Friends, Now

When I count the number of people in my life who have been truly good friends, I get a very small number.

There were many casual friends from my old employer. I used to see them every workday. Some of them I had known for more than 20 years. After that long, I would have thought a few of them may well deserve to be included as my good friends now. Of course, I have not worked for nearly five years now, and I rarely, if ever, run into any of them. Of the entire bunch, there is only one I still consider a good friend.

Old high school friends have a similar fate. I knew many then, but not that many close ones. There are only a few left today. Most of them I only see on Facebook. I get friend requests at times and have to look the person up in my yearbooks to even see if I used to know them. Most of the time, I am surprised by who requests from my old class. I was not even aware that most of them knew who I was back then. I guess in a way, they are at least social media friends, although I do not think I could count on many to be there in need as a friend can and should be. One I count as one of my best friends from that time; I rarely see them, and we live in the same town now. Another one I see only every ten years or so if we both make it to the same reunion. Even though we see each other that rarely, we still have a lot in common in some ways. And I know I can always call on her in a time of need.  

Then, there was a really close friend whom I met shortly after I arrived in this area. If things had worked out a bit differently, she may have been more than a friend. But I was a bit late meeting her. By the time I arrived here, she was already destined to marry someone else. It turned out my time knowing her was very limited. This story may be written about later, but for now, I will just say that she was killed in an accident with a drunk driver. 

A few friends are linked to my relationship. If my divorce was any indication, I am not sure those really count as my friends, no matter how long I have known them. I know of no one who was a friend before my divorce in any way now.

I do have one male friend that I think I could count on, maybe two. But most of the friends I have now are women. Why? I am not sure. Guys just do not seem to keep in touch. Or maybe it is just not accepted that a guy could help out another guy in a time of need, say, for support in an emotional upheaval after some trauma. So you just do not think of them when it is time to ask.

One thing I have learned recently, though, is that friends are still out there to be found. Although I may have stopped looking for a while, the key to finding these people is to recognize they are there and to pay attention when you see them. It may be as simple as that. And if you see a potential friend, try to not let the opportunity to get to know them slip away. Maybe there could be a reason for you to meet just at this precise instant of time. The universe may be trying to tell you something.

Short message from “Now”

I can hear the collective groans thinking that this will be yet another post about my childhood. I will give it a rest for a while. Truly, it is not easy to rehash events from my youth. At least you can skip the entries that are of no interest. I have to relive not only what is in the post, but also the other weird memories or just feelings associated with that time. The majority of the “Then” posts were originally written more than ten years ago, and I have tried not to re-read any of that since then. Putting them on this blog requires re-reading and editing. It really is easier to read this than to edit the entries to put them into this format.

Why is this hard right now? Well, there is just too much going on in my real life. I find I do not have the room in my head for the thoughts that relieving my past has conjured. Memory is the key. I know what all these memories did to me the first time I wrote this stuff down. Some of the memories were good. Some were unpleasant but necessary for the person I became later (in the now). I fear I may find a door that I would rather not open right now. I will get back to it when I can better sort out what matters and what I can skip.

Memories of Kindergarten Life

(I promise I will not tell about every year…)

At some point, I had to go to school. I seem to remember watching my brother and sister get ready for school in the past, so it was just accepted that this was the next stage of my life. I walked with them. They walked me to the door of my area, which was separated from the rest of the school, and they went on. I went in. I do not remember a lot about what we did. I remember show-and-tell, but I do not remember ever showing or telling anything. It would have been a bit boring for them, I think, to tell them I was related to kings and Mayflower passengers, but I would have if I had known. I remember playing with the other kids using what the teachers of that time thought were the things kids needed to help them learn to associate with others. I remember playing outside, and the chain-link fence separating us from the big kids. I remember sitting against a wall in the sun, eating my snack, usually pieces of apple my mom had cut up for me, surrounded by the others, all with whatever their moms thought was best for their snack time. The apple pieces would be discolored a bit with age, but they were still good. There was a sewage treatment facility near enough that when the wind blew just hard enough, it would blow soap suds into the playground, like soft white tumbleweeds. I remember the air force base still being visible, but at a slightly different angle than from home. And at times, you could see the Nike missiles.

I guess for those under a certain age, that must not make a lot of sense. Anyone born after the mid to late 1960s would only be familiar with Nikes being the shoes they wear or want to wear. These were the kind of Nikes that used to be a part of our defense system- at least during the Cold War. As I grew older, I realized we were literally surrounded by these sites in the Bay Area. We could see one from my kindergarten playground, which must have been to the north near Hamilton Field. There is another one south of there, up on the hill between Santa Venetia and San Rafael. These bases were everywhere. I do remember seeing the missiles being raised for testing, or maybe they were just replacing older ones with the next new model that went further or did whatever they did a bit better. When we moved again, as I was starting first grade, the school I attended was adjacent to the main freeway. More Nikes. This time, on flatbed trucks being hauled to the bases so other kids could watch them being raised or lowered. Thankfully, I never saw one fired off for any reason, although when I was old enough to know what they were but too young to appreciate the purpose, I wanted to see one go off.

Back in kindergarten, I began to learn about life in new ways. It was not all fluffy white suds blowing into the schoolyard, or eating apples at snack time. There was serious stuff going on, like rest time. How weird is that? To be expected to rest lying on a mat, or with your head down on a table. This is not the first time I had to do what I was told without knowing why, and it will not be the last. But rest periods certainly did not last much beyond the first couple of years of schooling. I seem to remember being way past daily nap times at that point. Nowadays, I might see the value in doing it. Then, not so much.

I played house. I am not sure how often. But it is in there somewhere that I did it. This was complete with the fake miniature house. “I’ll be the mommy, you be the daddy.” How that came out, I can only wonder. That memory is not there. Hopefully, I would not have been emulating my father in any detailed way, or they would have thrown me out of school. Probably, I just stood there and did whatever the girl pretending to be the mommy told me to do, and wondered if going to school would always be so weird.

Early memories and clever hints of future events

My mom did not drive, so she had to walk to the grocery store and carry the groceries back. Since I was the youngest and not in school yet, she brought me along. I rode in a wagon alone on the way over. On the way back, I had a bag or two of groceries with me. I thought of the wagon as being for me, but I think it was more for her. At the time, I was happy just rolling along. I remember there was a pickle barrel in the store. I thought it must be full of pickles. Later, I was disappointed to find out that only a small part of it actually held any pickles. Not that I liked pickles, but I liked the idea of the pickle barrel being full of them. The store also had a butcher who cut the meat for you and ground the beef for hamburgers right in front of you. I remember seeing all this. At the time, it all seemed just the way it should be.

I remember a birthday at this house and a Christmas. The birthday is very vague. I got a model race car that my father had to put together. That was always fun. He did not have much patience for things that required instructions. Christmas became famous for the year we almost caught Santa in a Santa trap. The trap looked like a typical bear trap, but it was made of plastic. We set it into the fire grate in our fireplace, where Santa would be sure to step when he came down the chimney. In the morning, we went out to see the gifts, and there was a note from Santa scolding us for almost catching him. We knew it had to be real because a ripped scrap of red material was found in the trap’s jaws. He must not have been too mad since he left us presents anyway. Not that I remember what that consisted of at this point. My parents could be creative and fun once in a while. They just did not always know how to show that side of themselves to us.

Much later, before their divorce but after mine, they were living back in Utah. For some reason, they got the idea that we all would be coming out to see them for Christmas. They decorated the house like they used to, for our upcoming visit. They even got out some of our old childhood toys they were saving for their grandchildren and wrapped them to put under the tree. The problem is that none of us knew this was going on. I think my brother and sister were at least financially able to have made the trip if they had planned to, and could get the time off. I had the time off because I was not employed, but I had no way to get there. No money to do a bus or train, and no car in condition to make the trip. Thinking about them going to the trouble of decorating for this visit, they assumed at least one of us would make it, is a bit sad. But that is how things went sometimes. All those toys they had saved and carted around were intended for their grandchildren. All of that was eventually given to others or lost later, along with the home movies and a substantial collection of slides and other pictures of all of us growing up. All of it was gone; so much for boring my future kids with old images of daddy growing up. Not that I have kids, but if I did…  As a result, I do not have much from this part of my life to show anyone who is now important to me.

A job not wanted, revisited- Part two

Sunday, May 24, 2020

I woke up that morning and turned to face her as usual. She was wide awake.

“I didn’t want to wake you up, but I haven’t slept all night. I need you to take me to the hospital. Now . . .”

If you knew my wife, you would know that this was a major deal. She did not take hospital or doctor visits lightly, and telling me she needed to go to the hospital now was a serious matter.

I don’t remember if I even asked what was going on at that point. It was “Now.” The explanation would follow. I remember telling her only one thing, “You should have woken me.”

She had trouble getting her shoes on that morning. I had to help her. She also had trouble getting her legs into my car. She later admitted to me that she had been trying to hide the fact that she had pain in her lower legs. So, it wasn’t just the delay in diagnosing that was against her. Even though she knew what to do and what to avoid in her condition, she still hid important details from me.

A pulmonary embolism is a big deal, but it can be treated. We were assured that this one was small enough to require only a few days in the hospital, with a prescription for a blood thinner, and that treatment could be finished at home.

A couple of days into her hospitalization, the routine morning blood test showed that she had had a severe drop in red cells overnight. This was remedied by the infusion of two units of blood.

A CT scan later that day showed no major issue that could explain the blood loss. I don’t remember if anyone officially explained this loss to us. My thought now is that it was caused by capillary leak syndrome, which could also explain the cough she had for months.

Capillary leak syndrome is not generally thought to be associated with the type of cancer she had, nor is it generally thought to be associated with the types of chemotherapy she received over the years. But there was one common factor in all of this that I realized could be a suspect in this case. Each one of her chemotherapy rounds ended with a shot of a drug to jump-start her white blood cell production to boost her immune system, which is severely depleted following any chemotherapy.  

It was a commercial I saw on television for Neulasta. I recognized the name of the drug being advertised and listened to the possible side effects. This drug was linked to capillary leak syndrome.

Later that night, her pulmonary specialist called me to update her prognosis. He also told me of a conversation with her cancer doctor, who had told him that her “numbers” following her first chemotherapy against lymphoma were not good and that he thought there was a chance the lymphoma had gone to her brain, which would require a spinal tap to verify. The bottom line was that they could not continue to treat her for the blood clot and that the odds were against being able to continue lymphoma treatment either, especially now that her embolism could not be treated.

After I hung up from that call, I cried.  

I cried, and then I screamed. And I cried some more. It was not to be a night for sleep.

Instead, I emailed a good friend with whom I had been sharing my wife’s updates, and later, reading her response to this particular update, I cried some more.  

In the end, it was over very quickly.

She did make it home again, at least long enough to see our cat one last time and for me to clean up her hair, which had become matted during her hospital stay. I remember that her hair was the thing she was most worried about regarding her chemo treatments. She wasn’t concerned about the chemo. She didn’t want to lose her hair.

She fell that first morning back home and ended up in the hospital again. I tried to lessen the impact of her fall, but was unsuccessful. After a few days at the acute care hospital, she was transferred to a rehab hospital. The plan now was to get her strong enough to maneuver around the house with minimal risk to herself. And just maybe her cancer doctor had a plan to check into possible lymphoma in her brain.

She worked on her rehab for a while and seemed to be in better spirits. But the pulmonary embolism was impacting her blood oxygen levels and making her heart race to unsustainable levels. On top of that, her neck lymph nodes were getting larger.

And the amount of time she was lucid was diminishing daily.

At that time, she was lucid enough to recognize me and talk briefly; she told me she was sorry I had to do so much now and that she couldn’t help me anymore. I held her hand and tried to smile as I told her not to worry, that I would be OK. I saw recognition in her eyes that she understood what I was saying. I hoped that I would have more time to get into this, but she was already dropping back into that less aware state. Maybe later… Later came around 2 am the next morning.  

She was gone.

A job not wanted, revisited- Part one

Sunday, May 24, 2020

I have put off writing this post long enough.

In early 2013, my wife had successfully finished her last round of chemotherapy for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. We were told that she should not worry about CLL, even though her mother had died from this. No, we were told that CLL would not kill her.

And, technically, that was correct.

In the end, it was a combination of things.

In the summer of 2018, she told me the lymph node in the side of her neck was growing in size again, much faster than it had previously. And that it felt different to her, this time. We called her doctor. He said not to worry, that her numbers were good last time, and just keep an eye on it.

Keeping an eye on it was easy enough to do at the rate it was growing.

We called again to ask for an earlier appointment. No, her doctor didn’t feel it was necessary. The appointment was only a couple of weeks off at this point; it should be OK.

We got a second opinion from her ear, nose, and throat specialist. He measured the lymph node and sent his report to her cancer doctor. Still, the appointment was not moved.

We got a third opinion from the ER doctor at the very hospital that housed the cancer center. The ER doctor spoke to the cancer doctor, and he told us that they had agreed to move the appointment up and to call the office on Monday morning.

Sometime over the weekend, he changed his mind. The appointment would not be rescheduled.

This became rather important later.

The morning of the appointment had finally arrived. November 8, 2018.

The morning appeared bright and sunny until we went out to my car to start the drive to the clinic. The details of this particular day are out there for anyone to look at, so I won’t go into those now. I will just say that we never got to the appointment.

And because most of the town where the cancer clinic was located was all but burned down that day, by the time her doctor had relocated and was taking patients again, a couple of months had elapsed. Even when they were taking patients again, it took another couple of months for the new diagnoses to be made.

This made it around 4-5 months from the time she noticed the enlarged lymph node that felt different from other times, to lymphoma being diagnosed. I admit that this one fact still bothers me after all this time. Her doctor had been the one to emphasize the importance of communication about any changes in her lymph nodes or other related issues, and he ignored them when they were brought up. My therapist suggests that it is important to let this go. The early diagnosis of cancer is key to a better treatment outcome, but it may not have made a difference in this case. And even if it had, it can’t be changed now.

And considering my wife’s other issues, this probably is correct.    

She started the preparation for her new rounds of chemotherapy as soon as we could, once she had the new diagnosis. We were assured that this new diagnosis was a good thing, since they could cure lymphoma. We were told there was an 80% chance of a cure, and with the addition of stem cell infusion after the cancer was in remission, she would have new bone marrow to go with it. She never got there.

Halfway through the pause between first and second treatment, this plan for beating lymphoma ran into a snag.  

See- A job not wanted, revisited- Part two

Not a job wanted

The alarm clock is beeping. You were right, this month it really is darker than last. The reason for the alarm waking us up so early one week each month is never far from either of us, particularly for you. It is time to start the next cycle.

We dress, do a quick breakfast, and try to make things as “usual” as any other day. But I know how hard it is for you to think of anything being “usual” anymore.

The cats do not understand why it is still dark as I let them in for their breakfast. ‘The humans must be nuts,’ they must think. They eat, but things do not seem right to them either. They are up early, but they still cannot go outside until it gets a bit brighter.

They clearly do not understand us.

Driving up the hill again is beginning to feel like a commute. But this is not a job either of us would have wanted. This will be the fifth round of chemo. After this week, there will be only one more round left. By that time, it should really be dark during the drive to the clinic.

This next round will also be the last one for sure. And after that? Only time will tell. No one knows what will happen. All I know is that without this treatment, you might not be here now. As hard as it is for you to go through this, it seems to be helping. It is hard for you to believe that, though, as we drive up to the clinic this early in the morning. You still have to get through this week’s treatment before we get to the last round next month. You will make it to the last one, though. I was not always sure of that.

Getting older . . .

I will be the first to admit this. I am getting old. I see it and feel it every day. This is not so bad, really. I know it is inevitable and irreversible. I appear older than I actually am chronologically. Thinking back, this has always been the case. My voice deepened earlier than most other boys. I grew a beard earlier than most in my class. Appearing older than my age actually had some advantages back then.

When I was eighteen, I had a sixteen-year-old girlfriend. When we could afford it, we liked to go to The Magic Pan in Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco. We would order a dinner of crepes and a nice glass or two of white wine. I guess she also appeared older than she was. I did not abuse this ability to drink underage without being “carded.”  In fact, I only did it a couple of times with this one girlfriend. Maybe that time in the 1970s was just a bit more relaxed when it came to restaurants checking people’s driver’s licenses to see if they were of legal drinking age.

Now, nearing 60, my one-time red beard is close to white: OK, it is white. I still look older than I am and older than I feel most of the time. (But I have to admit that I am starting to feel as old as I look.)

Recently, I was out shopping for household groceries. I was in the checkout line of a natural food store in town. This nice-looking, younger woman was running the register. We chatted a bit as she entered my purchases into the system. She told me the total, and I ran my card to pay. Something about this seemed off. My total was less than what I had been predicting in my head. Outside, I quickly dug out the receipt. The entries looked right. Then I saw it. Down at the bottom of the receipt, I saw the words, “Senior discount applied- You saved this much money.”  What? Senior discount? She thinks I am a senior?

This was traumatic at first. Sure, I must be close to their senior discount criteria, and I know I have always looked older than I am. But do I look that old? My inner youth screamed in agony.

Now, when I go to that store, I try to remember which cashier thinks I am old enough to qualify for their senior discount. It is not much, but I find I want that discount. But I must be getting old. I can’t even remember which one of them gave me the discount, and that was only a few weeks ago.

Earliest Memories

The earliest event I am pretty sure I remember from my own life happened when I was around 4 years old. I remember being taken out of our house and being put into a boat. The water around us was brown. The boat was yellow with a black trim. I could see the tops of fences that were still above water. As a family, we had been flooded out of our home in an area where flooding was no longer supposed to happen. My family always figured this was not a real memory of mine, but a construction based on hearing stories about the flood in later years. I wonder about that because they do not remember the details I remember. They remember me as being upset that I could not stay in the house and play in the water with a toy boat. I wonder if I could construct the part about being taken out to safety. Why would I not build a memory of wanting to stay and play in the water, an event they told me about? Memory is a funny thing.

Shortly after that flood, we moved. This, I remember, and I am sure of it. I remember being in a dirty, beat-up pick-up truck. We are driving along an unpaved road. It is smooth, but dirt nonetheless. There are houses on either side. We stop at one. I do not remember knowing what was going on yet, but that house was the next one my family moved into, in an area called Santa Venetia, in Marin County, California. I have seen pictures of this later, but they were in black and white. My memories are in color. The houses were newly built. No lawns in front. No trees. The street was not only unpaved but also ended just down from our house, blocked by a barrier.

On the other side of the barrier, open space stretched all the way to Hamilton Air Force Base. The field was largely unexplored by me in my short time at that house. I remember being in it to fly kites, and just a short distance to explore the things a kid of 5-6 would want to explore. But, frankly, I am not sure I would have wanted to go much further. Maybe this was due to my lack of understanding of distances. That Air Force Base I know now was at least seven miles away. It has since been closed. At the time, though, it was very active, and I think I was afraid of getting too close to it- like a five-year-old kid could walk seven miles through a field, and wander into a sealed-off military area. The bigger kids in the area went farther out. But, I knew I was not old enough to go where they went, yet. So, I watched the planes doing touch-and-go landing practice, not knowing what that was at the time. It was just fun to watch them take off, fly around, and land again. I listened to the jet engines roaring in the distance. Why would you want to be closer anyway? It sounded like they were already too close. Pilots would fly from the airbase over our neighborhood, providing endless hours of fun for a kid. Sometimes they would waggle their wings, making us think they were waving to us. I would wave back. I doubt they saw me.  

Who I am and where I came from

If you do an internet search for my name, you will get many results for listings of people who share my name. Some may even be related to me. There is an actor, a writer, a photographer, a painter, an equestrian specialist, a bass player for a jazz quintet, and many others, all sharing my name. I am not any of those people, but I could have done some of the things they have done in their lives.  I have done nothing special yet. Well, not special in any way that would have made anyone recognize who I am.  If you look deeply enough in a Google search, you might find me; it appears I have at least one promising result returned for the SETI @ Home project. You probably know that they are searching for some indication of non-natural radio signals out in the rest of the cosmos. This was the first use of a project utilizing millions of individual computers connected by the internet to receive small data packets and transmit the findings back for further analysis after running a program to process the data. I also have a few hits on an internet hybrid car group. No cure for a disease. No million-dollar lottery win that was then given to charity, yet anyway. I am no one in particular. But it occurs to me that, even though you do not know me, I still have a story.

I was born towards the end of what has become known as “the baby-boomer” generation. It was the Cold War. The words “Under God” had just been added to the Pledge of Allegiance. There was a Communist under every bed. No doubt Soviet Nukes were targeting every major city in the United States, perhaps even where I now live. And we, no doubt, had just as many – or more- targeting them: I know there was a ballistic missile silo near here, but it was decommissioned before coming online. Of course, at that point, I knew nothing about any of those things that were a part of what would become my early life.

There were some in my family long ago who were of note. Evidently, my genealogy goes back to the first Plantagenet King, Henry II, and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and, before that, to William the Conqueror. Hey, I do not know for sure. It is in the book of my family roots, researched by my great-aunt, who had done similar projects before. She sounds very convinced that the evidence found in her research on this link is real, and I do not think that she would have stretched anything just to make it a better read for the few people who have the book. But, even if this part is not true, I am directly related to settlers in the New England area around 15 years after the Mayflower landed. The head of the family at that time was a minister (although not ordained). The early settlers needed a minister, and ordained ones were scarce, so they accepted him. He was granted some acreage in what is now Hingham, Massachusetts. A part of that land bears his name and is still shown in local history books. He was a mover and shaker in early American life. He went on to be an early settler in the community of Marblehead, Mass., served as a minister at the Old North Church there, and was involved in community affairs.

That same book shows that I am related to one of the original Mayflower passengers, Thomas Rogers, a signer of the Mayflower Compact. Although this is interesting if you are in my family, I am not sure what real value there is in this fact. At the time, any of these facts could have done me some good in early school years; things like “Show and Tell,” or, just as likely, report topics for school projects. I did not know anything about it then. All it is good for now is acceptance into the Mayflower Society, which charges an annual membership fee to maintain that status. I am not sure what else it is good for. They do give you an official plaque showing you are the real thing, after they verify the lineage that you researched and sent to them. Maybe they have a secret handshake, too. The information on the internet about the reasons you might want to join is a bit sketchy. Knowing it is true is good enough for me.

My father’s namesake was the first of the early New England ancestors to leave the area. Because he had a bad leg from polio, as the story goes, his family knew he would not make it as a farmer, so they encouraged him to cultivate his mind and attend high school, something that very few in those days could afford. He became a teacher and moved to the Illinois area, where he met his future wife, my link to the Mayflower. She was an older daughter in the family he was staying with. The family had invited him in, hoping that having a teacher living in the house would be a good influence on the children. He married the daughter and moved to Iowa, being among the first settlers to take advantage of President Lincoln’s loosening of the homestead laws. They went by covered wagon. I mention this for a couple of reasons. He is the ancestor that my father was named after. And he is the one I most resemble in the few pictures that exist of my early ancestors.