Conrad Bishop's Blog, page 5

Feral…

—From EF—

I would like to have a t-shirt that says “feral.” I realize I would be proud to wear it, and this is new. The thought came to me during what I like to call my pre-dawn crepuscular time. (I love that word.) I don’t know what triggered it, maybe thinking about Order vs Chaos, and how to honor and empower both. I have been having one helluva time attacking the chaos of my desk, a palimpsest (another word I love) of receipts and unfiled invoices and a terrifying collection of who-knows-what. It has become an existential hangnail.

Recently I read something online that rang a bell. It had to do with erasing the scars made by shaming, how they distort aspects that might actually be valuable, lovable, or both. I have read many a piece that advises “learn to love yourself,” and muttered right, sure, yeah. This was different: something clicked, and I started deliberately recalling the most scalding shamings I could remember. Wow. The worst of them were all inflicted by my mother, and a great many of them had to do with my body. All of them concern aspects of me that by now are things I respect, admire, and for which I can admit pride. And every one of them is part of my feral self.

When I was a little kid I was strong, athletic, and happy in my body. The era of glasses, braces and ugly orthotic shoes was yet to come. I was always barefoot when possible, had unruly hair that grew long and loose, and I rambled far and wide in the hills, fields, and woodlands close to our house. I loved to convince myself that the little woodland pond with a moss-covered fallen log was a magic place that only I knew about: it was my secret. Often I escaped the anger and rigor that filled the daytime household to flee to the comfort of the little apple tree that was my refuge. There I could whisper to the little jewel-like tree frog that hid in its hollow core, feel the embrace of its sturdy branches and be safe. I knew all the nearby plants, and carefully gathered and kept their seeds in treasure troves.

I read this and think, Wow, I would have loved to be that kid. And then I remember. I was. Then my eyes were wrong and I needed glasses. My teeth were wrong and I got braces. My feet were flat, and I narrowly escaped the plans to have them broken and put in casts. (Eventually the barefoot years produced lovely arches.) My strong muscles produced a nice round butt, and I had to wear a girdle. My strong legs didn’t have slender ankles. My dad worked in the meat industry and loved my appetite for raw beef, which he indulged, but I think that might have brought on the shame of “bad breath.” Well, yes, I was a carnivore.

But the worst, longest-lasting shame was that I learned very early the path to pleasure. I was orgasmic at age five. It was my solace, my comfort, and I was told it was something scummy and awful, and nobody decent touched themselves. I had a tonsillectomy at age twelve, and the docs had to grapple with a sudden tiger and hold me down. (I’d heard that all secrets would be disclosed under anesthesia.) I carried this nasty secret for all my childhood and adolescence, and it played hell with my later sex life. Betty Dodson, bless her soul, gave workshops in female self-pleasure, and eventually I attended one. At moments I was sure I couldn’t get through this, my psyche would self-combust and I would blow away in flames, but it changed my life.

I want to hug that little girl and say, yes, you’re beautiful. Talk to the earth, roam the hills barefoot, climb the apple tree, revel in pleasure, love the beautiful chaos of a bowl of pebbles, acorns, and seashells. Go ahead, take time to be alone, let your mind roam free.

I’m blessed. I have a mate who saw me sixty-three years ago and said, “I want her. She scares the shit out of me.” He has ridden my highs and lows and silences and explosions and has often written them into things I can share on stage. It’s time I look back and love what made him say, “I want her.”  

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Symbolism. . .

—From CB—

Why do we vote against our interests? For a start, it should be said that we don’t: most of us don’t vote. Granted, the last Presidential election set a record, but in 2022 the rate dropped from 66% to 49%. And of course the fundamental question: what our interests are? Whatever the extremes of the spectrum, we can surely agree that most sentient folks want the same things: enough to eat, shelter, good health, a good start for their kids, and respect. The definitions of these things vary radically. For some, a living wage insures most of these things; for others, ten billion dollars a year is inadequate, being addicted to the addiction of gain, as compelling as an addiction to heroin or some other designer drug. I have my notions, my neighbor has his; we live side by side without speaking, except when it’s unavoidable.

But pundits have noted a chronic discontent, and to me, it’s fed by our human capacity for symbolic thinking. If we’re part of a group, the group identity assures our own survival. A gated community does assure security from other people. Most of us can’t afford that, but a Bulls T-shirt is relatively cheap, and if the Bulls win the championship, we’ll last another five years, and if they come from behind, it’s special—we too might come from behind.

That might indicate, from those to whom it applies, a low intelligence level. I disagree. It’s as natural as belly-button lint, no matter whether it’s an enflamed radical or a knuckle-dragging reactionary: both can be equally convinced of their own gifts, at least by the crowd they run with.

But how does that translate into votes, whether in our own democracy or in others? Again, I can’t help thinking it comes from symbolism.

Toughness and dedication: Everyone wants a “tough” leader. On the Right, that means someone who threatens to crack heads or worse. On the Left, someone who screeches with fervent resolve will do. No one wants a compromiser.

Prominence in the media: You want someone who’s known for something. They’re more real. It does make a difference to some what it is they’re known for, but if it’s bad it might be persecution by the accuser, and it shows they’ve got balls.

If your guy is elected, you’ll win the Lottery. You’ll get promoted. Your rich uncle will die, leaving you a bundle. You’ll hire someone to do the dishes. You can smoke six cigarettes at a time. Your neighbor will be royally pissed. Things will be better somehow.

If elected, your tribe will win, leaving other tribes in the dust. You’ll look around and see everyone wearing the same T-shirt, same headline on it, same logo. You belong the right place. Whether or not you’ve been part of the high school In-crowd, you are now. You’ve pinned the tail on the donkey.

And things will change. Not the same old stuff on the news. The “mess in Washington” has been a campaign headline, in my memory anyway, since 1952, and if it takes carpet-bombing to change things, bring it on. Both Left and Right deplore the Establishment; career politicians, entrenched bureaucrats, all claim dedication to the Little Guy or the Little Gal. The catchphrase “I’m not a politician” will win you lots of votes, but in my mind, that’s as if I’d prefer brain surgery supervised by the first-year medical student.

It’s all symbolic. We do vote for our interests: enough to eat, shelter, good health, a good start for their kids, and respect. Or we vote for the symbols of those interests. It’s as if headline-writers wrote the news. Meaning whatever will grab attention, so the next-door ad might at least plant the name of the product in your head.

What to do about it all? I have not the foggiest idea.

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Loving Age. . .

—From EF—

Every year, every decade has brought me gifts. Sometimes they aren’t fully-appreciated until their picture has a frame, and I received a beautiful frame this Thanksgiving. Our family was together at our house. Our daughter Johanna, who has lived in Italy for over twenty-five years, makes a twice-yearly visit now that our own transatlantic travel is not as frequent, and she arranged to come for the family gathering—specifying that she would be in charge of menu and prep. Our son Eli and his beautiful Lady Meg didn’t have to endure eighteen hours in assorted overgrown sardine cans, just a drive in their first all-electric Zipcar.

This year will be the first year that Jo’s husband Francesco will celebrate Christmas without his mother, and Jo won’t be preparing the epic event of an Italian Christmas feast. She welcomed the idea of doing an elaborate Thanksgiving whose menu would allow our one vegan celebrant to eat just about everything. The one turkey item was the one that engaged me in substantial prep, boning a pair of big turkey thighs, stripping the skin, and surgically removing all the ropy tendons. Aside from that, my major contribution was delighting in a half-day of shopping with Jo. A lot got done on Wednesday, but Thursday really hit high gear after we all shared a big elaborate salad at lunch—my major kitchen contribution for the day.

Here’s what we enjoyed: a stuffed mushroom appetizer, followed by turkey cutlets wrapped in prosciutto and fresh sage, then Lobio (a Georgian red-bean stew with walnuts) accompanied by pan-cooked cornbread patties and a relish of pickled lettuce. A substantial entree was a mixed-root-veggie layered gratin, baked with a cashew bechamel in lieu of cream; the thin bands of color were spectacular, shading from the dark red of beets through the different red of purple potatoes, then orange squash topped with white turnips. Pickled lettuce was a new concept for me, even more so the roasted fennel with radicchio and red grapes, and both were piquant and wonderful.

After lunch Eli and Meg were fully involved with Jo’s kitchen prep, and the three of them were having a great time together chopping, schmoozing, and catching up on the past months’ events. Everything was proceeding smoothly, my kitchen is small, and I surprised myself by asking Jo if I was a needed pair of hands or if I could take some time at my computer doing memoir-editing. She briskly allowed me to avoid guilt, and it wasn’t until close to sit-down time that I rejoined the crew.

That was the lovely frame. For maybe the first time in a lifetime of “doing everything,” I savored the distance of age. The three were working as a lively team and sounded as if they were enjoying it. I was not excluded, I was privileged. Elderhood can be beautiful.

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Dying on Stage. . .

—From CB—

It’s taken me a very long time to die. On stage, that is.

I walked onstage for the first time. I carried some fake cherry blossoms. I was weepy. My duchess had died. I’d known someone very slightly who died, but it wasn’t really part of my daily life. Later, as it came closer, it was more meaningful. But the best I could do at the time was “weepy.”

My second stage appearance was as a high school kid. The play was a comedy, and all I recall was that I knocked down a big brawny kid during rehearsal. I was playing an intellectual wimp, which was pretty easy for me, and when the script said “He hits him,” I asked the director what I should do. “Just hit him,” she said. So we said our lines and I hit him. He fell. I’d hit him. He wasn’t so brawny, and I wasn’t enough of a wimp.

Maybe the next was a community-theatre production of OUR TOWN. I was too young for much of anything, but wound up playing the paper boy, who comes on in one scene and doesn’t do much. His big moment is when the Stage Manager reports that Joe Crowell Jr. was killed in the Great War, but that’s when I’m back in the green room waiting for the curtain call. I don’t get to act dying in agony with a bullet in my gut.

That doesn’t happen till the next show. I’ve convinced the drama teacher at my high school to take a show to the state contest. It’s Saroyan’s one-act HELLO OUT THERE, starring me. And I get to die. The guy is in jail for rape, but he’s innocent, and at the end he’s killed. We had the problem that there weren’t any rapes in the Fifties, or at least you couldn’t say it on stage, so it was my maiden playwriting effort: turns out it’s shoplifting. Still, they kill me and I die and win a best-acting award.

It’s a long time before I get to die again. I’m Elwood P. Dowd in the junior class play, an immigrant son at the community theatre, a waiter at the Omaha Playhouse, and another crazy in the senior class play. Meantime, I’m surviving day by day until the time for state contest rolls around. By this time I’ve read a bunch of Ibsen and convince our drama teacher that we ought to do GHOSTS. I cut it down to forty minutes, and fortunately I don’t have to inflict Oswald with a gum disease: Ibsen has already adapted to the morals of his time, alluding to syphilis without ever mentioning it. And I didn’t properly die, I just lost my mind, so it took longer. But we won a lot of “bests.”

In college it took much longer even to go nuts. I played a Duke who condemns a prisoner to death, but it’s not the same thing as if he died himself, and he doesn’t. I did have a couple of major roles, but I can’t remember the end. I discount my role as Laertes in HAMLET, which was purely fake. The starring guest artist was no fencer, and neither was I, but for the final duel we had a fencing coach who was pretty good. Unfortunately, the actor playing Hamlet really got into the role and started to improvise the duel, and since we knew only the choreography we’d both thrust and parry together, which was a bit absurd. I got an arm wound for real, and finally we managed to kill one another.

Subsequently, in my theatre career, I’ve died a few times, and I think I’ve done it well, though mostly in the times leading up to it. When I drifted into directing, others bit the dust and I leaned back in my chair, never to die.

Anniversary. . .

—From CB—

Today is our anniversary, 63rd. I have to confess that Elizabeth had to remind me: the only dates I remember are Christmas, the Fourth of July (which usually happens on 7/4)—though I don’t think of myself either as Saved or as especially patriotic,—and anything where stuff is likely to be closed. Anything else, I try, but it rarely makes any impact on my work habits. Today, though, I thought, “I could write about that.”

We were formally married the following August, but the commitment to a life together was made on this date—or something near it, as we really weren’t thinking about the calendar at that point in time. We had met sitting across the aisle in stage lighting class, both noticing that we laughed at the prof’s deadpan jokes and soon after collaborating—I as director, Elizabeth as actress and co-translator—in a  scene that stunned the directing class. That led to a number of dates and walks by the lake and at last—this being the days of restricted dorms—to climbing into the back seat of a chilly, decrepit car.

I was 19, EF was 20, and suddenly we’re 82 and 83, and all we really know for sure is that that clamber into the back seat was a pretty good idea. Sometimes following instinct has a result that works. I recently wrote a flash fiction based on a wedding we attended, where the bride processing down the aisle burst into unstoppable laughter. I have no idea what struck her funny, but I speculated in the fiction that it was every crisis we’ve had in our marriage together—and lived through them.

To my mind, the essential thing in marriage is Heinlein’s definition of love: that the happiness of your mate is essential to your own. That bypasses all traditional rules and vows, yet imposes a huge imperative. And a risk: that your mate plays a charade to keep you happy. Which imposes an equally challenging need for both parties: honesty.

But anything I can say about marriage, I won’t. That sounds like advice, and the only advice I can offer with certainty is to live from day to day. Which will happen whatever I say. The godawful thing about advice are the moments that rise to contradict it, and in marriage that happens with the added effect that there’s “something wrong.” Which indeed there may be.

Probably no different than diplomatic relations between nations or political relations between diverse parts of local population. The sports metaphor rules: keeping score. But in other contested issues, you can blame the ref, you can blame critical injuries, you can blame the left tackle who comes through the line like a tank, and your instinct militates against empathy with the team you’re against. Marriage requires the opposite.

So we’ll find a way to celebrate, and continue on our path to the unknown future. The path has calla lillies along both sides, and the blossoms persist.

Dreams. . .

—From EF—

For a very small bear, I’m having huge dreams. (When I wondered about the profusion of intense and complicated dreams I have during the darker months, somebody told me I was probably part bear, dreaming during hibernation.) Aging is upping the ante, since sleep now comes in blurts and dribbles.

In my early years I had terrifying nightmares, to the point that I resisted sleep. Then in my late 20’s I learned something about dream-work and started working with the threats. Lately, for some reason, I have even had adventures that left me feeling really good by morning, even though they involved a lot of effort. Many of these have been images of new forms of community and mutual support, and I was a part of making them work. Wow.

But last night was awful. It was one of those post-collapse scenarios where the fabric of society has come apart and danger was everywhere. I had escaped into a beautiful area like west Marin, rolling grassy hills, and was commencing the process of improvising shelter. Just as I began to feel safe and comfortable a crowd of loud, aggressive people came into view. I was alone and feared that they would find the survival supplies I had just stashed.

Some part of my mind remembered that I’d had other dreams where I had success organizing people and forming good relationships. I tried to be friendly and become part of the group, but it didn’t work. They were already in a fighting mood when they came into view, and I was a good target. The bullying started at a low level, masking itself as nasty comedy, but it was going to get bad. I did what I could—I woke up, drenched in sweat but safe in my bed.

It was my night-time version of the daily news. Generalized road-rage is rising steadily, and slowing enough to make a turn into our driveway provokes horn blares and jabbing fingers. The red tide is rising, and the media are falling all over themselves to make sure we know every grotesque detail.

It was only 4 AM when I woke and I didn’t want to risk going back into Part Two of the same damn dream. It’s hard to focus with a racing pulse and sticky skin, but little by little I mucked myself out. I need to get some instruction on dreamworld martial arts.

 

    

        

 

Shyness. . .

—From CB—

I’m shy. This was a recent realization, one of those moments when it all comes clear. The revelation would be natural, of course, with the advancement of age. That hesitation of speech when the word is almost there, but it doesn’t come, when pauses are longer, when something comes out that makes no sense. Yet it isn’t a new characteristic; it’s long-standing.

One doesn’t really think of such a thing, given the risks I’ve taken, from ditching an academic career, marrying at nineteen, crossing Europe twice on a motor scooter, or stepping out on stage for thousands of shows. Or raising a couple of kids. But that doesn’t conceal the fact that I’m shy.

What in fact does that mean? It means a reluctance to engage with others. It means a morbid fear of the telephone. It means hovering near the snack table at parties, smiling vaguely at friends, but exhibiting an undue interest in the deviled eggs. In radio interviews or any moment of public display, it means shifting into another persona—not fake, just different. It means armor against feeling.

Why? I once thought it stemmed from my lifelong sense of empathy. Hypothetical empathy, I might better call it. Not that my sense was accurate, but if it seems possibly true, then it has to be paid attention. Did the person you’re phoning just now take a break to go to the can? Does the person you might engage in conversation really want to talk? Or talk to you? Does the person you’re asking directions speak English, or can I muddle through in my fractured German or Spanish or French?

Every start to a conversation is like a dive off the high board at Crystal Pool, a public pool where I sometimes went to swim as a kid. I hated diving, you got your head wet, but I had to dive because I paid to get in, and maybe once I dived off the high board. I don’t know if I did, though I remembered thinking about it. How many conversations have I actually dived into, and how many just thought about it? The last time I was in Council Bluffs, where I grew up, Crystal Pool was paved over. No one could dive into the asphalt.

Nothing to be done to enshrine this realization in behavior, or to contradict it. It’s as much a part of me as the hair of my beard. Which sometimes itches, sometimes tickles my lips, and regularly needs trimming. You just look in the mirror and think, That’s me. Or you scratch.

You do think, Is this truly me or only a mask? Do I grow this as a convenience, so I don’t have to shave every day? What if I never answer this question?

Meantime, I go on with life. More weeding to do, and I’m never moved to question the weeds. The greens barrel gets emptied on Thursday morning, often at dawn, when the garbage trucks do their concert. We live on a half acre of tangle, never clear, always spawning something new to try to clear: sticker weed, stink weed, crawler weed, tall sprout, duff.

What happens when we die? The yard will presumably get sold, perhaps paved over like Crystal Pool, perhaps refurbished as a luxury dwelling, perhaps leveled for apartments. Or perhaps children will build houses in the trees—tall observation points to see the future. If the trees don’t fall on the house.    

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Quality of Life. . .

—From EF—

When Conrad came home from the hospital after recovering from his fall and concussion, he was given a gaudy bright-pink form to fill out and post on the fridge door, and another one for me. These are what responders to a 911 call will look for when they enter your house. If you’re not breathing and don’t have a heartbeat, what then? Your bright pink POLST form (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) will tell them whether you want to continue your death-journey or whether you want them to do everything they can to bring you back. Medicare covers a doctor visit for you to think this through ahead of time together and make your wishes known. Wow.

The two of us finally have an actual doctor, a PCP (Primary Care Physician) who knows our names and faces and actually both talks and listens during a visit. (This has been lacking for a long time.) He spent time walking us through the after-911 possibilities—what happens later in the hospital, what happens after you come home, what happens if you enter hospice, etc, and how you get yourself and your family to know you’re all on the same page.

In this long spiral path of conversation in his office, what came up again and again was Quality of Life. What does that mean? What makes living worth it? If I’m on a breathing machine and a feeding tube and have no significant brain activity, how long do I want to call that Life, if there’s no prospect of change?

That’s a helluva question to answer. Our doc is a mensch. He recently lost his father, and shared a bit about that. It was a terminal diagnosis, and the father said he wanted it to be simple. He wanted to be fully “there,” and then he wanted to be gone. He wanted time for his family to gather, to know what was coming, to have time together to make it real, then say good-bye and let it happen. California is one of the states that permits this, and that’s what they did.

Our culture has been squeamish about both birth and death, the only two experiences shared by every human who has ever lived. Now there are end-of-life doulas, and the Sebastopol Senior Center has hosted a monthly “Death Cafe” for a number of years. Samhain is coming close, and our own list of those close to us who are no longer living—well, it gets longer every year, as it does for everyone.

We will observe our own Samhain in the majestic fragrant embrace of Salt Point State Park, with music provided by the whump of surf on the rocks and the whisper of wind in the pines. Our fire-pit will flare, flicker, and subside, as will we all. Two weeks later, we will celebrate the bonding in 1960 that united us for life. Our essential Life-Sustaining Treatment is what we do with and for each other every day.

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Dreaming…

 

—From CB—

Walking home from coffee and gym, I’ve realized that my brain is stuck in editing mode. So I resolve to write at least a page a day off the top of the head and without objective, except to do it.

I’ve been having dreams that are vaguely theatrical, though I’ve rejected this, with regret, as my life path into the future, a pleasure mixed with grief, like most of life. The dreams take place, most often, in a large, non-theatrical room—a cafeteria, gym, or some undefined locale with fluorescent lighting. We’ve done lots of those, once playing in a women’s lingerie department and a number of prisons. The dreams involve, always, getting set for a show, unless the getting-set is the doing it, or having done it while packing the van to get out of there and on to the next. There’s always a fatal problem. Sometimes the pieces of the set won’t fit in the van. Sometimes the cast is scattered all over the place, and as director I can’t command attention. Sometimes spectators are gathering to see a play that hasn’t been written. Or if it’s Shakespeare, I’m playing a major role but don’t know the lines, and I have a quick costume change but can’t find the shirt or the rack or the room. The play goes on without me, and Ophelia yells, “Fuck!” It’s a modern adaptation.

I see it coming. The play henceforth will go on without me. It drags on, it’s perpetually overwrought, the cast changes, and they’re making it up fromscratch. The jokes are botched, it’s repetitious, too clunky, too violent but without a fight coach. It’s lifelike, yes, but it needs another draft, where characters recall their objectives, and it’s not such a muddle. We’re born as fragments of ourselves. It’s as if we slide out of the birth canal, past the grip of the midwife, and splat on the floor. “Welcome to Life!” sings the choir. And I look for the costume rack. Only eighty or ninety years to find the shirt that gives me my character.

Last night, I was involved in a show that would feature Marlon Brando, despite the fact that he’s long since dead. But I had no script, no sense whether it would be stage or screen, and Brando was never present. Yet the dream would feature Brando. It slowed to a crawl as I rolled clockwise in bed, and then it was only fragments of sleep.

What does this suggest to the stunted mind which is mine? Do I simply say “What the hell!” and let it lie there? Do I change the cat litter? Do I push out the sides of the van to get all the stuff in? It may be, of course, that I simply turn clockwise in the bed and tuck the pillow more firmly under my head. You sort of feel, in fact, what you might be in rehearsal for. I never ask who’ll want to see it. That’s good business practice, but I wouldn’t know how to do it. I simply think, well, it’ll find its audience or it won’t.

And I wonder if folks who’ve never been in theatre manage to dream without anxieties? Where the play goes as scheduled, it all fits in the van, and you find your shirt? Or is all teeming humanity beset by stress through the dark and stormy night?

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Births. . .

—From EF—

Today is the birthday of Conrad Joy Bishop, Oct. 8, 1941, Denver. His dad, who had been very clear about not wanting kids, had been spending longer and longer away on his various wartime jobs, and Margaret was on her own. She had to call a cab to get herself to the hospital and went through labor without support. I remember keenly my own labor with Eli, who inherited his father’s very large cranium. The don’t call it labor for nothing.

The labor was long, the delivery was lacerating, and Margaret remembered a nurse saying, not intending to be overheard, “She won’t be good for anything after that.” None of that pain dampened the joy of having her baby in her arms, at her breast. His given name was his father’s, but his middle name was purely from his mother: Joy.

Birth is heavy whitewater rapids, no guarantees, and when the outcome is good its radiance fills all the dark corners where fear was hiding. I have been the witness of three more of Conrad’s birthings.

One was in Chicago in 1975, during the long complicated surgery that removed a growth called an insulinoma from his pancreas. The lab pronounced it benign, but I knew better. The violent blood-sugar crashes it had been producing had made our lives surreal for an entire year. The surgeon had to “go in blind” because the iodine-contrast imager had broken down as soon as the scan started, and it couldn’t be repeated because the dye had produced a violent allergic response. The surgeon’s skill, and maybe his sixth sense, enabled him to find the little bugger hiding behind the stomach (which had to be detached and swung out of the way), nestled into a corner between the common bile duct and the aorta. Perilous territory for a blindfolded search. A real-time blood-sugar monitor was running, and the moment the insulinoma came out, the reading shot back to normal. That was a second birth, a return to being able to claim his own mind, his undistorted consciousness.

The second was in San Francisco in 2013 when he had open heart surgery after a month-long battle with a vicious bacterial infection that had colonized the interior of his heart and further damaged a mitral valve weakened by childhood rheumatic fever. His three beloveds, daughter, son and wife, were allowed to gown and mask up and accompany him to the door of the surgical theater to wave bye-bye. From there the three of us went to the waiting room, and he went to the knife and the machines. For hours he was technically dead. The heart is stopped, its blood rerouted to cleansing machines. The lungs are stopped, as oxygen is supplied to the blood via another miracle machine. The surgeon had a living heart in his hands, opening its chambers, delicately sewing repairs into intricate damaged valves, then restoring all normal connections. The rebirth, from my perspective, was not the shift from the machines to the repaired living body. The family was allowed to visit him in the ICU as soon as he had regained a semblance of consciousness, but he was still intubated and hence mute. Removal of that tube from deep down the trachea is a nightmarish sensation for the patient, and the doctor required our assurance that we wouldn’t freak out at the sight. The doc was so good. He spoke gently but firmly to his semi-conscious patient that this would be an awful moment: was he ready? The grunt meant yes. 3, 2, 1, NOW! A whole-body shiver, and it was done. His eyes were wide open, he smiled at us, and again he was reborn.

The third was this year, the end of March, after a fall that landed him flat on his back on a parking-lot tarmac. I didn’t see the fall happen, but when he didn’t return to the driver’s seat after stowing the beach-picnic basket in the back, I got out, walked around to the driver’s side, and saw his motionless body with his head in a puddle of blood. After a stunned moment that nearly stopped my heart, I called his name, with no response. Kneeling, I could feel breath, and began a murmured mantra: Stay with me, don’t go, stay with me. After a long time, his eyes fluttered, then opened, and again he was reborn. It was a difficult rebirth, his recovery, learning to walk again, but that was the moment of crowning.

All birth is holy.

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