Category Archives: Family

Aging, Family, Feelings, Health, Memories, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Here We Go

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Trash pickup. Significant rain yesterday and last night. Coolness. Kate’s reading. Right now, All the King’s Men. Her honesty. The deepening of our time together. Mutuality. More of that. Turbination. Money. CBE. Zoom. Lights. Electricity. Solar panels. My keyboard. The third phase.

Week I, vacation. Missing my workouts but staying true to my vacation. Putting up ten-year smoke detectors. Cleaning the oven. Going to the bank. Putting together a new laundry hamper with Kate. Cleaning the living room, the garage. Focused on domestic tasks.

But. There’s a flaw in the ointment. Kate reports feeling erased as I reorganize the kitchen, pick up more of the chores. That’s a strong word, I said. Well, we can’t do this if I’m not honest. I agree.

Mutuality is the key. She feels like she’s lost her partner role. I don’t. I see her pay the bills, fold the clothes, make masks, deal with her multiple medical issues. When I can’t figure out how to put up the smoke detector, she knows. When I need to know how to clean the oven, she knows. Her brilliant mind is intact and needed. By both of us.

Her grasp of medicine, which she wears lightly, makes our life so much less fraught. She can discern the serious from the don’t worry about it. Her honesty, which is a core quality for her, means no guessing.

Part of what’s happening is that the Lupron is gradually losing its grip on my hormones. That means I have more energy. Combine that with Kate’s big improvements: leakage fixed, stoma site healing, lung disease stable, stent in place. Relief and joy come more often.

As I feel better, I want to do more around the house. But that gives rise the being erased feelings in Kate. You can see the dilemma. Communication and thoughtfulness on both of our parts is necessary. Mutuality being the key.

Marriage. A pilgrimage. An ancientrail with ecstasy. And despair. Joy and fear. Anger and reconciliation. A pilgrimage toward the true holy grail, humanness. Still on the trail, backpack secure, walking stick in hand, cape wrapped round my shoulders. Here we go.

Commentary on Religion, Coronavirus, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Politics, US History

A Hard Place to Be

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Sunday gratefuls: My partner, Kate. Our sweet girl, Rigel. And, our good boy, Kepler. Kate’s stoma site looking better. The front yard, looking clean and foresty with the stumps gone. The backyard looking good, will look better before Labor Day. Window cleaners, gutter cleaners in August. Yeah. Rethinking our Covid life. Republican, Trumpian angst.

Every limbo boy and girl
All around the limbo world
Gonna do the limborock
All around the limbo clock
Jack be limbo, Jack be quick Chubby Checker, 1962

Remember the limbo? Wonder how we’d all do now? Those of us in the Boomer brigade. Would not be pretty, I imagine. Kate and I used this word today to name a source of sadness. Covid has put our lives in a limbo between then, PC, and, whenever, post-C dominance of life. Her illness puts our lives in limbo between our old life together and whatever happens next. In some ways the third phase is a limbo phase between the younger, active days of education, family, career, and that old scythe wielder in the black hoodie, death.

Limbo was an abode near hell, a permanent eternal home for the just who died before the birth of Jesus and those who died unbaptized. Limbo is the ablative form of limbus, or border. Reminded me of liminal. Comes from a Latin word that means threshold. On the threshold of hell lies a well-bordered realm for those who couldn’t fit into a medieval Roman Catholic understanding of theodicy.

Yes, that’ll do. We are, through no fault of our own, needing to stay at home, in limbo, our homes being the border between us and the hell of Covid. And the threshold, the liminal space, is a place now filled with danger and possibility.

The ancient Celts believed the liminal times of dawn and twilight were magical, the optimal time to work spells, to conduct rituals. Many religious traditions have waking up and going to bed prayers, rituals. Jews, for example pray in the morning to open the literal eye and the metaphorical one. Episcopalians pray at night: “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.”

Limbo is a tough place to be. Liminal spaces like dawn and twilight, or liminal places like an ocean beach or a lake’s shoreline, offer entrance to another world, one unlike the one we are currently in. At night, sleep. In day, wakefulness. On the beach land underneath us and oxygen in the air, in the water, water beneath us and oxygen trapped, for us, in its molecules.

What’s beyond the threshold of limbo? A Biden presidency? A world made safer with vaccines, good testing, and contact tracing? A healthier Kate, able to get around more the world? We just don’t know. We are not, however, unbaptized souls trapped in a metaphysical realm, but flesh and blood trapped in a disastrous political situation compounded with a pall created by plague.

We are souls in waiting. A hard, hard place to be.

Cooking, Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel

Needed

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Wednesday gratefuls: Mary’s recovery. Nasal polyp removal. Anitha, her bestie caring for her at home. Meeting with our financial advisor, RJ. Zoom. The health of our corpus. The three Earth countries sending visitors to Red Mars. Tianwen, Perseverance, Hope. China, USA, UAE. The night sky. Our stumpless front yard. Needing a break.

Want to set this burden down. For a bit. Need a vacation. A staycation. Something. Always on. Dogs. Kate. Cooking. House maintenance. Cleaning. Mail. Groceries. (Kate pays the bills.) Cars. Insurance. You know, all that domestic stuff. Work outs. Organizing stuff. Laundry. (Kate folds. Thank god.) My own health. Doctor visits. Imaging, hospitals, emergency rooms.

A bit whiny, maybe, but I do need a break. Of some kind. Not gonna happen either. No place to go, for one. Thanks, Covid. So even if putting the dogs at Bergen Bark Inn and Kate in respite care weren’t expensive and a hassle in itself (something more to organize), the virus makes travel unfun.

Having Seoah here was wonderful, of course. And, she did relieve the cooking and house cleaning. But not the overburden of responsibility.

Trying to figure out what I can do here on Shadow Mountain. Just crossed off workouts for a week and a half. I always go back, so that’s no danger. Problem with them is I moved them to mornings so I wouldn’t miss them so often. I used to work out around 4 pm. Too hot now. Plus cooking the evening meal. Other things. The move to mornings has worked well. I’m very regular with the exception of morning appointments out of the house.

But. Not getting any writing done, painting. Reading has shrunk to news and serious material like Art Green’s Human Narrative. Some pleasure reading in the evenings.

I want to finally finish, I’m oh so close, the loft. Then get back to writing and painting. I’ll take early morning hikes. Read some more fiction. Watch movies. I’ll buy takeout for the next week and a half, too. That should help. Ah, hell. I could take two weeks off from exercise. I might. Jump start a renewed Covid, stay-at-home life.

Yes. This sounds good. A respite. Needed.

Family, Feelings, Friends, Health, Third Phase

Blood test

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Tuesday gratefuls: PSA. PSA test. Prostate cancer. Life’s precious days. The Shofar. Pride. Sorrow. Will James. His proposal for the Trees too close to the house. Rick Standler who’s coming by this week to grind the stumps. Cleaning the garage. Finally. Gusting Wind. Clear, blue Sky over Black Mountain. Tree pollen. Sneezing. The fans here in the loft. Low humidity.

OK. Draw blood. Send it to the lab. Write down numbers. Post them. Send them to the oncologist. Weird to think that this process talks about cancer. About its presence or its likely absence. Quest labs. Makes it sound downright Arthurian, eh?

Each case of cancer has its quest. There is a dragon to slay. Trials to go through. Setbacks. Those who hinder and those who help. Obstacles. It is a test of will, too. Can you stay on your quest in spite of fear, pain, misery? Can you defeat the illusions, delusions, ghosts?

I suppose this is why so many obituaries start with he fought cancer. She was brave. Survivors writing what they hope will be their own virtues. The warfare analogy so common in the death notices is understandable, but far from adequate.

The medical care for cancer infantilizes as often as it ennobles. Toxic chemicals introduced into our whole body do their indiscriminate work. Get weak. Have hot flashes. No sex drive. Suffer bone loss. And that’s just me. Others. Our immune systems suppressed. Nauseated. Lose our hair.

Not victims. Humans who have a disease. Not victims. The knight on the quest can never be a victim. Cancer is, as doctors often say, bad luck. It’s deadly. Scary. As bad a dragon as you’re likely to face. Yes. All that.

But. To be a victim is to give cancer a victory it doesn’t deserve. We all die of something. I’ve come to think of that something as a friend as important as my mother. My mother gave me life. This life. Cancer or heart disease or old age will give me death. The most important punctuations for all of us: Life. Death.

Before death however, no matter how diseased or distracted, we are alive, here and now. I’ll die tomorrow. Yes, perhaps. Until then though we wake up, we cook, eat, wash dishes, hold hands. Look life in the face. Smile.

Family, Feelings, Friends, Health, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Ordinary Time

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Summer and the full Moon of Justice peaking over Black Mountain

Monday gratefuls: Seeing Jon, Ruth, Gabe. Rain. Cooling a hot day. Beau Jo’s pizza. Folks in masks in Evergreen. Simple Green. A good mop. Lysol and Tough wipes. Clean toilets and floors. The whole yard looking neater. Seoah closer to finishing quarantine. Old friends. Bringing joy. Being joyful. The moon this morning, full and half set behind Black Mountain when I got the paper. Our mountain life.

“All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither; deep roots are not reached by the frost.” J. R. R. TOLKIEN quoted in the INFP profile on 16personalities

On Sunday morning now I mop the floors and clean the toilets. Takes about an hour and a half. Feels good. More would not feel good. Kate dusts. Some stuff, like windows and the stainless appliances, get missed. We’re working on how to deal with that.

Seoah just did it. She’d mop, clean, hustle. I’m trying to continue the spirit in which she did these necessary chores. Working so far. I clean the kitchen each day. Load, unload the dishwasher, cook. With Seoah’s good energy as the backdrop.

Told the story yesterday to my old friends Bill, Tom, Mario, Paul about putting Kate’s feeding tube back in. First couple of times it popped out we went to the E.R. Once to the surgeon, Ed Smith. Now, I’ve done it twice. I care for her feeding tube site once a day or once every couple of days. Nurse Charlie.

Doing these things, plus getting all the pallets ready for collection and the lawn mowed have buoyed me. These are the chop wood, carry water equivalents for me right now. And doing them induces a meditative, here and now state.

Let’s hear it for ordinary time, not extraordinary time. These wild and precious days in which we spend the life gifted to us.

Anoka County, Colorado, Denver, Family, Friends, Holidays, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Park County, Politics, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Travel, US History

#244

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Saturday gratefuls: This country. These purple mountain majesties. The lakes of Minnesota. Lake Superior. Evergreen. Conifer. Shadow Mountain. The great plains, rippling wheat. Corn fields of Iowa. Lady Liberty. New York City. San Francisco. Puget Sound. The Colorado River. The Mississippi. The South. New England. The first lighters up there in Maine. Jambalaya. Gumbo. Devil’s Tower. El Capitan. Crater Lake. The Mackinac Bridge. Protests. Alexandria. Muncie. The Big Medicine Wheel. The sacred Black Hills. Cahokia. Carlsbad Caverns. Marfa. West Texas. From sea to shining sea. Haleakala. Waipio Valley. Waimea Canyon. Da Fish House. Denali. Kodiak. Salmon. Grizzly. Wolves. Lynx. Wolverines. An amazing country still.

244 years old. Lot of candles for that red white and blue cake. Hard times. Like the Civil War. The First World War. The Spanish Flu. The Depression. WWII. Yes, it’s been hard before. Will be again. We navigated the churning, stormy waters of all those. We can get through this one, too.

A canard? Maybe. Yet, I believe it’s so. Rising out of this fire may come a nation truer to its ideals. No more Trumps. Ever. No more easy white privilege. No more easy oppression of people of color, women, lbgt. A more just economic and medical system. If we do, the pain will have been worth it.

I love this country. From Route 66 to the hot dog shaped hot dog stand in Bailey. From Coney Island to Puget Sound. From the Minnesota angle to the bayous. It’s my home, my place, the spot on this earth to which I am native. It can be tarnished by the political class, but not erased.

Here are my friends, some of my family, the graves of my ancestors. Here are the roads I traveled as a young man, the streets and fields I played in as a child, houses in which I’ve lived, the cities I’ve loved and fought for. This is the land of memory.

Let’s celebrate #245 with a 46th President. And with 45 in jail or disgraced. Make it so.

Cinema and Television, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Friends, Mountains, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Good News

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Thursday gratefuls: Chuck roast fork tender in the Instapot. Yum. The stillness. Only the occasional car on Black Mountain Drive. Just us and the critters. Wild and domesticated. PSA next week. Kate’s ostomy nurse referral. Kep and the bone from the chuck roast. Rigel and the bone from the chuck roast. Kate’s voracious reading. Robertson Davies.

Doomscrolling. Covidiot. (thanks, Tom) Mask maker, mask maker, make me a mask. At home with the virus raging outside. Like a wild snowstorm blowing across Shadow Mountain. So quiet here.

Generation hide. They told us it would be bunkers, radiation hazards. They prepared us with duck and cover drills. (though, to be honest, I don’t remember any.) Pamphlets. Civil defense sirens. Those yellow and black icons of danger. Nope.

The biohazard sign, triplet open crescents over a circle. Duck and cover = masks. Bunkers = self-quarantine, but, at least above ground. No sirens, just daily updated charts of the infection curve. Never flattened here. Here, in the United States of America. Maybe we should duck and cover. In shame.

Mutually assured destruction now means all those freedumb loving libertytards who refuse to wear masks. Who refuse to believe the virus is real. Or, if it is real, they believe it’s germ warfare. God, our fellow citizens as intentional disease vectors. What….?

Our generation sits behind closed doors. Those books on the nightstand now read. Newspapers, for those ancient of days who still receive them. TV tuned to Netflix. As the bleeding edge of the Baby Boom, we’ve been in a high risk category for over 10 years. Now it counts.

Those who like good news can find a lot of it on television. Though I long ago stopped watching infotainment, the protests get covered. What a joy they are in this otherwise bleak time. Young people speaking their minds. Yes, something’s happening here. And this time, it’s very clear.

Coronavirus, Family, Travel

Citizens of the World

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Wednesday gratefuls: Denver Post delivery. Our short, flat driveway. The iris that bloomed. My fingers, which know where the keys are. Rigel, early this morning, looking at me still in bed. Day 7 in quarantine for Seoah. Feelings. Sadness about the failure of the United States. Failures. Words from Mario. Good words. The clan. Mary’s retirement day, yesterday. Wow.

Both sister Mary and brother Mark have lived out of the U.S. longer than they lived in it. Both reached this ex-pat milestone this year. Mary has lived in Singapore longer than she lived in our hometown of Alexandria. Mark lived longer in Bangkok than in Alexandria. Oh, the places you’ll go. A Shadow Mountain congratulations to both of them, true citizens of the world.

We’re a traveling family, though I’ve been a stay at home compared to my sibs. Two siblings who live so far away and have for so many years makes family a long distance relationship. Especially with mom and dad both dead. Glad they’re not here now in this virus ridden country, with a shabby would-be autocrat whose ties drag the ground. At least Singapore and Saudi Arabia have leaders.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Great Work, Health, Our Land and Home, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History, Weather +Climate

Que serait

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Tuesday gratefuls: Seoah in Singapore (and quarantine) 6 days. Rick, the stump grinder, reasonable prices. David and Ray not so much. But the lawn will get cut. Moving the pallets. Giving the log cutter tool to Derek. Kate’s idea. At more ease with cash. Work happening. The clan.

Venality, denial, racism, support for white supremacists, demeaning the disabled, grabbing pussies. And, now, the worst treason of all: ignoring Russian bounties on U.S. troops. Outrage seems far too mild a response. This man is, and has been from the start, not only unfit for office, but a radical dismantler of its authority. No wonder the world has shaken its head, laughed, then cringed. Beginning to move on from us. A world without us. America cannot take getting much greater. Too much winning.

United StatesOn June 2914-day changeTrend
New cases40,041+80%

This box from this morning’s NYT follows Covid 19. In the last two weeks Covid cases have jumped 80%! So much winning. This man has actively caused the deaths of thousands of U.S. citizens. Ignored a James Bond villain, Vladimir Putin, who authorized election tampering and pay for slay in Afghanistan against American soldiers. Not to mention tweeting positive utterances about white supremacists. No, not only the “good people on both sides” remark, but new ones. Including the pink shirted man and the barefooted woman holding guns on protesters outside their St. Louis mansion.

Who would rid us of this troublesome President?

On a more upbeat note I scheduled my third Lupron influenced PSA for July 7th. I see my oncologist, Dr. Eigner, on the 17th and Dr. Gilroy, who managed my radiation, on August 3rd. A year ago I was in the midst of the 5 day a week drives out to Lone Tree. Lying down on the altar of sacrifice, listening to the Band.

Nope, I don’t think about cancer much. Life goes on until it doesn’t. Freezers go bad. (ours continue to chug along for now) Yards need mowing. Seoah’s in Singapore. Wildfires are possible. The future’s not ours to see.

Meanwhile, carbon emissions.

Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Mussar, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel

One Day at a Time

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Wednesday gratefuls: Simplicity. Does this idea bring me joy? Kondoing my thinking. Maybe. MVP. Rich. Susan. Marilyn. Tara. Judy. Zoom. Covid’s forced introspection. What matters in our daily life? What doesn’t? Seoah between Narita and Singapore. Picture of her with mask and faceshield on the plane. Kate finding Kep’s hotspots. Sano. Going down, coming back up.

On Shadow Mountain. The Sun rising, Black Mountain lit. The Air still cool. All the promise of a new day. Each day is the only day in which you’ll ever live. We’re all one day old, every day. Each morning we can choose to continue old patterns, the remnants of other days, or we can choose new habits, new actions. Even new thoughts. Each day is New Year’s. Old Mother Time melted away last night and the infant wrapped in the sash titled TODAY has succeeded her.

What will you do with this one wild and precious day?

We’re taking Kep to the vet. He has several new hotspots that have shown up on his back. Not sure why, not sure what to do next. So, we’re calling in Dr. Palmini.

Kate’s spirits took a dive yesterday when she discovered Kep’s hotspots. Seoah’s gone. She can’t hug Ruth and Gabe. Her stomach acted up. All got to be too much. She’s resilient though. Look at how she’s handled the multiple insults to her body.

Seoah will touch down in Singapore today. Or, rather, tomorrow. The mysteries of the International Date Line. Her flight gets in just after midnight Singapore time.

First Wednesday with no Kabbalah class since January. School’s out. Teachers let the monkeys out. Gonna take a rest over the summer, then pick up the Kabbalah thread again in the fall.

Groveland U.U., the congregation I joined soon after I left the Presbyterian ministry, wrote me a note yesterday asking if I would do some presentations for them over Zoom. An unexpected pleasure, made possible by your friend the Coronavirus.

MVP (Mussar Vaad Practice Group) met last night. The middot (character trait) we discussed was simplicity. As I’ve mentioned here before, mussar involved identifying a character trait and then creating a practice for yourself that you can use to strengthen it. There are many different lists of soul traits, some exhaustive, some short.

Once you find the middot or middah (plural) on which you need to work, you’ve defined what the mussar teachers call a soul curriculum. Judaism is very clear on the journey. You’ll make mistakes, regress. What’s crucial is to not stop. That may sound zealous, but it’s not. It’s a recognition of our humanity.

My practice, if I should choose to accept it, is to ask what thoughts bring me joy. Not sure yet whether I like this. I created it, so I can change it, but it seems interesting. Just not sure whether joy is a good criteria for thoughts. Even so, it intrigues me. I’ll give it a go for a while, see where it leads.