They alerted authorities and she was apprehended near Terminal 1. She suffered yet another relapse in her obsession with airports and flying. 

Marilyn has given various reasons for her behavior to the press and calls herself no criminal mastermind.  She told CBS Channel 2 in Chicago that “I have never been able to board a plane by myself.  I was always let through.  I mean I was able to go through the security line without a boarding pass. 

She has claimed to be the victim of a worldwide conspiracy to harass her, and once stated she suffers from “whistle blower trauma syndrome that makes me feel the need to get on a plane and go away.”  At other times she has admitted she suffers from bipolar disorder, a diagnosis she resisted for a long time.  She says she was depressed when she made her stowaway attempts.    

Reporters who have followed her arrests attribute the success of her evasive maneuvers to her ability to blend into a crowd as a seemingly harmless, elderly white woman.  Whatever the case, neither law enforcement, the courts, or our mental health system have found a way to stop her behavior. 

It is too bad Marilyn Hartman is fascinated with airplanes.  We’ve grown twitchy about people sneaking onto our airplanes and cannot tolerate it.  If Marilyn was fond of trains and could write about her travels, perhaps Amtrack would give her a standing ticket to take an empty seat on those scenic routes they offer when she has the urge to travel.  But it is not ground travel that fills Marilyn’s fantasy, its being in the sky.

Maybe someone could introduce Marilyn Hartman to Dion Callaway, the one-legged skydiver.  Dion could teach Marilyn to skydive, acquaint her with the euphoria he feels while floating in the air two miles up, and they could both get what they so hunger for from life. 

 

As it is sometimes said in auction notices, my collection of clippings includes “other items too numerous to mention.”  Now that I’ve saved most of them in a blog, I feel better about throwing them away.  There will be more.  Always more.  Thoreau’s advice was “simplify, simplify, simplify.”  But you never know when an article will come in handy.  Heck, one day you could write about it.

 

 

 

Welcome June

 

In August we got a call on a Friday that Moe and Don wanted to come down and see us Sunday.  Nice surprise.  They had just been down on the 4^th of July.  We always take visits from them whenever we can get them, but they were rare during the pandemic.   They were very careful about the virus and insisted we be careful as well. 

We were sitting outside in the sun, getting the Weber going, when Moe went to her car and reappeared with a small gift bag.  She handed it to her mother.

“What’s the occasion?”

“Nothing really.  Just something special for you.”

My wife reached in the bag and pulled out a fresh lime.  She looked at Maureen and reached in again.  Nothing.  She looked at her daughter with a quizzical face.

“What’s the deal?”

“That lime is about the size of your grandchild.”

Fast forward to Fat Tuesday, February 16.  The baby was due February 6.  Moe and Don had been in the hospital since noon Monday.  When we went to sleep that night, we were sure we would wake up to news of a birth.  At 5:26 a.m. on Ash Wednesday I woke up and immediately checked my phone.  Nothing.  I sent Don a text.

“Tell us something please.”

He texted back.

“We’re with the midwife.  Talk to you soon.”

Six months after that day in August when my wife looked curiously at a lime in her hand, at 2:15 p.m. on February 17^th, the world shifted to make room for a new soul.  Don and Moe became first-time parents, my wife and I became grandparents along with Don’s Mom and Dad, and scores of people assumed new roles and responsibilities.  Siblings of the new parents became aunts and uncles for the first time. Relatives in two families received the news and added a name to their list of cousins, great-nephews and nieces, and more.  On top of all that, a host of friends rejoiced.  Don and Moe’s new baby arrived not only to a family but also to a community.

Ultrasound images do babies no justice.  We had seen blurred black and white approximations of this infant, allegedly real and actual, several times during Moe’s pregnancy. Then suddenly the baby appeared in the flesh on the small screens of our smartphones.

Five days later we found both a snow-packed parking place and our Air B&B, stashed our belongings, and took an Uber in the dark to Don and Moe’s Humboldt Park apartment in Chicago.  As we made our way through mounds of snow and buried cars, we saw Don on his stoop standing under the porch light.  He led us up the stairs to an apartment we had visited over and over for ten years or more, now made new when the door opened on our daughter Moe holding our granddaughter, June Colleen McClure Palmer.  Our daughter Moe gave June to her mother to hold, and when Colleen was done she gave her to me.

That very fact that life includes such miraculous events as the moment one holds their first grandchild is a great gift.  But then life itself, both our own and the lives of those around us is equally miraculous.  How is it we forget?

Eleven months ago, I worked the primary election on St. Patrick’s Day, without a face mask, and the next day it seemed the entire planet was shut down. Since then, two and a half million souls worldwide were lost to Covid 19, more than a half-million of them in our country alone.  Our next-door neighbor died of Covid.  My wife and I lived alone and apart from family and friends for almost a year.

The day before June was born, my wife and I got our second injections of the Moderna vaccine and when we received the news of June’s arrival, I was huddled on my couch under a winter coat and an afghan.  Safe, I was assured, from the ill effects of a Covid infection, but plagued by chills and aches.  Eleven months of near isolation, spared from the pandemic by modern science, new grandparents, and though not out of the woods suddenly much less worried about harming our new granddaughter and those we love.  Sometimes life rushes at you like a river in flood.

l was telling June all about the past year as I held her on the couch at our Air B&B.  At just a week old, she wasn’t interested.  I tried singing “The Pony Man” by Gordon Lightfoot, having brushed up on the lyrics anticipating this rare chance to perform.  June was unimpressed.

June did a lot of yawning and seemed intent on determining how many ways she could move her mouth and tongue.  If she saw me or even heard me, she didn’t let on. I may have known this previously and forgotten, but I’ve concluded with certainty that it is hard to even guess what babies might be thinking.

Not that I let that stop me. I made a point of establishing for June her whereabouts, not knowing if she’d been told.

“In Chicago, where you and your parents live, it’s been snowing like hell and roofs have been caving in.  Some buildings have fallen down entirely.  But if I were you June, I wouldn’t worry about it.  Those are big old abandoned buildings, older than me, built when they were still using bow truss rafters.  Back then architects thought they could get away with wide spans of unsupported roofs by using those rafters, but it turns out when you get a lot of snow like this without a thaw, those old roofs can’t take the load anymore. Your apartment is OK though, and this place too.  Old carriage house we think.  Good stout beams tying the walls together.  Look up.  You can see them.  The hipsters exposed the wood.”

June turned her head but looked out the French doors instead.  I believe a streetlight caught her attention.

“I read about those trusses in the Tribune.  Good newspaper.  I hope it’s still around when you learn to read.”

I have my doubts about it lasting but hated to tell her.

June yawned.  She won’t read for another five years or so.  In five years, I’ll be 74.  When she graduates from high school, I’ll be 87.

“While your Mom was pregnant with you, our country had a really bad president.  Probably the worst ever.  But you live in the United States of America where we have free and fair elections.  So, we voted him out.  After he lost the election for his second term, he worked up his followers and they stormed the Capitol building in D.C., trying to stop the Senate from certifying the vote.  Didn’t work.  With any luck you’ll never have to deal with him or anyone like him again.  Joe Biden is in the White House now and the democrats control the house and senate too.  You were born at a good time.”

June hiccupped.  She seemed to be staring right at me as she made those little hiccup sounds, hardly caring about them at all.  Her chest puffed up when she hiccupped.  Tiny little chest.  Everything about babies is tiny.

“You know June when the weather gets better and you start getting out more, you can visit me down in Ottawa.  Your grandma and I have a big yard with tall trees.  I used to swing your Mom and your Uncle Dean on a tire swing there.  I still have the tire.  I can put it back up.  I know the branch.  It’s still there.”

She kept hiccupping but seemed intrigued at the same time. 

“At the edge of the yard, by a deep ravine, I have a little shack.  We can hang out there.  I’ve got a lot of good stuff in there to look at and play with.  Although I may have to clean it up some and do a little baby proofing.”

A whole lot of cleaning and massive baby proofing as I thought about it.  June was getting antsy.  Doing some squirming.  Her Mom came over to see us.

“I think it is time June eats her supper, Papa.”

My family thinks June should call me Papa.

“Ok.  Well, June and I had a nice talk.  I’ll guess you can have her.”

I’m happy to report that it all comes back, this being with a baby feeling.  I remember when June’s Mom was equally tiny, and my wife left her with me alone for the first time.  I put her on a blanket on the living room floor.  I had a play session planned where she and I would set up a winding pretend road and drive play trucks down the road making truck noises while a toy plane flew overhead.  A whole afternoon of action and entertainment. 

Turns out that day, thirty-five plus years ago, June’s Mom found her thumb, was fascinated with it, and before you know it fell asleep.  I learned quickly that when babies are tiny, they pretty much eat and sleep.  You can’t rush a baby’s development.  They’re in charge. 

That’s how my time with June ended that day in the carriage house.  We had a talk, fairly one-sided, she nursed, and then went to sleep.  It was both an uneventful and wonderful time.  I can’t wait to do it again.

In the days after June was born but before I met her, while thinking of good songs for kids, I asked Alexa, my faceless, always responsive, never failing voice of fact and reason in the kitchen, to play lullabies. As often happens, she responded with things I’d never considered.  One of them was a song by Christina Perri called “A Thousand Years” which I never thought of as a lullaby.  To me, it was always a tender love song for grownups.  Now it sounds different.  Especially these lyrics.

                                           I have died, every day, waiting for you.

                                           Darling don’t be afraid I have loved you

                                           For a thousand years.

                                           I love you for a thousand more.

                                           And all along I believed I would find you

                                           Time has brought your heart to me

                                           I have loved you for a thousand years

                                           I love you for a thousand more.

I remember the days I first held each of my kids, Maureen and Dean.  I was there when they were conceived, born, and all the days in between.  I was Moe’s Dad at age 31 and Dean’s Dad at 33.  I remember that guy, that new Dad, and how he felt. 

He was in the delivery room wearing a hospital gown.  Twice nurses put his wrapped-up babies in his arms and twice he was a little scared.  They were so small.  He had loved them since before they were born, and now they needed his and his wife’s help for everything.  He felt so responsible for their well-being but down deep he didn’t exactly know what he was doing.  “Thank God for my wife” was what that young guy kept thinking.

You would think holding a grandchild would feel the same.  It didn’t.  I know June’s parents so well that I’m not scared in the least for June’s future.  They may be worried, but I’m not.  My overwhelming wish now is that I will be here, with her Grandma, for as much of June’s future as possible.        

We assembled our nuclear family in Chicago for a home-cooked dinner.  When counting noses, I was somehow gobsmacked by the realization that we had grown from six to seven.  And after dinner, when I cut the cake we bought at an old Wicker Park bakery to celebrate June’s first week on earth,

I wondered silently just how much of a head start I had on my granddaughter.  I worked it out later on a calculator.  It comes out to this:

June                     1 week

Papa                    3,607 weeks

One of the great joys of my life has been watching my children’s lives unfold into adulthood.  I know it may not be the same with June.  Like all human beings, June and I will have only so many weeks in our lifetimes.  But she has a lot more in her future than her Papa.

Maybe lullabies are love songs after all, and vice versa.  And maybe somehow, they are inspired by grandparents hoping to pack the extravagant amount of love they feel for their grandchildren into however much time their lives overlap. Maybe even a thousand years. 

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyk2i8xNVow