Day 131 - Taking a Break

http://www.wrightfuneral.com/obituary/Arthur-V.-Wenner/Moorhead-MN/1207649

I'll be taking a break from my project for a few days.

Day 129 - Getting Ready for Romania

When I made arrangements to pack up my things in Iran so I could leave at the end of the USC program, I didn't know that I would be going to Romania. I was set to return to the U.S. where I expected to land in San Francisco to get my life restarted. My roommate Maureen and I had managed to get flights leaving Tehran going east to allow for stops in India, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, and Japan before returning to the U.S. by way of Los Angeles where I planned to visit Ed and others from the program now in southern California. I planned to spend three months traveling.

Indonesian statue

But a week after arranging for the packers to come and a week before we were set to leave, I received a telephone call from the embassy in Tehran, telling me that I had been selected for a Fulbright lectureship in Iasi, Romania. The office in Washington, D.C. that handled the arrangements for Fulbrighters in eastern Europe wanted me to go straight back to the U.S. to take part in an orientation program. I decided to skip the orientation and shorten my planned travel from 3 months to 3 weeks, allowing me to spend about four days at each stop and still arrive in Romania on schedule.

That meant a quick rearrangement of what would be packed up. Instead of shipping everything to California, I had to separate things so that some would go to Minnesota and some directly to Romania.  Maureen's things were being packed out at the same time, so we had to keep everything segregated to ensure that Maureen's things ended up heading to Hawaii, some of mine heading to Romania, and the rest heading to Minnesota. The men who showed up to do the packing were not pleased by these complications. In addition, we had been warned that packers in Iran took every opportunity to include anything of weight they could into boxes to increase how much they could charge.

The supervisor of the packers didn't do any packing - he supervised; he looked over everyone's shoulders while they worked and he marked down what was being packed on the inventory list, a fact that I now have a greater appreciation for after having experienced the worst packout ever when we moved from Virginia to California. Once the boxes were full, he closed the lids and taped them shut, and then wrote the name and destination in large letters. He began by writing Maureen's last name on all the boxes, but with "Mr." in front of it. I pointed out that not all of the boxes were for Maureen, He crossed off Maureen's last name and replaced it with mine, still with "Mr." in front of it. I pushed a little further, pointing out that it would not be accurate to ship my boxes to Romania for Mr. Wenner since there wouldn't be a Mr. Wenner at the other end. With a flourish and a not so friendly look on his face, he marched over to the boxes and added an "s" after "Mr." I decided it wasn't worth the effort to point out that there wouldn't be a Mrs. Wenner in Romania either. At least the last name and gender were correct.

Because I missed the orientation session, my information packet was mailed to Ed's house for me. Ed and I sat on his balcony and read through it. We both found ourselves laughing and reading out paragraphs to one another, paragraphs that made it sound like Romania was going to be a repetition of Iran. It stopped me up short because I was very happy to have left Iran and really didn't want to go to another country that would bring up the same feelings that Iran had. Both countries were governed by autocratic leaders who insisted on the adoration, even if feigned, of everyone around them. Both countries had a reputation for not being able to believe everything people said. Both countries had a reputation for it taking a long time and many bureaucratic hurdles to get things done. I wasn't sure I was going to be any happier in Romania than I had been in Iran.

In the end, I discovered Romania was very, very different. The same words applied in the descriptions of both, but there was a difference in the intensity. More on that later.

Day 128 - Warren Curtis Stewart

JFK airport image by saaby, via Flickr

Warren Curtis Stewart, a man with three first names that also are three last names, came into my life abruptly and remained there only briefly. Introducing him now is a good transition from my Iran days to my Romania days.

I met Curt in New York's JFK airport when I was on my way to Romania, my first trip entirely on my own. There was no one telling me what to do or where to be. I had to figure everything out for myself. I had picked out a matching set of luggage that included a piece advertised as "fits in overhead compartments on most airlines" which I therefore chose as my carry on bag. I also had a purse, a coat, and a hat which I had learned always to wear when traveling in order to get just a tiny bit more respect from the flight attendants than my hatless self seemed to get.  Luggage in those days didn't come with wheels, and I don't recall if I had discovered those collapsible trolleys for luggage. I suspect I was carrying all that stuff around with me from one part of the airport to another, filling in my time between flights.

I dropped something in the middle of a wide corridor and that is when Curt appeared. He stopped and asked if I could use some help. He was in a military uniform, Air Force, I think. It was 1977, not long  after Vietnam ended. And after having lived in Berkeley and San Francisco for nearly six years, my comfort level with the military was pretty low. But he seemed kind and he offered to have me join him in the first class lounge while I waited for my flight. He was the first person I could recall meeting who joined the military during the Vietnam War days and then stayed on beyond his initial enlistment. I had relatives who had joined the military in peace time and stayed in for a career, but that was different. For the most part, I had been surrounded by boys and men my own age who were exploring how to avoid the military, or at least how to avoid combat zones. In response to my question of why he was in the military (a pretty cheeky question I thought) he said he would have been drafted so he enlisted and then decided to make it a career. I don't recall much of our conversation, a likely indication that Curt asked the questions and I happily told him all about how exciting it was to be heading off to Romania, especially after spending the past two years in Iran.

Curt was on his way to Turkey, but I understood it was the military equivalent of a business trip, not an assignment.  With the 20/20 hindsight that many years of working with military members at embassies overseas brings, I wouldn't be surprised now to learn that Curt was in intelligence or military sales, although it was somewhat unusual that he wasn't surrounded by the support entourage in those cases. Military offices at embassies have a minimum of three staffers - the principal, the deputy, and the admin guy (usually) who did all the support work. Even TDY (temporary duty) military members never arrived alone. They were always in pairs or triplets. Maybe Curt was just enjoying the excuse that running into me offered to get away from his traveling companions.

At the end of the wait, he asked if I would write to him because he was curious how I would find Romania. We corresponded for that year, following the same pattern in every letter. We would pose one question to the other in each letter and we would include our own answer to the question in the letter.

When I returned to the U.S. from Romania, he called several times to give me encouragement as I looked for a teaching job. He told me that he had gotten married since we met at the airport in New York. I never saw him again. And when I wrote letters to everyone I knew when I received the offer to join the Foreign Service, my letter to him was one of two that were returned as not being deliverable.

Day 127 - Grandma genes

Alex and I got to take care of James this evening, so his parents could go out for dinner for the first time in many months. When they dropped him off, Sarah showed me what was in the bag that we used to call a diaper bag when Mom carried one around, although there are so many more things in it than just diapers. In addition to diapers there was a change of clothing, in case more than a diaper needed to be changed, and a bottle of milk, although James hasn't adapted to getting his nutrition that way.

James is big on smiling these days. He smiles all the time at Simon and Sarah, naturally, and even gave Alex and me a few as well. Even after Sarah and Simon left, he gave us a few smiles while the two of us sat on the floor around James' car seat ooh-ing and ah-ing and goo-ing while shaking rattles in his face.  Alex finally got his dream - reading a book to his grandson.

But after about an hour, James stopped smiling, stopped playing with his toys, and started fussing. So we took him out of the car seat to hold him. We took turns having James sit next to us on the sofa the way we had seen him sit next to Simon in Facebook posts. In another 30 minutes, that stopped satisfying him and he became even fussier. I pulled out the bottle of milk and heated it the way Sarah explained. She didn't expect James to drink it, but it couldn't hurt to try, right. Alex moved the car seat to the sofa so neither of us would have to get all the way down on the floor again - because getting up is so hard these days - and rocked James while I heated the bottle. He wasn't interested in the bottle, of course. So I tried the next item on the checklist - James' diaper. Changing it was a good thing. For a few seconds, I thought it might be enough as I saw that smile again on his face. But once I got him bundled up in a clean, dry diaper and snapped his onsie back on, the smile disappeared and the fussing began again.

For the next hour, James cried. We tried rocking him in his car seat, carrying him around the house, turning off all the lights so that we would walk him around without lights, we turned off the TV and turned on the music on Alex's iPod. We had to trade off carrying him because my arms, shoulders, and back ached after a few minutes.

We even tried lying down on the bed in a dark bedroom with him. After 10 minutes, Alex picked James up and walked with him some more, at which point he finally stopped crying.  A few minutes later, we thought it was safe to put him back into the car seat, and it was. Five minutes later, Simon and Sarah arrived to pick him  up.

Because James didn't stop crying for so long, I started wondering if I have any grandma genes. While walking with him, I couldn't think of any lullabies. I just carried him, rubbing his back in the hope that it would comfort him. Maybe because I didn't have any of my own babies, the grandma genes just weren't kicking in.

We get another opportunity on Saturday.

Day 126 - Innocence of Childhood

image by peter pearson, via Flickr

Mom and Dad didn't buy a lake home like so many others, but they did make sure we spent a week each summer at a lake. We spent several summers at the same resort where there was an island in the middle of the lake. One summer, my brother Wayne and I decided we would row out to the island. We didn't make it, not because we couldn't -- we were convinced we could -- but because the adults back on shore assumed we were in trouble because we were so far away from shore. I was so disappointed when Dad showed up with another boat and motor in order to tow us back to shore.

My 11-year-old niece's favorite TV programs include Law and Order Special Victims Unit and Criminal Minds.  And that made me recall my first encounter with such concepts, the book To Kill a Mockingbird.  When we were at Cotton Lake for our annual week of vacation, Mom read the book and decided it was a good one for me to read, I guess because the story was told from the young tomboy Scout's point of view.  When I got to the point where Tom Robinson was accused of rape, I asked Mom what the word rape meant. She told me to look it up in the dictionary. Our dictionary defined rape as forcible carnal knowledge. That didn't help much so I looked up carnal and read that it was of the flesh. The dictionary was no help at all. I realized only that rape was something bad, but that was enough for me to get the message of the story.

Dad felt strongly about not going to the drive-in theaters to watch movies. When a dusk-to-dawn showing of kids movies was announced, Dad took us kids. The next day I recall him telling Mom that he was never going to take us again because of what went on in the cars around us. I never saw anything going on around us. I watched the movies.

For years I didn't understand why Mom told people when she was buying something as a present. I had heard a clerk in Melberg's Book Store tell her that you always pay more for a present. So if she just didn't tell the clerk it was a present, the price should be less, right?

Day 125 - Decisions

image by hang_in_there, via Flickr

I thought I was decisive. I made decisions, every day. I decided what to study in school. I decided what topics I would write about for my essays. I decided what to read. I decided what to wear every day, what to eat. I made big decisions and small decisions.

But then one day in San Francisco a friend told me he would like to spend a day with me where I would make all the decisions. He made me realize that I made decisions for myself, but as soon as there was someone else involved, I deferred. I think I was afraid to make a decision that wasn't the decision others with me would make. I didn't want to disappoint anyone. So I left all decisions up to others. That had to change.

Making decisions was an essential part of my first job with the Department of State. I was a vice consul, the lowest consular title, in the non-immigrant visa section of the Consulate General in Stuttgart, Germany. Every day I made several hundred decisions in response to applications for non-immigrant visas. Each decision was an either-or choice. For applications that came in the mail, the choice was either to issue the visa OR to invite the applicant in for an interview. For those who applied in person, either we gave a card with a time on it to return to pick up their passports with visas in them OR we invited them to take a seat until a consular officer could interview them.  When we interviewed applicants, the choices were either to issue the visa OR to reject the application. That's it. Every decision was an either-or choice.

It took awhile to reconcile myself to knowing I would never have all the information I needed to make the perfect decision.There was no difference between the reactions of two people to whom I issued visas; both would be happy even if my decision to give a visa to one of them was wrong. Similarly, there was no difference between the reactions of two people whose applications I denied; both would be unhappy even if my decision to refuse a visa for one of them was right.

Once again, just as I had concluded after Iran, I realized sometimes it is more important to appear decisive than to be certain that the choice was right. Since I would never know that my decision was the right one, all I could do was learn from each decision to make a better decision next time. The basic criteria was subjective: every applicant for a non-immigrant visa must overcome the presumption that he or she is an intending immigrant. There was no magic formula. There was no checklist of requirements an applicant must meet. There were some lines in the sand that could prevent the issuance of a visa, but those were rare. In most cases, it was the consular officer's decisions to believe what an applicant said about their intentions with regard to traveling to the U.S. It was my decision.

In Barbados, I once again made decisions about visa applications. By then I had adopted a new pattern. I had to make decisions, big decisions, decisions that affected the lives of those around me, every day, many times a day. When I got home, I did not want to make any decisions. When I arrived home and Alex asked me if I'd like a drink, I fell back into my post-Iran habits; I said yes. When he asked what I wanted, I told him I didn't care. He could bring me coffee, water, tea, wine, a gin and tonic, I just didn't care. I didn't want to have to decide now that I was home. 

Day 124 - Choices

“IT IS BY CHOICE AND NOT BY CHANCES THAT WE CHANGE OUR CIRCUMSTANCES.” 
― Nadia Sahari, Breakaway: How I Survived Abuse

image vy emilio labrador, via Flickr

Everyday we make choices. Even when we don't think we are making choices, we are making choices.  When we let someone else make decisions for us, we are making that choice.

My friend Kathy let other people make choices for her. She did this in part by assuming that everyone around her had a hidden agenda. When she went shopping, for example, she assumed that the clerk in the store who helped her choose a blouse, dress, slacks, etc., had some hidden purpose behind her suggestions. So nine times out of ten, once Kathy brought her purchases home, she would begin to question whether the color was really good for her skin tone or the neckline complemented the shape of her face or the waistline of the slacks made her look slim. After stewing about it overnight, she returned the items. Instead of making her own choices, she let her assumptions about others make those choices.

image by Leonard John Matthews, via Flickr

Kathy lived with me for about a year. My house had one bathroom. Both Kathy and I grew up in houses with just one bathroom and lots of siblings, so getting along with one bathroom wasn't a problem. The medicine cabinet above the sink had two sliding mirror doors which met in the middle. Because the point where the doors overlapped distorted the image, Kathy used to stand to one side of the sink so that she could see her face on just one of the doors. In contrast, I used to slide one of the doors open half way so that I could stand centered at the sink and see my face without the distortion of the split mirror. When Kathy saw me slide the door half way open, she laughed because it had never occurred to her that she could do something about what she didn't like. She was so used to making adjustments to herself instead of to the world around her.

“Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.” 
― Madeleine L'Engle

Day 123 - More Decline

It has been less than two months since I was last in town to see Dad. While he has improved greatly since three weeks ago when he had his fifth stroke, the decline from my last visit is marked and obvious.

Bingo is one of the events that helps me see the changes. Wednesday is Bingo day where he lives, right after mid-day coffee.  I knew that Dad hadn't been staying in the dining hall much after having his coffee, so last week I was prepared for him wanting to leave the hall when Bingo got started. But he wasn't anxious, so I put a card in front of him to watch what he would do. Instead of leaving it on the table, he picked it up and held it in his slightly shaking hand as he looked it over when the numbers were called. He held it so close to his body that I couldn't watch what he was doing without standing up to look over his shoulder. I knew from having helped him at a noon meal earlier last week that his hand-eye coordination is much worse. As he tried to pick up food with his fork, he kept aiming for a spot on the table in front of his plate. So I didn't expect that he would be able to pull those red sliders down over the numbers this time. And there were no surprises.

After the first game, I picked up a card for myself. I didn't really care about winning a game; I just wanted to be doing something to keep from hanging over Dad's shoulder. I thought about passing my card to Dad if I ended up winning a game, but I wasn't sure that he would even realize what winning meant. So I decided I would just play, without announcing "Bingo." With a card in my hand, I could watch Dad's reactions without appearing to.

Dad looked over his card consistently, but I am not sure it was intentional. He found one number among those called and he tried to pull down the tab. But most often he seemed to be looking for something. When I asked, he told me he saw a Bingo card on the floor and he was trying to pick it up. Then he reached for the napkins on the table. I think he thought they were Bingo cards, too.

This week Dad didn't want to stay for Bingo at all, but we had a wonderful conversation. I told Dad how much I had to thank him for. I told him that when I was in fourth grade, I thought I was getting too expensive: I got glasses that year, I was in the middle of corrective dental extraction intended for me to avoid having to wear braces, and I started taking violin lessons. I thanked Dad for keeping me after all of that. He laughed and held out his arms to give me a hug.

Last Thursday I found that Dad wasn't in his room when I got there. I went to the dining room to look for him and learned that he had gone to church. One Thursday each month, Trinity Lutheran Church pastors hold a service at Eventide and volunteers make sure they get all the Trinity members out of their rooms for the service. The same man, Jerry, has been picking up Dad for those services since last fall. Thursday Dad and Jerry talked about fishing and baseball and Jerry said Dad told him about his new Ford.

Over the course of these two weeks, Dad told me that he had his appendix removed the day before (that was two days after my sister-in-law visited Dad for the first time after she had had her appendix and a portion of her large intestine removed), that he had just returned from a train trip to the East Coast with a story so filled with details that kept him laughing at himself throughout, and that he thought something sounded strange when I called him Dad. He talked often about his car again, but I noticed that the word car seems more generic for him. He pointed to one of his loungers and referred to it as a car. And then he pointed to his wheelchair and asked me if it was his rental car. When I leave each day, I tell him I'll be back the next day, and about every other day he tells me he isn't sure where he will be the next day. I give him a kiss and reassure him that I'll find him, wherever he is.

Day 122 - Velveteen Kitty

Velveteen Kitty

Velveteen Kitty is the gentlest of creatures. When he wants some petting, he raises his paw to catch the attention of the nearest humor. If the humans aren't observant enough, he'll tap his paw ever so gently against a leg, arm, hand or even cheek. He is insistent, but not aggressive. No one can ignore his gentle taps. But even when he is invited to jump into a lap, he waits to be sure his presence isn't an intrusion. He is the gentlest of creatures.

Life could have been so different for him if he hadn't found Lori. Of course, Lori thinks she found him when she spied him in the cardboard box of free kittens. He was the runt of the litter. His fur was absolutely totally and completely unruly, sticking out in every possible direction, making him look more like Gizmo from the movie The Gremlins than a kitten. Lori's family had just lost a cat so her eyes locked onto Velveteen Kitty's eyes and it was destiny that he should go home with her.

He was so small then. But now his body has grown into the mass of fur that surrounded his kitten body, giving him an almost regal look. The thick fur poses challenges. Between the hairs he shed and the hair balls he coughed up, Lori had had enough. She took Velveteen Kitty to be groomed. He gets a lion cut so that his head and tail retain evidence of the thickness of his fur while the rest of his body is as smooth and soft as velveteen. Velveteen Kitty does have one drawback: he drools. When he has finally been convinced to sit in my lap, his head goes under my hand wherever it is - on the keyboard of the laptop, on my book - and while he gets my attention, he drools. But I don't mind.

Mas

Velveteen Kitty shares his human home with a few other animals. There is Lily, the almost entirely orange tabby who seems to forget who Velveteen Kitty is for a few days after he gets his new lion cut. During those days, Lily hisses and spits at Velveteen Kitty, giving the impression that she is pretty tough. But in fact, Lily runs at the sight of her own shadow and hides in back rooms when the house has more people in it than she is prepared to share it with.

There are also the two dogs, Max and Kirby, each one barely Velveteen Kitty's size. The dogs ignore both cats most of the time, concentrating all their energy on making sure the joggers, walkers, dog-walkers, runners, and occasional drivers who make their way down the street in front of Lori's house keep away. Their barks are ferocious, although their size makes it easy to overlook them, especially during the winter when they blend into the snow that covers the yard.

Day 120 - If You Want Something Done, Ask A Busy Person

Image by natalia love, via Flickr

It is the end of April; I have made it one-third of the way through this project, an opportunity for more stock taking and reflection.

At the end of the first month, I concluded that writing first person memories was easier than trying to write fictional pieces. That is still true. I also concluded that I needed to read something each day in order to spark my thoughts. And that is still true, but I find that completing a project each day seems to take up just the amount of time I have, rather than less time each day, leaving little time for reading. And my last conclusion at the end of the first month was that it was getting easier to write each day. That is harder for me to affirm. Perhaps I have hit a plateau. It isn't harder for me to write, but it doesn't yet feel easier.

Whether at work or in my personal life, I seem always to be trying to get one more thing done than I have time to do, trying to prove Ben Franklin got it right when he uttered the words in the title. Some days I think taking on this project is the one more thing. But I'm going to try to keep going. I may just have to try scaling back on the length of what I write each day.

Starting today.

Day 121 - Minnesota Nice or How North Dakota of You

image by J. Stephen Conn, via Flickr

I have been in my hometown for nearly two weeks and I keep being reminded of what a wonderful place it is, setting the matter of the weather aside. I spent so many years of my life trying to figure out how to get out, probably because I didn't realize what I would be missing or how much less of the wonderful stuff I would find elsewhere. Here are some examples.

On Sunday when my sister, brother, sister-in-law and I were at a local restaurant for dinner, a young woman came to our table as she was leaving and asked if we could use a coupon for 20% off our bill. It was only good through that day. My initial thought was cynical. What was she getting out of it, I thought. So my first response was that we had already received our bill so I couldn't use the coupon. My sister pointed out that I could use the coupon at the cash register, so we accepted it. And sure enough, the coupon knocked one whole meal's cost off the bill. That's Minnesota nice.

The other day, I went to a McDonald's restaurant and found the door locked when I got there. I thought that was curious, so I walked over to one of the windows to peer in to see if it was closed. Within seconds, one of the customers in the store had come to the door to open it for me. She said she also found the door locked when she arrived. It was a statement, not a complaint, and she smiled at me as she held the door open. That's also Minnesota nice.

image by J. Stephen Conn, via Flickr

I ordered a meal, but I wanted to substitute a strawberry lemonade for the drink. What I got was both the strawberry lemonade and a glass for a beverage. I thought about filling the glass with a soft drink to take home with me, but then I drank a large sip of the lemonade and got the worst case of brain freeze ever. My head hurt. My nose hurt. My eyes hurt. My eyes watered. My throat hurt. My heart started pounding. All I wanted to do was lie down until it went away. All I could do was put my head in my hands and wait for it to go away. At that point I didn't want anything more to drink so I picked up my tray and the rest of my lemonade and headed toward the refuse bin to toss the wrappers, leaving the empty cup behind on the table. The woman at the table next to me ran after me to give me back my empty cup. That's Minnesota nice.

Today I went to a local pharmacy to print off some photos. The sign at the photo station instructed me to go to the next register. But the next register was empty and had a sign saying to ring the bell for help. A woman was standing there, having rung the bell at least twice already. When no one appeared, she turned to me with a smile and said we could just as well take our things and leave. But she didn't mean it, of course. Instead, she rang the bell again and waited until one of the clerks finally arrived. How North Dakota of her.

On reflection, I now realize that by leaving this area, I had expected to find the wonder of big cities and exotic places along with that Minnesota Nice attitude. People here are generally trustworthy which means it is safe to assume someone is telling the truth until proven otherwise. In so much of the rest of the world, the opposite is the only safe assumption. While I can't imagine my life turning out any way other than the way it has done so far, I am very happy to have started out here, with the safety and security of trustworthy people around me, with policemen who really do serve the public, and counselors who counsel instead of taking advantage of those in their care.