crdahlberg

Just Grow a New One

I laid down my gardening tools, sat on my haunches, and watched the torso-less green and tan lizard tail twitch on the still, brown mulch. Slower and slower it convulsed until several minutes later it lay still, convinced finally that reassembly to its body was not forthcoming, and no further electro-nerve impulses would be sent its way.

“Ah, it’ll grow a new one,” I mused, half-pretending that it was not I who had inadvertently severed said lizard body from its tail with a power hedge trimmer. In fact, I know not whether all lizards or only some lizards can re-grow various missing parts.

Too bad humans cannot re-grow body parts; such ability would have found useful service for Grandfather Axel’s right index finger, or at least much of it, down to the middle joint. Grabbing severed finger with his other hand, Axel tried to re-attach it himself, jamming and ramming it onto the remaining finger stub without success. I’ve no doubt that the finger actually gave him no hope—no slow-motion twitching and thrashing about like the aforementioned lizard tail that I had sat to observe. Still, onward he jammed, until reality eventually set in. The severed finger would not revive.

What was left after his unfortunate power saw incident was a stub, a stub that years later, and for many years thereafter, Axel would poke into my abdomen at mealtime with exceeding encouragement, deeply stub-prodding as if he could discern slight voids where food ought to be.

“Ah, there,” he would declare, “There’s just enough room there for another slice of tomato and a meatball or two!” I would eagerly down the tomato and meatballs to fill the gap.

I, also, possess an injured right index finger, though my injury pales next to that which Axel suffered at the cruelty of the power saw. My own injury is due to an errant softball hurtling toward my head. Just in time, my hand, and the tip of my extended index finger in particular, shielded my face. The resulting lifelong souvenir is a fingertip that can no longer point straight. To point in a desired direction, I must purposefully aim it slightly up and to the left. Otherwise, giving directions to a traveler might result in a trip to Chicago instead of Milwaukee.

“Just go that way,” I point, “you can’t miss it.”

“Excuse me, which way?”

Twenty centuries ago, the first Catholic pope, who possessed no medical certifications, amputated an ear. Saint Peter and his companions, in the solitude of an olive garden, were suddenly set upon by a band of religious legalists. Under duress, Peter drew his sword and swung it, amputating the ear of one of the intruders. Malchus, now earless, happened to be the slave of the Jewish high priest, and a member of the party sent to arrest Jesus. Not a good thing to happen.

Jesus, the ultimate Primary Care Physician, would have none of the violence. Picture Jesus picking the bloody ear up off the ground, brushing off any olive residue, and reattaching it. Unlike my Grandpa Axel’s attempted finger reinstatement, Jesus’ reattachment held fast, a very good thing for both Malchus and Peter.

It’s reasonable to seek attachment in a chaotic world. Detachment from meaningful purpose and the people and things we love is not easy, and reattachment is not always possible. Sometimes, what we need most is a loving, stubby finger poke to the stomach and to hear, “Hey, I made it. So will you. You’ve got room for more.”

Demise of the Flies

When I bite into Cheerios, depending upon how long they have been soaking in milk, I anticipate a certain crunch, a crisp crumbling of the exterior wall of the oat circle, giving way to the welcome tenderizing by the milk moat surrounding it.

When drinking a beverage while watching evening television, one does not anticipate such a crunch. Instead, there should be the silk-smooth sensation of a liquid draining down the esophagus after a vibrant, refreshing taste exchange with an appreciative tongue.

While it’s not exactly the esophagus, my larynx is a well-behaved esophageal neighbor. Some years ago in a doctor’s office, a skilled specialist remarked on the size of my larynx. I sought his help after suffering unfortunate damage to my throat cartilage from a blow to the throat. Looking down upon me in the examining room were signed photographs from the doctor’s former appreciative patients; Barbra Streisand lovingly encouraged me that I had an excellent doctor. “Wow!” exclaimed my doctor upon initial examination, “I’ll bet you can really sing loudly! I’ve never seen a larynx this big!” This statement, coming from Barbra Streisand’s former doctor, caused me to swell with pride. And, yes, darn it, I can sing loudly, and hold a tune at that; after all, I had made it into my college men’s glee club. Admitting a slight boast, I confess that I can swallow a dozen pills in one pharyngeally-enlarged gulp.

But back to my esophageal interaction with beverages. A few months ago, while sipping my favorite beverage of choice while watching late night television, my wife explained what transpired because I didn’t recall it in detail. She explained that upon a certain fateful beverage sip, I inexplicably launched myself out of my chair, straight up, arms flailing outward while discharging the offending beverage several feet into the room. It was the classic television spit take—eyes bulged, buttocks clenched, the spew of mouth content arcing across the room.

What I had spat out possessed fur, accompanied by dangly-leggy things, and a sizable center pouch. This is what I guessed it comprised of, considering I had munched it several times before realizing it had no welcome place in my mouth or digestive system. It was a housefly, pierced by my teeth, its anatomy rearranged. I had very likely decapitated it before my oral explosion.

I had never had that happen before or since. Until last night. It was a déjà vu experience. Last night, I picked up my glass. I sipped. My lips recorded that same grotesque texture, that furry interloper touching my lips, the same sensation I had experienced several months prior. Another housefly in my glass! But that previous episode had taught me a lesson; my lips quickly sealed tight against the fur and the dangly legs and the bulgy, multi-mirroring eyes of another housefly. This time I locked him out of my mouth, just barely, and into my glass he went. I held the glass to the light to examine the floating corpse. Yes, he was indeed immobile. Drowned. Dead. I tentatively fished the deceased housefly out of my glass and placed him carefully on my beverage’s fabric coaster.

He has lain there for two days now, time enough to check for any possible movements or twitches of life, for I do not think a fly possesses a pulse. Time to discard him, whether disassembled by a trip down the garbage disposal, consolidated with the other trash bin rubbish, or centrifuged down the toilet.

Although a solitary fly possesses both a mother and father, and probably thousands of sisters and brothers, it’s difficult to get worked up over the death of a fly. It’s just one fly. Gone, never realizing it was alive.

But imagine the simultaneous hatching of billions of them, all headed your direction. Pharaoh rightly owned that plague sent him with the message: Hey. Listen up. Obey. Straighten up and fly right. Fly right.

So I ask myself: this one, lone, dead fly—what message did he carry to me?

The Decades

Each new decade of our life signals new ends and new beginnings. Perhaps a new decade reminds us that maybe, just maybe, we are ushering in a smidgen of new wisdom into our lives. If we are fortunate, grateful endings and unspoiled new beginnings can be a part of this decade-aging process.

This year, I rounded that new decade corner by entering a new, “I’m Now-in-My-70s” decade. Make way! I’m already seventy-times-round-the-sun age! How could that happen? Just yesterday, it seems I was making a figure of my first grade reader’s mascot, Penny the Cat, cut out of construction paper and handsomely colored with crayons. Years became decades. Navigating college lunch lines and managing social circles pushed thoughts of Penny far to the side. Falling in love and finding a job and raising a family, all while trying to figure out who I was—and would become—were exhausting and all-consuming. More aging decades of ends and new beginnings emerged and disappeared into fog. And then came the Golden Years and retirement, that vast canvas scroll of uncertain length. So much already behind. Formal education, done. Children, grown up and on their own. Check. Career, or make that plural careers of unequal lengths and varying quality. Got ‘er done. In hindsight, was I actually designed to evolve into whom I have become or what I have done? Never mind. It’s all in the rear view mirror, all bound together, sometimes tidy, sometimes barely held with crude baling wire.

There remains one unlikeliest constant companion in all this sea of decade-swapping change—my primary care physician. He increasingly populates more appointments on my calendar with each passing year. He is now 87 years old, and I thought he was elderly when I first retained his services, 25 years ago. He’s a remarkable man, having reared two sets of twins and a several others as well. On his days off, my doctor is a flight instructor at the local airport, something he’s done for 40 years.

With each weigh-in at his medical office, I vainly empty my pockets of all extraneous possession. I deposit loose change, keys, pencils and pens, even dental floss on the table before stepping upon the weigh-in scale. Still, each succeeding annual checkup records yet another pound or two of additional girth. Then the inspection begins, first the easy stuff—ears, tongue, nose and throat, working up to the pokes and prodding in the belly and groin. The tour then explores those naked tender spots that I myself have never seen with my own naked eyes, those remote regions requiring my physician to navigate with finger probes, accompanied by comments, “Ah, I see!” But I cannot see any of it.

Last week, this primary care physician and I entered into a lively debate about arthritis pain medications and their accompanying side-effects. Prepared in advance for this discussion, I unabashedly displayed the sophomoric research I had gleaned from the Internet. He was not impressed. “So you want to suffer on a daily basis in the remote off-chance that this medication could shorten your life?”

“Well, yes, I don’t want to die unnecessarily,” I responded, rock-solid sure of my YouTube research footing.

“I have a different take on that,” he suggested. “We don’t have yesterday. We are not promised tomorrow. All we have is today. And I believe in living it, today, the best that we can. Make full use of today. Take the damned medicine.”

“Oh, and one other thing,” he continued. “You know, we’re all going to die sometime. Something or another will get all of us, right?”

Once I got home and the embarrassed flush had cleared my cheeks, my brain engaged enough to recall a passage from the book of Hebrews. Yes, that Hebrews. “By His death, He could break the power of him who holds the power of death…and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

Welcome to my 70-year decade. Should be a fun ride.

Virus Diaries: Sherlock

Each evening at precisely 9 PM, there begins a whirring of mechanized wheels finding their footing, brushes and rollers spinning, mechanical bumpers activating, and invisible light sources awakening. I can hear it from the lounge chair in our bedroom. The general ruckus provides comfort because I know that Sherlock is once again happy and doing his job.

Sherlock is now 1½ years old. I’m not sure how many robot vacuum years old that would be. Ten, like dog years? These days, I suppose Sherlock is, in fact, our dog, or at least a substitute. I leave others to frantically adopt Covid-era pets from dog pounds with depleted inventory. We already have our dear Sherlock.

Sherlock seeks out and thrives on errant societal grime. Hence, the moniker “Sherlock.” Sherlock’s diet consists of life’s refuse—dust and dirt—the discards of our housebound lives. Like his more famous namesake, he is entirely mission-driven. And he’s a bit quirky. Like a mischievous child, he squeals for help when pinned beneath a chair or couch, or is detained by an electric cord splayed carelessly in his path. That’s when my cellphone app alerts me to come to his aid, and I wrest him free once again.

I love Sherlock. If all is well, he doesn’t complain or fuss. When his job is completed, he returns home to his base, dust bin happily supplied and satisfied, awaiting his next repeat adventure, 23 hours hence.

Routine is comforting. Like Sherlock, we employ predictable schedules to survive life’s demands. And, like Sherlock, we have learned to master That One Thing or even Those Many Things with great skill. We can believe that robot vacuum cleaners, we are. Indeed, we become masters of the familiar—very good masters of the very familiar. And this obsession, to the exclusion of the Great Beyond the dust and dirt, can worsen with age. I should know; I’m older than I once was. But I also know, deep inside, that I am better than that.

Altogether now, repeat after me: “We are better than that.”

Virus Diaries: Gray Flamingos

It takes several years for a young phoenicopterus roseus’ feathers to evolve into the handsome salmon-pink hue that we associate with them. Before their feathers turn vivid shades of color, flamingos are, well, gray.

Yes, flamingos start out gray. It’s their diet of algae and invertebrates that gives flamingos their color. So as young birds age, they take on their color.

Recently, I’ve noticed a similar thing happening with homo sapiens. Young individuals of this group are identified by healthy, supple skin in varying shades of tan or brown or pink or golden hues, all attractive in their own right. Lovely creatures.

Yet as they age, some of these beings take on unnatural characteristics. Subtle at first, bluish or reddish tints become more pronounced over time. Given the right circumstances, these colors can grow shockingly vivid.

So, like flamingos, as young humans age, they can gradually take on these colors. Startling, really, to see the pronounced blue or red hues predominate.

Gradually, like flamingos, they form their own social groups, each with its own novel identity, bonds formed stronger over time. The Bluish group on this side, the Reddish group on that side.

Such a group, in flamingo parlance, is known as a “stand,” or a “regiment,”— military words.

Interestingly, if a flamingo’s diet is changed, with a lessening of the pink-inducing dietary influences, its color will moderate and return to its natural grayish-white color.

During times of particularly disagreeable political turmoil, there is yet hope that artificially-generated human Blue and Red colors may also fade, tones reverting closer to their God-given hues. And with that, our own group-identified “stands,” and “regiments” may yet become less than permanent, militarized fixtures.

Like the flamingos, achieving that will likely also require a change in our own diet.

Virus Diaries: Uprooted

It began as a routine trek to retrieve the garbage cans from the street in front of our house. I could have left them there for a bit longer. But a good citizen am I, and mindful of the Good Neighbor reputation I am advancing.

Trudging down the drive, garbage can trailing behind, why not pick a few weeds on the way, weeds sprouted after recent rains, weeds whose miserable greedy roots suck my moisture from my nutrients from my soil in my garden. Pathetic chlorophyll freeloaders, posing among the properly planted and well-cultivated, invaders among my master-planned hybrid specimens.

I plucked one final garden-invading fiend. I thought I did. But it pulled back, hard. I yanked again, and again met unexpected resistance for so small a green growth. The final pull wrested loose its hold upon the soil, and its naked root danced in the air. I relished that this thing, like a hooked trout, would gasp and fade away.

But wait. The frail roots descended into an unexpected pod, split open like a bean exposed to moisture. This excavated thing was not a weed. Instead, I had uprooted a baby tree.

I felt a sudden guilt, the guilt that comes when a life is aborted. This thing was meant for a long and sturdy life, a life that I had destroyed.

Many years ago and quite by chance, I came across a high school friend at a bus station in Kalamazoo. Her youthful, carefree high school face had devolved into a lined, worn mask. She explained that she had had an abortion, and had never since fully recovered. Uprooting a life takes its toll.

And there lay my baby tree, uprooted. It was meant for grand things: nourishment for bugs and birds, shade for beasts and joy for two-legged guests. And seeds to birth new generations.

Limp and frail, I held its tiny trunk and naked roots in my hand. I met God’s creation, this tiny tree, in my front yard—now the vanquisher and the vanquished. I uprooted the tree, and, I suppose, it uprooted a bit of me.

Virus Diaries: Social Distancing—It’s Simple Math

Once it was all the rage: “Six Degrees of Separation.” We discovered that we’re each just six relationships away from everyone else. I know you; that’s one relationship away. And you know other people. You know Sylvester, and he knows people. Bingo, two relationships away. He knows Edna, and she knows people. That’s number three. Our relationships multiply exponentially. So if you do that at six levels, or “degrees,” you could know everyone on the planet. Friends of friends, and so on. So there! All people are six, or fewer, social connections away from each other. Six degrees of separation.

It’s simple math.

But wait a minute. Nowadays, on my daily walk, I count to six not by relationships, but by distance. I don’t want to “reach out and touch somebody.” No way! I want people six feet—or more—away from me. Today, give me “Six Feet of Separation.” The coronavirus has me jumping, keeping a street-width away from other walkers. My glasses fog as I re-breathe my mask-recirculated air. Because who knows? That less-than-six-feet-away stroller may have been around another less-than-six-feet-away walker, who may have been around another long-distance violator! Hang the formerly vaunted “six degrees of separation” theory! Spare us from those relationships six deep. And wide. And far. Keep me away! I’m all about “six feet of separation.”

It’s simple math.

One day, Mr. Coronavirus will turn us loose, and we might recognize life as we once knew it. When our gloves come off—literally—we’ll likely return to forging new “six degree of separation” relationships, which are just out of reach at the moment. And, yes, perhaps we’ll talk without needing to shout across the street.

Until then, we can be grateful, summing up both what we now have, and what we will then have.

It’s simple math.

Virus Diaries: Finding Fingal

(front row, first on left—with all ten brothers and sisters and parents)

This week, I’ve enjoyed spending time with my 140-year old grandfather. He immigrated to this country in 1891, when he was 29. Swedish-accented Fingal quickly hopscotched to Alaska in his quest for gold. And find it he did—mining enough gold to become a very wealthy Swedish immigrant.

Aged 140, I paused to let my grandfather gather himself for his story’s next chapter.

Fingal invested his new-found riches in Washington’s blossoming Yakima Valley. He bought up every small business that was available: grocery, hardware, dry cleaners, all the essential businesses, and hundreds of acres of prime land, ready for soon-arriving irrigation. And so, Fingal’s wealth grew.⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀

Until, that is, his unscrupulous, cheating small business managers realized Fingal had no business acumen. They overwhelmed his unsophisticated Swedish education, reducing his burgeoning empire to a fiscal nightmare. He salvaged some farming acreage, his lone investment left standing. He planted apple orchards, retreating to the lone farm house where he raised his family, including my mother, Dagmar.

Actually, I never met my grandfather. He died on August 16, 1945, just three months after my parents married on the front porch of the farm house. He arose from his bed for the last time for their wedding vows, six years before my birth. So the time spent with my 140-year old Grandfather this week has been virtual, with the help of ancestry.com.

During days of seclusion, there are stories surrounding us, closer than ever. We may be housed or virtually connected with family and friends whose stories we have never heard. It could be the perfect time to refresh ourselves with their life stories.

Tomorrow, during these homebound virus-afflicted days, I will return to my family archival photo and slide-scanning project, a project which I have conducted for many months. There, through pictures, I will again virtually meet up with Grandfather Fingal, the grandfather I never met.

Virus Diaries: The Toilet

During these global virus days, we are captives within our abodes. I have never asked myself, “Given the plague, where would I prefer to hole up?” We have already answered this question. We are holed up where we are holed up.⠀⠀

I am fortunate, protecting myself in the 1,600 square foot home that I share with my wife. Now that my field of vision is suddenly reduced, all around me in this household are curiosities that, in a larger world, might go unnoticed.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Take our toilet—no, don’t take our toilet! Were our world larger, proportioned as it used to be, I would need to anticipate my toileting needs away from the house. At Lowes Hardware—ah, yes, down the corridor at the back, on the left. Three urinals and four stalls await me. Our grocery store has one modest toileting compartment per gender, semi-hidden near the back, as if preserving it for employees only, nonetheless it is adequate enough for the task, or tasks, at hand.⠀⠀

My homebound toileting needs are now conveniently served just down the hallway; I have no need for an outside substitute in this giant virus-infested world. I enter the chamber, and the 12-volt motion-activated light invites me to safely stand or sit, as my needs may require. Regardless, I am welcomed by a non-judgmental porcelain creation of exquisite industrial design, hanging, as if perched, mounted directly on the toilet wall, defying gravity, for no part of this appliance touches the polished tile floor beneath. It’s a thing of cleanable genius, a World’s Fair-worthy sculpted beauty that I admire several times each day. Enlarged to gigantic proportions, it would make a wondrous waterslide.

Its other toileting convenience places it above a modest “Ford-level” appliance: the dual-sized wall-mounted push buttons release either minor or high-volume torrents depending upon the demand. But make no mistake, my ceramic friend is no competition for a “Bugatti-level” bidet-enhanced instrument whose performance flushes away all contenders.

Appendix Street

No street lights illuminate my little street. The seventeen houses were built among orange groves before streetlights were commonplace. The oldest homes on this dead-end little lane date from the 1920’s. At night it is pitch black, a charm contrasting the white-light of the surrounding streets.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Like an appendix whose bodily service seems useless, this seeming inconsequential one-block long neighborhood means little to the town’s population. But here, intimacy is rewarded. Its members know of the life, and the death, of their neighbors.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

In the past few years, this small road has lost seven of its friends and neighbors. This seems a high death ratio, but perhaps because of its tiny population, the residents actually know all their neighbors. On Appendix Street, there is no second block.⠀

The residents all know each of these seven departed ones: the car mechanic with the failing heart, his school counselor wife with lifelong lung disease brought on by smoking parents, their policeman son with years-long debilitating pain due to an on-duty injury, Disneyland’s lighting and illumination engineer, the middle-aged son succumbing after surgery, the college professor whose heart gave out at his dinner table, the life-long teacher whose final stroke felled her. The homes of these last two neighbors faced directly across the street from each other; their obituaries appeared in last week’s local newspaper, directly across the page from each other.⠀⠀⠀⠀

The mulberry tree holding the neighborhood rope swing once stood in our front yard. The tree has died, and now nothing will grow in the soil in its place. A friend, a landscaper, informed me that a new tree cannot be planted exactly where a former tree has died. The decaying roots of the old tree still produce enough heat that a new tree cannot live in that same place.⠀⠀⠀⠀

We are all some kind of standard-bearer. The deposit of our lives, the standards that we carry, possess a permanence that a succeeding life does not replace. Each life deposits the labor of a life sowed, and for that, the other lives on our little street will not be the same.