This is Where I’ve Been

  Week Six: I Want My Dog to Live Longer (The Greatest Wish) I wish I was the king of rock and roll I wish I was cool and in the know and I wish I’d wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” I’d like to see my late mother again I’d like to stop poverty, save this world from hunger But the greatest wish, oh, I wish to come true I want my dog to live longer --Curtis Salgado & Alan Hager,  I Want My Dog to Live Longer (The Greatest Wish), from Rough Cut On Christmas Day 2021 while we were in Jacobus, PA to celebrate the holiday with our son’s family, I received a phone call from someone at Pet Suites in Greensboro, NC where our dog Leon was boarded. She asked me if Leon had a history of seizures. I told her that he did not.  He does now. Canine epilepsy affects less than one percent of dogs. It affects 100% of ours. Much is known about canine epilepsy. Much can be done preemptively, but there is no cure. I call it his “demon”. Apparently there are two types of seizures in dogs: genera...

  Week Five: Oh Very Young  Oh very young, what will you leave us this time? You’re only dancing on this earth for a short while. – Cat Stevens , Oh Very Young, from Buddha and the Chocolate Box I met Joyce Kahiro at Overlea High School where I worked. Joyce was easy to spot despite her short stature. She was the only student granted permission to wear a hat in the building. The reasons why students could not wear hats did not apply to Joyce. She wasn’t partially hiding her identity. She wasn’t wearing gang colors. She wasn’t just being cool. The reason Joyce was allowed to wear her hat didn’t apply to anyone else.  As a young teenager Joyce and her mother came from Kenya to visit Joyce’s sisters who were living in the United States. Soon after arriving, Joyce experienced severe headaches. After a brain cancer diagnosis and enduring multiple surgeries, Joyce never returned home. I cannot remember the first time we met, but I can vividly remember the many, many conversa...

  Week Four: Yes, I am a Pirate Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late The cannons don’t thunder, there’s nothing to plunder I’m an over-forty victim of fate Arriving too late, arriving too late… —Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Forty, from the album A1A Life is timing—so they say—like chancing upon a seashell or meeting the pirate that you only imagined. I have examples of both, and I know first-hand the good fortune of finding treasure in the sea. For any number of years I heard that Sanibel Island, Florida is where people go to find seashells. After the first ten minutes on the beach, I saw for myself that the reputation was well earned, and after three days and literally hundreds of shells later, I see the appeal. There is something about a seashell—something beautiful, something quite magical. Perhaps the beauty is in the symmetry or the coloring, but I suspect that most of the appeal—especially on Sanibel where hundreds of shell-seekers compete—is wrapped somehow in ...

  Week Three: Couldn’t Stand the Weather  Like a train that stops at every station, We all deal with trials and tribulations. Fear hangs the fellow that ties up his years. Entangled in yellow and cries all his tears. --Stevie Ray Vaughn, Couldn’t Stand the Weather , from Couldn’t Stand the Weather I sometimes think that for the most part people think in metaphors but express themselves in similes. It’s easier than explaining, so concepts like trains stopping along a lifetime of tracks so the passengers can deal with “trials and tribulations” is more conveniently expressed as a simile. Life is like a train… Not so with “entangled in yellow,” or even the personification of fear, but I for one, think I understand. Actually what I understand is that the “fellow” hangs himself because of fear, and the “yellow” part will remain a mystery in the sense that I can’t explain the word choice. The entanglement I get. Here’s the best and absolutely worst example I can muster: the ineffable...