Thanksgiving

Lynne and I watched The Fantasticks the other night. The movie starred Joel Grey and a cast of unknowns. She didn’t care for it. I did.

About 40 years ago, when I applied for entrance to Goodman School of Drama in Chicago, I had to perform a soliloquy and sing a song, solo. For the soliloquy I chose the St. Crispen’s Day Speech from Henry V. As tough as I think I am, I still choke up every time I read or hear that speech. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers….

I sang two songs. Not because I’m a good singer or because I enjoy singing. I sang two songs because I’m a terrible singer and I hate singing. I figured singing two songs terribly might gain me some points for courage. I guess they did, because I was admitted to Goodman.

The songs I chose for my audition were On the Good Ship Lollipop, made famous by Shirley Temple; and Try to Remember¸ from The Fantasticks. I chose the first because it didn’t require much in the way of vocal range. I chose the second because it was so mushy and popular (this was, after all, 1967) that it could hardly be sung to ill effect.

I also loved the song. I still do.

I’m thankful I’ve been given the opportunity to remember, to reflect, as I have since my illness was diagnosed. That’s what I’m truly thankful for on this Thanksgiving. The time I’ve been given.

I know I have a list of blessings too long to count, but this opportunity to look back, to remember, is an immense gift in that it enables me to make some sense of a life that was, in truth, not very well lived. I’m thankful for that.

I complain. I piss and moan, as my father would have said. And some days it’s justified. But the value of each day I have – to reflect, to feel joy or sadness or pissy or whatever – just can’t be overstated.

Of course, I’m thankful for Lynne’s love. For my mother’s love. For the presence in my life of my brothers and my two sons and their wives and my truly beautiful grandchildren. I'm grateful for friends who care, and there are more than I deserve. And I'm grateful and all my other blessings.

But this time I've been given is the real blessing. Because the time is what affords me the opportunity to remember, to express my love as best I can, to give thanks, to take what steps I can to leave something of value behind.

So I’m grateful.

Tired

I’m tired today. Not because I did anything worth speaking of. Not because of a lack sleep or lack of rest. I’m tired because of cancer.

I’d like to be positive today. To be cheerful and upbeat. I know it must be trying for Lynne and for everybody who comes in contact with me to deal with a crank. A grouch. A tired, old man.
But that’s the way I feel. Cranky. Grouchy. Tired.

I have been able to write for a couple of hours so that’s not bad. But it hurts to walk from my room to the kitchen. I don’t have enough energy to bathe. It is difficult to sit upright. I’ve spent most of the day in bed and once again my bed is calling me, seducing me to lie down and rest.

I don’t want to spend all my time in bed. It’s no way to live. I take meds to give me energy and they don’t. I wonder, what would I do, what could I do if I were truly poor and had to do physical work of some sort to care for my wife and me?

Oh, well. At least that’s a blessing. It just doesn’t seem like much right now because I’m so damned tired.

Mom

I can’t always remember what I’ve written. I know that forgetfulness comes with age, that it’s just natural part of life. It also has something to do with the medicines I take.

Anyway, I don’t know if I’ve already written here that I talk to my mom on the phone every day at 6 p.m. If you already know that, you’ll just have to excuse me.

My mom is a pistol. Though she’s 93, she drives herself to mass each morning, then goes to the grocery store or runs other errands. When she comes home, she works on and usually finishes the New York Times crossword puzzle. In the afternoon she gardens, washes clothes, cooks and does other chores.

A few weeks ago, she, this 93-year-old woman dug a small post hole, mixed a bag of concrete, and reset a tipped-over clothesline post in her back yard. "Mom! Why didn’t you hire someone?" I asked.

"Ah, hell. It was a small enough job," she answered. "Why should I waste the money."

Yeah, she’s a pistol.

I love talking with her, though it’s a chore. She’s almost as deaf as the clothesline post she put up in her yard. I spend half my time with her hollering, repeating the same things like a parrot until she understands.

I do the "Times" crossword puzzle every day, just as she does. Then, when we’re stumped, we compare notes on the phone. The puzzles are all edited by Will Shortz, a celebrity who’s on public radio every Sunday morning. One day last week Shortz asked puzzle solvers to identify the man who said, "Everything in life is luck"?

The answer was "Donald Trump."

"What’s the answer to that question about luck?" my mother wanted to know.

"Donald Trump," I said. I had cheated and found the answer on line.

"Donald Duck?" my mother hollered. "What do you mean?"

"Trump, mom. Donald Trump!"

"What the hell does Donald Duck have to do with it! That’s the silliest damn thing I ever heard." My mother didn’t always curse like that. It’s a part of her getting older, just like my forgetfulness is part of my aging.

Finally, I got her to understand it was Trump not Duck who made the crack about luck.
"I swear," my mom said. "No wonder Will Shortz has to wear a disguise in public. I’d like to punch him in the nose."

No wonder I look forward to talking to my mother every day. No wonder that’s the one appointment I have every day I never seem to forget.

Cool

The weather is cool now. The temperature this morning when I woke was 51 degrees, but with the wind out of the northeast at about 5 mph, it felt cooler.

When I went outside to pick up the local paper and the New York Times, I wore only a pair of slacks and a tee-shirt. By the time I’d walked the thirty or so feet to where the newspapers lay, I was chilled, shivering a bit. This doesn’t happen very often here in South Florida. It’s a wonderful change for those of us who live in heat so many months of the year.

When I talked to my mother on the telephone last night, she said she was getting ready for the cold weather. She made it sound as if a blizzard was headed her way and that she had to get the livestock into the barn before the cattle froze solid where they stood. What she meant, I knew, was that she had to put on a pair of the thick, woolen socks my old man used to wear when his feet were cold and throw an extra blanket on her bed.

Anyway, I told my mom I thought the change in weather was great. "Humph," she said. "I had enough of this in Chicago." I remembered, then, waking in the morning to find the milk left by our back door frozen so the cream – solid – pushed up and out of the bottle like magic, holding on its apex the cardboard bottle cap. I remembered walking to school through heaps of city-gray snow, shivering as an icicle built over my upper lip. I remembered hopping out of bed very early one morning to sit on a towel atop the steam-heat radiator under my bedroom window, watching the snow fall, wondering if I could figure out a way to avoid walking to school.

I knew what my mother meant, then. "But it is nice for a change, because we know it won’t last."
"I guess so," my mother said. But I knew she didn’t mean it.

She isn’t having it so easy these days. Her husband dead now for more than a decade. Her brothers both dead and her cousins as well. The retired teacher across the street, good for a laugh and companionship at dinner, died two years ago. And that’s not all.

My older brother sick, in a wheelchair. Me – her favorite, of course – is sick with terminal cancer and my younger brother ailing as well. She’s worried about us and about the few investments she has, the ones that pay for her food. She worries about her own health, too, after all, she was born more than 90 years ago.

I can see why she wants it warm. But still, for me at least, it’s a welcome change.

The Kids

People who know me well, and there are several, know my story and know why I was not involved in my two sons’ lives as they were growing up.

I wanted to be, I truly did. But I simply wasn’t able to do or be what I could and should have been. It is the greatest regret of my life.

The boys – Dylan and Eamon – are men now, both married, and each with one child. My elder son, Dylan, and Mickie, his wife, have a beautiful daughter, Chloe. Eamon and his wife, Jennifer, have a marvelous little boy, Aidyn.

Over the last several months, my sons and their wives have sent me two hundred pictures, maybe more as attachments to e-mails. There are pictures of birthday parties, of visits to the zoo in Denver, of Aidyn wearing a leather jacket and of Chloe wearing a Barack Obama sweatshirt at an election rally. How great is that!

There are pictures of Aidyn and Chloe together and pictures of the kids with my sons. There are pictures that make me laugh aloud and some that make me want to weep for joy and for sadness at missed opportunities.

God, I feel so fortunate to have these boys and their wives and children in my life right now, no matter how peripherally, no matter how impermanent the contact is.

I print the pictures out, pictures of the two kids, my two grandchildren, and Lynne buys frames and I hang them, as many as I can, on a wall where I see them as I work. Chloe and Aidyn. A dozen pictures so far, and more to come, I’m sure.

I used to think the grandparents I knew were saps. No kid, I knew, could be as beautiful, as smart, as perfectly charming, as the grandchildren these idiots talked about. Now I know I was right. Oh, their grandchildren were okay, I’ll give them that. They were cute, maybe. And perhaps they weren’t quite as slow as they appeared in the pictures these proud grandparents showed me. Maybe someday they’d look more presentable.

But if you want to see a truly beautiful child, or a baby as smart as a little engineer, drop in my room and look at the wall over my desk. Those kids, that Chloe and that Aidyn, they’re really something to see. Trust me. They’re worth looking at.

Looking at their pictures, I sometimes forget what's going on, that tomorrow I have to get chemo, or that I may never see them or get to hug them. I forget cancer and think only good things, for a while. And that's wonderful.

Good Day

It’s amazing. Some days are bad. Very bad. And then, just when I start to think all my days are going to be bad, I have a day that’s so good it can hardly be believed.

Today is a day like that. Good, I mean. Wednesday, two days ago, was one of the bad ones.

On Wednesday, I had chemo. I was only able to walk about 50 yards along the sidewalk leading from the hospital’s front door to the parking lot before I had to sit down and rest. I was nauseous on the drive home, so much so that I pulled off the road to puke. I spent the rest of the day in bed except for a few minutes I devoted to working on that day’s entry for this blog.

Yesterday was so-so. But that’s okay because it turned out to be just a transition.

Today’s been great. I woke up feeling good. No nausea. I had some energy. The drive to the VA hospital was pleasant: traffic was light, it was cool, the sun was just coming up. The crossword puzzle I brought with me was not quite impenetrable and I was called on time for my appointment.

Linda Vesley, my therapist, was, as always, wonderful and understanding. I enjoy the time I spend with her. She helps, she's funny and smart, and great company. The stuff we talked about was sobering, but the session was pleasant.

The drive home was good. The Symphony Orchestra of Ireland was on the radio playing Mozart. I didn’t have to vomit.

Now I'm up from my nap. I’m going to write a bit and I expect the writing to go well. I’ll read and enjoy what I read. There won’t be any bills in the mail or, if there are, I won’t open them. I expect to eat something unhealthy but enjoyable and then waste my time watching a movie. Lynne and I will not argue about money or anything else.

I’m not going to complain, today, or try not to, because this is one of those rare days when I feel happy to be alive.

Many people who know me well believe I’m a curmudgeon, a grouch, a cynic.

And I am, kind of. Or maybe the problem is that days like this don't come along all that often when cancer's in the picture.

Anyway, I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

The Bear

The chemotherapy waiting room was crowded this morning, the most crowded I’ve ever seen it. Every chair was occupied, there were three men in wheelchairs, and three more leaning against a wall in the hallway until a volunteer hauled chairs from some other room.

Later, one of the nurses explained that the lab held up some blood work which meant the pharmacy couldn’t mix the chemicals on time and then some new patients showed up. The bottom line was that the whole system was screwed up.

I bring a crossword puzzle with me every time I come to the hospital, one of the old Sunday puzzles I have in a collection put out by the New York Times. I’m usually able to keep myself occupied long enough to get through the visit without getting bored. Today was different. The puzzle was just too hard. I had to quit.

So I was sitting there looking around when I noticed a guy sitting across from me. For a moment, I couldn’t figure why he caught my attention and then I realized that he looked just like my old man, dead now for more than a decade. Really. This man looked enough like my father to be his twin, enough like my dad to give me a momentary chill.

My dad was quite a guy. I think, sometimes, of how he’d have managed cancer. He’d have faced it the same way he faced everything, with his fists cocked, ready to punch back, but enjoying the fight. We called him "The Bear" not because of his looks but, rather, because of his willingness to scrap.

That’s the way he was.

I’m adopted, so I’m not physically like my dad. He was a longshoreman, much like the working stiffs in "On the Waterfront." He had arms as big as some men’s legs and hard as tree trunks. I’m tall and skinny and a writer.

He was tough enough to start with nothing, retire at 55, travel the world with my mother, raise three sons – a doctor, a lawyer and me – and overcome two heart attacks with enough steam left over to die doing yard work.

I think he was cynical as I am. He expected trouble in his life and was rarely disappointed. But his cynicism gave him a sense of humor that can only be described as a little dark. Like mine.

Not long before my dad’s death, he and my mother were watching television when a report was aired about Pope John Paul II, who himself wasn’t in real good shape.

"It’s easy to tell he’s not married," my dad – a lifelong and reverent Catholic said.

"How that?" my mom asked.

"If he was married, his wife wouldn’t let him out of the house looking like that."

Now, that’s funny.

He also told us all to make sure we didn’t do anything extraordinary to keep him alive when he was at the end of his life. We agreed. Then he said, "But make damn sure you don’t let me go even one minute earlier than I’m supposed to go."

I remembered those two things he said while I was waiting for my chemo. I smiled. And I also gained some strength. Like my old man, I’m ready to go, but I don’t want to be early for the departure.

Dinner at 8

Lynne and I rent movies from an outfit called Netflix. It’s great. I order the movies – in DVD format – online. They’re delivered within a couple of days. We watch, then ship them back in prepaid envelopes. There’s no hassle at all.

The movie selection Netflix offers is fantastic. Last night, for instance, we watched "Dinner at 8," the comedy that hit movie screens in 1933, smack-dab in the middle of the depression. The cast included Marie Dressler, John and Lionel Barrymore, and Jean Harlow.

Much of the acting is dated. There are a lot of contrived poses, larger than life gestures, and exaggerated facial expressions. Still and all, it’s a wonderful movie.

The story centers around a couple’s plans to host a fancy dinner party for a visiting British Lord and Lady. Invited guests include an aging actress (Dressler), an alcoholic actor (John Barrymore), and Harlow as wanna-be socialite from the wrong side of the tracks. Nothing goes right, of course, hence the laughs. Dressler is outrageous.

What really makes the movie great, though, is its topicality. The rich have fallen on hard times, work is hard to get, the market is in the tank and it’s impossible to borrow. At the same time, the rich, the well-off, continue living as if there’s no such thing as a charge for services rendered.

In the film, Oliver Jordan (Lionel Barrymore) is the head of a bankrupt shipping company. Despite a heart condition and the threatened takeover of his company by a louse played by Wallace Beery, Oliver is able to don a tux and to entertain his guests at a party he can’t afford. His daughter, oblivious to dad’s needs, worries only about breaking up with her boyfriend so she can carry on with the alcoholic actor. His wife has all her focus on the guest list and the aspic centerpiece.

Sound familiar? It should. All the characters in Reagan's selfish America – made even more toxic by the worst president in the country’s history – were represented in this movie filmed 75 years ago, at the time of the nation’s last economic nightmare.

The movie had a happy ending – except for everybody but the actor who killed himself. Even his wasn’t too bad, since he had time after he turned on the gas to pose himself under a spotlight. Oliver didn’t die of a heart attack. The company was saved. Beery was thwarted. The wayward daughter went back to her boyfriend. All was well.

Of course, that’s a movie. Here’s hoping things work out as well in the real world.

In any event, watching Marie Dressler play Carlotta Vance took me out of myself, and that was welcome. At the movie’s end, Harlow’s character, an empty-headed beauty, tells Vance she’s reading a book that predicts that machines will soon replace working men and women. After a classic double take at the news that the blonde can read a book, Dressler looks her up and down and tells her that she’s sure that Harlow had no reason to fear being replaced by a machine. It’s worth watching the movie just for this one scene.

Mark

I had breakfast with one of my favorite people yesterday morning. Mark and I have been friends for three decades. It’s a comfortable friendship. We meet every few weeks to catch up on the news, talk about our families, about politics and movies and books, and share our ideas. We enjoy the time we spend in each other’s company.

Like all friendships, ours has been transformed over the years, shaped and reshaped by our changing circumstances. At first, he was my boss, but even then we recognized shared ideas and ideals and that made us close. He’s been a mentor and a cheerleader. He was best man when Lynne and I got married. He stayed my friend even when I disappointed him. He has protected and aided me in a hundred different ways since I’ve been diagnosed.

During these years, we’ve shared the joy we find in writing. Mark is a successful businessman. He’s made a more-than-comfortable living as a business writer and a ton of money creating direct marketing copy. But he’s happiest, I know, when he writes his poetry and short fiction.
And he’s good. He’s one of the best writers I’ve ever read. Some of his lines are good enough to make my breath hurt. And I let him know that as often as I can. But I also tell him (and so does Lynne, who has edited much of his work) when he’s off target.

And he lets me know what he thinks of my work – good and bad. And in that, he has made me a better writer than I ever thought I could be. In fact, Mark edited the early chapters of my book about the Sea Venture, chopping out what I later knew was a major flaw.

It was Mark, too, who first encouraged me to write a memoir. He told me it was a worthy project and I believed him. So I wrote my story and he read it and said it’s not bad.

And now he’s encouraged me to write a novel.

I’ve had one inside me for a while and now seems to be as good a time as ever to put it on paper. I can write without worrying about hurting anybody’s feelings and without worrying about selling the book because, hey, I’ll be gone, right? There’s no real risk of failure.

That’s freeing.

Anyway, when we walked to our cars after breakfast yesterday, I gave him the first chapter to read. Then I started to drive away while he sat in his car for a moment. I didn’t know it, but he was looking at the first page of the manuscript. He drives faster than I do, so he was able to catch up with me about a block away, his lights flashing and horn blaring.

"I read the first paragraph," he hollered when he pulled up next to me and rolled his window down. "I read the first paragraph and it’s outrageous!"

I smiled. He doesn’t throw praise around just to hear his own voice.

"Keep it up!" he said.

So now I have a new project, just when I needed one. Who wouldn’t want Mark for a friend? I hope he knows how much his friendship means to me.

Obama

Yesterday was quite a day.

I had chemo in the morning and felt sick all day, as usual. But that was okay.

I forced myself to stay up as late as I could watching the election results. As states were declared, some for Obama, some for McCain, I thought back. I remembered how, when I was a boy in Chicago, the only Afro-American I ever saw in my neighborhood was a woman – I never knew her name – who did chores for the families on our street. She baby sat for my brothers and me once, that’s all I recall.

When we moved to Clearwater in 1958, the beach was segregated, as were the schools. Blacks would often step off the sidewalk and stand in the street as whites walked by. My only contact with a black man was when I worked in a restaurant, first as a dishwasher, later as a line server. My boss was a 20-year-old with moves as graceful as a dancer. I drove him home after work one day. He refused to sit in the front seat with me, saying he’d better sit in the back. Not for his sake, but for mine. "It’s too dangerous in my neighborhood if people think we’re friends," he said.

During my one year of public school, I saw no people of color other than a janitor. When I went to Catholic high school in Tampa, I was surrounded by young men whose families fled Cuba during the revolution. They were all wealthy, so they had little to do with me. There were no blacks at all.

In the service, things were different and by the time I went to college things had changed, a bit, at least in Chicago. I was a politically active hippy. I found time to Still, help register African-American voters on Chicago’s South Side and marched with Jesse Jackson when he was an unknown. I remember the smell of tear gas and remember reading about the riots in Selma and Montgomery. I never thought I’d see the day when a black man would be elected president of the United States.

So that's why yesterday was quite a day.

As a consequence, I can understand Michelle Obama’s words when she said she was proud of the United States for the first time in her life. She could have said it better, but, hey, I can understand. I’ve never been more proud to be an American than I am today.

And, man, am I glad the cancer let me live long enough to hear Obama’s speech.

The Vote

I’ve just passed a milestone in my experience facing terminal cancer, one of the three goals I gave myself when I was first diagnosed.

I think I’ve mentioned that I want to live long enough to see the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame win another national championship and to watch the hapless Cubbies play in a World Series.

While the football season isn’t over, the Irish have already lost three games. That means they’re out of the hunt.

The Cubs were eliminated from the playoffs in the first round. So, as I have my entire life as a Cub fan, I just have to wait ‘til next year.

My other goal was to vote in one more presidential election before I shuffle off to someplace where attack ads are not allowed. (They won’t be in heaven, I figure, and as far as hell is concerned, even Beelzebub must be tired of them by now.) Anyway, I mailed in my absentee ballot a couple of days ago. So I’ve accomplished that one.

I promised myself I’d stay away from politics in this blog. Not because it isn’t important but because I have a tendency to rant. That comes, I know, from being the son and grandson of Irish political junkies, union guys and organizers who found their survival linked to politics and politicians. My Grandfather, Mike, and my dad, Patrick, both saw "No Irish Need Apply" signs and both, with the help of political muscle, fought to work and ultimately became homeowners able to send their kids to college. No surprise, then, that when I was a kid, we breathed politics. We didn’t have a television then, so I didn’t know who Howdy Doodie was but I knew about FDR and Ike and Keefauver and Mayor Daley and about Eamon DeValera and Michael Collins and the hard men of Ireland, too.

So, poliltics were important in my house and are still. But I’m not going to say who got my vote.

Suffice it to say I figure this is the most important election of my lifetime. It’s also the first time I’ve really been excited about casting a vote since 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was killed and I marched aginst the Vietnam War on the streets of Chicago. That should give you a hint.

I’m going in for chemo again tomorrow. I know I’ll be ready to puke by the time I leave the hospital. I’ll also be tired. But I’m going to sleep all day and mainline compazine if I have to so I can stay awake and watch the election returns tomorrow night. My 93-year-old mother – who curses like drunken mariner when she talks about the current political scene – says she’ll stay up all night if she has to, praying the right man wins. If she can do it, so can I.

That’s how important this is, I believe. And I’m thankful I had the chance to cast one more vote. And if things go the way I hope, I'll hang on for Inauguration Day.