A day of memory... redux

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, 

and your government when it deserves it."

- Mark Twain

There is little to say about tomorrow that hasn’t been said many times, by many people.

There is little to feel about tomorrow that hasn’t been felt many times, by many families – brothers…sisters…parents…cousins, aunts and/or uncles.

There is an uncontrollable, and heightened human chemistry when a loved one is in harms way.  The busyness of the day masks the quiet, ever present gnawing thoughts that sit beneath razor thin membranes of our minds, hoping against hope for their safe return.

A lot of hearts...

Less than one percent of the American population are on active duty, compared with somewhere in the neighborhood of nine percent during times of war in previous decades.  A relatively small number compared with the 314 million people who live here.

A relatively small number until you consider that is 3.1 million men and women who serve at any given time in the United States Armed Services.  A large percentage of these folk have been to the theatre of war more than once…many more than three or four times.  Each time there is an increased sense of concern, sometimes helplessness, in those left behind, as they watch their family member depart.  Nobody wants the knock on the door…

I am a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, and every day I was away, my family prayed that their son, brother, cousin and nephew would have a safe return.  Everyday I was away, I thought about the things familiar to me in a homeland I was unsure I would see once again. 

Floyd Eberhard…

My wife’s father was a career soldier, serving in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.   He was a good man, a decent man, an honorable man, an honest man and he was a patriot.  You never heard of him.  You never felt the resonance of his laugh, nor the clarity of his eye…the intellect he possessed, nor the gratitude he felt to live in this land.  BUT those of you reading this blog in the United States were protected by this man…by this man and so many others who knew life is not kind to all…not fair to everyone – a man who understood the importance of work and discipline and duty for others…for others.

His family – three children and a wife – understood the sacrifice. They understood the sacrifice, but in their humanity as with all whose people are in danger, they prayed…they hoped…they endured.  Their family, like mine, was rewarded with our return.

So many were not…so many were not!

While my view of recent wars in which our country has been engaged, is one of uncertainty, there is NO uncertainty regarding the men and women who have volunteered to defend this country…willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.  It’s hard to appreciate that some people are wired like that.

Privileged indeed...

We live in a land most of us take so much for granted that it boggles the mind.  As we sit in front of our wide-screen TVs, strive to consume more and more things, go to social events relatively unimpeded, and move through our cities, counties, states and country at will…most do not appreciate what a truly dangerous world we live in.  Most of us only know people in other lands by what we see on cable news or National Geographic specials regarding other cultures…beautifully edited for color and storyline.  Life in this world, for the vast majority of human beings…the VAST MAJORITY…has little in the way of “...beautifully edited…” anything.

So for tonight when each of us goes to bed and breathes a prayer for the day past…tomorrow morning when each of us gets up to greet a new day…when each of us looks at our children or spouse or significant other or speaks to someone, with whom we have a relationship of meaning…surely thank God for the things we have. 

But in this land…in this country, for all its difficulties and flaws – thank God for the young men and women who have been willing, regardless of the call and the era in which they served, to risk their lives for all we have been given.

To my brothers and sisters who have sacrificed time or life, and particularly for those who are in ‘…arms and harms way…’

Thank You!

- ted

Graduation - the ticket for the next event...

 “There are no endings, just the next breath… closing

one part of our lives and beginning another”

- Anonymous

“Another thought or pearl I took home with me,” She continued, “is to act like you’ve been there before.” 

The point?  If you have practiced with the tools of your trade, it really doesn’t matter where you exercise their use…they will work exactly the same way.

She was a little more than half way through rehearsing her speech when we pulled up to the circular drive at the Alumni Center.    She needed to be a little early, so I had driven her to the graduation site. 

She opened the door, looked over at me.  “No Crying,” She said, to which I replied, “I am not going to look at you!”

And with that she was out the door.

The theme of the graduation keynote speaker was to be grateful for having gotten through the rigors of school and for the love and support for those who had made the effort possible.

A different day…

As she stepped to the stage to make the closing graduation speech, I was transported to a basketball game a decade or so earlier as she headed to the line to shoot a foul shot.  She had always been a good player, but had found herself on the wrong side of her high school coach and played only sporadically her senior year.  Her willingness and ability to stick it out in adversity showed me great character.

Collegiate ball was a different story.  There it was talent, not politics that determined who did or did not play.  She started her freshman year and every year after that…driven…focused…deliberate and enthusiastic in every part of the game.  At Westminster she came into her own as an athlete and it was a joy to watch her play.   As it is to this day, her unrelenting drive to succeed was a constant on and off the court.

The other constant in her life and an equally instant flash to my mind was her mother, my sister Nancy…maybe the most vocal partisan who EVER attended their child’s athletic endeavors. 

No foul called against Mariah kept the official from getting an earful – “What are you BLIND!!!" - and no brush with a defensive opponent was less worthy than a ‘game ejecting’ flagrant – “Hey ref, she nearly crippled my daughter!!!” - foul!!   It would take practically an act of Congress for the woman to miss a game, or any event for that matter, that involved Mariah – flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone – the unapologetic love of her life! 

Nancy was, in fact, so vocal other parents and her brother (that would be me) were uncomfortable sitting near her, for fear that if she got thrown out of the gym, those around her would be tossed out too!

The first college game I attended, found Mariah fouled somewhere in the second quarter.  The infraction had occurred during the course of a shot, so she had two tries.  She stepped to the line with a single-minded look on her face…put the ball up, and something astonishing happened…TO ME!!  I could not explain it, but my heart completely melted.  My stomach quivered, and I am certain I had my first hot flash!! 

I felt connected to her in a way that to this day I am unable to express.  While I loved Mariah from her birth to the very moment she let that ball go,  yet in that instant…in that very millisecond I understood, as much as I possibly could a sense of Nancy’s connection to this youngster she had brought to life!  Somehow I took an ownership, an intimate proprietary visceral sensation…a heretofore unknown epiphany regarding the place of my heart in her life.

The journey continued…

Four years before this weekend, in this very same auditorium, Mariah began medical school with a ‘White Coat’ ceremony.  Here, each bright-eyed, enthusiastic incoming student was given a short white coat that they would wear during their four years of medical school, identifying them as medical students in training.

There would be clinical classes…exams…working groups…more exams…less sleep…more things to be done.  If these youngsters thought they had worked hard BEFORE medical school, they now discovered a whole new level of expectations and worlds of information to absorb.

At that White Coat event, our little family was still intact.  While the unrelenting and ever tightening boa constrictor grasp of Alzheimer’s was stealing my sister away with each breath, she was there to watch her daughter begin the process of a life long goal.  The pictures from that day show us smiling and looking at the camera.  It was the beginning process of one journey and the ending process of another. 

There is little doubt, as Mariah crossed the stage in that christening event, a loud resounding voice would have exceeded all sounds in the room as she slipped that short white coat over her shoulders.  There wasn’t, of course, and while distracted by all the people in attendance, Nancy was there and in a way understood her daughter had ‘made the cut’ for this varsity team.

Here and now…

Yesterday, the gauntlet had been traversed, and as Mariah crossed the stage, it was not a coat, but an academic hood and the degree of Doctor of Medicine.  Along the way, she received a number of awards and honors, and over this weekend received four more formal accolades for excellence in academic, clinical and leadership roles.

There is a moment, as the initiate is ‘hooded’ and they walk across the stage to receive their diploma, when the room is moderately quiet.  Channeling her mother with all the enthusiasm I could muster I found myself yelling, “Way to go Mm-er!!”

And with that, she as out the door…out the door of a different vehicle…heading to another place as she prepares for yet another life changing event at the end of the month – Marriage to Dan…the young man with whom she has chosen to spend the rest of her life…how could one be more proud??

As the events of the weekend unfolded, I tried to keep her instruction, “No Crying.”  The problem, of course, is that by not keeping my word, I was unable to keep hers.

I looked at her…

- 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 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

Skin in the game...

“What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? 

The taxidermist takes only your skin.”

– Mark Twain

The pants are a bit baggy around the knees, and the seat has gotten pretty worn.  The same thing is happening around the elbows at the sleeves.  The shoulders are in pretty good shape, but the body of the thing seems to have stretched out more than I thought it would.

I am certain the tailor knew what he was doing when he created the outfit.  After all, the specifications were pretty demanding.  The material he chose was of the finest quality…thin, but incredibly resilient.  He made it to breathe in the summer for coolness, and act like a bit of insulation in the chillier months of the year.   The suit’s custom tailoring was excellent and as a bonus it was water resistant!   

I wasn’t really conscious of the all that it took to create this outfit, because, it was in fact a gift from my parents.  Decades passed before I understood anything about it.  You know what they say, once you have been wearing something for a while, you don’t even notice you have it on.  I honestly never gave the thing much thought.

Now because of my age, possibly a little more thoughtfulness, I am paying a lot more attention.  They say until you have ‘skin in the game’…something personal…it is more difficult to get certain things squarely on the radar.

Well, now it is squarely on the radar…and how.

The suit…

The clothing I’m talking about is skin...My skin!  It’s getting older and just doesn’t fit like it used to.  All the make-up, eyeliner, refresher cream has, in the end, done nothing to make this outfit any more resilient.  Okay, I have never worn any of that stuff, but it is clear, like most everything else about the house in which I live, my skin is changing.  

Even the exercise I do has not seemed to make a lot of difference.  As I grow older, the unrelenting effects of time and gravity and a little shrinking from the inside – less muscle mass and a little shortening in height – my skin now sags in a variety of different places.  In the old days, when I ‘got a little bigger’ (read put on weight) or a smaller, that skin hugged my bones as though it were painted on my frame.  This is no longer the case!

Custom build and function…

The thing about this pelt we all wear is that it does so much for us, and often until something happens, we don’t give it the credit it deserves.  When we think about vital organs, usually the brain or heart or lungs come to mind.  We don’t think of skin as the important organ that it is, but in fact, without it, everything else would have a very hard time surviving.

Skin is tough and resilient (think leather).  It controls body temperature, keeps body fluids and electrolytes in balance.  It contains nerve endings sensitive enough to discriminate sand paper from concrete and the softness of a new born baby’s cheek from the petal of a rose!  This dynamic, living carpet, is the first line of defense against disease and infection.  Unless damaged in some way, its ability to protect the body is more than impressive…it is, in fact ‘… the guardian of the castle!’

Aging – Yikes!

But then, like everything else in this finite piece of machinery, it slowly loses its tone and breaks down.  It loses strength and elasticity, becoming thinner, leading to greater risk for damage from sun or falls and cuts.  It doesn’t produce as much oil for lubrication as it used to, so it slowly takes on a dryer feel and paler look.  It’s padding and insulation abilities are reduced, making temperature regulation a little more difficult, and it doesn’t repair itself quite as well as it did in bygone years.

Skin ‘in’ the game?  In fact, as we age, we lose skin function ‘from’ the game!

It can be a little disheartening thinking about these outward appearance changes, particularly when one realizes the same kinds of changes are occurring in all of the rest of our vital organs.  On the other hand, not many of us have lived our lives or been accepted principally for our appearance.  We all appreciate that any outward attractiveness is only ‘skin deep.’  For those who love us, the last thing they would say in describing us is the character of our skin!

So, like everything else, our skin loses its resiliency as the years go by.  It has served us well, and if we take care of it, it will continue to do so.  Aging is kind of like chronic disease.  It can’t be cured – can’t turn back the clock – but rather managed it as the finish line makes its way toward each of us.

While there is no doubt, “The pants are a bit baggy around the knees, and the seat has gotten pretty worn,” I prefer to think of it as a reflection of a life well lived filled with people and experiences that far outweigh a little sagging and looseness around the edges.

When I look in the mirror and give it a little thought, that’s what I think about.

- ted