A is for Army

April 1, 2018 Sally3 Comments

My father served in the United States Army.

I don’t think he would ever begin the story of his life at this point, but this is an alphabetical telling, not chronological. Plus, I was born during the Army years, so I suppose it’s a good place for me to start.

The Army helped pay for his medical school. In return, he gave them 6 years active duty.

One posting was in Eritrea, which at the time, was part of Ethiopia. My earliest memories are from Kagnew Station, the army base there. Those little fragments of memories hardly seem real. I rode camels. I sifted sugar to help in the kitchen. We had chameleons.

My early memories rarely include my father though. I imagine he was kept quite busy with his work.

He moved his way up through the ranks. This is one of my favorite pictures of my mom and dad from one of his promotion ceremonies.

When he left active duty, he didn’t fully leave the Army. For many years he belonged to an army reserve unit — the 414th Civil Affairs Battalion out of Utica. While in the reserves, he continued to study and move up in ranks, eventually becoming a Colonel. He called it a “full bird Colonel.”

“What comes after that?” younger me asked him.

“General,” he said, and I was duly impressed.

When he had put in whatever time he needed for a full retirement, he did just that.

These days he likes sorting things — emptying banks and sorting the coins, sorting through papers and photos, sorting pins of various shapes and sizes that he has acquired over the years.

At dinner the other night, he said to Karl, “I have a lot of insignia pins. I found a dish that had a whole bunch of them. Maybe you’ll have some use for them.”

I looked at the assortment he had spread over his dresser. Sure enough, those full-bird eagles were thrown in some pennies and nickels, a lucky 4-leaf clover, and a few caduceus.

He had forgotten the hard work that went into earning them. I’m not even sure he knew their significance. He was ready to give them away to anyone who seemed interested.

My dad was in the army, but I think he has forgotten it.

I remember, though.

I remember him shining his army boots on the night before reserve duty, and the smell of the boot black.

I remember how different he looked in his fatigues.

Mostly I remember feeling kind of proud that my father served in the army.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · dreams · family

2018 Blogging from A to Z: About My Dad

March 31, 2018March 31, 2018 Sally7 Comments

Tomorrow the A to Z Blogging Challenge starts. I missed the deadline for the Theme Reveal and I’m pretty sure I signed up twice. It makes me wonder how this year’s challenge will go.

Writing has been such a struggle lately. I can’t seem to find a chunk of time to write. Writing, or, for that matter, doing anything “in dribs and drabs,” as my mother used to say, is a challenge. It takes time to get into the right mindset and find the right words. For me, an interruption comes and I’ve been sent back to Monopoly/Writing Jail without collecting $200 or 200 words or anything.

Recently I had this horrible dream:

I was walking in a field with my family — my husband, my children, my siblings, and my father. The field grew swampy, and we were talking about how it hadn’t always been that way and how we planted corn on it in the past. The path was narrow and my father stepped too close to the swamp. As he fell in, the swamp became a deep hole full of water and I jumped in to save him. He was sinking so I swam beneath him to get his head to the surface so he could breathe. As I pushed him up to the surface, I felt myself running out of air. While underwater, I could see some family members sitting to rest, but they hadn’t noticed him falling in. No one was coming to rescue us. I couldn’t call for help because I was underwater. My father couldn’t call for help because he can’t think clearly. I realized that I needed air and I needed to get help, but to do that, I would have to let go of my father. I used all my strength to heave him up and then pushed myself toward the surface for a breath. He slid past me, like dead weight, and I grabbed his hands. Instead of reaching the surface, I went down, down, down into darkness.

Then I woke up. It was an awful dream. I don’t need a Joseph to interpret it, but it served as a warning.

To misquote an African proverb: It takes a family to care for the elderly.

I’m so thankful that I DO have a strong and supportive family. My brothers, my sister, my children, my husband all pitch in.

The other night, when my father fell around midnight, Karl was right there ready to help. He drove us to the hospital and then stayed with my father so I could go home and get a little sleep before I went to work at 5 AM. (My father ended up with stitches in his forehead and staples in his scalp. Everything else seems to be okay.) I know Karl wouldn’t let me drown.

Helen is taking days off from work to stay with my father so Bud and I can get away for a mini-vacation. She did the same thing back in January. She’s not going to let us drown.

And I need to make sure I ask for help BEFORE I’m underwater. (Lifesaving 101)

But back to the A to Z Challenge. I decided to adopt this theme: About My Dad.

Writing about who he was will help me with who he is.

Plus, he’s one of my favorite people in the whole world. I think you’ll like him, too.

I just have to make sure I carve out those chunks of time for writing.

Faith · photography · Uncategorized

A Little Bit of Narnia

March 29, 2018March 29, 2018 Sally6 Comments

Yesterday’s sunrise was pink and blue.

The day before it was orange and yellow.

I take so many pictures of the sunrise. I’ll be at the pool and one the ladies swimming will say, “Ooh! Sally! Get your camera!” I’ll grab my phone and step out the door into the cold for yet another sunrise photo.

It never grows old.

Here’s one of my favorites, looking in a slightly different direction:

I’m reading excerpts of Lamentations for Holy Week. Feeling the sadness of the Jewish people as they lament the destruction of Jerusalem sets the tone for the sadness Christians should feel as we approach Good Friday. I love the way C. S. Lewis, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, described Aslan walking to the Stone Table

…one of the girls walked on each side of the Lion. But how slowly he walked! And his great, royal head drooped so that his nose nearly touched the grass. Presently he stumbled and gave a low moan.

“Aslan! Dear Aslan!” said Lucy, “what is wrong? Can’t you tell us?”

“Are you ill, dear Aslan?” asked Susan.

“No,” said Aslan. “I am sad and lonely. Lay your hands on my mane so that I can feel you are there and let us walk like that.”

And the girls did what they would never have dared to do without his permission but what they had longed to do ever since they first saw him — buried their cold hands in the beautiful sea of fur, and stroked it and, so doing, walked with him.

That part of the story is almost unbearable to me. Because even if I picture burying my cold hands in his mane, I know that soon the lion will be gone and my hands will be colder than before. It’s an awful feeling.

But Lamentations 3 holds one of my favorite passages — and arriving at it is like arriving at Easter morning.

²¹But this I call to mind,
    and therefore I have hope:
²²The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
²³they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

Every sunrise holds that promise for me. His mercies are new every morning. In Narnia —

There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane… stood Aslan himself.

The Narnian lampposts that line the driveways and parking lots at the pool extinguish themselves one by one every morning and I am left with a glorious sun. Even on the grayest days, I know it’s there — and it brings me hope.

Book Review

The Hate U Give

March 26, 2018 Sally5 Comments

The paper fluttered out of my Bible one morning.

I had written the following quote on it:

You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.

William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce spoke those words to Parliament in 1789 as he told of the horrors of the slave trade.

The quote fit perfectly with the book I was reading, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. My friend Shannon had recommended it, and midway through she asked what I thought of it.

“It’s a brutal view into a world that I don’t know,” I told her.

And it is.

I grew up in a white town, attended a white school, had white friends. There’s nothing intentionally racist about that; it’s just a fact. Small upstate New York towns were predominantly white in the 60s and 70s.

At my father’s birthday party, a woman, while looking at one of his old yearbooks, said to me, “This is fascinating.”

“What?” I asked.

“His high school had two choirs — one white, one black,” she said.

I looked at the yearbook — the 1947 Cobbonian from Morristown High School. One page did feature two choirs: the Spiritual Choir and the Madrigal Choir.

The reverse side of the page featured the A Cappella Choir and the Training Choir, both of which were integrated — just barely — with less than a handful of people of color participating in either one.

“We’ve come a long way, haven’t we,” I said to the woman looking at the yearbook. She smiled and nodded.

But we still have a long way to go.

For the breadth of Angie Thomas’s book, I was allowed to stand in the shoes of a 16 year-old African-American girl, who grew up in the projects, who saw two friends gunned down, and who ultimately learned that her voice is her most powerful weapon.

I thought about the book this weekend when I saw the news coverage of students across the country participating in March for Our Lives Rallies against gun violence. They used words — and silence (after reading the names of the 17 students who died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, student Emma Gonzalez stood in silence on the stage for 6 minutes and 20 seconds, the amount of time it took the gunman to kill them).

I’ve read solutions to the gun problem that range from arming teachers, to supplying buckets of rocks in classrooms, to having therapy dogs in schools. Some sound disastrous; others seems inefficient and ridiculous; still others might work. I don’t know what the answer is —

But I do know it begins with talking and listening.

It begins with standing in the other person’s shoes, no matter what the issue is, if only for a moment.

After that, I can choose to look the other way.

But I can’t say I didn’t know.

I’m glad I read The Hate U Give.

Life

Not My Favorite Place

March 23, 2018 Sally6 Comments

“What happened to your hand?” my friend Kate asked.

I was reclining in a chair at one of my not-favorite places

What she asked about had happened at a new not-favorite place — the GI Lab.

It was a week of taking care of myself.

On Tuesday I had my first colonoscopy. After talking my way out of it for eight years, I finally lost my bargaining power and had to go.

The nurse chided me. “You should have come years ago,” she said.

I shrugged. I mean, really, what did she want me to say? I was there.

But, when she tried to put the IV in the back of my hand, she blew my vein.

Helen picked me up after the procedure (she was my designated driver) and I showed her my bruised hand.

“Just imagine that your daughter could have done that,” she said, and I understood her to say that every nurse has those moments when IVs don’t go perfectly. A little grace was in order. Thinking about that didn’t make my hand hurt less, but it made me complain a little less about it.

The bad part of a colonoscopy isn’t the IV, though. It’s the prep. It’s the low fiber diet followed by the clear liquid diet followed by the nothing diet. It’s the Miralax and the Dulcolax and the everything-else-lax. I found myself thinking about the scripture that talked about the less honorable parts of the body. (from 1 Corinthians 12)

On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honourable we bestow the greater honour, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty,which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honour to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together.

I can tell you, from my colonoscopy prep, that when one part of the body suffers, the whole body really does suffer.

On Wednesday morning, when I drank my first cup of coffee in days, I rejoiced. It’s also true — when one part of the body rejoices, the whole body rejoices.

On Thursday, I went to the dentist. I do this every 6-8 years, whether I need it or not. I love my dentist. I just hate sitting in a chair feeling and hearing the scraping of metal against my teeth.

My not-favorite places. And two of them in one week!

Of course, I go to one of my favorite places every morning.

It’s beautiful to watch the sun reflect off the water.

Soon, when spring arrives, I’ll be able to visit another favorite place —

And if winter drags on, I have this favorite place –

Plus the really, really good news is that I don’t have to go for another colonoscopy for 10 years.

And I don’t have to return to the dentist immediately because I had no cavities. Of course, she’d like to see me every year, but I think I can stretch it out a little longer.

family · photography · poetry

Today Is Good

March 15, 2018 Sally13 Comments

I’d rather be right where I am today
Yes, I would
Yes, I would
Today is good

I’d rather keep in step with time than stay
Yes, I would
As I should
Today is good

Sometimes my heart begins to stray
To other times, to other days

My memories may not obey
This need to stay
Here in today

The day will come when I will say good-bye

Yes, it will
A moment still
And so until

I’ll lean into the sadness and I’ll sigh,
This is good —
For I have stood
Right where I should

Sometimes my heart begins to stray
To other times, to other days
My memories may not obey
This need to stay
Here in today
Here in today

My first thought when I saw the photo challenge was Simon & Garfunkel’s El Condor Pasa.

My second thought was wishing to go back in time to when my children were young and my parents were both still alive. I quickly realized that wasn’t a healthy road for me to go down.

So I ditched Paul Simon’s sparrows, snails, hammers, and nails, and wrote this about my need to stay in the moment.

family

Celebrate 88

March 13, 2018 Sally9 Comments

“This is such a great idea,” any number of people said the other day when we hosted a birthday party for my father at the Otesaga.

Not to be morbid, but the idea came from receiving lines at funerals. When my oldest brother died four years ago, I stood in a funeral receiving line for the first time. It felt like everyone had a story to tell about Stewart. I wished he could have heard them. He would have felt so loved.

When my mother died, the same thing happened. Person after person held my hand and told me a story about my mother and how much she meant to them. It gave me comfort to hear, but I wished my mother could have heard the stories too.

When Mr. Hanson, my 7th grade math teacher, died, his funeral was packed. The receiving line stretched out the door of the Vet’s Club and down the street. I wished I could have grasped his hand one last time, looked him in the face, and told him how much I appreciated him.

That’s why I started thinking about a party for my father.

I bounced the idea off my siblings. Before long, I was on the phone with the Otesaga. It had to be a strange call for their event planner.

Me: I’d like to have a birthday party for my father.

Planner: How many people do you expect?

Me: I have no idea.

Planner: I really need a number.

Me: I have no idea.

She worked with me.

I am so thankful for Brooke. She listened and guided and suggested.

For instance, she suggested that we use several adjoining rooms so it never felt crowded. She suggested we set up one room with comfortable seating, so my father could sit on a couch instead of a dining chair. She and her staff put out the decorations we had brought — books and photographs. She was wonderful.

The real quandary was how to get the word out. Friends of Bassett helped SO much. They blasted the invitation to retired physicians, current physicians, administration, and I forget who else. The local churches also helped to spread the word. As I ran into people at the grocery store or the gym or the post office, I invited them. It’s hard to corral a lifetime of people.

Among the first to arrive were two nurses from Dermatology, his last hold-out in his long and varied medical practice. He was delighted when he saw them.

From the home health aide who takes care of him,

To a former CEO of the hospital,

To one of his secretaries,

To a little leaguer he had coached,
To family,

More family,

And a slew of friends and colleagues, his life was well-represented.

The next day, as he started working his way through all the cards, he asked, “How did all those people know it was my birthday?”

I just smiled.

family · Life

If I Just Keep Moving

March 7, 2018 Sally3 Comments

“If I can just keep the car moving,” I said to Laurel, “I think we’ll be okay.”

Earlier last Friday, I had marveled at the way the snow surrounded the house, blowing, swirling, sticking to windows on every side.

Schools had announced their closures the night before. The hospital had called twice to reschedule appointments that family members had for Friday. The pool — actually the whole sports facility where I work — had decided to close pre-snowstorm.

But the swim meet was still on.

Swim meets are never canceled.

Ever.

Bud shook his head in disbelief, but handed me the keys to the car that has better snow tires.

And off Laurel and I went, driving the 80+ miles to Half Moon, NY.

The roads were bad.

“Take a picture,” I told Laurel, handing her my phone and quickly returning my hands to the steering wheel.

It was white-knuckle driving time.

I usually take back roads, zipping up and down hills, past farms, through hamlets, to save time. Not Friday, though. I chose my route based on which roads I thought would be clearest.

Route 20 wasn’t bad when I finally got on it.

Not bad, but not great either.

The viewable area in my windshield grew smaller and smaller as the wipers got caked with ice.

“I have to stop and clean the wipers,” I told Laurel — but there was nowhere to stop. The plowed lane was narrow and the shoulder non-existent.

We passed a huge Walmart truck leaning at an odd angle in the median and covered with snow. I wondered how long it had been there.

We passed an SUV down an embankment. “Do you think anyone is in that car?” Laurel asked.

“I don’t know, but I can’t stop,” I told her. “It wouldn’t be safe.”

I watch a state trooper in my rearview mirror pull over beside it. He put his flashers on for safety, and I assume he went to check.

Grimly we drove on.

“I’m going to stop at that gas station,” I said to Laurel, “so I can clean the wipers.”

But I couldn’t see the entrance and the brakes didn’t want to cooperate, so I continued driving.

30 mph seemed optimum. If I slowed, the car skidded. If I went faster, I felt like I was flirting with out-of-control.

“If I keep the car moving,” I said to Laurel, “I think we’ll be okay.”

We pressed on.

Past the tree tipped into our lane.

Past more vehicles off to the side.

Past snowmobilers.

Past 4-wheelers with plows attached.

Past bundled-up people with shovels who made me think of people bailing out sinking ships with tea cups.

Once we got to Albany, the roads were fine. The last little jaunt up to Half Moon was easy.

I sighed with relief when we checked into our hotel.

As I lay in bed that night listening to the thumps, hall noises, and plumbing sounds that go with staying in a hotel, I thought about how much of life is like that drive.

Sometimes it’s white-knuckled and demanding of every ounce of my attention.

Sometimes questions of whether I made the right decision overwhelm me.

Sometimes obstacles fall in my path.

Sometimes I can’t enjoy the scenery.

Sometimes I just have to keep moving.

Sometimes that’s all I can do.

dementia · family

God Bless the Moon

March 1, 2018 Sally5 Comments

Every morning I go downstairs and sigh when I see the tray table beside my father’s chair. It’s a mess.

I tidy it — but I know my organization will erode to disorder by evening.

The problem these days is that he has taken to playing the boombox my brother got him last year. My father doesn’t understand the difference between a DVD and a CD, or, for that matter, between the radio setting on the boombox and the CD setting. He needs help, but often won’t ask for it. The CDs and their empty cases cover his tray table.

Whenever he puts a CD called “Scottish Tranquility” in, we have this conversation.

Dad: This music is so mournful.

Me: It’s supposed to be peaceful.

Dad: There are no words!

Me: It’s instrumental.

Dad: I understand that, but where are the words?

Me: Instrumental means it’s just the instruments.

Dad (pointing to the CD case): But it lists the names of the songs.

Me: Yes, the songs still have names.

Dad: This music could put you to sleep.

Me: That’s why it’s called Scottish Tranquility.

Dad: Can you put something else on? This is terrible.

It really isn’t terrible. It’s soothing and quiet, just what my soul needs.

This morning, at 4:30 AM when I got up for work, I looked at the mess on his table. Open books, half-done crossword puzzles, CDs, and empty cases.

“Why is everything always out of place?” I said out loud, frustrated, longing for that Scottish Tranquility.

Half an hour later, when I walked outside, I was pleased to see the moon in its proper place. It silhouetted the barn and reflected off the road. A restart to a messy day.

Something about that sight gave me peace.

The moon is always right where it should be.

The other night it was peeping through the trees.

Sometimes it’s out in the daytime.

I’ve seen it from an airplane.

And it was gorgeous in Bosnia.

I can’t count on the moon to be in the same place every night.

But it will never be misplaced.

It may not be as reliable as the sun — rising in the east, setting in the west — but it’s there.

All I have to do is look.

Ah, the Sea of Tranquility.

family

Subscriber of the Day

February 28, 2018 Sally7 Comments

My youngest brother composed this song when he was a wee lad.

The daily newspaper that my parents read was called the Oneonta Star and one day my little brother burst into this song. It’s much better than my first song which was called “Freckle Face.” Lyrically, my song was more interesting (although a little disturbing), but overall, his was better.

Oneonta — pronounced Oh-nee-on-ta, not, as tourists occasionally say, “Won-on-ta” — is the small city to the south of Cooperstown. 2014 population = 13, 838.

Some of you may be shaking your head saying, “That’s not a city. That’s a town.”

Well, when Cooperstown’s population is only 1,812, Oneonta sure looks like a city.

The Oneonta Star eventually changed into the Daily Star. Old timers still call it the Oneonta Star, just as they still refer to the Price Chopper as the Great American, our local grocery store which changed hands close to 20 years ago.

Old habits die hard.

My middle brother delivers newspapers for the Daily Star. He started when one of my older sons had a paper route and occasionally needed a back-up. My brother enjoyed getting up early and running the paper route. As he told me once, “It’s like getting paid to exercise.” It doesn’t pay terribly well otherwise.

But the people on his route love him. He gives them each a crystal for Christmas and then does little things throughout the year, like occasionally putting stickers on the papers to brighten their days — black cats and pumpkins for Halloween, hearts for Valentine’s Day, fireworks stickers for the 4th of July — you get the idea.

Last year, on my birthday, he put a Happy Birthday sticker on the front page. My father looked at it and said, “I wonder what the devil this is about. It isn’t my birthday.”

“It’s mine,” I told him.

“Oh,” he said.

This year my brother added a bunch of stickers, to make the occasion unmistakable.

But my father didn’t say a word.

Every day, the Daily Star announces the “Subscriber of the Day.” My father comments on it frequently.

“I wonder what you have to do to get that honor,” he asks when he reads it.

The person is usually unknown to us because the Daily Star covers quite a large rural chunk of upstate New York. A few weeks ago one of his friends was named.

“Look,” he said. “John Davis is famous.”

Subscriber-of-the-Day famous.

It’s a strange honor that seems so important to him. He always checks that name above the fold, and then scans the obituary names below the fold — “Just in case my name shows up,” he says, with a morbid humor that I appreciate less and less.

Today’s paper had many celebratory stickers. I wondered at the occasion — until I saw what my brother had surrounded with his stickers — the Subscriber of the Day, my father.

“Did you notice all those stickers?” I asked my father when he sat down to breakfast.

“Peter likes putting stickers on,” he replied.

“These ones are pretty special,” I said. “Look.”

He peered at the newspaper, and peered some more. Suddenly a wide grin spread across his face.

“I’m the subscriber of the day!” he said, fist-pumping the air. “Hallelujah!”

Hallelujah indeed.

I almost burst out singing — “O-ne-on-ta Sta-aa-ar!”