The Kilala

When my father died in 1987, I inherited his two cats, Charlie and Chrissy. He named them after characters in the TV show Charlie’s Angels. I had them for a long time. About 1996, Chrissy died of stomach or liver problems one day while I was working. I buried her in the yard where I lived at the time. I marked it with some bricks. The veterinarian had wanted to take her up to a hospital in Santa Fe for very expensive treatments and follow-up drugs, but I didn’t have that kind of money. The other cat, Charlie, lived much longer. After I married my second wife, I took Charlie with me and established him in my wife’s house. I hated to move and leave Chrissy there. She was dead and buried, but still. Charlie lived with us for many years.

In 2000, on my fiftieth birthday, as I thought I was waking up, I saw my father to the left of the end of the bed, in the small corner formed by the closet and the wall. He looked as I remembered him, but he was many years dead. I knew that, but he was right there, big as life. As first, I just stared. Then I said, “Hey Dad, what have you been up to?” Such a dumb thing to say. He said nothing, but he smirked, the smirk that was a big part of his personality, and appeared to look past me for a moment. Then he turned and walked to my right, along the bottom edge of the bed. As I turned my head to follow him, I seemed to open my eyes. I was still staring at the small corner where I’d seen him, but he wasn’t there or anywhere. The closet door was partly open, exactly as it had been a moment before – same exact clothes hanging there. It was a dream? It sure had been detailed. It was light already, so I got out of bed. I looked where I’d seen my dad look, and there, under the bed, was Charlie, my dad’s old cat. I hadn’t thought about my dad any time recently, and I hadn’t known the cat was there. I couldn’t imagine why I would suddenly have a dream like that. It freaked me out for days.

Charlie woke up and followed me to the kitchen for breakfast. The dream, if such it was, stayed with me. Charlie was fine, and I never had another dream about my father. All was well for awhile, until one evening I realized I hadn’t seen Charlie for many hours. I went looking and found him in the small bathroom in our bedroom. He was acting strange. There was a nasty-looking liquid coming from his eyes. I wet some tissue and wiped it away. That’s when I realized his eyes were gone.

I was shocked. Can a cat’s eyes dissolve? Was there some disease that destroyed eyeballs? He was a cuddly sort, always on my lap and usually on the bed with me at night, so I would have noticed if he had been sick. I wrapped him in a towel and sat with him on my lap for hours. It was late in the evening, and I didn’t know what to do. He seemed OK, except for the eyes. He settled down, and slept. At one point he woke up. I petted him. He purred. He stood straight up and stretched his back in a high arc. I was so happy. He lay back down and went gently to sleep as I petted him, but he never moved again. I buried him in the yard. Some time passed but I grieved for Charlie, and never stopped wondering about his eyes. A couple of years later, at the house of my wife’s friends and neighbors two houses away, I was sitting with the husband who was complaining about cats shitting on his backyard lawn. He had a pellet gun and said he shot any cat he saw in his yard. He bragged about being able to shoot them right in the eyes at night because of the way cats’ eyes glow from reflected light. It took me a minute to make the connection. Charlie had been dead awhile. I walked home by myself. I never mentioned it to my wife because the couple were close friends of hers, and we saw each other often. I thought about calling the police, but I didn’t really have any evidence.

One day, a beautiful cat showed up in my backyard, nursing a litter of little fur balls. They kept to themselves around the corner of the house. The kittens grew up and wandered off. I was happy the momma cat stayed. I had her spayed. The veterinary clinic said to keep her inside for a while. I had to keep her in the pet carrier, as she wasn’t used to being inside. She’d gotten used to me and the yard. When I finally let her out, she seemed fine. She stayed nearby. A few days later I found her dead in my wife’s vegetable garden, a victim of bad surgery? Or some chemical my wife had put out to get rid of the bugs eating her vegetables?

I was sad, but sometime later, another pregnant cat showed up. This time I put food out every day for her and then for her kittens when they got old enough. I planned to offer the kittens for adoption when they were ready, after at least three or four months. My wife did not want cats living in the yard anymore. It was fun to watch them develop. They mostly hung out on the patio outside the sliding glass doors. The mother cat kept them in line, and I watched as she taught them all to hunt. She would bring an injured mouse to them, and let them learn how to catch it, and that it was food.

I don’t know why people think they can remove kittens from their mother right away. You really can’t. Some people wait for eight weeks, but veterinarians say that is not nearly enough. They are at greater risk for developmental, social, and health issues. I could see that. At first, of course, the kittens had to feed from her teats, but then she showed them the dry food I had been putting out for her. After that, she began their training for the hunt, how to pee and shit away from their food and sleeping area, and eventual independence. It was beautiful to watch.

One day, while the kittens were still very young, one of them had managed to climb on top of a tall picket fence I’d recently completed. There were pickets on both sides, but there was room enough, apparently, for one of the cats to get inside. I had to undo the screws I’d used to fasten one picket, and he tumbled right out, unharmed. However I found another kitten dead in the pile of wood I still had alongside the fence. Two pieces were construction timbers, very wide, long, and heavy, and I had set them on bricks, upright against the fence, rather than lay them flat, where they might warp. The kittens must have been playing on the boards and knocked them over. One got squashed, and I hadn’t noticed it missing. This kitten I’d just saved ran back to his mother, meowing loudly, not interested in having me comfort him.

I didn’t plan to keep these cats long. I wanted to have them adopted, but my wife kept insisting I get rid of all the cats. I reluctantly agreed, and got a trap. I put the food in one night, and sure enough, mother and kittens were in it the next morning, except for one. I decided I was going to keep him. He was a striped orange cat, identical to my dad’s cat, so I named him Charlie II, but just called him Charlie.

Fast forward one year. Charlie II had learned to come inside for food, and sit on my lap. One fine spring day, another pregnant cat showed up, and I saw Charlie II playing with her. He was neutered, so I knew he wasn’t the father, but they sure liked each other. My wife let me know this time I couldn’t keep the kittens around for long, so after they were weaned, I trapped them and sadly took them to animal control. In the drop-off room, they got loose before I could get them in a cage. They were very lively. They were jumping almost to the ceiling and bouncing all over the place. It was really sad, because, at the time, they would likely be euthanized. But not the mother.

• 

• 

Kilala & Charlie II

She was very young herself. I read once that cats can have litters at six months of age. She was very small and thin, so I made the assumption she was about a year old, possibly less. I fed both cats outside for awhile, but eventually I moved the food indoors, slowly moving it further away from the door, until they were happy coming in to eat together. I never got around to calling her anything but Girl, for another four years. The oddest thing of all was that she had the same colors as my dad’s female cat, with nearly the same pattern. I had both of my dad’s cats back!

Three years later, I was divorced. My wife got the house; I got to keep my pension. And I got to keep both cats. She said they gave her the evil eye. When they came in from outside, they’d give her a wide berth. She was scared of them, and jealous of the affection I gave them. Once I had them settled in at my rental house, I noticed one day that they were scared of my broom, something I’d never threatened them with. I was immediately suspicious of my ex, since she used to put me down for opening those sliding doors for the cats to go in and out. She laughed at me for doing that. And she thought it was stupid that I got down on the floor to play with them. That seemed like odd behavior to me. She had never had pets, and had actually pushed Girl, the new cat, away, when it tried to get onto her lap. Charlie was always on my lap, so Girl thought that was a good idea too. After my wife had freaked out and pushed it off of her legs, Girl never would get on my lap, ever, no matter how much I coaxed, or if I picked her up and put her on my lap. She would just freak out and jump down immediately, so I stopped trying.

Meanwhile I had a friend, a workplace acquaintance who met me every Friday for lunch. We had some things in common, like a love for reading, especially Sci Fi, and Japanese graphic novels called manga. She had cats. We also loved Frito Pies in the cafeteria, but sometimes we’d go for the long walks to a restaurant for Greek gyros or for Chinese fast food. She told me about a manga she liked that had been made into a TV series, available on DVDs. In fact, she lent me a set of those videos to watch at home. There was a cat named Kilala in the story, one who tranformed into a huge flying demon.

I could only watch them when my wife wasn’t at home, or was out of town, as she controlled the TV I’d bought for her, and hated both Sci Fi and animation.

After my divorce, I renamed my female cat as Kilala. It fit. She was still a bit wild, and never allowed herself to be picked up. In fact, getting her into a pet carrier when I moved resulted in bloody, itchy cuts all over my arms. I took her straight to a vet clinic to be chipped.

Over the years my work buddy and I had swapped many books and even Marvel comics. I found her fascinating herself, but while I had been married I knew better than to touch forbidden fruit like that. Actually, after the divorce, when I’d moved into a rental house, I invited her to come see the new place, and although she said she would, she never did. Once, we had a conversation about the new Marvel movie that was opening, Silver Surfer. We both said we were going to see it. So, I asked if we could go there together, or if I could meet her at a theater, but she appeared shocked that I had even asked her, and responded that it was inappropriate. I didn’t continue the conversation, as I was walking her back to her office, and we’d arrived. I never understood the “inappropriate” remark, since I was divorced. But she was young, and I was not. She stopped being available for lunch. Nuff said, as Marvels’s Stan Lee used to say.

So, my cats became my whole family. Charlie and Kilala had a pet door, so they would come and go as they liked, after we got settled in the new place. Actually, the first time I let Kilala out, she disappeared! I was frantic for awhile, feeling like it was my fault due to moving her to a new, unfamiliar neighborhood. I imagined her trying to return to my ex-wife’s house, getting eaten by coyotes, or because of the wide river, using the Rio Grande bridge where she might get hit by a car. It was a long way to go. I didn’t expect to see her again. Still, I called and whistled for her every day. But after nearly three weeks, I hadn’t quite given up, so I put flyers all over the neighborhood, and in stores, asking people to call me, even if they had just seen her. I also put some up all over the 83-house compound where I live. A day or two after posting the flyers in my compound, just after I’d gotten into bed, she just showed up at the back door, which was in my bedroom. As I opened the door, Charlie jumped on her. I thought they’d lick each other and rub together, but, no, he mounted her immediately. That, I thought, was inappropriate at that moment, so I pulled him off so I could feed her. She never disappeared again, and the two cats were inseparable.

In fact, they always came in at night to sleep with me, even after they’d eaten. They would follow me around the house, whether I was in the living room reading or watching movies, or at my desk in the bedroom. Sometimes they’d split the difference and one would be in each place, so they were never far away. Charlie was an excellent hunter, just like his predecessor, and brought rodents and the occasional bird home to eat. There were literally thousands of birds in the area, with the river nearby, irrigation ditches flowing throughout the neighborhood, and the Rio Grande Nature Center sanctuary a mile and a half away. I know cats can be a problem for bird populations, but surrounded by many thousands of birds, I wasn’t worried my two well-fed cats could eat a significant number of them, and since they were neutered, they weren’t breeding. I felt my cats needed to stalk and pounce, or chase a little fresh animal flesh once in awhile to stay healthy.

It’s funny to me that people around here post things about cats about how dangerous cats are to entire populations of wildlife, but they aren’t concerned about the large population of roadrunners around here. Some think the cats might eat the roadrunners, but those birds are fierce, and can kill cats in self defense. In fact, roadrunners can outstrike, kill and eat rattlesnakes. They eat small birds too, raid other birds’ nests for eggs and often expropriate the nests. So, roadrunners, roaming freely in large numbers are as much of a threat to small birds as any cat. Roadrunners, by the way, grow up to two feet long and run 26 miles an hour! And, although coyotes run between 35 and 43 miles an hour, roadrunners can fly short distances. The cartoons had it backwards.

I ramble a lot. Sorry. This was about my cats. I lost Charlie. He disappeared one day – never came in to eat dinner, and the food was still in his bowl the next morning. I contacted Animal Control, but they hadn’t been in the neighborhood, and more to the point hadn’t been called to pick up any dead or sick cats in the entire area where I live. I examined all the nearly identical cats they had, but he was chipped, and they hadn’t scanned him. So, I wondered about him a lot. I put up dozens of posters, about Charlie, this time. Someone told me they’d seen a cat like that in the next neighborhood over, so I walked or ran there every day for six months looking for him. He had always come when I called or whistled for him, but, he was gone. I hoped he was taken in.

A year later, after I’d given up all hope of him coming home, I happened to mention his loss to the leader of a hike I was on. Kilala had never stopped watching for Charlie to come home, and often sat for long hours, obviously depressed. She rarely moved, and appeared to have lost her raison d’etre. I had decided to find her a male companion, pimp for her. The hike leader told me there was a cat living on the golf course in Bernalillo. The clubhouse had been feeding it for a long time, but wanted to adopt it out. The cat would sometimes turn and bite if you touched its back. (Liability issues.) I hoped it was a male. When I checked it out, I was told it was a female, named Snowflake, for the white fur. I agreed to adopt it anyway, but when I went to be approved for the cat by its friends at the golf course, they had just found out it was male. Anyway, the clubhouse members approved of me, and said they would bring the cat over. He also had a small house they had built for him, with added insulation to protect him from the cold winter nights. When they came, they brought him, his house, food and water bowls, and a large supply of food. And, they would visit to check on him, bring treats, and often take me to dinner.

Well, as much as I had hoped otherwise, this cat had only been around humans all his life, and didn’t know what to do around other cats, how to chase, play-fight, hunt, or screw. He’s a disappointment, but eventually the two cats learned to get along, and both slept on my bed. He mostly sleeps, never uses his house, and rarely goes outside at all. I kept the name Snowflake because he responded to it. Kilala likes him, but he just doesn’t respond much to her. He finally let her lick him a little bit, and I’ve sometimes seen him lick her back, but that’s the extent of it.

Shortly, I will bring this little cat epic to a close.

Two years later, I was sure I’d seen Charlie near the Post Office and the Senior Center 2 ½ miles away. The size and markings looked identical. I was in my car, returning from the post office, when I spotted it behind the fence at the back of the Senior Center. I stopped the car, and called his name. He jumped up, and began walking towards me, but stopped, sitting back down with his legs crossed, acting like he had always acted. Unfortunately, I was in the car for one thing, and for another, it was a different car from the car he would have remembered me coming home in. He had always come to greet me when I drove up, and often slept under the car for the shade it provided. However, I was blocking the street, and I had a truck come up behind me. I moved, drove around the block, but he was gone. I went back often, calling his name, and even asked inside the senior center if they were feeding him, but they knew nothing. I never found it. I had seen a collar with a tag around his neck, so I assume he is someone’s cat now, if that was him. I don’t know how he got a license without someone scanning his chip, but it could have fallen out. Of course, maybe it wasn’t him.

I took Kilala to the veterinary clinic this past October 13th. She had been itching a lot. No sign of fleas or ticks, but she had been biting herself and tearing out her fur, which alarmed me. The vet found her skin irritated, likely by some tiny parasite, so he applied a soothing lotion to her, gave her something to calm her down, and also re-upped her rabies shot and whatever else I hadn’t kept up with. He gave me a liquid (selemectin plus sarolaner) to apply to the back of her neck to kill whatever was bothering her, possibly biting lice. It seemed to work. Three months later I finished with her medication, but she started to bite herself a bit. However, she stopped after a few days as I pondered getting more of the liquid drops. Her fur recovered nicely.

But not long after, I noticed she was not grooming herself anymore. She was also sleeping way more, and lethargic. Some matted fur appeared on her flank. She seemed OK, but then she stopped eating as much as she had. In fact, she seemed less and less interested in her food every day. As I petted her I noticed how bony she was becoming. She hadn’t been eating much for some time it seemed. I tried giving her milk in small amounts, as I had occasionally given her some as a treat, although I know it’s not good for cats. She had always loved it, but now wouldn’t touch it. I bought tuna fish, the only other thing she had really loved, but she passed on that too. She was also retching without bringing anything up, sometimes wheezing, and her purring had a funny discordant sound to it. Worried again, on February 9th, I took her in for testing. $425 dollars later, I knew she didn’t have liver or kidney problems, but only a stomach infection. She had been given antibiotics for that. But she was very weak, and the vet cautioned me she might only have months to live. I also had a cream to apply to her ear once daily to stimulate her appetite. Even though I washed my fingers thoroughly, I was petting her, and it seemed to work on me! I have eaten more in the past week than usual (it could also be from stress over Kilala) and suddenly the pants and shirt I had been wearing just a week ago wouldn’t fit – I couldn’t button the pants closed. That’s some fast weight gain!

She didn’t eat that first day after I brought her home, or the next, but then she popped up right away one morning as I walked into the kitchen area. She was hungry, and more energetic. She was drinking water again too. I had high hopes she might recover, given how strong, healthy, and active she had always been, but after a week, she stopped eating much, that I saw, but I did see her drinking. She wouldn’t go outside at all – it was cold and snowing a lot. She slept all day, but moved from spot to spot around the house, including the bathroom, which was odd. It looked like she was going to die after all, and soon. I spent more time with her, petting her for long periods of time. She didn’t object, I put her on my lap too, and for the first time ever, she didn’t object. Last night (Feb. 18, 2021) she moved from where she had been hiding behind the toilet, and flopped down right in the doorway to the bathroom. I kept checking on her, but not only was she not going anywhere, but at one point, even though she was awake, one of her back legs twitched as though she was trying to get up but couldn’t.

I had her on my lap earlier, and had petted her a long time, then she’d been wandering around the house some more, stopping at her favorite spots – back of the bed, bath mat, front door, in front of the fireplace, and other random spots. When she ended up in the bathroom I left her alone. But now, this was it. I felt she was dying and soon. I scooped her up gently and sat down in the comfy living room chair, put the TV on, and petted her for two hours straight, She was breathing slowly, and responsive to my touch. But not purring. Her head was draped across my arm and at one point she appeared to be choking so I adjusted my wrist to her chest in case she had been unintentionally pressing her throat against my wrist. She settled down, and I kept petting her. She fell asleep. As I watched the TV, I kept an eye on her chest. For a time, it was moving, but then I couldn’t tell. She still felt warm, but I stopped and got up. She was dead and already stiff. I tried talking to her to say my final goodbyes – for myself, too late for her – but I could barely speak.

I put her stiff body back on the chair while I fed the Snowflake, who wasn’t even curious about Kilala. I can’t write any more. (Feb 19, 2021)

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MORE TO THE STORY (March 3, 2021)

After I had fed the Snowflake, I put Kilala’s body in two overlapping plastic bags, and sat it outside (temperatures were to be below freezing). In the morning I went out to dig her grave. The ground was almost as hard as a rock (mostly clay) and choked with tree roots. I wanted it to be fairly deep, so I stopped and filled it with water to soften it overnight. The following day I finshed the hole more easily. I took Kilala out of the bags so she would readily decompose into the dirt. She was soft and pliable again, but her head lolled loosely. She still felt warm, but the sun was out and it had taken me some time to finish digging the hole. I placed her gently in the hole. I left her collar and tags on, adjusting her head to a natural angle, as though she was asleep. I placed her food bowl next to her. I covered her gently with a little dirt, and then put the plastic bags on top of her, with some stones, just in case I hadn’t dug the hole deep enough to discourage the coyotes, and then filled in the hole, tamping it down all around to pack the dirt firmly, and replaced the landscaping gravel. I said goodbye again, and placed the outside chair she often slept in over her grave. I sat in it for a bit, remembering her.

Two days after her burial, I went out, intending to sit in that chair in the sunlight. As I plopped into the cushion on it, I heard a tiny meow. I looked around and my other cat was not outside. My neighbors don’t have cats. I jumped off the chair, put my mouth near the ground, and called Kilala, and added Girl too, but there was no repeat of the sound. It worried me, more than I would have imagined. “Could I have buried her alive?” was my first thought. She’d been stiff as a board that first night, her face caught in a stiff rictus. Then she had spent two nights in freezing temperatures before burial, and double bagged. “How could she have survived?” went through my mind. I knew it was crazy, but stranger things have happened. I wondered if she could have developed rabies from her recent inoculation, and if paralysis could have developed, “Parhaps a coma?” It bothered me so much, but I knew it would be even crazier to dig her up. She had to be dead. I never should have handled her soft, warm body before burying her. It took me days to finally accept that she was dead. Gone. Sometimes I sit in the chair and talk to her. My small cat family, begun with my dad’s two cats, and the two nearly indentical ones that followed, was gone. That connection I had maintained though them to my father was gone. I hadn’t realized I’d wrapped my grief up in those four cats, beginning from his funeral in 1987 until 2021.

My mother turned 90 on New Year’s Eve. My siblings and I had planned a party, but we were limited to a Zoom meeting due to the pandemic restrictions, and her poor health. We all live in widely separate parts of the country. She’s beginning to decline mentally, but we’ve agreed on an in-person 90 ½ birthday get-together in June. We’re an optimisitc bunch, all lucky seven of us.

A Walk Among Ponderosa and Alligator

I went for another hike Friday, July 26. The sky started out blue, but clouded over. There was a cool breeze all day, thankfully, because the weather has been in the 90s pretty steadily every day. Still, the sky was an odd color. I wondered if there was some of that dust from the Sahara dust plume in the atmosphere already. The storm was supposed to hit the Gulf Coast area on Saturday. Well, no matter; it was a great day. After the hike, I looked back to the area where we’d hiked, and saw Virga rain in the upper atmosphere. Virga is rain that evaporates, above the ground. In the southwestern USA, storms are easily visible a hundred miles away. One can see the rain falling from the clouds, but it often doesn’t extend all the way to the horizon. Hence, drought, even though there’s rain.

The trail we began hiking on is called Mahogany Loop (Forest Trail #05602), but we intersected with the Ponderosa Trail Loop, which meanders through a dense Ponderosa pine forest in the Cibola National Forest that hasn’t been logged in perhaps fifty years. I took a few photos of those, including a Ponderosa broken by high winds, and some bark beetle damage that killed many thousands of old-growth trees throughout New Mexico. There were also some Alligator Junipers, and I photographed the lower portion to show it’s texture and immense thickness. Very old tree. There are other tree species too, and tons of wildflowers. We met a couple with their dog. They said they had seen him twice in the area, and were unable to find his owner, before deciding to adopt him.

Adopted

Alligator Juniper

Another Alligator

Looking west at the Sandias

Ponderosa V

Bark Beetle damage

Bark Beetle holes

Timmmmberrrrrr!

Death on the trail

Life

Paintbrush

I have no idea why

and more paintbrush

Interestingly, this is the first time I’d been back to that area in an entire year. It is directly adjacent to the area where Angelina Jolie shot the movie “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” which wrapped July 1, 2019. The film was directed by Taylor Sheridan and produced by Film Rites and BRON Studios, based on a book by Michael Koryta. Ms. Jolie is quite friendly, and chatted with the background actors surrounding her during brief cuts in one scene that was shot many, many times. She is funny too. Her makeup included tangled hair, deep bloody gashes, and soot from a fire in a previous scene. Since it is OK to respond to an actor if they speak to you, I was curious about what had been happening to her character. “You look a little worse for wear,” I said. I regretted saying that afterward; it’s not the sort of thing one says to a woman. She pulled down her torn shirt to reveal a scar at that point, saying: “And I got hit by lightning too!” Whew. I hadn’t meant to insult her, just saying what was on my mind. I was a bit embarrassed and looked down when she did that. A bit later she told me that the movie is very well done, an intelligent, tense drama, and very much worth watching. I looked for it and found that the release date is October 23, 2020. I will watch it.

So, getting back to the hike. After we returned to our vehicles, we headed back down State Road 337, but stopped at a private cemetery just off the road. It was fenced, so I didn’t enter, but I took some photos, with respect. The details of the graves were very touching and sad, especially the ones for “Victor, Son of Manny and MaryLou,” and for 20-year-old Rosa, who may have died during childbirth, as it is inscribed: “Mother of Dorothy”.

Very sad. But they were, it seems, very much loved. And lived, for a time, in beauty.

To My Brothers

 

 

John

Pat

Brian

 

I love my three brothers very much, and while we are not all on the same page politically, we can usually disagree, and still hang out. We are brothers and that means a lot. We shared a lot of good and bad things as children and we stick together through thick and thin.

However, recent events such as Black Lives Matter protests, and solidarity protests over George Lloyd’s death, the violence that bled out of peaceful protest, possibly by instigators — I mean, who trashes their own or their neighbors’ stores? — and the misunderstood calls for “defunding” the police following on the heels of disagreement over the need for masks and distancing are threatening to tear us apart.

There was a heated discussion that I was notified about, and I was saddened by the way the discussion was going, so I wrote a reply to all three, even though only two were involved. The third has let his views be known many times, and was referenced in the discussion.

So these were my thoughts on the subjects touched on:

I think cops tend to be part of a blue gang, and many have the idea that they ARE the law, but they are not. There is a lot of racism within police ranks, and it only comes to light once in a while, because the good cops say and do nothing about it. I don’t think bad (and illegal) cop behavior is all about racism though. I’ve seen them wielding long hardwood batons on peaceful white protestors, and tapping them on the shoulder as they walked away, squirting pepper spray directly into their eyes.

I was harassed by cops while bicycling across country, and I’ve been stopped on my motorcycle by a Sheriff who reached for his gun as soon as I reached for my license, which he had just asked for. I’ve been spread-eagled onto the hood of a patrol car for a traffic stop that (being overtired from overtime and not having eaten, and on my way to a nighttime class) I politely disputed. His insistence that I’d run a red light when I’d seen him next to me was ludicrous. I got pissed off and called him an asshole, so I was charged with assault on a police officer (a felony). Not my best move, but an over-the-top reaction from the cop.

Those are just a few examples, but the police, in general, have had the idea for some time that any hint that you’re not going to treat them like tin gods can lead to arrest or death. Even standing nearby outside my residence while I, silently and legally, observed some white teenager getting roughed up by the Baltimore cops brought a threat of arrest for me. These are realities, and it’s worse for poor people, especially blacks. I learned this in downtown Baltimore when I was younger, and from my recent trips, I’ve seen little change in the living conditions downtown since the 1970s. The “inner city” as we used to call it is actually deplorable. For the record, children who ask to wash your car windows in downtown Baltimore are polite, and not petty thieves. I do believe the pattern of racist redlining, denial of credit and racial profiling is the same there. There is deep distrust there now in people’s eyes, and it wasn’t always that way. It’s sad.

I do remember that my grandfather was a policeman, and (brother) Pat was military police. Violence against the police is not the answer. And, the “defunding” that people are calling for means shifting some police funding to other more appropriate organizations better prepared to deal with mental health issues, for example. We use armed police, trained to deal with violent criminals, for minor things, while there are huge cuts to the budgets of mental health institutions and drug treatment centers. The public is not the enemy, and any police who think it’s us versus them are no better than a gang. I applaud those cops who took a knee. I applaud the cops who work closely with their community, and put their lives on the line to help, but there needs to be an attitude adjustment if people are to trust the police again.

The adjustment starts now, because it’s past due.

I don’t know if this will help. It may not. But I felt I had to state my opinion honestly, right or wrong, or misinformed as I may be. But, I always want people to think beyond the talking points. And I want open discussion, not name-calling or attacks.

Me

69 at Ten-3

It became time to write again. Happy Birthday to me. I turned 69 on October 8th. Went to the reunion of my high school class of 1969 earlier this year. In my senior year, we all had orange and blue buttons that said simply: “69”. We loved it.

My stepdaughter Maya’s birthday is September 26. Ever since her mother and I divorced, Maya and I have continued to celebrate holidays and birthdays together, and sometimes just do some wine tasting.

Maya posing

What?

We really like blind wine tastings. I used to be pretty good at it while we were both working for a winery. Now I drink less wine, and not much grape wine, so I have a hard time identifying one dark complex red from another. But it doesn’t matter. We always have fun at those.

For some years now, we get together on a mutually agreed-upon date somewhere in between our birthdays, or perhaps after mine, to exchange small gifts and have a good dinner with some good wine. She was pretty busy around her birthday, and also picked up a nasty cold, so she actually stayed home on her birthday. Her dad sent her a video of himself and her nephew singing happy Birthday and blowing out some candles.

Finally, we got together. We rode the tram up the mountain to the new restaurant here. The tramway itself opened in 1966.

One of two new tram cars approaching Sandia Crest.

The restaurant is called Ten-3 because it’s situated on the crest of the mountain ridge at 10,300 feet above sea level. The highest point in the Sandia Mountains is nearby, at 10,678 feet above sea level.

Wonderful place. The original High Finance Restaurant had been there since 1979, and had to be replaced. It closed in 2016. It was completely demolished and a new foundation put in, but the weather up there is unpredictable. Forest fires, high winds, and snow hampered the work. At times workers could not even get there.  It took over two years to build the new one, and I’ve been not patiently waiting for it to open all that time. I used to hike up the mountain some early mornings and have lunch up there. A good cup of coffee, when it was chilly, or a nice beer after a long hike in the summer heat just could not be beat. Over the last two years, I watched the building slowly, slowly take shape.

Approaching the site

Frames for new windows!

Metal and Concrete

Concrete, rebar, more concrete

Construction

Construction

It opened in mid-September, instead of Spring, but hey, it’s open now! There are two sections: the bar area, and the fine dining area. Different menus for each, but the food is good no matter where you sit. We opted for dinner, so Maya and I split a smoked pork belly appetizer, and the New Mexican Paella entree. It was plenty of food for us. There are other menu items, and some are very pricey, so if you’re looking to splurge, this is the place. When you add in the cost of a bottle of wine, and taking the Tramway up, it costs quite a bit. I wanted to experience eating high above the city again, but it was really worth the cost to treat Maya. She has been my absolute joy since she recovered from four years of brain surgery, chemo, and radiation to treat the tumor they discovered in 2004.

I celebrate every day that she is alive. Her tumor is gone. She fully recovered, graduated from college, and even though she has a full-time job, a daily grind like most of us, she studied and received her Master’s Degree as well. She is doing well. Even while doing all that, she and I worked part-time for a winery for 7 1/2 years until it closed after the vintner’s death.

Since then we see each other less often, so it’s always a treat for me to see her smile and enjoy life. Although the experience of ascending the mountain, and experiencing those magnificent views east and west is exhilarating, there is nothing like spending time with Maya. She is intelligent but witty, hardworking but fun, runs to relieve stress, and enjoys her life and friends. She does not worry about a recurrence of cancer, or of dying. She lives life now and travels often. I am so incredibly lucky that she exists in my universe. There are times in my life when I am tired, lonely, and depressed, but just thinking about Maya always makes my life worth living. I’m glad she has time for me.

I have many interests in my life, and I am sometimes busy as fuck, but a little time with Maya here and there, and I am happy. I love her. Her happiness succors me, calms me, and makes life bearable.

1992-94

After treatments, 2005

Inn of the Mountain Gods

White Sands, 2005

Celebrating 2005-06

2006

2007

2009

2010

2013

2017

Contemplating Death Again, With Photos

09/03/19
Well, six years ago I had a heart attack. Too much plaque in the heart artery that feeds the heart muscle itself. Problems for some time before that, something I attributed – as did my doctor – to a recurrence of my childhood asthma. Overtired on exertion, falling way behind on hikes up the mountain. Getting weaker instead of stronger. I’ve climbed up the Sandia-Manzano mountains. Sandia Crest is at 10,679 feet above sea level. Manzano Peak is at 10,098 feet. I’ve climbed in the San Mateo Mountains, specifically to the highest point, up Mt. Taylor, to 11,306 feet, and I’ve snowshoed Mt. Taylor several times. Also climbed to the nearby La Mosca lookout tower at 11,036 ft. I’ve climbed Mount Baldy, at 10,783 feet, in the Magdalena Mountains. I’ve hiked in the Jemez mountains, including snowshoeing in the Valles Caldera. At 11,253 feet in elevation,  the volcanic caldera is 13-miles wide. I’ve hiked and snowshoed often in New Mexico’s mountains.

Valles Caldera mound

Valles Caldera

After the heart attack, not as much. I still hike, usually once a week, sometimes two times a week. Sometimes I hike a fair distance, sometimes I hike really fast for just 70 to 90 minutes, a cardio hike. I figure I’m in good enough shape for my age. My knees never bother me. Since I had the angioplasty and stent placement 6 years ago, I’ve been good. No sign of any heart problems, but you never know.

Of late, I’ve noticed myself falling behind the others I hike with, and being very winded at times, more than usual. I’m sleepy often throughout the day. I used to catnap for 15 or 20 minutes, and be completely refreshed. Often I try that now, and sleep for an hour or two. I have no trouble sleeping through the night.

But, but, but. Today, after I’d taken another short nap, I awoke to a small sharp pain in the chest, just right of center. I researched it, and it’s likely not a heart attack, but it could be leading up to one. Possibly it’s angina, a symptom of heart disease. or it could have been a spasm. Either of those can occur during sleep, and generally last 5 to 15 minutes. This one lasted  two to three hours. Took some Advil and then some aspirin.

The more likely cause is a blood clot traveling to my lungs, as I had none of the heart attack symptoms I’d experienced before, nor any of the other classic symptoms. The reason for this could be that I badly sprained my right ankle a month ago. A lot of blood clotted around it, giving me bruises all around the ankle and even between my toes. I’ve been wearing a stabilizing boot since then. There is also a small (3mm) chip fracture on the talus bone of my ankle. I can walk fine with or without the boot, but the doc gave me two more weeks to keep wearing the boot. I hate it. But, it could be that the ankle injury is the source of a blood clot, if that’s what it was. Painful anyway. The pain is gone now, but it could come back. I don’t know what caused it.

I was supposed to have had a checkup with my cardiologist two weeks ago. Arrived 20 minutes early for a 3:45pm appointment. Checked in and waited. And waited. The few people there all got called in. I waited. More people showed up until there was quite a crowd. There are a lot of doctors there. At 3:45, a tall healthy-looking man checked in, saying he had a 4:00pm appointment with my doctor. He was called shortly. I waited. About 10 minutes later, I got called to the examining room, to have my vital signs read. I told the woman taking them about experiencing weakness, and sleepiness as before my heart attack six years ago. She left, said the doctor would be in shortly.

I sat there, unhappy. The reason I’d come early was hoping to get out by 4:15, as I had an important commitment at 5pm. As I sat, I could hear my doctor’s voice next door, with the man I’d seen come in 20 minutes after me. I waited. But, by 4:30, I had to leave, and I stopped at the reception desk to tell them I was leaving. Never heard back.

Now this sudden pain. I thought about making another appointment, but never got around to it. I could die any time, so I figured I’d get an online will started while I still could. Such a strange thing it is to contemplate a will!

I rent, so I have no property to leave behind. I have only the money in the bank that comes in and goes out every month. I save, but things always come up to spend it on, necessary things, like repairs to my aging car and much older motorcycle. Sometimes I have to travel to family events, and none of them live nearby. Anyway, I have little in the way of tangible assets. But, there are things I’d like to leave to family. I have way too many things, like music CDs and vinyl albums. Tons of books. Some paintings, but mostly prints. A few coins. Not really a whole lot, but I’ve been to enough estate sales to know what happens to all the stuff you think is worth something. It’s all junk, sold cheap. Some things can be worth a goodly amount, but no one knows, unless someone hires a professional appraiser. But few family ever do that, unless the deceased was extremely wealthy. As it happens, I am not. Wealthy. Or deceased, as yet.

But it sure got me thinking about who I could give my things away too. So much of it has little enough financial worth. I thought about who might enjoy this small sculpture, or that old painting, or the coins, or a keepsake from the winery I worked at for eight years before it closed. Some things I’d like to have go to family who would appreciate it. I have too much stuff, sure, and much of it can be sold off at an estate sale for whatever they can get; that’s fine. Sitting here for hours today while the pain subsided, deciding who should get what, and not wanting to slight anyone, but not having so much to give everyone something, even if they actually would want it. 1st world problems. And yet, I’d like family members I love to know I was thinking about them. I like to make people smile, especially those I love. My estate, what a joke. Cheap material goods.

What was my life? Flipping burgers. High school diploma. Working in a college physics lab, measuring x-ray wavelengths and spaces between atoms in silicon crystals, a useful thing to know later on for computer technology. But I left that lab before the computer chip revolution hit. Spent years traveling, working for a carnival, a bronze foundry. Settled down in another state 1,675 miles miles away as the crow flies, but I rode my bicycle there over countless miles. Poured concrete, laid concrete block, installed park benches and steel doors. Treasurer of my union local. Finally got a job back in the sciences, giving tumors to rats, and treating them with chemotherapy drugs and x-rays. I did continue in Cancer Research a bit, then worked Quality Control at a printed circuit board company for three years. Finally went back and got another job at a medical school working first with mice, and their immune system proteins, then with research machines.

I took night school classes for years until I finally got a Bachelors of Arts college degree, a dual major of English (Creative Writing) and Distributed Sciences. I had studied a lot of sciences over the years, but not enough in any one field to get a diploma in it, not even a Bachelors of Science. Never did much with the writing part of my education, but I ended up making synthetic proteins for medical research, and synthetic DNA and RNA as well later on. I could also sequence proteins, or DNA, or analyze the amino acid content of proteins, or purify proteins and DNA. I ran a lab, balanced my budget, kept database records, worked independently. Finally retired with a small pension. Then I made wine for eight years at a small winery until the vintner died, and we had to close the winery. Now I take acting lessons, hike in the mountains, work occasionally as a background actor on movies and TV shows. Still hoping to land a good speaking role, one that brings me recognition, something to show that my life had meaning.

Yeah, I had lovers as I traveled, and met someone I wanted to spend my life with, but all I got was a bit less than two years with her. Married sometime later to a great woman, but after seven years that was over too. Two stepkids I never got to spend time with again. Then I married again. Two more stepkids. That 14-year relationship was fun, but ran out of steam and died. However, I did realize that I loved my stepdaughter when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Fortunately we’ve been able to stay connected, even making wine together for those eight years at the winery. She survived after surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and more chemo. How strange to find those chemicals and x-rays I used on rats used successfully on a human being I loved.

So perhaps I did accomplish something significant after all, Perhaps my work on x-rays in silicon and germanium crystals helped create the computers to run those fancy treatment machines. Perhaps the work I did on rats helped establish correct dosages of chemotherapy drugs and x-rays. Perhaps my work helping calibrate x-ray wavelengths helped doctors calculate just how much energy was necessary to kill a tumor and not the person. All the people that work in science, even those that just run the machines, and conduct the experimental protocols contribute, each in our own small way, to a much greater good.

And, goddamnit, my step daughter is alive and healthy. And I love her. I finally learned that love is when you truly care about someone, about their happiness, and not just your own. Love is not about having another person. It’s about loving, without expecting anything in return. That’s what I think. If I’m still alive tomorrow morning, I’m going to call the doctor’s office, get in there as soon as possible, and do what it takes to stay alive. Because I love someone, and I like that feeling.

Just realized I was writing my own obituary. Hmph. Got things to do yet.

(09/05/19 UPDATE: The cardiologist says the pain in my chest is likely muscular, because of the lingering pain, and like a blood clot or angina. Blood pressure, however is high, so I need to monitor it twice a day for two weeks, report back).

Monster

I watched a movie last night. It is titled: A Monster Calls.  It is an adaptation of a children’s tale. It is also very intense and far too real to be just a tale. A boy’s mother is dying of cancer. He wants to believe she will recover but knows she will not. The movie is pretty much about him, those expectations, and how he deals with them. The story has elements of fantasy, and some beautiful animation of the brilliant watercolor illustrations I expect are from the book. I enjoyed it, and, yes my eyes teared, my throat constricted and tears did indeed run down my cheek. Highly recommend, for all ages.

It got me thinking about many things, death among them, and the love I have for my stepdaughter Maya. Her struggle with cancer made me realize that I loved her, and that I didn’t want her to die. Is that selfish? I imagined it would be impossible to live without her. I imagined I would die if she died. Unlike the aforementioned movie, however, my hopes were realized and she did not die. It was the most wonderful thing I ever experienced. I felt real joy, for the first time ever. As time went on, I realized I loved her fiercely, more than anyone I’ve ever known. At first, I wondered if I felt that way chiefly because she almost died. But, I came to understand that it was the possibility that she might die that opened my eyes to my love for her. I believe I really love her, because I want the best for her. I want her to be happy. I want her to live a full life, for her, not for me. I want her to live many, many years after I’m gone. I think that is really what love is, when you care about someone you love, and wish for their happiness, regardless of your relationship, or if you live together, or even if you never see them again.

She was still quite young when I met her. I dated her mom Linda for four years, then married Linda and lived with her, and Maya, and her brother Noah. I was part of a family. It was the second time for me, and I wanted to make sure it worked out better than the first time I had tried that. I never became close with Noah, but I liked him a lot. Maya and I seemed to become friends. We only ever had one argument as I recall. It was my fault and mostly a misunderstanding, and we talked about it right away, and resolved it and I apologized for what she thought was anger on my part. When she started college, which was the same place I worked, we often met for lunch.

After both of Linda’s children, Maya and Noah had moved out, Linda and I had the place to ourselves. She had big plans for the house, including an addition, a new roof, and many other things. I accomplished most of it before I had to leave. Fortunately, Maya and I remained on good terms after that divorce. We work together at times, bottling and labeling or selling wines. We’ve been to many wine festivals, and have helped keep a unique winery running. It is always a joy for me to see Maya, and work together, or go to dinner for holidays and birthdays. It makes me happy too when she travels or has good times with her friends. I love her very much.

Maya’s death would have crushed me entirely. The interesting thing, to me, is that a lot of people died when I was young, and I felt no loss. There were some great-aunts that I didn’t know, so that was understandable. In second grade a classmate died, choked on a glass of water. I was shocked to hear of it, but I didn’t know him personally. A cousin died very young after that, and I felt sad for my aunt and uncle, but my cousin’s death did not touch me. One by one, my grandfathers died. I was an altar boy at both of their funerals. I never knew my paternal grandfather well. I believe I only ever had one conversation with him, one that I remember well, but I felt no grief. My mother’s father came to live with us for a short time before he died. I enjoyed having him there, but again, I don’t recall any grief when he died. I remember thinking how odd it was that he had spent so much time in a veterans’ hospital, which is often where my parents would go to visit him when I was very young. Then he seemed so healthy when he stayed with us that I was quite surprised when he died. I did not feel grief; was I a monster?

The one person I missed greatly, and loved was my father. My parents had divorced while still raising the four youngest. As an adult, his death left me confused. I didn’t know what to feel when I got the phone call. We had not stayed in touch since I left home. Our relationship had gone downhill before I left. I had gone to see him before he’d died, but we did not speak of anything substantial, and that seemed bittersweet in retrospect because there is much I’d have liked to talk with him about. I wasn’t going to attend his funeral, because I had just been to see him, and I felt that was better than seeing him dead. And, as well, I really couldn’t afford to fly that far again. However, when I sat down to write a letter to my brothers and sisters, explaining why I wasn’t coming, I broke into tears, and sobbed. I felt awful. I was overcome with grief, and decided to travel anyway, just to be with family. I missed the funeral itself, but arrived in time for the wake, and I felt much better among my relatives, even laughed with cousins I had not seen in decades.

Then my godfather Fred, a close cousin of my mother, died. The two of them had grown up together. Fred, aka Fritz, would visit us three nights a week after he left the bar he worked at. He usually brought us kids a treat, chocolate, or even packets of clay, leftovers from when he was a typesetter. Loved playing with the clay. Loved the chocolate. Fred helped my mother out, painting, lending her money for groceries, or especially putting up the Christmas garden, with the trains and houses, and the paper mountains tacked up on the wall around the raised wooden platform that held the little village. As a GI, he had fought in Germany against the Nazis, and brought back a toy-soldier marching band from the basement of a burned-out house in Germany.  It always marched across our village, despite the swastikas on the band’s uniforms and flag, and the little guy in front with the small mustache and raised arm salute. I remember thinking, despite Fred’s racial prejudices and those other eccentricities, that the world had lost a good man. I did not feel grief, but he had been and is still on my mind quite often.

Then again, I was reminded of my father’s death when the heart and soul of our winery, Jim Fish, died suddenly. I did feel that same grief again. He was like a father in some ways, a mentor, and a friend. I learned a lot from him and worked with him making wine for seven years. His death was a great painful loss to me. I loved him.

What has always kept me going is that I still have three sisters and three brothers. We’re getting old, but still hanging in there. Even my mother, at 86, is still alive and kicking. I’ve always felt I loved my brothers and sisters more than anyone in the world, but I have to add Maya to that mix now. She is family and more than that to me.

My love for her is unlike that I’ve felt for anyone ever in my life. To keep her alive I would gladly give my last ounce of blood. It seems strange sometimes, to realize that I care about someone so much. I thought I had loved others before, but never have I had this depth of feeling for someone. I admire her too. I admire her strength in coping with brain cancer. I admire her intelligence, and her continuing efforts to learn and advance herself in the world. I admire the way she cares about her friends. I admire the way she cuts off and donates her hair to Locks of Love. She wore a wig herself after losing her hair twice to chemotherapy and radiation treatments, so she continues to give back. I admire her for starting an organization to help people get back into school after having had to drop out due to cancer or other medical reasons. I admire her independence and fighting spirit. But mostly, I think, I just love her.

Sometimes, imperfect as I am, I think perhaps I’m not as bad a monster as I thought I was.

Dreaming of Random Acts of Sex and Situations Intolerable

 Woke up this morning early, dreaming. I had stayed up until 1:00 am, but I was wide awake at 5:30am. I ran a lot last evening, in the rain, with lightning just a few miles away. It was the first time I’d run in the rain. I liked it; I was able to keep my body temp down while running. Cool, in reality.

The doves are cooing and I have my coffee now. I decided to post because my dream fascinated me. In my dream, I had decided to live on the street. I know, I know, one does not just “decide” to do such a thing, but hey, it was a dream. I had some sort of small tent or structure over me, and I was under a large blanket, peering out at life on the street. Part of me wondered what I’d done with all my stuff. That part of my brain decided that I still had a car and had my stuff in that.

As I peered out, I saw a couple I knew. I knew the male better than his partner, but they came over and looked in at me. Suddenly the woman was getting into my tent, box or whatever it was I was in, and she was naked. So was I. She climbed under my blanket and lay on top of me. Her skin was warm and smooth. I was in heaven. Then, of course, this guy also came in. He seemed a bit hesitant at first, but he came in and lay down next to the woman. I had no idea what was going on.

In fact, I quickly realised that the two people didn’t know who I was, that I was out of context, and in the poor light available, they hadn’t recognised me, as I had thought. That raised interesting questions to me. Did they do this sort of thing all the time? Did they seek out homeless men to sleep with? Should I tell them I know them? As I pondered ways to shock them with my knowledge of their identity and introduce myself, I realized I’d forgotten their names, which killed my element of surprise, so I said nothing about myself.

Realizing that they were probably expecting sex, especially since the woman had her hand on my erection, but I wasn’t into either this ménage à trois stuff, or sex with men, I wasn’t sure what to say or do. The male asked me if it was alright. I said I wasn’t into men sexually. He asked me why. I told him that men just didn’t turn me on, and he, of course, wanted to know why I wasn’t curious. I told him, I had been curious, but I had gotten over that. I went into a reverie, and could no longer tell if I was just in my head or speaking out loud.

I remembered my roommate from when I’d first left home. He was into young boys, his words. I accepted that about him, but came to realize he was also interested in me. In fact, he was four years older than me. I’d thought of him as a friend, but he had other ideas. Nothing ever came of that, not for lack of trying on his part, but I’d had to punch him a bit to finally dissuade him.

Shortly after that experience, my best friend had been a lesbian. That doesn’t mean that I learned anything from the experience, but years later, on a trip to Canada, where my old roommate had become an expatriate, I had needed his help getting across the border, after a run in with the border cops, and I was staying in his apartment. He made it clear I couldn’t stay long, as he couldn’t afford to feed me. It was clear that he wanted me to feel grateful for his help, and he told me to go ahead and make myself breakfast while he went off to work. I had very little money at that point, having lost $50, half of all the money I’d had a few days earlier, and I was feeling a bit desperate.

When he came home later, it seemed clear from a number of things he said, that, if I were to be open to sex, he could possibly put me up longer. That was consistent with his previous attempts, and I figured I should consider that. However, the sight of him naked didn’t excite me, in fact, I was totally flaccid, and couldn’t get it up anyway. That seemed to settle the issue for him. Somehow, people always seem to assume one can get into something they have no interest in, if only they try. It often doesn’t work for heterosexual relationships; so there wasn’t any reason to expect it would work for a homosexual relationship either, except that young men seem to always be ready for sex at any time.

I really do think that there has to be some physical attraction, and some hormonal signaling, for this whole sexual attraction thing to work. I don’t think one should ever have sex with someone one is not attracted to. Random sex with strangers is just not a good idea, in my opinion.

So, that is what I told the couple. The woman still wanted to have sex with me, and, as had happened before, the man said he would just watch. I had turned down that offer as a young man, but I was very much interested in this woman, so I was considering it when I woke up.

Ah well, it would have been a much more interesting dream, I think.

Once, while I was young, tanned and muscular, I met a couple who invited me to their home for a party, and since I didn’t have a car, they drove me there. However, there was no party, except for the three of us, and the man had made that offer: I could have sex with his wife, if he could watch. It was the first I’d ever heard of such a thing. I considered it for a nanosecond, but at 25 years of age, I turned them down. I felt vulnerable, and a bit worried about what would happen. Rape came to mind. Being bound and tortured came to mind. But, most of all, I knew damn well I couldn’t have enjoyed myself with the woman with anyone else watching, much less her husband.

Once I told them I wasn’t interested, we had a few drinks, talked some, and slept, since it was very late at night. I slept on the couch and they didn’t bother me. In the morning they drove me back to where I lived. I never heard from them again, but it was fascinating to learn that there where people who did such things.

I don’t know why all this bubbled out of memory last night.

Perhaps I was curious about what my stepdaughter was up to. She had texted me to pick her up from work, but hadn’t said where she was going, Her evening class was over, and I thought she might want to have me take her food shopping, since she doesn’t drive. However, she had wanted me to take her to a certain bar, a favorite of hers, one not far from where I live. I was going to be running with my running group, and would have to turn around as soon as I dropped her off, and go right back to near where I’d picked her up. I remarked on that, since I thought it was kind of funny. She was apologetic, as she thought it would be easy for me, since I’d be so close to my home.

I asked her if she was meeting someone, and she said, “Yes.” I asked her if she was having dinner or just drinks. She said, “Dinner.” And she said, “Bye, See you next time.” I was curious who she was meeting, but she didn’t seem to want to say, or give me any information; I was curious why.

I love that woman a lot. She inspired me to run. She runs a lot, always has, except during her cancer treatment. It took a lot of work on her part to get back into running, but she runs marathons these days. I ran a half-marathon last year for the first time ever, four months after my heart attack, and will run one this year. She will run a full marathon at the same time, probably in little more time as it takes me to do a half.

When I got back from my run last night, I thought about stopping into the bar where she was, but I know she likes her privacy. I remember thinking that I’d have joined her if she’d asked, but three can be a crowd, and anyway, we don’t hang out much anymore.

When I say I love this woman, I mean it. I love her with all my heart, and always want her to have a great life. I’d love her even if I never saw her again, but I hope that doesn’t happen.

Some day, she’ll be married, with a kid perhaps. Maybe we’ll drift further apart. I used to drive her to and from work, but she doesn’t need me for that anymore, just an occasional lift here and there. I’m divorced from her mother these last seven years, and her mother avoids me like I have bubonic plague. No communication or rapprochement with that one. She’d kill me if she believed I had any designs on her daughter. Hell, my stepdaughter would quickly terminate all ties with me too, if she thought I’d ever thought of such things, even in a vague association with a dream.

I don’t know why I even brought it up. It is nice to have someone to love like her, even in a non-sexual, platonic way. In fact, I’d find life a whole lot less tolerable without her. It’s bad enough my cat got eaten by coyotes. “Situations tolerable” the Traveling Wilburys sang, and really, my life could be worse, but it could be better.

THE JOY OF BRAIN TUMORS

I didn’t know I could find joy in
a brain tumor
I never really felt love before
the brain tumor
I never felt such fear
a brain tumor!?

We joke about it
It’s not like you have a brain tumor
We compare headaches to
brain tumors.

It’s my step-daughter that had
the brain tumor
I never knew such fear
– the all-day brain surgery
– the chemotherapy
– the radiation.

I never knew I felt such love
this young woman I’d known
thirteen years from girl to woman
I never knew such joy
– after the operation she survived
– still needed chemo she survived
– still needed radiation
gamma knife
– a high-tech magic bullet.

Damn brain tumor
fuckin’ damn brain tumor
dead brain tumor.

She survived
She’s alive
She’s healthy
She’s whole.

My chest loosened
I can breathe
My heart
is beating.

I never knew such joy before
the brain tumor.

The Picklement

The boy’s nickname was Terry. He didn’t particularly like his name, because a lot of girls had the same one, and it sounded like a child’s name anyway.  He’d started out with Terrance, but in 1st grade the other boys called him Clarence instead.  It always got a laugh, but not from Terry.  It sounded like the name of a clown, or some snooty rich kid in a story.
After grade school, he changed his name to Bob, although Bob didn’t have much of a ring to it.  Still, it seemed a nice unambiguously masculine name, and much more adult sounding than Terry, or Terrance.
Bob, as a name, worked fairly well for Terry.  People didn’t stumble all over it, like they did with Terry, confusing his name with Gerry,  Perry, Harry, but most often, oddly enough, with Larry.  He wondered if it had to do with Larry, Moe and Curly,  since the most common misunderstanding of his name was always Larry.  He tried emphasizing the T whenever he said Terry, but it didn’t help.  People just don’t get Terry usually until the third try.  It made introductions tedious, even though people always smiled, and often apologized.
Terry went by Bob all through high school.  He liked it.  People seemed to respond better.  He was older than he’d been of course, but high school boys are not generally known for their maturity, and Terry, or even Terrance could still have been disastrous.  If there was one thing Terry hated more than anything else, it was being teased.  Still, boys will use just about anything to tease another boy.  The school insisted that everyone wear ties.
Terry had a hard time waking up in the mornings, and taking the time to tie a perfect Windsor knot every day had gotten old fast.  Terry discovered the clip-on tie: perfect knot, perfect length, and impossible to discern.  Somehow, one day, a classmate noticed, and snatched it from him.   He chased after the perp, grabbing the tie and pushing the perp onto the ground.  Generally, Terry had always been very easy-going.  His father often said Terry would let someone take the shirt off his back, but that was what “turning the other cheek” meant in the real world.  In the religious world, “turning the other cheek” meant martyrdom, and martyrdom was preferred to violence.  However, just ignoring all the  jibes and taunts was not easy, and that one time, Terry ran his attacker down and won his self-respect. Or so he thought.
Instead of congratulating him on standing up for himself, his other classmates made light of it, pointing out that the other boy, although the same age, was shorter.  This made Terry into little more than a cowardly bully.  “But, what was I to do?” he asked, “let him take it?”  No one answered that.  Whining was not allowed.  However, this incident provided the catalyst for another far more embarrassing one, since the real bullies felt Terry was an easy mark, and could only defend himself against smaller adversaries.
Terry’s family didn’t have a lot of money, and clothes were patched, sewn and worn until they fell apart.  It so happened one day, as Terry bent over to pick up a fork he dropped in the school cafeteria, that his pants split.  He was mortified, but no one had seemed to notice.  The pants were brown corduroys, with lots of vertical lines, and baggy enough that Terry thought it would pass unnoticed if he walked slowly and kept his butt cheeks pinched together.  He sat down opposite his peers, and relaxed.  He made it through lunch without a single comment.  In fact, he relaxed too much, because as he stood, the gap widened enough for someone to see.  Ellis, agent provocateur, class clown, and always an outlaw, took it upon himself to take full advantage of the situation.  He grabbed a slice of pickle off his lunch tray  and ran up to Terry, dropping the pickle in the rip as Terry stood up.  The indignity of this was just too much.
That someone would see the tear no longer mattered.  Ellis was going down.  Terry lunged for him, and Ellis, cowardly as most bullies are, took off running.  Ellis laughed at Terry,  sidestepping and ducking through the cafeteria.  Terry chased him into the hallway.  Lunch break was not yet over, so there was no one in the hallway.  Terry chased him, gaining on him, running full tilt down the hallway.  Of course, yelling and running past the principal’s office, in a school  that prided itself on self-discipline, was not a particularly bright thing to do.  They were caught.
Now, Terry was in the equally uncomfortable position of trying to explain that someone had put a pickle in his pants.  Fortunately, it had been the principal who’d caught them.  The vice-principal was in charge of discipline, and he would have come down hard on them.  As it was, the principal referred Terry to Student Court, a disciplinary board wholly run by the students.
Terry explained the pickle incident, (picklement?) and the court, laughing behind their hands, let it go.  To add to Terry’s shame, all decisions by the Student Court were published in the school paper, although the rip in someone’s pants became a rip in someone’s shirt.  In 1965, no newspaper would dare even allude to something sexual , much less the innuendo of a pickle in someone’s pants.  It wasn’t journalistic integrity, but everyone knew the real story anyway.
Terry could see, by now, that the name didn’t make any difference.  He was kind of an oddball, it seemed, and names were nowhere near as important as he’d always believed.  After high school, he kept using Bob, although his employer and coworkers were not the types to care about a name one way or the other.   By now, however, Terry noticed that Bob was an extremely common name.  In every room, it seemed, there was a Bob. In a restaurant, in a garage, on the street, or at work, Bob was as ubiquitous as Tom, Dick and Harry.  Terry, realizing that, as an adult, he could have his name changed legally, thought about changing his name to Bilbo Baggins.  It was not a bad name, far out of the ordinary.  That would have been alright, but he knew his family wouldn’t like his dropping the surname. But, what would Bilbo be without a Baggins to go with it?  He thought about just using Frodo,  but few people had read the half a million word sequel to The Hobbit, so he would have had to spend a lot of time explaining the Lord of the Rings character to every person he met.
Of course, changing one’s name is a very superfluous thing to do anyway, as Terry had found out.  And now there were far more important things to worry about in the world, like sex and war, and getting to work on time.  He took night classes at the University where he worked, but he really wanted to go to school full time.  He applied for, and was accepted at another University a few years later, still calling himself Bob.  He kept his job on a part-time basis, as a sort of contract employee.  However, those aforementioned things, sex and war, took over most of his thoughts, as he sought one but wanted to avoid the other.  That took him to rallies and demonstrations, as well as into drug and sexual experimentation, and his studies suffered.  His thoughts were always elsewhere.  Dismissed from school on probation for a year, he decided to travel.
After a few years of odd jobs and traveling, he took a job one day in a small foundry in Arizona.  The foreman must also have thought Terry an oddball when he asked him his name, because  Terry paused.  It was a normal question, but suddenly, and without having given it any thought in years, he told the foreman his name: Terry.  It was, after all, how his family had known and still knew him.  No one he had ever met was as important as family, and he never changed his name again, even though he rarely got through another introduction without having to say his name at least three times.

MORE PANCAKES PLEASE

Some people eat beans every day
some people have bread every meal
some eat anything any old way
We had potatoes, hey, what’s the deal?

Ate a lot of them growing up
with potatoes in the garden
and meat vegetable potatoes
every night for dinner

Mashed potatoes Scalloped potatoes
Boiled potatoes Baked potatoes
Home-fried potatoes
French-fried potatoes

Potatoes au gratin
Potatoes and ham
Bacon potato salad
Sweet potato pie

Potatoes in the stews
potatoes in the soups
potatoes as main course
potatoes on the side

But, ah! potato pancakes
smothered in applesauce
Couldn’t get enough
More pancakes please.

My Birthday Was Plural

Birthdays were never an egocentric event for me. My brother and I, although a year apart, shared the same birthday month, so my parents always combined the two into one party, one song. You know how people sing it, Happy Birthday to so-and-so? Ours were always together, Happy Birthday John and Terry. As a result, I think, I never thought of a birthday as a focus on me alone.  This is a little odd, since some psychologists believe children under the age of 7 reason egocentrically, believing that their view of the world is the same as anyone else’s view.  However, I at least saw that the world didn’t center around just me, but included my brother.
I remember much of my childhood, but not all.  However, I can interpolate some things.  I have no idea what my first birthday was like, although my mother was about to give birth to my brother, so I’m certain that weighed heavily on my parent’s minds.  Knowing them, I assume they used the occasion to have family over for cake.  What was my second birthday like? Well, I don’t know, but with John one year old, they might not have wanted people over so things stayed a little quieter.  At that age, I wouldn’t have cared.  I know we were a handful.  By my third birthday, I’m sure the tradition got started to have both our birthdays on the same day.  There were no other children as yet, and mom would have wanted to light candles and teach us to blow them out.  The difficulty would have been in trying to teach us our numbers, because John needed two, and I needed three.  She baked two cakes!  By the age of four, John and I knew the drill.  When October came around, and my mom started baking, we knew what to expect.  We knew there would be a cake with four candles for me, and a cake with three candles for him.  At the time, I remembered that previous birthday, my third, but that memory is long gone now.
You may well ask how I remember my fourth birthday at all, but I think it was the trauma of moving.  I can’t remember the place we moved from anymore, but it had a long stairway outside the building.  I remember being forced into a car, and driving a long way to the new place.  The car was green, the rear sloped in a continuous curve from roof to fender. The inside had a cloth-covered ceiling.  I remember that cloth, because in later years, it was loose, ripped, and always falling down.  At the time, I didn’t pay it much attention, because I was more excited about where we had arrived.  It was a small house, but it had a grass-covered front lawn.  We had not had one of those before.  My parents seemed happy about that, but, compared to the other lawns in the neighborhood, ours looked different.  It hadn’t been mowed in a long time. It was wild and tall.  I liked it, but, of course, no lawn is ever allowed to be like that for long.  I suspect that is when my dad bought his first lawn mower, because by the time I was ten, we had moved twice again, my bother and I had the job of mowing, and that thing seemed ancient.
Those old push mowers were something else.  I delighted in the spinning blades, each one of which curved in a broad sweep, much like present-day wind turbines.  To my ten-year-old brain, the blades should have been straight, but somewhere along the line, people had figured out how to cut grass more efficiently.  Often the blades would be near-dull, and pushing that thing through the grass was not my idea of fun.  It was however, not something I had to do, but something John and I had to do.
We were sidekicks.  From birthdays to work, we did everything together.  Hell, we even got punished together. My father, discovering something broken or missing, would confront us. If neither one of us owned up to it, he said we would both be punished.  Punishments ran a wide gamut then, from standing in a corner, to no dinner, to slaps on our butts, or the dreaded leather strap, which hurt like hell.  One time, John owned up to something neither of us had done, just to get the interrogation and slapping over, and so we wouldn’t both be punished.  Odd to think that our parents thought we’d ever do anything deliberately bad, knowing the consequences, but I guess they thought we wouldn’t ever do anything bad again if they punished us hard enough. Boy, were they wrong.
Running through the yard, we accidentally trampled mom’s azalea bush.  You’d have thought we went outside just to destroy that bush from the way my dad carried on.  We took our clothes off one time, and went out on the porch roof, climbing out the second story window.  A neighbor saw us, so that didn’t go over very well.   We also thought it was fun to throw small stones out that same window at passing cars, since the porch roof kept us from being seen from the street.  We thought we were pretty clever about it, trying to determine the exact time to throw a stone, so that it would hit a car while we ducked down.  We could hear the thunk on a car roof or door, and one time a car squealed to a sudden stop, and backed up to our house.  That we had to see.  Of course, that meant we were seen. Well, it was not fun anymore, as the driver got out and walked up to our house.
Then there was the time John and I built a small fire in an empty lot behind our house.  We tried to build it up with stones all around it, but we were too young then to know to clear the entire area of combustibles.  It spread, and we couldn’t put it out.  We got on our bicycles and rode for our lives, afraid we’d get caught, and we were. A neighbor had seen us, called the fire department, and called our mother.  She made us march out to the firemen and apologize.  They were incredibly nice to us.  They smiled at us.  I didn’t know what to make of that, because we had been scared to death to go out there and tell them it was our fault.  Our parents made sure we knew the danger of fire, and read us the riot act over that one.  I doubt we could sit down without wincing for days after that.
John and I were a class act though.  One time, investigating a construction site nearby, my brother and I and Eddie, a friend, were dropping rocks into a pool of muddy water in the incomplete basement of a new house.  There was a hole in the first floor where the stairs would eventually be. We didn’t question why the basement walls and the floor of the first floor were built, yet the concrete for the basement floor hadn’t been poured yet.  It was just fun to have a huge puddle far enough below us to makes big splashes.  Three boys, a hole, a long way to fall; what could go wrong?  I fell in, but Eddie went for his parents, and John found his way down to me.  I was laying face down, out cold, in the water.  He turned me over, saving my life.
Years later, we had ridden our bikes miles away from our house, and were investigating a sewer drain outlet.  All the storm water from the street above flowed out into a small creek, and beavers had built a dam on it.  It was just too damn fascinating to leave alone.  However, the concrete around the storm drain outlet was green and slimy.  John fell in.  The slime was everywhere.  He couldn’t grab hold of the edge to pull himself back up; he kept slipping back into the water.  It was deep there, over our heads.  We didn’t know how to swim yet, and the water was dark and filthy.  In retrospect, I think he was panicking, because he thrashed around like crazy.  I got on my stomach.  I reached out my hands and yelled at him to grab them.  He did. I was able to pull him far enough so he could climb out.  We rode over to a nearby house and knocked, explaining what had happened.  John was socking wet, and reeked.   My dad drove home from work and took us home.  He was, shall we say, upset, but also happy that we were OK.
So it continued over the years, through accident after accident.  We even shoplifted together; that was a mess of trouble.   Always we survived, and both of us have all our parts.  We even fought each other.  Sometimes only one of us got into trouble at a time.  We balanced everything out by being Altar boys and Boy Scouts. We served mass and camped together.  We were a team.
High school changed everything.  I went first, leaving John behind.  John developed new friends.  Rather than follow me to the same high school, he went to a religious school in another state for a year.  It was the sort of pre-seminary school you go to if you plan to be a priest, but before you go to an actual seminary.  It was strange not having him around.  Stranger still, he changed his mind and came back after that first year.  Instead of hanging out with me however, he had other friends.  He told me about discovering masturbation.  I had discovered that on my own.  He also knew girls. He did end up going to the same high school as me, but we never saw each other.   He was one of the popular kids.  He found a part-time job after school working on an assembly line for printed circuit boards.  I rarely saw him, and he never told me how to get a job like that or what he did.   He had money, bought himself a leather jacket, and combed his hair out and down and over his face, unlike my greasy pompadour.  He was as different as he could be.  I stayed after school myself, joining various clubs: Science, Computer, Drama.  When I was home, I had to study, usually two to three hours, just to keep up.
John and I didn’t have free time anymore; no time to waste riding our bicycles randomly, exploring, getting into trouble.  I stayed to myself. He thought I was weird.  I didn’t have friends, I didn’t date.  Well, I took my cousin out a couple times, but that didn’t go anywhere.   By the time I graduated high school, John and I were like strangers.  There were no more joint birthdays.  I got a job and left home.  He graduated the next year and got married.  I went to his wedding, dressed in a funky double-breasted suit I’d picked up for myself. It reminded me of my grandfather’s suit.  I looked and felt out-of-place around the family.  I tried to look and act mature. I had even bought a packet of Tiparillos, small plastic-tipped cigars.  I thought they’d make me look sophisticated, but when I tried inhaling one at the wedding reception, I thought I’d choke my lungs out. Clueless.
John invited me over one time after his daughter was born , a year later.  He’d always been the skinny one, but he’d put on a lot of weight. His wife cooked a lot.  They had certain meals on certain nights, same thing every week.  I asked him about sex, and he whispered to me, “Tonight’s the night.”  I thought, “What, once a week? Are you kidding?” Clueless.
I however, was very involved with anti-war activities.  I’d been arrested.  John thought it was a joke, that I’d gotten arrested for the hell of it.  Neither of us had been drafted, but I was caught up in a counter-culture, one that distrusted the family unit, authority, the draft, wars, and law itself.  I liked marijuana and tried LSD a few times.  Dropped out of school, lost my job.  I moved away.  I had many lovers.  Sex was my favorite drug.  I was a drifter and a carny.  I settled on the other side of the country, poured bronze, worked as a hod carrier, then found work in a cancer research laboratory at a University.  I took free classes there, got a degree.   I got married and divorced twice.  I retired.
I still miss my brother.  His 40th wedding anniversary is coming up soon.  I think I’ll go see him.   We’re so much alike.

BREAKING POINTS

Things happen

violence flares

mom throws things

yells at Dad

Dad yells at Mom

throws things

Mom threw a glass at me

broken shard cut my leg.

Dad, angry knocked me

into walls or

my breath out

backhanded me

from across a table

spankings,

leather strap too

didn’t faze me

much

but

when he falsely accused

and slapped me

one way and back the other

and back again and

his hand swung

and I snapped

knocked him down

and raised my foot

to kick!

his head in

smash his brains

but

he caught my leg

in powerful arms

smiling

never hit me again.

35 years later

married

arguing

she accuses

falsely

she yells

calls me a liar

coffee cups in our hands

I empty mine at her

she throws hers in my face

and I snap

What is wrong with you?

escapes my lips

between clenched teeth

and I slap one way

and the other and swing

my open hand

to slap again

with fingers only

but she backs away

and I sit in my chair

and smash a remote

against a wall

I am my father.

she calls the police

domestic violence, she says

I’m in a domestic violence situation

she says

I listen from my chair

disbelief replaces anger.

the police come

while I clean up the coffee

she is not there

cops are suspicious

stained rag in my hand

no one else around

oh shit! I think

yes, of course, come in

search the house

she is not here

I don’t know where

crap!

I show them neighbors

where she might be

they find her

tell me I have to leave

counseling for me

anger management for me

Later on

She tells me to stay

unless it ever happens again

It never does, but

she keeps drinking

moody

angry happy sad up and down

never satisfied

impatient

demanding and hard

belittling and mean.

I left all that as a boy

but, now, in love

I can’t leave her

my heart beats

in a hollow

relationship

year after year after year.