Road Trip 2012

The rolling hills around Jasper, Georgia, where we enjoyed spending time with our good friends the Smiths,  grew into mountains as we travelled toward Tennessee and then Kentucky for our long awaited 2012 road trip which had been postponed by my surgery and then a few other things which cropped up.  We are travelling in July which may not be the perfect month for a lot of outdoor hiking, but sometimes, we take what we can get!  The roadsides were alive with wild flowers: Queen Anne's Lace, chicory, and ox-eyed daisies.  The trees have that rich color and full foliage that just shouts "Summer!"

Crossing the Kentucky state line, we did not have far to go to our destination:  Cumberland Falls State Resort  Park where we had a reservation for the night at the DuPont Lodge.   As we watched the thermometer rise to 98 we noticed the signs of drought as we passed through areas where grass had turned brown, plants were wilting, and trees were less vivid.

The DuPont Lodge was a delight.  Constructed of stone, the lobby had a huge fireplace, open beams, and lots of rustic wood.  Our room was comfortable with lots of windows shaded by large awnings.  The air conditioning was definitely appreciated!

We waited until after five before taking a hike through the woods to the falls.  The path was fairly steep and not something we plan to do again.  We found that we could have driven to a parking area close to the visitor's center.  Coming back, we took the road.  Since we had dutifully communed with nature going, we felt we could commune with asphalt on the return trip.

The falls were lovely in the late afternoon, roaring and falling 67 feet in the Cumberland River.  We could feel the mist from the falls all way up to the overlook.

After our hike back to the lobby, we collapsed onto the comfortable sofa for a few minutes before going to the lower level for supper.  We had a good table right by a floor to ceiling window overlooking the bird feeders and the river in the distance.  We enjoyed watching the goldfinches, tufted titmouses, doves, Carolina chickadees, and the chipping sparrows.  All the kids in the restaurant got excited about the two raccoons which were scavenging under the feeders.

We topped our soup and salad supper off with a shared slice of Derby pie with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream.  We felt we had earned it from our almost two miles of demanding hiking.

Neither of us had any desire for more entertainment for the day!  Tomorrow we continue our Kentucky adventure and pray for rain!

In Memory of the Casualties of War: Memorial Day

Memorial Day weekend has rolled around again with a record number of Americans hitting the highways headed to beaches and other get away places.  The three day weekend has become a symbol of the beginning of summer ever since the commemoration day was changed in 1968 to create a long weekend.  Unfortunately, somewhere, somehow, the significance of this day has been lost.  Now there is some sort of foggy understanding that it is a patriotic time to honor all our veterans, eat lots of barbecue, and get our first good sunburn of the season.

Time was when this day was not celebrated in this part of the country.  This was "Yankee Memorial Day" not to be confused with "Decoration Day" when families visited cemeteries, cleaned grave sites, and put out flowers to commemorate the Southern war dead.  That has changed down through the years and I think the change was good.  The War has been over now for nearly 150 years.  It is time for it to be over.

Never has a soldier served in combat without being a casualty of sorts.  Some come home missing limbs; others come home irrevocably changed in mind and spirit.  But the ones we commemorate now are those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, giving their lives in service to our country.

Too often, we abstract war in our minds.  We do not want to face up to what it really is when we are filled with patriotic rhetoric and resolve to take care of business. We don't want to think of real people hurt, real people maimed, and real people killed.  Now that the draft is gone, it has become abstract for whole groups of people.  When every able bodied man of 18 had to register and knew that he had a strong chance of being called up, it was much more of a reality.

I grew up with war and unfortunately, a long list of "conflict" have dotted the historic landscape of my life.  My first real memory of war was watching the airplanes fly overhead in the early forties when ,my father had disappeared to some place called "Camp Blanding" and later to a place called the Philippines and Japan.  Two of my uncles were also gone:  one ultimately to Europe to slog through the Battle of the Bulge, the other to the Pacific aboard an air craft carrier.  Four of Aunt Effie's boys, some lying about their age to join up, were scattered across the globe.  She would walk the fields late at night praying for their safety.  All of our men came home, but in some of them there were scars of the spirit which never healed.

We are still in war.  I fear that too often the majority of the people in this country are more concerned with who is on reality TV and how much the price of gas is than on the cost of this war to individuals and families.  I am not interested in getting into the political/global reasons for being in the war.  I am interested in the fact that we, as Americans, need to understand that this is not just the war of those serving.  It is our war.

So, as we complete this weekend, we can't do much for those who lost their lives fighting for this country other than trying to do everything we can for those other casualties of the many wars we have so nobly fought.  I am talking about looking around, being aware, and taking responsibility for this country of ours.

       Surgery was Friday.  I spent a fair amount of time in the "holding area" before I went in.  I don't remember much after I got to the OR until about four hours later.  It took we a while to climb out of the fog and back to reality in the recovery room.  I can assure you that it was as close to a psychedilic experience as I ever want to have.  Soon after awareness set in, I was in the room with a stream if visitors coming in.

     Fortunately I did not know what I looked like until the next morning.  There is something a little lacking in "hospital" hair!  The nose tube doesn't do much for my looks either.  I spent the afternoon with Rob and Klep pretty much in lala land.  I stupidly felt I should go  as long as I could between pain medicine and by midnight the blood pressure was doing its thing heading upwards.  I came to my senses at that point and started using the Demorol regularly.

     Saturday I was up and walking a little.  Sunday I walked more and sat up for two hours in the chair.  Today I am aiming for six walks.  The pain is much less, the incision looks good; what we need now is for the intestinal tract to go to work.

     I have met some of the most wonderful people in here.  There is Khady who is from Senegal.  There is Cassandra, a tall, slim but strong young lady.  Most of all, though, I have appreiated my night time angel Tonya who just went off her twelve hour shift.  This morning she will take two of her kids to school and then go to her second job.  This will be her last week with the second job.  She has been accepted into the nursing program.  She and I purely had church here in the room the other night when the blood pressure finally leveled off!  Anyway, she goes off duty for seven days, so I probably will not see her again.  There have been lots of others:  Brittany, Tim, Vicky, Judy.  The list goes on and on.  Oh, and there is Marcus who appears at three o'clock in the morning to draw blood so that the results will be ready for the doctors when they do rounds.

Best Laid Plans

The best laid plans are just that -- plans.  When I left home for my routine five year colonoscopy, I fully expected to be enjoying the largest milkshake in Valdosta before noon and to float lazily around the pool in the afternoon while the last vestiges of my meds wore off.

Not so!  Dr. Pennington found a polyp too large to be taken out with a scope.  We had two choices:  go home and start all over getting ready or go into the hospital and have the surgery.  We opted for the second.  So, as the day winds down, I am in room 303 of the surgical wing.  The afternoon has been full of questions, x-rays, blood tests, and telephone calls.

Tomorrow morning is the surgery.  I will not be at my best with a tube down my nose, so I am discouraging visitors until my intestinal tract starts working again.  I do covet your prayers as I go through this.

I have a peace about this whole thing.  The preliminary lab report is that it is benign.  We pray that this is what the next test will show, too.

So, the milkshake will be put on hold for a week.  If everything goes well, I hope to be home by this time next week.

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

Raindrops are lightly falling this last Sunday of February at Mosquito Gardens. This last week of above normal temperatures has indeed brought forth the varmint that brought us to jokingly name our home here Mosquito Gardens. I killed my first one of the season, a fine one of good size, yesterday!

When I saw the blob of green hovering just west of us on radar in the predawn hour I awoke, I had a choice to make. The easy one would have been to pull the robe a little tighter around me, settle into the chair, open the blinds, and watch the rain begin. I gave serious thought to doing just that, but my better self won out. At six-fifty I was out the door, headed down the long sidewalk to the driveway, umbrella over my head.

The rain was light, but steady, beating a good cadence for walking as the sidewalk in front of me gradually turned from dots to wet grey. I saw the dogwoods, still green as they begin opening. The showest sight, though, were the Formosan azaleas, resplendent in their brilliant color which falls somewhere in between deep purple and intense pink. Their blooms, fully four inches across, are the true queen of my yard and others in this part of the south. The little miniatures azaleas are pretty and neat, but these huge bushes celebrate the changing of the season like no other in their over the top exuberance of color!

My mind wandered (as minds are likely to do; mine, anyway!) as I walked. I have been walking for exercise and pleasure since the late sixties and I thought back to the last time I actually walked in the rain. It would have to have been while we lived at Green Park, a monstrously large apartment building in Musachino City, a suburb of Tokyo, Japan. We lived there, along with several thousand other Air Force people between May of 1969 to May of 1972 when we moved to Tachikawa where we enjoyed living in an actual house with an actual house.

But, I digress! I started walking at Green Park for exercise and pleasure. After I sent Klep off each morning to his job on the IG team at Headquarters Fifth Air Force, Fuchu, Japan, I would circle the building three times for my morning exercise. Later a friend (usually Carol Griffin that first year) and I would go out the gates and walk through the wonders that surrounded us. Some days we stayed close to home, walking down to the alley where a variety of shops awaited us. Other days might find us a mile or so away at a Shinto shrine or at some pottery shop or coffee shop we had never discovered. It was on these jaunts that we really got to see what our neighborhood was really liked. We learned to let the attention of people snickering geijing under their breath roll off us. Carol could fit in much easier than I, since she was short. Tall American women were always noticed.

My walking started as an effort to take off the excess pounds I had added to my body after I got married. I have battled weight all my life. Face it! I started off in trouble when I was born weighing twelve pounds! The first year of our marriage, we both gained over twenty pounds. The walking helped. So did writing down every bite I put in my mouth for three months. By Christmas, I was within four pounds of my goal. The following Christmas, I was still within four pounds of my goal.

I find myself in that situation again, four pounds shy of where I want to be. Therefore, I walk. Actually, I think that I would walk anyway. To me, it is such a pleasure to be able to move. After my accident in 2005, I gradually tacked on over thirty pounds which did nothing to improve the mobility of the knee with the torn meniscus!

While I walked this morning, I considered the fact that my will power seems to have "got up and left." I also pondered the reasons for this, and wonder if, I somehow have decided to sabotage myself. I don't know since psychology is not one of my strong suits. It may just be that I have an overwhelming desire for chocolate!

I guess I'll just keep pondering, pull out the umbrella when it rains, and go walking! Someday, somehow, I will shed those four pounds!

December 27, 2005

All of us have anniversary days. Some are joyful, some sorrowful, and some bittersweet. I try not to dwell on these overmuch, but when Christmas season rolls around, I can not help but remember the 2005 one.

The season, as always, was a busy one. Anne had been in the far east on her assignment with the Southern Baptist IMB, but Rob and Traci had put in a quick appearance before heading off to their adventure in Venice and London. Klep and I had not made it to South Carolina to visit our other son and his pregnant wife, so we headed off bright and early the day after Christmas. It is unusual for me to do the driving, but Klep was having an unusually painful bout with his sciatica and I drove up.

We had a lovely dinner and celebration with the kids. We were all so very excited about the grand daughter who was due in early June. The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast, packed the car with Christmas gifts for all the Florida people, and headed south.

After gassing up in Baxley, Georgia in the early morning, I was driving on US 1. Klep was making a shopping list for a brief stop at the supermarket in Waycross when I spotted two dogs coming into the road. I swerved, lost control of the car in a spin, and ended up hitting one and maybe two pine trees. The next thing I knew, I could feel the branches from the tree in the backseat. Klep was sitting quietly in his seat not moving. The first thing I remember is turning off the car which was still running. I was blocked in the car. The driver's window was gone; the windshield broken. I had never felt so alone in all of my life or so frightened. There was blood on Klep's head. All I could think about is, "How can I tell my children that I have killed their dad!"

Fairly soon, a pickup truck stopped and at least two young men were at my window. They had called in the accident and told me that help was on its way. One of the young men reached in and held my hand while we waited. The other was able to reassure me that Klep was alive but unconscious. The Lord had sent two off duty EMTs to my rescue.

The ambulance arrived. Klep regained consciousness and was strapped to a board first and taken to the ambulance. Then, somehow, I was removed through the passenger side and placed on a stretcher. In the ambulance, another EMT took our vitals and I think I was started on oxygen. I was so very pleased that my blood pressure was low. In fact it was the lowest it had ever been. Fortunately I did not realize that it was because one of my lungs had been punctured by one of the five broken ribs on my left side!

One of the EMT's found Klep's cell phone and called the last number called, our nephew John in Florida. They were headed home after a doctor's appointment and immediately headed north to Baxley where they found us in the emergency room. They also called members of our church who started praying for us. We were hooked up to the usual iv's and oxygen in the ER and both of us were put through scans to see what had happened inside. They called in the surgeon for me. At some time that afternoon he told me that he was going to do something that would make me hate him. He inserted a tube into the side of my chest to drain all the fluid out and reinflate the lung. I have a very hazy memory of all this and what seemed like a few minutes was really several hours.

At some point in the afternoon a Georgia Highway Patrol officer arrived to get me driver's license information and to finish his paper work on the accident. He told me that after he saw the car that he did not expect to find anyone alive. I suppose, looking back, that this was the first time that I realized how very blessed we were that day.

When I was stable, they asked which major hospital I wanted to go to. Of course, my first choice was South Georgia, but they did not have a bed available. The hospital they sent me to was Memorial in Savannah. They did not have a bed available (flu epidemic), but they were the regional trauma center for Baxley.

Sometime after dark, I was loaded onto a helicopter with an attendant with me. By this time I knew that Klep, though concussed, was all right and was being released. Anyone who knows me, knows that flying is not one of my favorite things, but the doctor would not allow me to make the trip in an ambulance. So, we were up, up and away. I remember seeing the lights of Savannah as we approached. I remember being taken off the copter, taken into the hospital, and going through more scans and examination. I vaguely remember one of Kevin's KA brothers, Vic being there to see me.

They kept me in the emergency room ICU that night and all the next day. A steady stream of doctors came through. Kevin and Reagan arrived. The pastor and his wife came. Klep was in. John and Pam were there. I issued a few orders either then or earlier about who was to be told and who wasn't and who was to tell whom. I also told Klep that he was to come home and pay the taxes and get the truck. Anyway, I must have been a little repetitious, because they still tease me about my concern about getting the taxes paid before the end of the month!

I was told that I would probably be put on a respirator. With the injuries I had sustained, I needed to expect that. I had five broken ribs, a cracked sternum, a cracked shoulder blade, and a broken collar bone, plus a number on small pieces had been broken off my spine.

That night I was moved into a room in the ICU. Sometime during the night a young black woman came in to clean me up. She told me that she knew I was one of His because of the smile on my face. She was a true blessing.

Klep rode home with John and Pam. Kevin and Reagan stayed until they knew Klep was back, and we started the steady process of getting better. The phone calls started coming in from all over. Anne called. I told her I was fine. When Rob got to London and had Internet access, he found out. My mother continued to fret. I spent New Years Eve and New Years Day in Savannah. I remember FSU losing in the Orange Bowl. Sometime during that week, I started occupational therapy to learn how to get out of bed without doing further damage to myself. I had about a thousand x-rays. I got an epidural pump for the pain. I learned a lot about being in the hospital.

On the afternoon of the fourth of January, the doctors decided I could come home. Klep lined my seat in the bright blue Dodge with pillows and we headed home.

Rob and Traci arrived home from their trip the same day I left the hospital. They were over to check on me and to stay for the weekend. Bless Traci's heart, she took the tree down and put all the ornaments away for me. They also fielded telephone calls, took care of food, got me extra nightgowns, and were an all around delight.

I gradually walked more and more steps each day. I knew that the sooner I could move around easily, the sooner I would be better. The nights were the hardest because I had to sleep on my back. I only took medicine for pain at night after the first few days home. I wanted off the medication as soon as I could be. I did not spend all night in the bed until the middle of February. Each night when I got particularly miserable, about 1:00 a.m., I would move to the large recliner in the hallway where I would lie in a cocoon of pillows and sleep until morning.

When Klep started back to work, my mother came everyday to stay with me. It was not easy on her and by the end of the month, I felt well enough to stay by myself.

People were wonderful during this time. The people in our church brought food. The people in Klep's organization at Moody brought food. Col. Oshiba's wife cooked a whole collection of Korean food that he brought on Saturday afternoon.

So, I suppose December 27 is one of those anniversaries that I will always remember. I am ever so thankful that we survived the crash. I am thankful for all those people who helped us that day and who helped us through the six weeks of recovery. I learned how very loving and caring my family in. I learned how much my husband loves me, if I ever had any doubts. I learned how very generous and loving our church and our friends are.

I am convinced that our survival was a miracle and that those EMTs did not show up by accident.

Christmas 2011

Our Christmas season which began with Thanksgiving (both literally and figuratively) is well into its second week. As I gaze out the front door through the wreath, I pause for a minute to let the feeling of Christmas just seep into my very being!

Our Christmas is both a static and a changing thing. It is static in the traditions which we have developed. It is changing in the many ways that life itself changes and evolves. This change does not negate the quality of Christmas, just the way it unwraps gradually as we age and our children leave and change. Many things about the Christmas with young children I miss; others? Not so much!

Now, I have more time to do little things for others. One of the things we started even when our children were young was to buy gifts for some people who would not receive any otherwise. This, I can now do at a more leisurely pace. I now have time to make fresh cranberry chutney from the leftover fresh cranberries. Lunches with friends can be long and leisurely.

We no longer have young children to pile into Green Gas Hog to go see the Christmas lights. But, we have my 88 year old mother who will enjoy a ride through the beautifully lit Stephen Foster Memorial Park in White Springs. We also have the time to ramble around to our hearts' content listening to Christmas music on the radio and marveling at the things others have put up for our enjoyment! I always strongly suspected that we enjoyed these Christmas light jaunts more than the boys anyway! It was a way for our house to be cleared out so that Santa could do his magic and go on to other parts of the world.

Now we have more time to catch a play or a concert or a full moon reflected on a lake where we can marvel at the timelessness of the Christmas account. It matters not a whit that the birth was probably not in December. What matters is the magical, wonderful miracle that we worship a God Who cared enough about us (worthless and disobedient as we are) to come to earth in the form of a baby to reveal himself to us!

So! Bring on the lights, decorations, music! Sorry, Elvis, there will be no Blue, blue Christmas at our house this Christmas 2011!