From Now On
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From Now On
The next morning, Violeta, the wife of Adil, served us breakfast on the rooftop and shared the story of how they had joined forces – her artistic vision and his carpentry skills – to convert this 400-year-old house into a dar. At midday, we met up with Ervin again as we walked to catch our train, out Bab Bou Jeloud and down streets outside the medina’s crenelated walls and then through Bab Semmarine into the Mellah, the historic Jewish quarter. Living side by side with Muslims since the founding of Fes, Jews resettled in their own section of the city near the Palais Royal in the fifteenth century. But by the mid-twentieth century, nearly all Jewish residents had emigrated to other cities and countries, including Israel, and the surviving synagogues in the Mellah are now tourist sites.

On the train ride back to Rabat, we were able to get facing seats by the window. Cile befriended the Moroccan woman sitting beside her, offering her throat lozenges after she had a coughing fit. When Cile pulled out a deck of cards so she and I could play gin rummy, the woman took great interest in our game, and was highly amused when Cile skunked me, winning all three games.

Our last week in Rabat, our language instructors graciously doubled up classes so we could get a full week of instruction – four hours each on Monday and Tuesday. While taking a short walk for a mid-class break, I noticed some plastic bags falling out of the shoulder bag of a woman in front of me. I picked them up to give them back to her. “Madame! Madame!” I called to get her attention. She turned to look at me and the bags in my hand, confused. But her daughter understood, saying something to her in Arabic. The woman’s face brightened as she accepted the bags, saying, “Shukran!” A taxi driver standing nearby caught my eye and put his right palm over his heart in recognition of my good deed.

After class, as we walked back to our riad, I stopped at a fast food stand for a sandwich. I watched as the cook chopped up saucisses et oignons and heated it on the grill, then took one of the round flat loaves found at any boulangerie stand, sliced into it to form a pocket that he filled with the sausage and onions, wrapped it in a piece of butcher paper, and handed it to me. Dix dirhams. As we proceeded through the medina, I enjoyed my treat, but eventually the grease began to seep through the bread and collect in the folds of the paper. I stopped to pour some onto the street, right in front of a shopkeeper talking with a friend. Because Moroccan shopkeepers treat the street facing their shops as an extension of their storefront, I was being incredibly thoughtless. He said to me, “Shukran,” the irony unmistakable. “Thanks a lot, buddy.” One good deed undone by an inconsiderate one.

Our last full day in Morocco, we were free of obligations. We’d been wanting to visit a nice beach – the ones in Rabat and neighboring Salé are not – so I’d asked Douae for a recommendation. Her favorite was Plage de Bouznika, forty kilometers south of Rabat. We headed to the gare that morning, past a group of pro-Palestine May Day demonstrators on Avenue Mohammed V, who were outnumbered three-to-one by police and military lined up in front of the Parlement.

In thirty minutes, we were in Bouznika. We took a taxi that ferried us past a carnival being set up, a caravan of camels grazing nearby, and dropped us off on an unassuming residential street. We stood there a minute before realizing a walkway between two houses led to a long lovely beach sheltered by two rocky outcroppings, private homes behind us, the blue Atlantic beckoning. We walked along the edge of the surf to a restaurant at the far end of the beach, Eat and Chill, where we shared small plates of calamars frits et salade d’avocat aux crevettes,[6] watched fishing boats come in to unload their catch, and as the sign urged, chilled.

Those first two weeks in Morocco, Cecile and I settled into the rhythm of our days. Two hours devoted to one-on-one language learning, a restorative coffee at one of the many sidewalk cafes, two hours spent channeling kid energy (or trying to) at the daycare, then a stroll around Rabat. After dinner at the riad, some language homework and daycare lesson planning for the next day.

My young French teacher, Douae, est très gentille et patiente (et aussi très belle). Her English skills were not strong, all the better for me because it challenged me to communicate with her in French. We usually met two hours a day four times a week in the third-floor offices of the Moroccan Center for Arabic Studies (MCAS), above busy Avenue Hassan II. The pervasive debate of car horns would drift up from the street and through the open windows into our classroom, not to mention the Arabic instruction seeping in from the next room, a cacophonous background to our French dialogue.

The daycare was a ten-minute walk from the MCAS classrooms, down an alley off busy Rue Souika, near Rabat’s Grand Mosque. We were getting to know our young charges, two dozen children like eggs in an egg carton, tucked into two low rectangular tables that filled a room. I’m grateful Cile decided to bring a suitcase of books and supplies. Of course, the daycare already had some art supplies, but the kids were thrilled by the crayons, markers, and paper we brought the first day (plucked from shelves stocked for my grandsons when they were younger) because they were brand-new, the paper wrappers still intact, the marker colors still vivid.

We quickly learned that after forty minutes of that, the kids’ interest would flag. Sensing their antsiness, we’d get them out of their chairs and into the two-story central room, where we’d all start moving our bodies. Their favorite songs were “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” and “Baby Shark,” but we introduced them to “The Hokey Pokey” and “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” Lots of English practice on body vocabulary and “shaking it all about.” As for “Baby Shark,” I’m not sure – maybe they learned “safe at last.”

For the last forty minutes or so, we’d cajole the kids to wind down with books. We added two or three to the daycare library every day. Classics such as Hop on Pop and Old McDonald Had a Farm, which I revised to “Old Mustapha Had a Farm.” The children loved to page through the books with us, naming colors and animals and counting anything that could be counted. Those two hours were loads of fun, but exhausting.

In our free time, we explored the city beyond the medina, following Avenue de la Résistance west into the middle-class neighborhood of Quartier de l’Ocean. We discovered the Musée National de la Photographie, located inside the thick walls of Fort Rottembourg, erected in the late-nineteenth century to house two 30-ton cannons donated by the German government. The fort marks the eastern terminus of the Corniche, a popular promenade that hugs the Atlantic coastline and offers stunning views of waves crashing on rocky cliffs below.

We also walked south out of the medina, discovering the peaceful botanical gardens of the Jardin Nouzhat Hassan and strolling along Avenue Mohammed V into the Ville Nouvelle, built by the French in the early twentieth century, past La Grande Poste, the Parlement of Morocco, the Gare Rabat Ville, et les musées d’art et d'archéologie. This section of the city is a blend of Moorish and Art Deco architectural styles. We wandered, a couple of flâneurs of boulevards lined with stately palm trees, past buildings with rounded corners and balconies and smooth white stucco walls, their horseshoe arches decorated with intricate geometric patterns.

Just as Cile and I were learning to navigate an unfamiliar city, we were learning to feel at home in a new language. Douae continued to guide me toward French fluency, feeding me lists of vocabulary and coaxing me out of my comfort zone of present tense. I began to learn the distinctions between l’imparfait and passé composé. I worked on my pronunciation, trying to perfect the French “r,” moving the sound to the back of my mouth while exhaling. Douae mixed in sentence exercises, oral questions, short reading and writing assignments. For one of my essais de français, she asked me to describe my early impressions of Rabat and the Moroccan people. I concluded that piece: Je suis reconnaissant que les Marocains, même les vendeurs, ne nous prêtent pas beaucoup attention. Mais quand je croise le regard d’un Marocain dans la rue et je lui fais un signe de tête amical, il me répond toujours à mon salut.[1]

Our host, Jamila, welcomed us with a plate of dates and a pot of thé de menthe as she registered us. It was a lovely place – three rooms on the second floor and one on the rooftop terrasse, which was appointed with cafe tables where we could enjoy breakfast and a four-poster bed where we could enjoy a nap. After unpacking, we headed out to see the medina. Our goal was Djemaa el-Fna, the vast marketplace square at the center of the medina, proclaimed an Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2001 by UNESCO in recognition of the unique role played by this gathering place for juice and food stall workers, snake charmers, trained monkeys, Amazigh water vendors, henna artists, storytellers, Gnaoua drummers and dancers.[4]

Douae later asked me to draft a couple paragraphs about our trip so I could practice using the different past tenses. Among other things, I wrote about getting caught in a scrum of people in the square: Nous marchions à travers la foule sur la place quand un homme derrière moi a chuchoté en mon oreille, “Hash?” J’ai dit, “No, merci,” mais j'étais un peu fier qu’il ait pensé que j'étais si cool.[5]

That evening we ate at one of the many rooftop restaurants that look down on the square – vegetarian couscous for Cile, tajine de mariage (chicken and prunes) for me – and relaxed in the evening air, high above the hubbub, as an orange sun slowly dropped from the sky. After a half-hour of picking our way through the medina in the general direction of Bab Doukkala, we reached our riad, climbed the steep stairs to the terrasse, flopped down on the bed, and gazed up at a nearly full moon.

Next morning, we continued to explore. Cile’s mission was to buy gifts for friends back home, and I tagged along. Many of the souks have a particular focus or personality, linked to the craft practiced there. The blacksmiths work and sell their wares in Souk Haddadine, the fabric dyers in Souk des Teinturiers, the olive growers in Souk Ableuh, the leather workers in Souk Semmarine, and so on. After some shopping success, we decided to visit the beautiful architecture of Médersa Ben Youssef, an Islamic school built in the 16th century. However, we were diverted by a young Moroccan in a tracksuit who exclaimed, “My friends, you are in luck because today, Saturday, is the only day the Amazigh tanners come down from the mountains to work, and I’d be honored to take you to the tanneries.”[5] Was this true? We didn’t know, but we’d heard about the open-air tanneries, and decided to say yes to an adventure. “Not far,” he promised. As we followed him through twisting alleyways, he asked, “From the United States? I have a cousin in California!” He boasted that Amazigh leather workers produce the highest quality goods. And as we passed a pile of rubble that was once a home, he explained, “Ah, that earthquake!”[6]

After a fifteen-minute walk at breakneck pace, we arrived at the tanneries near Bab Debbagh, on the eastern edge of the medina. Camel and goat hides were being unloaded at a doorway as we slipped past. We were handed sprigs of mint – “To mask the smell!” – and handed over to another man, who gave us a tour of the tannery. The array of cement vats built into the ground were filled with hides – some soaking in water to soften them, some soaking in lye to remove hair, some in vats of flour to leach out the chemicals, some laid out in the sun to dry. Then he led us down the street to a building where the leather was being dyed – indigo blue, olive oil brown, mulberry purple, henna red – and then farther down the street to a shop, where he introduced us to the owner, who invited us up the stairs and into the shop’s backroom. Ahmed Drissi was also Amazigh. He shook our hands and asked us to sit down on a cushioned bench. “You are from the United States? Then we are brothers.” He told us of an American Red Cross doctor who had cared for the people in his home village in the mountains.

“Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm: for love is strong as death.” –Song of Solomon 8:6

In this first month since my son’s death, I’ve managed to stay afloat. Reading and responding to cards, emails, texts, and social media comments have been cathartic. I find myself drifting on that vast but well-charted ocean of grief – for each wave crest of normalcy, an offsetting wave trough of depression. When talking about grief, it somehow feels right to turn to metaphor, to make that leap beyond the rational.

In my more buoyant moments, I catch sight of the horizon and, with luck, landfall. When I’m deep in the trough of a wave, all I see is steel blue water. In those darker moments, the same movie plays in my head, over and over: Jesse as he’s about to be struck by the Ford Bronco, in slow motion, that flash of realization in his eyes, the awful impact of steel on bone, the cracking of vertebrae. And then, me kneeling in the median grass, cradling his head in my lap, beholding his broken body, weeping. And then, me appearing beside him just before he walks into traffic, grabbing his arm and swinging him around, the two of us hugging as cars whiz by.

This pattern of highs and lows is similar to how it felt all those years as the parent of someone with an addiction (and how it feels, I’m sure, for someone with an addiction): the bright hopes of rehab and sobriety, the deep disappointments of relapse. I imagine this is something like the highs and lows of the bipolar disorder that presented in Jesse in his early twenties: the euphoric and creative hypomanic phase, followed by depression that fills the void when the elevated and energizing mood has vanished. And how similar to the stressful daily routine of a restaurant chef: Hours of prepping the night’s specials and other menu items. The mad rush of the dinner hours, orders pouring in, a string of tickets hanging above each workstation. Then winding down by midnight, putting food away in the walk-ins, planning and ordering supplies for the next day, and ending with a drink or two or three.[1]

When Jesse was hypomanic, too wired to sleep, he’d come home from his job and, even when not drinking, stay up all night. He’d work on some art or bike project, waking us up. I’d go down to the basement. “Jesse, could you please go to bed?” He’d grimace and shake his head, knowing I didn’t understand. In those moments, I’d recall when he was little, when I could put him to sleep by singing a song and rubbing his back, and wish I could still do that.

* * *

One memory of Jesse transports me to 2015. It had taken a lot of gentle persuasion to get Jesse to the point of giving rehab a try. Although less than enthusiastic, he was well aware the counselors were offering him tools and strategies that could help him make healthier decisions. Pat and I participated in the family sessions held on Sunday afternoons, and were feeling hopeful when he graduated from the program that December.

The rehab center found a placement for him in a sober living house in Minneapolis. Although we would have been happier if he were closer to home, we knew this could be an important step for him. He had begun scouring websites for sous chef jobs in Minneapolis. I helped him load his possessions into my car and drove him 300 miles north. After paying his first month’s rent at the house, I helped him haul the boxes up to his second floor efficiency, gave him a big hug, and drove home.

When we called the main office the next evening to see how he was doing, we learned he wasn’t living there, that he’d gone out for dinner with some housemates and had returned drunk. Per the house’s rules, he was banned from staying there, and they had no idea where he was.

The next day, not having heard from Jesse, we began to call police stations and hospitals. This went on for a week. We were distraught, trying hard to ignore the darkest possibilities – January in Minneapolis can be brutal.

We finally got a call from him. He was sleeping on a couch in a communal house. The good folks there had found Jesse panhandling on the streets and taken him in. I drove to Minneapolis and picked him up, and we retrieved his gear from the sober living house and returned to Iowa City. Not much conversation on that long drive – I saw no value in reminding him of what he already knew, and Jesse was withdrawn, ashamed of his failure to live up to our hopes, and his. Pat and I never did hear the whole story of that week.

The next summer, lacking a steady chef job, Jesse found a temporary haven at Echollective Farm in rural Cedar County. Led by Derek Roller, former co-owner of The Red Avocado,[2] the farm had been in operation for fifteen years by then, both as a CSA and a supplier of produce to various businesses. Jesse pitched his tent at the far end of the fifteen acres of farmland he worked during the day. He seemed happy. On one of my visits, he showed me a barn filled floor to ceiling with crates of seed garlic, the farm’s specialty, ready to be shipped out. Working on the farm became a way for him to get some distance from bad habits he’d cultivated. But he usually came into Iowa City on the weekends, sometimes getting a ride from one of the farm crew, sometimes asking me for a lift. This poem emerged from one ride returning to the farm.

Driving with Jesse

I’m driving my son Jesse

25 miles into the countryside

to the farm where he lives and works.

It’s 10 PM and 80 degrees,

and we’re done with the small talk.

Cruising the two-lane blacktop at 60,

all the windows rolled down,

we let our speed invent a wind

from the still summer heat.

We rush through a restless night,

sensing shifts in temperature – warmer

as we crest a hill, the slight frisson of a chill

as we dip down to cross a creek.

At one point we drive through

the almost visceral funk of a dead skunk.

Except for the occasional glare of headlights,

nothing else distracts us from our meditations.

I want to remind Jesse the red-winged blackbird

tattooed on his shoulder blade is indeed black,

but its red and gold epaulets were earned

through acts of fearless tenacity.

But we each abandon ourselves to the moment

or wrestle with our thoughts – I don’t know –

as I deliver him to the darkness and silence

and next step in his journey.

* * *

I offered to help, but Jesse mostly passed on that offer, believing he needed to face the consequences of his actions. I always tried to remind him I was there for him. For various reasons, news from my son could be sporadic. He had a hard time hanging on to a cell phone. But these last three months, thanks to public library computers, we’ve been corresponding fairly regularly via email. Here’s his part of that conversation:

10/31/23

I’m struggling like Chaka Khan. Tell me something good.

All that’s left in the fields are cornflowers. They don’t fit behind my ear. How to impress the girls. Weave a wreath with prairie grass.

Ever dug a pit in a road bed? Pretty sure it doesn’t take seven guys.

I want municipal funds for a Christmas goose – on my bucket list for a long time. Now I can’t stop thinking about it. Blood and vinegar.

Homeless in Austin. Yesterday on the bus, some guy said, “Hey, I remember you.” I once gave him my shoes. Went home barefoot.

Need to remind myself to be that person.

update of sorts (11/28/23)

So, I’ve been busy in odd ways. Been hanging out at the Friends meeting house here. Participated in their business meeting and made editorial changes to the letter they were submitting to government officials – senators and such.

Can’t remember if I told you this, but I took on a boarder/companion named Mayra. She saw the world as out to get her, and I’ve tried to show her that there are good people and good things. It seems to me that the message is sinking in. I thank Max[2] for the tent and the rest. I’m able to give her and myself a safe space.

I attended a forum on city planning about cyclists and pedestrians and how to make them more safe. Also about diverting the city’s money from the highway and more towards infrastructure. I said my peace/piece and they thanked me for it.

Weather is getting colder. I send my love and wish you well.

–J

learning from history (12/8/23)

I’m going through a more difficult time right now, and it has caused me to remember our history. Remembering the struggles that you and Mama had trying to raise three children with not much for financial means. But we had friends. Those are means.

I give great thanks to all the people who helped us and me. I’m trying to do as much as I can to help my friends. But I’m having trouble parsing my own needs with theirs. I am recognizing that their problems are interfering with my own well-being, but I have trouble letting go.

I woke up today wanting to go tell all of them to go fuck themselves. I don’t want to feel that way, but it’s hard.

If you have any advice, I could use it right now.

Love you,

–J

12/10/23

Thank you, Papa. I’ve been feeling the same way. I’ve just been having trouble relaying it to my compatriots. I’ve been trying, but I’ve chosen to give up on them and leave them to their own devices. I’ve helped a lot of people at a sacrifice to myself. It is time to take another route.

Keep being a baller-ass father, and I’ll keep loving you and passing on all the good things that you have taught me.

I’m having trouble with my boarder. I’m reminded of a punk band’s album entitled “Everything Now” (12/21/23)

She seems to think that even while homeless, she can have anything she wants. I’ve provided the best I can, but it has been at a cost to my own well-being. I want to provide for her, but street life implies that we all provide for each other.

You once told me a part of a book you read about kids in hard times: “If I have ends, you have ends.” I take that to heart, but I feel like I’m running thin.

I don’t want to abandon her, but I think I might have to. The thought of it breaks my heart. Any advice that you might have I would be gracious to hear.

12/22/23

What you said is something that I have come to realize. Thank you for your words. I just need to figure out a way to let her go in a way that I don’t feel like a bad person.

I’m trying to work on myself and my own situation, which has been difficult. In addition, I’ve taken on a lot of other people’s burdens.

I may be homeless, but I still call my tent a house because that’s what it is for me right now.

When Mayra asked for safe harbor and I said I could provide it, I didn't fully understand what I had actually done in the last few years. When I first showed up, everyone was disparate. I gave everyone what I could – cooked for them, helped set up camps, gave them clothes and food and money that I had, showed them friendship. Now there is a community of people who look out for each other rather than just looking out for themselves.

People have been calling Mayra my wife. She is protected. I guess I should be proud of that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my current state and think that I was meant to be here. I feel that I did my job and need to get out rather than get trapped. It is a slow process; I’m still trying.

Love, JPD

12/28/23

I’m glad to hear you had an interesting and eventually beneficial Christmas. Mine sucked. I had to kick Mayra out after she chose to abandon me for some strangers.

I met a nice girl on the bus, gave her my hat and some food. She said she lived in a house that had empty rooms and invited me to stay. Then I met her boyfriend, who threatened to hurt me twice. When he turned and said, “Why the fuck are you following us?” I responded, “I’m not,” and I went home.

At least some guy on the bus shared his blunt with me.

12/28/23

Oh, and two women showed up to the area where I live, asking about me. They had no other reason to be there.

I don’t like this. Sure, one of them is gorgeous and the other one is super nice. But fuck this shit – I don’t want anyone taking advantage of me. ‘Oh, I fucked up and made bad decisions. This guy is nice and will take care of me.’ Don’t need it, don’t want it.

I’m super lost right now.

12/30/23

I’m trying to avoid this, but I think everyone is going to come live next to me. I like my quiet. I enjoy the idea of balance, and yes, in theory balance should occur naturally. I’ve learned that sometimes it requires a lot of patience; it can’t be forced. C’est la vie.

I’ll figure it out.

Thanks, Papa

I shared this with Lilia but thought it might interest you so I’ll pass it along. (1/22/24)

I had another interesting day yesterday. I went to the Quaker meeting house and then to the library, where I ran into Mayra, whom I hadn’t seen in a hot minute. She introduced me to a guy she had been hanging around for the last two weeks named Angel. He was very skeptical of me at first, guarded and protective of her. After he felt me out, he opened up. Turned out to be a really nice guy. We kept talking and he said to me, “She loves you.” I laughed, and he said, “No no no, she really loves you; she talks about you all the time and I see the way she is around you.”

I recognize it, but I don’t think she really knows what love is. I mean, it took me a long time to figure out what love actually feels like. That’s why I’m sure I love you.

Later that night, it was raining non-stop, and David, Mason and I were hiding under the awning of the McDonald’s. There was another guy there we didn't know who asked me for a lighter, which he used to set a T-shirt wrapped in a chunk of plywood on fire. David asked me for some water, which he used to put out the fire. I helped stomp it out and threw that stupid mess over the bushes. We told him that what he did wasn’t cool. David made the wise decision to leave, as we were on camera and we frequent the place. We both told Mason that we need to leave, and he was like, “Naw, I’m just going to stay here.”

Dumbass.

I’ve been subject to an interesting I-don’t-know-what. (1/30/24)

I know I told you about Mayra. She is off on her own, and I don’t know where she is. Random people keep asking me about her. Some are asking about her and some are asking why aren’t you together in the sense of you are supposed to be together, so where is she?

It happens on an almost daily basis, and it is kind of fucking with my head, and when I say kind of, I mean completely.

Two days after that last post, at dawn, Jesse was hit by a car while crossing a busy intersection. He was clinically dead when the EMTs arrived, but they were able to resuscitate him and transport him to a hospital. That Saturday, his sister Emma flew from Roanoke, his brother Sierra flew from Seattle, and my girlfriend Cile and I flew from Iowa City. We made our way to the hospital to be with Jesse and learn more about his medical status. His injuries were extensive; most serious were cervical spine fractures and a spinal cord injury. He was in spinal shock. In response, the neurology team had done a partial cervical decompression. He was critically stable, responsive but heavily sedated and intubated.

Monday morning, we met with most of the ICU care team, hoping to get a clearer picture of Jesse’s prognosis. That afternoon, we finally met with the neurosurgeon who performed the cervical decompression. That conversation confirmed our worst fears: the cervical spinal damage was so extensive that Jesse’s best outcome would be a life as a quadriplegic. Given all the adversity he’d faced in his life, Sierra, Emma, and I agreed this was more than he should be asked to bear. We elected to have his life support withdrawn, and after this was done late Tuesday night, Jesse peacefully slipped free of his body. That strong and generous heart beat on for more than five minutes after his last breath.

Joined by thirty friends and family, Sierra and Tina said their vows under that portico looking out on the Hudson River fjord.[1] I officiated, as I did for Emma’s wedding, beginning the ceremony with something meant to be moving. I know I was moved that two of my children in the past year had expressed their love for another and taken this brave step into the world of commitments and responsibilities.

We crossed the street and lingered in Riverside Park while the wedding photographer took every possible permutation of a group portrait. Then we headed toward the subway for a rousing interborough journey to a little Brooklyn restaurant for the reception dinner. The party was intimate enough to allow me to make a toast, which went something like this: “I know my kids sometimes wonder how Pat and I have survived as a couple all these years. We do argue a lot, we often don’t see eye to eye, but we’ve never stopped talking and listening to each other. Sierra and Tina, always listen to each other, always make up afterward.”

As is always true when I spend time in New York City, by the end of that day I was both exhilarated and exhausted. This was even more true for Pat, who wore a joyful smile on a face drawn with pain. We spent most of the next day relaxing in our Washington Heights brownstone and then flew home on Sunday.

We’ve all experienced plane-flights-from-hell. By the time we got to LaGuardia, grabbed our tickets, and navigated the terminal to our departure gate, Pat was spent. Because the flight from LaGuardia to O’Hare was jam-packed, Pat had to check her carry-on suitcase at the gate. The flight was uneventful, but when we disembarked in Chicago at five o’clock, we learned all connecting flights to Cedar Rapids had been canceled because of an ice storm there. We were rebooked on a flight leaving the next morning and encouraged to spend the night at one of the nearby hotels. But Pat didn’t have her suitcase, which contained all her meds (the last time she’d do that). The crew at the gate directed us to baggage claims service, where we could retrieve the suitcase.

When the person at the claims office told us they couldn’t locate her luggage, Pat became upset and pissed off. She probably could’ve used one or two pills at that moment. We kept trying to explain that “We can’t find it” was not an acceptable answer. Feeling faint at one point, Pat collapsed into one of the plastic chairs along the office’s wall. The woman at the desk asked me, “Is your mother going to be okay?” I was seething. Through gritted teeth, I hissed, “She is my wife! Now find her bag!”

Pat’s luggage was eventually found that night, averting our mutual meltdown. We returned to Iowa City, and to the realization that all our children now lived at least a thousand miles away. That August, Emma and Zach had moved to Richmond, Virginia. Zach started work on an M.F.A. in kinetic imaging at Virginia Commonwealth, and Emma landed a job in the state medical examiner’s office, gathering data on a range of subjects, from roadkills to spousal abuse. Pat and Emma missed each other. They’d grown closer during those years since Emma’s return to Iowa City after college. We could’ve complained about our kids flying the coop, but neither of us had stayed close to home. In our early twenties, we each found our way to Iowa City after leaving the San Francisco Bay area (Pat) and the Akron, Ohio, area (me). It was not surprising our kids would follow suit.

That same month, when Pat saw Dr. Farivar for her six-month checkup, the CT scans indicated the stability of all dissections and aneurysms under observation. This was the last time that Farivar would be directly involved in her care. He left the University of Iowa in September to become the chief of cardiac surgery at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia. By then, it had been twenty-six months since her last surgery.

But the scans at her next check-up in February 2013 showed two new outpouchings (or pseudoaneurysms[2]) from the ascending aortic graft. Pat no longer had much confidence in the University of Iowa surgeons. Everyone she consulted frankly expressed hesitancy, if not trepidation, about opening up someone with her medical history.

Pat called Gretchen Oswald, the Johns Hopkins genetic counselor and Loeys-Dietz Syndrome Foundation co-founder whom she’d met the previous year. She asked Pat to have the hospital send the CT scans to her at Johns Hopkins, and she forwarded them to Dr. Duke Cameron, head of cardiac surgery. Although he described these new pseudoaneurysms as merely “worrisome,” he agreed she needed her ascending aorta and aortic arch replaced soon, before her condition became more urgent. He proposed using the elephant trunk procedure. As Gretchen explained to Pat, “They would replace your ascending aorta and the root that still has the dissection and the arch completely; then they would put a graft down within the descending aorta.” Between 2006 and 2017, this technique would be performed worldwide on only 68 patients, including Pat.

On May 13, 2013, two months after Pat’s phone call with Gretchen, she was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital for the surgery. Because our HMO was denying coverage for the surgery and the provider, Dr. Dietz had to write a letter wherein he explained that Loeys-Dietz syndrome is a condition typified by “arterial tortuosity and an aggressive predisposition for aneurysms and dissections throughout the arterial tree,” that in Pat’s case “urgent cardiothoracic surgery is necessary,” and that Dr. Cameron “is a cardiothoracic surgeon with specific expertise in the surgical management of aortic enlargement associated with connective tissue disorder” and “allowing Ms. Duer access to this expertise would clearly optimize outcome.” A polite way of telling the HMO beancounters to quit obsessing over their profit margin and allow this woman to continue living.

In September 2011, a month after our daughter Emma’s wedding, Pat decided to reach out to Gretchen Oswald, a genetic counselor at Johns Hopkins University’s Institute of Genetic Medicine and co-founder of the Loeys-Dietz Syndrome Foundation. Pat knew that Loeys-Dietz syndrome (LDS) was a connective tissue disorder similar to Marfan syndrome but with certain key distinctions. She knew it was the root cause of her three open-heart surgeries over the last three years. But during that time, she’d met too many doctors who, after reading her medical chart, either asked her to explain LDS to them or stepped out of the room so they could quickly research it on their phones or in their medical reference books.

We usually gave those doctors a pass – LDS had been identified only six years earlier. But Pat wanted to speak with doctors who could give her a better understanding of the disease and a better plan for treating it going forward. She wanted to meet Dr. Harry “Hal” Dietz, a professor of genetic medicine at Johns Hopkins and a leading authority on Marfan and Loeys-Dietz syndromes.[1] Gretchen responded to Pat’s email by inviting her to schedule appointments in conjunction with the first Loeys-Dietz Syndrome Foundation conference, to be held in June. Having never met another person with this condition, Pat jumped at the offer, and Gretchen scheduled appointments with doctors who specialized in the treatment of genetic diseases such as Loeys-Dietz.

For me, a new school year had begun at Cedar Rapids Washington High School. I dove into it – getting to know a new group of students, building communities in my U.S. Humanities and AP Lang and Comp classes, meeting after school with the new staff of the Washington Literary Press. My traditional “song of the day” for the first day of classes was Joe Cocker’s version of “I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends.” My students and I had a tacit understanding: Despite the valiant efforts of my fellow teachers, high school could be a, well, perhaps not an institutional hell but at least an institutional purgatory, a place of temporary misery.[2] And yet, if we all helped and supported each other, we could get through it. In my personal life, over the past three years. I’d learned the value of that help.

My days were long – I usually left home by 6:30 in the morning for the thirty-mile commute and arrived home by 5:30 – but for me, teaching was important work. Maybe I was able to persuade some students to write more effective arguments. Maybe I showed some students ways to become better at listening to the ideas and opinions of others, or I helped some discover that beneath Hawthorne’s verbose and convoluted literary style was a timeless story that hooked our interest and empathy, or I encouraged some to become more comfortable with being different, unique, themselves.

It was my eighth year of teaching, and Pat was used to the long hours, although since she no longer worked equally long hours, I was missed at home more than before. I did my best to leave school at a decent hour, but I also felt it was better to get most of my after-school grading and lesson-planning done at school rather than bringing it home with me. I was striving to be completely present, whether at school or at home

We hosted our usual elaborate dinner at Thanksgiving, Pat’s favorite holiday of the year by far. She had an endearing habit of inviting all manner of folks for dinner, resulting in a curious but always congenial gathering of family, friends, and holiday orphans. But we didn’t have thirty guests that year (the most we ever stuffed into our cozy 900-square-foot house for Thanksgiving dinner) and everyone helped out by bringing dishes. Pat still had a weight restriction, so we wouldn’t let her lift the bird into or out of the oven.

Two weeks later, the Washington Literary Press held PAM Slam, its biggest event of the year. I loved that the students conceived of the event – a Poetry slam with Art exhibit plus Musical performances – in order to raise funds needed to publish a full-color edition of their end-of-year literary and arts journal, Fingerprints. I loved that every one of the fifteen staffers pitched in to make the event a success. I loved that the student body turned out to support us – always close to 200 paid admissions. I loved that the administration supported the students’ right to free expression, recognizing the purpose of the profanity heard in some poems was more to express emphasis or catharsis than to offend or disrespect. I loved that PAM Slam had become a school tradition.[3]

We spent a quiet Christmas with Emma and Zach and Jesse. Even though they were adults, we carried on certain family traditions. After we each opened one gift on Christmas Eve, Pat and I waited till everyone had gone to bed before bringing out the majority of the presents and filling the stockings, “from Santa.” We all enjoyed the frisson of waking up to a pile of brightly wrapped packages under the tree, sipping coffee and waiting for Pat’s cinnamon rolls (made the day before) to finish baking.

In February, the results of Pat’s follow-up appointment with Dr. Farivar after her latest surgery gave us cause for cautious optimism. The CT scans showed no change since before the surgery in a number of areas of concern: a short dissection of the aortic root, dissection flaps in the thoracic aorta, and aneurysmal dilations of the aorta and arteries. This stability was a good sign, but she was not out of the woods, not in the clear. By then, Pat and I knew she’d never be out of those woods, but we were determined to enjoy the life we shared, and to ignore, without ever completely forgetting about, the cardiothoracic clock faintly ticking in the background.

If it’s true that into every life a little rain must fall, we had come to realize it never rained on Pat’s life without pouring. Those CT scans also showed areas of emphysema in both lungs, which explained the shortness of breath Pat had been experiencing. In addition, Pat revisited with Farivar the problem with her voice, reduced to a hoarse whisper since the second surgery. This dysphonia could be traced to pharyngeal nerve damage that occurred during that surgery. More recently, she’d been having trouble swallowing. Far too often, Pat would suddenly stop eating in the middle of dinner because food was stuck halfway down her esophagus. This dysphagia could also be explained by the nerve damage. When she participated in a swallow study at the University of Iowa Hospital’s Otolaryngology Clinic in May, it showed not only the muscle walls of the esophagus not working properly but an abnormally narrow spot restricting flow.

To give you a sense of the inner demons Pat was battling at that time, among her double-digit array of prescription drugs was alprazolam (Xanax) for anxiety and insomnia, clonazepam (Klonopin) for panic disorder, fluoxetine (Prozac) for depression, and hydrocodone (Vicodin) for pain. Pat hated having to use these drugs, and was always trying to reduce the dosages or completely remove the drugs from her regimen. When she was young, her mother had struggled with drug addiction, and memories of that experience haunted Pat. I understood her fears and tried to reassure her: “You are not your mother, and the alternative to taking alprazolam and hydrocodone is getting worn down by sleepless nights and constant post-surgical pain.”

In June, Pat embarked on her pilgrimage to Baltimore, home to the widely acclaimed Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine. At the Loeys-Dietz Syndrome Foundation conference, she became an embodiment of hope to many younger LDS patients and their families. As a 59-year-old woman, Pat offered to fellow attendees the possibility of outliving the current life expectancy of 37 years. Her medical history also challenged the theory that pregnancy and childbirth were risky if not impossible for women with LDS because of the chance of aortic aneurysms and uterine ruptures.

Pat’s initial exam was performed by Dr. Mark Lindsay, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins. His clinical notes suggest the meeting commenced with an upbeat and optimistic attitude: “Today, we had the pleasure of evaluating Ms. Patricia Duer.” By page 3, the notes take on a more serious tone: “The next concern going further up the aorta is Ms. Duer’s dilated aortic arch.” Although Lindsay indicated its current dilation of 4 cm didn’t normally call for surgery, Pat’s LDS diagnosis altered that calculation. After consulting with Dr. Duke Cameron, they agreed an aortic arch measuring 5 cm could signal the need to replace it. Although this indicated another surgery was in Pat’s future, and we knew there was nothing she could do to keep that aortic arch from dilating further, the specificity of this plan was reassuring.

Let’s spend a moment with that consulting physician, Duke Cameron. According to his Johns Hopkins Medicine website page, “He is internationally recognized for his contributions to cardiac surgery, particularly aortic surgery for Marfan syndrome, Loeys-Dietz syndrome and other connective tissue disorders.” But we had a hard time getting past his name, joking that he surely removed his Stetson hat and cowboy boots before going into surgery. We soon realized how badly we’d misread his character. Duke Cameron was the least macho cardiothoracic surgeon we ever met. During Pat’s next two surgeries, we came to rely on his accessibility, kindness, and quiet confidence.

The following month, I got a chance to participate in Tony Hoagland’s Five Powers of Poetry Seminar[4] in Santa Fe, New Mexico. An old friend of mine and Pat’s from our undergraduate days at the University of Iowa, Tony had gone on to become an exceptional poet and teacher. He’d created this week-long seminar to help high school and college teachers develop new strategies for bringing poetry and poetry writing into the classroom. I spent a wonderful week with Tony, his wife Kathleen, and a dozen other teacher-writers in that city of art, culture, and history. Although Tony was dealing with serious health issues of his own, he only wanted to hear about Pat. He was always that generous and selfless. As we discussed and wrote poems that week, I thought a lot about her. This is one poem that emerged from those thoughts.

Together

We’ve unharnessed the horse of abstraction.

It whinnied a moment, then galloped off

to a fresh meadow of oats.

Now we are left with the wagon –

four wooden wheels careening down

the long hill of our lives.

At times we veer off the winding trail,

but the wagon somehow finds it again.

We had a hand brake,

but it’s been rendered worthless by overuse.

All the plans we’d made are

neatly packed in the bed of the wagon,

but as we pick up speed

on this steep rocky trail

items go flying out the back –

to-do lists, itineraries, agendas, pension plans.

This makes us lighter, less encumbered,

but we don’t know if that helps.

Meanwhile, the bottom of the hill approaches

more swiftly than ever.

Hang on tight! I shout,

and we do, we do.

Even as we went “careening down the long hill of our lives,” our children continued to forge their own paths, to our great pleasure. Sierra and his longtime girlfriend and flatmate, Tina, announced to us their decision to get married. So, we began to make plans to travel to New York City in November for their wedding.

Footnotes:

[1] In 2005, Drs. Hal Dietz and Bart Loeys had identified and characterized Loeys–Dietz syndrome.

[2] For more on this, check out the TikToks of my former colleague Joe Sloma, for example, “would that i weren’t so bored” @squirehaligast.

[3] Here’s one example of a student performance, and the popularity of the event, from PAM Slam 2012.

[4] The five powers are image, diction, voice, structure, and implication.

My daughter, Emma, recently mentioned that the golden anniversary of her mother and my wife’s death was approaching – five years ago on November 5 she died. I’ll always be able to count on Emma to remind me to hold Pat in the light.[1] I’ve been looking through Pat’s recipe box, recalling favorite dishes, and promising to make some, although her recipes usually lack instructions and often lack quantities – they’re more like reminders. For Thanksgiving this year, I made the oatmeal rolls we traditionally devoured with that meal. I thought of Pat as I savored the nutty flavor of those soft, dense rolls on her favorite holiday of the year.

After Pat’s second open-heart surgery in September 2009, our lives regained a small measure of stability. But as her health and strength improved, she began to confront the loss of focus that materialized at the end of her career as a geriatric nurse and nursing director. She scheduled a weekly appointment with a psychologist, and although I imagined I could have helped her deal with her anger and frustration, I came to realize what a smart move that was. She needed someone with professional training and with no emotional investment who could help her gain perspective and point her toward emotional stability.

I never attempted to pry into those conversations between Pat and her therapist. But if she shared an insightful comment after a session, I’d file it away. When Pat would go into an anxiety spiral about her health, I could sometimes calm her with “Remember what Amy said …” It helped that I could couch that advice as coming from her therapist, not me.

One suggestion the therapist made was to get involved in a volunteer program. Pat began to help with Meals on Wheels, picking up twenty-five hot lunches from The Senior Center every day and delivering them to homebound clients on Iowa City’s east side. The work revived that sense of purpose she sorely missed. It became a way for her to continue to care for the elderly and disabled.[2]

In 2010, we began to appreciate the joy of watching our children growing into adulthood. Sierra was finishing up a master’s degree in Japanese history at Columbia University and working as an assistant producer for a news correspondent at Tokyo Broadcasting System Television. Jesse was holding down a good sous-chef job at Leaf Kitchen and had moved in with his girlfriend, Emily. Although he was still struggling with alcoholism, we were hoping a steady job and girlfriend might help him right his ship. And in early 2011, Emma announced she was getting married. Her fiance, Zach, was an intermedia artist from northern Minnesota wrapping up an MFA at the university, a tall, easy-going guy.

Emma wanted a big wedding that would bring together all our friends and family, but she also wanted it to express her personal style and tastes. This would be a casual DIY affair, the vibe equal parts artist, neo-hippie, and Quaker, and no wedding planner was going to tell her otherwise. It was a delight to see Emma and Pat work together to plan the event.

It was about this time that Pat began to realize all was not well with her heart. Loeys-Dietz Syndrome – the connective tissue disorder that caused the aneurysms and dissections wreaking havoc on her cardiothoracic system – was at it again. Pat often felt tired and lightheaded, the effects of low blood pressure. Her cardiac surgeon, Dr. Farivar, described it as “increasing symptoms of severe aortic deficiency.” Based on the echocardiograms, he concluded that the primary culprit was a faulty aortic valve, and recommended Pat undergo a minimally invasive surgery to have it replaced. Without missing a beat, Pat agreed to the surgery. The memory of the first surgery, which she barely survived, would’ve caused me to pause. But for Pat, it was “Fix this right away – I need to be there for my daughter on her wedding day.”

The surgery was scheduled for June 2, the day after my last day of classes. I took a stack of essay finals with me to the Day of Surgery waiting room, hoping that grading them would occupy and distract me during the long surgery. Dr. Farivar planned to replace the damaged aortic valve with a porcine valve. The use of pig heart valves dates back to 1965. Similar in size, weight, and structure to human hearts, the hearts of pigs grown for human consumption are often used for medical purposes. The next time Pat and I had bacon for breakfast, we joked it might be the same pig donating his heart valve to her.

Pat took the lead-up to this surgery more in stride than I did. Dr. Farivar had called it “minimally invasive,” but it was still open heart surgery. At some point, I tried to write my way through my fears so I could set them aside and stand by her side. It was my way of whistling in the dark.

The ascending aorta

The descending aorta

The septum and the right atrium

The vena cava and the aortic arch

The wondrous architecture of the heart

An architecture with structural damage

A weakening of the arterial walls

An anomalous bulge on the MRI scans

The dreadful lyricism of “aortic aneurysm”

Yet my wife’s heart is strong, stubborn, resilient

I’ve danced to its fierce beat

For thirty years

And her cardiac surgeon

Can replace a ransacked chamber

Of her heart with that of “some pig”

Can remove a vein from her thigh

Switch it with a ticking aneurysm

And stitch it securely into place

With the delicate precision of knots

Handed down by generations

Of Persian carpet weavers

So that my wife’s heart

Can go on beating

Pumping

Loving

The full surgical procedure took nine hours. Pat’s body was on a cardiopulmonary bypass pump for 134 minutes. But nearly everything went as planned. Reviewing Dr. Farivar’s post-op procedure notes recently, I was struck by the unusual beauty of his medical language: “Using a pediatric ball tip sucker, we emptied the heart out. We placed a pediatric wire-reinforced sump to drain the heart. The valve was insufficient and floppy…. We then placed twelve pledgeted mattress sutures in a non-everting manner in the aortic annulus…. We closed the aorta with a teardrop-shaped bovine pericardial patch in order to minimize any fish-mouthing of the coronary artery…. We de-aired the heart with provocative maneuvers.”

One hiccup in the surgery occurred when the medical team cracked Pat’s chest. Her breastbone (sternum) had not healed from the first two surgeries. When they removed the wires holding together the two halves of her sternum, the bone fractured on both sides. When it came time to close up Pat’s chest, they decided to use two titanium plates shaped to fit on either side of the aorta, held in place by four self-tapping screws and double wires. According to Farivar’s post-op notes, “The patient tolerated the procedure well.” Well, I guess.

From then on, those breastplates would cause annoying red-tape delays at airport security. Although the titanium might suggest Pat was working on her Iron Woman armor, it made me more sensitive to her fragility. If I slowly ran my fingers over her sternum, I could feel the screws.

Pat recovered more quickly than she did from the previous surgeries. She was extubated the day after the surgery, moved to the general ward the day after that, and discharged three days after that. Because of the extraordinary sternal repairs, discharge instructions included no driving for four weeks and no lifting, pushing, or pulling more than five pounds for eight weeks. Emma and Zach’s wedding date was eight weeks away.

During the two weeks leading up to the marriage, all our efforts were focused on making the event as beautiful as possible within our means, and Pat worked harder than anyone. We hired a photographer. Jesse played a major role in preparing the dinner catered by Leaf Kitchen for our 250 guests. Everything else was done by us and our friends. Our musician friend John played songs as guests arrived for the ceremony. Each table was adorned with a vaseful of flowers from our friend Mary’s gardens. In lieu of a band, Sierra compiled a great playlist and became our deejay for the day. Instead of providing a traditional wedding cake, we asked guests to bring homemade pies. At least thirty-five pies of every possible type showed up.

By the time Jesse was born, we had outgrown that West Branch apartment. We moved to a farmhouse three miles southeast of town, and all three kids eventually became bicyclists. The gravel road was not easy to ride on, but we found a good dirt trail shortcut that followed the Wapsinonoc Creek into town. And when we moved back to Iowa City as Jesse was beginning seventh grade, his cycling interest took off. In his junior year at City High, he fell in with a crew of DIY bike mechanics. His friend John had access to an arc welder and some garage space. They started scavenging frames and then cannibalizing them to bring their bizarre brainstorms to life – tall bikes with one frame welded atop another, choppers with ridiculously long front forks and tiny front wheels, a flatbed trailer outfitted with a barbecue grill. They’d fire up that grill, hop on their Franken-bike creations, and ride around town. When the coals were hot, they'd park in front of some popular spot such as the Deadwood Tavern and grill a pack of brats for consumption. Although the Iowa City Police were no fans of their escapades, the boys could have easily stumbled down some path to much worse trouble.

In 2008, my kids pooled their money to buy me a birthday present – my first high-end bicycle, a Trek 7000.[3] Fitted with two panniers, it was perfect for doing errands and commuting to and from work. But it also became a vehicle for long leisurely rides into the country – I’d head down Sand Road to Hills, feeling the rhythm of the miles, greeting wild bergamot, prairie blazing star, partridge pea, black-eyed Susan, oxeye sunflower along the way.

In July 2010, Sierra and Jesse decided to do RAGBRAI[4] with five of their friends, and invited me to join them. Pat was just nine months past her second open-heart surgery, and I wanted to stay close by, but she persuaded me to spend this time with my sons, now young men moving out into their own lives. I traveled a fifty-mile rail trail from Hiawatha to Waterloo (the Cedar Valley Nature Trail), and met up with them at the end of their fifth day. We camped in the backyard of friends in Cedar Falls, and I finished the last two days of the ride with them.

It was a trip, riding with the young’uns. Although each day’s route averaged seventy miles, our group would enjoy a leisurely breakfast, never in a rush to get going. The guys took turns driving the sag wagon,[5] buying groceries for the day and meeting us for a late lunch, and then scouting out a campsite in the overnight host town. Our squad included one tall bike, and someone else pulled the trailer, laden with two coolers packed with beverages, primarily beers. We usually got rolling by 11:00 AM, after nearly all the other bikers were well on their way. Unhindered by crowds, we could move at a brisk pace, but after a spirited fifteen-mile sprint, say, the team would stop to enjoy a beer and the scenery. I balked at the idea of beer that early in the day, but the others tried to persuade me that beer supplied much-needed electrolytes.[6] The crew also observed a ritual of visiting every cemetery we passed to smoke a joint. Again, because I wanted to be sure I lasted till the end of the day, I was the lightweight in the group.

With all that dillydallying, we would hit the pass-thru towns as people were packing up their concession stands, which functioned as fundraising tools for various local organizations. If folks hadn’t already sold out their food items, they were usually happy to give away the remnants. On the last day, we made a long stop at the town park in Epworth, fifteen miles from the Mississippi, and drank beers with Epworthians[7] celebrating the haul they’d made from the 20,000 riders who’d recently passed through. We told stories of our week, let them try their hands at riding the tall bike, and made some new friends.

Two years later, when Emma invited me to ride part of RAGBRAI with her, I happily said yes. Married the previous year, she and her husband would soon be moving to Virginia. Again, I was looking forward to an opportunity to bond with my offspring via cycling. Cedar Rapids was the overnight town on Day 5, so that day we rode a mix of rural roads and bike trails from Iowa City to Van Vechten Park, just east of downtown and near the route the riders would take the next morning. Unlike most bikers, all our gear – tent, sleeping bags, extra clothes, food – was strapped to our bikes’ back cargo racks.

Through the three open-heart surgeries Pat had undergone and recovered from over the previous three years, Emma and I had stood by her side. Of all our kids, she had taken Pat’s health issues most to heart. We talked about an impending decision she was struggling with – to move out into her future or to stay near her mother. But we also stopped thinking for a while, listening instead to our wheels spinning, our gears clicking, our minds unwinding. We shared the joy of biking through the rolling eastern Iowa countryside, and the late July corn standing along the road raised its arms in praise of our efforts. The days would heat up but we’d keep moving at a comfortable pace, creating our own breeze. On the second day, somewhere between Oxford Junction and Lost Nation, we stopped at a creek with a rocky bed to cool our feet and bathe our faces in the knee-deep water. Like the river this creek fed, the Wapsipinicon, we continued to braid our way through the countryside and, by the end of the day, dipped our tires in the Mississippi.

I rode that Trek 7000 for fourteen years. Repairs were becoming more and more frequent, and when I blew a back tire last summer, I decided to hang up that bike. As I procrastinated buying a new one, I dug out a black Giant the kids had bought for Pat. It was too small for me, but sturdy and fun to tool around on. I felt a bit like a circus clown riding a tiny two-wheeler. This past spring, according to the eyewitness account of a neighbor, a young teenage boy ran into my garage, grabbed that Giant, and rode off on it. I presumed he was going for a joyride, but the bike never turned up, so I finally stopped by the Iowa City Bike Library and bought a used Gary Fisher Capitola hybrid, a sweet ride.

When Cile and I went up to Wisconsin’s Door County in August, we took our bikes along. We cycled all over the northern tip of that peninsula, from Gills Rock on the Green Bay side to Newport State Park on the Lake Michigan shore, taking the ferry across the Porte Des Morts to Washington Island and biking to Schoolhouse Beach, a cobblestone shore of polished gray limestone nestled in a deep blue harbor on the north side of the island. As always, I felt the freedom of self-propulsion. We passed well-tended pastures, fields of bee-laden lavender, thick stands of beech, maple, and hemlock. We transported ourselves at a human pace, absorbing the subtle beauty, stopping whenever our hearts asked us to.

Footnotes:

[1] We didn’t call them fixies. Single-speed bicycles with pedal brakes were the norm then.

[2] A vernacular term, particular to the Akron area, for the piece of land between the street and the sidewalk, although the word originally referred to the narrow swath of land between streetcars going in opposite directions.

[3] The same model, I later learned, that President Obama rode.

[4] It was the 38th Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, from the Missouri River to the Mississippi, “an epic eight-day rolling festival of bicycles, music, food, camaraderie, and community” (per the official website). Although registered participants numbered 10,000, at least as many folks rode without paying (as we did), sleeping each night wherever they could pitch a tent or roll out a sleeping bag.

[5] Support-And-Gear transportation. Ours was a pickup fitted with a camper.

[6] Yeah no.

[7] Epworthers? Epworthites?

In late June of 2009, two months after being released from the hospital after her emergency open-heart surgery, Pat returned to work. She was the Director of Nursing at Crestview Care Center in West Branch, Iowa, and loved her job. In 1990, after our youngest child, Jesse, started school, she took a job as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) at Crestview, and quickly realized she had an aptitude for and interest in geriatric care. She was a hard worker who never shied away from the more unpleasant and challenging tasks associated with caring for the elderly. She grew close to many of the women she cared for, often coming home with amazing stories about their lives. She also had a thick enough skin to handle male residents who, because of the challenges of adapting to the confinement of age and disability, were often surly, rude, even combative. She treated them with compassion, but could also fend off their cantankerous commentary and throw it back at them, and the men respected her for that.

Crestview’s administrator, Cheryl, was soon encouraging Pat to take advantage of a company benefit that covered the tuition for CNA staff interested in becoming nurses. She enrolled in the nursing program at Kirkwood Community College and began taking classes while continuing to work full-time and care for our family. At the old rambling farmhouse we rented near West Branch, weeknights were study nights. Sierra, in high school, and Emma and Jesse, in elementary school, did their homework, while Pat pored over her Human Anatomy or Pharmacology textbooks.[1] Because my wife was such a good cook, she’d gradually taken over most of the cooking duties, leaving the cleanup to me, but when she started taking night classes, I became the cook, much to the amusement of our kids, who gave me grief that I only made flat foods – pizzas, pancakes, tacos. In my defense, the pizzas and pancakes were made from scratch.

Pat graduated in 1996 with an Associate Degree in Nursing, passing the exam to become a Licensed Practical Nurse. Before long, she was promoted to the Assistant Director of Nursing position, and by 2009 had been Crestview’s Director of Nursing for nearly ten years. She may have gained an office, a desk, and daily paperwork duties, but she still spent much of her time on the floor with the residents, helping the nursing staff, often filling a shift if someone called in sick at the last minute. How many times did we encounter people – while eating out or walking through the Ped Mall – who stopped to thank Pat for how well she had cared for their parent or grandparent.[2] Simply stated, she loved her job.

But at an appointment with her surgeon, Dr. Farivar talked about the unusual state of her cardiovascular system, recommending she undergo genetic testing to see if that might provide an explanation. It did. In July, Pat was told she had a newly discovered connective tissue disorder known as Loeys-Dietz Syndrome (LDS). The disorder had been identified in 2005 by Dr. Bart Loeys of Ghent University Hospital in Belgium and Dr. Harry Dietz of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, whose findings had been presented in an article they co-wrote and published in Gene Reviews journal just one year before Pat’s surgery.

Similar to the more widely known Marfan Syndrome, Loeys-Dietz Syndrome is characterized by aggressive cerebral, thoracic, and abdominal arterial aneurysms and dissections.[3] Because of this, the average lifespan of LDS patients is 26 years and women with LDS have a high incidence of pregnancy-related complications, including uterine rupture and death, all which made Pat, a 56-year-old woman who had given birth to three children, an extremely rare case. Some of my wife’s features that made her interesting and endearing to me – her velvety and translucent skin, her wide-spaced eyes, the hyperflexibility of her joints – now helped confirm the LDS diagnosis. More importantly, the diagnosis raised the question of whether she’d be able to continue working.

In early August, at a follow-up appointment with Dr. Farivar, a CT scan revealed a dissection of Pat’s descending aorta. He immediately scheduled a second surgery and urged her to go on disability. Cheryl sat down with her and persuaded her that this was the best course of action. Pat did not want to leave the job that she loved, that gave her life purpose. (We often talked about how, in the middle of our lives, we’d both found paths to professions – nursing the elderly, teaching teenagers – that felt meaningful and important to us.) It didn’t help that the decision to stop working had to be made quickly to verify the disability so she could qualify for full long-term benefits. Even considering all the cardiothoracic surgeries she would undergo over the years, this forced retirement hurt her heart more than anything else.

During those days, Pat and I would each climb aboard our own runaway trains of thought. For her, the fact that LDS was now part of her body and life, something perhaps treatable but never curable, seemed patently unfair. She had taken care of her body, paying careful attention to what she put into it, shunning chemically processed foods for homegrown and organic produce and meat. She couldn’t let go of the randomness and injustice of it all. I’d try to offer the perspective that illnesses aren’t handed out on the basis of some moral calculation. If we could agree that no one deserves to be ill, correspondingly no one’s earned the right to be healthy. But in light of all Pat was facing, it was hard for her to be philosophical.

I was vexed by my own emotional and illogical distractions. A stitch in my side while jogging became a harbinger of a heart attack. A bout of indigestion might be the first symptom of a stomach or colon cancer brewing inside me. This focus on the slender and unraveling rope of my mortality would be momentary, but I often had a hard time shaking it. I mean, who knew? Pat was perfectly fine that April morning in 2009 when I kissed her goodbye, neither of us aware of those cardiothoracic booby traps ready to explode. By the end of that day, she was clinging to life on an operating table. I kept these spells of death anxiety to myself. Given what Pat was going though, it didn’t feel right troubling her with them.

However, the situation of our 24-year-old son, Jesse, occupied both our minds. Before moving home after the first surgery in April, he had been living and working in New York City as a sous chef. Bit by bit, we began to learn how badly he had been scuffling there, never holding down a job for long, squatting in an empty warehouse in Brooklyn, developing an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, an occupational hazard in the high-stress restaurant industry. After the surgery he found a good chef job in Iowa City, and we held out hope for a turnaround. Jesse is a sweet man, and we were happy to have him around. But his alcoholism was slowly becoming apparent, as much as he tried to hide it from us. His sunny disposition would get lost in a fifth of gin, and our growing concern for him pushed the impending surgery into the background.

Even with all that seemed to be hanging over our heads, Pat and I were grateful for my school break and the time we had together that summer. Not that I ever stopped thinking about teaching, but in those months I could stay home with her while updating my curriculum and fine-tuning my courses. We’d take Auggie, our Aussie–border collie mix, for long walks around the neighborhood. In the evenings we’d binge-watch TV shows, mostly police procedurals – Law & Order and CSI: Las Vegas, Prime Suspect and The Closer because we liked strong female characters, Criminal Minds and Dexter because we liked our stories dark, Sherlock and House because Pat was fond of Benedict Cumberbatch and Hugh Laurie, both of whom looked a lot like her father.

The surgery to repair the descending aortic aneurysm took place on September 3, 2009. I knew I’d be taking some time off early in the school year, so I made an extra effort to build a good rapport with my students in that first week and made sure I got the best sub available. I spoke frankly with my students about why I’d be gone, reminding them that although I was committed to being their teacher, I had equally important personal commitments. As was true after the first surgery, my students displayed a surprisingly deep reservoir of empathy. That fall, both before and after the second surgery, students from the previous year would often stop by my classroom or catch me in the hallway to ask how my wife was doing.

I told my students the surgery was risky, but I tried not to let on how worried I was about it, neither to them nor to Pat. I’ll never know how she was able to manage the anxiety she must have been feeling, but as I’ve said before, she possessed remarkable inner strength.

For this second surgery, Dr. Farivar had a better sense of what he was walking into. His surgical team included seven assisting doctors, eight nurses, and two perfusionists. Even with all that help, the surgery took ten hours. Pat was kept in the ICU for four days and sent home ten days later. The surgical outcome was positive except for one complication – some injury (perhaps during intubation) had paralyzed her left vocal cord. An otolaryngologist’s attempt to repair the vocal cord with an injection proved ineffectual. All that was left was a raspy whisper. She would never again speak to me in her normal voice.

For years, I kept a voicemail from her on my phone so I could hear that voice. It didn’t matter that she was chewing me out because of my bad habit of not answering her calls – I’d muted my phone, or forgotten to charge it, or left it on my desk while I made copies – and that her message was particularly salty. It was still good to hear from her.

Footnotes

[1] Sierra has told me, “I vividly remember the intensity of her study habits. She started every session with the assumption that she couldn’t do it, but her notes and review processes were amazing. This stands out to me because as a ‘gifted kid,’ I never had a fraction of her determination and perseverance.”

[2] In 2002 Pat was nominated by Cheryl for the Director of Nursing of the Year award given by Care Initiatives, Crestview’s parent company.

[3] That is, abnormal swellings in the wall of an artery or tears along the inner lining of an artery, weak spots susceptible to sudden ruptures causing massive internal bleeding.

In the early evening of November 5, 2018, on the tiny hospice ward of Mercy Hospital in Iowa City, while my 35-year-old daughter Emma and I nibbled our take-out dinner from El Banditos and chatted with my sister Julie and our old friends Ken and Helen, Pat quietly passed away. Her body, diminished in size and energy by the bladder and lung cancer she’d been fighting for the past two years, was dwarfed by the bed in the middle of the large room. The ever-present oxygen machine, which had helped Pat’s damaged lungs to draw breath, was still wheezing away, but Pat had stopped breathing. Pain meds were still dripping into her veins from the IV bag. The screen that displayed her vital signs – heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate – was now registering flat lines, but the alarms that would’ve gone off had been silenced days ago.

Heavily sedated with pain medications, Pat had been nonresponsive for the past five days. When Emma had arrived from Virginia and said, “I’m here, Mom,” she replied, “Oh, that’s good.” Those were her last words. She closed her eyes to the world soon after. Her fierce battle for life, which began over nine years earlier, was all but over, and the group of us kept vigil. As many other friends had during that time, Julie, Ken, and Helen had dropped by to visit with us for a while. They’d found the elevator located near a back entrance that provided the only access to the hospice ward on the fourth floor. Now, we were quietly talking by the tall narrow windows that looked out over the bare treetops of Bloomington Street and, a block beyond that, the spire of the St. Wenceslaus church steeple.

Emma was the first to sense Pat was gone. She walked over to the bed, held Pat’s hand for a moment, and let out a soft cry. We all joined her to stand around the bed and say our goodbyes. I had not thought to share a final goodbye with Pat when we were still able to talk to each other, but I’d been whispering it into her ear those past few days. She and I had been rehearsing that farewell for years.

Forty-three years ago, I moved to Iowa City to take classes at the University of Iowa, renting a room on the second floor of the Montessori School on Reno Street, ten blocks northeast of this hospital. That fall, I met Pat when we worked nights alongside each other in the Stone Soup Restaurant bakery on the corner of Clinton and Jefferson streets, eight blocks to the southeast. So this hospice ward room where we were gathered was at the geographical epicenter of the beginning of our lifelong friendship.

We made an unlikely pair. Pat had just moved to Iowa City from the redwood rainforests of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Her family consisted of a father who died of smoke inhalation in a San Francisco hotel fire when she was seven, a younger sister with whom she never spoke, a stepfather who had sexually abused her, and a mother who struggled with substance abuse. When Pat was seventeen, she’d had to sign the papers committing her mother to a detox facility. To free herself from all that, she married Clifford when she was eighteen, divorcing him two years later to escape that mistake. I grew up in the unremarkable suburbs of Akron, Ohio, the eldest of ten children in a decidedly practicing Catholic family. I could count the number of girlfriends I’d had on one hand. Sporting an imperceptible wisp of a goatee, I imagined myself a neo-Beat poet. Somehow, we discovered common ground on which we could base a friendship that, over time, filled in and deepened and became a loving relationship.

So It Goes

Manic twenty-year-olds

we frantically fumbled in bed

fire engines racing to the blaze

or the clumsy tumbling

and mid-air collisions

of novice acrobats

making slapstick love

it was never enough

Now forty years later

I'm reading a New Yorker article

and you’re watching The Walking Dead

on your tablet

I lay my hand on your hip

or rub your back

or hold your hand

to keep you here with me

a little longer

that’s enough

The story that ended on that snowy evening in 2018 can be traced back to April 9, 2009. It was a Thursday afternoon. Pat, the director of nursing at Crestview Care Center in rural West Branch, was cranking a bed when she experienced sudden chest and back pains that knocked her off her feet. Though she was able to stand up and, after a few minutes, was ready to return to her duties, Cheryl, the care center’s administrator, had already called for an ambulance. When a CT scan at Mercy Hospital showed an aortic dissection (that is, a rupture or tear in the aorta’s lining), she was immediately transferred across the river to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, much better equipped to handle such a case. A message had been delivered to my classroom about Pat being taken to the hospital, and I was on my way, speeding the thirty miles from Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, my mind racing through all the worst-case scenarios.

When I arrived at the emergency room check-in desk, I was quickly escorted into a room full of doctors and nurses. I barely had a chance to exchange glances with Emma and Cheryl, who were standing outside that huddle of hospital staff, before I was informed of Pat’s medical status and the potential risks and benefits of surgery. I was asked to sign a form approving the emergency surgery. I normally defer to my wife on medical issues, but Pat, who had been in perfectly good health that morning, was drifting in and out of consciousness. I signed the form and told her I loved her before they wheeled her out.

The attending doctor, Dr. Robert Saeid Farivar, was a cardiothoracic surgeon who had graduated from the Boston University School of Medicine ten years earlier. He immediately impressed me as competent and reassuring, even though he was aware of the mortality rate of aortic dissections. He would be dealing with two aortic aneurysms – an ascending aneurysm and a descending aneurysm that extended from the aortic valve to the renal artery. As they began to prep her, Dr. Farivar noted that her “pericardium was tense with blood.” When Pat’s chest was cracked open, the doctors discovered “the entire right coronary artery had been sheared off the aorta” and “appeared blown out.” They began cooling her body to 65° Fahrenheit, and she was put on heart bypass. Then began the painstaking repair of a cardiothoracic disaster, a heart in tatters.

As Pat was being wheeled to Surgery, a nurse escorted Emma and me to the Day of Surgery Lounge on the sixth floor of Colloton Pavilion. Emma had just completed a Master’s degree in public health at the University of Iowa, and was working with one of her former professors on a funded research project at the local Planned Parenthood clinic. I called our sons, Sierra and Jesse, who were living and working in Manhattan and Brooklyn, respectively, to tell them about Pat’s surgery. They made plans to get to Iowa City as soon as possible. I also called our closest friends in the Iowa City area, many of whom soon joined us. Pat’s colleagues from Crestview also stopped by to see how she was doing. I found myself recounting the events leading up to the surgery over and over. Based on what little I knew of Pat’s diagnosis, our friend Mary, a doctor, filled in some of the blanks of what might be transpiring in the operating room.

The Day of Surgery Lounge is a misnomer – we did considerably more pacing than lounging. Most of the scheduled surgeries were being wrapped up and the waiting room was beginning to empty out. I was afraid to leave the lounge, afraid I’d missed an important update, but at some point I went to the Java House station on the first floor to get coffee. With Emma’s help, I created a text message group to make it easier to update folks. We located blankets and tried to sleep in chairs or on couches. I repeatedly forced myself to turn back before descending into the mental cave of horrible outcomes. The surgery began a little after 4:00 p.m., and the doctors didn’t close her up until the early hours of the next day.

When Dr. Farivar finally met with us, still wearing his navy blue scrubs, the mental and physical exhaustion etched on his face must have mirrored our own. His news of a successful surgery was tempered by his report of the catastrophic and tenuous state of her cardiovascular system. In the intervening years, whenever a nurse or doctor would read her chart and Farivar’s surgical notes in our presence, their response would invariably be something along the lines of “It’s a miracle you survived!”

I can’t overstate Pat’s will to survive. She spent the next week in the ICU, heavily sedated, kept in an induced coma as she fought to recover from the surgical trauma. Her progress was slow, incremental. By then, Sierra and Jesse had arrived. Knowing our three children and many friends were ready to help, and knowing I could do little for Pat in the ICU other than watch and wait, I had returned to teaching. It felt good to get back with my students and colleagues, all of whom were incredibly supportive. I became a master at compartmentalizing, but when the final bell rang, I’d head back to the hospital and spend my evening with her.

On Day 5, when the doctors were confident she was strong enough, they reduced the sedatives and withdrew the breathing tube. We were ecstatic when she opened her eyes and looked around. Our joy and relief stood in stark contrast to her response – shock, disbelief, and anger. She had no idea why she was there. Agitated and disoriented, she tried ripping out her IV lines, her chest tube, her catheter. She yelled at me, certain I’d given the doctors permission to perform some cruel experiment on her. Unsurprisingly, she had no memory of her medical emergency of five days earlier. We attempted to describe all that had happened, but it took a while to calm her. Meanwhile, one of the doctors led us out of the room and explained “ICU psychosis”[1] to us. By the next day, Pat had gone out of her way to apologize to every nurse in the unit for the way she’d acted. But the disorientation and anxiety lingered for days. At one point, in a moment of contrition, Pat said, “Well, happy Easter I guess.” When I thoughtlessly replied, “Easter was like a week ago,” she burst into tears.

After her chest tube was removed, she was transferred to the general ward and, a week later, was discharged from the hospital with a medication list fifteen items long and instructions to begin physical therapy. As weakened as she was by the surgery, she applied herself to an exercise regimen designed to slowly rebuild her strength and mobility. She was anxious to return to her job at Crestview, which was for her much more a calling than an occupation. But this was just the beginning of a survival story that would last for nine more years.

Footnote:

[1] According to an article in The Atlantic, “The Overlooked Danger of Delirium in Hospitals,” ICU psychosis is “a sudden disruption of consciousness and cognition marked by vivid hallucinations, delusions, and an inability to focus, that affects 7 million hospitalized Americans annually.” The piece goes on to say that “patients treated in intensive-care units who are heavily sedated and on ventilators are particularly likely to become delirious; some studies place the rate as high as 85 percent.”

Working in the garden this week, I pay attention to the buds on flowers she planted – the orange-and-yellow flames of the early-blooming dwarf tulips, the forget-me-nots preparing to share their blue reminders. Scything down and raking out the waist-tall stalks from the patch of bee balm that grows by the creek, I’m enwrapped in and enrapt by its fragrance, its resilience, its minty balm. The sprouts of this year’s bee balm are emerging, but the flowers won’t bloom until mid-summer, a brilliant swath of scarlet in the back of the garden. Hummingbirds – and bees, of course – can’t get enough of them, their buzz and hum audible from a distance. According to the website Practical Self Reliance, “Bee balm is antimicrobial and soothing, so it’s often used to treat colds and flu.” The petals are not only used in medicinal teas but are also edible. I might try some on my salads this summer.

Tuesday, 31 March 2020

I’ve been thinking about our response to Covid-19, our efforts to open our hearts and stay in the moment. We’re into the third week of sheltering-in-place and social-distancing, with the likelihood that it will now continue through the entire month of April. Maintaining some kind of emotional balance is needed during this quarantine time. It’s important to stay in touch with what is happening in the world around us. A twelve-year-old Belgian girl and a thirteen-year-old British boy have become the youngest victims of the virus; the 4,000-member crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier are now in quarantine after an outbreak; a funeral in Albany, Georgia, has turned into a “super-spreader event.” And yet, following the news, we risk getting caught up in the potential dangers, the number of cases, the pandemic possibilities and what-ifs. That path leads to paranoia, an irrational fear of the world. A more constructive response is a rational fear of the virus.

I want to act responsibly – one way of staying in the present – washing my hands often, disinfecting surfaces regularly, avoiding physical contact as much as possible. I’m also trying to be aware of my habits or patterns of life. Although the district hasn’t yet given us guidelines on possible online learning, I’ve decided to start a daily email to my students, which has helped me focus. Each morning, I send a short message to each of my classes – AP Language & Composition, U.S. Humanities, and African American Humanities – letting them know I’m thinking about them, mentioning school work they might be doing, sharing a short reading and the song of the day. The last of these is a classroom tradition – to play a song during passing periods to get our minds dancing. It could be a new song I’m listening to – Sudan Archives’ “Nont for Sale” or Fiona Apple’s “Fast As You Can” – or a timely song such as Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” or The Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” (an obvious choice) or a joyful energetic number such as The B-52’s “Love Shack.” These daily emails impel me to keep my students in mind as I go through my day, reading books, listening to music or podcasts, watching movies – activities that keep my mind engaged with meaningful work.

Because the weather has been kind, I’ve been able to go for runs and walks, and work in the garden, clearing off the dead leaves and vegetation, getting the garden ready for planting. I visited my neighborhood garden center yesterday afternoon – again, feeling a bit uncomfortable about disregarding the informal restriction – to pick up vegetable and herb seeds, starter mix, topsoil, and a witch alder shrub to replace the burning bush I had cut down and excavated. I appreciate how this is helping me focus on productive solitary activities and staying in the current moment of spring and rebirth.

One silver lining of the pandemic is that I’m getting better at using online communication tools. I set up a Google Meet with Sierra, Emma, and Jesse this past Sunday. I have not been great at staying in touch with them, and decided this would be one way to bring us all together, to strengthen our Roanoke-Iowa City-Austin-Seattle ties. It worked fairly well, and everyone is on-board with doing this on a weekly basis. If I call on Sunday at 4:00 p.m., it will be five o’clock in Roanoke and two o’clock in Seattle. Yesterday, the Washington ELA department met on Zoom for an hour and a half. We had an agenda, which primarily justified our need to chat, catch up, enjoy each other’s company, offer moral support. These online meetings gave me some practice for the Google Hangouts editorial meeting I’ll be holding with my Washington Literary Press kids this afternoon.

Because I live alone now, the lack of physical contact has been a challenge. When I’m working in the yard, I wave to and converse with my neighbors, and I’ve noticed the increased friendliness of our little sidestreet. On walks with my friend Jennifer, we’ve engaged in comforting and affirming exchanges about how we’re learning to rebound from loss. I hope to reach out to other friends – Sharon and John, Mary and Steve, Nancy – to arrange conversational strolls with them.

I’ve definitely noticed some hindrances to staying present since the onset of the pandemic. Becoming anxious or overwhelmed by all the news could send anyone into a tailspin. Because of my physical isolation, I need to get better at staying on task and following a schedule. I sometimes flit from one thing to the next – a butterfly’s focus that doesn’t usually feel productive or satisfying. I don’t want to force myself into a rigid schedule, but I do want to say, “I’m going to read this afternoon,” and then do so for an hour or two without interrupting myself. The night is my most productive writing time, but I was up until four a.m. last night, and those were not productive hours. I don’t want to always be nose-to-the-grindstone, but I do want to be engaged in work, by which I mean “activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.”

Friday, 3 April 2020

We seek out the small signs that we’re still human and whole and hale.

In our Zoom meeting

The birds are singing at Alexia’s home.

She’s sharing her home with us.

We share our homes with each other.

This is how we will learn to love again

After the pandemic.

Saturday night, my friend Jennifer and I watched a stunningly beautiful movie, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, at Film Scene, a day before it closed its doors. The twenty people in the theater all carefully chose “socially distant” seats, but one might argue we were being unnecessarily risky. And last night, six friends came over for what had been planned as a potluck dinner to welcome my daughter Emma and her two sons. Although Emma had to cancel their trip, it felt good to get together with friends and enjoy some delicious food. We cautiously bumped elbows rather than hugged, and our gathering was well under fifty people, so we obeyed that restriction, but again I wonder if we were being foolhardy. I’ve made a list of errands and tasks I don’t have time to do when school is in session, but out of sympathy for store clerks and cashiers, I’m hesitant to enter shops unless I must.

Tuesday, 17 March 2020

I had a Covid-19 nightmare last night. People with the coronavirus were taking everyone else with them. Once they knew they had the virus, they gathered everyone with whom they had been in contact into a room and then shot them all and then shot themselves. I think this has something to do with the fact that people have not only been stocking up on toilet paper and antiseptic wipes and hand sanitizer but also guns. Why do people feel that they need more guns and ammunition at a time like this?

Thursday, 19 March 2020

Inspired by Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights and determined to cling to some optimism during these dark times, I’m attempting an essay on the joy of pancakes: When my kids were young, I would usually make pancakes on Saturday morning. When Pat was working on her nursing degree, taking classes during the day and working evening shifts at the nursing home, I would sometimes make pancakes for dinner. (The kids made fun of me because they claimed I only knew how to make flat meals – homemade pizzas, pancakes, tacos.) Somewhere along the way, I found a good pancake mix recipe: unbleached white flour, whole wheat flour, cornmeal, a bit of buckwheat or seven-grain flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt. I’d often add blueberries or overripe bananas, and in the summer, leftover sweet corn off the cob. Sometimes I’d make small silver dollar pancakes. The kids liked this tradition. As they slathered the pancakes in butter and syrup and peanut butter, they’d often sing, “she never made me pancakes,” which I somehow assumed was an Ol’ Dirty Bastard song, but it turns out it’s from the song “Pancakes, off The Legendary Marvin Pontiac: Greatest Hits album.[1]

Now I make those pancakes for my grandsons. They have come to expect them whenever I visit them. They call them Poppy Pancakes and claim they’re the best. As I cooked some on the griddle this morning, I meditated on the transformation from batter to pancake by the influence of heat, how the batter slowly rises on the griddle, bubbles forming on the surface and then popping, the edges lightly browning, a signal the pancake is ready to be flipped. A sweet and simple way to show my love for my children and my children’s children.

Monday, 23 March 2020

Spring break is over and we should be back in school now, but we’re not, and won’t be for at least another three weeks, probably longer. It’s distinctly possible this school year will be canceled entirely. I worry about my students. Are they safe and sound? Are they following pandemic restrictions? Are they bored? I sent out an email to all my students today just to connect with them, a habit I plan to continue until we are together again.

The snow that fell yesterday outlines the branches of every tree and bush, the sharp contrast of black and white, but the snow is already melting and dropping from the trees as I write.

On a whim and out of a desire to give myself something to look forward to, I’d ordered a pair of maroon hightop Converse All-Stars on Amazon. Rather, the fifteen-year-old inside of me ordered them. And the fifty-year-old didn’t complain or object, nor did the sixty-five-year-old who is the combination of the other two. These were the tennis shoes I wore all through my teen years. They were the basketball shoe de rigueur at that time – lightweight canvas uppers, high tops whose extra support protected against ankle rolls, rubber soles in a grid pattern that enabled us to make sharp cuts on the hardcourt. We called them Connies or All-Stars, never Chuck Taylors or Chucks. That all came later.

Only two colors were available back in the sixties – white and black – and I always wore white Connies. Now, Chucks are fashionable casual wear rather than athletic shoes, and come in a rainbow of colors. When my maroon hightops arrived on Friday, I immediately laced them up. In a time of coronavirus and sheltering in place, they make my feet feel lighthearted and fancy-free.

Tuesday. 24 March 2020

I love moments when minds intersect, when paths cross, and I get to witness those serendipitous moments. Here’s a “conversation” that took place yesterday between a scientist (Hope Jahren’s memoir Lab Girl) and a poet (Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights) about the symbiotic relationship between fungi and trees. While reading Jahren, I came upon this:

Every toadstool, from the deliciously edible to the deathly poisonous, is merely a sex organ that is attached to something more whole, complex, and hidden. Underneath every mushroom is a web of stringy hyphae that may extend for kilometers, wrapping around countless clumps of soil and holding the landscape together. The ephemeral mushroom appears briefly above the surface while the webbing that anchors it lives for years within a darker and richer world. A very small minority of these fungi – just five thousand species – have strategically entered into a deep and enduring truce with plants. They cast their stringy webbing around and through the roots of trees, sharing the burden of drawing water into the trunk. They also mine the soil for rare metals, such as manganese, copper, and phosphorus, and then present them to the tree as precious gifts of the magi.

Jahren goes on to ask why they are together, but posits no scientific answer, only suggesting that “perhaps the fungus can somehow sense that when it is part of a symbiosis, it is also not alone.” Maybe she’s guilty of anthropomorphizing the fungi. Or maybe she’s suggesting lessons that we can learn from trees and fungi, reminders of what Paradise might feel like. In my reading last night, Gay continued this conversation:

In healthy forests, which we might imagine to exist mostly above ground, and be wrong in our imagining, given as the bulk of the tree, the roots, are reaching through the earth below, there exists a constant communication between those roots and mycelium, where often the ill or weak or stressed are supported by the strong and surplused.

By which I mean a tree over there needs nitrogen, and a nearby tree has extra, so the hyphae (so close to hyphen, the handshake of the punctuation world), the fungal ambulances, ferry it over. Constantly. This tree to that. That to this. And that in a tablespoon of rich fungal duff (a delight: the phrase fungal duff, meaning a healthy forest soil, swirling with the living the dead make) are miles and miles of hyphae, handshakes, who get a little sugar for their work.

Gay is a bit more explicit than Jahren about the allegory: “Joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our life and the lives of everyone and thing we love.” I’m sure Jahren and Gay are not the only two folks who have made these connections, but that I encountered this profound idea twice in one day is, well, pretty cool.

Footnote:

[1] Marvin Pontiac is a fictional musician created by the musician, painter, actor, and director John Lurie.

Tuesday, 11 February 2020

Last Friday, my decision to retire from teaching went public (on the Cedar Rapids school board agenda). I had already talked with my department chair, Adam, about this, and learned he was in the process of requesting a one-year leave of absence. After school on Thursday, I spoke with Julie, one of our instructional coaches and a close friend. Those conversations reminded me how bittersweet this decision is. I count Adam and Julie as two of my closest colleagues. As is true of so many of the teachers I’ve gotten to know over the last fifteen years, I have tremendous respect and admiration for them. I’ve witnessed teacher after teacher draw upon a seemingly bottomless well of empathy and compassion in order to connect with and support their students.

During my prep period on Thursday, I also stopped by to share my retirement plans with John, our principal. The conversation was as strange as many of our conversations have been. He asked if there was anything he could have done to keep me here, offering me an opening I gently stepped into. Already sixty-five years old, I had planned to teach one more year at most, but yes, his inability to address the everyday needs of his staff played a role in my decision. If he didn’t know that already, he’s even less astute than I had thought he was. At one point, he reminded me that his “laser focus” has been on helping our students to be academically successful. I reminded him that if that focus on students means that he ignores and fails to support his staff, to the point where their low morale affects their work in the classroom or persuades them to leave the profession, well, then he’s a pretty lousy principal. I don’t know if he heard w