Condominium

Natalie’s Prompt: What was on top of your daddy’s dresser? In the drawers?

When I was twelve or thirteen and living in Albuquerque, I remember walking into my parents’ bedroom early one morning before taking off for school. The two of them were still in bed, my mother asleep, my father just waking up. I don’t remember why I was in there, or what I needed to ask them, but I do remember looking down into the open drawer of my father’s nightstand and seeing a package of condoms. The package was open, but I can’t remember if there was also a used one in the drawer. My father saw me looking and very discreetly slid the drawer shut. Nothing was said.

My father never gave me “the talk.” You know, the one about where babies come from? But in a roundabout way, the moment served as a kind of confirmation of what I’d been told about “what-goes-where” by my big brother. I remember being kind of astounded that my parents actually did such a thing. At the time, 1959, my dad would have been around 50 years old, my mother only 42, so of course they were still doing it.

Naturally, the first thing I did after seeing the condoms was to dash off to school and blab about it to my little buddies.

Bun Mi, Popsicle, Sunscreen, Ear Fungus

Three minutes on each of these topics:  a lunch you loved, a memory of a popsicle, a memory of sunscreen, a memory of a doctor’s appointment.

Memory of a Lunch You Loved:  The New Saigon Vietnamese Bakery on Denver’s West side makes the best bun mi sandwiches this side of Ho Chi Minh City.  The bakery is attached to the New Saigon Restaurant.  Rumor has it that it was founded by the restaurant owner’s daughter, who allegedly went to Paris to learn the art of French bread making.  It’s the bread that makes her sandwiches extra special.  Unlike most places, her rolls have a crispy, flaky crust that’s a revelation to bight into and chew.

The other thing I love about her bakery is that she offers a vegetarian version of her iconic sandwich.  Honestly, you can’t tell the difference between her soy-based meat and the real thing.  Any time I’m on the West Side, I make it a point to go there and chow down.  The price is also a draw.  A bun mi sandwich will set you back a paltry five bucks.  Hey, what’s not to like?

Memory of a Popsicle: Okay, I’m not much of a Popsicle fan.  For one thing, I’m off sugar and have been for over a year now.  Popsicles are loaded with the stuff, so I can’t eat them.

Back when I was eating sugar, I used to make it a point to buy my Popsicles from those Mexican guys who pushed ice cream carts around the hood.  Their “paletas” were made of natural ingredients like almonds and fruit.  I haven’t seen any Mexican Popsicle vendors in several years, so I’m wondering if Trump’s anti-immigrant stance has blocked them from coming in.

A Memory of Sunscreen:  Back in 1957, my mother, and my two brothers and I took a train trip to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  We boarded a train in Albuquerque that took us down there via the Deep South.  At that point in time the country was still segregated, so the trip was a real eye-opener for me, all of ten years old and just learning about the world.  I was shocked to see that “colored people” were not allowed to drink from the same water fountains as whites, or to sit in the same train car either, for that matter.  Anyway, we made it to Ft. Lauderdale and spent most every day at the beach, slathering sunscreen on our rapidly reddening bodies.  Lots of wise cracks from my mom and my uncles about how we were “turning into little pic-a-ninnies.” Oy!

Memory of a Doctor’s Appointment:  I’m a Kaiser member.  Before my current doctor, my primary care physician was a relatively young guy whose name I’ve forgotten.  He wasn’t, in my opinion, much of a doc.  On one visit he shocked me by telling me that the Kaiser policy is for its doctors to type the patient’s symptoms into a computer program, which in turn spits out a diagnosis and treatment option that the doctors are expected to follow to the letter.

I’m sure this has to do with avoiding legal liabilities, but to tell you the truth, the policy doesn’t fill me with a whole lot of confidence.  I mean, what about the doctor’s intuition about the patient’s condition, based on years of medical training?

Anyway, on a visit for my annual physical, I complained about what I figured was a fungal infection in my left ear.  I told the doctor I was treating it “homeopathically” with red wine vinegar that I was swabbing around my ear with a Q-tip.  He got a little bent out of shape about it, told me that it was a dangerous thing to do.

“Okay, fine” I said.  “What do you recommend then?”  He shined his flashlight into my ear and, I suppose because there was nothing on his computer to recommend, left it at that. He offered no alternative.

Spoiler alert, the home remedy works just fine.

On another occasion, I went in complaining of lower back pain.  The doctor typed in my symptoms and ordered both an ultrasound and an x-ray.  He never mentioned the results of the ultrasound, but he did show me the x-ray of my back.  His diagnosis?  “You’ve got a bad back.”  (Well, duh!)

Again, the computer did not suggest a treatment option and I went away with my back still sore.  I ended up curing it myself by sitting in a hot tub with my back pressed up against a jet.  That, plus a massage, did the trick.  No thanks to Kaiser or my doctor.  Begs the question, “What happens if I show up really sick sometime?”

Born in a Suitcase

Natalie’s Prompt:  Where were you born?  Where do you live now?  How did you get there?  On a deeper level, when did moving and restlessness begin?

I was born on an army base in Newport News, Virginia.  It was called Fort Eustis or, as my older brother used to call it, “Fort Useless.”  I don’t remember what it looked like back then, but a few years ago we happened to be in SE Virginia and so we stopped in for a visit.  It has no doubt changed completely since 1947, but I went into the base hospital and the chapel for a look anyway.

We lived off base in a house built by my dad deep in the Virginia woods.  The house is no longer there.  Nor are the woods that surrounded it.  It’s now a vast asphalt parking lot, and as near as I can tell, where our house once stood there now stands a Midas Muffler Shop.

When I was four months old, my dad was reassigned to a Post in Bad Aibling, Germany, about 53 Kilometers from Munich.  It was there that I first began to notice the world around me.  My brother Dave was born there.  I remember that we had a maid named Marianna whose main job was to take care of us kids.  We had a German Shepherd dog named Betsy.  My big brother’s best friend was a German boy named Zepel, who may have been the son of one of the maids or the gardener.  Among the first words I ever spoke were German ones, taught to me by Marianna.

I was four years old when we sailed back to America.  After that, we returned to Virginia, and then went on to live on bases in New Jersey, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Albuquerque, Taipei, and Colorado Springs.  I learned a lot from moving so frequently.  Army kids know how to make new friends quickly, and how to say goodbye.  Army kids come to accept the existential truth that nothing lasts, and that your whole life can change on a dime at any minute.

I left home to go to boarding school in Pennsylvania when I was 16, and after that I lived in dozens of houses, dorms, apartments, hotels, youth hostels, ships, log cabins, and tents.  After college, I was constantly on the move, travelling to Europe, the Middle East, India, Thailand, China, South America, Australia, the Caribbean, Alaska, and Canada.  I kept traveling for years after I got married, sometimes on my own, sometimes with my wife.

Lately however, I’ve noticed a shift.  I’m sort of burned out on travel and am pretty much okay with staying in one place and working on a project…preferably a writing project, or at least something creative and fulfilling.

I say I’m burned out on travel…but recently I got an email from an outfit called AirTreks offering a round-the-world flight with five or six stops for a piddling $999.  Not now, maybe, but you never know…

Scars, baggage, what I drive, and what drives me

Natalie’s Prompt #1: Scars you’ve had (physical ones and the ones inside)

Outer scars?  I’ve got a bunch, and every one of them has a story to tell.  Like, for instance, the cicatrix that runs the length of my left tibia.  When I was thirteen, living in Taiwan, I developed a bone cyst.  The army hospital in Taipei did not have the capacity to remove it, so I was sent to Okinawa for surgery.  The doctor’s parting words? “Be careful, son.  The bone is brittle and we had to remove a bunch of it to get rid of the cyst.  It might take a couple of years for it to grow back.  So no contact sports, you hear?”

Did I listen?  Of course not.  A year and a half later, in junior high school in Colorado Springs, I’m playing basketball.  The ball skips across the floor, hits my left calf, and the tibia snaps…landing me in the hospital for a month in a full length cast.

Out of the hospital, I wore that cast for at least another three months, during which time the right leg grew an inch, while the left one, immobilized in plaster, did not.  The upshot?  My left leg is an inch shorter than my right, which for most of my life has meant that I walked with a limp, until I finally overcame my vanity and had a lift put on the left shoe.  Another side effect, my spine has a lateral curve, especially down near the coccyx bone.  I haven’t sat with a straight spine since the break and, if you look at x-rays, my back is a totally twisted mess.

There’s a barely visible scar on the inside of my left bicep that I got at around that same time.  Having been born with a heart murmur, the doctors wanted to do a test on my heart to see if I was okay.  So my dad drove me to Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center in Aurora, where they checked me in, put me under, ran some sort of stint up my arm which they then fed over to my heart.  Not sure what the test was supposed to reveal, but I apparently passed it with flying colors, the docs congratulating me and telling me I was fine, nothing to worry about.

Also barely visible is a small indentation on the skin of my forehead, about an inch-and-a-half from my hairline…make that my “receding” hairline.  When I was maybe 10 or 11, I developed a wart right at the spot where my thick black hair began.  My mother took me to the doctor who burned it off with a prod-like electric device.  I remember the crackling sound of the electricity and the faint tracks of sparks flying off my skull.  Looking at it today, it’s an interesting marker revealing to me how far back the hairline has receded.

And finally to the major scar on my body; a long slash that runs along my spine at the point where a surgeon in Las Vegas, Nevada, cut me open to repair a compression fracture I’d sustained in a car crash on Hwy 15, just north of town.  It was 1971 and I was 24.  That one laid me up for a solid year, during which time I had to wear an aluminum back brace.  I was left with a permanent mini-hunchback, although with little residual back pain.  I could have ended up in a wheel chair, but I dodged that bullet, thanks be to God, or Allah, or whoever it is out there that is keeping an eye on us.

Prompt #2:  What you carry (in a backpack), what you carry inside.

I’ve had dozens of backpacks, picked up at garage sales and thrift stores for never more than ten bucks a pop.  My current pack is a small, very sturdy grey and navy-blue affair with three pockets and the label “Outdoor Products” on the front.  I picked it up at Wal-Mart for just under ten bucks, but I can tell its going to last me a long time.

Inside, I carry a small blue zippered canvas bag that was designed to hold a book (it has a cloth bookmark attached to it).  I’ve had it for years and it shows few signs of wear.  The cool thing about it is that it serves as my multi-purpose media kit.  I use it to carry my writing notebooks, and a mini-Bluetooth keyboard that I use with my phone.  The external zippered pocket is where I keep my pens, pencils, a small ruler, glue sticks, and personal calling cards.  I’ve probably had it for twenty years now, and I’d be lost without it.

As far as what I carry inside…I know this is going to sound arrogant, but I’m carrying very little in terms of unresolved neuroses these days.  Much of what used to hang me up was left on the meditation hall floor during years of retreats and personal practice.  That, plus all the journal keeping I’ve done.

Prompt #3:  What you drive, and what drives you.

I drive an orange 2014 Subaru Crosstrek.  It’s a popular car here in Colorado, I think largely because of the color orange, which also happens to be one of the colors of the Denver Broncos (the other being blue).  The Subaru is the first spankin’ new car I ever owned.

Before the Subi, I drove a 1994 Toyota pickup that was maybe a year old when I bought it.  It had only 6000 miles on it.  I paid six large for it and it lasted me twenty years before I finally sold it and got the Subaru.  While the Subi isn’t bad, I kind of miss the Toyota.  We had a lot of adventures together, me and my truck.

As for what drives me…these days I’m driven by a strong desire to leave a legacy when I go.  It pains me to think that I will depart this life and be forgotten.  What I hope to leave behind as a record of my passage, are my writings.  I know that my scribblings are a rather frail legacy.  I’m no Dante, no Hemingway after all, and what I’ve written in the grand scheme of things is of little consequence…but still.

So I’ve set myself the goal of producing two books a year for the next ten.  One book will be a collection of things I’ve written in the past but never published ‒ my dharma talks, my college essays and random articles ‒ which I can self-publish if need be.  The other a book written for the market; kids books, histories, biographies, creative non-fiction, and so on.  If I live another ten healthy years, that will bring the total to twenty five books (inclusive of the five I’ve already published).

Bottom line, I’m driven by my love of writing and my absolute need to be working on a project, which in the end is what gives meaning to my life.

 

A Spectacular Fourth

Natalie’s Prompt: Tell me a memory from the Fourth of July.  Where were you . What was the light like?  Why this particular Fourth?

I’m not sure of the exact year, but it would have been sometime in the late ‘50s.  We were living in Albuquerque at the time.  Dad was stationed at Sandia Base, but we were staying off-base in a house he had bought and renovated.

The Fourth of July on a military base is always a big deal; parades, fireworks, the whole schmeer.  It being summer, we were at the Officers Club swimming pool, basking in the desert sunshine, eating hot dogs, and waiting for nightfall when the big fireworks display would take place, just beyond the wall that surrounded the pool.  That was the staging area for the annual display.

Finally night fell and the moment arrived for the big show.  What happened next stunned everybody.  Instead of the orderly procession of starbursts and pops, the entire sky suddenly lit up, as if the whole display had gone off at once…

…Which was exactly what happened.  Somehow the whole show had caught fire simultaneously, and for the next ten minutes it was one solid flashing, booming sound and light show…the best, most exciting fireworks display any of us had ever witnessed in our brief and adventuresome lives.

Of course, we kids hoped it would go on forever, which, of course, it did not.  The bright floral sky went black and our ears rang in the dead silence.  Wish as we might for more…nothing.  We all sat there in the sudden silence, listening to the voices on the other side of the wall as whoever it was who had fucked up tried to fix it.  Probably some poor GI who would get a major ass-chewing from his superiors the following day for flicking a butt into the barrel of explosives.

Anyway, that was it, the end of the show.  But it did leave us with something to brag to our friends about, and a memory that has stuck with me for a lifetime.  That, plus a question I’ve contemplated ever since.  Which is better; a pleasure that is short and overwhelmingly, overpoweringly stunning?  Or one which unfolds slowly and lasts and lasts and lasts?

Battle of the Bulge

Natalie’s Prompt: 10 minutes on being fat, chubby, flabby etc.

Mainly it’s the flab around the middle that bugs me. I’m 5’4” tall ‒ or was for most of my adult life. I think I’ve shrunk in the past couple of years and am now more like 5’3”, give or take. When I was young and single, I weighed an ideal (for my height) 165 lbs. I was skinny and muscular with not an ounce of flab on my gut. But then, after I got married, I shot up to 190 lbs. and have lugged that extra 25 pounds around with me for going on 30 years. I’m convinced that the extra weight is to blame for my bad knees, and for the damned bunions on both feet.

In 2018 I made a New Year’s Resolution to lose 25 lbs. and keep it off. I decided to cut out sugar completely, and also to take up the Adkins diet, which means eating nothing that can be digested as sugar, like rice, or bread, or potatoes. I also kept up my regular exercise routine ‒ two days a week lifting weights, three days a week swimming laps, five days a week riding the exercise bike. Following that regimen faithfully, I managed to lose a whopping 9 lbs. which seems paltry compared to stories I’ve heard about people who lose 50 lbs in a couple of months. I still have a layer of fat around my waist, although my wife tells me I’ve gotten smaller all around.

Maybe so, but I still feel a tad flabby. I brought this up with my doctor who said, “Maybe you should bump it up to two hours.” To be honest, I don’t have an extra hour to spend in the gym each day, but it has occurred to me that instead of parking close in, I should park at the furthest edge of the lot to get in the extra steps. Maybe try for 10,000 steps on top of my normal workout. My goal for this year is to lose another 15 lbs, which would put me at my ideal weight. I’ll keep you posted.

An Empire’s Demise

 

Natalie’s Prompt:  What can you give up knowing?

I have a couple of friends who, when Donald Trump was elected, decided on a personal boycott of the news.  They have deliberately chosen not to know the daily revelations of his missteps, misdeeds, and misstatements.  I have to say that while I’m a bit conflicted on the topic of willful ignorance, I’m beginning to think my friends might have a point.  The daily Trump revelations and what they say about the current state of the Union have begun to depress me.

To be sure, I don’t go out of my way to learn what outrageous thing this crypto fascist has said or done, but it’s hard to avoid, given all of the ways the news is delivered to us: in the papers, on Facebook, on my computer screen, and on the various TV talk shows my wife is addicted to.  The news is always on in the background at our house, so I pick up on the day’s Trump trash whether I want to or not.

The American empire is collapsing around our ears.  I see it in the rise in the number of hate crimes, in the leader’s tacit support of fringe groups, in his outright racism, and in his willingness to blame the victims in tragedies like the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, or the fires in California last summer, not to mention his unwillingness to do anything about global climate change even though he admits that it is, in fact, happening.  In my opinion, the very fact that Donald Trump was even elected already tells you that the country has gone to hell.

Letter To My Father

Natalie’s prompt:  You are writing along about your father.  In the next paragraph switch and speak directly to him. Say the things you never dared say before.

Dear Dad,

It’s been 19 years and three months since you left the planet.  I’m tempted to write about all the deaths that have succeeded yours; your eldest son, Wes, all of your remaining sibs – Caroline, Yolanda, and Charley, and your cousins Louie and Augie.  But you probably know this already.  I wonder if you’ve been reunited with your loved ones in the afterlife; heaven? the bardo? purgatory?  Was your Christian faith vindicated, or are you well and truly dead, buried in the cemetery in Colorado Springs, no longer possessed of consciousness in any form?

I have to tell you that I’m feeling a tad “left behind,” since I am the last surviving member of the family you and Mom started back in 1943.  I’m 71 years old now, the same age you were in 1980.  I often find myself measuring my life against yours in this way, asking myself ”what was he doing back then when he was the same age as I am now?” At your brother Charlie’s funeral last year, one of the cousins pointed out to me that I am now the oldest living member of the family…the patriarch.

I have to say that I learned a lot from you, Pop, much of it by osmosis.  You taught me how to support myself by buying rental properties in the inner city, vacant and in need of renovation and going for dirt cheap back in those days.  (You’d be amazed at what real estate is going for now in Denver.  Through the roof!!)

I learned public speaking from watching you deliver your sermons every Sunday morning.  This led me to become a semi-professional public speaker myself.  I spent 15 years giving talks on cruise ships and even got a job teaching public speaking at a university in China.

As a matter of fact, I acquired my deep love and appreciation for all things Chinese from you…which you in turn acquired when you were stationed there during the 2^nd World War. I also caught the travel bug from you.  Nothing I love better than to hop on a ship or a plane and go somewhere exotic, especially when it involves working in some way with the locals.

You yourself never became a writer professionally, Pop, but I do remember how you wrote your sermons in longhand every Saturday and then practiced them for hours in your study, the mumbling behind the door as you rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed.

After you died I went through your papers and found all the letters you wrote to Mom and your sibs during the war.  You’ll be interested to know that after you died I hired three secretaries and together we transcribed them.  I’ve donated the originals to the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress.  I also donated all of your handwritten sermons to the Chaplains Museum at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina.  What I’m saying here, Dad, is that you are not forgotten and that your legacy will live on.

There’s so much more I could tell you.  I married Nancy three years after your demise and we’ve been hitched for going on 16 years now.  I think I learned how to hang in there, to stay married and work through the difficulties from you and mom.

By the way, you should know that you now have three great-grandsons. and a fourth great-grandchild on the way.  You’d be proud.

I owe you a lot, Pop.  Thanks for being my Dad.

Love, Don.

“Ah Davey, we hardly knew ye”

Not a Natalie prompt: Symbols of the Christmas Season

When December comes, I always think of my younger brother David who, had he lived, would have turned seventy on December 2, 2018.

There was this curious fact about the dates of our respective births.  I was older than he by twenty months, but in that short space of time between his birthday on December 2nd, and mine on March 31^st, we would be — at least nominally — only one year apart. He died on Valentine’s Day, 1984, a date intended to celebrate romance and the fullness of life, but also during a year that had become an ominous symbol of totalitarian government, thanks to George Orwell.

What can I tell you about David?  He was a talented artist in a number of genres: a skilled draftsman, a maker of artistically crafted furniture, a creator of the Bicentennial commemorative plaques that to this day adorn the historic buildings in the rural Massachusetts community where he lived with his wife and two baby girls.

David was born in Nuremberg, Germany, where my dad was stationed after the war.  The city was a pile of rubble at the time we were there.  David’s graphic works were all about life interrupted; a jacket floating in the sea with fish swimming through it, the Titanic sinking with wrapped Christmas packages floating out from it in all directions, a pair of boots hovering in the air above a saddle in a drawing he called “The Lone Ranger’s Out of Body Experience,” watercolors of empty armchairs.  The images, coming straight from his heart, seemed to presage an early demise.  Certainly he was aware of that.  Not long before he died, he said to me, “If anything happens to me, promise me you’ll take care of my two daughters.”

And then there were my own premonitions, this sense of my heart expanding upwards and outwards to in some way protect his head – always his head.  He was turning a piece of wood on a lathe when it exploded and struck him on the head, rendering him instantly brain dead although his heart continued to beat until he was finally taken off of life support, his head black and blue and grossly misshapen.  There was no viewing, and the casket was closed at his funeral.

Sometimes I wonder who he was in his previous lifetimes…perhaps one of hundreds of thousands of souls drifting over postwar Germany in search of a mother and father to unite and provide a portal onto the planet.  What had he done in his previous life that had warranted his early demise in this one?  It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times in the ensuing 35 years since his demise.

“Ah Davy, we hardly knew ye.”

The Family Ritualist

Not a Natalie Prompt:  Describe a ritual or the role of ritual in your life

My Dad, who was an army chaplain and then a civilian minister, naturally took on the role of family ritualist.  After he died everybody  assumed I would pick up where he left off.  I’ve done weddings (lots of them), and funerals (lately more than I’d like), and have worked them out so that they are appropriate in situations where those being honored are not adherents of any particular religious tradition…which is sort of ironic since I myself am affiliated with a specific religious tradition, namely Buddhism.  Much of what I do at weddings and funerals is inspired by rituals I’ve participated in or observed in a Buddhist context.

Back in the mid-1980s, I was studying meditation at a forest monastery in Thailand.  There was a small village nearby, and there was a kind of symbiotic relationship between the monastery and the village.  The monastics tended to the spiritual needs of the villagers, who in turn saw to the temporal needs of the monks; food, robes, toothpaste and so on.

At one point during my stay, the monks were asked to perform a funeral rite for an old woman who was to be cremated on the monastery grounds.  All of us living in the monastery — monks, laymen, Westerners, and Thais – were invited to join in the festivities.  The body, in a wooden casket, was placed atop a small mountain of firewood.  Then we were instructed to climb some steps, walk along a narrow platform, and look down into the casket at the corpse.

Afterwards, I stood and watched as the others passed the casket and said their goodbyes.  No one was spared.  Dads held their small children up so they could look down at grandma’s shriveled corpse – none of your Western wussiness where the body is dolled up to look like it’s just sleeping.

After the viewing, one of the monks attached a skein of yellow string to grandma’s wrist and the skein was then passed from one mourner to the next.  We held the string in both hands as the abbot lit the pyre on fire and the body was burned to ashes as the monks chanted.  The string was then cut into small pieces which we tied to one-anothers wrists, a reminder of our own impermanence.

Walking away, I watched as a long column of termites fled the charnal grounds in a flowing river of amber.

These days, when I’m asked to do a memorial service for someone, I tie a skein of yarn to the funeral urn and pass it around to the assembled mourners.  I recite the Loving Kindness Prayer, first for myself, then for the deceased, then for all beings everywhere.  I pass a pair of scissors around, and the participants tie the small lengths of cut yarn to each other’s wrists.  I tell them to wear it as a memento mori until it rots and falls off.