Post Thanksgiving

Pumper Cells Part II

It appears scraping the back of the cornea and then wallpapering it with new cornea cells is a bit painful. But the patient is doing well despite discomfort and having to keep his head back and his eye focused on the ceiling above for 15 minutes four times a day.
The surgeon declared his handiwork successful and Ken's recovery on track.
I was a bit alarmed when he couldn't see the very big E on a cursory eye check yesterday morning, but he could tell that a hand was being held up in his line of vision if not the number of fingers.
Not a surprise since there's an air bubble in his eye placed there to hold the new layer of cells in place until they adhere to the cornea and voila, sight is resumed. Or so my understanding of this procedure goes.
We'll lay low this weekend waiting for the air bubble to dissapate and sight to resume and our fragile routine to return.

Pumper cells

We have another surgery today. We meaning Ken.
This time it's the eye. And here's where my shallow knowledge could be a problem. I'll try to confine this to my dim understanding of what's happening.
It appears that his optical pumper cells (who knew) have aged and those remaining can't adequately pump. The result is dim vision that means he has to squint to see. He got Kindle. The e-reader lets you enlarge type and it's his most favorite possession. He's gone through three. But now, even with his good eye, it means he has to squint to read.
Today, he will not only have a small cataract removed, because why you are there why not, but he will also have a kind of re-wallpapering of the lining of his cornea with healthy donor pumper cells. The procedure takes up to four hours. And it's a 1 in 10 chance it will all go well and he'll be reading his Kindle squintless next week at this time. I take him at noon and I'm gathering we'll be home in time for the semi-final rounds of Dancing with the Stars. (Ken called to vote for Kelly last night.)
Tomorrow, we return to the doctors to check the stitches and within the next few days we'll know if the surgery was a success.

Jonathan

On Oct. 14 at 12:30 p.m. on an unseasonably warm day in Arizona, I watched as my godson's casket was lowered into the grave and his family and friends each dropped a yellow rose into his grave.
It is inconceivable that Jonathan Zinsli is dead.
His mother had called me a week earlier at 5 p.m. on Oct. 7 sobbing, asking me if I could come to her home. What's wrong? Can you come to my home, she repeated. I had never heard such anguish in her voice. Yes.
The police had reached them to say that their 21-year-old son had been killed in a motorcycle accident earlier that day in Daytona Beach. Jon had moved there shortly after graduating from high school to attend Daytona State College. The school had a top-rated photography department and Jon was a talented photographer. His mother helped him move to Florida. He worked at Best Buy while he established residency and had enrolled in the school. He'd also bought a motorcycle. And on that morning, as we later learned from his legion of friends, co-workers, professors and exquisite girlfriends, he had ridden that motorcycle on his way to or from a photo shoot. A short distance. And an 80-year-old man in a red Toyota, driving the opposite direction, had made a left hand turn in front of him and Jon had hit the car, been thrown from his vehicle and died probably at the scene.
A young woman at the scene was with him and in the way information now gets shared these days posted on the Orlando Sentinel site that Jon's bravery in his last minutes of life had changed hers forever. She and Fran would wind up emailing back and forth in the first days that this crushing, unbelievable news seeped into the marrow of his mother's and father's bones, forever changing them.
On Oct. 14 in the Chapel of the Chimes mortuary those who love the Zinsli family and Jon, came to pay their respects. We filled the room. All there to weep and mourn with this remarkable family because the death of a vibrant, beautiful, smart, talented 21-year-old son full of life, of aching potential is an incomprehensible thing.
There was Rachel, Jon's first friend and co-worker, then fellow photography student, who Best Buy flew from Florida to attend the funeral. The family would learn that Best Buy had to bring in a grief counselor when word of Jon's tragic death spread. Photography professor Eric Breitenbach brought some of Jon's exquisite photoraphy and a message board students and professors had signed during a standing-room-only memorial service they held on Thursday morning after Jon's death. "He brought us all closer,'' Eric said.
Fellow students and Jon's roommate, Lukas, were there. His high school friends. His Boy Scout leader. His high school photography teacher who'd first scene Jon's talent and challenged him to step aside from his adolescent rage and self-absorption to first learn this craft before he explored its fringes.
His sweet sister. His two older brothers. His grandmother who held his newborn body in her arms when he was born at home with his grandmother, two brothers and the Glendale firefighters in attendance. His grandfther who took him on numerous deep sea dives and would have given him more camera equipment for underwater photography this Christmas. HIkers who, with Jon's family, had hiked most of the trails in Arizona and beyond.
The members of the B'Hai community and the Swiss community who watched him grow. The former sang piercingly aching songs at his funeral and at the gravesite. They read prayers.
And his family: his father, brothers Peter and Phillip, his sister, Katya, his uncle Michael and his mother each eulogized him. Unbelievably, eloquently, painfully standing before all of us talking about Jon. Their brother, son, nephew, grandson. And his professor, his girlfriends talked about his love, his talent (the most talented student I've seen in 29 years), his passions, his kindness, his loyalty, his wit, his mind, his hope.
And the story that lingers is the story his mother told of a fig tree the family had brought back to the desert with them from their two-year sojourn in Switzerland when Jon was a kindergartener.
She'd planted the tree and it had born sweet, full, delicious fruit. This remarkable family savors all things of the earth, most especially its fruit. They had enjoyed this fruit for many years and then the tree had begun to wither. It had seemingly tired so they cut the tree down. But Fran said that lately she had noticed a small, green shoot from the stub of its trunk. She'd begun watering the tree. Nurturing its tender green signs of life as I've watched her do with her children, her students, with all of us that gather round this remarkable woman.
And in that story, told at the funeral of her youngest son, Fran led each of us to the barely visible blades of hope.

Travel notes

In no particular order of importance, some snapshots from our recent trip to London to visit Amanda and Michael:

It's very disconcerting to be in a country where they speak English, although sometimes it sounds like a foreign language, and drive on the wrong side of the street. You never know where to look for oncoming traffic when you are walking. And when you are a passenger in a car it seems equally confusing figuring out where you are headed and where the round-abouts are really directing y ou.

Amanda and Michael's flat is on Kensington Gardens Square, near Bayswater, Hyde Park and a 15-minute walk from their old flat in Notting Hill. It's a first-floor flat which means that you look out their living room picture window that's at least five-feet high with white wooden shutters that fold into the wall right onto the sidewalk and narrow street that amazingly accommodates parked cars, city buses, delivery trucks and cars sometimes simultaneously. Two doors down is this hip neighborhood bar and restaurant where you can get eggs, coffee and pastry in the morning and martinis and tapas at night. The laundromat is less than a block away and there are a series of hair dressing, waxing, nail places within spitting distance. Across the street is Nandos where you can wave at the person taking your grilled chicken order over the phone.
It's, as they say, bustling with a steady stream of Moslem women in scarves , everyone talking on cell phones and a lot of people smoking.
As Michael says, there's a lot of energy. You could literally sit at the window and watch an all-day drama. It's like a day at the beach without the sand and sunscreen.
You can step out their front door and most times of the day can hail a taxi within five minutes.
You can also walk down the street and take the No. 23 bus and be on Bond Street next to Sufridges, the large, local-favored department store, within 10 to 15 minutes.
I now can identify the Marble Arch from a bus window two blocks away.

Last year we went to the races at Ascot, a sublimely British thing to do.
This year we went to the last night of the Proms at Hyde Park where Barry Manilow was the headliner. Really.
Think the 4th of July meets tailgating at a Steelers/Bears game. Thirty-seven thousand people with their picnics spread out on blankets (some had brought tables, tableclothes, candelabras , sliver, china and crystal) most waving the Union Jack flags, sipping champagne and ale and dipping into salmon pates, cheese plates and other nibblies. By the end of the evening, which celebrates music and patriotism -- you heard this random mix of Handel's Water Music, Copacabana and Auld Lang Syne.
At the end there were fireworks and this unforgettable scene of a park full of Brits -- we were with alumni of USC -- singing a full-force rendition of Britannia, God Save the Queen and then linking arms and singing Aud Lang Syne.
At the end, magically there appeared black plastic garbage bags near each blanket pad. People bent down, grabbed a bag and began disposing of their rubbish. All very civilized, sensible and efficient. Brilliant.

The high T

Winston's nervous breakdown

The other day we took our dog to the vet and asked, in addition to the examination, if they could keep him overnight so we could sleep.
Winston, our basset of some nearly 10 years, is having a nervous breakdown. Or at least a very severe anxiety attack.
Even the pills many people give their dogs during monsoon season to sedate them during thunderstorms don't work. He spends his days and nights panting, pacing, whining and trembling.
I think this summer of detox, pain pump surgery and the subsequent trial of rejiggering Ken's pain med mix have taken their toll on Winston.
He's always been very emotionally sensitive and needy, like the rest of us.
He's been the steadfast, tail-always-wagging, emotive dog that follows Ken's every move and could sit beside him 24/7 having his back scratched or his head petted.
But lately, he's taken a turn and it's not been good. His tail is frequently down, not wagging. He has poddy issues, as in he goes on the carpet. Frequently. Yesterday he couldn't even gather the wherewithal to jump up on the couch, something in the past he would have done enthusiastically. He spent the day panting, whining and staying as underfoot as he could as we followed us from room to room.
The vet concurred that he's got something that in canine language is akin to anxiety. He's on some kind of doggie Xanex that won't probably really take hold, if it does, for a month. He gets it twice a day.
But, as with Ken, there is progress. Teeny, tiny progress.
And I've decided rather than homicide, I will be understanding and reassuring.
Last night, he was able to jump on the couch, although he stood up on the cushions and faced away, not even understanding that it's customary to sit on a couch, curl into a nice ball and/or lay your head on your mistress's lap.
Eventually, hours later, he assumed the normal dog-on-the-couch position. And for a while quit shuddering.
Last night he slept through the night. He only paced and panted for a few minutes.
This morning, as if he forgot that he's suffering from anxiety attacks, he wagged his tail and for a moment was the old, happy-go-lucky, happy-to-see-you-and-be-alive-in-this-world Winston. Then he remembered and began panting, the sight of a doggie bone being offered him too much to cope with.
We're a house of healing this summer. Stepping our way to healing one little jump-up-on-the-couch at a time.

The last brother

Saturday morning I watched Ted Kennedy's funeral from 7 a.m. until maybe almost noon. All of it. Even the dead TV time when the rain spattered the streets of Boston outside that big, solid Catholic church that looked much more splendid inside than outside.
I noted the new brick and slate sidewalk approaching the church steps and then all the unlikely mix of people extending themselves to each other the way you do at weddings and funerals when strangers or adversaries or exes wind up sharing a pew or a dinner table because celebrations and mournings eclipse, even now, grievances and positions.
And my heart felt a familiar sag remembering earlier Kennedy funerals. A kind of televised history we baby boomers share from the time many of us were in junior high and watched Jackie, Bobby and Teddy walk -- the two brothers in mourning suits -- behind JFK's riderless horse-drawn casket (with the riding boots in the stirrups backwards.)
I -- forgive me Catholics -- rolled my eyes at the priest's lame, hollow-sounding, self-important homily and found it not surprising that people leave this institution although at the same time I respected the Kennedy family's embrace of the faith and the church.
I tried to sort the faces and names and stories of the Kennedy clan, noting the sweetness of the children each asking for Ted Kennedy's passions: a health care system that worked for all and a people who embraced one another or at least respected one another regardless of gender, nationality and who they chose to love. We all prayed Hear our prayer -- those unlikely seatmates (Hillary next to George. Bill grabbing face time with Barack. Nancy Pelosi talking to Jimmy Carter and Rosalyn (still seems such a sourpuss.)Orin Hatch. Caroline. The Smith boy who was accused of raping the girl. That whole sordid moment. Jean, the last sibling. Was that Joan Bennett Kennedy? The blonde with the sort of unfortunate facelift. I had these catty thoughts while transfixed and sad at the passing. The careful watching of Vicky whose countenance seems to deserve a more noble name.)
And then Obama's eulogy, pitch perfect.
And when the family walked out beside the casket of the man who was father to too many of them I wondered where Vicky would sleep that night.

Cool mornings

This morning I sat in my garden with a cup of coffee and the morning pages I've been doing fairly faithfully since Margot and I went to a conference in Sedona with the Artists' Way writer, humorist and sage, Julia Cameron. (She was married to Martin Scorcese, something that somehow added a great deal of heft to her words.)
And to my point: it was cool. Sweet, sweet cool air with just a hint of moisture. The sky, of course, was cloudless blue and the sun bright. But the air was cool. Refreshing with a promise that this back-breaking heat was finished. The afternoons may be in the triple digits, but the mornings were cool and cool mornings make all the difference. It allows for a time to regroup, gather your energies and be still.
The heat 24 hours is relentless. When they say it saps your energy, it's true. There's no regathering time.
Soon, we'll be able to eat dinner outdoors again. But for right now morning coffee in the garden is sufficient.

38 Years

Yesterday we observed our 38th anniversary. Ken bought me black pearls. A 72-inch strand of black pearls purchased from the neighborhood jewelers from a catalogue they seldom ordered from.
The jewelry lady was impressed that the pearls at that price looked this good. They do. I appreciated the story about how impressed she was that you could get 72-inches of black pearls at "that price'' because we'd agreed, or I had stated, that we weren't getting any presents for each other.
A card would do.
And it would have.
But it's 38 years. Thirty-eight years. This summer has felt 38 years long.
So last night we packed Ken's walker into the car and made it to the 7 p.m. showing of 500 Days of Summer. We had movie theater popcorn for dinner. Perfect. And we watched this very clever movie about love. Unrequited love. (You learn that from the outset so it's not a spoiler.)
One of the lead's friends has known Robin, his girlfriend of years, since they were in elementary school. There's a line he says, which I can't recreate, that describes the girl of his dreams. She has fuller breasts, likes sports more and something else. But that in the end Robin is better b/c that's who he loves.
Ken and I met in 2nd grade. It's a tale I have told at a lot of dinner parties. I offered him a quarter to draw me a squirrel. He had sketched an amazing pencil squirrel. Very detailed and perfect, especially for a second grader. And a quarter was a high price given the times and that I didn't have an allowance. It was my ice cream money. He refused. One of what would be only a handful of times he would refuse my request. But he was smitten with Patsy Crarey at the time and couldn't be bothered.
But we were in second grade together. We had Miss Kraner, a first-year teacher whose classroom was completely out of control. Ken and I dated in our sophomore year of high school, but I didn't really like him. Then we began dating in earnest our senior year. I had to really work hard to woe him. I walked him home after school -- something you did in Kokomo, IN, in 1966 when only about a dozen kids in high school had their own cars. We were not among those.
We journeyed down memory lane last night. Not back to second grade but to our wedding day. I'm in contact with all but one of my four bridesmaids. Amazing really. Ken is in contact with two of his. We wondered at his choice of groomsmen. We remembered who he'd asked to be ushers. That Melissa Moore and Beth Shagley had served cake, a disaster because they thought they had to dissemble the tiered cake to cut it. We remembered the Phi Delt fraternity brothers who'd come and who had seranaded me when we returned to my parents' home for an after-reception reception where we could serve wine and beer since you couldn't do that at the First Presbyterian Church where we'd had the reception in the fellowship hall. That Ron and Sandra had been there. Sandra in black pants, a first for a Kokomo wedding and something probably still rememberd in some circles. Our children's godparents and such a fixture in our lives now and then merely wedding guests.
And I thought that then both of our fathers had been alive and my grandmothers and great-grandmother. And that these souls -- Amanda and Lucas -- who would enter our lives three and seven years later and transform them -- were not even in our imagination.

Julie and Julia

I read the book and couldn't wait to see the movie.
I had no idea I would weep through much of it.
If I had only one movie to take to the island this might indeed be it. I love food movies, but this is much more than a food movie. It's like An Affair to Remember (the one w/ Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr) meets Babette's Feast. Only different.
I think Nora Ephron nailed this. Just like I thought she nailed it in Heartburn, one of my other favorite movies.
This is a love movie on all kinds of levels. Certainly food, but more fundamentally the joy of life. Of relationships. Husbands and wives. Sisters. Friends and the bone deep pleasure in food. Its preparation. Its mystery. Its chemistry. Its soul-satisfying goodness and the joy of sharing a meal with friends and family.
My friend and colleague, Karen Fernau, admitted that she too wept almost without restraint when she saw the movie and vowed that she was going to end her relationship with low-fat Mediterranean diet and embrace butter. And that she was going to live each day with much more joy than she had allowed herself.
It was that kind of sweet, sweet movie.
At the end of the movie, they applauded in the Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, movie theater where I saw this. I didn't really notice because I was so transported to the world that Julia Childs created with her husband, Paul.
I think as much as this movie celebrates French cooking with its butter and its sauces and its heart-stopping flavors, it also celebrates marriage. Soul-satisfying, deeply known to another marriage.
And it made me weep in tender appreciation.
(The critics are right. Don't go to this movie hungry. Get the medium-size popcorn at least.)

Recovery II

After nearly three months of detox, there's a light.
Ken has gotten himself off oxycotin. He weaned himself from pain pops. And then was told he could go back on them and now we are waiting for his pump refill. Same cocktail ingredients, different proportions.
He had his morphine levels goosed up and now he walks, with the help of a delux walker loaned to us by a neighbor, back and forth from the bedroom and dining room with ease. We've put up the folding couch in the den, a sign that he doesn't need three crash spots throughout the house, just one.
He went to the movie with Lucas and dinner at Durant's. He takes long naps but he is no longer bed-ridden.
He can make coffee, let the dog out and remind me where I left my glasses.
The trip to London to visit Amanda and Michael that we thought at one point might be out of the question is now back in the very real realm of possibility.
He gets his pump refilled with the new mixture next week.
It will be as close to what the doctor thinks is the right mix as we've had.
The doctor expects that Ken will indeed be headed to London to visit his daughter and son-in-law in early September.
We may be on the other side of this.

Recovery

It rained in Wisconsin. Sweet, blessed rain.
The natives were not happy, but I was. Six weeks of record-breaking dry heat, relentless sun and no monsoon to speak of made me nearly dilirious when the rains set in for almost two days at Powers Lake, the site of my break.
It was a weekend of rain, sweatshirts, conversation, wine, Scrabble, great food and the nonstop distractions of life at this Wisconsin lake.
Lucas was tending to his father, pruning the back garden and vacuuming a summer's accumulation of bougainvillea leaves. He also had my car detailed and helped his father pick out a sports coat at Dillard's outlet at Metrocenter.
They saw Julie and Julia and so did Melissa, Sandra and I.
More on that later.
I slept uninterrupted. Ate uninterrupted. Read uninterrupted and danced and sang hymns and show tunes with my daughter-in-law. Sweet.
The break I didn't think I needed.

My wise children

Thursday afternoon I'm headed to Powers Lake in Wisconsin.
My daughter-in-law Melissa will pick me up at O'Hare. She will drive me to the lake. She's already picked out the music she knows will trigger a spontaneous sing-along (she's the only person who actually encourages me to sing). We will arrive at the lake where Sandra, our children's godmother, will have a light snack and a bottle of wine ready.
Thus will begin a weekend get-away I balked at acknowledging I even needed.
But my children are far wiser than I.
When this was first proposed by Lucas and Melissa a week ago they anticipated my resistance and said that it was already a done deal.
Ken and I had been through what we later understood to be Ken's withdrawal from pain pops coupled with the crippling pain he was experiencing waiting for the pain meds in the pump to reach a level that gave him relief.
But when Lucas, Melissa, Amanda and Michael join forces they are formidable.
Melissa had proposed my break. She'd heard the depression in my voice. The frustration and the exhaustion. So she got the brunt of my resistance. This was too expensive (they footed the bill) and too spontaneous. "Next time check back in before you decide I need a break, " I'd snapped to her.
But I took my daughter's lead. "Your children love you, mom. Enjoy yourself. Have a good time. I wish I was there.''
I still could not fully admit that I needed a break.
It wasn't until Sunday morning that I knew I needed to call Melissa and apologize and say thank you. You were right. I do need this.
She wondered what took me so long.

Corner turned

Ken called Monday at 1:49 p.m. and announced he had "turned the corner.''
He was pretty sure that the last seven days of anquish had been actually withdrawal from the pain pops he'd been sucking since he'd eliminated daily doses of oxy cotin. These little "pain pops" are Oral Transmucosal Fentanyl Citrate. He'd pop them in his mouth. Rub the nub of opiate inside where it could absorb quickly and soon it was backing the braying dogs of pain back into their pen.
But on Tuesday, July 28, our son's 31st birthday, Dr. Lieberman told Ken that the pain pops were undermining the pain pump's effectiveness. He had to stop them.
Ken didn't know if he could. He'd already been reduced to rubble by the six weeks of detox. The pain pops -- at least three a day -- had been what had gotten him through.
But he stopped them. He knew he had no choice.
Ken would now probably say he had bottomed out because he has such new-found empathy for people whose bodies clamor for relief in whatever form it comes and however destructive.
The days ahead were difficult.
At one point, when we were in the swimming pool hoping that the near bath-water temperatures of the pool water and his bouyancy would relieve some of the pressure on his spine, he said "I think this is withdrawal. I don't think it's the pump."
I had not clued in on the pain pop factor. I just knew that the man who had talked to me for a solid 60 minutes and been the animated guest at a dinner party the previous weekend was reduced to near monosyllables and could not sit up longer than 5 minute stretches a week later. We seemed to be spiraling downhill. I kept teetering between taking him to the ER and distracting him with ice cream.
By Sunday, he said "I think I was addicted to the pain pops. I think this was all withdrawal.''
Now he's left with pain that reminds him of the original surgery 11 years ago. But somehow that all seems manageable. Hopeful. With each adjustment of the pain relief cocktail he will experience more relief.
Or that's the hope.
Meanwhile, on Sunday he talked for 90 minutes straight. A lucid, detailed conversation about a science fiction book he was reading. Not something I normally would have lasted through for more than 10 minutes. But when I said, "You're losing me.'' He said, "But it helps me not think about the pain."

Lest you think I'm too despondent

There are bright notes in all of this.
Their name is Danuta.
(And I might add, Karen. Ken's sister came for 10 days and was at her brother's beck and call, carrying ice tea with the 2 packets of green sweetener and the 1 of sugar, chauffering him to doctor appointments, grocery stores, the gym, the floral shop and the dry cleaners and all places in between. She cooed over him, listened to me and kept our home and hearth clean, stocked and orderly. We wept when she left.)
Danuta, our Polish friend who brought cabbage rolls last week, homemade apple cake and pickel soup yesterday, arrives at our doorstep most mornings and stays until just before I get home from work at night.
She's all things wonderful. First of all she's been cleaning our home for nearly two decades. She knows our quirks and where the garbage bags are kept. She changes the sheets, vaccums, wipes those water spots off bathroom mirrors and scrubs the shower weekly. Now she's moved on to more refined projects as she stays with Ken during the day when I am at the office.
She has reorganized the pantry, tossing what I couldn't bear to part with and rearranging the shelves in such a way that at the end of the day I find myself just going to the pantry to look at the sheer beauty of her organized Polish mind.
Same thing with the kitchen linen drawer. The assortment of towels that include Aunt Gladys' hand-embroidered kitchen towels are neatly folded by type: Aunt Gladys', the multi-colored tufted ones we bought at Costco a couple of years ago and the thin white cotton ones perfect for drying glasses. (Although you wouldn't know that by my spotty wine glasses.)
She, and others certainly, have been our comfort, especially these last two weeks.
When she couldn't come yesterday, she wound up stopping by with the Pickle Soup. (By the way, the recipe for Pickel Soup must be a national treasure. This soup is the nearest thing to homemade Chicken Noodle Soup only without the noodles and with just a hint of dill, thus the name. I'll get the recipe.)
Susan, she said, when she called me yesterday.
I brought you Pickel Soup. You have pickel soup?
No, Danuta.
I make this for Albert (her future son-in-law) and now it's his favorite. I brought you some and put it in the fridge for you.
(That meant she had driven over to our home from cleaning a home in Avondale 30-some miles away on a day she wasn't supposed to come when it was 113 to put a container of Pickel soup in our fridge for our dinner.)
I think Ken will like this? Is he ok?
He was asleep when I came in (she has a key).
Yes. He's ok, Danuta.
Will you be here tomorrow?
Yes. Susan. I will be here tomorrow. 9:30 ok?
Sure.
I get there earlier if I can.

Superior knowledge

It appears I'm amassing superior knowledge about pain. A very specific kind of pain. And this isn't personal knowledge. It's what I observe.
We're two weeks and two days post surgery and the patient seems in more pain than before. Which is saying something.
Since I traffic in shallow knowledge it wasn't until today that I goggled "clonidine neurological pain relief. " It reduced me to tears.
There's certainly a lot to be said for adding this to the cocktail of pain meds sloshing around in Ken's pain pump. The FDA-approved drug (but we all know about the FDA's track record) has shown dramatic results in relieving neuropathic pain where other meds have proven too weak for the task.
But he's experiencing the same kind of pain he experienced 11 years ago when the initial tumor and two cysts were removed from his spinal column and we began this journey of pain meds, surgeries, physical therapies, braces, chiropractors, massages, acupuncture and prayer.
He's unable to be on his feet longer than 2 minutes. When he stands his back feels like a block of wood. Numb. Hot. His feet are constantly burning, hurting. His legs wobbly. Stinging. And this is after our second increase of the pain mix trickling down his spine bathing it in what is supposed to be relief.
It takes time, we've been told. These are normal reactions, we've been told.
But week two in bed seems an odd normal. Although last night when Ken couldn't stand, the odd normal seemed preferable to the new new normal.
There's an odd desperation to going to the computer and googling meds and then weeping.
You don't want to have to google medical terms and meds except as a lifeline to someone playing a high stakes game of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Not who just wants her husband to be able to sit and walk again.

Post Surgery II

We're two weeks post surgery and it feels like two years.
Thursday Dr. Lieberman programmed a five mililiter increase in the morphine that will drip from the pain pump to the tip of the line floating in Ken's spinal column and then down his spine. . It will take three days for him to notice the increase. That means tonight at some time he should experience more relief.
So far, I don't think he's noticed any change.
But this morning we made it to the 10:30 service at church and when Ken walked back from taking communion two ladies who adore him applauded.
He made it to church because two women from Kenya who attend our church were supposed to usher at the 9 a.m. service and he wanted to be there to tell them thank you.
They'd agreed to usher a month or two ago but had arrived late and the head usher had gone ahead and asked someone else to step in. It had infuriated Ken who had asked these dear African women who speak marginal English and read even less to usher. They had been thrilled and said that they would be happy to usher. Between them they had gotten six children dressed and out the door and wrapped themselves in their finest African garb to usher for Mr. Ken.
Mr. Ken and his wife hadn't made it to 9 a.m. church that Sunday to avert this mishap. So the ladies had sat in the pew, all dressed waiting to be told what to do. And no one ever approached them.
Ken was beside himself. So, he was insistent that we make it to church today because the ladies had agreed to try it again. They didn't even need to be coaxed and at 10:30 Saturday night Ken had text the minister to make sure everyone knew to look out for the African ladies.
And he had also wanted to be there this morning because a man who hadn't been to church for 12 years had agreed to usher at the 10:30 service and Ken wanted to support him.
Sherman came up after the service to thank Ken for inviting him to usher. Sherman said he would gladly do it again and Ken signed him up for the 16th and 23rd of August.
As for the African ladies, they came at 9 a.m., maybe still a little late, but it all went well.
Sometimes it's quite humbling to be married to Ken Felt.

Post Surgery

Eleven years, six surgeries, countless drugs and physical therapy sessions later, Ken and I had a sustained 60 minute conversation yesterday.
It also had nothing to do with bowel movements, pain levels, stomach upset, drowsiness, balance issues or drugs.
It was Saturday morning. We were at the dining room table. He was talking about the book he was reading on his Kindle. I was listening, cautioning him about my capacity for too much detail about the virtual past decades that these travelers to a new planet could access. We covered multiple topics. Ken was engaged, animated.
There was no fog. No eyelids that begin to droop 15 minutes into a conversation that over the last 11 years I've never learned to ignore. They're always a trigger that I've lost him. I jar him into engagement by accusing him of falling asleep. He rejects that accusation, maintaining that he's awake and alert and that the eyelid thing is merely his inability to maintain the focused eye contact I seem to require. We argue about that a little. But the debate is senseless. The conversation ends or he patiently, determinedly hangs in there and I carry on a monologue, which apparently I don't mind doing.
But not Saturday morning. There was no spat. Only tears.
Do you realize what's happening?
Yes. I'm here, he said.
For a person who processes most things by wrapping words around it and plopping it on the table for my spouse to sample, droopy eyelids have been difficult.
The drug veil was insidious. Mostly, I've been amazed that Ken has handled chronic pain with the grace, good humor and patience that he has. But I've resented losing even a sliver of his presence.
He can not stand for more than 10 minutes. Walking more than from the dining room to the bedroom is labored but he's fully engaged.
And although we have learned not to expect complete recovery during any of these surgeries, procedures, medications and therapies, Saturday morning sitting at the dining room table talking aimlessly for more than 60 minutes with my husband with nary a droopy lid was sweet.

Lucas

A mother is prone to lavish praise on her son and see him as a stout-hearted man capable of leaping tall buildings, doing whatever else it is Superman does and brokering peace in the Mideast.
But in my case these are not the love-blind blubberings of a devoted mother. I simply speak the truth.
Lucas stepped in the door Thursday night in the final hours of his father's two-month detox and for the first time in many days he enabled us to breathe.
We had been awaiting my pending lay-off (that didn't come last week, thankfully). There's always the concern about our mothers in Indiana care centers. We'd also had to replace a broken toilet, fight an infestation of ants in the kitchen and treat a urinary tract infection that threatened to postpone Ken's surgery.
I had long lost my sense of humor. Ken was trying to make it on two pain pops a day.
We sat down to dinner and Lucas took us from UTIs, lay-offs, pain pops and toilets to a story of Salty, a 77-year-old man who several years ago started chaplaincies at horse tracks. A former drug abusing jockey, Salty had found God, or vice versa , and spent the rest of his life talking to others about his faith, the Bible and Christ. Lucas had talked to Salty (a whole other story), told him about his dad and informed us that we would be talking to Salty over the weekend if we wanted to so he could pray with Ken and me before the surgery.
Ok, then. This was good. This was going to be good.
It continued. He cooked us lunches (Baja burger he named it: grilled hamburger, his special guacamole (recipe upon request), swiss cheese, sauted mushrooms on grilled whole wheat bread). The night before he made us the aforementioned guacamole with this incredible grilled Tiger shrimp and this smokey, picquant sauce I dream about. (recipe upon request but he makes it pretty much by taste.) Grilled marinated flank steak, steamed fresh green beans in a lemon-butter sauce and fresh sweet corn (not as good as corn sold road side at Powers Lake in Wisconsin.)
Our son is compassionate, drop dead funny (he does a Saturday Night Live-worthy assortment of characters from a Pakastani taxi driver, to a Puerto Rican flaming hair dresser to this hard-to-place slightly retarded orderly fellow) wise, smart and capable of making folding laundry an adventure.
Everyone who knows him, and certainly his family knows this about him, understands Lucas' presence lights up a room. Allows everyone to breathe deeper. (In the hospital waiting room, he sat next to this 60-plus, overweight man who within minutes was telling Lucas' about his wife who had recurring cancer and the day before had told her husband she was ready to die. The man choked up. Lucas patted him on the back and said, " That's hard man. My prayers are with you and your wife." Simple. Straightforward. Sincere. I watched exchanges like this all weekend with me, his father, strangers. (And this was at a time when Lucas was told his job would end July 31 , another casualty of a company buy-out.)
Marriage to Melissa and the growth, adjustments, self-reflection and perspective-changing insights that union can inspire have polished his soul.
We told him he had made all the difference. We didn't know what we would have done without him.
I've heard those words spoken by me and to me many times.
They have never been truer than spoken yesterday when we bid him farewell and thanked him from the bottom of our now very full hearts.

Pump in

At 11:35 a.m. Mon., July 13, they wheeled Ken into OR. He was in as much pain as I've seen him. The anestheologist , a competent-looking Dr. Andrews, broke protocol and administered a sedative before he was done reading all the paperwork. "I can't stand here and read this and watch you suffer,'' he said. That's when I realized that my earlier admonition to Ken to quit moaning so loudly because it was scaring other pre-op patients had been really misguided. (It wouldn't be the first or last time I had that realization.)
By 1 p.m., Dr. Lieberman walked into the waiting room with a wide smile and a hug and said that the operation to insert the pain pump had gone beautifully. He'd filled it with a cocktail of numbing agent and a pain killer and a teeny tiny bit of morphine. And from here on out we'll go to Dr. Lieberman's office and slowly begin adjusting the mix until he's without pain. The surgery was a success and the real pain management begins.
By 3:30 p.m. he was in his room in ICU. He ordered dinner (tomato soup, chicken caesar, pudding and ice cream) . He hugged Lucas and told him he was the best son ever. Talked to Amanda on the telephone and told her she was the best daughter ever. He beamed a squint-eyed love missile to me. He was oozing love and good will. That would end.
The good surgery juice that had led him to slumber through the pump insertion wore off quickly. He told us the next morning that he was up all night. The weary edge was back in his voice. He'd finally gone to sleep in a chair. But less than 24 hours after surgery he had had physical therapy. He had walked. He had blown into that plastic contraption with the ball that you have to keep suspended in a chamber. He had managed to break his Kindle (again) and he was on a first-name basis with the morning nurse, Dee.
We took him home at noon and put him to bed, where he is now slumbering. He has some pain but nothing like he did Monday at 11:35.
Pain management now begins not with piles of pills plopped in his mouth four times a day (although he still takes a lot of pills orally) but with a willowy catheter that floats in his spinal column slowly emitting teeny teeny tiny micro-size drops of morphine into his spine, 1000th the amount he's been taking. The prayer is that does the trick.

The phone call

We left each other at work today saying "Good Luck. Hope to see you tomorrow.'' Ton

The Wall

I'm not sure what happens to marathon runners when they hit the wall within miles of the finish line. But I do know what has happened to Ken.
We're in the dog days of detox. Rather he's in the dog days and the rest of us are watching and at moments cheering him on and then wondering if he should just abandon the race because it appears too overwhelming.
I've reported that he's not under the table sucking his thumb, until now. He's managed to get himself off all oxycotin, something that reverberates with many because of Michael Jackson's sudden death and all that swirls around that.
But these last days have left him without pain killers and raging pain. At one point his sister called me at work to say he was incoherent he was in such pain. I came home, called his pain doctor and the neurosurgeon and asked for help. His pain doctor, who I now want to give our time share in Sedona I'm so grateful, called right back. She reminded us why Ken was doing this. Told him not to abandon this because he'd come so far and then called the neurosurgeon to see if we could work out some compromise about no pain pop during these last two weeks before surgery. Within a few minutes she'd called us back. The two doctors had talked and come up with a plan. The surgeon would move up the date to insert his pain pump and rather than fill it with opiates would fill it with a kind of numb ing agent that would help him through the critical two weeks of detox when he can have no opiates in order to reset his pain receptors. They also put him on a high powered anti-inflammatory until his surgery, now scheduled for July 13. He had acupuncture today and last night we took his sister out to dinner on her last night here before she returns to Indiana. (We figured last night that the two of them hadn't spent this much time together since they were kids and were at Lightening Dude Ranch in northern Indiana. Ken didn't enjoy Lightening Dude Ranch either.)
He is no longer under the table, but he is stepping slowly and counting time by the moment and not by the hour.
Lucas comes tomorrow.
We have four more days to go until the pump insertion and then another time period until he gets the pump filled with morphine and then more time until we get the right mix of meds in the pump.
But until then he's substituting DumDum suckers for pain pops and trying not to notice the difference.

Detox, the Final Days

Tuesday, June 30, we went to Dr. Leiberman's office and learned the good news: surgery July 17. Now we're in the dog days of detox that coincide with summer here in the desert: endlessly hot with no relief in sight. Mornings are as relentlessly oppressive as night time. It's what they mean by heat island. We've too many asphalt-covered, heat-soaking, radiating roads and parking lots here in the desert. It must be like pain with no hope of a reprieve from cooler mornings and nights that provide a respite from what otherwise seems like living in a blast furnace or in front of a hair dryer on permanent high heat. (I am eliminating a/c in this metaphor b/c it doesn't suit my purposes.) So it is with Ken. I had wondered at the seeming ease with which he handled the earlier weaning from oxycotin. He's not under the table sucking his thumb but his pain is clearly evident , especially in the early morning and evening when stinging pain courses through his legs and feet. It's reminiscent, he says, of those post-surgery days 11 years ago when all his nerves awoke from the surgery and remained on red alert until we found Dr. Sparks and some relief from the daily doses of oxycotin. Now he's here with his eyes fixed on the morphine pump insertion and the final days of life without relief except for planting flowers, Google Earth, cookies, gelatto , his Kindle and prayers.

Independence Day

I'm measuring Independence Day this year by geography. Amanda and Michael are in North Dakota at his 20th high school reunion where the honored graduates of this tiny school are in the 4th of July parade. Melissa and Lucas are in Oak Park. Karen, Ken's sister is here helping us through the last days of detox (another blog post) and her husband, Gary, is in Greentown maybe headed to Walton, In., with their son, Matt and his wife Jodie, for a family picnic, car show and fireworks. Their daughter, Alicia, and her family are in Florida at the Buckley's condo. And we are here in search of fireworks that may be best watched on TV and a good grilled hamburger which is easily enough obtained.
My mother for the first time in her life is not celebrating the 4th from her home in Kokomo where she was one of the first people to put red, white and blue bunting on her picture-perfect flower boxes. The flower boxes now have fake springeri we purchased from Holly Hobby nearly two years ago. Ken's mother doesn't know it's July 4th and she will be asleep before the fireworks begins right across the street from the nursing home at the Greentown fairgrounds.
This is an accounting of our whereabouts. As for our activities: Ken and Karen are potting flowers and replacing a hose. He has his perfect helpmate, his sister, who's patient, unendingly helpful and dedicated to helping her brother through this painful piece of pain. We will go across to the street to our church where there will be games, food, music and a salute to the 4th in the coolness of Nelson Hall. Tonight, the three of us will maybe treat ourselves to gelatto and Oh, Hell and our shared memories of earlier July 4ths in Kokomo, Indiana.

I don't get it

I think it's my age. I'm simply too old for Michael Jackson. Too much of my memory of him was Neverland, the pajamas to the courthouse, the pale face, the baby balcony thing. And as for his music and evidently his legendary status of having remade pop culture and pop music as we know it -- the only one who could dance and sing -- (Liza Minelli? Judy Garland? Gene Kelly?) I apparently have no real appreciation for that. This is the woman who thought James Taylor was hard rock.
I think that you go nearly anywhere in the world and you hear American music being played. We create the rhythmns and the sounds that reverberate. And to that end Michael Jackson captured something.
And I also think that news producers, anchors grew up hearing Michael Jackson and his death reverberated. I was standing in Moo Cow over-priced ice cream story at the Hotel del Coronado after a day on the beach when a young woman, with cell phone in hand, announced that Michael Jackson had died of cardiac arrest. She'd read the tweet. I was surprised and repeated it immediately to Ken. I'd learn much later that Farrah Fawcett had died too. But after the 12th hour of coverage I wondered what all the fuss was about. There hadn't been this much fuss when Paul Newman died. In fact, I was insulted that his death had created so little response.
I think it's my age. I'm 60. And I don't have my husband's or my children's affinity, taste, database for music, lyrics. I like Sinatra. I know all the words to Autumn Leaves, Misty, Fly M e to the Moon and most of the songs from Camelot and Fiddler on the Roof. None from Thriller and I just learned this week that a whole generation claim Thriller as the song that defines their adolescence.
Mine was Johnny Angel, the first 45 I bought at Kroger's in Kokomo, IN. from Jane Plotner's mother, who was a cashier there, when I was in sixth grade.

Detox update

We are now in the double digits of daily opiate intake. We got a wheelchair yesterday just in case. Sometimes it's hard for Ken to walk. But mostly he's a trooper.
By July 1, he will be off all opiates. On Tuesday we meet with the surgeon and learn if he has to have a trial, when the surgery can be scheduled and if there's anything Ken can take during his two week off-all-pain-meds to help with spasticity and cramps. Maybe not.
Ken's sister comes Monday for 10 days to stay with Ken during the day while I'm at work. It will be the longest time they've ever spent together without their parents maybe their whole life, with the exception of one two-week period when Karen was 14 and they spent two weeks at Lightening Dude Ranch, a time Karen loved and Ken hated.
Lucas comes after Karen leaves to spend a weekend tending to his father and his mother.

Away We Go

There are a few movies I would own. That's my criteria at the end of a movie. Would I buy this for my film library? (I have a film library but its titles don't necessarily reflect anything other than they were either a great bargain on a sale table, a gift or a fairly decent bargain on a sale table. With the exception of Seabiscuit and the March of the Penguins.)
But in my mythic film library I would add Away We Go. (And Lars and the Real Girl, Little Miss Sunshine, Bottle Rocket, Princess Bride, Heartburn, Hannah and Her Sisters, Juno (maybe) and Il Postino, A Man for All Seasons, Lawrence of Arabia (which was a gift) and Babette's Feast.)
This movie is about a couple who become pregnant and go looking for a home (town) in which to raise their child. It is a heartbreakingly dear movie as they visit Phoenix, Tucson, Madison, Montreal and Miami in search of a home and their own bearings along the way. I like Sam Mendes (American Beauty) and I love this film and I want my children to see it.
The couple is tender, smart, vulnerable, real and drop dead funny. It could make me start watching The Office to see John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph (she's not in The Office but I wanted to write her name.)

SOS from Paris

Our daughter called yesterday from Paris. (Such is Amanda's life that last Saturday she was in Sedona and this Saturday she's in Paris.)
As was often the case when I talk to my children my first words were, "What's wrong?''
She'd forgotten to turn the water on for the cats.
This seemed an odd thing to call me about since I'm in Phoenix, the cats are in London and she was in Paris. I didn't have keys to her apartment nor did I know anyone who did.
"How long can cats go without water?"
Ah, she was calling Dex.
Or rather the one person she knew who had a computer or the phone number for a vet who could give her the answer to that question.
"I need to know if I should get on a train now or if they'll be ok until we get back Sunday.''
Her cats are in the habit of jumping into the bathroom sink or, preferably, the bathtub and sipping water from the trickle she lets run from the faucet.
She'd forgotten, in her haste to leave for work Friday morning and her jet laggy state, to follow the faucet routine.
Michael, who is vigilant about such things, was already in Paris with his mother.
I told her I was on it and would call our vet and call her right back. Meanwhile, in my attempt to deepen my shallow knowledge of feline hydration, I googled "How many days can a cat go without water" and found that there are many people asking this question. One post was months ago and no one had answered.
The answers from the Google search weren't nearly as helpful as my vet tech's. (If they lose 10 to 14 percent of their weight in water, it could be fatal. If you can weigh them and do the math presumably you can fill their water dish.)
The vet tech said they'd be fine.
I called Amanda. She was relieved and headed into a restaurant.
I'll call tomorrow to see how they (the cats) survived.
Meanwhile, if you or your loved ones should run into a dehydrated cat, be sure not to over-water them. This can induce vomiting which sort of exacerbates the dehydration problem. Give them sips (obviously take them to a vet if you can verify that weight loss thing) and Pedialyte is recommended for the same reasons we give it to babies who are deydrated. The electrolytes, etc.
From what I gather from my quick Google search canine dehydration is another matter and at this point I admit extreme shallow knowledge on that topic other than as a precaution if you are going to be gone again: Leave several bowls of water.

Detoxing detox

I've appeared to have overstated detoxing. Ken is now taking less opiates in a 24-hour period than he once took every six hours, give or take an hour or two.
Granted mornings are difficult. He goes his longest span of time without anything during the night. In the morning his legs don't move well at all. If we had to leave the house in a hurry he'd have to drop to the ground and I'd just roll him out. But otherwise he's handling this fairly well.
I'm less so.
It's part of that shallow knowledge thing. I don't know why he appears more overly medicated now than when he was taking nearly six times as much opiates.

Friday night

It's an odd night here.
Part new phase of detoxing: Ken was sound asleep when I got home. Katie's gone so CBS News has a stand-in anchoring tonight.
Even the TV News anchor has changed.
The end of the week routine -- dinner out or sometimes a movie -- won't happen. Last week, we were headed to Sedona with Amanda here on a quick vacation from London. This week she's in Paris and we're deeper into detox. I played solitaire watching the news. This time of quiet and peace and solitude has arrived and it feels unwanted. Like a party to which you have not been invited.
And word comes again of possible lay-offs at work. People are weepy, anxious. We'd had a month or two of relative calm. As much calm as you can have in these economic times when you are employed in an industry that has been circling the drain for a while.
So, we all wait. Supposedly, the announcement of 10 percent layoffs is expected July 8.
I am tracking time mostly by remaining miligrams of oxycotin in Ken's blood stream. Now another factor has been added to this complicated equation.
My friend Margot is grieving the death of her sister. My friend Kathleen is grieving the end of her daughter's childhood. I am missing my father who watched the demise of the steel industry and wishing he were here to talk about the evaporation of the daily newspaper, the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler -- something this man born in Kokomo, Indiana, City of Firsts (firsts being claim to the first automobile) would find as incomprehensible as Continental Steel closing.
I am deepening my once shallow knowledge of loss.

Deeper knowledge

I am accumulating numerous topics for my Shallow Knowledge book, but an area in which I am gaining deeper knowledge at too fast a past is detoxing. Ken's not mine.
We have definitely moved past the easy part of this process. He began decreasing his pain meds several weeks ago at an impressive clip.
But during that process we flew to Chicago to visit Amanda and Lucas and my mother, not an easy trip, and other than being more tired than usual, he didn't skip a beat. He's managed to handle a weekend while I went away on a girls' spree to California and wine country and left him running the coffee and treat tent at church one Sunday. He's hunted down the last portable carrier on sale at ACE hardware. He's kept up his attendance at the men's 6:30 a.m. breakfast on Wednesdays and the ROMEO lunch on Thursdays.
But Tuesday, after we put Amanda on the plane back to London, he surrendered to the pain and exhaustion of steadily weaning himself from a three times daily down-the-hatch shot of oxycotin.
His handsome face is etched with a grimace of wearing, wearying pain. Yesterday, he fell asleep in the middle of playing Oh, Hell. He got up at 9 p.m. only to return to bed at 9:15. He was too tired, hurt too much to even pull the sheets up over his body. This morning he made his way to the kitchen for his bowl of cereal and milk. I cut the strawberries. He hurt too much to lift the knife. We aren't through with this. Harder days lie ahead. I'm grateful he can sleep.
For now.
His doctor said it would be like a very hard case of the flu. Maybe swine flu without the swine. You'll hurt so bad you wish you could die. The pain pops I've nagged him to quit sucking, I now find myself looking for to give him.
I will work from home today writing about xeriscape gardening about which I do have shallow knowledge but luckily good sources.
For detoxing I have a titch more knowledge and shakier resources, my self.

Shallow Knowledge

I don't know where this is going but I think it's a great title for a book: Shallow Knowledge by Susan Felt.
I had breakfast with my friend Fran today and she said to start blogging this so that this book idea I'm always talking about doesn't fall in the "good idea'' bin like the rest of my conversational books. "Your blog readers will nudge you to keep going,'' she said. She's a teacher. One of the wisest women I know so I'll follow her suggestion.
The idea for the book began like many good ideas, spontaneously and in the backseat of a car. I was driving home from Lake Tahoe (another post) last weekend during my girls' weekend (another post) when I began talking about the weirdness of turning 60 (another post.) We were talking about the list of 100 things you most want to do and how annoying those lists are when I began talking about how surprisingly difficult it's been turning 60. Besides the obvious (you really do have to take calcium pills now (another post) is the realization that I have accumulated no real hard, solid, deep knowledge about any topic like, for instance, cooking pasta. (What is al dente really?) Molding (is cove molding the one that curves in and crown the bumpy one?). How do you pronounce clesetory or however you spell it?) Which Shakespeare play has the line Something's rotten in Denmark? (See. We're talking shallow and I'm an English major.) And don't even start on the books of the Bible.Bible. I have shallow knowledge about a lot of different things (2 cups of water to one cup of rice and dead head your geraniums so they'll keep blossoming) which I am quite willing to share and shamelessly elaborate on regardless of how shallow the knowledge. And Dave, who was kindly chauffeuring us up and back to Lake Tahoe for the day, suggested that would make a great title for a book.: Deep Thoughts. Shallow Knowledge. The idea brewed through the night until the next morning pretty much everything I saw, heard or talked about became fodder for the book. I would have categories: food, geography (this would be very shallow); medicine (again, dangerously shallow); health, literature, entertaining (my depthiest chapter); relationships (again, deep); American history (pretty shallow); World history (see American history); basketball (I'm really good at faking this one.) Music (paralyzingly shallow.) And of course, gymnastics (here I verge on outright falsehoods.) And so on.
This would be more than a tips book. It would be actual shallow knowledge. Lists of things I consider as knowledge under a variety of categories. (See above.) Thus begins the book.

Risk

We were in Sedona a couple of weeks ago. We snagged two days in this incredible place at a time share that's come as close as anything else to replacing the cabin we had in Prescott and that we sold about five years ago.
Arroyo Roble sets on the banks of Oak Creek, a beautiful creek that runs through the canyon between Flagstaff and Sedona and farther south.
After sleeping the first day, I took a walk the afternoon of the second day. I made my way down the bank (about three feet) and across the rock-strewn wash to creek side. A couple of ducks were in the babbling creek. A red rock canyon wall rose on the other side. Where I was a large red rock was in the middle of the creek. It was about maybe 10 yards from one side of the creek to the other. The large red smooth rock was just a few feet from my side of the creek. You could step your way to it on the tops of smaller rocks. I did. Sitting there in the middle of the stream, watching ducks, the small waterfall upstream, the widening brook downstream. And eventually my eyes fixed on the other side of the creek and the wide red ledge and path that led upstream and down.
There were two limbs lying across the river within steps of the rock where I perched. I could easily walk along those limbs to the other side.
I thought about it for a while, walking along those logs to the other side. My heart began to beat a titch faster anticipating the walk, imagining the risks. If I fell, it was shallow. The current wasn't too swift. I wouldn't die. I'd just get wet.
It seemed a bigger risk to stay put and only imagine reaching the other side. Only imagine looking at the bank where I had stood from the other side. Only imagine walking on the path that afforded a closer look at the waterfall upstream.
I thought about this for a really long time considering that the risk was laughably small except to me and the distance something a younger person could probably leap.
I finally lifted myself down from the rock and tiptoed to the two logs, one which immediately rolled. I decided that I would crawl across and not walk.
I stooped to all fours, managing the rocking log that was less troublesome than the image of a 60-year-old woman crawling across the creek on two logs.
I made it to the other side, pleased but more conscious of what constituted a physical risk for me at this point of my life than even five years earlier.
I don't know what I think about this. Other than for a minute I realized I hadn't thought about making it back across to the other side. I began the crawl back, anticipating the rocking log and the more cumbersome dismount off the logs onto the rock. But it happened without mishap.
The next morning before we left, I walked down to the creekside and took a photo of those two logs. I would post the photo here but I don't know how to do that yet. But I wanted a reminder of the moment and what presented itself as a risk to me.

New shoes

I haven't seen Ken this giddy since his surprise 50th birthday party 11 years ago. He was standing in the garden, watering plants and giggling. Or nearly giggling. It was a hot May day. He's reduced his pain meds by 30 percent, so giddiness was not exactly the mood I expected from him.
But he had new shoes. Black dorky tie ups and his new orthotic foot and leg braces that help straighten his back and almost completely correct his gait, ruined since tumors were removed from his spine 11 years ago. He hasn't been able to wear anything but sandals since the surgery because his feet are too sensitive to anything they sense as cumbersome. He's managed to wedge them into black wing tips for two weddings and for an occasional church service, but mostly it's sandals.
But his orthotics guy knew about a whole line of shoes for people like Ken and he ordered him a pair of these black tie ups that are roomier, canvass and give him a lot more support that the velcro sandals.
And he was giddy. Giddy. Giddy with the support, with the ease of walking and with the ability to wear something as normal as tie up shoes.
He's waiting for the tennis shoe variety to come in the mail.

Filipino food and line dancing

Last month, our Global Dining Club (six couples with adventurous appetites) ate at a small Filipino bakery and restaurant in an otherwise nondescript strip shopping center that dot Phoenix intersections.
We were the only diners but the place still had a sense of bustle about it. As we ended our meal (delicious except for the dish I ordered that had a bitter taste people were talking about days later) a woman in a swirling black skirt and serious looking dancing shoes began leading two other women and a little girl through a line dance, calling out the steps in a careful, clear way. Evidently, Friday nights at the Filipino restaurant are line dancing nights. No cover. Instruction is free. The woman in the black swirling dress walked through each segment of the dance, calling out the beat and the step, repeating it until she saw that her students had it. Others joined in and she easily incorporated them into the dance, careful to repeat and correct before moving on. She was encouraging, completely understandable and patient without being patronizing. She was like a combination of Cheryl and Julianne on Dancing with the Stars. This woman was a skilled dance instructor.
After 38 years of marriage and endless weddings receptions where I had to bow out of the Electric Slide because I could never get the sequence, I realized this was my chance.
When she was through with one line dance she moved to another and then finally to the Electric Slide, a standard that most already knew but which she nonetheless methodically taught me, anticipating when I would mess up and inserting a reminder before the tricky part arrived.
By the third round, when I was at the head of the line and not following, I had it.
I had it. I could do the Electric Slide.

Detox Part II

I tell people, in grave tones, that we're detoxing. That means Ken will eventually eliminate all opiates in his bloodstream. He appears his usual sweet, endlessly curious, open self which seems at odds with the tone and gravity of my "We're detoxing,'' statement.
But I notice he's sleeping a lot more these days. And that his eyes seem tired and his steps more labored.
He's reducing his pain meds 20 milligrams a dose in a stepped down six-week schedule that makes my brain seize in its complexity.
At the end of this withdrawal he'll be off opiates for two weeks and then he'll have a pain pump inserted. We did this before and he wound up with spinal meningitis. But he really has no choice. He's getting less relief from the pain meds and his surgeon thinks that's why he's had a spate of falls recently. So, with a great degree of courage, stamina and blind faith he's begun the process. It's a steady march for the next six weeks.

cleared

It appears I have been cleared to blog again. The "reviewers'' have determined that I am not a blog spammer and I hesitate to even write those words for fear that the Blog "robots'' will throw a block on my blog again. Thank you to all those on Facebook who assured me that they could indeed read my blog and thus, everything was fine w/ my blog. Fortunately, you all could read it but I could not post.
So, now I'm gathering my thoughts to post once again.
I have no idea what prompted the block in the first place but the Blogspot folks said that it was things like irrelevance and posing like a blogger and copying things from other blogs that can trigger the blog robots to throw you in the blog lock up, so to speak.
So I can't promise that this won't happen again given those criteria. I don't copy from other blogs. That had never occured to me until now. And as for the relevance, I think that my little revelry about the Bonneville could have put the Blog robots to sleep.
At any rate, in less than the 20 days it might have taken to shut me down altogether, I am back posting. All's right in blog world.

Facebook

I'm slow to this Facebook thing. I just learned about Walls. I stopped myself from posting on my son's Wall that he had his birthday wrong. I haven't censored myself like that since junior high when you navigated a world with unfamiliar, unwritten rules.
I don't agree with those who dismiss Facebook as too time consuming (it can be); addictive (it can be, but so is Big Love) and superficial. They say, if I want to talk to a friend I call them or we email; I don't want to hear from a barrage of people I don't care about and this is how computer viruses spread.
This morning I saw a videoclip a friend sent hiking some incredible canyon country. I learned another former colleague's mother had died and there was a flurry of sympathy sent immediately. I learned another friend had walked in the woods in Ohio and then had breakfast. And that another former colleague was anticipating the annual girls weekend I'd heard her talk about 10 years earlier when we worked together. And a bunch of other stuff.
Anyway, why are we hooked or not hooked on Facebook and why does it have this appeal among boomers? Is it like some have speculated that we're all through with high school hurts and ready now to reconnect? Is it our generational desire to be hip and stay up to date? Let me know. I have to do a story on this and I'm not sure what angle to take.

State of Play

We saw State of Play last night with Russell Crowe and I was reminded of All the President's Men and how scary Washington DC seemed in those movies. Like all reporters hang out in parking lots at night scared of shadows and secrets.and in Russell Crowe's case, guns.
The most haunting line in the movie was Helen Mirren's. Paraphrasing: The story here isn't the takeover of homeland security by private industry but that this newspaper is dying.
Everyday now I have people ask me with a worried expression if I still have a job and if the paper's going to make it. Some expect its demise having read the stories and seen the paper shrink in size and page count.
I watched the end of the movie with the credits rolling as the headlines on Crowe's front-page story appears rolling off the presses. I saw the little robots put on the big rolls of newsprint and was reminded of our Deer Valley plant and how impressive those robots seemed and how modern given they replaced pressmen who had previously rolled those huge rolls on and off the massive Goss presses. Now those robots seemed quaint and antiquated and something that I would have to explain to my grandchildren since a newspaper could, unimaginably, be something that might need explanation like a teletype or a tickertape parade or a milkman has to be explained to youngsters today.

Bonneville

My mom and dad drove me to Hanover College in September 1967 in a blue Bonneville Pontiac. I learned to drive in that car. I thought of that Pontiac and the burnt orange and cream colored Fire Chief we had with the orange and cream colored leather seats before we traded it in for the Bonneville when I heard Friday that GM was stopping production of its Pontiac line.
After the Bonneville we never had another Pontiac, but they were the car of choice for our family during my childhood. I remember the purchase of each of the three (was it three?) Pontiacs we had and the Saturdays spent with my dad wiping on car wax, waiting for it to dry and then rubbing a shine into the finish until you could see your reflection in the fender. I haven't done that since. But it was a ritual in the summers growing up in Kokomo, IN.
Charlie Conkle had the Pontiac dealership in Kokomo when I was growing up. He passed it to his son, Charles Jr. and he to his son. We did our car buying business with the first Charlie of that line. His wife, Juanita, was my grandmother Georgia's best friend. They were an elegant couple. Charlie was tall and lean and a smoker. He'd unroll himself from behind his desk in the dealership and walk onto the showroom when he saw my mom and dad and I enter on our infrequent car-shopping treks. It was an event. We'd ponder the cars, considering the cost, ask about the previous owner because we never bought new, always used. And always from Charlie Conkle. The blue Bonneville was our most luxurious car. I sat in its backseat for endless drives to Indianpolis to shop for clothes before school began in the fall; on Sunday drives after church; for Christmas shopping at Blocks or Ayres in Indianapolis and to Lake Michigan in the summer. I'd lie in that backseat on my way home from trips to Indianapolis , my mom and dad in the front seat talking. My feeling that I couldn't possibly be safer or happier than on those night excursions with my dad driving and me watching the Indiana dark sky roll by like I was in some kind of spaceship or cocoon.
Like the newspaper industry, the car industry is changing, fading. And some brands, deeply rooted in memories of my childhood, are dying. When we were in Kokomo in March I saw that Conkle's used car lot on Indiana 24 was closed. It's lot empty.

Alyce's coach

I'm not sure how it happened but there on a great green grassy expanse of lawn at Innis Park in Columbus, Ohio, on one of April's finest spring days I became Alyce's gym coach. It's an unlikely role for a 60-year-old who never managed a cartwheel in her youth let alone in her "later years. My only affinity with the term is that I do like to direct things. And this strawberry-blonde 6-year-old seemed miraculously amenable to my direction.
It was our first meeting, Alyce and I. Although I'd been reading about her daily from her mother's blog, I had not yet met her. And to be honest, I was a bit nervous. She and her mother had just arrived at the park fresh from a soccer game. Alyce had played goalie. The team had lost. She seemed unperturbed and decidedly disinterested in meeting her Ogram's best friend. I was prepared for that. She was barefoot and just as her mother had described: wirey, willful, skittish, wary and oh, so sweet.
We wound up on the grassy lawn by way of meandering through the children's garden of this vast outdoor garden and park. Alyce was doing summersaults, cartwheels and other active, kid-like things. I had kept my distance, giving her space. I had also opted for lying on the grass rather than sitting by the other adults, my first real gambit at wooing her. I had been carefully watching her but not so she would notice.
A shameless poser, I simply acted like I knew something about gymnastics. It was risky. I knew nothing and if she found me out it I would have squandered that opening. But she never suspected. And eventually it really wouldn't matter. She willingly let me lead her through a series of summersaults, cartwheels and handstands. I had her finish each routine by standing on one leg with her toe pointed and telling her that was called "the gull.'' I told her she was gifted. And I kept worrying that my thin knowledge of gymnastic routines would bore her. It didn't. I "mixed it up'' simply by having her do more cartwheels. That seemed enough. And when I had her stand on her other leg, she rolled her eyes not out of boredom but by seeing this as a challenge she might not be up to. I told her she was ready for this advanced movement. We both believed it. But careful not to over-praise for fear she'd know it was a ruse to just be in her company, I also told her to point her toe. A coach, after all, is all about form and detail. The gull pose was the best opportunity for refining the form.
It was Alyce who referred to me as a coach. And for me she was / is a gift. For I had come to that park more wary and weary than open and engaged. That night she asked her mother if she could text coach to tell her she'd done the gull for 18 seconds.

Doris

Doris Whitworth died Wednesday, April 8, 2009, in a Sun City West hospice where she had had herself admitted last Friday seeing it as a means to a quick, painless death. Almost within hours of arriving there she found the place not to her liking and wanted to go home. They had no hangers. They couldn't ease her suffering or eliminate the grasping fear that at any moment she would be unable to breathe despite the oxygen tank to which she was tethered.
"This is no way to live,'' Doris said on Saturday afternoon, propped up on a pillow irked that her mouth was dry and that there was no close caption on the TV in her room. Her eye lids were half-closed b ut her keen, restless mind raced from one concern to the next immune to the sedative. Suspicious of any God in control, nearly deaf and displeased with the decision she'd made to put herself in hospice, Doris fought to direct her life. Finding hangers for her clothes, house keys and something to quench her thirst consumed her in those last lucid moments.
Doris was one of my husband's clients and the last one he would tend. Having outlived her three husbands, she kept careful control of her life from her two-bedroom home in Sun City where she had pretty much isolated herself for the last few years. A certified public accountant, Doris was a careful, meticulous, fearful woman who, like most of us, was full of contradictions. She was generous. (She gave us three of her time shares.) Secretive. Fearful. Easy to anger, especially toward the end, and equally as easy to forgive. She was suspicious of strangers, fearful of the energy they would extract in training them to her ways and her conviction that they would surely fall short. Nearly always she was surprised when circumstances would force her to accept a new person into her life. This was especially true for the three women who wound up caring for her in the end. Within minutes of meeting each of them, she shed all concern, although not her demand for having everything as she wanted it.
Tiffany was the first of the three to enter Doris' life. She had been with her since Doris' first hospital bout. Initially, Doris saw Tiffany as the daughter she never had. She was an angel whose presence allowed Doris to return to her home after she fell. But Tiffany's youth, Doris' age and nature and their combined emotional immaturity frequently poisoned the relationship. But still Tiffany remained. Two other women were added as Doris' inability to remain alone in her home over periods of time waned.
Throughout her time with Doris, Tiffany was confident that Doris would accept a God she dismissed as unable to meet her expectations or needs. Tiffany told Doris all she had to say was I believe. But surrender was against Doris' instincts. She banished the hospital chaplain from her room days before she opted for hospice care. Initially, the women resisted Doris' decision to have herself moved to hospice. Accustomed to carrying out her orders, they would have executed her desire to go home. But Doris' failing health and her own unreined fear kept her sedated and dying.
Tiffany was at Doris' bedside Wednesday morning when she breathed her last breath. Tiffany was praying. I think she prayed Doris' way into peace and in doing that found more of her own.
Doris' life and death are cautionary, instructive tales. Mostly of God's generous, porous grace able to breach even our most hardened will to control.

Spaces

I went to an architect's home today to interview him for a Cool Home feature. He's from Spain. His home is in a lesser known historic district in Phoenix. Nice, small homes built in the early to mid 1930s in Phoenix. When they were built they were advertised as "in the country.'' Now the neighborhood is in the heart of the sixth largest city in the country.
He's converted a one-car garage into his studio. That's on the architectural tour at the end of the month. I was there to see his home and talk to him about the space he'd created. He took me into his backyard. I scanned it quickly. Noticed the ramada he'd built at the back of the home. The concrete patio w/ the chair and table. The two lounge chairs. The square of grass surrounded by a pebble border. The bougainvillea. His sculpture. His arty looking fountain. He took me step by step around the yard. He called it his virtual swimming pool. Little upkeep and it made him feel cool. He pointed out the pomegranate trees, the bank of citrus trees all lighted so that at night he could sip his martini from the "dining" pad and look at the citrus. It's my urban paradise he said. The Spanish accent helped. But the thing I appreciated was having been slowed down and made/ encouraged to look at the details. Notice the wire lattice he'd created above a garden wall to create a strip of green cover between the yard and the driveway. The metal plaque he'd made with his company name stenciled in. He wanted hisyard to feel resort like in its attention to color, and aromas and views he'd framed. It was a nice, neat yard that otherwise I might never have noticed. It reminded me of the care people can take with whatever space they have to create a little paradise. A little virtual pool. The ramada I'd only glanced at on closer look was set atop thick logs with lattice bands slanted just so. In the winter, the slants guided the sun to the patio. In the summer, they were angled to provide shade and in between, they simply let light filter through. The concrete was stained. He didn't like flat gray concrete. It was acid washed and then the border was brushed with a certain kind of brush that created little pockets for the acid to stain darker. The center was brushed with another kind of material, creating another kind of color from the acid wash. The treatment created a kind of concrete rug. The ramada was strung with lights, criss-crossed to provide a pattern at night when the whole backyard could turn into a party. A little piece of urban paradise no bigger than a city lot with no diving pool, fire pit, jacuzzi, outdoor kitchen, mister system or putting green.

Friday Night Lights

If I were a TV critic Friday Night Lights would be my number 1 must-see TV recommendation.
I'm surprised that a show revolving around high school football has captured my attention, but it has. It's the one show that I wouldn't allow calls even from my children to interrupt.

Again

We met with Dr. Lieberman Tuesday. He's Ken's neurosurgeon. The man who just happened to be available five or six years ago when the wire dripping morphine into Ken's spinal column from an implanted morphine pump was severed as surgeons were trying to remove the pump and its line from his body. The removal was to have taken 30 minutes or less. He was in surgery for four hours because the line snapped and the anesthiologist removing the pump had to call on a neurosurgeon to fish it out of his spine. Lieberman was there. He's been a source of reassurance, skill and brains ever since. This time (there was another surgery in between our first encounter and Tuesday's appointment) he was talking to us about the pros and cons of having an electric stimulator inserted in Ken's spine to ease the pain and reduce the load of pain meds he's on, which are proving more and more inadequate and causing their own problems not to say the long term effect for his kidneys and liver processing these toxins. His assessment: the electric stimulator won't handle Ken's kind of pain. It would be useless. His alternative? Detox, reset his pain receptors and then have another morphine pump inserted. In cases like Ken's patients have required something like 1,000 times less drug potency than when they took pain meds orally. We're waiting word from his pain doc who would manage the withdrawal -- cold turkey. Two weeks. So, we'll see. Meanwhile, Ken is contemplating getting another dog presumably for Winstons amusement. But I think the real reason is to have something to hold on to during the detox.

March loss

In fairness, I must report my losses as well as my wins. I had a big loss yesterday. Missouri fell to UConn. You could tell from the body language, with 1 minute left and six points behind, that Missouri was going down and that they knew it.
Sad. I had them going all the way. I also had Villanova beating Pitt. That proved providential, but I didn't have Villanova winning it all, just making it to the Final Four. This is the madness of March. Mine appears to have ended a round early.

The small things

I wrote in my morning pages today and had this insight: it’s the little things. I went for my mammogram and bone density scan yesterday. Mammo clear but I had more bone loss. It's clearly my fault. The tech could barely hide her disgust when she read the answers to the questionnaire about my bone care habits. They are dismal. I don't take calcium supplements. I do eat cheese, but rarely do I drink milk. I don't take Vitamin D. She even asked incredulously, no multi-vitamin? No. I said. I felt her disgust as I lay on the table and the scanning thing chunked, chunked over me. I don’t take calcium. It’s almost this willful thing. I was writing about that this morning and then scooted right along to the issue of my mother and my mental wrestle with that ever-present guilty, unresolved issue of where she should be. I haven’t talked to her really since Sunday. I just talked w/ her briefly Tuesday. It’s Friday. So, I’m writing and I realize that to build my bones I have to take 3 calcium tablets a day. Stay in the sun 20 minutes. Walk 30 minutes and jump on my pogo stick. That’s really it. Some small things. As for my mother, I probably don’t have to move to North Manchester. Quit my job. Or sell my house here and buy a larger one (although apparently now’s the time to at least buy if you have money) and move her out here and hire caregivers and a therapist for myself. I probably just need to call her every day and send a card once or twice a week. That’s what I need to do. The small steps not the grand gesture. And I thought that’s not my style, small steps. And how much I miss not having the discipline and persistence to do the small steps because accummulated, they do change things. They rebuild bones. They comfort a mother.

More madness

I don't mean to gloat. Really. I just have to do one of those annoying little cheers: Missouri beat Memphis, an upset. I had Missouri. And, even though I'm a Hoosier, I had also picked Connecticut over Purdue. Not an upset, but pulling against my roots. So kind of an upset.
I don't mean to gloat.
And I won't probably be gloating anymore as this unfolds. But for now. For this moment. Just a teeny tiny gloat.

Recommended Reading

My Sunday morning ritual is Frank Rich in the New York Times. It use to be Vows in the Sunday Times' Style section. But now, it's Rich. When he was on vacation after the election, I was bereft. I have never read the Opinion page of any newspaper. (Nor comics for that matter.) But I have found myself a devoted Rich reader and would gladly fork over the $5 for a Sunday Times and consider it money well spent if his was the only piece I read. That I also more often than not enjoy Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman is icing.

March Madness

So far, two days into this grandest of spring rituals, I am 25 out of 32 games on the NCAA bracket. If I was mathematically skilled I could tell you my batting average, but, as established earlier, I am not. So, I'll just say that I think this is one of the best first rounds I've had. But, as they say in sports, the game is yet young and I have many more games to lose.
I've thrown myself into March Madness for 27 years. I haven't once in those 27 years missed filling out a bracket. One year, I won. For the last three years I ran the Republic NCAA pool and named it after my father, The Mike McGaw Memorial NCAA Tournament Pool. My friend's husband did the stats. We thanked him in wine. The first year of that pool I told the winner that I had donated his winnings to my father's Elk's Lodge to restuff the heads that hung in the Isaac Walton lodge hall. For a moment he believed me. This year, someone in sports is managing the event. Lucas called the night before he and Melissa took off for London to check my picks. His friend Brian had made him promise to call him if my picks were wildly different than his, such is my reputation for serious bracket-selection.
For a couple of years, March Madness was one reliable form of distraction while one of us in the McGaw clan was healing. In 1999 it was me from a masectomy and reconstructive surgery. My mom, dad and Ken and I all had brackets and we watched while I sat hunched over a pillow trying not to cough, sneeze or laugh b/c I hurt so much. Another spring, I coaxed my dad into filling out a bracket while we kept track of the games long distance. He in Kokomo fresh from learning he had Stage 4 lung cancer and me fresh from hearing the diagnosis. My mom may have put an entry into tht one too. Always Lucas has entered. And one time we drove into Prescott to Murphy's Bar and Grill knwoing that we could catch some of the games at their grand, old-fashioned bar. It's there that we discovered they had great wings and where over a glass of wine and beer we watched one of the great rituals of spring.
(I had Siena over OSU. That was this year's upset. Although at the last minute I betrayed my state and put Utah over UofA, so disappointed have I been in those boys this year. I missed Wisconsin and Michigan and was wrong about VCU. I still think when I'm 90 I'll play this b/c it's such cheap fun for the price of getting into the nearest pool.

Counting

My husband and our friend, Jon Shorr, conspired to contact some of my favorite authors to request that they write me birthday greetings on the event of my 60th birthday. The one who did, and who is my favorite author notwithstanding her reply to Jon's request, is Mary Doria Russell. She of Thread of Grace and Dreamers of the Day and Children of God. She wrote this witty, warm note noting that I was preceding her by a year into our 7th decade. Seventh decade, I thought. Seventh? She's 70 and she thinks I'm 71? I scrambled feeling a teeny tiny gnawing sense of dread that I'd blithely written six decades in one of my birthday musings. Math has never been a strong suit. A visual learner, I actually made a time line this morning and misnumbered even that before I finally grasped that by the time I was 20 I had lived a decade and on it goes. So Mary Doria Russell, my favorite author and now math instructor, is 59 and I'm 60, preceding her by a year into our 7th decade. Right?
Here's her note: (The subject line read: Happy Birthday you old bat)

Dear Ms. Felt,
Your friend Jon Schorr was rude enough to reveal that you are turning sixty on Monday, and hilarious enough to believe that you would enjoy being reminded of the event by an author whose work you enjoyed.
You are preceding me into our 7th decade by a year. Last week my husband and I replaced our ten-year-old car. Don realized that, barring accident, we'll be driving this new one when we turn 70, which is also the year of our 50th anniversary.
We have been walking around in a slight daze since that moment of existential shock.
Most of the time, I love being who I am now, and wouldn't turn the clock back even ten minutes. On the other hand, we're more attuned than ever to the dismaying aspects of old age. Don's mother is 94, and rather pleasantly demented. Recently, she picked up a piece of breakfast toast, gazed at it for countable seconds, and asked, "Now, what do you suppose this is?"
"Toast, Mom. You eat it," Don said.
And I thought, Shoot me. Please, shoot me.
Best wishes for happy returns that you remain sharp enough to appreciate
-- from a fellow boomer,
Mary Doria Russell

My wall

There are all these people who've wished me Happy Birthday on my Facebook Wall. (There are several people surprised a woman of my age has a Facebook page, wall and all the Facebook accoutrement.) I barely know how to access my page, let along my wall. But there they were. It's rather like coming home and finding your living room full of friends you didn't know you'd invited with nothing to feed them. It's very disconcerting. I want to individually thank each one of them. But you can't do that b/c they're on your wall. And how do I find my wall? I picture myself searching for my wall, finding it and painting a big thank you on it.
But first I need to buy a cake to give everyone a slice.

Big Six Zero

It's here. I decided to take an accounting: my weight, assets, debts. Sort of a spread sheet on this my 60th birthday. But it seemed too disheartening once I stepped on the scale.
As I wrote in my morning pages I realized that the actual accounting was much more uplifting and really where I'd stored by treasures: my children, my friends, my husband, my family. My job and co-workers. Neighbors. Books.
This is beginning to sound like a bad Christmas letter.
So, here's the thing. Yesterday, I danced at the Jazz Cabaret with a man who said I followed well and I took that as a compliment because he was as good a dancer as Ken and although I was a little nervous dancing with someone other than my husband who I've been dancing with since I was 17, I just relaxed and listened to the beat. I think I'll try doing that more.

About this past decade

A word about the past decade, fondly referred to as My 50s.
Here are just some of my observations as I sit here in my robe on a Sunday morning having begged off church because of a headache, a troubled stomach and now the horror of discovering I've been kicked off Kacey's Suggesting Reading List. (I must be more troubled by this than I would admit.)
This won't be a complete list, but for posterity, here are some highlights of this most eventful 10 years:
I do remember clearly that I celebrated my 50th birthday with one less breast that I had the previous year. I'd had a masectomy sometime in February, two months after Ken had had a tumor and two cysts removed from his spine. I was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer; had opted for a masectomy and reconstructive surgery. It seemed a tummy tuck could be at least one of the bennies I got from this. My dearest friend Margot sent me a box with something like 30 little ;gifts wrapped that I was to open every day until my birthday. It was very unlike her. Not that she's not giving, but I think she registered the severity of this more than I did. On March 16, 1999, Ken had staged a surprise birthday party on the eve of my reconstructive surgery. It was a fun affair. My parents were there. They had come to nurse me through the harder surgery than the masectomy, which was almost like out-patient surgery. The next day, St. Patrick's Day, my parents drove me to the hospital. Ken came, but he wasin tremendous pain and they had to find a bed for him to rest in during the surgery. When I came out of surgery all these people trooped into my hospital room. I was a sorry sight and not up to receiving company, but their presence was sweet. Amanda was living at home. Lucas had come with his girlfriend, Beth, and was dissuaded from having her spend the weekend at our home given it was pretty crowded.
that birthday I remember.
I went from being senior editor of the Features Dept at the Arizona Republic to being West Valley editor of some sort. A fall my friend Ellen helped me negotiate and whose sound, clear advice I've passed on to countless people and followed myself in more than a work related scenario. Basically, take notes. It's very calming. She also taught me through this that when something crummy like this happens that's more a blow to your ego than anything else you don't have to fall into a cavern of self-loathing and navel-gazing. You can take notes and plan Plan b.
I'm taking too long on this retrospect.
Here are the others: More surgeries for Ken; Lucas graduating from college; Amanda graduating from college; Amanda getting a job at Thunderbird; Lucas getting an internship in Chicago and spending the summer with the Culps. Me navi9gating a zip line at Leadership West and proving that my body did work even after a masectomy.
Driving Lucas to Chicago and spending three nights in Gallup, N.M., proving that I could find the FedEx route and have the delivery schedule changed. Driving to Chicago with Amanda and proving that maybe I shouldn't drive across country with my children. We were rescued by a truck driver outside of Tulsa who wondered what two women were doing driving across country hauling a car and driving a UHaul truck.
Joining Weight Watchers w/ Ken and losing 15 pounds and understanding I couldn't eat anything I wanted. Ever.
Moving to Barbados Place and emptying out our home of 15 years.
Kaiau, or however, you spell it. We went there'
Selling the cabin.
Meeting Melissa and understanding she would be the woman Lucas would marry. Their wedding.
Meeting Michael and hoping he was patient enough with Amanda and himself to risk proposing. He was. They are. Their wedding and spending much of the reception in the ER with my mother who'd gotten ill when we walked into the Gleacher Center where the reception was held.
Learning my father had stage 4 lung cancer. Being with him when he died.
Being with my mother who had to learn to live alone. Moving her to Peabody.
And somewhere in the middle of this I learned that cruising is really a whole lot of fun. Ken and I repeated our wedding vows on one of those cruises officiated by Margot - the ceremony not the cruise.
That driving on the left side of the road in England is tricky.
Having my first novel published and being on Oprah (just kidding.)
Exercising daily. (Kidding there too.)

When last I posted

Not to overwhelm everyone (assuming someone is reading this), I will blog in short bloggettes, so as not to , well, overwhelm.
In my second blog, albeit my last one more than a year ago, I reported that Amanda had found an apartment in London, where she and her husband, Michael, are living. Since so much time has transpired, she indeed has found a second apartment. They moved from their Notting Hill third-floor (three story) apartment to a garden level (cheaper but lovely) in Bayswater, a 17 minute walk from their Notting Hill roost.
They are in their last year of a two-year stint in London.
If I had been blogging like a good blogger you would know that we (Ken and I) visited them last summer when they still lived in Notting Hill and that Ken managed the 75 some steps up to their flat quite well. You would also know that Michael had rented a wheelchair to ferry Ken around not only London but Paris, where the four of us spent a fortnight. (It wasn't actually a fortnight, but I've always wanted to write that word in conjunction with a visit to London or Paris.)
If I had been a good blogger you would also know that in this last 12 months I've become a dedicated reader of NYT Sunday op-ed columnist Frank Rich. It, like Setgame and reading Kacey's blog and Margot's daily, are my most consistent weekly routines. I have also taken up with Daniel Silva and his Israeli master spy, Gabriel Allon, finishing a book about every three days this past month.
And you would know that my book club, started almost 10 years ago, nearly faded. But this January we pricked out fingers and dedicated ourselves once more to the monthly gathering for wine, food and book chatter promising to actually read the book, to have more than a passing familiarity with the books we recommend and to faithfully rsvp to the brave woman who agrees to host this group on any given month. We shall see how this unfolds. So far, attendance at January and February meetings was strong; discussion good (Red Tent) but there are those of us who are straying from the reading list finding it not up to its usual robust self.
And you would also know that I am approaching my 60th birthday tomorrow.