A compendium of small things…

Some weeks its just hard to find something to pontificate on in the fatherly sense.  It could be accurately chalked up to a lack of strong coffee or that nothing reveals itself at the moment of creative conception.  I am ramping up on red-red-red North Carolina politics that set our state back, our shunning of environmental issues and the like but nothing has jelled as of yet.  So I fall back on my PB days (the Pre-Betsy admonition to write something of depth so as to be of interest to her that in tandem would show my personality to the kids) and thus a letter becomes a compendium of the small things that went on the week before.

Last weeks letter was a definite throwback to the PB days.

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June 6, 2011

Ellen/Reid: Well, if you like heat and humidity this is the place for you.  Blast furnace hot but damp at the same time.  Go figure.

Here’s the update on Felicia.  Her surgery is set for the end of this month.  That nearly 30 day delay would absolutely drive me more bonkers than I already am.  Why in the world they wait that long on such a terrible disease is totally unfathomable to me.  I lectured her this weekend, more than once, to call her physician’s office this morning to see if she can light a fire under the operating doctor so we’ll see if that does any good.  There was a related article this morning in the paper about some new drugs specific to melanoma.  Advances, yes, but not a cure.  This comes at a time when she’s wrestling with other issues in her life, notably her son who has veered onto another path she’d rather he not take.  I don’t know.  I’m glad you guys are who you are, but it is very hard to see her have to endure another bout of the same situation she has already endured for years.  I’d rather that she take the time to tend to herself but the mother’s instinct to nurture, or at least care for, her offspring is awfully strong.  She needs to worry about herself for a change.  I plan to be with her at the surgery and be available for whatever else she needs between now and then.

Ellen, I’ll need to tap into your teaching expertise in the next couple of weeks.  My class on freelance writing is filling up at the local community college (it will probably top out at about a dozen or 16 students) and I’m starting to get nervous about it.  It’s not the content that is vexing but the presentation of things.  The class will be in a high-tech lab setting loaded with capabilities for PowerPoints and other sort of splashy gizmos.  My class outline is done but that’s all it is; an outline.  I’ll head over to the college later this week to familiarize myself with the ins and outs of the learning laboratory.  They say to teach is to learn twice so maybe that’s good.  All in all, this probably is something of an odd time for freelancers.  The pay scale has dropped like a stone (at least in the newspaper biz) but the availability of work is probably pretty good in that in this economy firms may not keep full time staff but instead farm the work out depending on their situational needs.

Your uncle lifted his cell phone to your grandmother’s ear this weekend but I couldn’t understand much of what she said beyond “I love you, too.”  I just don’t know what to make of it.  I wish I could be there a lot more often.  Her health seems to have stabilized for the time being.  I’m dependent on your uncle’s reportage of what’s going on and he’s around her often enough he sees the ebb and flow to her situation but he’s not sounding any alarms as of late.  It looks as if Joe is going to buy your grandparent’s house.  I have some mixed feelings about it, largely because he’s being influenced by your aunt and uncle (the house design is a bit staid by young person’s standards, I would think).  He’ll get a sweetheart deal on the house but I suppose when you do the math in terms of what it might sell for minus the real estate agent’s commission it’s probably not that bad an overly bad thing.  Joe and Ally will have their baby at the end of this month.  Ralph and Gayle are pretty excited about it.  Their third grandchild.  Guys, I’m in no rush.

That’s about it for this installment.  Working out for Wyoming (there’s a long way to go physically) and just trying to keep cool in this oppressive heat.  Reid, the offer of a ticket to CLT still stands, and Ellen, watch for news about a trip up to see your swanky new kitchen.  The pix of the gutted interior are cool, but for your sake I hope the contractors get a move on so you don’t have to live in a pile of dust and debris all summer.  An end-of-June timetable seems nice.  I hope they can live up to those terms.

You can’t go home again…

Ellen is about to become acquainted with dust as she and Tim kick off the remodel of their 1920s kitchen in St. Paul, MN.

I don’t know why, but the blog hasn’t been top of mind for me the past couple of weeks and the posts seem more tepid than usual.  I’ll get back in the swing of things here shortly.

Perhaps that’s because it has felt like old home week the past few weekends.  Whoever said ‘you can’t go home again’ was only partly right.  It does not apply if you need to box stuff and get it out the (garage) door to UPS. 

All the loose ends related to parental goods are now tied up.  Fine china to Ellen, antique cameras (dating back more than a century) are in Reid’s hands with the rest shipped to Charlotte.  It is all resolved and that chapter is closed. 

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May 9, 2011

Ellen/Reid: This morning I’m in a bit of a fog after yesterday’s travel.  Went to bed late by my standards (midnight) and was up very early and got to work about 6:30 to wade through a mountain of e-mails and that’s only from being out of the office a couple of days.  I shudder to think what the truly higher-ups have in their e-mail queue when they get back from vacation.  It was tough to get rigged up and out the door.  The coffee was particularly weak so it might necessitate a visit downstairs to Starbucks or Caribou when this letter is done.

All in all it was a pretty good weekend.  Steve’s wedding was appropriately low key and his girls did a fabulous job with their remarks.  Good to see lots of old friends and invariably they ask how you both are and what you’re doing.  I try to fill them in as best I can.

Jane Hemminger just cannot be rivaled as a party hostess.  Clad in her bare feet and a red apron, she and Dave threw a nice bash out on their deck on Friday night.  It was a beautiful evening.  The whole crew was there; Dickinsons, Cornicks, Sculforts, Hestons, John Leonhardt, the Kobes, Fustenaus and Shifflers.  I know I’m leaving some out but it was a very nice affair.  Jane can cook and prepare gourmet foods with the best of them.  And she makes it sound like it’s no big deal when it actually is.  I had a great time but was habitually overserved.  Not to sound like a broken record, but people habitually asked about what you’re both up to.

I stayed with Staci and Bruce all three nights.  Max and Alex are doing college things so they had plenty of spare room in their 5 bedroom abode.  That was nice.  We stayed up all three nights yakking and drinking wine way past my bedtime.  That’s why the mornings were fairly groggy.  My original plans were to stay at the house but am glad that did not happen.  Saw some of the neighbors, and they also ask what you’re up to.  Gave some of the boxed plates and tableware to Mary and Frank’s daughter Gianna who is setting up her first place.  Now she’ll have some dishwasher safe plates and bowls.  Quite a bit of the boxed material is going to Goodwill which is just as well.  Reid, you clearly don’t have the space for items, and Ellen you just don’t need anything but you will get the fine china which I hope arrived intact.  The big prize of the weekend was finding the glass-covered roasting pan which was your great-grandmothers.  That is the one thing I wanted from your grandparents house and I thought it had gone missing.  So that was a coup.  Really, it was hard to wade through everything.  It brought a lot of emotions to the surface.  I know whoever buys their items at whatever thrift shop they’re sold at won’t have the same attachment as we might.  That’s okay.  In reality, it’ll be less stuff for you two to clear out down the road if you know what I mean.  In a morbid way, I thought of carting some of it home to sell on EBay but since I don’t know how that works, let alone what stuff is worth, the boxes went over to the Goodwill pile.

It’s interesting to see Des Moines after all this time.  They have done an incredible job downtown.  Lots of towns, including CLT, would be envious of the restaurants and nighttime haunts from the Capitol on west.  It’s just very nice.  They’re not rolling up the sidewalks at twilight like they used to.  Bruce and John and I ate downtown at some funky little place Thursday night and it was fabulous.  Great to see those two.  The persistent question comes up about moving back to Des Moines and that’s a tough one to answer.  You guys are in that same boat because you get the same repetitive question.  It’s like that old saying: how do you get them back on the farm once they’ve seen gay Parie?

No sunrise service or holiday ham…

It's the small things that count. The nursing home staff in Wood River do mom's hair once or twice a week. Her lucid moments may be few but when they occur, she is the mother I remember.

You’ve seen no letters to my mother in the past few months.  None has been sent.  Part of it is family dissuation, part is her new address and, moreover, a new staff who would have to be instructed to do the reading.  I was in Nebraska for Easter but there was no sunrise service or holiday ham.   Instead, the time was spent alone with her.  She has her moments of clarity and you can see the gleam in her eye when certain topics – her beloved golf (“I was good at it”) for example – are mentioned.

Her situation is a persistent topic among Ellen and Reid.  Last summer remains fresh for them. They don’t want to miss their chances.

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April 25, 2011

Ellen/Reid: It seems like the trip to Grand Island, and more importantly, to Wood River, did not happen.  I was hardly on the ground long enough to catch my breath.  It was scarcely 48 hours from start to finish.

Your grandmother is doing okay.  She looked much better than I anticipated, and her mental cognizance was a little bit better than was anticipated, too.  She’s at a spot called Good Samaritan in Wood River, which as a town is nothing more than a wide spot on Highway 30 about 15 miles west of Grand Island.  The Union Pacific’s main East-West line is only about 20 yards from the highway so that gives you the history of Wood River right there.  Time, and the trains, have both passed it by.

But it is a good spot for her.  The staff is very caring, her hair was done nicely and someone had bothered to paint her nails.  It was obvious someone had paid attention to her.  Your uncle and I went straight there from the GI airport and the whole lot of them, about a dozen or 15, had been herded into the TV room although it was hard to see if anyone was really watching the tube.  Your grandmother wasn’t.  Her head was down but she was alert, and after a few seconds, she seemed excited to see the two of us.  She wasn’t quite sure who I was right off but then the light bulb turned on and you could see it in her eyes.

It is very hard to watch her slip away.  When you think about it, not even nine months ago she was ambulatory and much more conversant even if she had a lot of anger.  There is none of that now.  She’s confined to a wheelchair and her walker remains folded up against the wall.  She wears the same pair of shoes she’s worn for more than two years now.  She seems so much more balanced at this point, not because she’s sedated into silence, but her meds are much more attuned to her needs.  Your uncle found a doctor in GI who took the time to review all the dosages, removed some and put her on others and that has made an incredible difference for her.  As you look around the room at the other seniors, it’s not so much a quality of life issue as it is simply making the best of the days you have left.

Money will be an issue for her.  She’s running out of it.  It is incredible what even a little joint stuck in a backwater in the boonies of Nebraska costs month in and month out.  Your uncle, bless his heart, has had to bear the entirety of writing checks, and it appears that she will move yet again, this time to the Vet Center on the north side of Grand Island.  The cost won’t be so high, and her medications will be taken care of.  Honestly, it is really a matter of letting things take their course.  Moving to a high-end, beautifully designed spot wouldn’t amount to much for her because there are so many people at the Vet’s Home and so few staff.  She just won’t get the attention.  As long as she is clean and well fed, that is what matters.  Your uncle sees her every day, and that is about as much human interaction as she can handle.  I saw her three times out there, and on the final time I wondered if this might be the last time.  She perked up when the conversation turned to golf, and she said it always came easy to her.  That’s as conversant as she’d been.  She tries so hard to put two and two together, but being able to have some give and take just doesn’t work very well.  None of us really knows how she processes things.  I just want her to be comfortable and secure.

Felicia picked me up at the airport and it was good to get back to some normalcy.  Your uncle is encouraging me to make another visit sometime in June and I’ll probably do that.  I hope she can last that long.  But she knows we love her and she said the same.  That’s all I needed to hear.

A mixed bag…

I needed a jolt of goodness today, something to lift my spirits. And here it is. One of my all-time fav pics - Ellen on her wedding day as she jettisons the church for her reception.

Today is your lucky day.

No real moralisms this past week.  I stepped down off my lofty, left-wing soapbox to simply provide updates on the typical and mundane.  I’ll get back to waxing poetic next week with full force. Next Monday’s note will be a completely new tangent the kids have never, ever before seen from me.  I’m not sure what they’ll make of what they read.  Probably ‘life goes on’ and that will be sufficient enough.  Both have seen and heard bits and pieces here and there of the topic.

What you’ll read next week has nothing to do with medical procedures or jobs or lovable dogs named Henry or sunny Southern weather or terrible-lousy-awful-shitty golf swings.

But for now, it’s back to a mixed bag of routine news.  My friend Betsy will chew on me for not being more fatherly in my advice or counsel, but it’s Monday and I ran out of energizing coffee.

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March 28, 2011

Ellen/Reid: See last week’s note about Butler playing the role of the little school that could.  How many brackets have Butler and VCU blown to smithereens (mine included)?  I will be on pins and needles (i.e. I won’t be able to watch) the action on Saturday night.  Call me a scaredie cat.  It’s all true.  I had Butler making it to the Sweet 16 – but no further.  And VCU?  First round losers.

Things at the doctor’s office were something of a mixed bag.  On one hand the recovery has gone smoothly; I’m all healed and ready to go.  No problems there.  But they do this crazy ultrasound of my bladder and I’m back to square one in terms of drainage.  Not sure what we’re going to do about that.  The gist is not everything is leaving me which just amazes me because I feel bone dry. Their concern is this could lead to bladder infections if the situation doesn’t improve.  They want me to try some methods to train the bladder so I am trying to practice those before they resort to other remedies.  There are no drugs or surgery options available right now, so they will give me a 90 day reprieve to see how things continue to progress and then they’ll make a judgment from there.  I feel really good in all other respects.

In fact, I played golf yesterday for the first time since February 6.  Walked 18 holes, slowly, on a cold and damp day and felt just great.  There was virtually no one else on the course so I could take my sweet time.  If nothing else it showed me how much I missed just getting out on the course.  This morning my muscles were a little fatigued but nothing like I thought they might be.  The round was a shake-down cruise in that I didn’t try to hit for the fences but instead just swing easily and enjoy the cloudy day.  There were some good shots and some forgettable shots but I had a good time.  Reid, you ought to dust off your sticks now and then.  It would be good exercise for you.

Your grandmother continues her slide.  The other day your uncle called from her room at the nursing home and put his phone to her ear.  The best part of the conversation is the first :30 seconds because that’s when she is most lucid.  There’s no real back-and-forth per se.  She says she feels fine and then in the next sentence she asks me “Is Patty dead?”  That was her sister who passed away in 1970.  Yes, mom, she is.  I think that’s when she knows that something is amiss with her.  I’m sure she feels some maddening frustration about what has occurred to her although it’s all probably just a blur.  I’ve yet to hear her ask about your grandfather; perhaps she has shoved that way down in her subconscious.  That’s okay.  She has a lot on her plate as she rides out her days.  I am so glad to be going there for Easter.  I’ve ramped up the schedule for my church newsletter to accommodate my travel.  I am very anxious to see her.

It’s good you got to see your other grandmother, Ellen, when you were in Des Moines.  No matter how things have gone down, it’s still the right thing to do.  People are who they are and there’s no sense trying to make the situation seem otherwise.  I’m not sure I would have the same degree of patience.  Life is too short to get all stirred up about things that are beyond your control.  I wish I’d of come to grips with that philosophy a little bit sooner.  Good for you, too, to pick up the china and some other items.  Your mom was anxious to get some of the stuff out of the house.

Reid, it is so good to hear you like things at Razorfish.  This sounds like a solid outfit and a very good fit for your skills and intellect.  It will be interesting to get you take on where this all fits in with the New School.  Ellen and I both think you can’t go wrong either way.  Nice to have choices.

The canyon-wide leap from legitimate defense…

Henry in scuzzy weekend mode. As Ellen said, "Tgif...look at this crazy dog."

From the time of my teenage years, I toted a shotgun around and over Midwestern corn and stubble fields in pursuit of birds.   Pheasants, quail, and a few ducks.  Nothing terribly exotic.  No deer or other large game.  I enjoyed most aspects of the hunt but as I got older I tired of the killing, and often of the shooting.  It was simply more fun to see what we preyed upon.  That was good enough for me.  My buddy Ray and I would road hunt at slow speeds, slurping hot coffee, talking, and hoping we’d see a rooster or bobwhite ducking in and out of cover.  If it escaped our iffy shooting skills, fine.  Back to the coffee and the talking.

My 20 gauge Beretta is now in Tim’s hands – I don’t think Reid has much interest in the sport – but there are no indications he’s taken it out of its case.   It’s fine that he now owes it, as is ownership of this type of armament for most folks.  But don’t lump me in with NRA cranks who would allow me to own military-grade weaponry because I can.  It’s one thing to lead game in the air but entirely another to aim at people.  How we have made the canyon-wide leap from legitimate defense of a populace during a Revolutionary War to guns that serve no civil purpose is way beyond me.  And how, too, we have legislators who fixate on such issues when we face the economy we face, the health care issues we face, and the environmental issues we face (to say nothing of teaching children, where North Carolina is a paltry 46th in public education spending), is way, way, way beyond me.

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March 7, 2011

Ellen/Reid: I wouldn’t worry too much about additional snows in the upper Midwest.  What you do have on the ground will be gone soon enough.  Down here the trees are budded out, the daffodils on their last legs, and the birds have paired off for nesting (although still no activity in my fancy cedar box).  We’re only 5-6-7 weeks ahead of you.  Only.

But our spring seems to have sprung some serious nut cases out of the cold ground in our two state area.  There seems to be lunacy afoot, and this time at the legislative level.  It seems we don’t feel our college students are safe enough without the “freedom” to carry concealed weapons on campus.  As if there aren’t enough gun-toting whack jobs already loose down here.  That’s all we need are amped-up students pulling out their Glocks at crowded bars or because their boyfriend or girlfriend strayed or a professor didn’t adhere to grade inflation.  Somehow I seriously doubt the founding fathers had on-campus security in mind when they crafted the Constitution on the heels of a war where a citizenry had legitimate cause to defend themselves.  On top of this, some lawmakers want to expand the notion of protecting oneself beyond the confines of their home.  It’s called the “castle doctrine” whereby a zealot can use force to protect their car or their business and much in between.  The legislature would allow trigger-happy folks to carry their weapon into a restaurant (“Hey, your service was lousy, take this…”) or a park (“Hey, curb your dog or he’ll get a piece of this…”).  As one legislative pro-gun nut said in a local newspaper report, “…a woman threatened by an estranged spouse or boyfriend might need quick access to a weapon at work.”  Perfect.  In some ways I don’t mind legitimate defense, but Ellen, Tim has my Beretta 20-gauge and he is welcome to keep it for the intended purposes like shooting game birds, but heaven forbid any of us need anything else around the house.  But I do like the weather down here.

I do wonder when we will return to civility on a grand scale.  We seemed to have turned some corner toward a darkened path.  Vitriol seems the byword of the day, and there seems plenty of vitriol to go around.  Your late grandfather talked about this for some time, years, actually.  He thought we were spiraling downward where if you looked at someone cross-eyed, that was all the license the other party needed to unload their verbal guns.  I think, politically speaking, we have taken a lesser road that will be very hard to veer away from.  All this is very easy to see from the front row seat in my glass house.  This is, in part, why your uncle refuses to run for statewide office in Nebraska.  He just doesn’t want any part of it.  Hard to blame him.

I will probably head to Grand Island for Easter.  From all indications things are winding down for your grandmother and I want to get out there while there is still time to see her.  It really does feel the same way things felt at this time last year.  There is a very real sense of urgency in that regard.  Your uncle sees the rapid slippage far more than I do; as recently as last spring she was racing down the sidewalks with her trusty walker, and now she is confined to a wheelchair.  Things have eroded just that quickly.  I still resist his forecasts on time.  None of us are in a position to make such guesses.  I wonder what happiness she really has.

I’ll turn things around pretty quickly for Steve Allen’s wedding in Des Moines.  It is the same day as Laura’s in the Twin Cities, although I will double dip by boxing things of your grandparent’s and shipping it all to Charlotte.  No doubt some of it will come your way, Ellen, and some to you, Reid although I’ll consult with each of you prior to doing so.  I don’t want you to have things you might not want or have room for.  I won’t clutter your lodgings any more than we need to.