Category Archives: Family

Family, Health

Jon

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Summer                                                             Summer Moon

Boy. Medicine. Trying to come to grips with Jon’s possible pulmonary hypertension. This is not a diagnosis you want. Even with advances, and they have been considerable, the fate of those with the disease have, to use Jon’s phrase, shortened horizons.

Just finished reading a 2006 article replete with medical shorthand, acronyms and formulas. I finally got it. This is a disease of the circulatory system of the lungs. Due to a variety of initial causes (and they are important in prognosis, but not diagnosis) the blood vessels in the lung become compromised, requiring increased pressure to push blood through them for its necessary oxygenation. The right ventricle of the heart pushes blood into the lung after it has been deoxygenated in its journey through the body. To produce the pressure required to pump the blood through the compromised lung circulatory system the right ventricle has to work harder (pump harder).

Due to the lung’s normally highly efficient circulatory system, the right ventricle has evolved a thinner wall than the left ventricle which pushes oxygenated blood through the body which requires greater pressure. As a result, when a diseased lung forces the thinner walled right ventricle to push harder, it eventually widens under the pressure, which makes its pumping less efficient, which makes it work even harder, which increases the dilation until the left ventricle becomes involved as the widened right impinges on it. This process defines the phrase vicious cycle. Then, at some point, the heart itself cannot produce enough pressure to effectively circulate the blood and heart failure ensues.

Treatment regimens are complex, only a few aimed at the actual problem, the circulatory system of the lungs, and all of those drastic. The advanced therapies (I don’t understand this use of the term.) are all symptomatic, that is, they reduce the load on the right ventricle by dilating blood vessels and improving circulation within the lungs, for example, but they don’t go to the problem itself and therefore ultimately prove inadequate.

So much about survival depends on etiology and we don’t know that in Jon’s case. Yet. Nor do we know to a medical certainty that he has the disease. An echocardiogram on July 1st will provide more information though catheterization of the right ventricle to determine it’s health is the final diagnostic step.

We’ll proceed as a family, figuring out what we can do for each other.

Aging, Cinema and Television, Family, Feelings, Memories

A Hole

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Beltane                                                              Summer Moon

Sometimes these moments reach out, grab a part of you unexpectedly. Evoke a feeling long forgotten. In unusual places. Kate and I went to see How to Train Your Dragon 2, better than the first installment and worth seeing for any proud Scandinavian. It’s a touching story, dramatic and funny by turns with a quality of animation that shows how far we’ve come since Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker. If you have a kid in your life, see it. If you have a kid left in your heart, see it.

Here’s what got me. Spoiler alert. Hiccup, the lead character, a boy just grown into young manhood (since his youth in the first picture) meets a mystery figure who loves and helps dragons, just like he does. The surprise is that she’s his mother, thought dead. There was a scene where this animated mother reached out and hugged her 20 year old boy for the first time since he was in the cradle.

A sudden wave of longing swept over me. For a second it was my mother, met again, reaching her hand out, a hug, the smell of her hair. The feeling rose from somewhere long forgotten. To be hugged by my mother. I miss it. Still. At 67 and her having been dead for IMAG016150 years this October. It reminded me of the hole I’ve lived around, never filled since her death and of the simple joys not possible for all those years.

It’s not regret nor nostalgia nor something I even wish for, just a hole, the hole that death leaves. And yet in its own way it was affirming. I loved my mother and I know she loved me. I know, if we found ourselves together, even over this long span of years, that she would hug me and caress my cheek. Kiss me. Tell me she was proud of me. That was her way. And, thankfully, I’m sure she would be proud of me.

 

Colorado, Family, The Move

Move Proud

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Beltane                                                                               Summer Moon

At our business meeting we look at cash flow, reserves, upcoming expenditures. We check our calendars and discuss mutual work like the garden, the orchard and now the move. We set some time aside next Friday for combing through items to send on to the SortTossPack consignment store. These meetings, first recommended by Ruth, a financial counselor, have become a key part of our marriage, about mutuality and forward thinking.

Kate’s clearing through the upstairs like a horde of locusts, sweeping everything before her. My movement through books and DVD’s has gone at a slower pace, but at a pace that will still see me done sometime this summer. Done, that is, with packing that which will be sold or donated. I will make, too, a good deal of progress on books and files that will be moved. Of course, some of the books will remain on the shelves because they are in current use.

We’re proud of ourselves because we’ve taken the move from idea to living reality in a matter of six weeks or so. A lot has gotten done already. And even more remains to be done. This house will be in the spring market for 2015, probably around March.

Dogs, Family, Garden, Latin, The Move, Translating Metamorphoses

Spray, Translate, Box

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Beltane                                                          Summer Moon

Sprayed the orchard again. I’m going to have this down by the end of the season with two a weeks in the orchard and once a week in the veggie garden. The rain and the International Ag Labs program (+ plus Bill Schmidt’s super juice that I applied last fall) have combined to give much of our garden big boosts. The collard greens, egg plants, cucumbers, beans, sugar snap peas, chard, beets, garlic and carrots have all exceeded their usual growth by this time of year. The tomatoes and peppers have been slowed down by the cooler weather and we’ve lost one of each. The onions don’t look bad, but they don’t look great either.

Got back on that equus. The next few verses after those that threw me were also tricky, but with the commentary I got through them. That felt very good.

Kate came up with an excellent idea, pack two boxes a day. If we each do it, that’s 28 boxes a week. And, in just two decades at that rate we’ll be ready to go. No, much earlier than that. By next spring, lord willin and the creek don’t rise.

Today I boxed up DVDs and surprised myself by finding several that I want to take along. More, though, thank god, that I could let go.

Mission crew commander Buckman-Ellis tells me that it’s looking bad for Kep coming to join him in Korea. The housing situation there is dormitory style until the dorms fill up, then you can go off base and, presumably, have a dog. That is, however, if the dorms fill up.

Fine with us. Kep has fit in with the locals.

Family

Vision

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Beltane                                                          Emergence Moon

When Kate was in high school, she was ready to graduate a year ahead of time. She had gotten agreement that she would take classes at nearby Iowa State. Then the school backed out of the agreement.

When she applied to medical school, she was told that her husband was already a doctor. Why did she want to be a doctor, too? She went anyway, studying in the early morning hours, so she could continue to be a wife and mother.

When she was the lead physician among pediatricians at the Allina Coon Rapids Clinic, she saw the need for evening hours, for pediatricians and family practice doctors working closely together. She saw the speed-ups underway with scheduling crowding appointment times and doctor visits measured by demeanor rather than medical results. She got angst and a bad back for her efforts.

She is a woman of vision, able to see, as the old testament prophets did, ahead. She was born just a few years before she could have been heard more clearly, yet she now has the satisfaction of looking back and being affirmed that her seeing was clear. I’m proud to be the husband of a woman who can see the horizon. And beyond.

Family, Feelings, Politics

Allowed?

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Beltane                                                                Emergence Moon

Kate and I drove on a blue highway, Minnesota Highway #10, from near our home here in Andover to Detroit Lakes, then, after the wedding turned around and drove back. Along the way, when I mentioned my driving “to get there a little faster,” Kate surprised me by saying, “Well, I’ve only recently been allowed to drive when we’re together.”

Allowed? This stubborn Norwegian woman, whose eyes have seen far ahead all of her life, further than life could take her, most of the time, felt the need to be allowed? That set me back and I knew it was true. As she’d pointed out a couple of years ago, I always drove. Never any question about it. And, as with most deep seated discriminatory impulses, her driving had never crossed my mind.

She drove to Denver a couple of years ago and reported that her back felt much better than when she rode. I said, “Well, you should drive then.” Guess that’s when she was allowed. This is not an easy thing for me to admit, since I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to eliminate discrimination, especially sexism and racism, in the institutions in which I’ve worked and the communities in which I’ve lived. But there it was, staring back at me from the driver’s seat.

I’ve gotten use to the passenger’s seat over the last year and a half or so. It was a transition and one I’m glad I’ve made. I can see more, enjoy the trips more. Shows you what you miss when you drive with blinders on.

 

Family, Garden, Great Work

Earth Bound

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Beltane                                                               Emergence Moon

That Kate and Charlie gardening team have begun another year of plant wrangling. Kate planted the herb spiral, cut a space so we can more easily harvest raspberries in the fall and mended the flower bed wounded by Rigel. Meanwhile tomatoes, peppers, chard, collard greens and ground cherries found themselves spots for the growing season.1000Kate and Charlie in Eden

There is nothing more literally grounding than planting.  We move the soil aside, add some nutrients and water. All the time we have to consider the type of plant, what it needs, how the soil is (though that process here is largely over) and what its requirements for sun are. Most vegetables need full sun and we had the big ash in the midst of our garden cut down last year to open up more areas of full sun.  A seed (its package) or a plant (its plastic container) leaves a temporary home for a place it can flourish, reach its optimum.

Caring for a garden together is so much like raising a family, caring for dogs. Nurture. It helps us stay in touch with our home and as a by product we get nutritious food. A pretty good deal.

Family, Health
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Beltane                                                                   Emergence Moon

A combination of back pain, percocet and melancholy has dulled the mind. It’s like thick gray wool packed in at the temples, crowding thought, squeezing it into channels too narrow. Concepts and ideas get clogged, adhere to each other, don’t come apart, so writing is more like picking cotton than fly fishing in a cold running stream. And, my fingers tremble a bit, unable to collect the bolls of thought, at least ones that might go together.

Hell might be such a state permanently in place, where the ideas and the concepts, the feelings are there, somewhere, but so difficult to access, to string together. It erodes the sense of self, makes character a matter of chance acquisition rather than moral choice.

This morning the gray wool packing has diminished, though the mixed metaphors here may not show it. The back’s better, though still stiff and painful. I can’t imagine Kate’s life where a certain amount of this pain never leaves her. The pain distracts me, at times it’s all I have energy for; yet, I know it will pass. For her, it is resident.

 

 

Family

Mothers

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Beltane                                                               Emergence Moon

Tomorrow is mother’s day. As we age, the number of mother’s around us multiplies. First, there’s your own mother. Then, there’s your wife (or  yourself) (and perhaps multiples). She (you) can be a mother. That’s the case for me. Plus Raeone. (ex-wife) And mother. Then your kids get married. And have kids. More mothers. No wonder Hallmark went for mother’s day.

As reader’s of this blog know, my mother’s been dead since 1964, 50 years. That’s a long time without a living mother. Still, the other mothers in my life make the celebration noteworthy. So, here’s to Kate, Jen, Barb, Raeone. Happy mother’s day all. And to Gertrude.

Family, Feelings, Friends, Poetry, Third Phase, Travel

Three Things

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Beltane                                                                         Emergence Moon

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.                                  Mary Oliver, Blackwater Woods

This life here. This land. These friends. The memories. All mortal. And I love them all. For forty years I have held this life, in its glad moments and its sad ones, against my bones, knowing I did depend on it. For twenty years I have held this land and the life here with Kate against my bones knowing I depended on both of them. For twenty-five plus years I have held the Woollies and Kate against my bones knowing my life depended on them. The dogs, too. Later, the docents, friends from the Sierra Club and elsewhere. All against my bones.

Now, and here is the gray cloud lying close to my mental ground, the ravens and the crows flying there, the catafalque. The weight. The heaviness. The mudstuck boots. Now, the time has come to let them go. All but Kate and the dogs.

No, of course there will be times. Times back here. Times together. Moments driving down the same streets, sitting in the same homes. But then as a visitor, a man from far away. No longer here. But there.

Mary says when the time comes, let them go. Yes. I’m doing that. She didn’t say anything about being glad. And I’m not. I’m sad in the deepest reaches of my bones. But, it is time, and I will let them all go.