Character – Page 2 – Snail Trek Blog

Love Poetry

The saxophonist lifted the instrument to his lips, testing the valves and mouthpiece. A ragged chirp signaled that his breath had indeed found its way through. The musician took two abrupt steps to his right and poked his finger onto a keypad. An audio track came alive, pushing his humble audio speaker to its full, if meager, capacity. He rotated two steps leftward, and he was off, saxophoning the melody line along with his pre-recorded ensemble bandmates.

Considering the setting, a pre-Thanksgiving Day banquet at an assisted living facility where my father lives, his performance was an adequate, perhaps admirable rendition, even when he switched over to his clarinet. It evoked memories of my father-in-law, Jack, who had played clarinet in a jazz band; I imagined his full head of dark hair, boyish grin and vigorous tap-tapping of shoe upon the dance floor.

Perhaps our friend, the current saxophonist, should have stuck with his micro-woodwind band and accompanying recorded track instead of attempting to croon. His vocalization gift was modest indeed; his singing voice wandered far afield. He plastered notes randomly, mercilessly splattering them all over the musical scale. Up, down, sideways, front-ways, back-ways in fits, the notes fell. Meanwhile, the accompanying pre-recorded track galloped happily away on its own, untethered from his vocalizations.

Little did his captive audience care. A frail woman in a wheelchair clapped and cheered along with the others in the modest audience, reliving each half-century old song the musician could muster. Another woman’s plaid red dress proclaimed “Snuggle” in bold white script, topped with a gold necklace. Below her chestnut-brown dyed hair, her deeply-lined face drew into a grin. After all, these were their songs, the songs they danced to before arthritis, before dementia, and before taking up residence in this assisted-living home. Their days of dancing may have been behind them, but the music liberated the melodies deep within. Their souls were set loose.

Besides the music, not everything else progressed smoothly at the retirement home Thanksgiving party. While my wife and I sat at our assigned table with my father in his wheelchair, the elderly gentlemen seated at the four-top next to us struggled to hear one another. Outbursts of exasperated attempts at dialogue succumbed to long rounds of silence. When the man nearest me attempted to pull his wheelchair up to the table, an unfortunate imbalance of plate and food ensued. There was a moist ku-thump as his full plate of turkey, brownish dressing, pale tan gravy, contrasting ruby-red cranberry sauce, and a dollop of pale-white mashed potatoes catapulted off the table and onto his lap. No one else even noticed before he pushed the contents from his thighs and onto the floor.

Nope. No one noticed, and no one cared. It’s the behavioral norm here, a beautiful norm. The wayward musical renditions could have shut down a cheap bar. But not here. Food spills onto trousers and carpet—who cared? No one cared. Survivorship builds callouses against the irritants that take down weaker folks.

None of that stuff really mattered. None of it.

Ah, there! Can you see them, the couple sitting at the next table, just beyond the heads of my father and my wife? That’s what really matters.

It was there I watched a drama unfold. One of the guests at this special Thanksgiving table was a tall, handsome, slender man with a shock of glowing white hair so thick it would choke a comb. I had noticed him earlier in the evening. He was the sort of man who, in the days before such promotions were banned, might have posed as the Marlboro man in a cigarette commercial. He carried himself casually, easily chatting with residents around the dining room, putting them at ease.

Beside him at the table, unable to speak and immoveable except for her head, sat his wife. A crimson blouse, tucked neatly into her wheelchair cushion, peeked from beneath a chic black sweater. Spoonful after spoonful, forkful after forkful, her visiting husband patiently raised her Thanksgiving dinner to her lips, pausing from this priority to stroke her hand and occasionally chat with the other table guests. Then he would turn again to his wife to feed her, and each time he did, a grin from a much-younger version of himself took over his face, reviving the same smile that possessed him the first time they met, decades ago.

It was poetry. Each serving he offered her was a new line of a love poem.

Eventually, the meal concluded, and the white-haired man disappeared, pushing his wife’s wheelchair to her room. When he re-emerged to descend the steps to his car in the parking lot, I quickly followed him outside into the brisk night air. I touched his arm, and surprised, he turned toward me.

“Sir,” I haltingly began, uncertain how to express my admiration for the love poetry he had displayed for his wife, “I’ve been watching you during the entire Thanksgiving meal. I watched every bite of food you served your wife. I watched you stroke her hand and talk gently to her, even when she could not respond back to you. I wanted to tell you I saw all that, and it deeply affected me. Thank you for showing me…” What I said immediately felt put on, too weirdly magnanimous, clumsy, and I wanted a second chance to say it better.

“We’ve been together for 53 years,” he responded. “She’s taken care of me during all those years. And now it’s my time, my opportunity, to take care of her.”

It was dark outside. He couldn’t see my eyes moisten as he reached to shake my hand. I wandered back into the dining room, knees weaker, but a stronger person.

To the Dump

Each week, a wagonload of garbage arrived at our house situated on the bank of the Rhine River. The wagon, replete with accompanying noxious odors, drew flies like a Disney theme park woos visitors. It was gross stuff, in this wagon. Just imagine your community’s weekly trash and rotting garbage all piled into one nasty, stinking, portable pile on parade—broken furniture, discarded clothing, drained motor oil, bits of string and nails and mangled wood, and a generous anointing of rotting food scraps, the passion of the buzzing flies.

An elderly woman in a tattered 1950’s-era patterned, heavily stained dress perched squarely inside the wagon, straddling the discarded garbage and trash. She wore leather boots and a threadbare baggy wool coat over a shabby sweater. A ragged scarf protected her head from the flies.

Her elderly husband’s mouth and cheeks animated his walrus mustache as he huffed deep breaths, stretching down to hug the next mound of trash to his chest. He heaved it up into the arms of his wife, awaiting the load from within the wagon. She searched for salvageable discards as he reached for the next armload of trash.

Meanwhile, their obedient horse, covered with burlap to guard it against the trash and the flies, awaited their command to move the wagon forward to the next house.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

During Christmas in Germany in the late 1950’s, we gifted our garbage man and his wife a small monetary offering, which they eagerly accepted, along with the other modest gifts of cookies, beer and schnapps from other neighbors. But that was small payback for the service they rendered us, unthanked, week upon week, offloading our stinking refuse into their garbage trailer.

At bedtime after I am asleep, their horse-drawn wagon still enters my dreams. I see that rickety-rickety garbage wagon. I hear the clomp-clomp of the hooves, and the gentle voice of the garbage man reining his horse to a stop at our driveway. He bends low to pick up and deposit my discards into the arms of his wife, atop the wagon. I see him glance at me as if to ask, “Is there any more?”

There’s always more. Scientists tell us that during our sleep state, our brains go through a cleaning cycle, during which the worn-out, damaged tissues in our brain are removed, like so much trash and garbage. The glymphatic system eliminates potentially toxic waste products from our brain, protecting us from disorders, including, very probably, Alzheimer’s Disease.

In my dream-state, this is the stuff being gathered for the garbage man. The exhausted brain cells that have done their job need to be replaced and refreshed. That’s not all. Along with those cells should go the day’s unredeemed endeavors—the worn and weary misguided thoughts, the ill-advised priorities and self-protecting reserve—they also deserve the dump.

Unfortunately, something in me wants to steel against that brain-cleansing process. Instead of yielding my wayward ways and misguided thoughts to the garbage dump, I want to hang on to the refuse of the day. Go ahead, garbage man, move on to the next house, to the next brain! That’s silly, of course. It’s even stupid. Why would I choose to hang onto trash? To hang on to distress? To anger? To being overlooked and ignored? To pride and self-importance?

And so lingers my ancient German garbage-master, peering into my brain, into my dream-state. “Do you vant to keep zat?” he inquires in his Prussian accent, suggesting he has more room on his wagon for anything I want to offload. “Do you vant to keep your broken hopes? Your aches? Your trouble? I can take zem!”

Oh, good grief. Don’t make me choose. I know what I want to do. But can I really let him take all that to the dump to be just—gone? That familiar trash is what I know the best; it has become part of me.

My patient trash man makes one final appeal; he awaits my decision. “Any more?” the mustache twitches. He reaches out to me one more time. I ponder whether there might indeed be more.

And then…I decide. It’s done.

He stoops down to gather my garbage one final time. He makes the day’s perfect pitch. His wife makes the catch.

Score!

The Weight of Measures

In September, my father turned 105. Measured by climactic world conflicts, he has lived through World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, the Invasion of Afghanistan, and the interventions in Syria and Iraq.

My father now has what I call Goldilocks Syndrome. That is, he measures the comfort of his bed in his assisted living facility—too hard, too soft, just right—and he regularly informs me. He also estimates the time and energy required for his next journey to the toilet. He measures the effect of his artwork. As an artist, he unwisely hoists himself from chair to walker to add a dabble of point to “improve” the appearance a decades-old painting, one of many of his painted companions displayed in his modest one-room apartment.

There are, of course, many ways to measure. A doctor may measure medical breakthroughs. An evangelist might count the number of souls saved. An artist could count the works sold over time. An entrepreneur might tally the balance sheet. A rancher would count the heads of cattle and the cost of feed.

Several times each day, we measure the food we eat, assessing and judging the flavors. Practiced chefs create delights to make our tongues tingle and jaws ache with pleasure. They have measured and mastered the effect of sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory, bringing flavor to the fore like an orchestra conductor, a bit more of this, now more of that, in sublime harmony.

Over the past several years, I have measured the width and depth of my family. My self-appointed task has been to preserve our family’s photo history. Dusty, creaky albums, long-sealed boxes of photographic prints and slides all find their way onto the bed of my digital scanner. I am creating a digital melting pot, joining the lives of dozens of disparate relatives into some sort of meaningful pattern of relationships, organizing a life by life, year over year brew of wild flavors.

All lives contain a genetic, geographical and circumstantial whirl. It’s impossible to measure who and what has brought which flavor to the mix. We are in the middle of it all, adults emerging from childhood, then leaning forward into the older characters we become. In our own family’s picture book, we can look bewildered, trying to measure who we are and who we will become.

By any measure, life can be untidy, messy, and difficult to understand. How, then, might we measure the progress of our own life journey?

There are the ever-favorite ways we measure ourselves and mark our progress: improve looks, lose weight, exercise more, the familiar makings of New Years resolutions.

If we dig a bit deeper, where it’s uncomfortable, we unearth some real dandies.

Help me out here. Does the measure of our self-sacrifice toward family members fall a bit short? Hmmm. Yes, guilty.

What about becoming more sincere and generous friends—how do we measure up? I again raise my own hand.

Oh, yes, and what about keeping that inner peace, joy, humility when promotion or recognition or other good stuff passes us by? No angst, please. But I LIKE to be promoted and recognized and have good stuff. Don’t you?

Am I the only one with those struggles?

Maybe our most important weight of measure is this: within a shape-shifting world, how well do we adopt, maintain, or adapt our own life-guiding values?

The High Cost of Living

During just the first two months of 2022, the price of a can of Campbell’s tomato soup at Kroger rose by 25 percent. The rising rate of cars and fuel prices have far surpassed Campbell’s soup, a bellwether of staple food economics. Even the price for mattresses, where one might be inclined to recline, hoping to forget about all this, has skyrocketed.

Have you ever tried to run up a downward-descending escalator? That escalator is the current state of economics. We’re all running hard to keep up, but getting nowhere.

The high cost of living is upon us.

The uneven, up-down, zigzag floors, walls and ceilings of a funhouse are just that—fun—for awhile. It’s a relief to come out the other end, having survived the intractable and dizzying balancing act. But when will this economic funhouse finally settle down? The cost of living is skyrocketing.

I prepared myself for my customary morning walk on Friday, Good Friday, to be exact, the Friday before Easter. I doused myself with deodorant in the off-chance that Joe would want to chat. I often meet him mid-stride on my walks, as I quietly lurch down my familiar back streets. Joe likes to hail me from across the street. It took Joe several months to learn my name. For many weeks, he christened me with the name, “Frank.” I get that a lot. Upon introducing myself, I’m often mistakenly called Frank, perhaps because I mispronounce my own name. “Frank” comes out much more distinctly than “Craig,” which I myself sometimes choke upon, getting stuck somewhere around my tonsils, the place in the gullet reserved for salt water gargling. “Frank” seems a much more straightforward, tongue-forward appellation.

After several dozen more exercise walks, I finally trained Joe to learn my real name. Now I get, “Hi, Greg.” Never mind. His intent is good. My next task is training him to discern the difference between a “G” and a “C.”

Anyway, Joe is a retired school teacher who cares for grandchildren on occasion and walks his dog with religious fervor. There used to be two dogs on his leash, but last year the golden retriever perished quite suddenly in its sleep after being diagnosed with cancer. How do I know this? Joe freely invites me into his world to share the trivia in his life. In some way, I am gratified to be trusted with the rigors of life by this one-time stranger. He lays out a welcome mat into his world.

On this day, this Good Friday, while chatting curbside with Joe, I suddenly realized that I had not paused my Apple Watch exercise timer for today’s discourse interlude. So I attempted to gently drift downstream away from Joe, despite his attempts to close the growing gap between us.

I lurched and forged ahead, leaving Joe to ponder the correct pronunciation of my name, and determined to mark my exercise miles and minutes. The late fitness guru, Jack LaLanne would be proud.

Abruptly, mid-stride in my exercise brain haze, I half-stuttered a step, lurching sideways like a crab skittering from a codfish. A full step would have landed me directly upon the remains of a rabbit, car-flattened. This bit of brown fur was once a beautiful creation. I lingered over it in awe and consternation.

It was laid open, a beautiful handiwork of its Creator, dissected by an automobile tire. It was still a thing of beauty, but a Picasso re-arranged structure it was. The parts were there, but not in the originally-intended design.

Why did this rabbit meet his demise on my exercise street? Why on Good Friday, just two days before Easter? Was it some sort of omen? The implication was obvious—could it indeed be the Easter Bunny? A horrific thought.

My Good Friday Bunny soon disappeared from the roadway. The next day, during my walk, he was but a flattened pelt with most of the fur missing. And the following day he was gone, nowhere to be found. Surely, he had not been raised on Easter Day, this Easter Rabbit. No, indeed, surely not. But the irony was not lost on me, his coincidental death on Good Friday and disappearance two days later—contrasted with the incarnate God-made-flesh, the real Easter Hero who perished on Good Friday and was resurrected on Easter, two days later.

These days, as we all know, it costs a lot just to stay alive. We know something of the high cost of living with each visit to the grocery store or fill-up at the gas station.

When our friend, Mr. Rabbit, tragically met the Goodyear tire while crossing the road that day, he experienced the ultimate high cost of living.

But the alternative Easter narrative is the one we will to choose to remember. It’s the one in which, on that triumphant Easter morning, there was offered a permanent, never-ending solution for the high cost of living.

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.”

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: 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.

One Baby, One Butt

Babies are warm, cuddly, and delightful. And they can be terrorizing, especially for new parents, for whom every moment of a twenty-four hour day presents a new learning frontier: “What do I? When do I? How do I? Where do I? Why do I?”

The counsel I gave myself then, and have since given others, is to simply do the one necessary thing immediately before you. Check the butt, change the diaper. Because every baby’s body works sort of the same. They eat, they sleep, they pee, they poop.

But, of course, babies are not automobiles. They need more than oil changes or diaper changes. Humans are a complex amalgamation of genetics, environment, opportunities and many other components, including Choice.

The woman I photographed transported one, two, three, four, five babies. I don’t know why or where she was taking them. But certainly each child was unique, and partially formed from infancy onward through their own Choice and consequence—to rebel, to obey, to comply, to tantrum.

Beyond infancy, the power of Choice plays an ever-growing part of our lives—our friends, attitudes, our values. By the time of adulthood, the power and the outcome of our choices can be gratifying or overwhelming—our faith, our career, our spouse. Many choices prove to be exceptional; others, disastrous. Some choices we want to mulligan, golfing slang for a “do-over.”

But the way to our future is far from re-living the past. We are given only one way out—one way to move forward. And that is by making even more choices—mature, forward-thinking and consequence-embracing choices, even in the light of some spectacularly poor ones in the past.

We all share the same human condition. To be human is to have one butt, but many choices.

Aflame

Shortly before today’s five-mile hiking regimen, I applied a new (for me) pain medication, bathing my midsection from navel to right hip. Typically, I apply Aspercreme, but today I inaugurated the stronger, bolder pain treatment medication to my abdominal paunch.
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A brief explanation of my belly’s epidemiology is in order. Seven months ago, I moved my 101-year-old father’s couch, allowing him easier accessibility. I did it the “easy” way. Why bother moving the heavy end table before lifting the couch? Instead, my contorted right-arm-reaching-over-left-shoulder movement resembled that of a geriatric ballerina, hands groping for the little wooden block that had slid out of place, while simultaneously lifting up the entire end of the couch.
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The damage was done. X-rays, an MRI, weeks of physical therapy, a growing relationship with my neurologist and two epidural injections have all served to accomplish—exactly nothing. Tingling, numbness and pain have been my companions for these seven months, including the aforementioned abdominal discomfort, in which the nerve endings feel like they have been dissected and laid upon my belly. Aspercreme touches the pain just a little; today’s new salve would surely provide an improvement.
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So out the door I jaunted, anointed with my newly-acquired pain retardant. Half a mile later, I recognized the severity of my folly—my belly was aflame. Imagine an open wound into which you pour liquefied chili pepper. The active ingredient of my so-called salve, I soon discovered, is a chemical drawn from chili peppers.
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I pride myself in believing there is not a lot of retreat in me. The next 4-1/2 miles I walked aflame, throbbing, and desperate for a change of underwear, the circumnavigating elastic waistband rubbing and re-rubbing the blazing cream into my seared flesh.
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Trousers now loosened, my crimson belly reminds me that all ointments are not created equally. And like friendship, the mild-mannered salve of a trusted comrade can be a far better companion than a flamboyant acquaintance of uncertain promise.