A Memoriam

Recently, two people I cared about deeply have died. One is an old lover. The other is a fellow blogger. I'll write soon about the old lover, and today the blogger.

Back around 2006, I started this blog. Over the next year, a little blogging family started. It was remarkably diverse. Over time, as social media became a thing, there was less blogging and more Facebooking. One guy who never stopped blogging was Erik Donald France, who continued his wonderful blog Erik's Choice.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that both his Facebook posts and blog had stopped being updated. With a little fear, I ran a search, and my fears were confirmed: Eric had died of cancer in December, 2018.

He was a fascinating guy. I had always assumed that when I was done with having kids in college, and was more free to travel and spend money, that I would meet him in real life. We had emailed back and forth a few times over the years. He was a college professor, and had a seemingly limitless capacity to be interested in things-- literature, history, art, cinema, the military, geography, science. There seemed to be nothing he did not find interesting. He could be writing about the American Civil War and he would tie it to something unlikely. He was as fascinated by 19th century events as he was French New Wave cinema. He wrote about events that had nothing to do with him, and he wrote about events that touched him personally, like the murder of a Chapel Hill bookstore owner, Bob Sheldon, in 1991. His last blog posts and social media posts were just a couple of weeks before his death.

I feel a deep sense of loss and sadness. The world was a more interesting and beautiful place with Eric Donald France in it. He shall be missed. 

There's No Cheating Time

Back in 2007, right before I started taking the prerequisites for the nursing program that I would attend a couple of years later, I got myself some new glasses and contacts.

The optometrist told me something I'd suspected already: that I would need bifocals. I was 46, so I was not very surprised. My parents had gotten them in their forties as well.

Besides the glasses (lines-free progressives-- I paid thirty bucks extra for my vanity), I got contact lenses, which I had worn on and off most of my adult life. The optometrist and I discussed options. One was bifocal contact lenses-- basically, one contact was for long distances, the other for reading. Sounded like a guaranteed headache. The other, she said, was to get regular contact lenses, and buy some over-the-counter reading glasses-- "cheaters." She told me to get the very lowest power that I could read with.

After buying a few different pairs, I ended up with a set of three from Costco that were the second-lowest power they made. These served me well for a long time-- it's been nearly nine years since I purchased them. Over time, one broke and another disappeared. The ones in the foreground of the picture are the survivors of the set.

Over time, I've come to wear my contacts only in social situations. My job has the risk of flying bodily fluids-- specifically, blood-- and so I wanted the eye protection that glasses gave me. And it was not very practical to be taking my cheaters on and off all day. During one of those social situations a few weeks ago-- dinner out with my wife-- I realized that I was really struggling see the menu. It was time to get stronger cheaters.

This morning, I popped my contact lenses in for a distinctly non-social situation-- running my errands on the only day off I have this week. I went to Costco again, and again bought a set of three. My first set had been +1.50. The ones that worked this time were +2.50.

After Twenty Years

I had a horrible time at the beginning of high school. My family had moved from the city to the suburbs and I could not get used to life there. In the city, I'd had friends from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. I'd had friends, period-- I just couldn't seem to mesh with people who seemed obsessed with possessions and status, had known one another since birth-- and were 100% white.

My sophomore year, I decided to make some changes. I lost weight, started running and lifting weights, and I finally started making friends. One of the ones I'm most fond of looking back was Pete V.

Pete and I met in English class. I think he sat in front of me. He was a gregarious and kind Italian-American guy who participated in all kinds of music-related activities. I looked forward to my English class when I could chat with Pete. After a few years of real hell, I was happy to have a guy who I could talk and laugh with.

Over the course of my sophomore year, I started making other friends. But Pete and I made a promise. We had read the O Henry short story "After Twenty Years" in class. The story was about two friends who make a pact to meet 20 years from that day in a spot in a city. We made a deal that we'd do that; I even had the date written down and kept in a safe place, which I continued to do for years.

http://americanliterature.com/author/o-henry/short-story/after-twenty-years

In the next couple of years, he and I made other friends and saw less of one another, since we never had another class together again. We always said hello in the halls whenever we saw one another in our high school of 5,000 students.

We graduated and moved on in life. I went to a small school for a year, left college and worked for a year, then went to a state school. In the late nineties, I went back to school and got a teaching certification. And in 1999, I went to my 20th high school reunion. He was there. I stopped and chatted with him, and wondered if he remembered our pact. It wasn't the exact date, but I'd hoped to run into him there, and was very happy I did. He seemed to be doing well.

A couple of years ago, another high school friend "friended" me on a very popular social media site. Pete must have seen me through that and friended me. Within a couple of days, though, I saw that he had a lot of very conservative political stuff on there. It's no secret that my politics are pretty liberal. I quietly unfriended him; I didn't wish to start anything up with him.

A few weeks ago, through the same friend we'd originally reacquainted ourselves with, he and I started chatting on the social media site. He remembered that he had connected with me, and I explained why. He assured me that even though our politics were very different, he would always respect me and my views. And then he told me some things that stunned me.

His father had been a horrible, raging alcoholic. His household had always been in tumult. School, the activities-- and our friendship-- had been what had carried him through that time. I had no idea; he had needed me as much as I had needed him.

I refriended Pete, and will never again be out of touch with him. Like the characters in "After Twenty Years," our lives took very different paths. In the end, we met up again, not in front of a shuttered store, like the characters in the story, but on the internet. And happily, neither of us were career criminals...

Little Miracles

Recently, my son started his junior year of college. In March, he'll turn 21. My days these days are filled with working overtime in order to pay for that college. A few weeks ago, though, I took a day off to rummage through my attic storage space to thin out stuff that didn't get thinned out during our move to a bigger apartment a few years ago. I came across a reminder of another time and place.

In 1998, I had just finished two things: my elementary education teaching certificate and an ugly custody fight with an ex-girlfriend over my son. Neither were cheap.

My ex and I had fought to a bitter standstill. We shared custody, but as is the custom in the state I live in, I ended up paying child support.

Those days, in early 1998, were some lean times, to put it mildly. I remember having to take a jar full of coins I had from emptying my pockets of change from one of my past jobs, as a server. I took it to one of those coin counters in my grocery store in order to buy groceries for he and I one week. It was all the money I had.

As I searched for a teacher job, I scraped by working as a substitute teacher in the meantime. I also heard from an old friend whom I'd worked in the past. He needed a solid server at his restaurant, which I'd worked at before. Business was booming-- would I be interested?

Hell yeah. I was getting evicted from the apartment my son and I lived in. It wasn't necessarily the worst thing. I'd picked the apartment in a hurry after the woman I was married to asked for a divorce at the worst possible time-- as I was fighting another woman over my kid and getting ready for to  student teach, the final step in my journey to become a teacher.

He and I had toughed it out there. Because of all the one-way streets in the neighborhood, in order to get to our home we had to drive by an open drug market, with gang members out in front of the building hawking their wares. I was glad he was 4 and too young to realize what was going on. At night, there was gunfire. I kept music or the television on so that he wouldn't hear it.

We made the best of our poverty. At the time, you could ride the CTA, Chicago's mass transit system, for $1.50. For twenty five cents more, you could get a transfer, which was good for 3 hours and could also be used for a round-trip. Kids rode free. On some Saturdays, we would board the el at the station about a block from our home, and ride it to the end of the line, O'Hare Airport,  and hang out for an hour or so. This was pre-9/11, so we could go right into the terminal where the planes were. There was a playground in it, which he loved. He also enjoyed going up to the windows and waving to the pilots who were waiting for passengers to embark or disembark. They would unfailingly wave cheerfully back to him. It's funny now because he cites this as one of the funnest things he did as a child. I did it because I knew he loved airplanes and no matter how broke I was, I could always scrounge up $1.75, even if it was by rummaging through my apartment.

One day, right before I started my second job, as a server, we were in the grocery store near our apartment and he suddenly got very excited; "Dad! It's Tommy! Can I get Tommy?"

I knew that it was a character from a children's show-- "Rugrats." It was in a close-out bin for maybe 4 bucks. I had just enough to buy us 8 or 10 dollars worth of groceries, which I could stretch out for a week, and not enough for this inexpensive toy.  He rarely asked for specific toys. Trying to hide my embarrassment, I told him that we couldn't get it. When he asked why, I could not figure out a way to explain it to him. He was upset. I told him that maybe we could get it later. I knew this was unlikely; it was the only one in the bin, in a very busy grocery store. It would undoubtedly be gone by the end of the day. I hoped he would just forget about it.

A day or two later, I started working again for my old friend. I'd worked for years at the restaurant before I went back to school. Old regulars and I were delighted to see one another. People knew that I'd just finished teacher school, and some knew about my custody fight. They were generous with their tips.

I worked as a sub the next day, and after work went to buy groceries. It was a huge relief to have, for the first time in months, money to buy plenty of groceries, and even a couple of little treats for my son and I.

As I walked into the grocery store, I happened to walk by the sale bin. I was in disbelief. There was Tommy. I quickly grabbed him and threw him in my basket, thankful for this unlikely turn of events.

My son was, of course, later surprised and delighted to see Tommy.

As my son got older, he started asking questions about that time and our circumstances. He ultimately began to understand what had happened, and how my poverty was the price I paid in order to keep him in my life. For his part, he remembers this as one of the happiest parts of his childhood. He still remembers those trips to the airport with delight.

Over time, Tommy, toy cars and Lincoln Logs gave way to baseball, Monopoly and video games, but he always had Tommy on a shelf in his room, even after other things of his childhood had gone to younger neighbors or Goodwill. I think that it was a reminder of that time that was improbably happy for him. With our move right after I finished with one more career change,  nursing school, and right before he started college, Tommy finally went into storage.

These days, I'm happy with decisions I made. One was the decision, over 20 years ago, to stay in my son's life, no matter the cost. The other was the decision a few years ago to go to nursing school . I chuckle sometimes thinking that as a consequence, I'm able to spend more annually on his education than I made in a couple of those harsh years.

Pretty soon, Tommy will be going into the Goodwill bin, where he will eventually hopefully help some other young, struggling parent make their kid happy for a couple of bucks. But before that, I had to stop one more time and remember those times, and be thankful for timely little miracles. 

A Boy's Dream

"Yeah, I was in the show. I was in the show for 21 days once - the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains."-- "Crash" Davis, "Bull Durham"

When I was about 7 or 8 years old, around 1968-1969, the baseball bug bit me. My family lived in Albany Park, a very ethnically mixed neighborhood on Chicago's north side. My friends in the neighborhood were a grab bag of ethnicities, nationalities and religions. Until just a few years before, Albany Park was populated mostly by Jewish people, mostly of Russian heritage. As they began the move to the suburbs-- a pattern that has remained to this day in this neighborhood no matter the ethnic groups-- new groups were moving in: baptists from Appalachia, Maronites from Lebanon, Irish, Hungarians, Polish and the first few Hispanic people. You name it, we had it

The one thing we all had in common was baseball. Our own little form of baseball. We played in the alley with a deflated playground ball-- it was the great leveler. The difference between the greatest hitter and the worst was pretty narrow. And speaking of narrow, we played in an alley. Our bases were utility poles, cracks in the concrete and by-the-way, watch out for the dogshit!

By 1971, my family had followed the Great American pattern that was emerging, and had moved to the suburbs for a split-level ranch and better schools. But I still loved baseball. In September of 1971-- specifically, September 11, 1971, I finally went to my first baseball game. It was my beloved Cubs versus the St. Louis Cardinals. 

I remember, to this day, nearly 43 years later, so much about the game. Juan Pizzaro pitched for the Cubs. Joe Torre, who was usually a catcher, was playing third base. Lou Brock, whom the Cubs had traded in 1964 to the Cardinal for pitcher Ernie Broglio, in what is considered to one of the worst and most lopsided trades in baseball history, was playing for the Cardinals. In all, I saw four future Hall of Famers play that day-- Billy Williams and Ron Santo for the Cubs, and Lou Brock and Joe Torre for the Cards. To my lasting regret, another future Hall of Famer, "Mr. Cub," Ernie Banks, was not playing that day; he retired about two weeks later. 

But my most memorable moment came with a player who I greatly admired-- a guy who was never going to make it into the Hall of Fame: Paul Popovich. 

Popovich had been one of the few bright spots in the infamous and heartbreaking end of the 1969 Cubs season. He was nicknamed "Supersub" for his ability to fill in ably at any infield position. He was only a lifetime .233 hitter, but he seemed to have a knack for getting the "clutch" hits-- hits right when they were badly needed. 

Popovich hit 14 home runs over his entire career (mostly with the Cubs) from 1964 to 1975. One of those home runs was that day, in the course of the Cubs' 7-0 victory: it was the one and only grand slam that Popovich hit in his career.

I never got to play little league ball, though I dreamed, as a little boy, of playing in the Bigs and hitting a grand slam. Instead, I grew up, went to college, moved back into the city and became a teacher, and then a nurse, and raised a son who is a baseball fan. We saw many games at Wrigley and he played six years of little league, something I hadn't gotten to do. He even pitched in his league championship his last year. He's 20 now, and in college. He told me a couple of days ago that he considers that pitching in the little league championship when he was in eighth grade to be the greatest memory of his childhood. 

A couple of weeks ago, the great pitcher Greg Maddux was inaugurated into the Baseball Hall of Fame. I saw him pitch many times, and during Maddux' second stint with the Cubs, my son saw him pitch. But for every Greg Maddux, there are hundreds of Paul Popoviches-- journeyman players who are talented and hard-working enough to make it to the major leagues, but who will never make it to the Hall. And for every Paul Popovich, there are 1000 little boys who can only dream of making it to "the show." To me, to see Paul Popovich living his dream-- and mine-- that afternoon in 1971, that will always be my favorite moment I ever witnessed in baseball. Except, of course, seeing my boy pitch in a little league championship.

Lean In

This weekend, my wife, my son and I went up to a reunion that my wife's family has every three years. At some point during the drive back, my son asked me about this blog, pointing out I hadn't written in it in a while.

Truth is that I had been planning for the last couple of weeks to resume posting. I missed it.

One of the big reasons I had slowed to a near stop in the writing was exhaustion. A career change, a move, getting a kid off to college, and then a couple of years of working as much overtime as I could stand-- I was fried most days, and still am. Still, I miss blogging more than I miss the rest.

So, anybody who reads this blog regularly knows, I changed careers. After getting laid off a teaching job that I just loved, I decided to go where the work was-- the healthcare profession. After flirting with the idea of becoming a pharmacist, a friend who was studying to be a nurse (and whom I took prereq classes with) pointed out that even if I went through with the plans to go to pharmacy school-- an unlikely event as it turned out, since there's only one in Chicago-- I'd be done with it around the time my younger child was done with college. The whole point was to be in a position to pay for the lion's share of my kids' college.

I was fortunate to get into the RN program of one of the Chicago City Colleges. Not only did it have a great reputation, it was relatively cheap.

Even so, the Recession started not long after I began the process. And then my wife was laid off her job the month I started nursing school.

She and I had a long discussion over a few glasses of wine one night about what we were going to do. We decided to tough it out and for me to stay in the program.

She worked a series of jobs, after a stint on unemployment, and I continued to work full time at a waitering job. I had to buck up, lean in, and know that I could sleep when I was done with nursing school.

I finished nursing school on my 50th birthday. My wife and kids threw a marvelous party. Most of my closest friends were there, including a surprise guest-- my old friend Viktor Zeitgeist, who flew in from Seattle on a redeye to be there. My mother came in for it as well.

I was fortunate to get a job ridiculously quickly. It was with the biggest dialysis company in the world. I knew next to nothing about dialysis; we'd talked about it probably all of ten minutes of nursing school.

I started training in early August of 2011. I bonded quickly with two guys in the class, Neal and Brent, who, like me, were middle-aged guys who were changing careers.

Brent had a kid in college, and I had one who was going to be there soon. I had a bunch of debts to take care of-- in order for me to finish nursing school, we'd done a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul. I had to take care of that.

In August of 2012, Brent, Neal and I sent one another texts caustically congratulating one another on our one-year anniversary with the company. We'd already grown a little weary of the job. It was a company in chaos. Still, the chaos resulted in a lot of overtime for Brent and I, so we dealt with it.

The next day I got a text from a co-worker about Brent; he was in the hospital. He'd collapsed-- a possible heart attack. I was a little incredulous. He was only 42.

I got ahold of his girlfriend's number. She told me he had collapsed at home. As it turned out, he'd had a brain aneurysm. At her request, Neal and I drove to the hospital to see Brent. We checked him for pupillary response-- we shone a light in his eyes to see if the pupils responded. None. He was intubated, breathing artificially, and his heart was beating, but he was dead.

We went to his funeral a couple of days later. His girlfriend and I have become close friends since then. Shared grief has a way of doing that. Neal eventually took a job at a hospital, but we've stayed in touch as well.

Nearly two years later, I'm still with that company. I've grown wearier of the job. Four managers in 3 years. Still lots of chaos, but still lots of overtime.

So now my son is half way done with college. My daughter will be a senior in high school this year. There will be a year where we have two kids in college. My daughter's birth father will apparently help some, but it's still going to be a strain.

But we've dealt with a lot tougher situations. As I look back at going to nursing school, and how it's worked out, I'm satisfied; the plan worked.

I look forward to the day I can move on to my next nursing job. Most of the people I treat should really not be alive. I'd like to be working with people who are going to recover. But for now, this is what's best for my family. I'll continue to lean in, and finish what I started. 

The Absence

The last few years, my posting in this blog has been sporadic. I plead fatigue.

Back in June of 2006, I had what was the worst week of my life. I had known that I was going to be laid off my job as a sixth grade teacher. It was my dream job; sixth grade in a mostly-Latino blue collar suburb of Chicago. The kids, their parents, my co-workers-- they were awesome. The Principal-- not so much. She took an Ahab-like hatred toward me that was inexplicable. Co-workers mused that I perhaps reminded her of an old boyfriend. As the final day of that job approached, I worried about the future. I knew that it was unlikely that I'd find a teaching job that I loved that much.

Then, it grew worse. I got a call from my parents. My father's doctor was pretty certain that my father had cancer. He was to undergo an operation that would determine this and if he had it (he did, as it turned out), do what could be done to take it out.

As I waited out the end of the job I loved, and my father going under the knife, I received news that was unbelievable. My friend Mark, a guy I've met when I was 22 years old, in college, had been found shot to death in front of his home.

To paraphrase Ken Kesey, who was speaking of the accidental death of his son in an auto accident, I felt like my cells were exploding.

A few days later, my father underwent surgery-- successful, as it turned out-- to remove the tumor in his gut. A few weeks later, an old teaching colleague, from when I was teaching on Chicago's tough West Side, called and asked if I'd teach at the school she was working at-- a program to get young adults who had dropped out of high school back into school and get them a diploma, allowing them to move on with life. I accepted.

This job, while tough, was incredibly therapeutic. It allowed me to work with young adults who were headed toward a bad end to get off that path.

While I worked this job, I considered my long-term future. As much as I loved teaching, I was finding the opportunities becoming more and more limited-- even before the 2008 economic cataclysm. I made the decision to go toward a field where jobs were increasing (even before the ACA)-- the health field. 

Artifacts

This summer, I've been trying to winnow down some of my stuff. As hard as I try to reduce my belongings, they seem to breed when I'm not looking.