Short Circuits (24 page)

I have the envelopes containing the plane ticket stubs from the time I took my parents to Hawaii—Mom had always dreamed of going there—in 1960. I have a petrified snail shell I found while walking along a railroad track in Los Angeles in the 1970s; and a small liqueur glass I stole from the bar at the Istanbul Hilton in 1956.

In my dresser drawer is a pair of sweat-pants with “Margason” stenciled on the seat. They were issued to me in August of 1954 when I entered the NavCads. I don't wear them, of course…their purpose is not to be worn, but to keep me tangibly linked to that part of my past.

I suppose there is a very fine line between “idiosyncrasy” and “psychosis,” and I readily acknowledge I probably do a balancing act between them on this issue. I can never fully explain how important these direct links with the past are to me. They protect me as the ground rushes up toward me; they comfort me. They are part of who I am, and as long as I have them, I have the past, and I am not alone.

* * *

PJS

When I went, in 2000, I think it was, for surgery for a para-hyatal hernia (in which a tear in my diaphragm allowed part of my stomach to move back and forth into my chest cavity), it was my first time in a hospital in more than 30 years. For the occasion, I bought a pair of blue-and-white-vertical-striped pajamas for the occasion. I'd not had, or worn, a pair of pajamas since I was about 10 years old, preferring either just shorts or nothing at all.

I still have them, and wear them every day (well, I do alternate them with a pair I was given a couple of years ago as a gift). The elastic in the pants gave out years ago, and I adjust them with a safety pin. There are places on the arms and elbows so badly worn that I can actually read a newspaper through them. But they are not torn, and so I wear them. Why do I wear them? Because, like so many of my clothes and other personal belongings which have seen better days, I simply cannot consider getting rid of them. They have been a part of my life for so long that to simply discard them when they are still wearable would seem, to me, to be an act of betrayal and abandonment. Would you discard an old friend just because he wasn't as handsome as he once was? Of course not.

I've mentioned before that I have a pair of sweat pants with “Margason” stenciled across the rear, which I was given on the day I received my Navy issued clothing immediately after I'd joined the NavCads in August of 1954. I somewhere have a never-worn, neatly folded tee shirt with my name stenciled across the back on it from that same clothing allotment. And as long as I have them, all I have to do is touch them, hold them, close my eyes, and 55 years vanish. I am a NavCad again and my chest aches with memories of and longing for that time.

And how, you might wonder, do I manage that? Easily. I use selective logic as a buffer against my sworn enemy, reality. (Whether reality considers me its enemy I have no way of knowing, but I rather suspect if it had any thoughts on the matter at all, its reaction would similar to the Mona Lisa's smile.)

If there is one thing I am not…and there are, in fact, a very great number of things I am not…it is practical-as-other-people-regard-practical. I have, as I've explained so often, two existences: the existence of my body and the existence of my mind, and I increasingly prefer the latter.

I greatly admire loyalty, and loyalty is a two-way street. I am intensely loyal to those things and people who are important to me and extremely fortunate in that that loyalty is largely reciprocated. I probably just carry it a bit further than most, to include inanimate objects, which generally do not have much of a say in the matter, and when the time comes when I cannot avoid parting with them, I do so with true regret and a sincere sense of loss, for to lose a part of my past is to…lose a part of my past, and with it a part of myself. When the time comes that I must throw away my blue-and-white pajamas—when they tear or the already too-thin fabric simply gives out through wear—I will part with them, but not willingly, and not without regret. With them will go a direct, physical link to several thousand mornings of coffee, comfort and TV news, and sitting at the computer writing emails and books.

It will be yet another ending, and there have already been far, far too many of those. Maybe I should go out and get a new pair of pajamas. Maybe I should go out and get a new cat.

* * *

TIME IN A JAR

I have an obsession with time, and the more that passes, the stronger the obsession grows.

Have you seen the TV commercial where the little boy captures the wind in a jar to blow out the candles on his grandfather's birthday cake? I relate strongly to that little boy, although instead of keeping the wind in a jar, I keep time. I have carefully punched small holes in the lid so that it can breathe, and I keep it on a shelf just behind my eyes, so that all I need to do is shut them to see everything in it.

It is June 6, 2007 as I write, but June 6, 1956, and June 6, 1943, and June 6, 1981 are all in the jar, somewhere. I may not be able to pick them out individually, but I take comfort in knowing they're all there. And I find—sometimes with a slight sense of dismay—that in some ways many of those now-gone days are even more real to me than today.

The bad thing about keeping time in a jar is that, for all the warmth and comfort it provides, it also includes the bad times; the sadness and sometimes unbearable pain that are part of every life. As a rule I'm pretty good at ignoring those bits of time, though there are occasions when an innocent memory will trigger something I do not want to relive, and I am trapped until I can force myself to look away and hurriedly put the jar back on the shelf.

But I'm generally pretty good at focusing on the areas within the jar where love and happiness are most heavily concentrated. And I continually thank my mother and father, now long dead but still alive in my heart and mind, for the gift of life, with all its flaws.

The jar's glass, like a very old window pane, also has flaws which can distort even the happiest of glimpses into the past with the ache of longing and the sense of loss, for no matter how I might wish otherwise, time is inside the jar, and I am on the outside, looking in.

I consider myself very lucky for having, since I was very young, the foresight to be a pack rat. Whereas squirrels collect and hide nuts, I've always collected and carefully gathered and put away my own words. One of the nicest things about written words is that they are not subject to the vagaries of time. Once set down on paper or entered into a computer, they have no expiration date, and can theoretically last as long as there are people to read them. Maybe part of me feels that somehow, some necromantic Dr. Frankenstein can one day bring me back to life by putting all my words back together. I'd like that, I think.

My navy letters bring me considerable comfort because each time I read them, I am transported to a time and a world still incredibly real to me. It's right there…right
there
…separated only by the thick glass of the jar in which they're kept. I can, any time I wish, relive the happiest days of my Navy experience…the
Ticonderoga
's last stop at Cannes before heading back for the United States…and it is only the intervening glass that separates me from them. And even though revisiting those days comes with a sometimes overpowering sense of loss and longing, I consider it to be worth the price.

My only concern with being so obsessed with preserving the past is that, in doing so, I may well inadvertently neglect the present. (The future I prefer to leave as a series of unopened gifts, each one bearing a small tag which says: “With Love from Mom and Dad.”)

* * *

THE PITY POOL

As I'm sure you probably have noticed by now, I am infinitely fascinated by me, partly because of my self-perceived isolation from the rest of the world and partly because my thoughts, experiences, and reactions are the only ones of which I can feel fairly confident.

Somewhere, in the dark forest of every human mind, there is a pity pool where the wild regrets and yearnings for lost things come to renew themselves when they suspect we may be forgetting about them. The nice thing about the pity pool is that we are comforted by the thought that nothing that happens to us is our fault or our responsibility…that all our woes are visited upon us by anyone and anything other than ourselves. And there is a certain nobility in the self-assurance that we are terribly brave to face such adversity alone. (“Alone” is a key word in all contemplation of the pity pool.)

My personal pity pool is actually more of a lake, the full extent of which is hidden by thick foliage of reality along the shore. But I while I really do tend to avoid it, I catch an occasional glimpse every now and then and, in the heat of emotion, have been known to take a dip in its murky waters.

My trips to the pity pool are most frequently occasioned by reminders of what I could once do…so casually and without giving it a single thought…that I can no longer do. (Yesterday I found it necessary to use a straw to empty a half-pint carton of milk since I was unable to tilt my head back far enough to drink it normally.) These little reminders of the difference between who I was until six years ago and who I am now are hard to take. We are two different people. Totally different, and yet still the same. I can't fully grasp it, and quite probably never will.

And because there are so many reminders, the temptation to take a dip in the pity pool is irritatingly frequent. Some friends meet every Friday evening for drinks. I know I would be welcome to join them, but I do not: it's too close to the pity pool. For years, I had a routine of having two Manhattans between getting home from work and dinner. I truly enjoyed them. But now any alcohol burns my mouth. I don't even use mouthwash that contains alcohol. Occasionally, when out for dinner, I will have a Kaluha and cream…heavy on the cream, light on the Kaluha. It still burns, but I do it. (Did I mention the nobility of bravery?)

And one reminder triggers a domino-effect of others. Carbonated beverages of any kind also burn, but in a different, hard-to-explain way, as do things like orange juice, lemonade, or anything citrus based. When I was at Mayo and took all my nourishment through a stomach tube, I used to literally dream of chug-a-lugging a tall glass of orange juice, or a big mug of root beer. But when I was finally able to try, I found the carbonation of the root beer and the acidity of the orange juice limited me to a few small sips at a time. And a flashing neon arrow over the words “This Way to the Pity Pool” comes on in my mind.

Why I'm laying all these things out here now is not, I assure you, a bid for sympathy: far too many people have had it much, much rougher than I, and I realize it and am embarrassingly grateful that I have had it so relatively easy compared to others. No, I do it in the hopes that you might do what I never did before the problem arose…take a moment at least once every hour to realize just how very lucky you are.

And I excuse myself for this Rubenes-esque self portrait of “Roger at the Pity Pool” on the grounds that none of us is fully aware or appreciative of what we have until we no longer have it, and by then it is too late.

An occasional dip in our own private pity pool is perfectly normal, and probably even healthy. The key lies in not staying too long before getting out, drying ourselves off, and getting on with our lives.

* * *

THE GLASS HALF FULL

There's a line from the old movie
The Man Who Came to Dinner
that never ceases to delight me. “At the risk of being swept away in mountainous waves of self-pity, how are you?”

While I never complain to others about my problems…no, never!…I must admit to an occasional brisk dip into the “poor, poor me” pool. It can be refreshing and it never fails to set my perspectives back in focus.

On September 13, 2002, I severely bit my tongue while asleep. A few weeks thereafter I began having a slight difficulty in swallowing. It was as if the throat, normally like a greased tube down which the food moves smoothly, was developing dry spots which slowed bits of food on the way down. After a few weeks of this, I went to the doctor who, finding nothing, sent me to an EENT.

I'll spare you the not particularly interesting medical details of the next couple of months other than to say that the EENT to whom I went assured me that while an MRI did show something deep inside the base of the tongue, the one thing I did not have to fear was cancer, since whatever I was experiencing did not present any of the symptoms. Puzzled, we decided to wait to see what might happen.

Finally, I had a biopsy and the diagnosis was…surprise…cancer of the tongue. I immediately hied myself to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, where I embarked upon seven weeks of radiation treatments…35 in all…and three industrial-strength chemotherapy sessions. At the end of the seven weeks, they proclaimed the cancer gone, but told me to come back in three weeks to have my lymph glands removed for testing. All was well, but having removed them, they could not be replaced.

Anyway, to make a very long story mercifully short, we move forward nearly eight years to today.

In case you might be curious about what life is like eight years out, (and never think for one instant that I am not eternally, deeply, sincerely grateful that I am here to tell the tale, or that I do not fully realize that I have absolutely no right to complain), let's do a little objective place-switching for a moment.

Because the radiation made eating normally impossible during treatment, you had to be fed by a stomach tube for seven months. Because you did not need to use your mouth other than to talk, the effects of the radiation combined with the contraction of muscles cut during the removal of your lymph glands, resulted in your jaw pretty effectively atrophying to the point where, after nearly four years you still cannot open it wide enough to eat a sandwich. Radiation and chemotherapy saved your life, but not without physical changes.

What kind of changes, you ask? Well, you can't whistle, for one thing. You can't scoop your tongue around between your teeth and cheek to remove food particles. You can't lift your head high enough to drain a glass of water or drink a can of pop. You can't turn your head more than 20 degrees in either direction. You can't stick your tongue out far enough to lick your lips.