Notes from the Cafe Fiasco

Understanding Grandpa

I must have been around 10 years old when I came in from outside on the afternoon of a beautiful fall day to find my 60-something Grandpa Dunham sitting at the kitchen table. He was leaned over with exhaustion and dripping with sweat, but he had a very wide smile on his face. He looked at me and said, "I just wanted to know if I could still do it."

Grandpa was prone to somewhat cryptic statements at times, so I sort of shrugged it off and when up to my room, not really understanding what he was referring to. But later in the afternoon I went back outside and saw that the chest high grass of the back field - over an acre in size - had been hand mowed to ankle high and the scythe that my grandfather had used to do it was leaning up against the garage sharp and oiled as new. So, this was what he was referring to. And even though I was 10 years old, I was impressed.

Almost fifty years later, this Saturday -- I bow onto the Aikido mat and start to stretch to warm up. I didn't make a "date" to practice with anyone, so I take the usual luck of the draw for my first class in about 2 years. I find a unsuspecting energetic young man to practice with as we bow to one another and start the first technique of the hour.

My back has kept me from practicing Aikido  for the past two years, but Paul Keelan is teaching this particular morning and this doesn't happen all that often. And the back has been better of late. And I'm wondering if, after two years, I can still do "it."

What "it" is is a little hard to explain. For a martial art, aikido can be pretty delicate. To be able to do it effectively, you have to be able to feel not only what's going on in your own body but in the body of the attacker. The object is to defang the energy of the attack and to do this you have to be able to select the correct response to the attack based almost only solely on feel. But this selection is not calculation. You do what your trained body tells you to do - there's not much intellectual thinking involved. What happens is somewhere between thinking and reacting.

So do I still have "it" after being away for so long?  It seems that I do - much to my own and my partner's amazement.  At least I have as much of "it" as I ever did. And, after a while, a huge grin spreads on my face that reminds me of the one that I saw on Grandpa fifty years before.

Of course, there is payment that must be made for finding out things like this. It's the Tuesday after the Saturday now and I'm just recovering from this little experiment. The back is still tender and I'm just starting to get around without pain. I don't remember seeing Grandpa the day after he mowed the field but he was probably hurting too - what the body learned as a young man was still there, but the price that one pays gets steeper as one gets older. 

But the grin remains.

MRI 3/16/10

The results of the latest in the never-ending series of tests are in and, for the nonce, I have no cancer outside of the prostate "capsule" that they can see using huge loud magnets. So my personal demon is staying put for the moment.

There is an area near the spine that they couldn't see clearly, so the radiologist is recommending, you guessed it, another test - this one: a bone scan. Since my PSA is slightly down, my main doc and I are thinking that nuclear material in the body may not be the way to go just yet, so I'm standing pat on any new tests until there's evidence that there's something wrong (or something more wrong).

So, back to the trenches (and the antioxidants) for another three months. Hand me the green tea.

Possible Answer

Nothing quite brings up the question of "where do we go when we die?" than seeing a loved being disappear right in front of your eyes. This was the case Monday when we had to euthanize our old, lovable cat who had become too weak due to heart disease to stand or even, at times, to breathe properly. It was time for him to go for no other reason than because I didn't want him to suffer any more.

One second he was there, as he had been for the previous ten years, and the next moment he was gone. And we had no clue to where. But maybe we got one.

There we are right after the passing in the vet's office, looking what was left of our beautiful boy and trying to get a grip on the change and Denise's phone rings. She has specific rings for specific people on her phone, so we knew that her Dad was calling. The ring tone: "The Ride of the Valkyries."

Since Smudge had almost literally refused to die for the previous few days, it was very appropriate that he should be rung out of this plane to the archetype of the handmaidens of Odin who gather the heroic fallen in battle and take them over the Rainbow Bridge to Asgaard to live a glorious afterlife in the Halls of Valhalla.

Where did he go?  I still don't know. But I like the possible answer that I was given.

Smudge Spriggs 1992-2010

Smudge Spriggs died Monday morning from the complications of congestive heart failure in Arlington, Massachusetts, not far from his home of many years in Somerville, Massachusetts following a long decline due to old age. He was the funny, fuzzy, and sweet cat that he had always been to the end despite being very ill. He leaves a heartbroken Dad and a very sad Mom. Contributions of cuddles, shrimp, pets, and tuna should be given freely to any other felines that are found in your environs in his honor especially if they like their chest scratched.

Typical Tuesday

Let's see.  There was a point between about 11:30 and 11:45 when I got something done ...

5.3

The best thing about 5.3 is that it is not 5.6 or more. It seems that my gulping down every anti-oxidant that I could get my hands on for the past 3 months may have resulted in a slight decrease in my PSA numbers.

What's important is that this number breaks a climb in the curve that I've had for the past year - a curve that was on the way to surgery or radiation or other fun medical stuff. Now if I can keep the number relatively stable, I can continue to continue to have cancer.

So, I now get to have one of those great "stick you in the tube for half an hour" MRI's to see if the cancer that I do have is staying put inside the gland. If that turns out okay, then it's back to the trench warfare of the past three years - known in the trade at "Watchful Waiting."  Want to hand me those ground flax seeds, please?