An Unforgettable Journey

She took our food orders with care and precision, writing down each request, repeating them out loud to assure nothing would be amiss. This was a person fully prepared for her task.

When she had completed this assignment, she announced that while our repast was being prepared, she would be reading a story to the assembled. "A bold experiment" I thought.

The entire journey seemed to transpire in but a blink of an eye. First, our host  lined up kitchen chairs, one behind the next. We were invited to take our seats, she being the occupant at the very front. Then she counted backwards from ten, stopping at three and announcing "Up, up and away." Our flight mere seconds, before touching down at our destination.

Having deplaned, we were escorted into the adjoining room, where a hastily constructed pool looked suspiciously like a small blanket, and the ocean appeared to be in the guise of a towel. Our leader's mother waded into the water and then beckoned.  A shout of "are you ready" (apparently standard protocol in this circumstance) preceded a jump into waiting arms. The form flawless, the union between the two an unqualified triumph. Next, she demonstrated her unique swimming technique for our collective review and approval.

Dinner was served in what had formerly been considered the mud room. This was to be the last event of our journey, it being temporarily interrupted by the announcement from one of the guests that there were "five minutes before bath time."

With our trip concluded far, far too soon, the clock informing us that takeoff to bath had all occurred in but 45 minutes, we gave grateful thanks to the master of ceremonies for an unforgettable experience.

I made certain to book my next adventure at once.

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Holding on for Dear Life

44 years ago today, she and I exchanged I do's. To her everlasting credit she has. My story has a very different trajectory.

My first recollection of what has become the central theme of our marriage occurred on our honeymoon. I am certain there were earlier episodes, during our courtship, but these incidents were obscured in the fog of romance.

We sat on the freeway somewhere in California, our rental car disabled by a flat tire. As difficult as it may be for some of you to perceive, the concept of cell phones was not even incubating in 1977. Therefore, the wait for triple A was of uncertain breadth. Until then, one's own capacity had to suffice.

 "I have no idea how to change a tire", I announced to my already not so blushing bride. There was no shame in my comment, just a declaration of limitation. Trying to put this end of that foreign piece of equipment into the other, raise the car into the air, compel the nuts, or whatever they were called, off their perch, well I had a better chance of inventing the cell phone.

It should have been a warning, a shot across the bow. Retreat before it is too late.

Her curse is that she is as capable as I am not. She can perform any task put to her. Her mind works in logical sequence. Where I find gibberish in instructions, she can improve the manual, refine it so that even a simpleton could put A into B. Almost any simpleton.

When we first were wed, we resided in a small apartment. There, I could paper over some of my most glaring deficiencies. But not all of them.

I cannot cook. I cannot clean. I cannot change a lightbulb. These are not hyperboles. I mean I dare not turn on a stove without first alerting the fire department and confirming that no small children will be harmed in the making of this movie. Even in college, when my roommate and I were off the meal plan, he decided that, for his own welfare, he would do both the cooking and the cleaning of the dishes. And many a potato went to an early grave as my wife extracted the light bulb shards, lefty loosey, righty tidy proving too intricate a concept for my mind to grasp.

The sheer weight of my incompetence has proven very hard for some friends to bear. This, they have notified me, is an act borne not out of inability but inattention or worse, intent. But I am not that clever, not by half or even a quarter. What you see is, unfortunately, what you don't get. Or maybe what you do. That is not clear as to grammatical connotation.

Through it all, my beleaguered wife has persevered. Like Horton Hatches an Egg, she has been faithful 100 percent. Through the storm of my ineptitude, through the head shaking incapacity, through the seconds, the minutes, the endless monotony of being mother and father to virtually every issue that has erupted over 16,071 days and nights, through the bad, the worse and the ugly, she has been as solid as I have been full of holes.

This morning we were charged with the care of our not quite 3 year granddaughter, as she and we await the arrival of her 3 day old brother, as he escorts his mom and dad home from the hospital. Our granddaughter was working diligently on one of those square peg, round hole puzzles that looked to me as hard to decipher as a Rubik's cube. My wife gently walked our ward through the process until she had turned straw into gold. Meanwhile, I wondered how I had ever managed to graduate from pre-school.

My wife could have taken a different path all those years ago. Could have partnered with someone other than a person whose picture stands astride the word inept in Webster's. Could have not had her picture next to the tale of Sisyphus. Could have had two children instead of an unintended third.

To anyone who asks, I merely inform them that she gave up many years past. That she accepted her lot in life with a grace and dignity of which I am not deserving. That she has carried me around on her shoulders, up and down every mountain that we have climbed together. Correction, that she climbed, while I held on for dear life.

Dear life.

 

This Is America

"This is America..."

Never has reference to being physically situated in the land of the free and home of the brave been so fraught with negative connotation. 

And I know, as certain as night follows day, that whatever thoughts follow that opening volley, they will be filled to overflowing with sentiments I wish had never been spoken.

As the older gentleman stood at the reception desk, in animated disagreement with the requirement to complete an extensive questionnaire before being permitted to see the doctor, he added "they ask less questions at the border."

I did not witness this incident. It was merely reported to me, but my mind's eye saw it perfectly. Reference to this country being a window into a universe of prejudices and hatreds.

Like a house with far too many American flags dotting its landscape.

I am quite certain Francis Scott Key would be appalled at this distortion of who we were intended to be, at the desecration of the values he found so dear, at the hiding one's worst impulses inside a protective covering of "patriotic" fervor.

Maybe I overreact, take a leap too far to reach my conclusions. Maybe this gentleman was just having a bad morning, was just flustered in the moment, was not really the stereotype his three little words suggested. Maybe I should not judge a book by its first sentence.

And maybe Donald Trump is a moral, compassionate man.

This is America.

Indeed.

G.O.A.T. or goat

AN EDITED VERSION OF THIS POST IS SCHEDULED TO APPEAR IN LETTERS TO THE EDITOR IN THE BOSTON GLOBE

The sport was arguably the centerpiece of the Olympics, as least this year. And she was the centerpiece of the centerpiece. The bullseye.

She was omnipresent. She was omnipotent. She was the G.O.A.T. Maybe the G.O.A.T. of G.O.A.Ts. The one.

And as Simone Biles wobbled in the prelims, we understood she would dominate in the team finals. Until she didn't, the weight of expectations bringing her crashing back to earth, no longer soaring through the air, twisting and turning, but suddenly, incredibly human, a person exposed, filled with flaws and insecurities like you and me. Now merely twisting in the wind.

On the biggest stage, at the absolute apex of a uniquely remarkable career, there she stood and announced "no more". We did not believe. We did not understand. This did not compute.

The emotional strain greater than the physical capacity. The mind, not the body, failing.

This has been a year unlike any other, testing our collective mental fortitude in the face of relentless adversity. And these Olympics, the stands virtually empty, the support of a cheering crowd, of friends and family, nowhere to be found, athletes isolated and alone in ways none of us could ever have imagined, the toll unimaginable on many of those who toiled. None more so than Simone Biles.

Did she embellish her stature in defeat more than she could have in victory? To some, this seems an absurdity. For them, she merely cracked under the pressure. To others, Simone Biles exhibited a courage and grace unmatched on a field of sport.

Once and forever G.O.A.T or, at least in this moment, mere goat? 

The answer lies in the eye of the beholder.

Of Cats and Dogs

It may not have been coming down cats and dogs but it was way harder than kittens and puppies. When I raised my arm and the water dripped from stem to stern, I was officially soaked.

But, when in Rome, you know.

The golf course was, to my eyes, otherwise emptied of human activity. There was one group who had taken shelter nearby, their cart now housed in a space that was  intended merely for human protection. Otherwise, sanity had prevailed and the rain had washed away the thought of continued participation in this endeavor.

But my group included a Scot who found this weather as mother's milk. And our leader believed if you came to play this game, you stayed until your work was completed. At least that's what I imagine he would have said if I had asked him.

There was one member of our entourage who would not take yes for an answer. As the precipitation seemed ever crueler by the hole, our 90 year old companion finally waved the white flag of surrender on number 9. As he sped away to the waiting embrace of the clubhouse, the water poured off the bill of my fully waterlogged cap.

I thought I heard word of heading to the bar after 11 if the gods continued to mock our efforts with such intensity. I looked down at my fingertips and they appeared to be a I recalled them when I lingered too long in a bathtub as a child.. Trying to swing a golf club in this circumstance was like attempting to grasp a slithering snake. But somehow my efforts were rewarded, my scores reflective of far more welcoming environs. 

And then, by some minor miracle, as we headed to 10 green, the spigot was turned off and the strange sensation of relative calm prevailed. While my shorts now clung to me tighter than Mr. Trump's arms around the thought of being President and my shoes felt heavier than the weight of expectation for Simone Biles at the Olympics, I smiled internally for having persevered and at least registered a draw with Mother Nature.

Yet, she was not done with her tricks, the mosquitoes on the incoming holes appearing to me like a swarm of locusts, or at a minimum as Alfred Hitchcock presented those birds to Tippi Hedren..

When finally I staggered off 18, but one thought entered my mind. What time is tee off tomorrow?

SELF Storage

 ("You Can't Take It With You, But You Can Put It in Storage")

It is not self storage but SELF storage, retaining those items that are far more essential than necessary, far more a reminder of what has value than a statement of what is valuable, far more important for emotional comfort than physical well being.

These are pieces we retain or fear they are lost to us forever. The first drawing that looks like a drunken effort at making a circle, the first report card that forecast inevitable greatness, the first letter from summer camp and the next dozen for good measure.

If it were my decision, all of these items times a thousand would be carried with us in ever expanding volume until we traveled as Sisyphus from one venue to the next. But my wife is able to see that an item discarded is not a life thrown away, that the accumulation of stuff is not the same as the retention of memories, that creating clutter for clutter's sake leaves us no space for what lies ahead.

When we sold our house after spending nearly a quarter of a century acquiring and keeping, it was my wife who was able to separate wheat from chaff, to limit my attachment, to distinguish inconsequential from irreplaceable. You would be surprised to learn that your heart only breaks for the tiniest of moments when the third grade report on yesterday's trash becomes exactly that. 

Ultimately, bigger fit into smaller and, though many things were gone, nothing was really lost. 

In the final analysis, SELF storage comes from within, not from with out. For what we carry with us from place to place is located not in a basement, an attic, or a storage shed, but only in our heart.

Hide and Seek

My baby brother is playing hide and seek with me. 

He is hiding inside my mommy's belly.

He is good at hiding.

Sometimes I can see him moving inside Mommy's belly. He must be trying to find a new hiding place.

I think my brother is going to stop hiding soon.

I think one day soon he will be coming out to meet me.

And when that day comes I will give my baby brother a big hug.

And I will show him lots of other good places to hide.

Like in a closet. Or under a blanket. Or even behind the couch.

I think one day my baby brother and I will be able to play all kinds of games together. And take walks together. And eat ice cream together.

And maybe even hide together. 

Peripatetic

 Peripatetic.

One year in school we were introduced to a lot of new words. Many of these have traveled with me through the years, popping into my head at odd moments. Some making it appear I am more learned than the reality of who and what I turned out to be.

Peripatetic arrived in the front of my cranium late last evening. As I lay on a mattress on the floor of the home of my daughter and son in law. In the last four nights I found myself in overnight residence at an old friend's home, at my sister's and now here.

No, nothing is wrong. I have not been given the boot by my bride of nearly 44 years (at least as of this writing. Though given my 'idiot'syncracies, that does remain a distinct daily possibility).

Rather, circumstance has temporarily found us dislocated from our bedroom. No need to shed a tear, for soon enough this issue shall be fully remedied and we shall rest our heads easy in old familiar environs.

But for today, as I awake from nocturnal slumber (although slumber is hardly an appropriate term for my Jack in the box up and down nights) I must first recall in what room I reside and where the nearest bathroom can be found.

I graduated from high school more than half a century past. Mr. Glidden, the teacher in charge of making certain I crammed as much new language into my brain as my feeble mind had capacity, has surely long ago shucked off his mortal coil. And with each passing day I realize that more pieces of what was tenuously planted in my head  escapes, never to be heard from again.

But many of the words I carry with me from that year are still on our collective journey. And they have served me well in those rare moments when I call upon a term to fully describe my thoughts on topics as diverse as my once and forever Yankees, or the 45th President (I still can't wrap my head around that one) of the United States.

So while my ruminations are truly more "peripathetic" than profound, a well used word inserted here and there can turn the ordinary into something a cut above.

And, voila, I can create an entire piece centered around a single term that entered my lexicon as a young boy.

Words that hop with me from place to place.

Peripatetic.

Crime and Punishment

 ("Why We Hold Olympic Athletes to Such Ridiculous and Cruel Standards")

There is such evident pain in these competitions. Years of obsessive attention, of endless deprivations, of relentless pressure, all exploding in the slightest hiccup on a balance beam, in a twinge as a hamstring revolts down a final straightaway, in a million different ways that, in a blink of an eye, turn dreams into disaster.

And then there are the drug failures.

A career suddenly swallowed up by a burrito, an antidepressant, a missed test after an abortion, a hit of weed after a parent's death. If there is honesty to any of these defenses, the emotional agony these athletes endure must be overwhelming. If indeed they have not sought competitive advantage, and worse, if in fact their transgression has not produced an unintended edge, then their hearts must be broken, their anguish almost undescribable.

And when this happens to the best we have to offer, on the biggest stage, when the light will finally shine the brightest, when all the hard work will be on glorious display, then we mourn for their loss.

We do not know where the truth ends and the excuse begins for Sha'Carri Richardson and other athletes who endure these most public humiliations. But if their tales have even the possibility of reality, then we are left saddened and angered by the insanity of a system where the severity of the punishment bears no relation to the significance of the crime.

You're Damn Right I Ordered the Code Red

 ("Trump organization CFO expected in court after indictment")

"Tell me this is not all you've got."

While I might be butchering the Nicholson to Cruise line in "A Few Good Men", the sneering Nicholson's cynical quizzing of the young prosecutor trying to take him down seems sadly appropriate at this moment.

My God, can we do no better than beating up a Trump accountant for his personal tax indiscretions? 

Let us hope there is method to this madness. That this is but tightening the screws on a Mafia underling as they move ever closer to taking down the Don. Let us hope this is not but the beginning of a decades long odyssey that ends with a nonagenerian Trump still standing, still defiant, still avoiding his day of reckoning for a lifetime of unbridled wrongdoing.

Why is it so hard to find criminal activity by this man? 

Please tell me one day soon he will crack open like a pinata. That he will scream, wild eyed and ever belligerent, "You're damn right I ordered the Code Red."

If only life imitated art.