June in July

 After many twists and turns, literally, my wife and I got back to Chicago to visit our kids and our grandchild June.  She was five months old on July 17 and very different from when we saw her on our last visit to Chicago in April. 

On this trip, we parked the car in Joliet and took the Metra.  Coming into LaSalle Street station felt like old times like we were getting back to normal.  We took an Uber to Dean’s place.

Dean is working from home in a new condo in Pilsen.  He is among the first five owners.  We dropped our stuff off, admired his new digs, and Moe and June arrived to take us north.  Dean had to be on a Zoom call.  We were meeting Don, June’s Dad, at Arlington Racetrack.  He works near there.

It was a hot afternoon, but we grabbed a picnic table under a tree and there was a nice breeze.  We put a blanket on the ground for June, bought hot dogs and beers, and settled into an afternoon of watching the horses run.  Although we talk almost daily, we caught up on being together.  We passed June around.  She was having a good day.  Almost all her days are good.  And different.  She’s growing up at an amazing pace.

And of course, we bet on the horses.  In a typical year, I place bets on three horse races: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes.  When I bet on the triple crown, I read about the horses in the paper a few days in advance, think about them briefly, and make very small wagers.  I am not a gambler or a student of the sport, but sometimes I pick winners.  I find that to be great fun. 

While shooting the breeze we talked about how to pick horses.  Don likes to bet the jockeys.  I was reading the racing form trying to figure out the records of the horses, and he was looking at the jockeys’ ages and percentage of wins.  His theory is, especially in a short race, the skills of the jockeys mattered as much or maybe more than the speed of the horse.

My wife bets the horses’ names, with an eye on the color of the silks.  The last time Colleen was at Arlington, with a group of friends, she won big on an exacta using that method.  Winning big is relative, but she walked away with over a hundred bucks and a story she tells anyone who will listen.   She couldn’t wait to do it again.

Meanwhile, I stuck with the racing form, both the statistics and the short narrative about each horse.  I especially liked the narrative which gave me a short description of the horse’s performance in recent races, conditions the horse favored, quirks and patterns.  I walked through the gate knowing nothing about any horse or any jockey who raced that day and tried to learn it all during the time between races.  Probably not a formula for success.  But I was confident I could figure it out. 

We joked about how we made picks.  Don suggested we hold June face down above the racing form, let her drool, and bet the horse closest to the wet spot.  Good as any other scheme he figured. 

In one of the early races, there was an Irish horse at 8-1.  Bred and trained in Ireland and brought over to the states for the summer.  I’m Irish, and my wife is even more Irish.  June looks very Irish.  My wife pointed out the jockey had green silks. 

“I’m going to bet that horse,” I said. 

Don was running to the window making our bets and there were fifteen minutes or so left to get the bets down.  I turned to the racing form and read about my pick.  I’d learned to note the length of the race.  This race was relatively long.  The narrative writer said the Irish horse liked to break out front but faded from the lead in his last three races.  Bad quality in a long race.  Another horse, the favorite, had won its last three starts decisively.  I had second thoughts.

Don came around collecting money and writing down our bets.  I put a larger amount than normal on the favorite. 

“You’re not betting the Irish horse?”

“I don’t think this is the race for him.”

I’ll be damned if that Irish horse didn’t come from behind in the last eighth of a mile, whiz past the horse I put money on, and win.  Completely against the odds.  That’s what makes horse racing a gamble.

I did win later, on a long shot named Devil Eye.  I’ve been having a devil of a time with this right eye all summer, and it seemed appropriate.  I stopped reading the back story on the horses.  It’s hard to become an expert in a day.  Devil Eye led the entire trip and won going away.  Go figure.  In the end, my wife and I nearly broke even money-wise but finished way ahead after a wonderful day at the track with Don, Moe and June.

We all made our way back to Pilsen.  June slept in the car.  When we got back to Dean’s place the charcoal was going in a grill that had been in a box when we arrived that afternoon.  We dug into appetizers on the patio and began our first family celebration in Dean’s new place.  It got dark, the streetlights came on, and we stayed up late talking.  It was good to be together having a home-cooked meal.   During that evening I thought back to when we first had our parents to our new house in Ottawa.  I’ve traded places with my dad.

We stayed two nights and came home late the third day.  We went to dinner in Chinatown, which was packed, walked with Dean and his partner to a little Mexican joint on West 18^th  for breakfast, planted and mulched around Dean’s patio, and more.  It wore us out in a good way.

But the main attraction, aside from Dean’s new kitten, was June.  We see her almost daily on FaceTime but being with her continues to amaze me.  If I am declining as I approach 70 at the same rate June is developing on her way to her first birthday, I can’t be long for this world. 

Two months ago, June rolled over for the first time.  It was a struggle, and when she went from her back to her stomach, she couldn’t hold her head up very long.  With her face flat against the blanket, she soon became fussy, and couldn’t roll back over.  Her Grandma and I wanted to pick her up right away.  Moe and Don urged us to wait a bit.

“We want her to figure things out by herself.” 

She’s figuring things out all right.  Now when she rolls over, she goes into what amounts to an upward-facing dog and stays that way.  Her arms and neck are so much stronger now.  She can stay in that position a long time.  In the past week she’s gone beyond that and now presses her legs against the floor, sometimes just her feet, going into something of a baby plank.  (Yoga positions.)

In the past week in addition to turning in a slow spin on her belly, she’s begun to travel while on her stomach, but backwards.  Put something in front of her and she gets excited, works her legs and arms to get it, but goes the wrong way.  Once again, her parents are waiting for her to figure it out.  She works hard.

On the blanket at the track, June’s grandpa couldn’t resist bending her legs, putting her knees under her against the ground, and giving her a tiny push on the butt to show her how to propel herself forward.  She can’t yet do it herself. 

I’m fascinated by how June looks at me through her brand-new eyes.  She has no words of course, and until she does, we just guess as to what she sees and thinks. 

How do babies learn about the world and discover their part in it?

That question began to form immediately after her grandma and I climbed the stairs of June’s home, a Humboldt Park apartment, and held her the first time.  She was a week old.  Her eyes were deep blue and seemed to look right through me. I wasn’t prepared for her stare.  It was disarming.  June’s been staring me down ever since, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, but always so engaging. 

Turns out I’m not the only one obsessed with finding out the answer to these questions.  Her parents are too, and they’re sharing what they are learning.  

My daughter put me on to a Radiolab Deep Cuts podcast made in 2009, which is simply a conversation between two men, Jad Abumrad (JA), then a new father of a two-month-old baby boy, and Charles Fernyhough (CF), a writer and developmental psychologist from Durham University.  Fernyhough wrote a book about what he learned about his own baby called A Thousand Days of Wonder: A Scientist’s Chronicle of His Daughter’s Developing Mind.  It’s about what’s happening in the minds of little babies when they are brand new.  The interviewer asked the author the kinds of questions I would have asked him.  Like this.

JA.   When I’m sitting here holding my baby and we’re staring at each other, what exactly is he seeing?

CF.   One difference that relates to the visual system is that the lenses of baby’s eyes are absolutely crystal clear, whereas our lenses, those of adults, they’ve become slightly yellowed and filter out some of the blue frequencies of the light we see. 

JA.   So, wait.  Paint the picture.  What would that be like for them?

CF.  This is my stab at imagining what this would be like for babies.  Imagine being in a Greek village in the summer.  At noon. 

JA.   Sun is directly overhead, and It’s one of those villages where…

CF.   Everything is white.  You know, the houses are all painted white.  You’re wearing sunglasses, and you suddenly take off those sunglasses.

JA.   It’s that bright?

CF.   Yeah.  I think light is a big – it’s probably the biggest shock to newborn babies.

JA.   It’s interesting to consider that such a blinding haze of whiteness might be how the world really is.  We just don’t see it as grownups because our eyes have changed.  Well, we did see that brightness when we were babies, but we can’t remember.  What about sound.  Do babies hear things differently?

CF.   Yeah, we think so.  We think they hear echoes.  I mean the echoes are actually always there, but our brains filter them out.

JA.   Whoa.

CF.   It takes some time for babies to do that.  I mean, the science is complicated, and I don’t think I can explain it quickly, but it has to do with the relative times of arrival sound makes on the two ears.  The brain basically has to learn to make the adjustment, but it can’t do it straight away.  So, we don’t actually know, but we guess that newborn babies hear things in a very echoey way.  And then after a while, they filter out the echoes and begin to hear like you and me.

JA.   Let’s go back to vision.  What about the stare?  My baby really stares at us, and we stare back.  It’s intense.  That I know for sure.

CF.   In the first couple of months, the visual system is controlled by an old region of the brain, the subcortical region.  The cortex is the more sophisticated new part, evolutionarily speaking.  In babies there’s a switch, a handoff between the original control system, the subcortical system, and the new cortical system that allows vision to grow and improve.  But as this happens, and it happens at about two months, there’s a kind of power struggle.  The subcortical region doesn’t want to let go.  So, the baby temporarily loses control of where he or she is looking.

JA.   Really?

CF.   Yep.  The scientists call this sticky fixation.  It’s where a baby will just keep staring at you, as if he or she can’t take their eyes off you.

JA.   Yes.  It’s happening now.  It’s wonderful.  You’re telling me this is a brain glitch?

CF.   Yeah.  I’m sorry.  It’s a very well-documented phenomenon.  I know its bad news for parents who think their babies are staring at them adoringly, but they don’t know where to look.  They can’t control where they look.  Basically, they don’t know how to look away.

JA.   Wow.  Depressing. 

CF.  Yeah, but this might be one of those cases where ignorance really is bliss because the truth is you have to project.  You have to make a leap of faith so that when your baby looks at you and you look back at your baby, you smile.  Because eventually, that will teach your baby how the world works.  Humans operate on relationships, which are feedback loops. So OK, at this moment in time for your baby the looks aren’t genuine and done by choice, but they will be soon. You want to return that gaze and make it positive.

 

June in July, at five months old, is way past involuntary stares and the echoey hearing.  She’s moved on.  As a tiny human being brand new to the world she is tuning into everything and everyone around her.  She is figuring things out at a dizzying pace.  She can grab both feet (Happy Baby) and put her toes in her mouth.  She can sit independently.  I expect her to crawl across the floor any day.  And she has a heartbreaker of a smile.  There’s a whole world out there for her to explore.  I want to watch her do it.  And I hope to be part of helping June learn how the world works.

Vegetables 2021

On a farm less than ten miles away, where I am fortunate to be offered space, I have a garden in one long row.  It’s a much straighter row this year.  I was subtly provided a string stretched tightly between two stout steel stakes. 

Last year, my first on the farm, I made the mistake of not looking behind me while planting.  My row was shorter and bowed out in both directions, zigging and zagging so much that the farmer who lends me the land couldn’t cultivate next to my row.  I learned not looking back may be a life strategy that has its place, but that place is not found in a garden.

I’ve just caught on, after nearly 70 years, to the important-sounding botanical family names of these familiar plants.  I was slow to learn.  But now that I’m there I’ll throw them in.  Here’s how I filled my straight row, starting from the east. 

Thirteen Brassicas-3 Brussels Sprouts, 4 Dino Kale, 4 Red Russian Kale, 2 Broccoli.

Forty-six Nightshades-not counting potatoes.  First the Peppers:  5 Serrano, 5 Habanero, 2 Cayenne, 2 Jalapeno, 3 Sheepnose Pimiento, 3 Lunchbox, 2 Shishito, and 4 Jimmy Nardello.  26 total.

Next the Tomatoes.  8 San Marzano, 2 Early Girls, 2 Orange Beefsteak, 2 Pink Beefsteaks, 2 Red Beefsteaks, 2 Jet Stars, and 2 tomato cousins, the Tomatillos Verde.  20 in all.

Lots (too many to count) of Amaryllidaceae, the formal name for the onion family.  I planted nearly enough shallot, red, and yellow onion sets to fill out the row.

 The row is capped it off on the West End by a member of the Daisy Family, a single Mexican sunflower, for the sheer hell of it.   

 Earlier in the spring, in a separate communal plot, we planted four rows of potatoes.  Oddly, they’re nightshades like tomatoes and peppers even though they grow underground.  We buried reds, cobblers, fingerlings, and exotic yet controversial purple potatoes under nice black LaSalle County soil.

I love the hidden life of potatoes.  The reveal when you dig them.  That, compounded by the satisfaction of knowing you made them multiply by simply cutting and planting a chunk of raw potato with an eye in it, makes potatoes a simple but wonderful crop.   The cutters, planters, diggers and tenders of those potatoes will dole them out in equal shares when we harvest them at the end of the season. 

At my house in town, I have horseradish, oddly an underground member of the mustard branch of the Brassica family, asparagus from the aptly named and I assume small Asparagaceae family, and rhubarb of the Polygonaceae aka buckwheat tribe.  How buckwheat relates to rhubarb I’ll never know.  All that stuff grows perennially.

I planted cukes and zukes (cucumbers and zucchinis), both from the Cucurbitaceae family, in my previous garden plot by the garage.  My former town garden looks so small compared to the row in the country.  The old garden space is now partially but increasingly shaded by a young volunteer oak tree, likely planted by a squirrel burying an acorn.  I was going to transplant the oak seedling to keep the garden in full sun but waited too long.  Instead, I sacrificed my original small garden plot for what I expect will be a nice big shade tree for someone else.

I also have big pots of herbs off the kitchen with several kinds of Basil-Tulsi, Thai, and Sweet along with Rosemary and German thyme all from the Mint family.  Rounding out the herb pot is Italian flat-leaf Parsley, an Umbellifer.  If I had planted one more particular plant, I would have created within that herb collection the famed quartet of Simon and Garfunkel spices.  But I don’t use sage much, so I left it out.  But you know the tune.  If you don’t watch out it will become your earworm for the rest of the day. 

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

We also have two big pots of chives, the smallest and skinniest member of the onion branch of the Amaryllidaceae family, which are much more than we need and out of control.  They come back each year no matter how little care we give them.

I was out at the farm last week watering.  Gardening seems so simple at the beginning.  The ground is bare except for the plantings.  The beginnings of weeds may be there, but they are tiny and easily ignored.  At some point, they explode, and weeding becomes frantic.  Unfortunately, when you water your plants, you water the weeds too.

Then comes the staking of the tomatoes.  Pinching off early blossoms and suckers.  Tying vines gently to rigid structure with strips of cloth.  It takes some time.  And despite all our efforts, it is the weather, more than anything we do, that largely determines success.

I’m always relieved when the plants are in the ground.  It is only then that I appreciate each trip to the country.  It gets me out of town, looking at what’s new on the farms I pass, admiring cows still in pastures, and witnessing the explosive growth of Illinois corn and beans in those giant fields.

I swear each year the fields grow larger, farmhouses and barns grow fewer, while the new architectural kings of the Midwest countryside, silver grain bins with propane tanks and steel sided pole barns for massive machinery, multiply like rabbits.  There are fewer animals and people out there all the time.  It’s beginning to look like an ag factory on a grand scale, complete with all the charm factories exude.

But I just tend to my row.  I swear that country garden kept me alive and sane during the pandemic.  I think I’ll always remember realizing (or did I know all along?) that life goes on no matter how dire threats become to us humans.  I was standing next to the pepper plants one day when it hit me.  The sun was where it should be.  The sky was just as big.  The breeze blew the same as always and the plants were not fazed.

Plants are so much simpler and more focused than humans.  They stay put and live out their purpose without a lot of screwing around.  Their purpose is simply to grow and reproduce.  Thank God for plants to hang on to when everything else seems to collapse around us. 

I’ll let you know how the garden turns out.  Maybe I can explain how those vegetables taste.  We’ll see. 

Saying Good-Bye

 

Dale and his sister Pat, the first of Francis and Lucille Flaherty’s six kids were Irish twins.  You know the definition, right? Born within a year of each other.  Often, as in this case, to Irish Catholic parents.  Pat arrived May 21, 1940, a day shy of her big brother’s birthday in 1939.  Every child was a blessing in the Flaherty family. 

In the 70’s I was working with a devout Catholic man at the LaSalle County Juvenile Detention Home when he and his wife celebrated the birth of their seventh child.

“How many kids are you two going to have Ed?”

“We don’t know.  It’s not up to us.”

I’m pretty sure that’s what Francis and Lucille believed regarding God and the gift of children.

Dale’s birth was followed by that of three baby girls.  Then, in 1950 when Lucille was 41, in a final hurrah, identical twin girls arrived.  Dale was 11.  The twins’ first memories of Dale were as a high school student at St. Bede Academy.

I visited Dale at his home in Florida along with his four remaining sisters, and three of their husbands.  I was one of the brothers-in-law.  I married Colleen, one of the twins.  We gathered to support Dale’s wife Pat and their children: Kathy, Carrie, and Jeff.  They were all helping Dale navigate hospice care.  He had a serious stroke a month earlier, and then another.  It was bittersweet.

During the five days we were there, lots of family stories were shared.  Nearly every story made someone cry and someone laugh.  We all have different triggers when it comes to grief.  Dale, as the oldest and only male, is universally viewed by his sisters as the favored child.  I don’t doubt that’s true.  “Prince” is a term that often came up in that regard. 

Dale was a huge sports fan.  He loved all the Chicago teams but especially the White Sox and the Bears.  Weekends often found him in the living room on O’Conor Avenue in LaSalle watching the Sox on the family black and white console TV, wearing his Sox cap, scoring the game in his spiral-bound score pad, and listening to the play-by-play on both TV and radio.   The twins remember trying to get his attention but instead drawing his ire.

“Scram twins” was the response they remember.  It didn’t stop them.

“SCRAM TWINS!”

Dale yelled loud enough to alert his mother to his problem.  Lucille would invariably stomp into the room and scold her two youngest daughters.

“Come on twins, you know better.  Get on out of here now.  Go outside and play.  Can’t you see Dale is trying to watch the baseball game?”

Dale was smart in school, especially in math.  Not only did Dale have a slide rule he knew how to use it.  After graduating from St. Bede, he went straight on to Marquette University in Milwaukee and majored in electrical engineering.  He used to ride the train home.  His Mom and Dad would pick him up at the station in LaSalle.

He always brought his laundry home.  Sometimes if he couldn’t make it home, he would mail his dirty clothes back to LaSalle in a metal box.  Lucille would wash and fold them carefully, repack the box with clean clothes, add her son’s favorite baked goods, and mail it back.

Dale married an Irish Catholic girl named Patricia O’Malley from the Beverly neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago and went to work for Motorola.  Then they started having kids themselves.  But they stopped sooner than their parents.

When I became acquainted with the Flaherty family Lucille had already passed away.  Francis was alone.  Dale and his wife Pat took over the family dinners.  The Flaherty’s had their big holiday get-together on Thanksgiving. We would gather at Dale and Pat’s house in the Chicago suburb of Woodridge.

Dale liked being the host.  He had a bar in his living room where he made us drinks.   Always lots of kids around, glad to see their cousins.  Francis and Lucille’s six kids loved being with their Dad and each other.  They made outsiders like me feel instantly and thoroughly welcome.

Though I got to know Dale in the suburbs, I could always see the farm kid in him.  Maybe it takes one to know one.  Both his parent’s families owned land in Dimmick Township south of Mendota.  As a kid, he helped his Dad and Uncles from both the Flaherty and the Lyons families with farm work.

Sometime after I joined the family, the Flahertys gathered for a funeral at the small Sacred Heart chapel in Dimmick.  No plumbing in that tiny Catholic church.  Stately outhouses instead.  The dinner after the funeral was being held at the Grange Hall in Troy Grove.  It came time to leave.

“Follow me,” Dale said.  A little train of cars followed Dale as he turned off the blacktop and headed north on a gravel road.

After several dips and turns on little-used roads, we magically popped into Troy Grove. When we parked and headed into the hall I caught up with Dale. 

“How’d you know that route Dale?”

“I used to haul ear corn to the elevator in Troy Grove on those roads with a tractor and a box wagon before I had a license.”

He grinned.  I could see in his eyes how much he loved being back in the country.

When they got rained out of the field, Dale used to go with his Dad and Uncles to his Aunt Marguerite’s bar in Troy Grove.  Dale would have cokes and play pinball as the grownups had shots and beers and solved the world’s problems.  He went with those same Uncles and his Dad to LaSalle-Peru football and basketball games.  At home, it was Dale and his Dad with all those girls. 

Like his father, if Dale had disappointments he hid them well.  They were gentle men, those Flahertys.  You couldn’t help but like them.

Francis seemed to take great pride in Dale’s accomplishments.  That could be because Francis was unable to go to college.  The depression brought harsh challenges to farmers who owed money to the bank for their land. Francis began farming as soon as he got out of high school to save his family’s acreage from being repossessed.  He gave up his dreams, even delayed his marriage to Lucille, so he could provide for his family.  He could have seen the future he once dreamed of for himself through Dale’s eyes.  We don’t know, because Francis would never say a thing like that.

After a few years with Motorola the company paid for Dale’s MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern.  In addition to all his knowledge, Dale brought calm to every situation he encountered.  He explained things simply and understandably.  He was kind and had a great laugh.  Motorola put him in sales.   

Selling took Dale to Europe and the Far East as business and opportunities expanded.  He loved the travel but hated being away from his family.  After big changes in electronics, and forty years at Motorola, Dale finished his career with smaller companies.  It forced him to work farther and farther from home.  He never complained, at least not to us.  As long as he was with his family, everything was good.  Former farm kids appreciate simple pleasures.

How could our visit to Florida not be bittersweet?  The strokes Dale suffered took away his ability to speak.  His hospital bed was in front of the lanai facing a small lake he loved.  There were two chairs on either side of his bed, usually occupied with family members talking softly to Dale or simply holding his hand.  There were a lot of tears, from both Dale and his family.  It was, I imagine, as emotionally draining for Dale as it was for us.  I was glad when hospice began doses of oral morphine.  As the days went by, Dale became calmer and slept more. 

I tried to stay out of the way and be helpful.  I cooked, joined in conversations about earlier happier times, and mostly stayed out of those chairs flanking Dale’s hospital bed in deference to his wife, kids, and sisters.  I say that, but at the same time, it was difficult for me to sit in one of those chairs. 

The last time I was that close to the death of someone I loved, it was my mother.  I was in charge of the staff who were providing care for Mom at our farm at the end of her life.  They called me when they noticed a change in her demeanor, her breathing in particular, and I made the drive to Danvers immediately.  I didn’t leave for five days, and I was with her at the end.

The hospice workers were wonderful.  With their help my siblings and I were able to complete the sad task of helping a family member end their life in dignity and peace, comfortably, assuring them they are loved, all the while trying to be strong and cheerful.  It’s an impossible task. 

But there was a difference between being with Dale and working through my Mom’s last days.  That was 1996 and I was 45.  I didn’t see myself in her place when I sat beside her.  Death seemed far away.  Not so on this trip.  I turn 70 in August.  This time, the struggles of the person I saw dying I imagined as my own.

I waited to have a longer talk with Dale till we were alone.  I took a chair next to his bed early the morning before we left.  I talked to Dale about June, my first grandchild, a three-month-old charmer.  When I did big tears came to his eyes. 

“You were so lucky Dale to be able to watch your grandchildren grow up and become young men and women.”

His grandchildren had visited Dale as a group the week before. When I mentioned his grandchildren, he closed his eyes and nodded.  Big tears rolled down his cheeks.  I didn’t want to make him sad.

“Remember that day we watched the Bears beat the 49ers in the rain?”

His eyes opened.

“I googled it.  It was November 27, 1983.  Maureen (our daughter and first child) was born in June.  It was her first Flaherty Thanksgiving.”

“We were at your house in Woodridge for dinner on Saturday and stayed over.  The weather forecast for game day was bad and no one else wanted to go.  Pat (Dale’s wife) thought you were nuts to even think about going.  You asked me to go to the game as soon as we arrived.  I said yes right away.”

Dale smiled.

I googled it because I wanted to remind Dale of the game the way I knew he saw it.  I was never that much of a football fan, but Dale knew the players, their stats, team standings, the over-under, everything. 

“I’d never seen Walter Payton play in person. He rushed for 68 yards.  McMahon outgained him.  But it wasn’t about the offense.  McMahon threw that one long pass to McKinnon.  Remember?  49 yards.  It was the only TD in the game.  The Bears defense held Joe Montana and that good 49er offense to one stinking field goal.  They were so tough.”

“The Bears sacked Montana five times.  McMichael had two.  Singletary, Dent, and Wilson all had one.  They forced them into four turnovers and recovered every one of ‘em.”

Dale’s eyes brightened.  He was a numbers guy. 

“San Francisco was a class team.  They went to the playoffs that year and were one game short of the Super Bowl.  You said you’d been waiting for the defense to come together like that all year, that those defensive players would take Chicago to the top.  A year later they won the Super Bowl.”

I’m sure he remembered all that.  I wanted in some way to take him back to that day.

“It started raining hard during half-time and didn’t let up.  The wind swung around and began to blow off the lake.  It dropped about 40 degrees during the third quarter.  Damn near everybody left in our section but you and me.  Remember?”

He smiled.

“You said it was Bear weather. ‘Just the diehards and the crazies now.’  We laughed and laughed.”

He opened his mouth and tried to laugh.  The look in his eyes told me so.

“After we got soaked, I remember a guy in the stands wearing a black garbage bag one with holes for his arms and neck.  I asked if he had more, and he pulled a roll of them out of a sack and gave me two.  Anything to cut that cold wind.  We wore them all the way back to the parking lot.  Tore them off and threw them in the trunk.  We couldn’t get the heater in the car going fast enough on the way home.”

I paused.  Dale kept looking into my eyes. 

“Thanks for everything Dale.  I’m so glad I got to know you.  We’re going to stay close to Pat and your family.  We love you guys.”

Dale’s eyes closed.  I squeezed his hand, walked out through the lanai, and sat by the lake.  There’s no good way to say goodbye to people you love.  You make it up.  You do the best you can.  It’s all part of the deal. 

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.