Gratitude, sadness, and mom

Good morning Mom! How’s it going? Have you had a meditation time already? I’m going to do one at 11:00 if you want to do yours at the same time. I’m going to aim for 10 minutes, but 5 would be okay too.

It is the first day. This Tuesday. A Tuesday. The only one that exists, while we wait for it to vanish. But it’s the Tuesday after last Friday, that day of operation and inauguration, when every lung seemed to be holding what breath it could, waiting to see if the unthinkable would continue to happen.

It did. President Trump. Jesus Christ, I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that. I fear I will. Trauma grown normal. And yes, the inauguration happened, followed by even more assault rifle spray of things to be upset about, from alternative facts to the ongoing competition for most unqualified cabinet pick (I have my “winner”).

But brutal circumstance gave me a different main memory for January 20, 2017, the day my mother had her heart surgery. She went in as scheduled, conscious sedation as discussed, and the surgeon did his thing as practiced thousands of times. It all went according to plan. Until it didn’t.

Bronze copy of Michelangelo's Pieta in the Grotto,
looking out over the Willamette River Valley.

The procedure failed. The problem was beyond their reach. I can’t imagine how it felt for my mother, when she came back to awareness and turned to ask the nurse “Did it work?”

How did it feel, when the nurse answered? “No. I’m sorry.”

I don’t want my mom to live forever. That would be a torture beyond reckoning. I just don’t want her to ever die. But here we are, confronted with the benevolent brutality that life ends. All of it. It’s a good thing in theory, but damn it sucks in practice.

But this is too dire. This personal talk of death. This national talk of dissolution. The future has its problems. Its ominous possibility. But today? Today the human spirit is strong. Love is strong. Stronger than doom. I love my mother. I still love my country. And on Saturday my mom brought smiles to everyone she met. And all across the nation the goodness in this country took to the streets to reject intolerance, to embrace support, to deny the divisiveness of a small-souled man who wants us to forget how much we love.

Unity in compassion and concern for each other. Such a beautiful sight. (NBC's photo)

My mom is wonderfully alive. Recovered from her surgery, she has many positive memories still to make. Some small changes can enhance that, and I’m not going to expect her to do them alone. Change doesn’t happen in isolation. Neither does democracy. So I’m going to join every day with a spirit of “What can I do today to foster the health and healing I want to see?”

It won’t solve every problem. No magician here, to polish the future to a paradise shine. But sure beats dwelling in gloom. Health, national or personal, doesn’t happen in an instant or in isolation. And in that interdependency, we are stronger.

Brothers gone Turkish

Apparently my brother and I used to fight like cats and dogs, squids and whales, birds and bullet trains, though I barely remember any of that. But we’re in a good patch lately, a streak of getting along that’s lasted about, oh, a quarter of a century or so. But through the demands of modern American life, where geography and occupation insert themselves like bossy uncles into the affairs of our days (or like bed bugs into a traveler’s sheets?), we haven’t actually spent much time together since Clinton left office.

Turkey's past, further past, and present

All of that’s about to change. On Monday morning I’ll head towards Turkey, and on Thursday my older brother will arrive in Istanbul. We’ll pitter patter around that most layered of cities, clicking cameras at ancient angles and trying to espy the currents of culture and history that flow through the streets, with their Byzantine memories and Alexandrian heritage. Or maybe we’ll just eat a (metric) shit ton of good Turkish food. That sounds alright too.

What will we do in Turkey, a land that hosts such a surplus of stupendous sites? That encompasses a mass of contradictions and a horde of cultural candy, with relics of ancient ages and promises of future delight? The plan is to do something that spans all of that. It has the potential to be amazing, the obligation to be beautiful, and the capacity to be excruciatingly uncomfortable. Will we roast and burn, freeze and blister, starve and devolve into animals prowling for sustenance and warmth, seeking survival on the fringes of communities we cannot touch? It’s possible.

Turkish countryside from last time, I'll see you soon

But in my present haze of excitement, trying futilely to leave expectations behind, I am going to leave things mysterious. So for right now, I’m focussing on the Family FeelGood current, which will flood out in diluvian splendor to a FeelGood April (unless we do that whole freezing and starving thing). Because travel to foreign shores is a well established love of mine, but to do it in the company of family? That’s a new version. A new perspective, and chance at clashes and harmony, growth and remembrance.

Looking across the Bosporus to Istanbul's Golden Horn

So I’ll be incommunicado for the rest of April. I hope you can connect and share this spring with your family and loved ones, and I look forward to hearing about it in May.

Wishing you lavish travels and familial fortune!

Finding gold in memory

We were looking for trees, and Columbia State Park had a positive feeling in my mind. We parked and went looking for the trailhead, but instead found old mining equipment, troughs of water, and the last departing crowds of running kids and smiling parents. This was not the forested park we were looking for, but something else unexpected slowly formed in the silted memory trough of my mind.

“My grandpa took me to a place like this...when I was a kid…” I told my lady, a bit distracted. I couldn’t stop looking at those twin troughs of descending water and mud, remembering dipping my pan into one just like those with my brother to one side and smiling grandfather nearby.

It wasn’t until we left, and were watching the birds that nest inside the bridge over an immense and empty canyon that I realized, or perhaps admitted, that that was the place my grandfather had taken us.

My grandfather was the most important man in the youngest years of my life, and that trip is a much more than a fleck of precious metal in my memory. The three of us drove up in his little Mazda truck, squeezed against the gear shift and stopping for hamburgers. We went to Calaveras Big Trees State Park, and couldn’t believe the size of the trees, leaving a nascent awareness of them as gods in my mind.

And we went to Columbia. We panned for gold, drank sarsaparilla in the general store, and my grandpa let us each buy a leather bull whip, which my mother never would have let us do. I remember the store owner said we couldn’t take them out of the bags while in town, since they would spook the horses, so we sat on a bench as the horse carts trotted past, peeking in at their coiled forms.

That was something like 25 years ago. And yesterday morning we went back, my third visit to Columbia, and walked on the streets where my grandfather had. The quaint facades were slashed with morning sun, and the chill in the air coexisted with fresh-cooked pancakes and maple syrup outside the restaurant, which was not quite open yet.

We couldn’t stay, no time to pan for gold, but here in this season of family and gifts, that unexpected remembrance of that essential piece of my family was a gift I hold dear.