Rick Bailey's Blog: Stuff happens, then you write about it, page 13

America Goes Left

Watch out. You’re an American in Italy, and you’re about to execute the ceremonial cheek kiss. How many kisses, one or two? That problem will take care of itself. The peril is in the prelude.

In the US, at the onset of a hug (or a cheek kiss—if we did that), we tend to go left. We lean forward and veer gently to the left, extend arms, and embrace. In Italy, they go right. 

Imagine that you are a Buick, a big American car amongst go-cart-size italian cars on a city street in Italy.  You approach an intersection. Ahead of you, coming toward you into the intersection, a Fiat. The light is red. You both stop, face to face across from each other. When the light turns green and it’s time to move, you press on the gas and execute a left turn. That’s what we do in the US. We go left and merge. But you’re in Italy, where the Fiat goes right. 

There are two awkward outcomes: a head-on collision, a kiss on the lips (or more likely a face smash), or, both cars complete their turns with an inevitable fender-bender. You both feel foolish. But there’s no doubt about who’s at fault. 

American, turn right.

And Now the Letter H

Today I discovered Hamerica. 

Make that Hamerica’s. It’s a chain restaurant in Italy “dove vivi l’esperienza degli States e provi i migliori hamburger fatti in Italia con un gusto completamente americano.”  Best hamburger in Italy, they boast. Just like being in the States.

Walking through Rimini this morning, we passed what used to be Picnic (the Italians say Peek-NEEK), a restaurant that had a huge vegetable buffet and garden seating and a very cordial and friendly old waiter named Roberto. Picnic closed ten years ago and was replaced by a tapas restaurant that did not survive. Now it’s Hamerica’s. 

Hamerica’s was  closed this morning. If it had been open, I might have gone inside, not for a genuine Hamerican hamburger but to ask, Guys, what’s with the H? 

There are five letters in the English alphabet that don’t exist in Italian: J, K, W, X and Y. As for H–they call it “acca,” sounds like AH-kah–it might as well be missing, as it is not pronounced. At Hamerica’s I’m sure they say welcome to America’s. We serve amburgers. 

It’s kind of cute. And very puzzling.

I got to wondering about H words. When we got home I pulled my Larouse English-Italian dictionary off the shelf and turned to the H words. It’s an old paperback edition, with 45,000 translations. In the H’s, here’s what I saw: 

That was it. Next I consulted the online Hoepli Grande Dizionario Italiano, thinking I would search all the H words and maybe count them. They are a lot of them (Hoepli, for example). Here’s page 1 of the search. 

Mostly words imported from English. I notice “hackeraggio,” a wacky italianization, which is kind of like hackerage, the act of hacking.  More H words:

It’s unlikely I will ever encounter the word hi-fi or hully-gully among friends, but I would give anything to hear those words spoken. With the H dropped, hi-fi would sound like E-fee and hully-gully ooly-GOOLY.

When I learned to conjugate the Italian verb avere (to have) I questioned neither the presence of H: ho (I have), hai (you-singular have), ha (he/she/it has), nor the absence of H: abiamo (we have), avete (you-plural have), nor its mysterious reappearance: hanno (they have). I can think of no other Italian verbs requiring an H.

Over time, I learned the utility of H, when it appears with the letter c and g. Spaghetti without the letter H would sound like spa-jetti. Michelangelo would sound like Mitchelangelo.

The plot thickens when we consider the voiceless glottal fricative, aka the gorgia toscana or “tuscan throat.”  

You might wake up one morning in your Florence hotel and, in the breakfast room, inquire about the weather and how you should dress.  Setting down your cappuccino the server might say, “Oggi fa haldo.”

Don’t bother looking for haldo in your Larouse. 

The word “caldo” just emerged from his tuscan throat. And in this case, strangely, you hear the letter H. Any Italian travel book will warn you about this curious phenomenon, probably with this illustration: a coca cola with a short straw, una coca cola con canuccia corta, una hoha hola hon hanuccia horta.  When they say a C word in Tuscany, they make it an H word.  Case closed. Or as they might say in Florence, Hase hlosed.  

I’ll have H’s on my mind as I continue my unt for amburgers in Italy.

Ours Are Better

One of our current favorite restaurants in Rimini is Nud e Crud. It’s just across Ponte di Tiberio, the 2000-year-old Roman bridge that takes you from old Rimini into San Giuliano, which is fisherman Rimini (and Fellini Rimini). Nud e Crud translates roughly as plain and raw. The food is simple and consistently excellent. A staple on the menu is piada, the local flat bread you make sandwiches with, and cassoni, a folded piada with a filling that’s sealed inside. Locals would order piada with sausage, radicchio verde, and onion; or piada with sardine, radicchio verde, insalata, and onion; or piada with squaquarone, a soft local spreadable cheese. Yesterday I was startled to see, at the top of the menu, “pidburgher,” Nud e Crud’s hamburger. 

Hamburger? In Italy? Who would order that?

Rimini is a tourist town. Maybe that explains it. Give some of the people what some of the people want. By the looks of it, the hamburger is catching on in these parts.

When I searched where to order a hamburger in Rimini, a lot of places popped up. Some, for the monolingual tourist, in English: Meburger, My Burger, HomeBurger, Old Wild West, Draft American Slow Diner, Porky’s Pub; Malto Craft Beers, Burgers, Dry-Aged Beef. And some for the local clientele: Senza Forchette, Panino Loco, Hamburgheria Energy, Pane Vino Baghino, Sbionta, Il Gatto sull’Albiccocco, Hamerica’s. There are delights–or oddities–to discover here. Il Gatto sull’Albiccocco translates The cat on the apricot. Okay, I’m a little interested. Also a little afraid. And, weirdly, Hamerica’s. What’s with the H?

Our friend Adele, who lives in old Roman Rimini, tells us that whenever she travels, the night before departure she goes out for pizza. She says she tries to sit as close to the oven as she can. She likes it hot. “I have a pizza,” she says, “because I know wherever I’m going, I won’t find a decent pizza to eat.” She might find a pizza she could reason with, but in the end, her view would undoubtedly be “ours is better.” 

Back home, before we travel, Tizi and I do likewise. Only instead of pizza, we have a hamburger. If you asked her, she would say mine are best, done on our grill. That’s nice. But our gold standard, were we to go out for a hamburger, would be Miller’s Bar in Dearborn. It’s a no-frills ground round, a bar burger served on a sheet of tissue paper. You can have a hamburger with cheese. You can have it with a cool, crispy flat slice of onion. Pickle slices, mustard, and ketchup on the table. Don’t ask for anything fancy on it. You won’t get it. And, really, you won’t want it or need it. It’s a hamburger for the Gods. Eating it, you are briefly deified. 

Why, while in Italy, would I want a hamburger? If I ordered one, my view would undoubtedly be “ours are better.”

When I look for the menu at Il Gatto Sull’Albiccocco, this tagline greets me: Wine and Restaurant. And this promise: Il nostro ristorante é una storia d’amore. Romantico, ricercato e legato alla tradizione. Wrong door. Do they mean romantic hamburger? No, they do not. Google flubbed. It’s a seafood restaurant, not a burger joint.

Next stop, Pane Vino e Baghino.

This place serves burgers? Their logo features a pig, a “baghino” is a pig, and so many gustatory delights in Rimini and Romagna appertain to the pig. But on the menu, hamburger comes first, and there are ten hamburgers to choose from. Ten!

These are hamburgers with a local accent, all named in dialect.

È burdél (the kid): hamburger with mayonnaise, ketchup, lettuce, tomato, and onion. Se furmái (with cheese) hamburger with cheese, Sla panzetta (hamburger with bacon), Bela burdéla (a delicate hamburger for the more refined palate) with white truffle oil, barbecue sauce, lettuce, tomato, sweet onion, and brie. Wait, white truffle oil? They’re just getting started. The next burgers get more elaborate, a little more Italian and international. Here’s where they drop the bomb: Tam fe s’cíupè (this one makes me explode), a breaded hamburger fried twice, with tzatziki sauce, barbecue sauce, arugula, tomato, sweet onion, and bacon.

This is fast food–with an accent, with an attitude. The more menus I look at, the more I see–and appreciate–an Italianized hamburger. At Doppiozero (for the double zero flour used to make piada) you can get hamburgers called Boss and Kroc and Factory, all slanting more in the direction of the homey’s taste. A hamburger with squarqueone and arugula, a hamburger with fontina, a hamburger with grilled pork cheek.   

In Pesaro, thirty minutes by car down the coast, is a restaurant called Harnolds. Perhaps there is, or was, a Happy Days connection. Harnolds has been there for decades. Like Hamerica’s, it features the inexplicable H.

Harnolds has hamburgers. 

I’m sure you can find a hamburger in most Italian towns now. Two days ago we had lunch in Mondolfo (population 14,000), a hill town inland from Pesaro. Not a tourist destination. We went for pasta and porchetta. Had we been so inclined, even there we could have found a hamburger. It might have been good, but I’m sure we would have concluded that ours are better.  Eat local. Here in Italy, especially, eat local. And eat well.

One day I will order a hamburger over here. Really, I will.

Made to Last

When we arrive in Serravalle, the village Tizi is from in San Marino, and open the apartment, as soon as we’ve wheeled suitcases through the front door, I drive down to the street below the building to turn on the water. To do that, I visit our tombino. Our little tomb. There are four of them next to the building, what we would call manholes in American English. Inside them are the waterworks, a line, a valve, and a meter for each apartment in the building. In our tombino, six lines, six valves, six meters. To each meter a metal tag is attached; on ours, written in black Sharpie ink, Canducci Luigi. I gently open the value, the needle on the meter spins a few times, and we have water.

It sounds simple. It’s not.

The rectangular tombino cover is iron. It’s heavy. For years I would look for a piece of re-bar that Luigi Brocchi, one of our neighbors in the building, hung on the edge of a retaining wall close by. When I started turning the water on and off, Luigi showed me how to pry open and lift the tombino cover with the re-bar. I proceeded to do so every time we came. Then one year the re-bar was gone.

That Spring day when I parked the car, Serravalle was wet from recent rain. The asphalt pavement around the tombino was wet and dirty. To lift the cover, I got down on all fours and used a heavy screwdriver Tizi’s dad kept in a drawer up in the apartment, a tool ill suited to that job. As I was straining, struggling, and cursing, trying to get a purchase on the edge of the cover, a guy walking by gave me a hand. We talked for a minute. He pointed at the slots on two ends of the cover and said, “Qui ci vuole una chiave.” You need a key.

I asked, Where do I get one of those?

He said, “Deve trovare un fabbro.” You need to find a fabbro.

#

We have stores we return to nearly every time we come to San Marino. We cover a fifty mile radius, crossing into Italy every day. That year we planned to go to Gambettola, to the Pascucci store, a forty minute drive from Serravalle. Pascucci makes fine linen tablecloths with hand-stamped designs in blue and rust and red and green ink. They’re beautiful works of art that Tizi loves. The images are evocative, the fabric thick and sensuous, the craftsmanship historic. They’re not cheap. 

One year on the beach I bought a cheap imitation, brought it home, and presented it. Tizi shook her head. It was . . . a cheap imitation. Arguably junk. But useful junk. The dimensions were odd, not quite a square, not quite a rectangle; a square-tangle. We used it for everyday. We didn’t love it. 

#

Fabbro is a word I loved immediately. 

I knew it from my undergraduate days. T.S. Eliot dedicated his poem “The Wasteland” to Ezra Pound, “il miglior fabbro,” echoing a line from Dante’s Purgatorio, referring to trovatore Arnaut Daniel, “Il miglior fabbro del parlare materno,” the better poet in the mother tongue. Six hundred years later, in contemporary Italian, fabbro refers to a guy who works with iron, sort of like a blacksmith.

Where would we find a fabbro? In the Pagine Gialli? 

#

In the house I grew up in, there was a kitchen drawer. In that drawer were placemats. They were plastic, with a spongy surface on the underneath to keep them from sliding around on the table. They were decorative in a planty, floral kind of way. After dinner, you wiped them off with a damp sponge or dish rag and put them back in the drawer. Convenient. Simple.

In the house I’ve lived in for decades now, in marital bliss, I’ve never eaten off a placemat. Tablecloth, yes; placemat no. Much of that time, the majority of the time I would say, I’ve eaten off the ersatz linen tablecloth I bought on the beach and, even more often, a tablecloth-size blanket. Yes, a blanket. We have three of them, navy blue in color. For our 36 x 30 inch kitchen table, they’re the perfect fit. Where do you get a blanket that size? 

On overseas flights. 

We disagree on the source of these blankets. I say United; Tizi says Delta. 

Lightweight blankets, made of hi-tech, water-resistant, vomit-resistant, quick-wash, wrinkle-free fabric, durable enough to circumnavigate the globe many times over, they make better tablecloths than blankets, something one of us, Tizi I would say, recognized on a long flight years ago. Before we landed, she spirited one into her carry-on. Then came another flight, we filched another blanket. Then another flight, another blanket.   

#

“Do you know a fabbro?” I asked Tizi’s Aunt Teresa. She seemed like a good source. For whatever you wanted–wine, anice liquor (mistrá), sausage, eggs, rabbit, woodwork, painter, locksmith–she had an omino, a little man who had the stuff or did the job. She did not know a fabbro. 

Every time we’re in San Marino we go to a store up in Fiorentino. It used to be called Simply. Now it’s Superstore COAL Alimentari, a dreadful name. It’s kind of like a miniature Meiers or Walmart. We go there to buy reading glasses and sunglasses. The guys at the counter are generous and, in time, have come to recognize us. They will adjust the fit of glasses we bought in prior visits and seem casually interested in our story, the San Marino lady with the American husband. 

This year while we tried on glasses, we asked if they knew a fabbro. They did. In Fiorentino. Five minutes from the store. They gave us very specific driving directions, with many helpful hand gesticulations for curves and stops and continue on, and finally, there on the left side of the road (the funny Italian left hand gesture, thumb down, four fingers waving as one to the left). I drove right to it, a small industrial-looking building with a large wide garage door, closed.

# 

The thing is, if you’re not cool with placemats, which Tizi is not, you want a cheap everyday tablecloth. The fine linen washes well. The guys at Pascucci in Gambettola or Marchi in Santarcangelo, they say go ahead and use bleach. Bleach will make the blue even more brilliant. It does. But still… 

A bit of ragu drops from your fork. 

Worse, a glass of red wine tips over.

Or worst of all, a splop (a portmanteau our son invented, combining spill and plop) of ketchup or mustard lands on the linen.

You gasp, you wince at the sight of it.

This year at Pascucci we see wonders. In the studio, the laboratorio, they’re working on prints with traditional Romagna imagery–roosters, grapes, grain, pitchers. Also some pieces with drawings and paintings by Santarcangelo di Rimini screenwriter-poet-painter Tonino Guerra, on tablecloths, aprons, bibs, and placemats. 

“Placemats?” I say to Tizi, pointing.

“Yes.” She shakes her head, meaning that we are not using placemats. “We have some of those.”

“We do?”

“Adele gave them to us a couple years ago.” Adele her childhood friend who visited us in the US a few years ago.

“Where are they?”

“I put them away. I don’t remember where.”  

#

We returned to the fabbro’s shop, twice. Still closed both times.

There was no rush. I used the delay to mentally rehearse my explanation in Italian. A few years before that I had presented my argument about a parking ticket in the office of a uniformed police captain in Pesaro–I think he was called colonel–having rehearsed my speech for days. And got the fine reduced by 50 euro. I’d never met a fabbro, but I suspected this would be less stressful. Acqua (water), strada (road), tombino (manhole), coperchio (cover), chiave (key?).

I’ve learned not to puzzle too much about words and their meanings. Chiave is the word for key. You have a chiave for your house, a chiave for your car. It’s also the word for wrench. To loosen a nut on a bolt, you need a chiave. How can a wrench be a key? Now manhole lid lifter-upper was also a key. Ci vuole una chiave. Okay.

Third time was a charm. The fabbro was in.

In a large open space on the other side of the garage door, he and his colleague were bent over a few lengths of steel rod, arc welding. I was interested, but I didn’t look. You’re not supposed to look at welding. He was fifty or sixty, wearing overalls. He pulled off his helmet revealing gray hair neatly cut. He was fit, trim. Out of overalls he could have looked like a professor or a dentist.

It was late afternoon, too late for buongiorno. I said buonasera and launched into my speech. Acqua, strada, tombino, coperchio, chiave. I had cobbled together an explanation: A chiave that would fit in the slot on the cover and enable me to lift it.

He understood immediately what I needed.

I’d come thinking maybe I could get a chiave made before we went back to the US, so I would have it when we came back. That was a few weeks off. He set down his welding wand, yanked a piece of scrap iron, a long rod, from a pile, and cut a half meter length of it. He cut two more lengths, one for a handle, one for the tee to fit in the cover’s slot, welded those to the longer rod. It took two minutes.

“Like this?” he said. 

I was happy. He was happy. We talked for a while, about his work, about the San Marino woman and her American husband.

I keep the chiave behind the refrigerator in the apartment. I guard it jealously.  Everytime I use it, gripping its handle I feel like I’m shaking hands with an excellent fabbro. 

#

That day at Pascucci, standing in their laboratorio, we chatted with the proprietor. Tizi pointed to a couple items with the Tonino Guerra images she admired and we bought . . . placemats. In the next room, the work went on, intricate, painstaking. The younger craftspeople worked at it, inheritors of the art.

“Placemats,” I said. “Really?”

“To give away when we get home,” she said.

They went home with us. I never saw them again. On the flight we inspected the Delta blankets, a shade of blue neither of us liked. Fortunately the ones we heisted years before were made to last.

Broken

“You’re going to freeze your ass off,” Tizi says. 

I’m piling tin-foil food containers on a tray so I can walk them over to the neighbors. It’s a February evening in Michigan, dark at 6:00 p.m., cold and damp. There’s no snow to speak of, just bone-chilling 30 degree weather, what my mother-in-law called “aria rigida.” Rigid air.  Some winter nights two below zero doesn’t even faze you, when it’s that crisp dry winter cold, with no wind. When I step out on the front porch to shake a tablecloth, I’ll want to linger a few minutes in shirt sleeves, under the porch lamp. If I knew a soliloquy, I would perform it. 

This is not one of those nights.   

“Freeze your ass off,” I sing to Tizi, to the tune of Handel’s Hallalujeh chorus. It’s a catchy tune. “Hallelujeh, freeze your ass off, freeze your ass off.” I’ve offloaded braised chicken thighs, a modified cacciatore, from a pan on the stove into a large container. In the three smaller containers are three side dishes. When they’re arranged on the tray, I pull on a light jacket and slip my feet into flip-flops. Still singing: “Freeze your ass off, freeze your ass off.”

“That’s enough,” she says.

“That’s Handel,” I say. “Catchy tune.”

She shakes her head. “Are you sure they’re there?”

“I just saw the car pull in the drive. And Debbie sent me a text.”

Debbie is Beverly’s daughter, up from Cincinnati. With her sister Cindy, who’s up from Nashville, she’s here to make arrangements. Their mother, our nextdoor neighbor Beverly, died day before yesterday. She was 94.

“At least zip your jacket up,” Tizi says. 

The chicken smells great. I tell her that. 

She watches to make sure I zip up, glowering at my stocking feet in flip-flops, arguably the wrong foot wear for the season. Or maybe it’s Handel’s freeze your ass off she’s glowering at. I don’t know. But I feel good.

“I know why you’re doing this,” she says.

“This zipper has always given me trouble.”

“This is about Madelyn, isn’t it?”

She means taking food next door. She means another neighbor and what happened over ten years ago. 

When I step outside and turn to look back at Tizi, I feel my jacket popping open, unzipping from the bottom up. A busted zipper.

Damn.

Madelyn, whose husband died in 2012. And I did nothing.

We’ve lived in this neighborhood for 38 years. Generally, unless they’re outsourced to assisted living, people live here until they die. Five years ago I was out for a walk one summer day. Up the street I came upon Bill Case, 82 years old, lying on his back on the Benneker’s lawn. “Bill,” I said, “do you need help?” “Oh, I’m okay,” he said. “I just need a few minutes to rest.” A year later, he was gone. We went to his funeral. Patty Hodges, who walked the block, then trudged the block, then eventually stopped the walk. We went to her funeral. And Dick, her husband, his too. Harold, Beverly next door’s husband, has been gone 15 years. Jed, the other side next door. We went both of those. Most of these houses are named for their long-time residents. The Case house. The Dion house. The Stahl house. The Benneker, the Wolf, the Doerr house. And the residents come named in couple format. Bill and Roxane, Patty and Dick, Richard and Michelle, Ellen and David, Harold and Beverly, Peggy and Jed. Word travels. Last month Michelle called. “Ellen’s mother died. I thought you would want to know.” We went to that funeral.

In the Doerr house, Madelyn. There was also a John in there somewhere, but he was elusive. An unknown quantity.

I know I should not become attached to things of this world, but I love my jacket with the now busted zipper. I love it the way I love an old Timex watch I don’t wear but keep next to my bed. When I press the stem, the dial lights up. It’s 3:00 a.m. Too early to get out of bed. I’ve changed the battery five times. The watch is that old. I’ve tried replacement watches but always gone back to the old Timex. When we travel, I take it with me–to Italy, to California when we drive out west to visit our son and his wife. 

Last year I thought I left the watch in a Medora, North Dakota hotel. I was bereft, that’s the only word for it. I felt an irrational sense of loss totally out of proportion with the object, frantically unpacking my carry-on at our next location, Whitefish, Montana. 

Then, there it was, under a sock. 

#

“Well,” Madelyn said one afternoon, “John died.” I could swear she added “finally.” John, her elusive husband, sick six months.

On this warm afternoon in June I had walked down to the mailbox and found no mail. When Madelyn came around the corner a few hundred feet away, her walk looked normal. Slight in size, she was dressed in khaki slacks and a short sleeve chambray blouse. Her short brown hair fell just over her ears, framing her face. She didn’t so much walk as float the block. I might see her once or twice a month. We chatted. She gave me updates. She knew I knew John was sick. 

I told her I was so sorry and took a few steps down the drive in her direction.

“Yesterday,” she said. “I’ve called the girls.” Daughters, two of them, living out of state. 

I knew exactly this about Madelyn: What restaurants she’d been to recently and how she liked them. Where she went in Arizona, by herself for weeks at a time. Her life, it seemed, occurred mostly apart from her husband, who in retirement had begun riding a motorcycle. I would see him occasionally on a big road bike, wearing his black helmet with a visor, his inscrutable round face behind the windscreen.  He was a white collar rider. She didn’t complain so much as aver: He rode long after he should have, he went off on long trips by himself, he was gone weeks at a time, rarely called. She said once, What if something happened? They were separate but equal, united in their separateness, it sounded like.

“You’ll let us know arrangements,” I said now.

“Oh, there won’t be any,” she said. “No funeral or memorial, I mean. We don’t do that.” 

She lifted her head and looked at me, defiantly, it seemed. Or at least assessing my reaction.  

At that moment Frank the mail carrier pulled up in his Jeep. I stepped down to the road and he handed me our mail. As he motored away, I gave Madelyn an awkward hug and said again how sorry I was.

“Tell Tizi,” she said.

I told her I would.

From the very beginning, the zipper on this jacket has given me trouble. It’s a small blue plastic zipper, on a lightweight garment. A heavier, more robust metal zipper wouldn’t be right, color-wise; it would be too much hardware for such a light jacket; overkill. 

On this little blue zipper, the nub thingie, or pin, that fits into the bottom slot of the zipper on the left, the retaining box, sometimes called “the garage,” is short and difficult to seat, the way you need to fix it in place before drawing the slider, sometimes called “the car,” up the length of the zipper and joining the teeth. Typically zipping is a struggle and takes longer than it should. I curse the zipper, but I love the jacket.

I bought it a few years ago in Italy, at a store called Conbipel, on the road up to San Marino. 

At that time Tizi and I were looking after her nonagenarian aunt. Looking after is probably the wrong term. We were being present. Tizi went up the street from our apartment almost every afternoon to sit with Zia. Some days to help out, I would drive Elena, Zia’s Ukrainian caregiver, to run errands–to the mercato up in Borgo Maggiore, to the grocery store and pharmacy, down in Dogana, to the flower shop and cemetery below the main road in Serravalle. One of these years Elena was getting ready to take the bus back to her home in Ukraine, a 72-hour trip she made once a year. For months before going, she would stock up on supplies and merchandise she couldn’t find back home. This one year she needed a winter coat for her daughter.

Along the depressing stretch of road connecting San Marino to Rimini, between a series of ugly bright yellow outlets I had never been in, was this clothing store, Conbipel.

Inside it felt like TJ Maxx. While Elena looked at coats, I passed the time in men’s stuff and found this inexpensive jacket, navy blue, lightly insulated, easily stuffed into the little blue nylon sack that came in its inside pocket, a jacket our niece says the Italians call a “cento grammi,” indicating its weight, 100 grams. It’s practically nothing. It cost practically nothing. But it has practical and sentimental value. 

I wear it all the time. I remember that day, I remember Elena, I remember Zia. It’s more than just a jacket. 

A few years after John’s death, a for-sale sign went up in front of Madelyn’s house. I was driving home from the grocery store one summer day. Seeing her in the yard, I stopped the car and put a window down.

“Madelyn,” I said, “you’re not leaving us, are you?” 

“Yes,” she said. “I’m moving down to Arizona.”

“For good?”

“Yes, for good.”

I said I was sorry to hear that. She was a fixture in the neighborhood, after all. She’d been there since we moved in. I said it wouldn’t be the same without her. I meant what I said.  

She stood there, assessing me, giving her head a negative shake. It must have been June, because a warm breeze carried a white flurry of cottonwood fluff. A blanket of it lay on her lawn.

I said I figured we would have another week or two of cottonwood snow. She lifted her head and said nothing. “Well,” I added, “we’re going to miss you.”

She took a step toward the car. “I have nothing to say to you,” she said. 

“What?” I said. “What?”

“I have nothing to say to you. After John died, you never called me.  You never came to the house. You never did or said anything.”

This was true.

I put the window down further. She suddenly seemed smaller, older; brittle. I looked away, then back at her. She was right. I hadn’t done anything. I’d gone on with my life, driving by her house every day, seeing her walking the block, waving to her, and forgetting. She had seemed so self sufficient. And liberated, I must have imagined. I remembered her stating that day, so flatly, that John had died. “Finally.” But had she really said that?

 “Madelyn,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” 

“I’m sure that you are,” she said, “and I don’t care. I have nothing to say to you. Have a nice life.”

With that, she turned and walked across her lawn and into her house. 

#

Butter. 

If I couldn’t budge the zipper on that blue insulated jacket, I wouldn’t be able to wear it.  And I didn’t want to let it go. 

I like to fix stuff, if I can. I’m not particularly good at it. Some things I render even more fatally broken when I try to fix them. The problem with the zipper, I imagined, must have been the car, the sliding device that magically joins the teeth on the zipper. With a screwdriver, I thought, I might widen the gap on the car and get it to slide down; with pliers, I could restore the gap, and maybe it would work. Maybe. But that fix also seemed like a good way to definitively ruin the zipper. 

When I searched stuck zipper repair online I learned that the zipper is a relatively new invention–twentieth century–that we can thank Gideon Sundback, Elias Howe, Whitcomb Judson, and BF Goodrich for their ingenuity, perseverance, and good offices; I learned that no one knew what to call it at first, hookless fastener, separable fastener, chain lock fastener, clasp locker, until finally it became the onomatopoeic zipper.

And I learned you can fix a stuck zipper with butter. I tried it. It worked.

I went home feeling the hate. We use that word casually. I hate oysters, I hate Florida, I hate those medicine commercials before Jeopardy, I hate the Julia Roberts character in Steel Magnolias. Those hates are cheap. We freely give of our hate. We throw it away. Receiving it is another matter. Real hate is cold. It’s formless, monolithic, it hollows you and possesses you. That I know of, only a few people in the world hate me. Really deeply, completely hate me. I’ve learned that it lasts, that it’s as powerful as love. Along with a few old hates, now there was Madelyn’s. Hers was fresh hate.

I drove home and sat by a window in the front of the house, in a chair with a view of the road. I explained things to myself. The summer John died I was driving 400 miles a week, back and forth to my parents’ home, helping my father and brother move my mother into assisted living. The days and weeks after John died, there was no service, no obituary, no death notice. And Madelyn, who had walked the street in front of the house, had seemed so independent all along, so complete unto herself.

I was making excuses. When someone dies, my daughter said once, you show up.  

I got up from the chair, stepped outside, and walked three houses up the street, across her snowy front lawn to her porch. And knocked.

It took a minute. I wondered if she had decided not to answer the door. Then it opened.

“What?” she said.

“Madelyn,” I said, “I am really sorry. I know that I have hurt you and I am so sorry for that.” I said it again and again, in so many words, saying essentially the same thing in as many ways I could. I offered no excuses. I only said all those words.

“If you’re looking for forgiveness,” she said when I paused, “you’ll have to go somewhere else.” Then she stepped back and pushed the door shut.

#

“You did what you could,” Tizi said later.

“It helps to have a funeral,” I said. “You remember. You do something.”

“You tried to make things right,” she said. “I couldn’t have done that.”

“You show up,” I said.

“You showed up. And she kicked you in the teeth.”

That night I lay in bed, still feeling the full force of her words, the door closed in my face. Have a nice life. It was all I could think about, this fresh hate. It was all I had in me, and I knew it would be with me for a long time. Outside the wind was blowing. I pictured the cottonwood snow in the dark.

I imagined Madelyn walking the street in the dark, walking past our house one last time, looking up at our bedroom window, swirls of cottonwood snow surrounding her, lifting her, bearing her away, satisfied and broken.

Toothpicks

“Did you bring a flashlight?” Tizi asks. We’re setting out on our morning walk. It’s January, cold and dark. The snow that fell a few days ago has all melted, leaving puddles in the depressions in the asphalt pavement. She’s wearing her bright yellow Flectson vest over her many layers. A passing car will light up its gray reflector panels, two on the front, one in the back. By the side of the road you can’t miss her. Can’t miss us. I have one too, but i didn’t wear it. I figure one vest is enough. We are, after all, walking together.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Great,” she says. 

I detect miff. “I’ll just stay next to you,” I tell her. “And let your reflectors do their job.”

She’s miffed, I know, because we’ve turned left at the end of our street. She prefers to go to the right. A left turn takes us to our five-mile walk, whereas right is seven miles, a route I like, too, except it takes us down one mile of dirt road, and today it is wet, which means mud. 

Just wipe your feet on the wet grass after, she would say.

I don’t like mud.

Just walk on the dry patches in the middle of the road.

They’re not dry. And there’s more traffic than usual these days because of a road closure, forcing us to the muddy shoulder.

Just wipe your feet on the wet grass.

I don’t like mud.

There’s also some residual miff. Because of toothpicks. She was looking for toothpicks yesterday in the cupboard next to the sink. They should have been up there. It’s one of those dysfunctional corner kitchen cupboards, above the counter next to the range, requiring a chair to stand on and bodily contortions to reach into its furthest holds. 

She asked me to search the top shelves, which I did, finding a lot of junk: half a dozen boxes of expired cold medications, three pepper mills and a salt mill we’ve never used, Worcestershire sauce we never need, defunct vitamins we didn’t take, two small bottles of designer olive oil, never opened, a large jar of solid state honey, Child Life award winning liquid multi-vitamin and mineral supplement (orange/mango flavor), never been opened, no longer a liquid; also three stainless steel frothing pitchers, also a blue and white sixteen ounce ceramic caffe latte tumbler someone gave us, never used, and a lone blue and white espresso cup one of our kids made in a ceramics class and gave us, not needed, never used; zinc lozenges, a box of Bigelow chamomile tea c. 2002, a tube of truffle cream that I’m sure in disuse has become a solid. And more. 

When Tizi can’t find something, she accuses me of 1) moving it to an undisclosed location or 2) throwing it away. These accusations are not without foundation. It wasn’t the missing toothpicks. It was the reminder that I disappear stuff. She was miffed.

Our walk this morning will take 90 minutes. She slows down slightly, putting 5-10 feet between us. We should walk together. She’s wearing the Flectson vest. Also, it’s too long for us to walk in a huff.  But she’s making a statement. To lighten things up, I think of telling her what song is on my mind this morning, “Hang On Sloopy,” by the McCoys. I decide against it and say to her instead: “Toothpicks always remind me of Dennis Cockram.”  

We’ve seen Dennis in the movies–not at the movies, I mean in the movies. We’ve seen him and a few theater classmates from our undergraduate days. In the theater program back then, Tizi was in costume design. I was not a thespian. But I was theater curious. In a few productions I served as a stand-around, a potted plant, an actorkin that a director could move to a point on the stage, where I would stand, try to look authentic, and not say anything. Some of the actors who actually acted we eventually saw on television and in movies. Dennis could act. 

Along with his acting skills, he also knew what to do with a toothpick: lodge one in the side of his mouth, giving him an air somewhere between rugged and insouciant. More impressive, he could roll a toothpick vertically in his mouth. It was painful to watch–that double pointed object. You experienced vicarious peril. It may have been this skill that landed him his part in Uncle Buck. It’s a small part, but Dennis owns it: Uncle Buck’s friend Pal, who does that toothpick thing.

“Dennis,” Tizi says. 

“The toothpick roll in Uncle Buck.”

“He did that all the time. He came from a family of ranchers.”

“I remember,” I say.  “Like Rip, on Yellowstone. Rip is a toothpick man. Ranchers and toothpicks. Manly men and toothpicks. How did that get started?”

We’re walking down into my favorite part of the five-mile walk. We curve around a low swampy area. In the dark, the bare trees standing up reaching toward the sky remind me of dendrites.

“I wish you’d brought a flashlight.”

“It’s kind of spooky,” I say. “I like it.”

“What about deer?” 

There are deer. She reminds me that Sherrie, our friend, said she was attacked by a deer. I ask how a flashlight would help.

“We could see them.”

And duck? Actually, I think, if I had the flashlight, I would not shine malevolent deer. I would light up the back of Tizi’s head. Instead of a hat, she wears a neck warmer, essentially a tube pulled down over her head. Her hair, a silver that I find thrilling, spills from the back. 

“If it dries up today,” I say to her, “maybe we can walk the long walk tomorrow.”

#

Henry David Thoreau’s family was in the pencil business. I wonder, as we walk, if there were also Transcendentalist toothpicks in the 19th century. 

It turns out, no, there weren’t. Toothpicks were popularized in the US by an American titan named Charles Foster, who, according to toothpick literature, is “credited for mass-producing the toothpick in the nineteenth century after noticing the locals’ great teeth on a trip to Brazil (they credited toothpicks for their sparkling smiles).” To create demand for toothpicks in restaurants in Boston, Foster bribed Harvard students to politely request them.

When I look into toothpicks, I find more lore than I ever imagined. Ancient toothpicks found in Italy and Mesopotamia. Seventeenth century Portuguese nuns that made, and still make, the world’s most highly prized toothpicks. Eskimos, no surprise, poking their teeth with walrus whiskers. In Osaka, there is a toothpick museum shedding light on both the history and multi-cultural implications of toothpicks. Death by toothpick? Sad but true. The American writer Sherwood Anderson  and possibly President Warren G. Harding, died of peritonitis, having accidently swallowed toothpicks. 

The record number of times an individual rolled a toothpick vertically in his mouth, ala Dennis Cockram, is 50, held by Pete Carpenter of Whitmore Lake, Michigan, on October 17, 2020. As far as I know, Pete Carpenter is still alive. 

#

I heard a crash one morning. In one of our kitchen cupboards, a clip securing a metal track on one of the pullout shelves gave way. (See the assembly illustration at the top of this page for item #1.) The pullout was overloaded with large white heavy deep Corningware dishes, three of them, one stacked on top of the other. The pullout dropped, shattering all three, smashing a couple ceramic trays below it. It was a terrible loss. Those lasagna dishes were Tizi’s mom’s. It was a terrible mess. And it was an inconvenience because a few more Corningware dishes, also in the stack, did not break. Where would we put those, now that the cupboard was compromised, rendered useless?

So began my relocation program. Other cupboards, also with pullouts, were similarly overloaded. I read the other day in the New York Times about the six-month rule. It you haven’t needed something in the past six months, and if you don’t anticipate needing it in the next six months, get rid of it.

The heavy panini grill in another cupboard, overloading another pullout, an appliance we use once a year, went to the basement. The food processor, heavy as a boat anchor, similarly relocated. We have stacks of pans, three shiny stainless steel All-Clad saute pans, small medium and large, that we do not use. Or that we use once every 3-5 years. Into the basement they went, behind the doors of more cupboards. 

“I might need one of those pans,” Tizi said. 

“Another clip might break, another pullout might crash. Remember the lasagna dishes.”

“But I don’t know where you’re putting things.” Undisclosed locations.

“Ask me. I fetch.”

Miff. Major miff.

#

Traffic picks up. The sky takes on that delicate, faintly lit, gloomy early morning  light. I can’t help myself. “Sloopy let your hair down, girl,” I sing, “let it hang down on me.”

To which Tizi says . . . Nothing.

“In the first band I played in,” I tell her, “I sang that song.”

“That’s nice.”

“In the high school gymnasium, in The Troupe.” 

We’re walking side by side down the middle of Westmoor Road. When a car approaches us, we move to the right shoulder and walk single file. When we hear a car coming up behind us, we move to the left shoulder and walk single file. Tizi walks in front of me. There’s enough light, I take a picture of her hair.

“Sloopy let your hair down, girl . . .”

“Why must you sing?”

“I got the music in me,” I say. “My brain is a jukebox.”

“I’ll have that dreadful song stuck in my head all day now. Does that make you happy?”

“So come on, Sloopy,” I sing. I know I’m pushing it. What kind of a name is Sloopy? I ask Tizi what she thinks.

“Maybe you can look it up.”

Still singing: “You make me feel so good.”

When we get home, I do look it up. According to one source, Sloopy was the nickname of one Dorothy Sloop of Steubenville, Ohio. More Sloopy trivia: Before the McCoys, a group called The Vibrations recorded Hang On Sloopy. It was written by Burt Berns, who also wrote “Twist and Shout” and “I Want Candy.” And more: The Ohio State University marching band plays Hang On Sloopy at every home game. The 116th Ohio General Assembly made it the state’s official rock song on Nov. 20, 1985. 

That’s a thing I wish had caught on nationwide, marching bands adopting top-40 songs from the 60’s, playing them in formation at home games. University of Michigan marching band, arranged on the field in the shape of giant grand piano, dazzling the 103,000 fans as they belt out Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.”

Tizi lets her hair down when we get home from our walk, pulling that tube off her head. I don’t dare sing about it, but I want to, in the worst way.

This morning I find not one but two boxes of toothpicks in the cupboard. They were hiding in plain sight. That’s a problem with my relocation project. If I can’t find something hiding in plain sight, how will I find something I’ve stashed in the basement? “I put it where I knew I would remember.” Both of us say that–when we look for something we’ve put away somewhere, only to forget what we knew we would remember. I know it’s down there somewhere, buried treasure.

“Your hair,” I tell Tizi, “reminds me of Brian May.” When she rolls her eyes, I tell that’s a good thing.

“Who’s he?”

“He’s the guitar player in Queen.” She shakes her head, meaning I don’t know him. Meaning, You just never stop. “We will we will rock you?”

“I don’t like that song.”

If only she would play just a little air guitar. That would be so great. There’s no point in asking.

Rice and Cabbage

Thank God for mothers-in-law. Or if you prefer, mother-in-laws. Mine was a gem. If it hadn’t been for her we would not have enjoyed cabbage with rice on New Year’s Eve. Or yesterday, when I revisited the dish so I could write up this recipe.

Two types of cabbage to choose from: regular and savoy. I swing both ways. I know Italians strongly favor the savoy, which they call verza. Yesterday I used verza; NY’s eve, regular. More or less the same result: bliss.

Like many Italian dishes, this one begins with the holy trinity: onion, celery, and carrot, chopped and sauteed in a couple tablespoons of olive oil. While the saute is in process in a covered pan on low-ish heat, next chop a chunk of the cabbage. I cook for two. So my chunk is between a half and a quarter cabbage. Chop and rinse, saving the dark outer leaves for a wash and chop. Toss them in. Those outer leaves will lend the dish deeper color.

Add the cabbage to your saute, add salt and pepper. Still on low-ish heat, cook the mix uncovered for 10-15 minutes, stirring and rolling. Add another tablespoon of olive oil, stirring and rolling occasionally. When you begin to hear to swish and chirr at the side of the pan when you roll and stir, add a couple tablespoons of water.

To the eye, the volume of the saute will decrease by half as it falls, mixes, and collapses into cookitude.

Then comes tomato puree. Not a jar of tomato puree. That’s too much. Not half a jar. That’s too much. Not even a quarter of a jar. That’s also is too much. A quarter cup will be enough to provide color and taste. Stir the mix, roll it; cover the pan.

Check back in 10 minutes. I like to see a golden color becoming dominant. Ah, the gold. If it still looks pale, maybe add a few more tablespoons of tomato. You want gold, not red. Cover and cook for 25 minutes total on low heat. But understand that you are cooking this down. Not wet. Not turgid. In between. You may need to add a few tablespoons of water. Salt and pepper again to taste. If you have a bullion cube, toss that in for good measure.

This much cabbage at our table will go with 3/4 or a full cup of brown rice. This much rice and sauce serves two in our house. But we are pigs. It’s really enough cabbage and rice for four people.

A little black pepper. Cheese? Hell no.

What’s in it for you

Table of ContentsTupperware and the Vitruvian ManA Brief Disquisition on KetchupThen March OnI Can See Clearly NowSomewhere Between Pinconning and PienzaMarket, MercatoSay What?Going HomeThe Fat OneWalkaboutA Broom, a Fire, a PastryNo Exit from GuyvilleAlt-FoodCats, Rats, and DonutsTo Your Health-Save MeGatherer, Not HunterDo Not Go FracturedFace ItPlease State Your Sweet NothingsGive Us This DayGrubs for LunchShake HandsMoonwatchThe Flood Will ComeTP MeWhat Comes NextA Finch, a Bruce, a BurrataIf This Is ShelterLess Than OneWhat Are The Odds?What Day Is This?The Scream In My HeartDon’t Worry About the KeyAnd Now This

Help?

“I’d like you to take a drink of water,” the nurse says. “From a straw.” I’m in the ER at West Bloomfield Henry Ford Health System. She hands me a styrofoam cup with a lid on it, a straw poking out. I’m good at this. I take a little sip, nod and smile.  “Not a sip,” she says.  “A swallow.” I do as I’m told. “Again,” she says.  “Three swallows total.”  

It’s a test. I pass with flying colors. Even showing off a little. She taps on her computer keys, recording the results.

“Okay, now three swallows from the cup. One at a time. No straw.” 

It’s the old Toronto Bedside Swallowing Screening Test, for dysphagia. Impaired swallowing that can result from a stroke. I came in thirty minutes ago, a little before noon, after the feeling in my right hand faded and the dexterity in my fingers fizzled. I was in the kitchen. When I trilled my fingers, my ring and pinky fingers on that hand didn’t participate. I took an aspirin and discovered I couldn’t screw the lid back on the aspirin bottle with my right hand. Before we left for the hospital, I slid my feet into flipflops, confident I would not be able to tie my shoes.  Some confidence. Here in the ER, when I take the swallow test, if I dribble or drool, that could mean I’ve had a stroke. I picture one of my grandsons, when he was maybe a year old, the look on his face the first time I raised a water glass to his mouth and invited him to take a drink. The water went in his mouth, then he smiled and it all poured out. 

I drink, I swallow. I don’t dribble. It’s not even close. And I don’t talk funny or drag a foot when I walk. And I already have my right hand back in working condition, all my appendages doing what they are supposed to do. I pass a smile test, three times; touch a neurologist’s fingertips, then my nose, a dozen times. It would appear my neurons are firing.

“Do you smoke, Mr. Bailey?”

“No, I do not.”

“Do you drink alcohol?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Approximately how much?”

Just enough, I start to say. Then decide against it. “One glass of wine a day.” I think about explaining my “rule of one,”  which is moderation in all things, especially alcohol, when I see my wife’s face. “Okay,” I say. “sometimes two. Put me down for one-ish.” 

“Do you ever have six drinks a day?”

This seems like a preposterous question. Six? Really? Why six? Why not five, or seven? In the interest of truth in testimony I answer yes, once or twice a year I have six drinks, over a 4-6 hour period, usually when I’m in our friends’ swimming pool, and I always regret those drinks the next day. 

At the end of my orals, when they ask, I say Yes I know where I am.  Do I know the month and year? It’s not a trick question, but I pause. Just a minute. Damn, I think, don’t pause and think about it, you idiot.  

December 2022.  I’m 70 years old. How the hell did this happen?

#

My father was 89 when he died. It was the chicken pox that got him. Not shingles. Chicken pox, the kid’s disease. His condition baffled doctors. He presented with hearing loss, total. Then he was unable to swallow properly. There was a sore in his throat. The ENT guy could see something back there. He just didn’t know what it was. When they admitted him to the hospital, they didn’t trust him to take water from either a straw or glass, for fear water would trickle down into his lungs. To keep him hydrated they asked him to drink a sludgy, chalky, not quite liquid mix that was trickle-proof. He hated it. 

Every new white coat that came to the door would ask him how he was feeling. 

I’d say, “He can’t hear you.” 

“How are you, Mr. Bailey? Were you able to drink the water substitute? 

“He hates it,” I’d say.

My father would look at me. “What did he say?” 

“He asked how you are,” I’d yell.

“I’m doing just peachy,” he would say, smiling at the doctor. 

There was a lot of other stuff going on, some pox-related, some not, none of it good. Outside in the hall, I was asked if we had a do-not-resuscitate order on file. I said we did. They asked me to please bring in a fresh copy.

Later, when they moved him to ICU, the same request. Do you have a do-not-resuscitate order? I said that we did, that it was in their files. They asked me to please bring in a fresh copy.

I’m admitted for observation, which is okay with me. Observation is like a clearing house. If you’re okay they clear you out of the hospital. If you’re a problem, they move you to a place in the hospital where they can fix you. 

In Observation I get my own room, which is also okay. A couple more doctors stop by. I show my teeth, squeeze their fingers, hold out my arms in front of me as if I’m sleepwalking or preparing to take a dive. I explain I had a TIA, a transient ischemic attack, on three occasions twenty years ago. This event felt just like that. But, really, since then, I’ve been good. They run down a list of tests they’ve ordered. Within thirty minutes I’m wheeled to the CT scan room. During the test, they inject me with iodine. The tech says, “You’re going to feel like you peed your pants. Don’t worry. You didn’t.” Let’s hope not. The machine revs up. A few minutes later there’s a rush of cold up my arm, then a flush of heat inside me. My butt starts to feel warm, then hot. I wouldn’t say damp. I can’t feel my brain. It must be hot too.

I try to imagine what they see, what they look for. A shadow? A spot? A smudge? I picture my brain as a Christmas tree, all lit up, and a TIA as one tiny little light burning out. We have eight strings of lights on our Christmas tree at home. With that many lights, hundreds of them, you hardly notice a dead bulb on one string. But then another goes dark, then another. One more and the whole string goes black. I’d like to avoid that, both on the tree and in my brain.

“You want your door closed?” a nurse asks me when I get back from CT.

“Well, now that you mention it, sure.”

One door over there’s a vocal patient, an elderly woman, judging by the sound of her voice. Is there coffee? she says. Is there coffee?  It’s her only question, and it’s urgent.

“Sorry about the noise,” the nurse says. “We get a lot of traffic through here.”

“Will there be coffee?” I ask. I smile, to say it’s okay, the old lady doesn’t bother me that much.  That much.

Is there coffee? Even with the door closed, I hear her pleading. She takes a breath, then yells again Will you please make some coffee? Will there be coffee? For an hour that’s all she says. Then she’s quiet. Moved out of Observation, I suspect, to somewhere else in the hospital. Next to the coffee shop, I hope.

Later that night I go for an MRI. When I get back to my room there’s a new patient in the room next to mine. He’s in pain. This is not moaning pain. These are  exhalations of agony. Every breath sounds like a step toward death. It’s awful. The tech who comes to take my blood pressure apologizes. “That’s deep pain,” she says. “Hard pain. They need to get someone up here.” 

#

I don’t do well with the sound of pain, mine or anyone’s. 

For a few years I was on the ski patrol at a local resort. There was a lengthy first aid course that preceded your induction into the patrol. We learned rudiments of on-the-hill care: mainly bandages and splints, c-collars and backboards. We practiced taking blood pressures, checking for dilated pupils, sniffing for the fruity scent of diabetic breath. The end of my first day on the hill, one of the veteran patrollers asked if I’d had a taste of blood yet. Before I could answer, he told me on his first day, a beginner had skied out of control and collided with one of the steel chairlift stanchions. “He was knocked out  cold,” he said. “He had blood coming out of his ears.” He must have seen me turn a little pale. “But hey,” he said, “that’s once in a lifetime. Don’t worry about that.”

I liked skiing around in the uniform. It felt like public relations. Nice day, I’d say to skiers. Try the back hills today. Good snow. I drove the snowmobile once in a while. 

“Are you okay?” I would ask a fallen skier who’d been on the ground for a while.  “Do you need help?” Thinking, but not saying: I certainly hope not. 

“The worst,” one of the older patrollers said one time, “are the shoulder separations. You ski up to this guy and he’s screaming. And you’re supposed to tie his hand to his head or put his arm in a sling, and he’s just screaming in pain.”  

Sometimes when my radio squawked, I flinched. Then one day it was my turn. “Skier down. Top of the River Cabin chair.  Anyone in the vicinity?”

“Me,” I said. And gulped.

“Possible femur fraction. Please check it out.”

At the top of the lift, a boy lay on his back, his arms out. Beside him looking on were two men. His name was Teddy.

“What happened here, Teddy?”

“I fell.” 

“Okay,” I said, “let’s have a look.” 

In training, in the case of a femur fracture we were told muscle cramping was possible. Cramping meant pain. Intense pain. To alleviate it, we learned to take the patient’s ski boot at the end of the fracture in both hands and gently pull, applying traction until the splint arrived. I guessed I was going to have to do this. “Teddy,” I said, “I’m going to hold your boot and gently pull. . . ” Saying this, I met the gaze of one of the gentlemen at Teddy’s side. He gave me a barely perceptible, very definitive  shake of his head. Don’t do that. I later learned he was an orthopedic surgeon. 

I was dangerous. I could hurt the kid worse.

Just then I heard the whine of the snowmobile pulling a sled up the hill, driven by a more seasoned patroller.  I pulled back from Teddy, relieved, content to wait for someone who knew more than I did. In training we were reminded to do no harm. Fix them. Get them off the hill. But do no harm. I took that seriously. For me do no harm meant don’t screw things up. Don’t hurt people worse. 

#

After a few hours, the agony next door was moved out of Observation, toward relief, I hoped; toward more life.  The next morning I had an echocardiogram. They took hourly blood pressures. Teams of doctors and their apprentices came to my room.

I was probably okay. TIA’s came and went.

These evaluations, echoed by each team, continued through the morning. Feeling optimistic, I put my pants on and found my flipflops. Then waited. The neurologist and her associate said they didn’t think it was a TIA. Then what was it? I wondered. They were going to treat it as a TIA, she said.  At minimum I ought to take a statin. 

Then I waited some more. To get out of there, I considered begging for coffee.

#

After two days in ICU, my father died in the middle of the night, of cardiac arrest. My brother called me. He was on his way to the hospital. 

“This is it,” he said. “It’s sounds like they’re trying to bring him back.” 

“What?”I said. “Why?”

“They called a few minutes ago,” he said, “and told me to get here fast. They might be able to keep him alive.”

“What about the order?” I said. “He was do-not-resuscitate. We said so. We gave them the papers, repeatedly.”

“It’s what they do,” he said. “They’re saving him for us.”

I had seen him that afternoon. He was in great spirits. We yelled a little small talk at each other across the bed. He talked about being called home. My mother had died two months prior. Now it was his turn.  He said that he’d had a good life, that we were going to be all right. He was ready to go. Before I left he started to sing. “Oh, the Lord is good to me…”

It was 2:00 a.m. I drove a little faster, picturing that determined team of doctors and nurses pounding on my father’s chest, determined to do no harm.

Coming Soon

Among the many topics I explore in these essays, marriage is one I return to frequently. We’ve been together more than 45 years. It’s not always easy for her because I am a pest. She’s just so much fun to pester. And she so frequently says such funny stuff.

The release date for And Now This is February 1, 2023. From January 2 to February 1 I’ll be running a giveaway on Goodreads. The giveaway is for digital copies, 100 of them! If you read on Kindle, you can check out and enter the giveaway here.