Sam and Brittney Wedding Album

 

On Saturday October 3, 2020, at a house in in Merced CA, my son Sam married Brittney Palmer, now Brittney Kurtz-Pico.  There were railroad tracks nearby, which made a great backdrop for photos.

Clockwise from bottom right
Sam's son Nate; Nate's cousins
Jamal & A'Nirah; Nate's sister 
Sarah and brother Moises

My assignment was to bring extended family from Richmond. Mission accomplished.

We gathered at long tables in the backyard to witness the ceremony.

Facing the altar

One of the seasonal crimson bouquets 
on the tables.

On left Jerry, Sam's AA sponsor.  
On right, Danny, from Solidarity House.

Facing the altar

Brittney's son and father, 
Michaels Jr. & Sr, accompanying
the bride to the altar

"The ring signifies the commitment you have made to one another. The circle itself has no beginning and no end, and is therefore a symbol of infinity.  It is endless, eternal, just the way love should be."

"I promise to accept your love,
and to love and accept you
just the way you are. With this 
ring I thee wed."

First moments as husband and wife

We feasted on burritos and drank horchata.  The cake & cupcakes were a big hit.

After eating some us went out to the tracks for a photoshoot. Even in the age of the automobile, railroads still have their aura of distance and adventure, of life unfolding and changing before our eyes.

Sam with kids and dad

Brittney with Sam and her sisters Brenna and Amber

Best of luck 
on the big adventure!

Covid-19 Flash Fiction: Untouchable

    My car's gone when I come out of the laundromat.  The police dispatcher says they towed it.  Parked illegally, unpaid tickets dating back years.  I've been sleeping in the back seat, now what? Maybe Fran will like me better now?   After we broke up she wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole; with social distancing, maybe that's down to six.  This pandemic's a joke to me, like everything else.

    But Fran doesn't laugh at my pole routine.  Her front door's cracked open, and I see a pale strip of her, cute face to slender hip.  I'm breathing hard from carrying my duffel bag upstairs. It's stashed to the side of her landing where she can't see.

    She waits for me to subside, then flicks a tendril of hair away from her eyes. "Phil,' she says softly, "I did touch you."  And with that I'm on fire, stupid me.  Getting back in bed with her would be great, but all I need's a place to sleep. I gaze into her living room, a question of a couch in my eyes.  "Still taking classes?" she asks. Her nose quivers. "Um, you need a shower.  Where are you staying?"     

    "Who is it Fran?" a male voice calls out from inside. 

    I turn and start down. "Staying with my brother," I yell, and she yells something back like "The one you hate?" I shrug and descend quickly, and only remember my bag when I reach the bottom.

    The thought occurs, don't bother, like go catatonic, and at least avoid the pain of more stairs. Keep moving around, and the prospects are limited.  Yet I do have alternatives. Two. I wasn't exactly lying to Fran about bro' Alfie, just improving on the truth.  Then there's always Susan. Up I go.

………  ………   ………  ………   ………  ………   ………  ………     

    Fran thinks I hate Alfred the Great because we never have anything to talk about besides his car, his house, his whatever.  But nothing interests me more now than the story of possessions, the glory of having.  I board an empty evening bus to Piedmont, determined to learn more.   

    The driver, a substantial black gentleman, peers at me over his mask with sad, disapproving eyes. I sit up front, but he won't talk to me.  As if he thinks I'm making him drive me to the ends of the earth on a doomed, illicit mission.

    I get off within trudging distance of my brother's house. A vision of his fridge opening pops into my mind, and my step quickens. Breakfast at the laundromat was a candy bar, lunch nothing.  Screw dignity.

     His gate's locked, and an array of hidden LEDs strobe me when I shake it. A topiary hedge in the shapes of birds follows a stone slab path to the house. There's a grove of potted bonsai trees on the front porch.  Lights pulse above the door, as if the house were signaling a turn.

    Alfie's voice comes out of a small cage hanging on the gate, which I'd mistaken for a bird feeder. "What's that Phil?" he asks, and a little red laser dot scurries across the bag by my feet.

    "Cool security system!"

    "What are you on Phil? What do you want? It couldn't be to make something out of your life."

    "The world needs nobodies," I say, "doctors can't just treat each other."

    Silence from the cage.  The street is quiet too, the lawns of the neighboring houses empty. I was wrong, I do have a shred of dignity left. Enough to prefer a private spat to a public one. But Alfie declines the gauntlet.

    "People do appreciate us," the cage says, "there's a pandemic on.  You may have heard talk."  The front door opens and my brother walks toward me, wearing a surgical mask and gloves.  He stops more than 6 feet from his side of the gate. He ain't gonna offer no fridge, no couch.

    "What's going on with the dentist?" he says.

   "Fran. She's a dental assistant. We were just talking about you."

   "That's still a big improvement."

    Over Susan he means, who he dubbed "the loser English major."  He looks down at my bag, and at me, working toward a question he can't quite reach. "Hang on," he says, and goes back inside.

    Discreet street lamps have come on by the time he emerges, holding a small cooler.  "I'll buzz you in," he says, "and then …."

    "I'll open the gate, get the goodies, and take my leave expeditiously," I volunteer.

    "Good luck Phil," he says.

    I open the cooler at the bus stop. Baguettes! Cheese! The thought occurs, say thank you first, to someone or something.  My prayer comes out as "I am SO effing hungry!" I call that grace.

………  ………   ………  ………   ………  ………   ………  ………

    Susan answers the door with her nose and mouth covered by a blue bandanna.  She looks astonished by my luggage, maybe because the face covering exaggerates the raised eyebrows effect.  "Do you realize what time it is?" she asks, bidding me enter, but keeping her distance.  She nods toward an antiseptic wipes container, and I use them on myself and the cooler.  Then she tosses me a surgical mask, and watches me put it on.

    "How's it fit?" she asks, gesturing toward the back of her head like she was twanging a strap.  I shrug, and she grabs the cooler and leads me into her living room.  

    We plop down on opposite ends of a couch, facing a TV.  A talking head looks serious.  "Thought you never watched," I say.

    "Do for national disasters, the World Cup, that sort of thing."

    The head's replaced by paired country names and numbers: Italy 7,000; China 3,000.  "Couldn't be the World Cup," I say, "too big for soccer scores."  

    She grimaces, acknowledging my comedian vocation.  "Strength in numbers," she says, "the guy thing.  Numbers, numbness, real life hurts, better off keeping meaningless scores."

    I grimace back, acknowledging her Susanness. Always the smartest one in whatever class we took together, she does micro-performances, like the numbers riff. She writes poems too, and I never know what to say when she recites one to me.

    She turns off the TV as if slamming down the phone. "Here's a number for you," she says, "0.  That's how much you still matter to me. Let me guess. Fran turned you away, and the cooler's because she felt sorry for you."

    "Untrue."  

    "Which part?"                       

    I don't say 'the 0,' although in times of various kinds of deprivation, I rely on her wanting me back. Instead I play lawyer: "Not coming from her place."

    Susan rolls her eyes, then struggles up from the couch and exits.  She returns with a hefty plastic basin.  She takes items out of the cooler, examines them, and puts some in the basin, others on a coffee table.  When the cooler's empty she sits back on the couch.

    "Phil, what do you think," she says, with accelerating tempo, "is there's a subtle yet crucial distinction between a woman on the one hand, and her natal cleft on the other?"

     She's a comedian too?  I mug thinking hard. "No way."

    "That part's yours," she says grimly, indicating the coffee table clutter.   So she wasn't joking; evidently, she's just completed our final accounting. 

    I do understand. One time I spent the night and "borrowed" cash from her purse in the morning.  She never said anything, but now I see it in her eyes.  "OK, I'll go find me a park bench," I say, playing the guilt card,  "keep all the food."

    "Thanks, and you can keep the mask" she says. Guess she's beyond guilt, she's not getting rich as a free lancer. "There's a pandemic on, you may have heard," she adds, sounding like my asshole brother. Then she tops off the basin with some of the coffee table delicacies, and lugs it into the kitchen.  I hear a fridge opening, the sounds of foodstuff placement.

    But she never actually said "get out." My remaining minutes of warmth could morph into hours. I picture her returning from the kitchen and retreating wordlessly into her bedroom, granting me the couch by sufferance; then we'd talk things out over breakfast.  

     Right.  "The real truth," I actually say out loud, "is that I'm welcome nowhere."

    Susan's still in the kitchen, but a voice answers: "Then lean into it."  Explain, I think.  "Don't wait," it says, "welcome nowhere, nowhere welcomes you. I'm the black hole that tried before to pull you away from the rejection tribunal.  The nothing that wants you to sleep on its couch.  Come."

    I take off my shoes, bolt for the front door and step outside.  Cold pavement slaps the soles of my feet. Susan appears behind me, looking quizzical.  I smile, wave, say "you're a talented poet," and start running.  Pain escalates with every footfall.  I'm thinking I'll dive behind a big bush and curl up; I'm thinking I'll dart in front of an oncoming car. Whichever comes along first. Whatever converges quickest on the vanishing point.

© µ 2020

Covid-19 Flash Fiction: Poof

     "Both are true," Tara tells Jo.  They're outside the store on break at the same time, which might or might not violate the social distancing rules.  She'd been thinking about "ambiguous," one of the few words her daughter Cassie would say to her since coming back home from college. So annoying, but the concept stuck. "Concept" was another metered word she'd picked up recently.

    "Both what?" Jo asks.

    Tara waves dissmissively. "Goin' crazy, just popped out."  Something about the gloves they were wearing, and the masks they were supposed to be wearing but weren't.   About the fact that they'd be going back inside soon, because everybody needs groceries, and some people need to work. But on the other hand, people don't want to get sick and die.

    "Stop shelter in place, stop the virus," Jo says, absolutely no transition.  It's another installment on a monologue that's lasted weeks, on and off. It started when Jo told her that the so-called epidemic was really a plot to spook the stock market to keep Trump from getting re-elected.  Now Jo says "If we don't stand up to them, we'll all be eating bat soup!"

    Tara nods.

    "A few thousand have died from Covid-19," Jo concludes, "hundreds of thousand die from heart attacks, millions from abortions!"

    Tara looks at her toes.  She wants to get the enemy right, and Jo could be confusing. There had been a different monologue, one that started the day Jo took out her sewing during break and said she was making masks for the war effort.

    "Which war is this one now?" Tara had asked, and Jo had given her a long, funny, searching look.

    "I'm so impressed by his leadership," Jo said finally, "the country will unite behind him."

    Now Jo shrugs and takes a drag on her cig.  "It's like musical chairs, shelter in place" she says. "When the music stops, you're stuck with whoever. This morning I told Michelle, 'confidentially, I hate your guts.'"

    "You didn't!"

    "I did."  She turns her pretty face to the side, and beneath concealing makeup, Tara makes out the contours of a fist-sized bruise. "Big liberal," Jo says.  Then she grinds out her cig, and the two friends go back inside to sort produce.

………  ………   ………  ………   ………  ………   ………  ……… 

    On returning home, Cassie surprises Tara by being at the kitchen table. Her daughter had gone into her room and slammed the door when she moved back, rarely emerging except to use the bathroom. She's hunched over her laptop with earbuds in, bobbing her head to private music.  Tara peers over her shoulder. There's a world map on the laptop screen, dotted with pulsing red circles, like a depiction of a bad headache in a pain reliever commercial.

    Tara taps her shoulder, and Cassie startles and yanks out her earbuds. "Did something happen?" she asks.

    "Something … it's 6 o'clock," Tara says, "I came home from work."

    "Mom, glad you're OK, but I need to tell you something."  She rises and faces Tara, hands on hips, eyes huge and hard behind rimless glasses, strands of long frizzy hair gleaming in stray beams of fading sunlight.

    "I'm for the virus.  I mean, I understand what it's trying to say.  OK, it's like this stupid thing, not even alive, I'll explain the concept to you sometime.  But it's outsmarting all of you, not just President Dickhead. And judging you. Are you racist? Sure, why should you worry if a bunch of little yellow people are getting sick. Are you callous?  Unambiguously!  You're in your car, you pretend you don't see the beggars holding up signs, and you drive off quickly.  Will you be able to get away fast enough now that they might be spreaders?"

    "Glad to see you're … up and about," Tara says. "What should I make for dinner?"

    "Whatever you want to eat, I'm going out with Chris."

    "Chris?"

    "Chris." She thinks her mom wants to know her date's gender, and isn't about to give her the satisfaction of finding out.

    Tara clears her throat. "There's this six foot apart thing."

    "Oh mom. If you can't accept me as I am, I'll go stay with dad."  Her unbeatable ace-in-the-hole.  The doorbell rings and Cassie rushes out, flinging a "Bye" over her shoulder… and leaving her laptop unlocked.

    Tara clicks on a red circle pulsing over where New York should be, and the circle dissolves into a photo of a trench, sacks lying on the bottom, a priest standing at the edge. She wonders if the people in the sacks had mothers who adored them, and who they hated; and she wonders what they wondered about.  If all families were zoos like theirs? If they would have to die like everyone else? Some of them must have had ways as odd as hers, and collected words as souvenirs; maybe one minute they were trying to decide if "President Dickhead" was a keeper, and the next minute, poof, they're trench filler.

South Korea, the Country that's not on Lockdown by Jacques Kim (translation)

MARCH 18, 2020 by Jacques Kim in Mediapart.fr 

Translated by Google.  Matt Pico contributed the occasional correction, as well as frequent rearrangements for the sake of English cadence. 1.1K words 

Thanks to a phenomenal number of tests, monumental tracing efforts, and the civic spirit of its citizens, South Korea has tamed the spread of Covid-19 without closing its stores or quarantining its cities.  A resident's report.

    We get the numbers every morning. This Thursday, 152 new cases, out of 8,565 total. After four days in a row below 100, that's a jump, but still low compared to before. There are a total of 91 deceased, compared to 264 in France.  The mortality rate remains low, around 1% (vs. 8.3% in Italy). And South Korea was once the most impacted country after China.

    For the moment, the epidemic is under control, and the country hobbles along. We don't "shelter in place," although schools have been closed since the beginning of March. But shops, bars, and restaurants are open. The roads were not barricaded. Even Daegu, a city of 2.5 million inhabitant, with the most cases in the country, was not placed behind a cordon sanitaire. My children's day care is still open, albeit with smaller classes.

    Aside from a shortage of beds in Daegu when the epidemic first struck, the hospitals handled the surge of critically ill patients. South Korea restricted its ties with the outside world but never severed them, even when the epidemic raged in neighboring China.

    Factory closings are rare. Public transportation works normally, although bus drivers keep bottles of hydro-alcoholic solution close at hand. Home deliveries have not been interrupted. In recent days, streets, parks and restaurants seem busier.

    But strict measures remain in place, for good reason. Since February, all mass gatherings have been prohibited, and sporting events and masses canceled. Some evangelical churches defied the ban - such as the River of Grace Church in the suburbs of Seoul. Fifty-four members have tested positive; the pastor, infected, sprayed salt water in the mouths of his faithful to immunize them. This Wednesday Seoul asked its nationals returning from abroad to remain confined to their home for two weeks.

    Telecommuting is taking hold, a small revolution in a country where corporate culture demands a presence in the office. If the government did not take drastic  measures, it may be because their instructions for physical distancing were followed from the start. Koreans have drastically limited outings and trips. In the streets, there are few unmasked faces - to refuse to wear one shows a lack of respect for others. There's a bottle of hydro-alcoholic gel in the elevator of my building. It's replaced often.

    How to explain these apparent initial successes against Covid-19? In a word, South Korea was ready. Poorly prepared for the MERS epidemic in 2015, it put new contingency plans in place. The country could also rely on a solid industrial base; not everything was relocated to China.

    Screening tests are the best readiness example.  Starting January 15, the CEO of Seegene, a Korean pharmaceutical company, made developing them top priority.  The authorities understood the urgency, and approved the tests in one week, instead of the usual eighteen months. Production started immediately, and the whole company, researchers too, worked the production line.

    The result: at the height of the crisis in early March, South Korea tested 18,000 people a day. So far it's tested a total of almost 300,000, more than one in two hundred Koreans.  By way of comparison, France performs only 2,500 tests per day, not enough even to protect health care staff.

    These tests are crucial, allowing rapid identification of infected persons - in particular asymptomatic cases who transmit the disease without knowing it.  Those who test positive are put in home quarantine, and the spread is slowed.

    The test is free if prescribed by a doctor, but anyone can get one for the asking. Korea had the brilliant idea of ​of drive-in test stations, which minimize the risk of transmission. A test costs around $128, with the fee waived if the test comes back positive.

    The movements of infected persons are reconstructed using credit card purchases, cell phone records, and surveillance camera footage; then the information is shared via smartphone alerts. My phone rings several times a day to tell me which restaurant in my neighborhood, which store, an infected person has visited, and the date and time. If the person had been to the cinema, the alert includes the seat number.

    There have been few protests over breach of privacy. Since the MERS epidemic, Korean law has authorized access to all information necessary to slow an epidemic. There is an encouraging sign in recent days, fewer daily alerts.

    The government played the transparency card from the start, providing daily figures for the progression of the epidemic. Most Koreans believe these statistics and trust the authorities. A striking counterexample to the Chinese model:  first deny the crisis and persecute whistleblowers; then lockdown a whole province.

    The epidemic took hold here because infected members of an evangelical sect did not isolate themselves, resulting in 60% of the South Korean cases. Many of these evangelicals are young, which helps explain the low Korean mortality rate. However, the overwhelming majority of the citizenry respect the social distancing guidelines and submit to quarantine when required.

    Masks, which allow a contaminated person to limit the risk of transmission, are readily available but rationed; anyone can buy two per week.  And in South Korea, life goes on under the masks. Koreans watched with dismay the carelessness displayed in early March in European capitals. That gathering of Smurf fans, tight against each other, and claiming that "the coronavirus is nothing"; French President Macron, going to the theater March 6 to "encourage the French to go out despite the coronavirus." As if the suffering Chinese and Koreans counted for nothing.

    Personally, I hit a wall of misunderstanding trying for weeks to get my family and friends in France to prepare for the worst. "It's just a bad flu," they told me, "stop being anxious. We have a good health system in France."  Deep down, we have a Western superiority complex, and looked down on those vaguely underdeveloped Asiatics who had let themselves be overwhelmed. Such contempt will cost us dearly.

    Once idealized by Koreans, the West has fallen from its pedestal. The lack of tests, the contempt displayed for two months of warning signals, the Korean students returning from abroad infected, were revelations. The Emperor has no clothes.

    Will South Korea itself now be a model, a democratic alternative in the fight against the coronavirus? As opposed to ultra-authoritarian China, which now seeks to use its "success" against Covid-19 to improve its image. Too early to tell.

    Especially since South Korea is far from being able to declare victory over the epidemic. There are signs that it's less vigilant, such as fewer masks in the streets. New foci of contamination have appeared: a call center in Seoul, an Evangelical Church in Seongnam, and retirement home in Daegu.  On Tuesday, the school closings were extended by two weeks. The crisis may have only just begun.

Covid-19 flash fiction: Shopping Trip

   There's always something, know what I mean?  Something gets in the way of some simple thing you do, for some crazy reason nobody explains.  Like this "epidemic," don't get me started.  The real epidemic is people living in their own realities.  OK, we all need to eat, and for me that means making the tired shopping trek to TJs after work. Bunch of other people waiting their turn to get in must have the same need, but that's all we share.  Get the f*** out of my way!  Just kidding.

    No one talks, they're keeping their — what's do they all it — social distance. Get that any time you want, just take out your phone.  That's what I do, and I'm about to beat my top Robo Football score when I just know someone's like, eyeing me.  Look up, and I don't know him, but I know all about him. "Hey … " he starts in, and the smell of booze is overpowering.  His clothes are filthy, skin shows through in places.

    "I'm not even going to talk to you," I say, "if you're happy this way.  Are you?" He does a sorrowful shuffle, then crosses his hand over his chest and shivers.  It's cold and rainy. I nod and say "wait here."

    I walk to the head of the line where this big guy, bouncer type, is letting in small groups as shoppers exit from another door.  I look inside  and see they're swabbing handbaskets and shopping carts with anti-bacterial wipes before giving them to the shoppers.  Great.  I say "needs extra cleaning help, be right out" and dart through the doors. The bouncer guy is too surprised to stop me.  "Gimme some of those" I tell the startled cleaning crew, and score a fistful of wipes.

    The guy stands were I'd left him, letting the line wend around him like he was a toxic dump.  Maybe he doesn't realize I'd left, he is that … like I was once.  I tug my sweater by way of explanation and say "sentimental value," then wipe off his hands and arms.  He doesn't blink when I approach his face, so I do that too.  They let in another batch, people inch by us, and one of them stink eyes me and says "Now you'll spread what he's got."

    "Hope not, or what you've got either," I tell him.  I take off my sweater and help the guy put it on, then we walk toward my car.  I call my wife, and by way of hello she says "working late?"

    "Yeah."

    "Be safe, see you soon."

    I open the car and let the guy in. "Wait here," I tell him, "when I'm done we'll go back to where I work.  There's always an extra bed.  But for now you must be hungry, wuddya want?"

Radio Theater: W;t by Margaret Edson ⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️☆

Margaret Edson

    We call ourselves Radio Theater, and most months we meet to read a play together outloud. Don't be deceived by the name, we have little invested in being performers.  The readings are occasions to catch up on each other's adventures, to eat and drink heartily, and to try on roles we don't get to play in everyday life. Some, like me, have been members for decades.  We kicked off our 2020 season January 25 with W;t (pronounced and sometimes spelled as Wit) by Margaret Edson.

    W;t won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1999.  Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., has metastatic ovarian cancer, and in an opening soliloquy, dressed in a hospital gown and bald from chemo, she tells the audience she expects to die in a couple of hours—and that her story contains elements of humor.  Then in a sequence of this-is-your-life scenes, we see her as a girl falling in love with language, as an earnest young scholar, as a demanding professor, and as a hospital patient.

    Vivian's dry humor is a treat.  In the intake interview, when asked what she does for exercise, she replies "pace."  In a classroom scene, a student starts asking for permission to turn in a paper late, and she interrupts saying "Don't tell me.  Your grandmother died"; request denied.  When she is placed in sterile isolation because her immune system is compromised, she explains that all life forms could potentially do her harm.  Then Jason Posner, MD, enters the room, and she adds "particularly medical professionals."

    Jason does medical research, and he's very smart; as a student he took Vivian's famously difficult Donne class, and got an A-.  Yet Vivian does not embrace him as a kindred spirit.  For one thing, she isn't thrilled with the idea of a former student giving her a pelvic exam. And Jason is absurd; he needs to prompt himself with the word "clinical" to remember the little human flourishes, like saying "Hello, how are you," when he enters Vivian's room.  The spell doesn't persist; his brusque phrase for excusing himself from Vivian's bedside to return to his research is "gotta go." And Jason is truly, deeply, cold. In the final scene, Vivian is unconscious, and when he sees by her fluid output that her kidneys have failed, he says "it won't be long now." In the same way he might note the dwindling numbers on a microwave oven display.

    Vivian's fave at the hospital is Susie Monahan, RN, who she even lets calls her "sweetheart." Susie is the only person so honored: Vivian is single; her parents are dead; she has only one visitor at the hospital, and when she comes in for her final stay, she takes a cab.  Susie provides a needed sparkle of warmth in Vivian's life. She's no intellectual, but when Vivian is scared and nauseous, and Susie brings her a popsicle to sooth her GI tract, it's the perfect gesture at the perfect time.  And Susie is not all heart, fortunately.  In that same popsicle scene, Susie talks from her head, persuading Vivian to sign a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) directive and avoid pointless medical heroics.

    Vivian herself was definitely not a warm campus presence.  Donne, the audience learns, is famous for confronting the Big Questions armed only with his wit — giving us one clue to the play's title. In one classroom scene, a student asks if Donne was hiding behind his wit, making things clever and complicated to hide his fear of death.  The scene ends with the question hanging in the air.

    Another flashback makes an explicit plea for a Head/Heart alliance, and explains the semicolon in the play's title.  Vivian is studying under the great E. M. Ashford, and E.M. makes her rewrite a paper on the Death, be not proud sonnet.  E.M. favors the authentic Donne edition with the last line Death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die. The two clauses joined by a humble comma, Donne's way of recognizing the unity of life with the stillness that surrounds it.  But Vivian used an edition that renders the last line as Death shall be no more; Death thou shalt die!  Per E.M., this sacrifices Donne's natural meaning on the altar of "hysterical punctuation."  Vivian offers to go immediately to the library and rewrite, and E.M. says she'd understand more by going and enjoying herself with friends.  Vivian wonders at the relationship between simple human truth and uncompromising scholarly standards, but at the time she doesn't follow up.

    After the flashbacks, Vivian lies very sick and addled in her hospital bed.  E.M. comes to visit, and in another perfect gesture, takes off her shoes and climbs in beside her.  Would Vivian like her to recite Donne? "Noooo."  So instead, E.M. reads her a children's book called The Runaway Bunny, about belonging, about what home means.  The bunny realizes his mom's implacable love will follow him wherever he might go, and decides to stay put; his mom ends the tale by saying "Have a carrot."  Not terribly witty, but E.M. says "perfect" to herself when she finishes reading the story.
   

Fecal Matters

Colonoscopy story, at a salubrious level of abstraction. Can be read by the squeamish! ≈2.8K words, © µ 2019.

    "What's the procedure?" my son Sam asked. We were speaking confidentially in the doorway of his kids' home, where we had met up to take them out to a restaurant. He was referring to the upcoming medical appointment he'd agreed to drive me to.

    I launched into words prepared to ease him gently toward the truth. "The prestige the body parts are accorded varies greatly. Most esteemed is the brain of course, then the heart …".

    "Is it a colonoscopy?", he said, cutting me short, but softening the brusqueness with an eye roll mixing affection with impatience.

    "Well, yes … but there's only a 5% chance of cancer." He gave me a hug and a clap on the back.

…  …  …

    Kaiser boasts of reducing colon cancer-related deaths by 58%. The main reason is early detection, accomplished by a test for tell-tale blood cells. Securing the test sample is a five-step process: 1. Take a sheet of paper the same color and texture of a toilet seat cover, and lay it on the toilet water; 3. Secure the sample by probing the floating mass with the bulbous, textured end of a plastic stick the shape of a toothpick; 4. The other end of the plastic stick is a stopper for a test tube; put the stick inside the tube sample end first, and seal it in place; 5. Mail the tube to Kaiser inside a padded envelope.

    I received my first test kit last year for my 68th birthday. Ignored it at first, defying increasingly urgent nagging from my Kaiser primary, Dr. Siacha (pronounced seeACHuh in her native Ethiopia) . My "rationale" was disgust; toilet training inculcates us with the notion that some things are best flushed and forgotten. But doesn't disgust decay quickly when a newborn enters your home, or when someone you love gets very sick? And abnormal gastrointestinal (GI) cells multiplying like crazy — what would THAT do for civilized toileting!  Reality gained traction over the ensuing months, and eventually I did the five-step.  Then a few anxious days.  Then Kaiser told me the results were negative.

    This year, 2019, I taught summer session Computer Science intensives at two colleges, CCSF and SFSU. This meant standing in front of classrooms sixteen hours per week. Days slid by in a sleep-starved blur, but I was not unaware that Dr. Siacha was nagging me again. "Later." A guy only has so much bandwidth. "Later" happened after my CCSF class ended mid-July, and then there came a Saturday that didn't feel like a desperate lunge toward the finish line.  But at step 2, the paper sank under the weight of the mass that was supposed to float on top of it. Decided just to collect the sample from the TP: paper is paper, s. is s. This time Kaiser said the results were positive; schedule a colonoscopy ASAP.

…  …  …

    Only one out of twenty positives actually have cancer, according to the reassuring test results fine print. My odds are even better, not being rotund, sedentary, or a smoker; and a carnivore only if the occasion insists. But one risk factor does apply: Eastern European Jews have the highest colon cancer rate of any ethnic group. I took Kaiser's first available Monday appointment, for September 9th at 1:30.

    My three fall semester classes would be in full swing, and I'd need to comply with a detailed set of instructions. Six days before, stop using ibuprofen. Three days before, stop eating high-fiber foods such as salads. On the morning of the day before, stop eating solid food, and drink only clear liquids. On procedure eve, drink half a gallon of Gavilyte; expect to spend a lot of time on the toilet. On September 9, finish the Gavilyte by 11:30. At 1:30 present myself to Gastroenterology, escorted by an adult who would commit to driving me back home; no, Uber would not do.

    Everyone said the escort requirement was Kaiser going the extra mile to protect themselves from lawsuits. A requirement nonetheless. A close friend volunteered, one who I'd helped care for after his kidney stones operation. Then it struck me that I wanted family close by. On alternate weekends, Sam drives from Keyes, near Turlock, to Richmond to spend the afternoon with his kids. And he works full-time, and goes to several AA meetings every week — but would he be willing to pile an Alameda-Oakland round trip onto his schedule?  Yes, although it meant sleeping over at my place after seeing his kids.

    Nobody said much about the Gavilyte experience; one expressive friend told me it was "unpleasant," and flashed me a confiding look.  But that unspoken unpleasantness could adversely impact my teaching career. Tuesday's my big classroom day, and Mondays mean frantic preparation tinged by panic. So, go online and figure out how much prof work could be done pre-procedure, between gagging on Gavilyte and racing for the bathroom?  Not the computer nerd approach. Instead, I went online and armed myself with abstract knowledge.

…  …  …

    The GI tract is a feature homo sapiens share with all other bilateria: that is, it's been in the family tree since we split off from the sponges, 555 million years ago, and acquired left and right sides.

    In homo sapiens, the terms colon and bowel refer to the small and large intestines (herein SI & LI). Picture a rectangle of coiling alleyways, with a broad road on three and a half sides. Digestive matter enters the narrow SI from the stomach. The SI ducks behind the LI, then twists, turns, and loops around itself, before becoming the wider LI near the southwest corner. The LI meanders north, east, then south, jots west, and then the last segment, the rectum (from Latin rectum, straight), heads due south. Feces exits the rectum at the discretion of the ring muscle called the anus (from Latin anulus, ring).

    A colonoscopy entails exploring only the LI, with an instrument resembling a plumbers snake equipped with a headlight. The official reason for the clear liquids diet, for the cleansing with Gavilyte, is to avoid spoiling the view. If the instrument encounters any of the small growths called polyps, it snips them off and retains them for biopsies.

    The "movement" in "bowel movement" does not mean excretion or secretion, as I'd assumed; in which case doctors might speak of bladder movements, or consider crying to be a tear duct movement. Although crying as movement isn't far off.

    Because "bowel movement" is not a medical coinage. It derives from "bowel" in the metaphoric sense of guts, as in "gut feeling;" and "movement" in the sense of emotionally engaging, as in "they were moved by the ceremony."  So the meaning of "bowel movement" was originally something like "deeply moving," and changed to defecation over time, perhaps at first as deflating humor.

    I wrote my stray facts in a notebook. The heft of the paper was reassuring, like the warmth of a security blanket; I wanted it with me on the 9th. Maybe it would let me counter any medical arrogance with countervailing writer status. Maybe doctors would be willing to share insights into the cosmic significance of the colons they scoped, or at least some irreverent jokes. When they asked me if I had any questions, they might be amused by my asking if it was merely a coincidence that two practices crucial for civilization, toilet discipline and speech, both relying on controlled constriction of orifices, take hold at about the same age, on opposite ends of the GI tract.

… … …

    That ominous silence around colonoscopy preparation foretold nothing whatsoever.

    Giving up fiber 3 days before was a bit like the doctor saying your weight and blood pressure are too low, you must eat more sugar, fat, and salt. Enjoyed the junk food interlude, but strange to say, suspending solid food intake the day before was no biggie either. I eat prodigious amounts to fuel my bicycle commute, utilitarian fare, such as protein bars; meals with all the charm of filling a tank at a gas station. Lounging around drinking tea and apple juice, consuming and expending little energy, was a vacation.

    The part that had me worried was Gavilyte, drinking it, processing it. I have a strong gag reflex, and a vivid memory of the stomach flu. The Kaiser pharmacy dispensed packets containing medication and citrus flavoring, along with an empty plastic jug. To improve the taste, they recommended letting the brew chill in the fridge for 12 hours.

    Did so, and my first swig procedure eve reminded me of lemon-lime Gatorade: mildly sweet, distinctly chemical. The worse part was the slightly gelatinous texture. Not the most repulsive beverage I've ever tasted, by a long shot. I sat on the toilet 5 - 10 times, but it was on then off, not writhing in agony. And without having to eat, my GI tract didn't take up much more of my precious prof time than usual.

    Nor did Sam; he's developed a warm sense of social occasion since he's been in recovery. He brought fast food takeout, and said that there was no need to serve him anything, or play host; that he was just there to hang out with me. We "clinked" plastic, my Gavilyte, his Dr. Pepper, and talked about the Raiders. Then I left him to his James Patterson novel.

…  …  …

    Gavilyte has completed its work when both toilet functions sound the same hitting the water, and look about the same in the bowl. Passed that landmark 10 am Monday morning, with a liter of Gavilyte to spare. Plenty of time to chug the rest, and then take a shower before leaving. It seemed important to smell thoroughly presentable for the medical professionals.

    The drive to Oakland took 15 minutes. We talked real-estate. Sam's getting married next year, and is saving for a house; four years ago, he was homeless. I tell him that homes are much cheaper near Turlock than in the pricey Bay Area. I tell him that somehow it will all work out; my bland reassurance whenever our conversations turn, as they tend to do, toward navigating the obstacle course of middle-class existence.

    Sam helped me navigate an obstacle course too, the one called the physical world. The appointment was for the Specialty Medical Office Building (SMOB), 3600 Broadway in Oakland. Apple Maps knew about a Kaiser Medical Center at that address, but not an SMOB. I imagined a secretive annex, a maze of ill-marked corridors stretching for blocks, panic, missing the appointment. Told Sam what Apple Maps didn't know, and he said just ask at the help kiosk.

    Of course. The SMOB is the west side of the Medical Center, whatever's to your left when you enter the building from the parking garage; the hospital's on the right. The help guy told us to walk past the glass-walled arboretum to the elevator lobby, and go up one floor. A dozen people sat stonily in the Ambulatory Surgery waiting room while a cheery receptionist named Shawn checked us in. Shawn told Sam how to find the cafeteria, and that he would text him when it was all over. I sat down among the quiet ones and pulled out my notebook.

…  …  …

    A worried-looking nurse carrying a clipboard called my name.  By way of hello, she asked if I needed to use the restroom (OK). She was standing outside when I emerged and asked for the results (negative). She asked if she could go back in with me and watch me try (no way). She asked for the last time the results were positive (noonish). She shook her head skeptically, and said "Most people need to go every 15 minutes."

    "Then how do they come in for their colonoscopies without, you know, risking social disaster?"

    "Good question," she allowed.

    She led me to a pre-procedure room, then left me to change into hospital garb. She returned with two nurses, one with "BSN" after her name (Bachelor of Science in Nursing, she explained), the other an RN, who graduated from the two-year program at CCC in San Pablo. "West Contra Costa's another world" I said, and by a smile and a glance she agreed that it was a gritty side of our gilded metropolis.

    They took my vital signs, said to eat light tomorrow, and not to drive. They had me put my street clothes in a net mesh bag, allowing me to keep my notebook. But from the quizzical looks they gave me, the notebook wasn't intimidating, it was just odd, as if I'd brought along my Teddy bear. They released the breaks on the hospital bed to wheel me toward the procedure room, and that moment was easily the worst part of the entire experience. Not bad physically, but the sensation of my lightness brought the inconsequential little old man into focus; easily wheeled about and deposited wheresoever the busy world wants.  

…  …  …

    There were three large medical monitor screens in the procedure room, and a whiteboard with my name, DOB, and Kaiser number. Two new nurses introduced themselves, Nancy from New Hampshire, and Elisha. Nancy asked me to confirm that the whiteboard information was correct (yes); and asked if she could hold onto my notebook during the procedure (it stays under my pillow). Asked her what it was like to work in Gastroenterology, and she said sincerely "great, great people."  So much for my childish notion that it was a punishment assignment, like latrine duty in the army.

    Enter a jovial thirtysomething thin bearded man, and an attractive young woman with a practiced smile. Benjamin was the doctor in charge of the scoping, Camry a med tech representative on assignment; in a movie they'd have been supplied by central casting. Turned over on my left side, as commanded. The oxygen tube smelled like plastic wrap. They hooked up the IV and told me I'd be getting two different relaxants, fentanyl and midazolam, brand name Versed. Fentanyl is known as synthetic heroin; the intended side-effect of midazolam is memory loss.

    The midazolam must have worked. The next thing I remember after "We're going to start the sedation now" is "It's over."  Looked around, different room, no fancy equipment, and the only person I saw was Nancy. No biopsy needed she told me, you didn't even have any polyps. My mesh bag was by the bed, along with a tray of crackers, cheese, and apple juice. After dressing and snacking, they gave me a wheel chair ride, room to curb. Sam was parked a couple of cars down, and jumped out and waved.

…  …  …

    "No cancer," I told him. Feeling smug, as if the test results were a testament to some hitherto undisclosed virtue on my part; as if my number wouldn't come up in due course.

    "I know, I was there when they told you."

    How had I missed that?  He must be hungry if he skipped lunch. Suddenly, I was famished too. "There's a burrito place near my house," I said, not intending to eat light.

    "OK, but the Raiders are playing in the Coliseum."

    "So you want to watch the game."

    "So I don't want to get caught in football traffic."

    So we returned to the island on a mission, eat fast food fast. We parked near a Hawaiian BBQ place. They had table service, but we would be the only customers. Sam has a thing for shrimp, and there was this amazing seafood platter picture in the window.

    More middle-class survival talk while we waited to be served. "You still for Biden?" I asked.

    He shrugged. "I'm for anyone who can beat Trump."

    We hadn't discussed politics since July, since the Gilroy massacre. On Facebook he'd reacted by saying angry white guys were our biggest terrorist threat, and then one of his recovery friends called him an Islam lover.  Then El Paso happened, then Dayton, and Sam deleted the conversation. He told me in the future he would avoid politics, because it distracted from his sobriety message. But he seemed shaken, as if anticipating many more random victims.

    Our food came. BBQ is irresistible, the tangy sweetness, the seared surfaces yielding up the juices sealed inside. I savored the tastes, and despite his traffic anxiety, Sam didn't rush me. How lucky to stay on in the generous world, enjoying an unhurried meal with my adult child; a sublime pleasure not every parent will have. World, thanks for the reprieve. Please consider America for the next one.

    Sam dropped me off at home afterwards. Then as usual on Mondays, I went into my study and worked for hours, at what, after all, is my dream job.

© µ 2019