WWI (the war to end all wars)

This is a picture of my grandparents right before he shipped out to fight in the trenches of WW I. Fortunately the only trenches he saw during the war were of the latrine type on the island of Hawaii where he lived as part of a contingent stationed in the South Pacific to protect our western flank. I have often wished I was older when he died, so that I could have heard the story on that one. As our boys were dying in the cold muddy trenches of Europe’s western front, he and his mates were keeping Hawaii safe for democracy.

By the time I knew my grandparents they had already moved from Missouri Valley, Iowa to Chicago during the depression. Grandpa was retired from the railroad where he had worked as a boxcar painter and my grandma had gotten very heavy. They lived in a red brick duplex in Bellwood that had a cement stoop and a fence in the back where I threw rocks at my sister to knock her off and she broke her arm and a small yard where the fireflies came out at night.

The Christmas of 1968 my brother and I received two battery powered, handset controlled, dinosaurs. I don’t remember if my grandparents gave them to us but my only memory of playing with them was on Christmas over at their house. One was a T-Rex and the other, a Triceratops. Come to think of it when I was a kid, there were only three types of dinosaurs, those two and the Brontosaurus. There were no “Raptors” or venom spewing lizards. I have a vague memory of the kind with the sails on their backs, but that’s it. I also have a vague memory of pitching a fit to get the T-rex ‘cause even at the age of three it was pretty obvious that he was the bad ass. He had a mouth that opened and closed and though his front arms were small they had fierce claws. My brother and I went out on the front cement stoop in the cold to do battle and somehow, inexplicably, my dino got its ass kicked every time. Though my T-rex looked mean he stood balanced on two legs and a tail and therefore was easy to tip over. What was worse, I couldn’t even complain that my older brother had cheated. It’s the only time I remember playing with that toy. I’ve asked my brother about this and though he to remembers that day well, he also can’t think of another battle-royal we had with them.

As my grandparents got older, my grandmother became to heavy to climb the stairs up to bed so they moved the bedroom into the dinning room. She continued to bake bread in the adjoining kitchen and I have a clear memory of her in her muumuu kneading the dough for rolls. She had soft, round, nearly transparent skin and kept her freezer stocked with fudge-sickles and orange push-ups. My Grampa was always the one sent on ice-cream reconnaissance missions to the corner grocery.

She died before he did. In my Grandpas old age he would get lost coming home from that same store and my Uncle Bill would have to go find him. Somehow I have a sneaking suspicion that when I am old and confused and most memories have faded away, I’ll get lost on my way home as well and my son will find me wandering the streets in search of a stoop that doesn’t even exist anymore.

Hospitals

Well the littlest one had to go to the hospital to get his tonsil’s removed. We had already spent last Friday night in the ICU due to the fact that he was having trouble breathing on account of how big they got. They had tried to get us to move to the floor over the weekend but we were having none of it. It’s hard enough teaching the ICU nurses how to take care of the boy much less the nurses on the floor. Instead we went home, all got some sleep and took him back on Monday for the big operation.

The boys fine, though his throat’s a little sore. Since his swallow isn’t that good he wasn’t allowed to have ice cream or a popsicle or anything so he was putting up a pretty big fuss.

We had the operation done at Mary Bridge CH here in Tacoma. It was a good practice run for both them and us. Up until now the boy had always made the trip up to Children’s Hospital in Seattle and that commute is just about enough to do you in. I swear I don’t know how sweetie does it the three days a week she works up there. We just thought Mary Bridge should get a turn and see how she does.

Monday his bedroom in the ICU had a beautiful view of Mount Rainier and the Sound. Snow covers the low-lying hills this time of year and in the end-of-day light the whole panorama turns pink. You can see the Armory, the County City building and the old Tahoma high school that sits on the far side of Wrights Park. Down almost directly below his window is a food bank and in the hour before it opens a line snakes it’s way across the parking lot full of a thousand points of forgotten light.

They kept him overnight in the ICU because he was having trouble dealing with some goopy secretions but by the next morning he seemed to be well on his way to going home. The weather had taken a turn for the norm and once again the mountain had the day off. It’s hard to get tired of the views around here; the mountain is rarely in the same place twice.

Pepper

Dewy and Ham's little dog Pepper died. He’d been on borrowed time since the rope episode anyway. Not much of a bark left to go along with his poor eye site and patchy fur loss. No one quite knows what happened, he just went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up. Dewy said she thought something was wrong when he just lifted his head and watched her walk to the bathroom, instead of following her in the middle of the night like he usually did.

I feel bad for the girls ‘cause they had that dog for damn near ever. Ham’s already talking about getting a new one but I think Dewy’s still not so sure. As anyone who’s ever had a pet knows they don’t live that long, unless it’s a bird or turtle or something and it’s hard to get back on that bicycle after the big crash. I’m thinking Dewy just needs a little more time before she can let her heart go somewhere else.

Last night it rained. Usually the sound of it on the roof of the Airstream puts me right to sleep but not last night. I lay there in the dim light wondering why I was thinking about a dog I never cared for all that much anyway. Practically blind and dumb as a post, he would run around chasing things only he could see, leaping and barking at his ghosts or his demons or maybe just sleeping under the old picnic bench with his hind legs twitching. Do dogs dream of the catch or only the chase?

I think what’s missing these days is the insignificance of his action. How his lack of fierceness or a true enemy never stopped his incessant barking. I miss that due to his limited self-awareness he would, like Don Quixote, attack whatever windmills happened across his path. Throughout most his life he was the vigilant protector of all that’s imagined: A guardian from the monsters beneath the bed and behind the closet’s door.

My feeling is that when he lost his bark he lost his job. In a world where dancing shadows of cedar boughs move, unannounced, across the drive in the wind, what good is a near blind, mute old dog anyway?

I just hope they don’t go the bird route in the hope that it’ll outlive them. It’s always been my opinion that bird people are generally a little crazy, probably driven insane by a combination loud squawking and bird shit.