On the beach – just us kids

I’m the only surfer in this high school annual photo. Me, in front, my board, an Oceanside 9-foot-6 Nose Rider, orange, easy to spot after wipeout (no leashes then). I lead John, Tim, Richard, Elizabeth balanced on top, trusting four high school boys not to drop her in the Daytona dunes. Bob (also an “S”) shoots the photo. Just a group of Esses on the winter beach. We are featured in the annual’s “S” page, headshots predictable, all in Catholic School uniform, hijinks saved for the beach pic. We tried to be the Beach Boys, us guys, hoisting surfer girl who wasn’t a surfer but smart, nice, defying gravity. She’s now in the Colorado mountains, I hear. Tim owns a bookstore in Philadelphia, not sure about John, I was Richard’s best man at his wedding, before I abandoned beaches for the Rocky Mountains. Richard is out in the Florida bush. Bob died during Covid. We were friends, roommates in a broken-down house in Gainesville. Bob the arborist, trimmed trees, grew homegrown. We were 17 or 18 on this day, 1968, class of ’69. The world boiled around us. We were on the beach. Just us kids.

This aging M.F.A.-trained writer vs. Copilot's A.I. mind

This is my version of a prose poem that I dashed off late last night. Maybe it's not a prose poem. A ramble, maybe, or just a burst of words that flew out of my head. I've been doing that a lot lately. Words bursting from my mind with very little rewrite. It's fun, really, just to let the words flow. Freewriting is what I used to call it when teaching college composition. I would tell my students just freewrite for 10 minutes and then let's see if anyone wants to read their pieces. Don't think about it -- just write! Do as I do. And I would write for 10 minutes about any darn thing I wanted. Things like this:

So what do you think of Florida my old friends ask. I think what is it they want me to say that I find it the most magnificent spit of land in the U.S. of A.? They are friends so I can't lie. I find it confusing after 46 years elsewhere many elsewheres. Warmer than my recent home Wyoming but confusing. Old landmarks no longer exist or they exist in puzzling forms. The beach seems less magnificent maybe because it’s so managed. The 60s and 70s we drove the wide low-tide beach any time day or night. We drove high tide too with all the attendant risks. Mostly we were pushing Yankees out of the soft sand and sometimes they paid us because they were so grateful that their 1968 Buick LeSabre did not get gobbled by the salty-sea. We surf as the sun peeks over the flat line of the horizon. A tortoise surfaces beyond the breakwater and we hope it’s not a shark. The waves are surfable but just barely and it’s OK because there always is tomorrow and tomorrow after that. My old rental west of the interstate is now a development and the beat-up two-lane road is now named for a gated community called Tymber Creek and yeah that Tymber with a Y and all the timber cut down for new houses says thank you alphabet. On Hartford Ave my father is not out by the street, dressed in shorts and flapping button-down, with beer in hand, yelling at the surfers to slow down. I go to a funeral for a high school friend last week and the widower a guy who was my classmate and teammate and relies on a wheelchair post-stroke looks up and says, “You look just like your old man.” And I take it in stride because I do that’s a fact and I’ve heard that the old friend is incapacitated and it is not true not true at all. We share quips about our conveyances, him his fancy wheelchair and me my fancy spine-assisting e-scooter. We are a fine pair of ballplayers 1969 and we make scholarship choices and it works out for him and he returns hometown and I’m cast off into the cold and I don’t regret it now but I did hundreds of times. Our links to past lives are pulled until they almost don’t exist. I tell my new friends: Yes, this place is too crowded and this is a voice from the Capital City of the nation’s least-populated state. It’s a place where newcomers my students from Torrington and Hanna and Meeteetse say THE CROWDS!!! THE TRAFFIC!!! and we city-born ones say it will grow on you boys and girls it will grow. So what do you think of the new Florida my green-eyed senior citizen? I open the bedroom window, hear the waves breaking at night. The waves. 

MS Copilot rewrite: 

My old friends ask what I think of Florida now. After 46 years elsewhere, I'm confused. It's warmer than Wyoming but different. Old landmarks have changed or vanished, and the beach feels less magnificent because it's so managed. In the past, we drove on the wide low-tide beach anytime, even at high tide with risks. We helped Yankees stuck in the sand, sometimes for a fee. We surfed as the sun rose, hoping to spot tortoises, not sharks.  

My old rental is now a development, and the two-lane road is named after a gated community called Tymber Creek. Hartford Ave has changed too; my father no longer yells at surfers. Last week, I attended a funeral for a high school friend. The widower, a former classmate now in a wheelchair, remarked that I look like my father. We joked about our conveyances, reminiscing about our scholarship decisions from 1969.  

Living here in Florida, I tell my new friends it’s crowded, especially compared to Wyoming. But I hear the waves breaking at night, and that remains unchanged. 

MS Copilot is not wrong but it's bland is it not? It just doesn’t get some things. Surprisingly, it does get other things. I thought about breaking up my big block of type into separate paragraphs. Copilot detected the change and did exactly that. AI scares me a bit. There are times, usually late at night when I am writing things down, when I wonder why I write at all. Really, why?

Our daughter Annie begins the new year by getting "washed in the ocean"

A fine day for a baptism. 

Our daughter Annie arrived with Chris and I for the Salty Church’s annual New Year’s Day full-immersion baptism. Annie was joined by 51 others who all wore the same black T-shirt with this inscribed on it in white letters: “Washed in the ocean freed from my past today I am new” (see photos). Annie, Chris, and I were joined by family members and friends and we trudged through the soft sand to the water. 

Some of us walked, I trudged. But I was prepared. I used my high-performance rollator walker to blaze a trail through the sand. The rollator was equipped with big knobby tires which, I surmised, would be a better machine for the beach than my tiny-tire-and-tennis-ball-equipped walker. I pushed it forward and then walked to it, pushed again, walked, so on and so forth. The idea was that if I pushed it as I did across our living room, too much weight would dig-in the wheels. Now I’m not saying I am too much weight but I am and my ploy worked for a time. That’s when Joe the Biker arrived to assist. Dressed in black Boot Hill Saloon T-shirt, jeans, and big boots, he was equipped for riding his Harley and to assist a handicapped old guy through the sand. He stomped down the pesky sand granules to make a runway that paved the way to water’s edge wherein dwelt the hard-packed sand. Joe said he liked baptisms and while he was not one of the baptizees, he was happy to be here and considered it a blessing that he was sober and alive and well in ’25 and praised Jesus and I said Amen.

I was mobile via my legs the last time I was on this stretch of beach 10-plus years ago for my brother Dan’s funeral or send-off is a better term. I joined a long line of mourners that had walked from the Salty Church to the Grenada approach and onto Ormond Beach. Surfers paddled out for the appropriately-named Paddle Out and airplanes piloted by Dan’s friends flew over in the missing man formation.

But today was for the living and a fine day it was. Blue skies, gentle breeze, modest waves. Annie donned her T-shirt and joined the crowd. The Salty Church preacher greeted us, said a prayer, and issued the day’s instructions. I could tell Annie was a bit nervous but also giddy with possibilities. She is the Evangelical of the family, attendee of conservative Christian churches and one who dwells within the web of True Believers. This is the last cynical thing this fallen-away Catholic will say on this post. For this day, I am not a sarcastic liberal. I have written here about my recent experiences in a Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital where doctors and nurses and CNAs and therapists worked for 25 days to save my life. I am indebted to them and to an organized religion that would build a healing place and hire healers to manage it. While in a coma, I dreamed of reaching out and touching the hand of God or someone very much like him or her. I listened to the twice-daily prayers over the loudspeaker and said some of my own prayers. I allowed others to pray for me and took communion from a lay communicant from St. Brendan the Navigator Catholic Church. I absorbed departing greetings such as “Have a blessed day.” I often repeated their blessings.

I have much to learn from the congregation of human beings.

One of those things is that my daughter, whose struggles with mental health issues have caused her much pain, will now be baptized. I watched as two church members said a prayer, lowered her into the water, and how she sputtered and smiled when she emerged. She was touched by the spirit and the fact that her aunts and uncles and nieces and family friends came out to see it happen. And then we convened at our house for cake and tea. Annie opened gifts which included earrings and necklace crosses and a giant conch shell my brother brought from Palm Bay. The cake was delicious and a chocolate phantasmagoria.

All told, a glorious day.

When we were friends

Some have died. Too many. A High School Friend, knocked back by alcohol, claimed by Covid, I hadn’t seen in decades. No funeral due to the pandemic. We knew each other in high school but I ran with a different crowd, I thought I was all that, you know, how at 17 you can think you’re all that without knowing what that is and what you may become. A few years later, we partied together, were roommates at the beat-up house at the end of the street on the way to Newnan’s Lake in Gainesville. He had a car, shuttled the lot of us to Daytona to be with family and other old friends. On one summer trip the afternoon skies opened up as it does in Florida. We rounded a corner, the sheets of rain easing up, and came upon a rollover. Pickup lost control on rain-slick country road. Little metal cylinders rolled around the soggy pavement and two guys too young to drink legally scrambled to pick them up. One guy motioned for us to come over and said “take as many beers as you want” and we realized that dozen of cans of PBR were on the tarmac. “Take them – cops are coming!” He shoved an armful at me. I stared, and then heard the sirens. “Hurry!!” My Housemate and I shuttled back and forth to his car and we had quite a stash by the time the Sheriff arrived. We were asked if we were witnesses and we said no sir no sir we just happened by afterwards and wanted to help but we’ll be on our way now sir. And we were. Partied all weekend at the beach. My Roomie more than most but thought that was just the way he was so the days and weeks and years went on and I realized that My Friend would never let go of those PBRs and Jack and shrooms and whatever other mind-altering substance came his way. I went West with the woman who became my wife and there was a 25-year reunion at a beach hotel and I was with wife and two kids and My Old Roomie was sober, with a woman friend he had met at AA. Later, he was homeless, or so I heard. I didn’t check to see if that was true. I had my own problems – that’s what I told myself. His sister texted me to say My Classmate had died of Covid, had been sick at home for too long and it was too late by the time he was carted off to the hospital and died. No funeral due to Covid and now it’s been several years and his face swims into view when we talk about school chums, where are they now and so on. My wife and I have now returned to that beach town where we met and memories swirl around like skeeters on a July night. I can tell you one thing that is true: There was a time during my brief span on Earth when this man and I were friends. On this lonely planet, for a brief time, we were friends. That will have to do.

Saying goodbye to a friend, Dick Lechman

A eulogy for a friend from a friend: 

Books, books, books.

Dick Lechman had thousands of books at one time at his Old Grandfather Books in downtown Arvada. He had books in the store, books in a garage, and a few in his apartment and his car. I loved going into the Arvada store because I could always find something I didn’t know I was looking for. A history of World War I, a coffee table book of Colorado maps, an unread early novel by one of my favorite writers. If I couldn’t find anything, Dick would always suggest something. His interests centered on spirituality and religion as befits a one-time practicing priest. But his imagination wandered far and wide. My daughter Annie, Dick’s goddaughter, liked the bookstore too. She was little and liked to get lost in the stacks to discover intriguing books about dinosaurs and unicorns, sometimes in the same book. I never met with Dick that he didn’t have a book for me. I might be interested in it or maybe not. But someone who will gift you a book is someone to spend time with.

After Dick and his wife Mary bought a house in Arvada, I sometimes journeyed down from Cheyenne to play ping pong in his garage/office. Books lined the shelves there too. Dick usually won the games and then we retired to the garage’s book section. Dick also built and installed a Little Free Library in his front yard. I like those and usually stop to peruse the library when I see one. It’s like hidden treasure – there could be anything in there. And often was.

Dick was a writer too, a poet with philosophy in mind. He always emailed or mailed me his poetry. I usually commented on it because I know, as a writer and writing teacher, that every written thing deserves attention. In his poetry, Jesus played baseball and so did his disciples. Amazing flights of imagination. I liked the way he always worked friends and family into his poems – that made it very personal. I didn’t understand all of it but appreciated that he spent time and energy writing it down.

Dick was a conscientious godfather. He always brought Annie books and wrote her poems. He went out of his way to help her when she was in a variety of mental health treatment centers, in Colorado, Wyoming and a few neighboring states. It’s sometimes hard to know what to say to a loved one with mental health challenges. Just being there in a big deal. Yourself, listening. Chris and I always appreciated Dick’s attention to our little bird trying to fly.

Dick was one of the first people Chris and I met when we decided to abandon traditional Catholic churches for something different at 10:30 Catholic Community. Some of us gathered together in a men’s group and it turned out we had a lot to share with one another. We went on jaunts to the mountains. I moved away from Denver, first to Fort Collins and then to Cheyenne, and some of the guys went down to Arizona for Rockies’ spring training. Dick liked his Rockies and so did Mary. We all were committed fans and one of my great memories was attending a Rockies-Dodgers game with Dick and Mary and Dick’s brother and sister-in-law. Summer night at Coors Field. Sure, you might get heartburn from the hot dogs and the Rockies relief pitching. But always the best place to be in summer.

It's sad to say goodbye to Dick. The memories remain. He was a good guy with a big heart. And a fine friend.

Dick was always learning. This is some of his commentary on an Easter poem he sent me in April 2022: Remember that is just Dick's two cents/And each of you have your two cents/So it seems this Easter is better than last Easter./Cuz I didn't understand the resurrection of the spirit till/I was 83 years old.

He was 85 when he passed from this life last week. 

2022 was Dick’s final Easter on this planet. He also commented on the afterlife, saying that he hoped there was no paperwork there. By that, I'm guessing he meant PAPERWORK, you know, the kind we all hate to fill out. He didn't mean the paper of books because that meant so much to him. I do believe there is poetry and books, lots of books, in the afterlife. What would heaven be without them?

Dick loved sports and especially the Colorado Rockies. If there's room for books in heaven, there must be be a snowball's chance in Hades that the Rockies can find consistent pitching and go on to win a World Series. We can all keep praying for that. 

Saturday Round-up: SCOTUS nonsense, funeral of a friend, and delving into crime-adjacent novels

The Supreme Court announced its rollback of abortion right yesterday. Now that Christian Nationalists have a majority on the court, this regressive move will be followed by others in birth control, LGBTQ rights, civil rights, voting rights, etc. This court wants to wipe away all of the progressive measures enacted since the 1960s. They can probably do it, too, as SCOTUS is the law of the land. But there are ways that states can toss a wrench into the right-wing steam roller. Not my state, solidly red, but other states in the region, Colorado and New Mexico to name two. Some major companies have announced that they will subsidize travel for employees and other wishing to escape their State of Gilead to get abortions. Other entities are doing the same thing. This is a feminist issue but also one of human rights and states' rights. SCOTUS seems perfectly willing to throw back gun rights to the states. Yesterday's action signals the same approach to states. Thing is, we will have half the states where abortion is limited or forbidden. Then we will have the more progressive states, or at least states that believe in a woman's right to choose. Where this will lead is anybody's guess. Nowhere good. 

I watched a funeral of a friend today on YouTube. The funeral was at Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Ormond Beach, Fla. I watched from Cheyenne, Wyo. The funeral mass was for David Rogers, an old high school friend. I saw some gray heads in the congregation so some of my classmates might have attended. David's widow and kids attended, as did his sister Dorie whom I knew from high school. She delivered a eulogy, mostly about family and David's passion of fishing. David and I shared a house out in the woods 50 years ago. David spent his time fishing in the Tomoka and Little Tomoka rivers. I spent my time hiking around the property, some 40 acres of woods and swamps. Spiders as big as my hand. Rattlesnakes and water moccasins and coral snakes. Possum and armadillos. Lots of birds. A beautiful spot that holds many memories. Rest in peace, David.

Our daughter Annie moved to Laramie and started school at UW. She rents an apartment on the edge of campus. Chris and I have been there several times, first to help her move in and then take her to lunch. College campuses in summertime are green, beautiful places, more park than academic setting. I always liked summer sessions. The classes were of short duration and laid back, for the most part. Afterwards, a great time to settle under a tree in the quad and read. Because we have distinct seasons here, with cold-ass winters, the summer afternoons at UW are particularly sweet.

Just finished reading "Good Girl, Bad Girl" by Australian writer Michael Robotham. I saw a reference to him in an interview with another Aussie writer, Geraldine Brooks. She called his books "crime-adjacent" and I was taken by that phrase and had to look up Robotham's books. Crime-adjacent features characters that aren't necessarily cops or private investigators. "Good Girl, Bad Girl" main character is Cyrus Haven, a forensic psychologist in Nottingham, England, who is trying to help the police solve a crime while he also tries to help Evie Cormac, a teen girl adjust after years of abuse. Fascinating. Cyrus has his own twisted past which gives him insight other psychologists don't have. Chapters alternate between Cyrus and Evie with the nickname "Angel Face." I liked the back and forth between characters once I read the first few chapters. Other CA books listed on Goodreads include John D. MacDonald's "The Lonely Silver Rain" which features Travis McGee who, as he puts it, does favors for friends. It usually involves tussles with bad guys. Bail bondswoman Stephanie Plum probably fits into this category. So do many of Elmore Leonard's books. I've read many CA books but didn't know it had a label. Until now.

Ballad for an old friend

Can you call someone a friend if you haven’t seen him in 40 years?

On Monday, I heard the news of the death of my old friend David. He suffered a stroke and was being transferred to rehab in Daytona Beach when his body gave out. The news came to me on a Facebook post from Dave’s sister in L.A. I was shocked. He is not one of the first to die in my high school class – Class of ’69. We’ve all hit 70 now and the inevitable cohort replacement grinds on every day.

The last photo I saw of David showed him holding an AK-47 which he was using for target practice out in the Florida woods. He had a gun hobby. He also was a dedicated fisherman. He once ran a popular bait shop in Daytona. He could talk your ear off about fishing and often did. We went to high school together and were roommates once on a little acreage we called The Farm. It was anything but a farm. It was an old house on Hull Road in rural Ormond Beach. The road was named after the family who built the house, one of the area’s first human residents besides Native Americans and the occasional Spanish explorer looking for the Fountain of Youth or cities of gold. Our high school, Father Lopez, was named for the priest who accompanied Pedro Menendez de Aviles when he landed in St. Augustine in 1565 to kill French Huguenots. Ponce de Leon had claimed Florida for Spain in 1513 during his fruitless search for youth, something, I guess, many Floridians search for.

Our little house had three bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, a massive fireplace, and an outdoor shower. Our girlfriends hated that shower even though we assured them that nobody could see them as our property was surrounded by forest. Didn’t seem to make a difference. They would take baths in our big iron tub or wait until they returned to their respective civilized indoor showers. Picky, picky.

The property was owned by a group of physicians who had bought it for an investment. This place will someday be filled with houses, they contended, and we laughed about it when we got stoned on the weed stashed on the farm by a friend who swore us to secrecy. Years later, as time marched on, the land was bought by a developer and now is a thriving neighborhood called Tymber Creek. That’s timber with a y as in “some tymber was sacrificed to build these spacious homes.”

I have fond memories of a man who meant so much to me long ago. In 1971-72, David and I were college dropouts. The military draft passed us by. I worked days as a hospital orderly and David worked evenings as a cook at a pizza joint. He brought home the leftover pizza that became our breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We could exist on pizza because we were 21 and always on the move.   

Our futures had already started. I wandered the property with our dogs, always alert for rattlers and coral snakes. At twilight, we stopped at an open field and watched the bullbats. As they dive for insects, they make a strange whooshing sound. I’d come back to the house to write, always writing. David was out casting for bass or snook on the Little Tomoka River, looking for something out there on the Florida waters. I hope he found it.  

Anything was possible then.

During the 1970s, I went back to school and then returned to the area many times as I looked for work and finally decided to light out for the western territories. That’s where I am today. Still writing.

David, may the fish be plentiful and feisty in the Beyond.

It ain't spring yet, but I can see it on the horizon

In normal years, spring is opening up time in Wyoming. Bright morning sun streaks through the windows. We open the windows to let in the fresh breeze. Then we close the windows when the 60 mph gusts blow in. We wave to our neighbors the first time we see them outside since October. I check on the bulbs planted last fall t see if anything is blooming. That often happens with the spring snow, lilies making a show of it by bursting colorful heads through the white blanket.  

Spring 2020 brought a radical change. We closed down just as the weather turned nice. Houses became fortresses against the gathering plague. Schools closed. Jobs disappeared. Events cancelled. As the fatalities rose, we hunkered down. Stores delivered our groceries. Beer could only be bought by stealthy visits to drive-up windows where you almost wanted to whisper your order through your new mask that didn't fit. Our downtown craft distillery stopped bottling vodka and churned out plastic bottles of hand sanitizer. Overnight, Zoom became a thing.

This spring feels different. It won't officially be spring for another 25 days. But we yearn for it. Chris and I got our two Covid shots of vaccines that didn't exist this time last year. I've ordered seeds for sprouting -- I'm already a little late doing that. We are already a week into the Lenten season and it seems like a miracle that the plague is receding. I am blessed to be alive and among the vaccinated and I can pay my bills and buy groceries. I have a roof over my head. I'm retired so my 8-to-5 working days are behind me. 

I thought about all of this last night as I watched "Nomadland" on Hulu. Thousands of my fellow Americans live in vans and small RVs. They crisscross the country looking for a place to land and a place to work. They exist on disability checks and small pensions. Work service jobs when they can get them. Their humanity comes through in a film that features real people and real places. Credit goes to director Chloe Zhou and lead actor Frances McDormand who transforms from Fran to Fern in the film.

Some people opt as a life as a nomad. Others are forced into it due to substance abuse, mental illness, or circumstances beyond their control. It raises big questions about the state of our country. But it merely asks you for empathy which is in short supply after four years of the hate and greed of Trumpism. Not too much to ask. I came away from it with the same feeling I had after watching "The Florida Project." In it, a different kind of nomad moves from cheap motel to cheap motel in Orlando's Disney neighborhood.  The film shows a lot of heart notably in the form of the six-year-old main character.

We haven't yet processed the Time of Trump. If you carried a bleeding heart into the 2016 election, it has been bleeding since. We may be suffering from a type of PTSD, a reaction to four years' worth of daily outrages. Reading good books and watching good movies may help us heal. It may also help us to greet our human comrades with good will when spring opens our doors.

Pandemic Year 2020: A casual lunch with old friends and poetry

Met my friend (and my daughter's godfather) Dick a few weeks ago along with his wife Mary. Personal encounters have suffered during the pandemic. It's almost like a vacation when you get a chance to see old friends in person. We were appropriately social distanced in Cheyenne's Outback Steakhouse in the middle of a Monday afternoon. The couple from Longmont had been at a ranch near Dubois for Mary's school reunion. Mary wore a maroon mask with her school logo, Dick wore a generic mask and I had on one from the Colorado Rockies. A few months ago I began getting masks that showed something personal. The Rockies seemed have cool ones and, after this season, need all the help them can get. I like Black Lives Matter and Biden/Harris 2020 and VOTE! I may spring for those as they also mean a lot to me and the country.   

My friends and I were arrayed at a distance at a three-top table. We talked about old times and ate a late lunch. Dick recited some of his new four-line poems. He is writing more concise verse these days because, as he said, nobody reads his 50-line poems. There is some truth to that. Even though I have plenty of leisure time, hyperactive lives seem to crave brevity even when it's not necessary.

Dick and Mary both are writers. Mary has published a great biography and is a weekly newspaper columnist. Dick writes poems about spirituality and religion, not unusual topics for an ex-priest. Dick wrote this poem which he read to me yesterday and e-mailed me this morning. It's worth repeating as it is rare to have a poem written for me. It's happened before but the occasions are so rare that I remember it. A former Wyoming Poet Laureate wrote me a poem of condolence after my brother died. It was a wonderful thing to do.

In ancient times (BPC -- Before Personal Computers) people wrote poems for all sorts of occasions. Traditionally, England's poet laureate had two jobs, to write a poem for the new year and one for the monarch's birthday. In the 1800s, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, expanded those duties to writing about important events. The best known of these is "Charge of the Light Brigade" commemorating a British regiment's sacrifices in the Crimean War. I once had to memorize the poem as punishment in after-school detention at St. Francis Catholic School in Wichita, Kansas. I still remember many of the lines: "Cannon to the right of them/Cannon to the left of them/ Cannon in front of them/Volleyed and thundered;/Stormed at with shot and shell,/Boldly they rode and well,/Into the jaws of Death,/Into the mouth of hell/Rode the six hundred." 

The Victorian Era spawned many a heroic verse. That came to a bloody halt in the Great War. 

But back to personal poems. Dick wrote one for me and I wanted to share as poems should be published, one way or another. 

Mike Shay 

by Dick Lechman 

I saw God in Shay 

in his backyard garden 

acting the plant master 

like his friend God, clay master

Thanks, Dick. I would like to think that God exists in me and is revealed as I tend my garden. 

 Amen.

A return trip to the Mind Eraser may help me with mobility issues

I can't walk. OK, I can walk but with difficulty. I fell three months ago and the docs finally figured out I sustained some spinal damage that took its time showing up. My fall was a wimpy fall. I lost my balance and fell into s snow-packed gutter. It was the last snow of the season in Fort Collins and I was helping my daughter move. Nobody saw my fall. If they had, I am sure they would have rushed over to help the old guy out of the gutter. So no witnesses. I brushed the snow from my keister and realized I was going to walk around the rest of  the day with a cold, wet butt. Five days later, my back began to ache. The ache stretched across the entire lower back. It hurt like hell. I started having trouble walking. I retrieved my cane from the closet and used that to get around until I couldn't and then made the transition to a walker. My fingers began to tingle and I lost coordination in my left arm.

It took three months to get to the "bottom" of the problem. My spine sustained some damage from the wimpy fall. A minor whiplash exacerbated my arthritic spine, and maybe a blow that I had sustained in an earlier fall or a traffic accident from three years ago. Whatever, I needed surgery. That's today. I was bummed to hear I needed spinal surgery but I hunted down a great surgeon for the task. So nervous about it. Excited, too, as this might be the beginning of the end of my decrepitude. The doc says I will probably need therapy to get back the use of my legs and arms. I can deal with that. But not walking? I am an active guy and this frustrates me. Even when I write, I get up and pace. I work out in the gym three days a week and swim two days a week. I love to hike but the  mountains have missed me this summer and I have missed them. 

I have a friend Tom with MS. We've known each other for 25 years. He was jut diagnosed when we met at our Denver church. I've seen his struggle. I've been part of the group getting him from his van to the wheelchair. I've helped Tom negotiate non-accessible spots, of which there are too many. He no longer walks and has difficulty with his hands and arms and innards. Still, he keeps on. When our boys were teens, we took them to Six Flags Elitch's in Denver. My son Kevin went off to swim with a girl he met and the rest of us decided to ride the Mind Eraser. Tom's son Brian insisted. Riders with a handicapped tag get to go to the front of the line along with their family members. The Elitch's staff members were good about helping Tom into the contraption that looked like a medieval torture device. The ride picked up speed and five minutes later, my mind was totally erased. I screamed the entire time, or at least I think I did. We were shaking when we disembarked but also laughing like fools. Tom needed help getting back in the wheelchair and we enjoyed some of the more sedate rides the rest of the day.

Tom showed courage and grace getting on that ride. I was skeptical he insisted, as did Brian. Tom's mind has remained sharp even while his body did not. He played baseball but now is just a dedicated follower of the MLB, notable his hometown Red Sox and our regional favorite, the Colorado Rockies. I look upon him as an example of what you can do when threatened with one of life's toughest physical and mental challenges. When I had to use the walker, I stopped going out. I didn't want people to see me in such sad shape. After six weeks of that, I was a mess. My wife challenged me to go to our annual Fourth of July party and bocce ball tournament. I sat and kept score while she refereed. A few of the grown men had stopped at the Fireworks Superstore on the way to the party. They set off smoke bombs and twirly, flashy things. No big rockets as fireworks are illegal in this Wyoming town that everyone in Colorado equates with Fourth of July celebrations. I had fun. We all did. At that point, I began to get out of my shell and get back in the world. That's it, isn't it? You have to get out in the world. No excuses.

Following today's surgery, I will be challenged to see what my body can now do. Sure, that's a challenge. But it's the mind that's the real issue. I get to test the strengths and weaknesses of my physical self. But it's my spiritual and mental state that makes the difference.

Maybe I need a return trip to the Mind Eraser. 

Reunion time Down South

Traveled to Florida for Chris's high school reunion. Not exactly her reunion but her sister Ellen's, who was just one year behind Chris as a member in good standing of the Seabreeze High School Fighting Sandcrabs. Sandcrabs can be particularly feisty when males fight each other during mating season and when attacked by predators. Humans feel the crab's pinch when they step on gnarly crustaceans while strolling through the surf.

We met mostly congenial Crabs at the reunion at the Hilton, the convention hotel directly across from the Daytona Beach Ocean Center. The convention center and hotel are new additions since these 18-year-olds graduated in 1976. Their name badges featured their photo in the bicentennial annual. The guys were longhairs, many of them surfers. Seabreeze sits a half block from the beach. If the surf was up, well, attendance was down. The school district built a fence to pen in surfing youth, especially since a McDonald's was en route to salt water. Fences are made to be climbed or, on occasion, dismantled. Coaches served as border guards. One of Ellen's classmates told us how he and his pals handcuffed an unsuspecting football coach to the fence. They had to run laps the rest of the year, but the surf was worth it.

At reunions, people tell stories. Almost all are true, although they get reimagined over the years. While the classmates shared, I listened. Some of the guys knew my brother Pat, surfer and football player, class of '74. My sister Eileen was in the '76 class. And many of Chris's friends. They partied together in high school and shared a beachside house while attending the local community college. Even though Chris attended school with a bunch of heathens, she sang in Daybreak, a Catholic singing group. Her questionable singing skills led her to a spot in the back row jangling on the tambourine. 

Seems funny, but they were of a different generation. I was class of '69 at Father Lopez Catholic High School six miles from the beach. School named after the priest who accompanied Ponce De Leon to Florida. Our mascot -- the Fighting Green Waves. I wore a uniform to school. Green Wave coat and tie. Attended weekly mass. You skipped school at your peril. Sister Bernandita would be in your face the next day. Not your face, really, as she was four-foot-ten and barely reached my chest. She roared like a lion, Punishment could be severe. The nuns hit and punched us. The priests took out the paddles. Just a look from Sister Norbert could freeze a linebacker in his tracks. 

The Crabs had a different experience. Principal a drunk. Teachers lackadaisical -- and some dated students. Every night a party night. Students allegedly engaged in s-e-x, unlike their Catholic brethren and sistren.  

As the current Pope might say: Who am I to judge? Chris's sister and friends are amazing. Remember how confusing it was to be 16? Remember how important friends were? High school can be the best of times and/or the worst of times. The first half of the 1970s meant sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll. In the South, it also meant integration. The school had a riot, or at least va major disturbance. Blacks and whites treated each other with suspicion. Until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and slightly thereafter) Daytona was a sundowner town. African-Americans weren't allowed on the beachside after sundown without a work permit. To be there otherwise, you risked arrest or a beating or worse. Blacks lived on the other side of the bridge in the Second Avenue neighborhood adjacent to Bethune-Cookman College, a traditional African-American college founded by noted educator Mary McLeod Bethune.

Daytona has a lively history. The baseball stadium on City Island is called Jackie Robinson Ballpark or "The Jack." In 1946, Daytona Beach defied segregation laws and was the first Florida city to allow Robinson to play in public with his Brooklyn Dodgers farm team. Noted African-American author Zora Neale Hurston from nearby Eatonville wrote on her houseboat in Daytona. Stephen Crane spent a night in Daytona after he was shipwrecked while on his way to cover the Cuban dust-up in 1897. This was the genesis for Crane's much-anthologized story "The Open Boat." The now unknown Robert Wilder (only one of his books still in print) wrote a Hemingwayesque book about Daytona's early days entitled "God Has a Long Face." Walter M. Miller, Jr., the tormented and reclusive World War II veteran and author of "A Canticle for Leibowitz," committed suicide in Daytona. He announced his death in advance with a call to the police, telling them that there was a dead man in his front yard (thanks to Denny Bowden and his excellent blog Volusia History for this info). Fireball Roberts (see comments) and Dale Earnhardt both died in wrecks at Daytona International Speedway. NASCAR started with races on the hard-packed sand of the beach. Early stock-car racers refined their skills by outrunning "revenooers" in the Appalachian hills.

It's all about stories and relationships. Can't have one without the other.

Visiting a sick friend in the hospital

This afternoon, I visited a sick friend in the hospital.

I picked up a get-well-soon balloon along the way. My friend had knee replacement surgery, so she will get well soon, with the help of good hospital help, rehab, pain meds and some time off from her job. 

It wasn't easy finding my friend. The hospital lobby is under construction. Not-very-helpful signs point out the way to patient rooms. It took me awhile before I figured out "hospital access" with an arrow meant "go this way to find your sick friend." When I finally did, and located the information desk, I found a sign on the desk that read: "Be back in a few minutes."

My balloon and I found a seat. A nice gentleman came over and asked if he could help.

"I'm looking for a sick friend."

"Do you know what room she's in?"

I could have said, "If I knew which room she was in, my balloon and I wouldn't be there." Instead, I said, "No."

"The lady at the desk will be back in a few minutes," he said.

"I guess I'll wait."

I waited. Picked up the newspaper. Read a few lines. I looked up and saw my Syrian cardiologist. I stood, asked him how he was doing. He said fine. He asked me how I was. He had performed implant surgery on me last July. I was feeling fit as a fiddle.

"Fine," I said.

"You look good," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Visiting a sick friend," I replied. Then I added: "Better visiting a patient than being a patient."

"Yes," he said, gradually drawing away from me to resume his spot in the traffic flow. I waved farewell with my right arm, the opposite arm from the side of my implant. I thought I felt the machinery ticking away in its little pouch between my skin's layers.

I sat. The info desk woman returned. She asked if she could help me. I gave her the name of my sick friend. "Oh," she said with a nod, as if I was the umpteenth person to visit this person. She read off the room number. She told me to follow her to the elevators. I did. When I reached the fourth floor, I looked around for signs with the proper numbers, but they were all wrong. I must have looked confused because a nice middle-aged woman wearing a badge came to my rescue. I told her the room number. "Follow me," she said.

She led me to the opposite side of the fourth floor. She pointed at the room in the corner. "That's it," she said. I adjusted my balloon and made a beeline for the room. I was on the same floor where I rehabbed from my heart attack, the follow-up stent and, later, the implant. After my heart attack, I walked these halls with help from a nurse or from my wife Chris. I was weak as a kitten. Scared too. In the beginning, we walked one circuit. Later, I was able to do two or three. Now I could walk dozens, I suppose, if I felt like it. I'm a bit winded sometimes, and not running any marathons, but I do feel good. People sometimes comment that I look good. When they say this, I think that I must have looked horrid back in 2013. Sickly. Pale. Weak.

"You look good Mike."

"Thanks. You look good too."

I remember the looks on visitors' face that said, "Gosh, Mike, you look like shit."

I was too sick to argue.

I am closing in on my sick friend's room, balloon bobbing in my wake. A nurse precedes me into the room. She carries knee rehab equipment. I can see my friend's husband on the couch. I can see the foot of my friend's bed. I see the bedside table with its water bottle and high hopes. My balloon and I are inside the door and I say "Anybody home?"

She looks at me. Her look is slightly unfocused, but she looks good, she really does. And that's what I tell her, my sick friend in the hospital.

You look good.

How one small event can put things in perspective

Yesterday I was reminded of life’s important moments.

Chris and I attended a christening at the First United Methodist Church. Katherine Margaret Cotton, infant daughter of our friends Don and Karen Cotton, was baptized by Rev. Trudy. It was a few family members and some friends. Lots of photos.

Much of the liturgy was about water and its healing powers. There was no full immersion, or even a partial one. Much different from the Catholic ceremonies I’d witnessed, the ones we held for our two children. Just a touch of water and a few words on Saturday and the baptism was complete. All of us in the pews pledged that we would be there to look after Katie. And we will.

She was born in Cheyenne two months prematurely. Rushed to Denver Children’s Hospital via ambulance, her father at her side. Joined by mom two days later -- Chris and I ferried her to Children’s. It was less than a week before Christmas. I was frightened when I saw the tiny baby in the huge incubator. This three-pound girl was hooked up to an assortment of tubes and wires. But she was in good hands in a hospital ranked among the top five in the nation.

She and her parents were in Denver almost two months. Karen and Don stayed at the Ronald McDonald House (remember to donate next time you're at McD's). And now they’re all home.

Welcome home.

I’m sure that Karen will be sharing many photos in the coming weeks. She’s a writer and photographer, after all. And a proud mother.