New Leashes on Life - A Fundraiser for Kat

I've been remiss in posting, taking a little longer than expected to recover from hospitalization for the Type A flu that set up base camp in my lungs. Some complications came up in my blood work which showed concerning low levels of white and red blood cells, hemoglobin and iron.   I don't have any other symptoms of a serious blood disorder  such as bruising, weight loss (yeah right), etc., so it might all be flu related, autoimmune, or just side effects of the low iron (I've been prone to anemia since childhood) but they are going to do a bone marrow biopsy this week.

I've just put it in God's hands at this point   But it's given me a lot to think about.  About how very fragile we all are, and how quickly the sand in our personal hourglass heads south.  I think of those around me battling their own health issues, Ed B., Stormdrane, Kelly Grayson, and now my young friend Katherine A. (gunwriter and blogger Kat Hel) who is scheduled for a double mastecomy in a week due a sudden diagnosis of cancer.  I was able to send a few dollars to

• Kat's Defense Fund which I hope you all can do as well, as this young married Mom of two can really use the help.  
• Reminders of what riches some of us have, even if fleeting.  

I remember back to my Mom's last days - I was pretty young when we lost her to cancer, but not so young I don't remember.  I recall those last conversations where she was talking to me but her eyes were fixed elsewhere like she was already somewhere else, waiting for something else.  Her voice was in her room, her form, but she was already gone, already beneath and beyond the knowledge of this earth.

I don't remember what she said, only the tear on her cheek as she was not ready to take that step out.

She was 10 years younger than I am now.

I still think of her, of my Stepmom, of my brother and stepbrother and my Dad, gone now. I think of them as I walk near the railroad tracks by our home. I walk early in the day or just at dusk on days Partner is on the road.  The traffic is quieter and you can still hear the earth breathe if you listen carefully, as if it just came out from under the ether and it's not yet aware it's awake, or what that awakening will bring.  I see small insects on small pools of water that formed from the last storm, not in the air, and not underwater, simply skimming the surface caught between those two points, fixed in time.

As the sun comes up, the river that winds through our village gleams in the mirrored blaze of a new day, the trestle across it a black arch from which soon the trains will rush past as people go into the city for the day's toil. I hear the rumble of the first train, my signal that it's time to head for home, the sudden sound a startling suggestion that time is rushing past, iron and will hopefully keeping us moving forward.

This day?  This day is a gift.  Even in all of the times in the air in which I came close to ending my day in something that would not buff out, I never had the sense of mortality that I carry now, that I may carry now for the rest of my days.  I think of the little plaque my Dad had on the wall of his home as things were taken down for the sale "This is the day the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it."  I used to read that with all the imperial dismissal of youth and think "that's all good Dad but what about next week or next year?"

Sunny D. Lab is home, at her rambuctious age, I leave walking her up to a young lady from our village who takes her out between playtime romps with "mom" in the back yard.  But I remember walking the much more docile Lorelei, who used to join me.  When we first adopted her I felt like we had the only agoraphobic dog on the planet.  She was terrified of leaving the property, even on a leash.  She'd lived six years in a small pen in a building with a single light bulb for light, having litter after litter of purebred puppies.  When she could no longer bear puppies, she was not retired to a warm, loving home, but surrendered to a shelter, a small blessing considering other alternatives that such dogs face.  

She didn't know what sun was, or grass, or playtime. She only knew what it was like to be inarticulate and dispensable. She learned sun and grass and play pretty quickly.  Walking on the leash away from the house took a few more months as she learned to trust and explore. It wasn't long before she was running ahead, little clouds of yellow Lab floof in her wake, joyous in the sweet, consoling victory that is freedom.  When her arthritis kicked in when she was about 10, Partner built her a motorized escalator up the steep steps into the house, so she could still enjoy her yard time.  A winch, some lumber, and a weekend of work and she was the happiest dog on the planet, riding it up and down to freedom into her final days with us.

Twelve years ago I wrote the Book of Barkley, having learned much of life through the eyes of a dog (though I still shake my head at the negative book review because "it wasn't about a talking dog!").  I'm still learning.  I've learned to be strong, not as men are strong because they have neither doubt nor hope, but because I have both.  Doubt enough to know how precious is each breath, and hope that keeps me headed towards the light.

The earth takes one last bite of the sun's rim as it ascends, and I break for the trail like a covey of quail flushed from hiding.  I treat each day as if it is my last now,  as one just never knows.  I hurry home on legs that have stumbled and found strength again, galloping through avatars that mark the stockpile of time, eyes on the horizon that calls like a brandished saber.  I near home, my somewhat tattered old red shirt my personal shot-torn flag that marks my passage as I round the last bend in the road before my destination.

I was released from the hospital 67 years ago, born not yet to remember what life would bestow.  This time, I came home from the hospital born to remember what my life has been before and what a gift each adition day is.  Our own bodies are unfaithful to themselves, the earth, and the heavens sometimes it seems, obvious to our desires. Too many of us lately have left us and too many are fighting to stay.  Too many people have gone from this world seemingly forgotten.  Except for those who still believe the promise, confess the faith, and remember all that is worth remembering. 

This is the day. . .

Tracks of Black and White

I carved our names upon a tree
simple words marked a plaintive plea
The text incised on darkened wood
with trembling hand as best I could
But in so writing tears would fall
for the bark's surface was far too small
Still my hand etched away in vain
with faith that it would be seen again
hope that these small woundings of a stem
might speak to someone who passed by them
I hope they see past the mark or stain
to small etched cuts of the heart that remains
Brigid 

Did you ever cut your initials into a tree? (and no, it's not a great idea tree-wise). Or etch the name of a secret crush back in school days, absently in a journal, not being able to think much beyond the words that made up the name of your beloved?

Short words are easy. It's the long strings of words that can break us, or make us. In the middle of a presentation today I had a blank moment and what came to me was "I lost my train of thought".

Where did that expression come from? Though we use it for everything from absentmindedness to excusing our disjointed ramblings by its loss, it was elaborated four hundred years ago by Thomas Hobbes in a somewhat different meaning:

By Consequence, or train of thoughts,

I understand that succession of one thought to another which is called,

to distinguish it from discourse in words,

mental discourse.
When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever,

his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be.

Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently.

Hobbes was quite the thinker, probably why Bill Watterson chose the name for his sardonic tiger in my favorite comic strip.

My personal lumbering boxcars of thought, speeding on through this railway station we call the Internet, is fueled by very early mornings, and a couple of cups of coffee, needed to get me moving as my days often start well before sun has risen.


Train of thought. The term just doesn't seem to fit our new age, when abundant discourse is sent forth in the click of a mouse, words and and ideas flirting between computer terminals in nanoseconds, with voluminous paragraphs abbreviated to simple text messages. In an age where entire freight cars of words are reduced to tiny particles of matter, the term "train of thought" seems to be a disappearing trail of smoke in our vocabulary. Sonnets and poetry reduced to . ;-) and "luv ya" in our rush to our next appointment. People spend hours each day texting and twittering without as much as a spoken word to someone they care about. If Hobbes were given a blackberry instead of a quill, would he have written Leviathan?

Log trains passed behind my house when I was a child. Passed down through the forested hills where we romped, grew up, fell in love and carved our names on trees. As they traveled down those hills towards the timber mills at night, their path would cut shadows across our neighborhood. I remember as a small child how the sound would intensify as my Dad would read to me at bedtime, as shadows would slide over the wall above my bed, over the model boats and planes and trains my brother and I played with. And with the shadow came one of the first sounds of my memory, the mournful wail of a train, competing with my Dad for sound, so he would speak louder and more clearly, forcefully driving each word outward, the phrases connected and intact and uninterrupted and in that moment I discovered my love for words. And for trains.

In daytime we'd ride our bikes along the tracks, looking for diesel smoke in cold air, throbbing engines, hoping for a quick glimpse. The yard at the timber mill had more than one track running into it, and as two trains would arrive, you'd hold your breath in fear of a collision, only to have one veer off and stop, while a long line of cars safely passed. I think of the missing man formation, in which a squadron of fighter planes performs a low pass, one separating and flying off to the heavens. A ballet of mighty machinery.

I'd memorize the names on the cars going by, forming the words in my mouth while smelling the fresh smell of wood going into the paper mill. So many cars, so many words. Each leaving a memory, branding my thoughts with its impression, burning into my head with the sunlight streaming through the slats. Carrying it's load of mighty trees fallen to make paper for which the words will one day affix themselves. Paper clean and bare with promise.

Behind my house, a new train, miles of unexplored tracks to walk, tracks crossing across the landscape of this new life, when viewed from the air, almost forming letters, writing of new adventures. A poem composed of ancient ties and abandoned depots, a sad lament to the forgotten forms of old trains, to lost thoughts and the art of speaking in deep clear sentences, now reduced to emoticons and abbreviated texts. How do you reduce your feelings to 3 or four letters, and quick clips of syllables that mean so little? Words sent through space, silently with no weight.


My Dad hasn't read to me at night in decades but until his death at 101, he regularly sent me letters, real letters, though his household had email and a cell phone. The letters were written in clear, flowing script that belied his years and in which he talked with steady and unflinching repose, of watching all his friends pass on, of navigating life in a body that aged long before his mind. He wriote of the family and of his days of laughter and prayer, words of humor, of inspiration, of compelling faith. Sheets of paper that for years have charted a course for me through adulthood. Sheets that lie carefully tended, fragrant and dry in a drawer, where I will treasure them now that he's gone, abiding strength still radiating from his descriptions of love and loss, the papers having a weight to them of his life. A weight that will keep me anchored.

How do you do that with a text message, how do you convey such feelings of family in a smiley? How do you explain what it feels to live, to breathe, to love, to fly, in a twitter message? For those thoughts make up boxcar after boxcar of the steady motion of thought, sturdy boxes of space and time, their spaces containing the heavy load of lust and longing, pride, fear and desire. A train barrelling forward in steady progressions as moving clouds fly overhead and shafts of sunlight peer through sliding cars, into their depth. As others transmit through satellites and space, I watch the landscape from the viewpoint of the train. Structures of iron lace, the suddenness of buildings, clouds of morning mist all crossing my line of sight, my muscles straining with the curves through corn shrouded fields, moving with the train, thundering through empty fields of past loss into meadows washed with light. I rush into the rain as the cars gain speed, waters cleansing the windows on which I look out on life. I hurl words into the darkness of an upcoming tunnel and wait for their echo back.


Train of thought rushing on. Life viewed as a passing landscape in which I live in the midst yet best write about it only as it has passed my window, a memory behind me trailing in the smoke of the engine. I don't have a Smart Phone.  I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to do a "Tik Tok" video.  Only on rare occassion do I text. I journal and I blog. I blog for me, to release words that need to come out at the end of the day. The stories may be too long to catch the interest of the masses looking for quick, short entertainment, of which there is plenty among the white noise of the Internet. My communications outside of here as well are lengthy strings of words, heartfelt messages splayed out on paper, their sincerity driving their movement, under my pen, the words stringing out behind me. Sometimes I hit send, somethings they just stay, hesitant to go beyond the confines of my longing.

But the words will always will be my own, the track they follow a mystery until that next bend is rounded. Words composed of past journeys on ancient rails, washed clean by wind and rain, and tempered by time. A story written to the mournful sound of a train whistle echoing through abandoned dreams and ancient memories, waiting for the echo of my words.

Saving Daylight

Rise and Shine.

Daylight saving time is still messing with my internal clock.  Thirty years ago, I could put in a 14-hour duty day flying, walk off the airplane at 11 p.m., and be back in the cockpit at 7 a.m. (the time spent getting to and from the hotel did not count as your legal "rest" back in the day).  I'd do that over and over, getting the occasional whopping 10 hours of rest in there to be legal, and still be bright and chipper.

Now, the only chipper I can conjure up is the wood variety I'd like to lob the alarm clock into just to hear it ground into bits.

Getting up early was even easier as a child. In Summer, we'd fling ourselves out of bed at the first rustle of a cereal box, eager to see who could get the prize out first.  Actually, the day the box arrived home, I would carefully slit open the bag, extrapolate the prize, examine it carefully, then carefully suture the bag and leave it for my brother, who then spent the rest of the prize-less day attempting to blow me up with water filled missiles (which said something about both our later career choices).

As soon as we were fed, out the door we went for a day of play, running so fast that we'd not feel the hot cement on our bare feet, cooling off only with the garden hose. It was probably just as well we didn't yet realize that 20 years later, we'd be running after something so hard we never felt it burn us.

Now, I'm spoiled, starting my day early for the most part because I want to. I've come to enjoy that quiet time before the city fully awakes when the sun rises over the waves that splash upon the shore of Lake Michigan with the lightness of youth, then vanish with grace and little resistance on the shore. It's those moments upon the shore, early in the day, that remind me of the ocean of my childhood, when I realized how much the water could bring and had yet to realize all it could take away. Some days, I'll have a couple of hours to myself before making a phone call for some consulting work, time to wander and dream, write, or bake a loaf of bread. On other days, I hit the ground running like a dog hot on the trail of a squirrel, eager for the chase. Each kind of day makes me appreciate the other.

There is a marked difference between getting up early because you want to and because you HAVE to. 

Getting up at 3:00 a.m. to ride a boat across the Columbia River Bar (which makes the Toutatis (Parc Astérix) roller coaster look like a stroll) to fish for salmon? No problem. Up at 4 to set up in a tree blind so you are in place as the first rays of sun shine their dapple promise of light on a 12-point buck.  Love to!

But it's another thing when that alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. because I had an early morning Zoom call with the Transportation Secretary of Angria or something.  There was no sun, or even the promise of sun, just an intense dark blue, almost black, that is not a color but an entire absence of color.  The room was cold, and I'd open the window, but not only would that make it colder but it would make my room smell like dead autumn leaves after it rains.  

There had better be coffee. If it is decaffeinated, remember I have crime scene tape.

But if you are like me you do it, because it's what you do, it's what you are, someone that says they'll do something and will, someone that doesn't believe in others being responsible for your bills. You are someone who had any inclination of entitlement wiped off their face by parents who remembered what it was to go to bed hungry growing up. It's trusting in the Lord in all things and caring for others while still remembering Galatians 6:5. For each one should carry their own load. 

I remember a day in the field, in unseasonably warm temperatures, that stretched into days, only time for a fresh biohazard suit with a handful of what I still think were hamster pellets and a swallow of liquid before going out again. I remember shouting directions and orders, trying to keep my team safe, where at the end, I could only speak in a scratched whisper, like a violin of which all the strings save one were broken in a final crescendo that ended like a blow.

I remember stopping at the store late on the way home, for a bottle of wine that might help me obliterate the images in my head, when the clerk said something about "I hate working nights."  I just smiled, thinking that at least she didn't have to put her clothes aside at the end of the shift to be burned, as I went home to try and forget. 

 

After days like that, getting up early now, completely clearheaded and at peace, eating a warm scone in my office while I write a technical analysis of some evidence for an attorney is a piece of cake.  

Retire, everyone said - you can sleep in, you can be a "trophy wife" (at my age, I think I'm a "participation trophy" wife).  Retire yes, trophy wife, no.  I found out many years ago, when dating someone who was wildly successful, that I was just something pretty to be worn on his arm, like that watch that cost as much as my car, only to find that when the day was done, and the business contract signed, I could be removed just as easily at the end of the night.  No thanks.  I'm happy with a husband who works as hard as I do, who will get up at o' dark hundred to make the coffee, if need be, just as I am known to be up early to make him sandwiches and pack some homemade cookies from my secret stash for an unexpected road trip.  Because, after enough late days and early mornings in a lifetime, you realize what truly is important. It's not living long enough to forget; it's living long enough to remember fully.

When the alarm goes off tomorrow, and I wake to dark skies, I'll smile with the thought of the grace of another new day crashing upon the shore, if perhaps in just a while longer.  I may be God's child and occassionally someone's technical expert, but at heart, I'm a vagabond without a master, and for all I cannot control in this world, that snooze button is mine. 

Back in a few

EJ brought home a flu bug (one that apparently the "flu shot" didn't cover this season), and I got it, and had to go to the hospital with some breathing issues.  Spent most of the week there, getting treatment with a respiratory therapist and a bunch of other anti-flu drugs, and am home now, recovering nicely.  

As I was sitting in my hospital bed drinking the "Ensure" they gave me I thought "great, it's just because I'm old. . . ."  The nurse read my mind and said, "3 other people hospitalized with the same thing here this week were in their 30's.

I felt a little better.

But be watching, this particular strain of Type A Influenza goes into pneumonia very easily, and there have been several thousand deaths in the US already this year from it.  Personally, Covid for me was like any other head cold; this was nasty.

I'll be back in a week, taking some time away from the computer to just chill and recover.  - Brigid