December,
2005
Greetings.
We hope that all is well with you.
Our year, like most of those in human life, was up and
down. T. S. Eliot wrote that "April
is the cruelest month." Not for
this family; it was May, at least in 2005.
My 82-year-old father died on May 1.
A memorial I wrote for him follows.
My father left this world in the same way he lived in
it: quietly and without a fuss. His Parkinson's was highly likely to begin to
affect him more and more and he faced a downhill slide over the next few years
that was going to be unpleasant—and that would have led to him being in places
and situations he decidedly did not want to be.
As I explained to his friends at the funeral, if you had asked my father
in late April if he wished to die on May 1, his answer most assuredly would
have been "no." If you had
asked him in late April if he wished in the next year or so to be in an
assisted living facility with staff helping him with clothes and daily upkeep,
his answer also most assuredly would have been "no." The art to solving that conundrum is picking
carefully the time of one's exit. Few of
us have the choice, of course, so it is often up to chance, but my dad—as he
did most things in his life—left this life with grace and perfect timing.
Although my father was a veteran, and beginning in the
1980s enjoyed attending the reunions of his "Company C," and getting
together with his Army buddies, his military experience played no significant
part of his life once he was out of the service. He rarely if ever spoke of his experiences
all the time I was growing up; only in his later years did he occasionally
mention his experience and impressions.
(It wasn't that he was averse to talking about his experience—he would
if I asked—it just wasn't a big part of his life once he started working, got
married, and raised a family.) In the
early 1970s, when I was facing the possibility of being drafted for service in Vietnam,
I had a heated argument with my mother on the topic (with my father present but
silent). When it was over, I asked my
father what he thought about the exchanges; his laconic response was "if
you don't go in the military you won't miss anything."
My father was the beneficiary of one of the greatest
feats of social engineering ever attempted by the United States government: the G.I. Bill. My father told me a number of times that
college never even crossed his mind when he graduated from high school in 1940. His family had no money; what little they had
had was lost in the Depression. (His
parents moved into what he once described as a "crummy one-bedroom
apartment" in 1934 on Lake Street at Bryant; his bedroom was the Murphy
bed in the dining area of the apartment.)
He had jobs of various sorts before being drafted into the Army for
World War II but wasn't thinking about college; the G.I. Bill provided him the
avenue to college.
While my father was not the most outstanding student
the University of
Minnesota has ever seen,
he obtained his degree, in Business Administration, and went to work. In 1951, after a stint with the General
Motors financing arm, he took a job with a company and kept it until he retired
in 1984. The company changed ownership
several times but my dad survived and stayed.
Great student or not, his kids were raised with the
understanding that they'd be going on to post-high school education of some
kind. My brother and I went to college
right out of high school; my sister got married after high school and went on
for more education later. All three of
us continued to go to school into their 40s and 50s. My mother, who had brief training as a
psychiatric nurse after high school, was always a stalwart supporter of all of
us going on in school. And all three of
us did so with the financial support of our parents: they paid the tuition.
One might think my father, staying with the same
organization, was the quintessential "organization man." But he wasn't. I don't think he ever cared particularly much
about his work—commercial finance. It
wasn't that he didn't like it, or did not do a good job; he simply saw it as a
means to an income to support his family.
Beyond that, I suspect it had no importance to him. At the same time, he very much liked the
people he worked with—a group that he worked with for many, many years and many
of whom he saw regularly after he retired, and many of whom thought enough of
him that they came to his funeral even though he had retired over 20 years
before he died.
What was far more important than anything to my father
were his children and his life with my mother.
And, sometimes, perhaps more the latter than the former (a sentiment
with which I am sure most parents can empathize at some point.) He was an attentive father who made sure we
had what we needed. But as a rather reserved
man, he was not someone to whom we as small children turned with problems or
questions. As we got older, however, he
was not just my father but also a good friend; I, and then Pat and I after we
got married, spent many a pleasant evening with my parents (and sometimes their
friends). As for their lives outside of
family, my parents always had an active social life. Whether cocktails and cards with friends,
amateur musicals through the schools, Vonheim Lodge of the Sons of Norway and
the Norwegian Glee Club, the Viking Luncheon Club, it was a rare weekend when
my parents were not having company or out at someone else's house or at some
event. My father and mother went through
their 40 years of marriage having a splendid time. My mother's death in 1989 put a temporary
halt to the good times, but my father soon found a friend, Ruth Smith, with
whom he could socialize and who became his partner in fun. After she died in the late 1990s, however, my
father became more reclusive in his home in South Minneapolis. Once he moved into the Kenwood in 2001,
however, and had to start eating community meals—since he had no competence
whatever in the kitchen—he quickly came out of his abnormal seclusion and
rejoined the world. He died napping
before his weekly 1:00
Sunday poker game, a game that he organized some time before.
As one who spends all his working days in a
university, I was always struck by the fact that my dad was an intellectually
incurious man. He read rarely, beyond
the newspaper, and was not particularly interested in intellectual conversation
or the social, economic, or political issues of the day. He was, in his later years, perfectly happy
to listen to my brother and me talk about politics or economics, but he never
participated. He was a traditional "businessman
Republican": moderately
conservative on fiscal issues, less so on social ones. I doubt he had much sympathy for the
fundamentalist wing of the Republican party that has so come to dominate
American politics in the early 21st Century.
My father's greatest single interest in life was
sports. (I would say "passion"
but that would be an exaggeration, because "passion" is not a word I
would apply to him about anything I can think of.) He was a great fan of both professional and University of Minnesota teams—including even the women's
basketball and hockey teams in recent years, evidence of his
broadmindedness! He was himself a
letter-winning baseball team captain in high school who, but for the
intervention of WWII and getting shot in Europe, wanted to try out for
professional baseball. But he remained a
life-long fan and golfed instead, until his back no longer permitted him to do
so.
One of the things that always puzzled me about my
father was how such a quiet man could have such legions of friends who admired
him to an extraordinary degree. Forget
the compliments that the survivors always receive at a funeral; as an adult I
can remember countless times when his friends (men and women) would say to me,
out of the blue, how much they liked and respected my father. Whatever this solidly good and decent man
did, other people recognized his character, integrity, and human
generosity. As my wife Pat pointed out
after the funeral, one reason that he attracted people is that he never had
anything negative to say about anyone. I
know perfectly well that not all his opinions of others were positive, but
those that were not he largely kept to himself.
With the passing of any parent there is a hurt and a
void that can never be filled. There is
the poignant reminder of one's own mortality, especially when one realizes that
he is the oldest surviving member of the immediate family.
Finally, I can say that my dad left this life
contented. When we came to his apartment and saw him, he was reclined on his
sofa and seemed to be asleep, at peace with the world and without worries. He saw his children grow up, raise families,
and pursue their various careers. He saw
his grandchildren born and grow up, ranging in age from 30 to 14. He saw the birth of two great-grandchildren
who are healthy and happy kids. How
better to leave the world than to know that his offspring and their children
are doing well and making their way in the world?
My dad was a member of "the greatest generation": they did their duty in World War II, went on
about their lives and contributed to the nation by their good character,
industry, and contributions to society, and just didn't think that much about
the importance of what they had done. It
was duty to God, country, and family, they performed it, and got on with their
lives. That's what my dad did.
* * *
I wasn't sorry to see May behind us for other reasons as
well. On May 15, two weeks after my
dad died, some guy made an illegal U turn and broadsided Krystin in Pat's
car. Fortunately, she was not the least
bit hurt, even though the impact spun the car 180 degrees. Unfortunately, the guy was driving a car that
he did not own and he had no insurance.
The insurance company totaled Pat's car, but we didn't let them take it;
we took it to my niece's husband in rural Wisconsin, who is starting his own
car-repair business, and had him fix it.
But this is not my idea of a good way to make money. We figured he'd do a good job--we saw the job
he did on refurbishing my brother Tracy's and Joan's pontoon boat—he took an
old dump of a boat and made it look like a million dollars. So we figured he could do our car as well. It turns out that we made about $1000 on the
deal, even paying the going market rate for repairs in Wisconsin.
Then on May 25, Pat had a hysterectomy. It was planned—she was glad to get rid of it
because it had been the source of pain and problems for a couple of years. So she was in the hospital for a couple of
days, and out of work for weeks afterwards.
(For those who know about such things, it was done vaginally rather than
by abdominal incision, so a less invasive procedure—but it still takes the
starch out of a woman.) She suffered a
setback because she got, as is not uncommon, an infection a week after the
surgery, so her recuperative period ended up lasting longer than she (or I) had
believed would be necessary.
So as I composed these paragraphs at the end of May,
2005, I was sort of emotionally beat.
* * *
With
my father's death, Tracy, Holly, and I inherited the 27 photograph albums that
my mother had put together over the years before her death in 1989, a
pictographic history of their lives since the time they met in the late
1940s. Alas, adhesives once again became the bane of my life: quite a few of her albums were falling apart
and the pictures falling out. After heming and hawing about what to do
with them, my siblings and I decided to tear them apart altogether and divide
up the pictures. So Pat and I spent 3
evenings in May disassembling the albums and sorting the pictures. That was rather demoralizing, like I was
taking my parents' lives apart. But I
meant what I wrote in the memorial: they
had a great time together for almost 40 years, so I guess I wasn't really doing
any damage to the good times they had had.
(And I sometimes silently cursed my mother under my breath because she
almost never wrote dates or names on any of the damn pictures! But she would know I was not serious. With most of them I had an idea of who and
when, but not always.)
In
the meantime, to my dismay, I had noticed that several of our (purposely-very-expensive-so-they-would-not-yellow-and-fall-apart)
photo albums were also yellowing and falling apart. So, faced with the
task of integrating the photos from my parents into Pat's and my albums (some
of which from earlier years were also not in good shape even though they were
only 10-15 years old!), I took apart most of our albums as well. That was
a month-long project that took over the dining room. Pat, gracious
helpmate that she always has been, sat down with me and helped re-mount and
write labels for hundreds and hundreds of photographs.
I
have ended up with four sets of albums: one of my mom growing up, and her
family; one of my dad growing up, and his family, one that starts when my
parents met and carries through their marriage and bringing up their family,
one set that starts when Pat and I met and our family and lives. Pat
faces the task, some day, of putting together the albums of her family and her
own life before she met me. I, of course, will be a nice guy and help
her, too 
But
these failing adhesives!
* * *
Also in May, after Elliott had been bugging me for a year
or more, I shaved off my beard and moustache one Friday night, after 20 years,
so he and Krystin could see what I look like without them. When Elliott walked into the room, he said "you
look weird. And you look about 15 years
younger." (Which was true, since my
beard is mostly white while my hair is not.)
When Krystin later came into the room, she sat down beside me on a sofa
and only then noticed the difference—and shied away, threw up her hands, and
said "you look weird." So much
for that experiment. And since I hate
shaving, which, because my beard is so tough, leaves me with small cuts all
over my face if I try to get a close shave, I started growing the beard back 2
days later.
Krystin made a funny observation that same weekend. I was driving a little red sport car (the
rental car provided by the insurance company while Pat's car was being
repaired) and I had shaved off my beard.
She said that anyone who didn't know me very well would think I was having
some kind of mid-life crisis: got rid of
my Dodge minivan for a red sport car and shaved off my beard to look
younger. Fortunately, there was no
crisis and I got my van and my beard back shortly thereafter.
Elliott finished middle school this year and went on to
high school (9th grade) this year.
He did a pretty good job in middle school—was consistently on the honor
roll—but I swear he rarely did any homework.
Supposedly there was 1-2 hours of homework per night, but not for
him. I couldn't complain because he got
perfectly good grades.
Krystin finished her second year at the University of Minnesota,
Morris, and began her third year.
Initially reluctant to go to such a small town so far (about 2½ hours)
from the Twin Cities, she has come to love going there.
* * *
I
was reminded this winter of how quick communications are these days. We had my cousin Mae for dinner and were
saying goodbye. Our chubby cat Bela
(from 8 oz. to about 12 pounds in less than a year) was poking his head out the
door, so Pat took him out and threw him in a pile of snow that we had just
accumulated. Bela just froze (not
literally) and didn't move. So Pat
picked him up and let him walk around on the sidewalk. He was in no particular hurry to come in,
even though it was probably only about 10 degrees outside.
When I came in the house the telephone rang. It was Krystin, at school in Morris, saying "Mom
threw Bela in the snow???" Turns
out Elliott was "instant messaging" with Krystin on the computer and
he heard us laughing at the cat. So he
told her. She got indignant about the
abuse of "her" cat and called to find out what happened. Yikes.
* * *
We (Pat and I, mostly) spent much of late winter and
early spring planning on being gone from the country from August to
December. After 18 years in my current
job, I had decided to take a leave to recharge my batteries and get a fresh
perspective on life in a large university.
The University
of Minnesota offers these
kinds of leaves to its professional staff, akin to a sabbatical for the
faculty, so with the blessing and assistance of the President's office (to whom
I report) I decided to take one.
University President Bob Bruininks wrote on my behalf to his counterpart
at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland
to ask that I be permitted to spend about 4 months there exploring questions of
interest to the University
of Minnesota. After a considerable delay in responding, the
answer came back "no." The
people in the President's office were floored—no one imagined that the chief
officer of a major British university, receiving a request from a counterpart
at a major American university, would decline the request. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I wrote an
email back directly in April and said the letter had some misconceptions about
the demands I would make on the staff and faculty at Edinburgh.
But I didn't think it would have much effect, and it didn't.
That threw things into a cocked hat. I began to make arrangements to go to another
British university—I had tentative "yeses" from both Manchester and
Oxford—when, in late August, the guy who had originally said "no" now
said, given the clarifications of my April email, they would welcome my visit
and looked forward to it. So I had to
write rather sheepishly to the folks at Manchester
and Oxford and tell them I was going to Edinburgh. Since it was August, however, we could not
possibly go for fall semester, so the folks at Edinburgh and I agreed I would come for
spring semester. So in early January we
are going off to Scotland
for 4½ months. All of us are going—Pat
has taken a leave from work, Elliott will be in a high school in Edinburgh just a few
minutes away from the flat where we'll be living, and Krystin and her friend
Mike will come along from the Morris campus to do independent study and perhaps
an on-line course. (They will have
separate bedrooms. They also intend to
travel around Europe for part of the time,
using Eurail and staying in youth hostels.
Mike, who took a year off before going to college, has done this before,
so he knows how to handle himself and get around. We are glad that Krystin has the chance to do
some more traveling, and with an experienced male along with her.)
Our house will be rented to a visiting professor of
German from the University of North Carolina, whose visit here will overlap quite
neatly with our time in Scotland. Even so, making the arrangements to leave one's
home for that long a time is trying.
Elliott pointed out to me that he has never been away from home for more
than 2 weeks; after I thought about it, I told him that I hadn't, either. I lived in a dorm my senior year in college,
but that was here in Minneapolis
and I went home to see my parents quite frequently (also to get laundry and
escape from dorm food). Pat, on the
other hand, went away to college, from New York
to Minnesota,
and Krystin, while not out of the state, is gone at Morris for several weeks at
a time. So the two homebodies and the
two who have lived away will now all live away.
But since it will be the entire family, I suppose "home" will
be where we all are.
We do hope to do some traveling while we are there. Besides traveling around Scotland, northern
England, and Wales, we'd like to spend a week in Paris and the surrounding area,
perhaps return to northern Italy (see below), and if we get frisky, travel over
to Norway and Denmark.
I can't tell you much about Scotland because we've never been
there. All I know is that in winter the
cold is bone-chilling (because, as our Scots friend Christine Grant pointed
out, Scotland is surround on three sides by ocean and the wind blows constantly
across the country) and that when we get there the sun will come up about 9:00
in the morning and set about 3:00 in the afternoon. So other than being dark, damp, and cold, we
should have a great time. (Seriously,
everyone I know who has been to Scotland
loves the place and has said we'll have a great time. We just have to get through the depths of
winter.)
* * *
We went to Italy in October for 2 weeks. Our good friends of nearly 30 years, Joe and
Genie Dixon, decided to celebrate their 60th birthdays by having
friends and family, in small groups, come over and stay with them in a villa
they rented in Tuscany
for the purpose. Since we don't get
invitations like that very often—never have before and probably never will
again—we certainly weren't going to turn it down!
Since we knew long in advance that we were going to
Italy, and since we knew Renaissance art history would perforce be a large part
of what we would see while there, and since neither of us had taken art
history in college or at any time, Pat and I decided to sit in on the
introductory, freshman-level art history course at the University during spring
semester. It was great fun, for several
reasons. We learned a great deal of art
history, even in this introductory course.
We found it interesting to be back in a classroom with a bunch of
18-19-year-olds. And quite by accident, one of Krystin's best friends was
really enrolled for the course. We found
the professor, Karal Ann Marling, to be a great teacher and a hoot
besides. (Marling is an extremely
well-known and distinguished historian of popular culture. She's also a first-rate character.) Since we sat in the back of the room (trying
not to look TOO out of place), we ended up sitting right next to Professor
Marling before class began and during the breaks. We got to know her fairly well, like her a
lot, and had her for dinner at one point this past summer. But most important, we at least learned a
little background and context for our travels in Italy and viewing some of the most
renowned art in the western world.
Rather than just stay the 5 days the Dixons were kind
enough to invite us for, we of course came over early and stayed after we had
been at the villa. We're too cheap to
spend that much money on airline tickets and only go for five days—and besides,
that's too far to go for less than a week.
So our rationale went, anyway. So
we went to Florence for a weekend, to the villa for 5 days, back to Florence
for another 3 days (where Krystin met us), and then to Rome for 5 days.
Our group at the villa was mainly good friends of Joe
(and their spouses), guys who had graduated from DeLaSalle
High School in Minneapolis back in the dark ages (long
before I graduated J), plus our friends Scott and Christie Eller (we did graduate the same
year, Scott and I from Washburn rather than DeLaSalle). It was a wonderful group to spend days
with—some of them we knew and some we did not.
The villa, tucked in the hills of Tuscany
about an hour southwest of Florence,
was built in 1905 as a hunting lodge.
The lore has it that Mussolini stayed there at one point when he was Il
Duce and went hunting. So who
knows—maybe Pat and I have slept in the same bedroom as Mussolini. What a claim to fame. We can see why people love Tuscany.
It has to be among the most beautiful places in the world. Around every corner is a Kodak moment.
While in Tuscany we took
quite a number of day trips while in Tuscany
(courtesy largely of our good friends the Ellers, who had a car—we did not—and
who drove us all over the place). To Assisi, to see the church
and monastery of St. Francis of same.
Impressive place, especially for a monk who dedicated himself to poverty
and helping the downtrodden. One wonders
what he would make of the enormous churches erected where he did his work. To Lucca, Siena, and Pisa (yup, the
tower does indeed lean—and it is merely the bell tower for the Pisa cathedral[1]). The cathedrals in all three towns were
awesome, even compared to St. Peter's. I
find it amazing that these rather small northern Italian towns (50,000 or so,
or less) have these fabulous cathedrals that take one's breath away. To Volterra, the alabaster capital of the
world, where we bought Elliott a small crossbow and a steel dagger (which didn't
come home in the carry-on luggage, needless to say). To San Gimignano, which a number of us took
several days to figure out how to pronounce correctly. These are all medieval walled cities—and the
walls are still there. They are immense,
both in height and width; I walked up to the top of the Siena wall and found a park with a biking
path, trees, and a playground. The
streets are narrow and often still cobblestone; Pat commented that if you
closed your eyes, you could hear the clip-clop of the horses as they went
through the streets. And, pointed out
another friend, you'd also smell the difference.
We decided that if the Catholic Church ever really runs
into financial difficulties, all it has to do is disassemble one of its small
northern Italian cathedrals and sell the art at Christie's or Sotheby's; it
would solve its problems.
Florence
was great fun. It is so interesting, at
least for us, to be in places that were very, very old even before the American
revolution. We took several guided
walking tours and did the usual tourist obligations, such as going in the
Duomo, the massive Florence cathedral, the Uffizi, and the Accademia (to see
Michelangelo's "David").[2] After we got back to Minneapolis, I read Ross
King's Brunelleschi's Dome, the story of how Filippo Brunelleschi
designed and superintended the construction of the great dome, which is still
the largest masonry dome ever built, and without scaffolding. Our tour guide told us that there have been
various engineering studies and computer simulations of the Duomo, all of which
demonstrate that the dome cannot be standing.
I don't know if the tour guide's tale is true. But I can't understand how quite a number of
these enormous cathedrals can stand up, so it wouldn't surprise me if it were.
Krystin went out one night in Florence with the son of a family the Dixons
knew because their older son stayed with this Florentine family for a year
after college. The younger brother,
Pietro, was in Minneapolis
last summer and we had him for dinner; he in turn had us for dinner with his
mother (father was out of town). Krystin
was commenting later that when she was out with Pietro and his college friends,
they all drank a fair amount of wine but their driving seemed to be just
fine. Then she paused, and added "but
how would you know? All the Italians
drive like they're drunk." She had
been observing driving and concluded, accurately, that there seem to be no
speed limits, no driving rules, and that one just drives and park wherever one
wants. (The building in which Pietro and
his family live is a 5-family dwelling in a building that dates to the 13th
Century and which has at various times been a granary, armory, and who knows
what else; it is now subdivided into 5 very spacious and attractive homes. Pietro's mother told us that one point, when
the Pazzi banking family was contesting the authority of the Medici—the
long-time rulers of Florence—the
Medici invited the Pazzi leadership out to the building that is now their house
and had them all shot. Pat looked under
the table to see if there were any bloodstains on the floor. Seemed unlikely, since this group
assassination took place about 400+ years ago.)
Rome was not so great, but our reaction may be a
reflection of the fact that we were there the last 4 days of the trip, it was
overcast all the time and poured down rain a couple of days, the traffic was
terrible and the subway doesn't go anywhere we wanted to (every time they want
to dig for a subway, they run into ruins, and that's a problem). And it was so crowded. One of our tour guides said they'd been told
the number of tourists in October, 2005, was up 30% over October, 2004.
St. Peter's might be a great place in which to be
awestruck, but it's not when there are approximately 654,000 other tourists
from around the world in the church at the same time. Nor are the Vatican
museums much fun when one is being herded through like cattle. The Raphael Stanze, the apartments of Pope
Julius II (who commissioned them from Raphael because he refused to live in the
rooms of his predecessor, whom he hated, Alexander VI (Borgia)), were quite
wonderful. He was working on the
apartment at the same time Julius had Michelangelo working on the Sistine
Chapel ceiling, and it seems likely that Raphael stole in (when Michelangelo
was not there) to examine Michelangelo's work.
(Upon returning from Italy,
I read also read Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling (the story of the
Sistine Chapel ceiling, by the same author who wrote Brunelleschi's Dome). Both were especially interesting because we'd
seen both the dome and the ceiling.) One
really does have to look at a book of the pictures of the ceiling in order to
appreciate the Sistine Chapel, because the frescoes are so far away from the
eye when standing on the floor of the Chapel.
(And Ross King puts to death the tale that Michelangelo laid on his back
for 4 years to paint the ceiling. He
didn't. He stood up.)
I found it amusing that there are markers in the floor of
St. Peter's noting the lengths of the 10 next-largest cathedrals after St.
Peter's (which is the largest). St.
Patrick's in New York City
is the smallest of the next ten. But
what is this, a little one-upmanship?
So we saw, in a hurry, some of the great Renaissance
works in the Vatican museums, enjoyed the many pieces of sculpture by Bernini,
did a couple of tours of Rome and its ruins, and came home. We may return to northern Italy, where there is much more to see and do,
but I doubt we'll head south to Rome
again. (As part of their traveling while
we are in Scotland, Krystin
plans on traveling with her friend Mike to visit Pietro in Florence.
Don't ask.)
* * *
Besides being annoyed by failing adhesives, we were
bothered by failing appliances as well, at times in retrospect that make us
think our trip to Italy
was ill-considered. We left for Italy on a Thursday night; the preceding Monday
night it rained about 5 inches where we live in Minneapolis—and our sump pump in the basement
decided that was a good time to die. So
we had streams of water running across the basement floor. (Our long-time plumber came to the rescue and
got a new pump installed the next day.)
When we returned two weeks later on a Saturday, we went to bed shortly
after we got back. All I wanted the next
morning was a hot shower, in my own bathroom—but, of course, the hot water
heater was out. (An emergency plumber
came Sunday morning and repaired it. So
between the sump pump and the hot water heater, we waved goodbye to about a
thousand dollars. What a fun way to
spend money.)
* * *
Friend of mine came up to me during the year and demanded
to say something that I'd quote in this letter.
I didn't know what to say.
* * *
(Although
this happened a little over a year ago, the story is perhaps still worth
relating, for those who didn't know about it.)
We had a quiet Thanksgiving 2004.
On the Monday before Thanksgiving, we took Krystin into the ER at 3:00 a.m. She had been feeling under the weather since
Saturday and even vomited a little Sunday night (when she was supposed to drive
back to school at UM-Morris). We assumed
it was a touch of the flu, pretty common at that point in the year. In the middle of the night she came and woke
us up and said she felt very sick. We
called urgent care; they said get her to the ER.
The ER people immediately put her in medical intensive
care. They knew immediately what the
problem was because she had a "fruity" smell to her breath (which we
never detected): ketoacidosis. Ketoacidosis results from a high level of
acid in the blood generated by cells burning fat as a result of astronomically
high blood sugar levels and no insulin.
Krystin was not coherent and barely conscious all day on Monday; they
had her on two IV drips with insulin and various other liquids. All the numbers—pulse, blood pressure, respiration—were
75 to 200% above normal. Her blood sugar
levels were in the 400s (normal for non-diabetics and diabetics taking insulin
is in the 90-110 range)—but those were down from over 800 when she was
admitted. They don't know how high the
number was; their machine only registers "high" when the number
exceeds 800. Pat asked the ICU doctor
how Krystin was doing; the doctor told her that they were doing all they could
but there was "a chance that she won't make it." (I only learned about this several days after
the fact.)
So we spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of
Thanksgiving week sitting by Krystin's bedside in ICU, watching monitor numbers
and quizzing doctors and nurses.
By Tuesday she had reconnected with the world, although
her monitor numbers were not yet normal.
She told us that because she had felt lousy during the weekend, she had
not eaten—and since she had not eaten, she hadn't taken any insulin. But not eating and not taking insulin does
not mean low blood sugar numbers; the result is the opposite. The doctor (in his mid-30s, perhaps) told her
(with Pat present) on Tuesday that "I consider myself young. But if I had had the level of acid in my
blood that you did, I would not have survived." (I also only learned about this after the
fact.) He said she made it only because
she was young, otherwise healthy, and lucky.
In retrospect, I am glad that we did not know at the time that we nearly
lost our daughter, and only learned it when she was clearly on the mend.
Wednesday afternoon she was moved to a regular hospital
ward for monitoring for 24 hours; Thanksgiving morning we got to bring her home,
pretty much back to normal. Since our
families were doing Thanksgiving dinners at other times during the weekend (due
to the usual schedule conflicts with in-laws), we decided that we would have
Thanksgiving dinner with only the four of us.
And we all went to bed by about 8:30
that night—Pat and I because we were exhausted from 3 days in the hospital,
Krystin from the ordeal, and Elliott because he had spent Wednesday night at a
friend's birthday party.
This episode affected Pat (and Krystin) much more than me
because I was basking in unintended ignorance.
I did not understand the depth of the crisis until it had passed, and I
do not find it easy to become retrospectively panicked. By the time I was fully apprised of things,
the threat of death had disappeared.
It was interesting to learn that in ICU, there is one
nurse per patient (or occasionally one nurse per two patients, if one is
clearly recovering). We had a lot of
time to talk with the nurses, with whom we were extremely impressed. This episode made me once again think about
health-care coverage. I was extremely
glad we have very good coverage; one of the nurses estimated that Krystin's
hospital stay would cost between $50,000 and $75,000. We could not pay that without great financial
maneuvering; what on earth would a family with no or inadequate coverage do???? I think we had to pay the $10 co-pay for the
doctor visit.
So our Thanksgiving was small—and much closer than we
normally are as a foursome—but we were thankful that we were still a family of
four, not three.
On Monday, November 21, 2005 (well, actually November 22 at 3:00 in the morning), Krystin
was working on college papers in her dorm, but took time to email us at that
point and recall that it had been exactly a year since we had had to take her
in to the ER. She expressed relief that
it had not happened again, and said it would not. Let us hope so.
Thanksgiving 2005 was quite different—Pat's family was
here, and then on Saturday we went to my brother's for my side. Krystin
was here and quite alive for both. (So
was Elliott, for that matter.) Too much
turkey and dressing, though. I think I
like it best when the dinner is at someone else's house, because then I don't
have to eat the damn leftovers for days afterwards.
* * *
Elliott showed me he has the potential to become a good
experimental scientist. We were talking
about the weather and he wondered whether someone born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, who came
to Minnesota in the winter would feel as cold
or colder than someone who was born and raised in Minnesota, assuming they had on the exact
same clothing. He hypothesized that if
he could find two people with the exact same genetic makeup, he could get an
answer. I pointed out that he wanted
identical twins but asked how he would measure the sense of cold. He was stumped by that question, so I
suggested one (impossible) possibility would be to have perhaps 100 such sets
of identical twins, separated at birth between Tucson and Minneapolis, and to
give them each a survey asking them to rate, on a scale of 1-10, how cold they
felt at -10 degrees. If the Tucson group average were 8 and the Minneapolis
group average were 5, there would at least be the suggestion that the Tucson group felt
colder. Since there are not 100 sets of
identical twins separated at birth, with one of each set in Tucson
and one in Minneapolis,
we can't do the experiment.
He also wanted to know if people have physical
differences in their body makeup if one compared, for example, Eskimos and
Greeks. The Eskimos have always lived in
a cold climate, the Greeks (or natives of any nation close to the equator) in a
warm one. I suspect there has been
research along this line, although I haven't looked it up.
* * *
Remember my recitation of the animals coming and
going? It continued. At the end of November 2004 we again got rid
of the second dog, Abby. She was sweet—and
also psychologically very needy—but she had a terrible urination problem. After our family room began to smell like a canine
outhouse, and she showed no signs of ceasing the behavior, we finally concluded
we had to surrender her to the Humane Society.
I am certain she was abused as a puppy, probably by a male (because she
always squatted and urinated any time Elliott or I reached to pet her). We could have put up with the neediness, but
not the urine. I would like to do nasty
things to people who do that to animals.
She would have been a perfect pet without the abuse; after it, I am not
sure she could ever recover to become a companion animal.
So 2004 turned out to be a bad year for dogs for us. Pat gave up and decided she'd just keep the
one dog until he dies and then decide whether to find another dog to run with
her. Or so she said. But then, lo and behold, she managed to find
Marla, a 30-pound, year-old black flat-coat retriever. Marla, after a number of months, seems to be
doing OK, and she's both nice and cute, although she needs to get older. We just aren't used to this puppy
energy. Krystin is not all the fond of
Marla but concedes she's better than Abby because she doesn't urinate all over
the place.
And
we only have a dog, or dogs, to run with Pat twice a week, although they obviously
become part of the family. Late in the
year, after recurring abdominal pains (the source of which cannot be identified
after MRI, CT scan, and colonoscopy), she decided to stop running to see if
that would alleviate the pain. As I
write this, the jury is still out. So
now we have the dogs but not the running that justified having them in the
first place. There's something wrong
with this picture.
At
least the geckos went to other homes.
Elliott lost interest in them, and since one of Pat's colleagues is a
reptile expert (and one of the nation's leading experts on snake venoms), he
took them and got them new homes. (We
also learned that our "female" gecko was not a female—and was some
quasi-rare species worth a considerable amount of money. Elliott wanted to know if he could get money
retroactively; we told him tough luck.) Since Elliott had been contributing $1 per
week of his allowance to pay for the crickets to feed the geckos, he got
himself a raise.
* * *
There
is a simple satisfaction, when picking raspberries, in turning aside leaves and
finding a bunch of 5-6 purple berries hanging there, sweet and ready to
eat. The satisfaction wanes, however, after the first 100 times it
happens. By then I was wondering where all these damn berries were coming
from. Somewhat to my surprise, I spent
about 6 hours on the 4th of July picking and then freezing 18 pints of
raspberries from my little patch next to our garage. I should have known that spending the Sunday
at my cousin's lake place outside Osakis,
Minnesota, visiting with my
Engstrand cousins, was going to cost me. At the height of the season, the
raspberry bushes demand picking every day. It was too wet on the 2nd and
on the 3rd we were gone to Osakis, so the 4th I got punished. But I
never imagined 18 pints. The total for
the season, from my little patch next to our garage (which only gets about
half-day sun) was 63 pints. I quit after
that—I got tired of picking. I probably
left 8-10 pints on the bushes. I assume
the birds enjoyed some of them.
* * *
Elliott got off a nice line in the grocery store parking
lot last spring. There is a minivan that
is almost completely square; I don't recall the manufacturer. But it literally looks like a stretched
cube. Elliott commented "nice
box. Wonder where the car is that comes
with it." It really is ugly.
* * *
I had to travel to professional meetings (Friday-Saturday
or Thursday-Saturday) three times towards the end of the year—the first weekend
in November, the third weekend in November, and the first weekend in
December. When I was young, unmarried,
and un-traveled, I thought these trips were great fun and exciting. Now I regard them entirely as a pain in the
rump. They were all useful and
productive meetings, but the motel rooms look all the same—and I sleep just as
badly in all of them. Flying has become
such a hassle that it is almost more trying than it is worth. The one great personal benefit from one of
the trips, to Philadelphia,
was that I got to have dinner with friends of very long standing, Bob Antila
and Denise Ulrich. Besides finding this
wonderful little restaurant, the three of us had one of the most delightful
dinner conversations among old friends that I've probably had in 20 years.
* * *
A few selected quotes to end the year, some of which a
number of you may have already seen, cribbed from emails from friends.
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain
folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House
will be adorned by a downright moron."
H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
"The
tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies." Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex.
"Should
any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance,
and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party
again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of
course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional
politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible
and they are stupid." President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1952
"History
teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is
cheap." President Ronald Reagan
"If
a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who
are rich." President John F.
Kennedy, inaugural address, January
20, 1961
"To
announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to
stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but
is morally treasonable to the American public." President Theodore Roosevelt
"A
little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells
dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government
to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply
in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous
public debt. If the game runs sometimes against
us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an
opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game
where principles are at stake." Thomas Jefferson, 1798, after
the passage of the Sedition Act
My
best to you for the season and for 2006; may it be a good year for you.
[1] All of
the cathedrals we saw had a baptistery (the babies had to be baptized before
they could enter the cathedral, so the baptisms took place in a separate
building) and a bell tower. We climbed
up various of them, including the bell towers of Pisa
and Florence. It is the baptistery of the Florence cathedral that has the "Gates
of Paradise" (so named by Michelangelo when he first say them).
[2] We also
saw, while in Rome,
Bernini's "David." I actually
liked Bernini's better than Michelangelo's.
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