Things are never quite the same...

"The whispered conversations in overcrowded hallways

The atmosphere as thrilling here as always...

Why, everything's as if we never said goodbye"

- Norma Desmond in 

Webber, AL: Sunset Boulevard

He couldn’t keep up with her as hard as he tried and try he did. She had burst away from him to see her son…while he shuffled along the best that he could.

The war for me was over…time in-service in that foreign land done…debt paid…life spared and back to all things familiar…if indeed things are ever truly familiar.

How this started
When I received orders for Vietnam, I reported to a base on the West Coast where I was housed with a lot of other young men headed for the same destination, in a large building full of bunk beds. Housed might not exactly be exactly correct. There is no doubt we were under roof, but there were military police at the exits, and we were…well, we were not permitted to leave until we shipped out. A precautionary tale of little doubt….a concern that some of the soldiers would slip out and go AWOL – away without leave!

A little family context…
My father had been a proponent of the war. Communism was the great enemy, and if Vietnam fell – as the domino theory went – it would then be all of Southeast Asia. I can recall many conversations and discussions he had with any number of people regarding how important it was for democracy to stop communism in the Republic of Vietnam (the South)...from Ho Chi Minh and the puppet masters in Moscow. They were, of course, the real villains.

It is said, “…it is much easier to tell someone how to climb a rope than it is to be on the rope yourself…” My Dad, like so many Americans at the time, had no real skin in the game. He was far removed from the oppressive heat and horror that was the Vietnam war. No skin…far removed…UNTIL his son – his ONLY son was drafted and was about to be sent to that far away land, where even the modest living of a minister of the Gospel was palatial, compared to the third world living conditions of Southeast Asia.

The change in my father’s politic wasn’t dramatic or quick, but if you paid attention, there was a clear shift and adaptation in his thought process. He was less apt to get into discussions about the war as you could see him confronted with the very real possibility he would lose his son and namesake.

He was a passionate, but guarded man, who metered out his feelings in the context of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was careful to protect the temper he had grown up with and other testosterone driven instincts that all men struggle with. The war, had come home to roost on his doorstep and ate away at him…he struggled mightily to keep it all in. He worked hard to act above the fray, but he labored over my impending departure…he lost sleep, and in quiet moments he wept.

Harboring powerful feelings take their toll on all of us. My profession, in later years, provided, an understanding of the devastating effect unchecked circulating hormones can have on the body…how mental stresses emerge in the most profound of ways, as the internal chemistry turns on itself attacking the weaker ramparts first; once weakened works to attack the next vulnerable spot, and the next, and the next…

Yet fathers are often bigger than life and so with the stiffest of upper lips my Mother and he hugged and kissed their only boy good-bye, bidding him that he fare well in his unknown and dangerous journey…there were no, “Go make the world safer place for democracy”…no “Whatever happens, be honorable”…no “You are making an unselfish sacrifice for your country and family”…there rather was, what had always been our custom – a small family circle, as he prayed the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob keep His hand on me.

Off to see the wizard…
There isn’t much in the memory banks about that brief stay out West, but soon I was “…leaving on a jet plane…” with a lot of other young men headed so far West, we landed in the East…the Far East! All of us were in clean and newly issued jungle fatigues, wide-eyed with NO, and I mean NO real idea what lay ahead.

After a stop at Clark Airbase in the Philippines, and Okinawa (due to some engine trouble), we arrived late in the evening at Ton Son Nhut air base in Saigon – today, Ho Chi Minh City. There was no jet-way from which to depart the plane, just a staircase sitting in an alien land with an immediate crushing humidity, and a kind of indescribable odor I have come to identify with tropical Asia. Not a bad odor, just different from the West Virginia hills to which I had been accustomed.

The aircraft did not shut down its engines, for its crew had “…promises to keep, and miles to go before [they slept]…” The shorter their time on the ground in a war zone, the better they liked it. After all they were just ferrying a new batch of ‘virgin’ soldier boys in-country, and an equal number of ‘not so virgin’ young soldier men waiting for the same stairway...out of country. These were not freshly showered GIs in clean uniforms…they looked worn and tired in the dark, moonless and dimly lit tarmac.

As we marched by them at what was our beginning and their end, there were cat-calls and more than a few comments about how we might not make the ‘going home’ line 13 months from then – mildly entertaining for them…fairly disconcerting to us.

Suddenly, we were there and they were not. In what seemed the blink of an eye, the plane was reloaded, back in the air – the sound of the jet diminishing in the distance like the last ferry to the mainland, escaping the impending storm. They were leaving us to…leaving us to…well, just leaving us.

The year was, as one might say, what it was. Adventures unknown presented themselves; memories created…many remembered…some buried never to be repeated.

It was time to leave
Thirteen months practically to the day, I found myself standing in line with a number of tired and worn soldiers, on the tarmac Ton Son Nhut airfield in Saigon waiting for another “…jet plane…” to land. This aircraft carried the exact number of arriving soldiers, but now we were waiting to get on, get out and go home. The only thought, “Let’s get on that plane and out of the airspace before anything happens.” A free floating anxiety wandering through my mind, that after an unpredictable year, something might actually happen at the last minute, preventing us from flying so far East, we would actually safely reach the West!

The flight home took me to the West Coast, then to an airfield on the East Coast where I picked up a domestic flight to go home. By now I had called to let Mum and Dad know I was safe, and let them know the time of arrival.

'Familiarity' doesn’t mean 'the same'
What I didn’t know in the year I away and unknown to me, was that my father could no longer conceal the Parkinson’s Disease that had been quietly encroaching on his life and body. What I didn’t know in the year I was gone, was that my father worried and ached for my safety everyday. What I didn’t know in the year I had been gone, was that my father would become more and more infirmed until eventually this disease would contribute to the premature ending of his life.

As the aircraft approached the regional airport in Canton, Ohio, every thing slowed down. It seemed the plane could not get to the ground fast enough. When it did, I got off and entered the terminal yearning and at the same time wondering, whether I would seem different to them.

In those days, anyone could come right up to the gate. There they were, in the distance coming my way. She saw me and ran with all she had in her. “He couldn’t keep up with her as hard as he tried, and try he did. She had burst away from him to see her son…,” to touch his hair, to kiss his face, to be assured that it was really him and not the frequently recurrent dream that he was safely home. He couldn’t keep up as she left his side, “…he shuffled along the best he could…,” the Parkinson’s in full bloom.

In spite of the excitement of the moment, I was stunned to see this invincible man, this bigger than life personality, struggling to move – for that is the curse of Parkinson’s; the difficulty of voluntary movement. As we embraced, all holding fast in each other’s arms, I could feel the tremors and toll this disease had taken from him in a little over a year.

Yet the prayer had been answered. I had fared reasonably well and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had kept me in His hand. More importantly, in spite of my father’s infirmity, and the unspoken drain on my mother’s life, we were together safely in one another’s arms.

We were not the same people who had prayed together and said good-bye. As it turns out, we had all been at war that year…all of us had lost a little something. And yet, words cannot express the feelings of that moment…the strength of love, the gift humanity has to carry thought and people with us no matter where we are…the ability to nurture and grow feelings, even in the most strenuous of absence. In that moment, whatever had happened in that year meant nothing, for we had the most coveted gift any human being can ask for…each other.

- ted

Last Tango in Singapore...

“…Red and yellow black and white

They are precious in his sight

Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

- Woolston HC lyrics

- Root GF music

It was warm and humid that final evening as I sat along the banks of the Singapore River, separated from the water’s edge by a 15-foot wide brick walking path shaded with banyan trees. Dinner would not start for a half hour, so I grabbed something refreshing to drink and nibbled on roasted Asian peanuts, which have both a subtle difference in taste, and a decidedly ‘snappier crunch’ when chewing.

It seemed an odd contrast to be sitting in this Far Eastern land listening to country music quietly playing on overhead speakers…Hank Snow, “I’m moving on” – Hank Williams, “Your cheating heart.” As the dinner hour arrived, the music paused; replaced by the familiar strains of soft rock from the 60s…the virus of Western Culture well entrenched.

Just across the walking path was a footbridge over which folks wandered back and forth from one side of the river to the other – where high-rise condominiums and small restaurants lined the banks. In this stretch…hotels on one side and condos on the other… it was a far and alien cry from the low land swamps that was this area in the 1800s.

It was hard to know who lived in those little boxes on the other side of the river, but if the French, Italian and German flavor of the restaurants were any indication, one might imagine there to be a fair number of European expatriates who left their homelands, if not all of their home culture.

Dusk had settled as the heat of the day slowly slipped away leaving a trail of humidity, the closeness of which felt like a second skin you would like to shed, but couldn’t…a small relief from the blazing heat…waiting in the wings for its encore just a few hours away.

Joggers and speed walkers mingled with strolling hand holders, in the moderately cooler but sticky air. Exercisers work the fringes there…both of them early – early morning before the heat comes or early evening once it’s gone. No one wants to be actively visible when the sun comes to work in the morning.

Day into night…
Evening along the Singapore River does not signal the end of the day. There is an almost palpable feeling things are going to change. With the lazy closing eyelids of the day comes the energy and surrealism of a hyper active dream. Young people begin to gather on the many lighted crossing bridges that link the two sides of the river. They sit in small groups with a liter of Coca Cola and a bottle of spirits – aptly named for by 10 or 10:30PM (20.00 or 20.30) they become loud and boisterous.

Restaurants along the Quays (landing areas on the River – pronounced ‘keys’) are filled with crowds a little older, but no less enthusiastic…until the night deepens, their glasses empty, stories told and the weariness of the day overcomes their bodies – drifting away in order from the least energetic to the most.

In the very early morning hours, the stillness of this tropical land reclaims, for the briefest of time, vestiges of the rhythm that existed for eons before the presence of man – before country western music or soft rock…before those morning exercisers broke the calm with padding feet and labored breathing, chasing the elusive elixir of a retreating youth.

A cultural paradox
For the Western visitor Singapore is a place where you can hide, completely engulfed in the same culture from which you came – for it is one of most modern, high tech cities in the world – or you can slip into one of the ethnic communities where you could easily be in any one of a number of Asian countries – Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, or China. In these communities, the hum is different, the food more authentic, the people more themselves – as most are when surrounded by the things and people they know. For it is human nature to ‘…see what you look for and find what you know…’

Singapore is a country where the color of my skin was broadest of exception – uncommonly bland amidst the majestic tapestry and hue from darkest black to lightest yellow and every imaginable shade in between; where Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, Indian, Sri Lankan and Caucasian sort themselves out in the mixing bowl of this multicultural Asian land.

A gentle reflection
I was reminded, how as humans we come in so many packages; how we have such varied spiritual belief systems (all of which ‘we’ believe to be correct); how we find different musical rhythms that resonate with our souls; how we believe each other’s foods strange, while our own completely normal. When we are away from home and meet someone from our own culture, how pleasant – maybe comforting – it is to relate to one another even the unspoken commonality we share.

And yet…and yet, amongst the grand differences, we share the central human experience of struggle, humor, love, hope and aspiration – no matter the culture, language or belief. In the bigger picture, the inward man/woman is where we find greater commonality; where we are so much more alike than separate; where we find those moments of communal ground…whether it be on the walking paths, restaurants along the Quays or markets in ethnic communities…It is the human desire to share the common experience. There is little doubt it is the human connection each of us desires, because “…God happens when humanity is connected…”

In spite of our outward differences, we all look for the Quays and small footbridges that help us connect and navigate the common river of life we all share.

The day was done
The next morning, I slipped away from this land 85 miles (137km) north of the equator and returned to the familiar surroundings of my home in California. But, as I sat waiting for the dinner hour watching that little patch of the world drift by, I felt a small twinge of wistful disappointment that the chair next to me at the table was empty.

- ted

Marking Time…

“Life’s race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and

that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has

been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of

childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life,

the maturity of old age – each bears some of Nature’s fruit,

which must be garnered in its own season.”

Cicero – On Old Age

Yesterday I got older. “Older than what,” one might ask? It wasn’t a special day, not some accelerant that speeds the burning fire of life…It was merely a day…But in that day, I got older.

Intro – take one
“Hi I’m Dr. Brown,” she said. And so she was. Young, tiny, dressed as if she were going out to dinner – it was only 10AM! It is odd when the physician attending to your needs looks like, well the ‘…every girl (boy)…’ in any high school…anywhere. That immediate impression quickly overcome by doing the math and appreciating undergraduate school, medical school, an internship, a residency, and if they have been in practice any length of time, by now she would be in her early to mid thirties!

This was one of those unrequested markers in life…it is not that they are turning doctors out earlier and younger, but that I am getting older…well, how about more mature. And by the way, what is the invisible line one crosses to enter the category of older age? What is the metric? Plato says, “Or suppose we differ in magnitudes, do we not quickly end the difference by measuring?” Well, there is no measurement here so it is difficult to quantify this aging thing!

I have heard it frequently said, “…you are as young (old) as you feel…,” but in my experience it is most often said by young folks to older folks complaining about how quickly time has flown by!!!

In an attempt to ‘keep my youth,’ I have tried to be moderately careful about what I eat, exercise regularly and get a good night’s sleep. The latter has not been consistently as good as one would like. Hypnos (the Greek God of sleep) seems to be inconsistent in his responsibilities in recent months….but I digress.

Intro – take two…
“Hi, I’m Dr. Brown,” she said. I relied, “Hi, I’m Ted.” I had been sitting in the chair in her exam room for about 20 minutes waiting for my eyes to dilate.

I had been noticing for some time my right eye seemed to ‘feel’ like it was working a little harder than my left. Gone for almost two decades was a ‘glasses-free life,’ with the emergence of a small astigmatism in that pesky right eye. A week ago, there had been an unusual ‘floater’ in my eye and some small ‘lightening flashes’ in the periphery of that same eye. So, thinking there might be a retinal issue, it was off to the Ophthalmologist. This brings us up to date.

Intro – take three
“Hi, I’m Dr. Brown,” she said, and went about shining bright lights in my openly and vulnerably dilated eyes. It was lots of, “look up – look down – look right – look left.” After a few moments she said, “You have some macular pucker (epiretinal membrane) in that right eye. When some people get older, the vitreous fluid of the eye contracts and pulls a bit of the membrane away from the back of the lens and wrinkles, kind of like cellophane. Once it happens, it usually doesn’t get worse. It can be removed surgically with tiny instruments, but there can be significant complications for some people, and no guarantees. I am happy to refer you to an opthamalic surgeon, because I don’t operate.”

Hmm, I thought…I come reporting a minor distraction to my right eye; am given no treatment other than a possible, but not probable surgical solution with a 50/50 possibility of success; 6 month healing time, and oh yes – I later checked the internet – much worse…the possibility of blindness in that eye.

“Well,” said I, “I am more inclined to let the natural history unfold than have surgery, but thanks.”

“Okay,” she replied. “I have to say, I am surprised you are seeing as well as you are with this. Your prescription is fine, come see me in a year.”

A little reflection
It’s easy to not pay too much attention to life as time moves forward. The morning comes…we meet it and get on with the day as if we have an unlimited number of these 24-hour cycles. The truth, of course, is that we actually have precious few of them.

The truth is they fly by with such speed we hardly notice…until…until we have those moments that remind us we are no longer the boys and girls of summer; remind us how good the early spring was; remind us of the richness of the fall harvest…and overcome us with how chilly the winter can be.

This is not a fatalistic perspective by any means, any more than the realization that time and gravity simply are. It’s just that we, in the ebb and flow of our lives, have few markers to tell us how the journey is actually going or how successful or how meaningful all of it is.

Our dance was done
And so it was. She was out the door to the next patient and I was out the door to….well, I was out the door with a label, an unresolvable contracted vitreous fluid – the result of the natural aging process…emphasis ‘aging’ – and the rest of the day.

Intro – part four
“Hi, I’m Dr. Brown,” she said. I replied, “Hi I’m Ted.”

“I am older today...”

- ted

Love covers a multitude of sins...

And Adam knew Eve his wife,

and she conceived, and bare Cain,

and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.

Genesis 4:1 – Bible

I lied to her once...


There were sins of omission, but the lie...that lie was so traumatic...thinking about it 46 years later makes me feel some discomfort!


The background
Fannie Margaret Maude Arnott was her name. By the time I understood that she had any name at all she had acquired one more - ‘ Dreisinger’. Yes, Fanny Margaret Maude Arnott was my mother, but I didn’t even know that. It took months before I could even say “...mama...,” the oft repeated word she used when appearing in my field of vision. She was a real “coo-er”, and a quiet singer of lullabies. A gentle soul and like so many mothers, was sure her baby boy was something special!


In some ways, she was ill equipped to mother a boy. Married in her 30th year, she had not been around many other than her three brothers...being a ‘tom-boy’ didn’t really qualify. She had gone to a school where there were no boys; became a school teacher and - before marrying Edward James - taught during the school year, traveled with her girlfriends and worked summers as a counselor at a girls camp in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec.


She was an active athlete as a girl and young woman. She could ride horses, snow ski, play basketball with the best of them, ice skate and win league championships on the tennis courts. While a good sport, she was a formidable and tenacious opponent, who taught her children to play hard...and play fair. Winning was not necessary for character growth - best effort was. She believed winning was NOT always the best teacher, and anyway it was the end of the war that counted - the smaller battles along the way only created the foundation for each new day. She would admonish her kids to...finish the whole race...be the tortoise if necessary...the little engine that could...the person left standing “at the end of the day.”  Consistency and hard work were the key. There was just something about that woman - she was special!


By the time I arrived on the planet, she had a decade and thousands of hours of preparation for my entrance into the fray. It would be different for her to teach a boy, but a born teacher she was. She would bravely say it was really only a difference in plumbing, wasn’t it?


She taught me almost everything physical in my childhood and early youth from her wealth of experience...play, swim, canoe, water ski, basketball and how to run. She taught me almost everything spiritual...story after story about brave men and women of the scriptures. She taught me almost everything about the coming challenges of life with morality story after morality story from the Aesop to Hans Christian Anderson, to the Little Engine that Could.


She loved music and taught all of us to sing, "...just find a harmony..." she would say and then sing some more. She taught me about gentleness and respect for women, an unrelenting theme from my earliest remembrances through my high school years. “Think of other girls,” she would say, “as though they are your sisters or me.”  As a youngster, I have to admit, the sisters’ part didn’t always inspire thoughts of gentleness!!


The event terrible
The date was October 13, 1967. It is easy to remember because it was her birthday, and the day I learned a life lesson that both informed the rest of my life, and still haunts me.


I was in school in Morgantown, West Virginia - home of ‘The Mountaineers.’ For some reason she had come by on her way back to Ohio from a churchwomen’s conference at Alderson-Broaddus College in Phippi - a small town tucked away in the West Central Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia. By now she and my father lived in Canton, Ohio, but Mum continued her ties with the churchwomen of the Mountain State. She had left the conference early in the day and surprised me. She loved surprises. We had breakfast together before her 140-mile drive home.


I had forgotten it was her birthday until about half way through breakfast. Not wanting her to realize it had gotten away from me, I told her I had a gift, but given it to my sister who was also in school at the University. I said it wasn’t a problem, because I would be coming to home on on the weekend and would bring it with me. We hugged and kissed good-bye; she headed home, and I to classes for the day.


It was around 4:30 that afternoon when I received a phone call from my sister...an agitated sister! What was this about a birthday present she was supposed to have for mother??? My brain went numb!


The 'worst' laid plans...
Fannie Margaret Maude Arnott Dreisinger “...aka mama...” had NOT driven home after breakfast, but spent the entire day tracking my sister down to pick up the ‘phantom’ birthday present, not because she couldn’t wait for the surprise, but because she thought it would make it easier for me coming home on the weekend. She wouldn’t have opened it anyway, it wasn’t in her character to not share the moment with giver of the gift...the giver of the gift...the liar with NO gift.


There were parallel surprises that day. My mother’s disappointment causing some damage to her trust levels with me, AND to me for having been caught in so blatant and foolishly constructed betrayal of that woman’s trust. She would have been satisfied with a “Happy Birthday Mum,” and “I’ll see you on the weekend.” BUT I had created a castle of sand and it didn’t take much of a wind to blow it away.


Facing the music
Mothers have some unknown and mysterious gift of forgiveness. I would have preferred a slow death of 10,000 cuts then to have faced my mother that weekend...but face her I did. She didn’t chastise me for my deceit; she didn’t question how I could have so callously disrespected her; she didn’t complain she had spent an entire day chasing the wind...she did worse! She told me how she loved me and how open her heart was to me; she said quietly and gently she hoped it would never happen again and be a learning experience...


AND THEN, Fannie Margaret Maude Arnott Dreisinger did what was the ‘hallmark of her character,’ she never spoke of it again...what effect this event had on that tender-hearted soul, I never really knew, but I know what effect it had on me...I was ‘cut to the quick’ and never lied nor misled her again as long as that woman lived.

"Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again."

- Mother Gooses' Melodies

The lesson
While fall with Mum was not fatal, it was a loss in the long-distance run of life. But as my mother was fond of saying, it is not the wins we learn the most from...it's the defeats.


In the waning years of her life, she didn’t know who I was. She seemed to know I was familiar and loved to have her hair and face stroked. Times I was with her in those last years always made me think of how much of her I carry with me and that life lessons come with a price.

- ted