How It Happened

January 8, 2014 Here’s how it happened. My husband, Rick, started smoking when he was about 15, which would be 53 years ago. He quit last February. Now, the medics and public health people will tell you it’s never too late to quit smoking, and I will say that Rick was glad to finally get that monkey off his back. He enjoyed, especially, not having to spend money on the habit. He said that after he quit, the usual time would come to light up, and he’d think, “Oh, I don’t do that anymore.” So it’s never too late to quit, but sometimes, even when you quit, it’s too late to save your life. I did nag him to quit years ago. He reacted to nagging like most people do – he became annoyed. After a while I realized that my pushing him to quit would never make him quit, but it would hurt our relationship, so I stopped. At this point, the still small voice inside that never seems to stop its yapping says, “So it could have hurt your relationship. He might have lived longer.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stupid voice. So he smoked. In 1997 he was diagnosed with renal failure. Then he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The growth of the cancer had blocked up his plumbing, and caused the renal failure. I had nagged him to go to the doctor, but he wouldn’t go. He had to work, and he figured he’d “work out” whatever the problem was. News flash for all you supermen (and women) out there. You can’t “work out” kidney failure or cancer like it’s a slight muscle spasm. He was only 52 when the prostate cancer was diagnosed. Because he was a Vietnam vet and a lot of guys exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam came down with early prostate cancer, I had to wonder. He told me he’d been on the ship out in the Tonkin Gulf the whole time, picking up ditched jet pilots, so that couldn’t be it. The Veterans’ Administration agreed. He had surgery, was told he no longer had cancer, his kidneys regained enough function for him to carry on without dialysis, and he went on his way until 2009, when he was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Anyone want to guess what causes bladder cancer? Anyone? Yes! Smoking! Smoking causes bladder cancer because the irritants and carcinogens end up in the bladder as the kidneys clean toxins out of the body. Smoking doesn’t cause every bladder cancer, I’m sure. But it causes a lot of bladder cancer. Then his kidneys failed again, this time permanently. This condition is called “end stage renal failure.” Sounds pretty serious when you put it like that, and it is. That’s when you have to have dialysis, or a new kidney, in order to stay alive. Rick did dialysis for four years. About three years in his emphysema/COPD (caused by smoking) began to get worse. In the spring and early summer of 2013, Rick’s nurses and I began to notice a decline. He was no longer his snarky self, but more subdued. He was told his lungs had about 30% function left. Then he got pneumonia and peritonitis in June. He got better, and then he got pneumonia again in August. Then his father died, and after that he seemed to give up, and was bedridden. His lungs were filling with fluid, some of which was removed manually by his pulmonologist. How is fluid removed from a lung? You stick a tube in and let it drain. Try not to think about it too much. About this time we learned that his heart valves had become stiff and didn’t work very well any more. His pulse was high and his blood pressure low. A cardiologist told Rick that the surgery to fix the heart valves would leave him on a respirator for the rest of his life because of the poor condition of his lungs, and there was always the possibility that he might not survive surgery. One night in early December Rick couldn’t breathe and I called 911. He was airlifted to Seattle, taking a “kick ass” helicopter ride (his words). He loved seeing the Seattle wheel on the waterfront all lit up with colored lights. He was diagnosed with double pneumonia and put on heavy antibiotics. After a week in the hospital and having more fluid removed from his lungs, he came home and was better than he’d been since last summer. He got out of bed and cooked a few meals for himself. He even went into the living room to watch TV. He was with us for the opening of presents on Christmas morning, but then slept for the rest of the day. Two days after Christmas I awoke to the sound of him calling my name. “What?” I said. “Nine one one,” he gasped. I made the call. The EMTs came again, and hauled him out the door again. This time the boats were running, so he didn’t get a helicopter ride. I went and saw him in the hospital that morning, then went and had lunch with my cousin Nancy at noon, then went back to the hospital in the afternoon to see him again. His nephrologist came by to see him, and while he was there, Rick asked what the diagnosis was for his condition. The doctor said, “Multiple organ failure. First your kidneys, then your lungs, and now your heart is involved.” Rick and I agreed after the doctor left that, like “end stage renal failure,” “multiple organ failure” sounded pretty serious. When I left we smiled at each other. We kissed. We both said, “I love you.” It was a sweet and kind of sad good-bye, because we both knew Rick’s condition was serious. As I went out the door he was looking out the window at the view to the east, over the city rooftops to the Cascades. It was the last time I saw him conscious. We spoke on the phone several times the next day. He told me the thoracic surgeons wanted to put a shunt into his lung and let it drain “for many days.” They’d be doing the procedure that evening, around five. I fiddled around getting ready to go. Stopped to do some shopping for a few sundries on the way. Had an early dinner while listening to Prairie Home Companion on the radio. The last time I spoke with him on the phone, he said they were getting him prepared for the procedure. He told me the room number (he got it wrong), and said he’d be there and in Intermediate Care afterward. I got to the hospital, went to the right floor and asked for the wrong room, but the nurses knew who he was and where he was. I peeked in and could see him surrounded by people in scrubs. A nurse grabbed me and led me to the waiting room and said he’d come to get me when the procedure was over and I could go see Rick then. I was sitting in the waiting room playing Scrabble on my Kindle when the alarm went off. It was the loudest, ugliest, most annoying and disturbing alarm I’d ever heard in a hospital. I didn’t take it personally. For some reason I didn’t think it could be Rick, or if I did, I quickly stifled the possibility. No, that can’t be Rick. But then I saw a couple of the guys in the waiting room looking out the door and pointing and one said, “It’s that room right there.” That room right there was Rick’s. In a daze I began to gather my things. I spilled my water all over myself and didn’t pay it any attention as I kept gathering and went out of the waiting room and to the open space in front of the room where Rick was. There stood a crowd of hospital employees staring into the room, gaping in horror. I looked in and could see Rick’s face. There was blood all over his chin. I touched the arm of a woman who looked more senior than the others in the group, and said, “That’s my husband. What’s happening?” She looked at me with eyes of pity and said, “I’m so sorry.” At that point I don’t know how I got from where I was to the little room next to Rick’s room. I was pushed, or guided, or led, because boy, they really don’t want you watching what’s going on at any time but especially when something has gone wrong. So I’m blank on how I walked back toward the hallway and then was led into that little room, where there were upholstered chairs, like in a living room, and a lamp that shed a muted ambient light. A quiet room in which to hear bad news. A woman sat with me, and then a surgeon came in, determined that I was Mrs. Tuel, and said, “I’m very very sorry. His heart stopped.” I felt a raw jolt – what? But I didn’t get to say good-bye! I was going to see him afterward! I… I don’t remember much else that was said although I’m pretty sure that surgeon kept talking, until about fifteen minutes later when another surgeon came in and said, “We have a heartbeat, and blood pressure.” This after twenty-two minutes of CPR. The first surgeon was astonished. The second surgeon said that they expected to find blood in his lungs when they put the shunt in, but they didn’t expect him to throw up blood, which he did, foamy fresh blood. That’s why I saw blood running down his chin. Then both surgeons began to advise me that Rick had been tortured enough, and if his heart stopped again, we should “let him go.” That they would try to make him comfortable as they would any patient in his condition, but that it would be best not to try any more heroics to save him or bring him back. A chaplain was called. She was a sweet middle-aged lady who was very nice and informed me that I was in shock. She told me her name but I do not remember it. She stood by me when I went into Rick’s room. He was on a ventilator and was not conscious. He was never conscious again. I went to his side and held his hand and talked to him, telling him I loved him, thanking him for loving me. “And there it is,” the chaplain would say every time I said something to him. After a while the chaplain announced that she was going home. I envied her having the option to walk out of the hospital and back to her ordinary life for about a split second and then walked over to Rick’s bed, leaned in close to him and whispered, “I thought she’d never leave.” Listen, chaplains are good people who do heroic work, and I don’t think anyone could have said anything at all to me at that time that I would have liked. They moved him up one floor to the exact same room. The nurse heard me calling him Rick. Up until then everyone called him “Mark,” which was his legal name, and we had never fought that. He just answered to Mark. But at this point, the nurse wrote on the white board, “Prefers to be called Rick,” and all the nurses called him Rick the rest of the time he was there. I stayed by his side. I sang to him. I sang “Madeline,” a song he wrote about a girl he met while on tour in 1970. I got the words mixed up. I sang, “How Can I Keep from Singing,” and “Blackbird,” and “All Through the Night.” I sang, and talked to him. I read to him from a magazine I had brought along for him. Our sons, J.D. and Drew came, and they both spoke to their dad, told him they loved him, touched his face, and said good-bye. They went and got Marley the dog out of my car in the garage and took her back home to the island. After the guys left the nurse brought a cot in, and I was able to lie down if not sleep that night. When I heard one nurse tell another not to turn an overhead light on because his wife was sleeping, I spoke up and said, “I’m not asleep.” I dozed, and woke, and watched nurses come in to turn Rick and adjust his equipment. His arms were in restraints to keep him from pulling the ventilator tube out. I hated that. In the morning the head nurse took me down a couple of floors to a nurses’ shower room and I got a shower – I felt so grubby. I washed myself, and washed my hair with lather from hand soap. My hair felt like straw afterward. When I was dry and dressed I went down to my car in the garage and got my Book of Common Prayer, and some bottles of water, then went to the hospital cafeteria and got some cereal and yogurt and a cup of coffee of which I could not drink much, then went back to Rick’s room, where he was much the same. In fact, he was a little more stable than he’d been the night before. I hoped he might wake up, but he never did, though his eyes opened a couple of times and stared, unseeing, before closing again. I read to him from the Book of Common Prayer, and held his hands, and talked to him, and sang some more. The singing seemed to calm him a little. Around one the first thoracic surgeon came back. He provided me a little dark amusement by telling me that the fact he was there was proof that Rick was getting the best possible care the hospital had to offer. I didn’t laugh at him. That would have been rude, and of course I was still hoping he might save Rick’s life, but I did think that, wow, everything I’ve heard about surgeons is true. Surgeons and pilots. Well, because Rick was confounding them by doing so well this surgeon thought that he’d try to finish the shunt procedure. Perhaps getting that drain into Rick’s lung could make the difference and he’d turn the corner. I had to sign a permission form which acknowledged that the procedure could result in cardiac arrest and death. I was sent back to the waiting room. It was not long before Dr. I’m-the-Best came in and said, “It’s time to make your good-byes.” So I went in to Rick’s room, stood next to his bed, held his hand, touched his stubbly cheeks, thanked him again for loving me and giving me the life I wanted, sang a little more, watched the numbers drop on the monitor. The ventilator was turned off. His breath came sporadically, and was very shallow. His pulse was slow and reedy. “Can we turn off all the alarms?” the respiratory nurse asked. I guess they did, for it was silent then, and the monitor was no longer on, and there were no more heartbeats, and no more breaths. He was silent, and still, and peaceful. After a minute or two, I said, “I think he’s gone.” “Yes, he is,” said Lesley, the nurse who was standing at my side as I sat with him. I said, “He struggled so long, and at the end his spirit lifted like a butterfly that was blown away on a gust of wind.” “Yes,” Lesley said. At that moment everything fell away except the love. There was nothing but love, all the good stuff. Our son Drew arrived soon, and he and I cried together, and we sat with Rick for a while. When Drew said he was going to go play music, which sounded like the best possible thing to do, I decided I would not stay on alone with Rick, so, a little over two hours after he died, I said good-bye for the last time, and left. As I drove by the steel foundry at the bottom of the hill going up to West Seattle, a stack blew a smoke ring and I laughed. Rick used to watch that stack like a hawk, waiting for it to blow a smoke ring, and there it was. He would have loved that. That was a week ago Sunday. The first few days I was simply stunned. I didn’t know what day it was until Thursday. I’ve been signing papers and making decisions and helping to plan a church service and picking a spot to bury the urn of ashes. I’ve had dozens of phone calls and have received dozens of sympathy cards (and I love those cards – they mean the world, they truly do), and I have discovered the very best part of Facebook, where people have been infinitely loving and supportive. So many people weep at Rick’s passing. I cried the first days, but have been dry-eyed since. I know a time will come when I’ll crack like an egg and sob from the bottom of my being until my ribs hurt and I gasp for breath. It won’t be pretty so I want to do it alone, but it will be a great cleansing milestone and I’m looking forward to it. I’ll never get over Rick’s death, never. It is amazing to me that the forty-one years I knew him seem like the blink of an eye – all the music, the marriage, the sex, the laughs, the hard times, raising the kids, the years of illness at the end – a blink, but it feels like forever since he died ten days ago. I will be all right. I know that. In time. Maybe my brain will begin to function again. I was ever absent-minded, but now I can’t remember from the beginning of the sentence what I meant to say at the end. I drift. I forget everything. A friend advised me today that when I set something down and want to remember where it is, I should take a picture with my cellphone. This sounds like a great idea, but I don’t know where my cellphone is. I’ve called it twice today to find it. People are being great, really wonderful. They are giving so much. And I bumble along, accepting it all with a gratitude I hardly feel capable of showing. I will be glad when the service is over. I don’t know if I can face all those people, but I will. I don’t feel lonely, except for sometimes. I lie in bed and look over and say, “Where are you?” I bury my face in the sheets and inhale. I get shaky sometimes. I feel like I might throw up a lot of the time. I read lightweight novels. I play scrabble on the Kindle as an almost magical activity: he was still alive that day when I was playing, he was still alive at first. I sleep for an hour and wake up, and go back to sleep, and wake up again, all night long. I feel exhausted all day. It’s not as bad as it might sound. Like I said, I don’t remember one minute to the next. I guess that’s a natural self-protection. Over and over I think of a catch phrase Rick hated for its meaninglessness: “It is what it is.” Yeah. It is.

Chris Howie, left, and Rick Tuel, right, December 19, 2013

Little Boxes: a Brief Visit to Mid-20th Century America

The Grateful Dead in Daly City, May 1, 1967. © 1967 Bob Seidemann. Used by permission. “Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky Little boxes on the hillside and they all look just the same…” © 1962 Schroder Music, words and music by Malvina Reynolds One day in 1962 Malvina Reynolds and her husband, Bud, were driving from Berkeley, where they lived, down to the Santa Cruz Mountains, where she was to perform at a Quaker retreat. Their route took them by Daly City, where new housing tracts were being built. Malvina saw those houses and told Bud that he needed to drive because she had to write a song, and she did – “Little Boxes.” Pete Seeger soon recorded “Little Boxes,” and, miraculously, it became a radio hit in 1963. Miraculously because Pete Seeger had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era. A couple of weeks ago I ran into a young man who said, “I don’t like that song. I don’t think it’s right to judge someone for the house they live in. Maybe that’s the only house they can afford.” I applaud this young man’s sensibilities, standing up for the common man and abhorring unjust judgments. However, his judgment of the song is based on a misunderstanding. Context is everything, and he is unaware of the context of the song, probably because it was written before he was born. To begin with, Malvina Reynolds was raised a socialist, and she stayed a socialist until the day she died. She was part of the Old Left, as it was known in the 1960s. After the intense focus of World War II we needed a new evil to fear, and the designated villain was Communism. Our former ally, Joseph Stalin, the dictator in the USSR, was now our enemy, but also we were told to fear the Enemy Within, Communists in our society. During the Depression many people who were crushed by the hard times were introduced to Communism, and Communism sounded pretty good. “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.” That sounds pretty sweet when you’re homeless, hungry, and unemployed, or when you’re an idealistic person of any class or age. It might even sound like The Answer. A lot of people became socialists or Communists, or sympathized with them. After the war, when Joe McCarthy fired up his Commie hunting apparatus and made Commie hunting a blood sport, many lives and careers were ruined by everything from social ostracism and job loss to imprisonment and exile for those pre-war associations and activities. Immediately after the war, the women who had done men’s jobs during the war were told to quit their jobs, get married, and raise a family. A woman’s highest calling was marriage, family, and putting her husband first in all things. There was a rebound effect to those beliefs later, but that’s another essay. One effect of the mass re-domestication of women was the Baby Boom, the huge number of children born between 1946 and 1964. With the Baby Boom came a Housing Boom, and tract housing flourished. To an America that cherished individualism, those rows of identical houses were appalling, the outward and visible sign of middle class conformity. We wanted to be recognized as our precious unique selves, but in the early 1960s social critics decried the rot of conformity: computers, automation, and our cookie cutter houses were turning us into clones and drones. Still, the houses were snapped up by people who were building their own American Dream: a house, a family, a lawn, a garage, an indoor bathroom, a golden Cocker Spaniel, a college education for the kids, the belief that every generation was meant to do better than the generation before. “And the people in the boxes all went to the university Where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same…” From the socialist point of view, the universities were, like everything else, controlled by the big money people – you know, the evil rich. Professors were employees and puppets of the fat cats, turning out workers and cannon fodder to keep the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and the middle class well under control. Over in my (Republican) end of society, by the way, my parents saw those same professors as Communist shills duping naïve students into becoming evil Commies. That was fifty years ago. What do you think? Did conformity win? Are we clones, and drones? Or did we all become (gasp) Commies? Or is the truth something else? If you google “Little Boxes” you’ll find an awful lot of socio-political commentary in which the song figures. It seems a great burden to place on a little song. I suspect that in Malvina’s mind, it was meant to be “funny, with a needle in it.” That’s how she described another of her songs, “We Don’t Need the Men,” which she felt was taken ‘way too seriously. Malvina once said to me, “You can’t say anything so clearly that someone won’t misunderstand it.” From this end of life I have to say she was right.

Bethel Saloon

My friend Sonya is visiting this week and my friend Becky called up one day and said, “Let’s go have lunch at the Bethel Saloon!” The Bethel Saloon is a biker bar on Bethel Road in Port Orchard. It’s a funky old building, almost like something out of an Old West movie. It’s an interesting leftover from a time before Walmarts and other manifestations of suburban blight. My friends and I have been driving by this place for years and saying, “Cool building.” It has a skeleton riding a motorcycle on the roof over the entrance. First thing you notice as you walk in is that the parking places in front are all for motorcycles. It was Wednesday and there was a sign saying, “Taco Wednesday! Two for $3.00! Come in on a Harley or a rod and get two free!” We went in and found ourselves in a classic old school American bar. The bar itself was on the left, and to the right were two rooms with one pool table each. We went to the bar and ordered lunch from the nice lady who worked there. Sonya and I had the two tacos, and Becky had the pulled pork sandwich. The food was good, and sitting on the tall stools at the bar we looked around at the décor and watched the people playing pool. The place reminded me of bars from the fifties and sixties with the dark wood interior, the neon beer signs, and the old school (i.e., politically incorrect) male humor. There were pictures featuring underdressed women and customized motorcycles, Seahawks memorabilia, and a few bumper stickers. My favorite bumper sticker was, “I swear to drunk I am not God.” I liked it for the humor as well as the theology. We got to talking with the lady barkeep after she made our lunches. When she found out we were from Vashon she asked if the story about the bicycle in the tree – that some World War I soldier had stuck it there before he went off to war – was true. I was pleased to be able to tell her, no, it most certainly is not true, and then told her the story of the Puz family’s misfortune and how it led to Don Puz’s bicycle being stuck in the tree, only to be discovered years later. We had a pleasant time and finished our lunch, and Sonya went off to use the restroom. When she came back I said I’d like to do that, too, and she pointed across the room and said, “Straight across that way. It’s the door on the left, if you have any trouble figuring it out.” I started to walk across the room and saw the two rest room doors. Over the door on the right, in black letters eight to ten inches tall on a white background, was a sign that said, “Dicks.” Over the door on the left was a similar sign that said, “No dicks.” So I didn’t have any trouble figuring it out. All you young’ns don’t realize that this sort of humor was once commonplace in America. You don’t see it so much anymore. Some people would be offended. If you are one of those people, I recommend you not go to the Bethel Saloon. But if you’re not one of those people, the Bethel Saloon is a great place to have lunch and a beer. The place has soul, a sense of humor, and pretty good food. We settled our tab and went outside, stopping an arriving biker named Pete and asking him to take our picture with my phone, which he did. Thanks, Pete. As we waited at Southworth to catch the 5:05 ferry, we saw many motorcyclists coming off the ferry and figured some of them were heading for the Bethel Saloon, maybe to get their two free tacos.

Now I have written a favorable review of a bar in Port Orchard. Any of you restaurants on Vashon who want a review, put up a sign saying, “Free lunch if you arrive in a Honda Civic.” I’ll be right over.

Thoughts of an Old Convert

Almost thirty years ago I experienced my adult conversion to Christianity. I grew up in the Baptist Church and always felt I was a Christian at heart, but in my late 30s I felt the call to be a Christian inside and out. Telling my women’s support group that I was giving my life to God was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done in my life. I was afraid, you see, that I’d become that person standing on a street corner forcing Bible tracts on passersby, stopping strangers to ask, “Do you know Jesus?” I was afraid that by giving my life to God I might end up being one of them. It was a relief to realize sometime later that God called me to be myself, and I did not have to hand out tracts. My renewed faith was at home in the Episcopal Church. I especially loved the Book of Common Prayer. I suppose it makes sense that a writer would join a church because its prayer book was well written. For years I began my day by reading the morning daily devotions in the Book of Common Prayer, and praying. It centered me at the start of my hectic day. I’ve returned to that practice recently. I did not evangelize my kids with a lot of specific teaching. I had this idea that who I was in my interactions with them (or anyone) was my evangelizing. If the way I lived was bogus, I figured nothing I said would make much difference. I didn’t realize that hypocrisy is part of being a parent. You can’t help it. Live and learn. I did tell the boys some things. I told them that the word “God” was a tiny little box which we used as a symbol when we were talking about something that was much too big and complex for a human to comprehend. I told them that every human being has a spirit, and that it is as much a part of you and integral to your being as your beating heart. You may not have a religion, but you definitely have a spirit. I told them that God is reality. God is the point where truth, light, life, death, mystery, enlightenment, etc.(!) all come together. I was thinking about those things this morning as I was sitting out on the ravine porch with my Book of Common Prayer, listening to the creek and praying for the people on my prayer list. It’s a long list. You might be on it. I was thinking how those things I thought and said years ago have proven to be true, and the longer you live in faith, the deeper you go into the layers of reality. Faith allows you to live in some kind of peace in this crazy, broken, world. God doesn’t fix everything for us, but does weep with us, hold us through all trials, and rejoice with us. Going beyond that, there are things in heaven and earth that we do not understand, and for which there is no empirical evidence. I cannot give you a rational explanation that would make miracles and visions comfortable for you. I’m not telling you to become an Episcopalian, or any other brand of religion. I am telling you that if you hear your call to be yourself, and you answer that call, that life will be hard, but if you don’t answer that call, life will be harder, and you’ll have missed the mark. I’m glad I answered that call years ago. Have I become me? In my halting, sporadic, human fashion, I’ve done the best I could. I believe that faith has served to make me better than I would have been otherwise, and looking back at all the times I screwed up, I know that I was usually following one of my own bright ideas and things got better when I let God steer me. It’s God for me, but for you who object to the nomenclature “God,” fine. You think about what you want to call your tiny little box that symbolizes everything that is real and true and incomprehensible, and nurtures and enlivens your spirit, and makes your life better than it might be if you do things “your way.” The walk of faith is so worth it. Good luck, pilgrims.

The Icebugs of Grylloblattaria, and Other Critters

This has been the most beautiful summer I remember in years. Day after sunny day dawns, and we put on our shorts and tank tops and sandals, those of us not restricted by bothersome things like jobs (“Bwa-ha-ha-ha,” says my retired husband), and go out to meet the delirious, delicious summer day. We water our gardens, we admire the blooms of our flowers, we revel in the sweet juiciness of our homegrown fruits and vegetables. I myself have five tomatoes on my single tomato plant, and if the weather holds, they may have time to turn red. Meanwhile I love to touch the leaves and smell the tart muskiness of tomato plant, a scent that says, “summer” to me. The sun discourages, but does not stop, the slugs. I got some of that “safe” slug bait and while it may kill slugs, and I’m not saying I have any proof of that, it is apparently a tasty treat for mice. Our son said that every time he went out on the kitchen porch, he heard the scurrying of little feet and saw mice bailing out of the slug bait container and running away. I never saw these mice, but a quick check of the slug bait stash revealed a liberal sprinkling of mouse turds among the few remaining pellets. Rather than trying to trap and kill the mice, I figured that when the slug bait was gone, the mice would forage elsewhere. Let the problem resolve itself, I thought. NOTE: this method may work with mice, but I have been informed it does not work with raising children. Little tip for you young parents, although nothing you do or do not do will forestall the day 10 or 20 years from now when your adult children will tell you the mistakes you made as a parent. Be of good heart – being blamed for our mistakes is a little service that parents provide for their adult children. Another feature of this long hot summer is that the spiders are spinning early. Usually I don’t run into spider webs until August, but this morning I had to clear a web before I could walk out the kitchen door. I can only imagine the size and extent of the webs we’ll have in September. The mosquitoes have been numerous and hungry this year. Eh, that’s usual here on the edge of the woods. We had one branch of tent caterpillars in the apple tree, and my non-identical twin Becky happened to drop by and cut the branch off so I could dispose of the caterpillars. An hour or so later we looked out in the yard and there was a large deer eating the leaves off the non-caterpillar part of the branch. We chased the deer away, but it came back later and finished the job, plus stripping my rose bushes of leaves and roses. Lastly I mention earwigs. Earwigs comprise the insect order Dermaptera, according to Wikipedia, which also says, “Many orders of insect have been theorized to be closely related to earwigs, though the icebugs of Grylloblattaria are most likely.” The icebugs of Grylloblattaria!* Isn’t that glorious? Doesn’t that sound like a science fiction novel? But I digress. Earwigs like to inhabit crevices. We all know this from experience. Quite often earwigs will inhabit crevices in flowers I bring in from the garden and a few hours or days later I find earwigs crawling across the kitchen table, or the kitchen counter, or the living room rug. I have an irrational dislike of earwigs, and will usually crush them without hesitation or compunction. They give me the creeps. So it was extremely creepy when I opened up my bedside CPAP machine the other night and found an earwig inside. Ugh. I walked it into the bathroom and sent it for a quick swim in the bathroom sink. Beats me how or why it got into my machine. The darn thing simply showed up. I guess that’s why I don’t like them – they’re always sneaking up on me. Give me the oogly-wooglies. Even the most wonderful summer is bound to have some down sides, but all these critters aren’t stopping me from enjoying this summer. Hope you are enjoying your summer, critters and all. *”Grylloblattidae is a family of extremophile and wingless insects that live in the cold on top of mountains.” – Wikipedia. Now you know.

Forty Years of Festivals

Yours truly singing at Festival, 1976 or '77 In July of 1973 I joined my hippie friends one Saturday morning to go up to town and see the Festival Parade, my first. We had to park a couple of blocks out of town and walk in with other festival goers. That part hasn’t changed in 40 years. The crowds have become bigger and the walks are longer now, going down Beall Road on the east and out Cove and Bank Roads on the west, as well as up and down the main highway. There were a few marching bands, and cars with a parade marshal, and various pretty girls waving to the crowds, but what most impressed me was the Bacchus Lumber truck. It had a pile of drain field pipe on the back. I knew I wasn’t in California anymore. In 1974, I sang at the Festival for the first time, by myself, in the patio behind what was then the library and is now the Senior Center. By 1975 festival music was being staged in Ober Park in the little area on the south side of the building, which is still used as a concert stage. The music was all volunteer, and as far as I know all the musicians were local. Some of the ones I remember are Mike Dumovich, Sr., playing raucous slide guitar blues; Mindy Manley playing the banjo and singing old time songs; Steve Fearey and Thea (Teddi) Leyva (now Westcott) performing as Bodacious; Bob Haworth in whatever configuration he had going at the time – perhaps his one-man band; Ron Hook and his Sub Pop group; and Chris Howie, Rick Tuel, and yours truly performing as Kanout Manufacturing. At the end of Saturday afternoon, Zumi and his marimba band played and most of us got up and danced. Many islanders played in the marimba band, swinging and sweating. The marimba is a fitness instrument. There were many other musicians playing, and I apologize if I have not mentioned you by name. I simply can’t remember everyone. In the evening there was the traditional street dance. Probably the band was the Doily Brothers. Now, here is an Island Legend. It happened before I arrived, so call it a fact-related rumor. In 1971, so the story goes, the Festival street dance was rocking on Saturday night, and everyone was having a good time. Midnight came and the county sheriff who was present told the band the dance was over and it was time to shut down and go home. There was resistance to this suggestion, so the sheriff pulled the plug on the band, and voila, the dance was over. People were not happy, but they dispersed. Everyone went home except for a couple of souls who came back up to town and firebombed the court house. I made a request on the Facebook page, “Old Vashon Pictures and Stories,” for stories about that incident. People have responded kindly and generously, so you can go to that page to read the stories. My deepest thanks to all who have contributed. Turns out to be a story of redemption for at least one of the people involved. People are still writing, and contacting me outside of Facebook with information, and I may write about that night and its fallout in a future column. As the years went by the Festival and its music grew. The Portage Fill began doing a different kind of street dance, so we had choices on Saturday evening. The parade started to include Bob Haworth’s kazoo band, and other local groups started doing their own original parade entries. Islewilde brought giant puppets. The Seafair Pirates, who terrified little children, eventually stopped coming. I think. In the 1980s I would perform at the Festival with the trio Women, Women & Song. We had fun and people came to hear us in droves, which was quite gratifying. Since then my participation in the Festival, and Festival music, has dwindled. Rick was part of the color guard at the beginning of the parade for a few years, but he can’t do that anymore, so he usually stays home during festival and enjoys the quiet in the neighborhood. Most Festival weekends the last few years I’ve gone up for the Kiwanis pancake breakfast and watched the parade with my friend Becky, and then come home and hung out with Rick. I take our granddaughter up to do the rides sometimes and walk around the booths and admire the crafts people’s wares and see people I haven’t seen for ages. Festival: an island tradition, the highlight of our summer, and quite a blast before August, when we frantically summer it up before school starts and autumn moves in. Looking out my window I see that there are already some leaves turning yellow on the maple trees. I mentioned this to someone who said, “Don’t look out that window.” Good advice. Happy Festival, Happy Summer, to all.

The Other End of Love

“…to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.” – Marriage vow from the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, page 427 Phil, one of my husband’s best friends from high school, recently remarried, to a lovely woman named Barbara. They have bought a house and combined their households, and are starting married life in their mid-60s with all the hope and enthusiasm of any newlyweds. We have wished them all the best and are happy for them. You have to tip your hat to people who marry at this time of life. The cynical side of me says it’s the triumph of hope over experience. Marriage, after all, is what a lot of us want, but it ain’t easy, even in the best of circumstances and all the love and good will in the world, because life happens. A lot of fuss is made about new love and beginnings – how many love songs are there? Who does not know that feeling of joy when the heart is fairly bursting with feelings of love? How many of us have been dizzy with the knowledge of love returned? There are probably even more songs about love gone wrong. There is not much deeper disappointment than when you’ve made yourself completely vulnerable and been betrayed, and who among us has not been there, and sung those songs? It is part of life to love and not be loved back. It sucks eggs, but we all have to live through the discovery that we are not everyone’s cup of tea. There, two metaphors in one sentence. Think I’ll make some tea and boil an egg. But I digress. Then there is what I am starting to call the other end of love, when you have lived together for longer than you lived apart, raised your family, done your jobs, been through the years and blows, and are looking at your life’s end game. Not so many songs about that. Jacques Brel wrote “La Chanson des vieux amants” (“The Song of Old Lovers”) and it’s a good song, but it’s not the song I’m talking about. Brel speaks of stormy times, of leaving each other, of taking other lovers, but always coming back to each other. One line says, “…we had to have a good deal of talent to be this old without being grown-ups.” (©Jacques Brel, but I don’t know what year) This is not the end of life – this is middle age celebrating youthful behavior that persists. That’s all very Gallic (or Belgian) of Brel, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about those of us who did not have the talent to keep ourselves from growing up, those of us who showed up for life every day and hung on, those of us who understand that, “…until we are parted by death” is about as solemn a solemn vow as you can make in this life. Where are our love songs? I’ve been thinking lately that I should write such a love song. I haven’t written a song for years, but this idea is turning slowly ‘round in my brain, and I’m thinking it would be good to have such a song to sing now, a song about a lifetime of fidelity and friendship, of laughter and music, of shared hard times and joyful times, of the sadness of knowing that life does end, and you never know when or how or to whom the ending will come first. That’s the trouble with loving someone forever – for human beings, forever has an expiration date. Then I shake myself and say to hell with all this morbidity. As long as we’re alive, we’re alive, and we shall live life to the fullest, fight the good fight, and continue to laugh and cry and eat chocolate and feed the birds, and perhaps sing one of those old love songs, maybe this one, © 1962 Bob Dylan: “If today was not a crooked highway; if tonight was not a crooked trail; if tomorrow wasn’t such a long time; then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all.” Yep. Tomorrow is a long time. That’s why it’s amazing that tomorrow arrives so fast. Congratulations and best wishes to Barbara & Phil. I’ll only add that Bob Dylan said early in his career that every song he wrote was a love song. If you’re a songwriter you understand that. But that’s another essay.