What she has missed the most

Other than the pain, discomfort and immobility, the thing that has bothered Margie the most is the time that she has missed with Kalib. She had been his official babysitter up until she suffered her first injury in January, and then his parents had to enroll him in daycare, because she was in no condition to care for him.

Then, about a month ago, she had healed enough that she took over his care once again. And now he is back in daycare.

At least she can get out of bed now, and come to the couch and sit with him.

Even when she couldn't, I would be in the room with her sometimes after his parents came home. The door would be closed, but then we would hear his little feet running down the hall.

Margie would smile, big.

Perhaps she will never be his regular sitter again. He and his parents moved in with us about a year-and-half ago so that they could save some money while Jacob applied to the US Public Health Service Commission Corps and then waited to hear from them. It was a very long process and until it was over, there was no point in them trying to buy a house.

Right now, Jacob works directly for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium as a civil engineer, but once accepted in the Corps, he would be subject to being sent anywhere in the world that the US operates health care programs, from Barrow to Afghanistan, maybe Guam.

Lavina was really hoping that he would be assigned to the Southwest. Flagstaff was the place she really wanted, because it is close to her home.

The assignment finally came - Anchorage.

Today, Jacob and Lavina went house shopping in Anchorage.

So, probably, by the time comes that Margie is again able to take care of little Kalib, he will be living in Anchorage with his parents.

Better that than Guam.

Not that I have anything against Guam. I am certain it is a nice place, but its a long way to have to go to see your grandson. It's a long way to have to go.

Anchorage is not.

That's hot chocolate that he's drinking there, by the way. His Auntie Lisa made it for him. That's her, sitting at the end of the couch, by Jim, the black cat.

I sure do love that cat.

I love them all.

I hop from a fishing boat in Prince William Sound to Family Restaurant; Sarah Palin finally pushes me over the edge (this is not a test, this is real)

This morning, at 5:38 AM, I sat inside inside the cabin of a fishing boat, a seiner, as it pulled out away from the dock and headed into the waters of Prince William Sound. Suddenly, a big truck came roaring into our path, so I pushed the button that would blast the horn and at the exact moment that I did the phone rang in our bedroom. It jarred me full awake.

At first, I thought that I would not answer it, because what kind of idiot calls you at 5:38 in the morning? But then, of course, there are all those calls that can come at any hour of the night, when someone that you love has been injured or died. As much as you never want to hear them, such calls need to be answered. 

Or it could be someone on the east coast who wanted a photograph from me and did not check to see what the time difference between there and here. I have had this happen a number of times.

But the phone did not ring again. And so I wondered if it had really rang at all, or if I had dreamed it. Margie never heard it. But then she sleeps more lightly than I do and was drugged up on pain killers.

I am quite certain that it rang.

I was now desperately tired and wide awake at the same time. I lay awake for a while, then rolled from my right to my left side. This was observed by Jimmy, the black cat. He rose then from the mattress, climbed atop me and settled down in the crook between my hip and shoulder.

He made my blanket feel wonderfully warm and so I thought that I could drift back to sleep. Just when I was about to, I heard Margie stirring and I knew she needed help, so I made poor Jimmy get down and I got up and helped her.

I then went back to bed. The windows were open just a enough that it had become very cool in the room. When I crawled back under the covers, I could not get warm.

"Jimmy!" I pled, "come back." He thought about it for about ten minutes and then he did.

Soon, I was once again wonderfully warm. I was getting close to drifting back to sleep when Jimmy heard a certain bird sing outside. He suddenly leaped off me and hopped onto the window sill to see if by chance he might get that bird.

Now, I was wide awake again. I got to thinking about Family Restaurant. I knew that I should not go there. I can't afford to go there every time I get the whim. And there is my acid reflux to think about. I need to eat oatmeal.

Yet, I did not want to lie in bed awake all morning and then get up and cook oatmeal. It was after seven now and it seemed foolish to lie in bed awake any longer. But the only way that getting up seemed tolerable was if I went to Family and ordered an omelette and had somebody wait on me. 

So that is what I did.

I bought Margie a burrito from Carl's Jr. brought it back to her and then headed out the door to take my morning walk. This dog was in the driveway and was very surprised to see me. It is the same dog that nearly killed the rabbit and that lives on the corner where the chicken crossed the road. 

We stared at each other for about one minute, as I waited, curious, to see what he would do. 

He got the hell out of there.

Somebody had moved the helmet from accident site up to just off the edge of the road. It seemed odd that nobody had picked it up yet, which made me wonder if whoever had been wearing it had been hurt badly enough that he had no need for a helmet and so no one had even thought about it.

I still wondered if it was a child or an adult. I picked up the helmet and put it on my head. It was tight, but I could push it on.

Could have been a kid with a big head, or an adult with a small one.

There were towering cumulus in the sky. 

Later, I found Margie in the process of paying our bills, playing with crossword puzzles. You can see how much better she looks. It has been almost two weeks now. They said she would be laid up for six - if she does not require surgery, which we won't know until Tuesday at the earliest.

Late in the afternoon, I took a coffee break. I passed by the Wasilla skateboard park - the best in the state.

Now... concerning Sarah Palin... I think she has finally pushed me over the edge with her Facebook statement against health care reform. She may not be aware of it, but in this distortion she has made a personal attack against my health care - as I tried to take responsibility and so bought a health insurance policy in good faith, only to discover, when my time of need came, that my health insurance, which I pay dearly for, is run by an organization that views my health care as an obstacle to their profits. 

I have spent considerable time in off-the-highway Alaska, where medical facilities are limited. Quite often, while I was out there, someone who had suffered an accident or had fallen critically ill had needed to be medivaced to Anchorage or Fairbanks by air ambulance. I knew that such an event could break me, so, about 15 years ago, when I spoke with the sales representative for the insurance that I hoped to get through the National Association of the Self Employed, the first question that I asked was, should I need it, will this policy cover the cost of an air ambulance?

The sales representative assured me that it would. I went for it. No other member of my Apache family was covered under the plan, as all were covered under treaty obligation by the US Indian Health Service.

At first, I thought that I had purchased a pretty good plan - until the time came that I actually needed it. Then I realized that the over $8000 I spend annually was not doing me much good. Very little was ever covered - and that includes medication, which was not covered at all.

I could have received much better care, and not postponed or ignored so much that needed to be done, had I have put that $8000 toward it, rather than to someone else's profit.

Still, I held onto the plan just in case I should ever experience the catastrophic event.

That came in June of last year, when I took my fall in Barrow and suffered my shattered shoulder. There is a good hospital in Barrow, but it was not equipped to deal with the injury that I had. So I was medivaced by air ambulance to Anchorage.

The bill for that air ambulance alone came to over $37,000. My insurance company turned it over to one of those sharp individuals to whom they pay high salaries just to find any clause that might enable them to get out of paying a claim. That person did his job well. They refused to pay. And that was only the beginning of the many ways my insurance company failed me after I took my fall.

So, yes - if a national health insurance option were to be established with client health rather than profit being the highest priority, I would drop my company in an instant and switch. And if enough of their clients did so that they went out of business... good. That would be exactly what they deserve.

No, Sarah Palin - Barack Obama's health care plan is not "absolutely evil" as you state on your Facebook page. And when you write, "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care," you are making that all up.

Your language is not only inflammatory, but dishonest. There will be no "death panel" and I challenge you to show us the language that a rational, intelligent reading of could be interpreted to imply such a thing. Your baby will be treated with respect, compassion, and care under the Obama plan - and not only that, but so will the babies of many parents not so fortunate as you and Todd, parents who cannot afford the kind of health insurance that you enjoy.

Why do you, of all people, stand against such parents and their Down Syndrome babies?

I also believe that you know this, but have chosen your words to pander to paranoia and fear in order to put yourself alongside the Rush Limbaugh's of the world.

Sarah Palin - I used to love you. I really did. I did not vote for you, because I feared where you might come down on certain issues dear to me, such as Native self-governance and subsistence hunting and fishing rights. Yet, after you took office, got rid of that jet and did a few other good and showy things, I had a change of heart. I thought you might truly be that "breath of fresh air," the cliche that even more Democrats than Republicans were using to describe you. But then came John McCain - who I also once loved - and you showed us who you really are. 

When I started this blog, I vowed to keep myself out of the fray, to not join the media and blog circus that whipped up around you, because I had other purposes and did not want to be diverted from them. I have often found it a struggle to keep that vow, but when I read the cynical words that you wrote Friday on Facebook, I could not keep it any longer.

You must be spoken against and so I speak against you.

Margie crutches her way into the living room and watches TV

Concerning this blog - concerning work, recreation and life in general - I remain in "take a break" mode, even if there is no break to be had, but in the past couple of days, Margie has made big improvement and so I must report it.

Yesterday, I walked into the bedroom and was most surprised to find her standing beside the bed, supported by her crutches, having risen to that position with no help from me.

And then... not immediately but very soon... she hobbled all the way out to the living room, with me slowly walking backwards in front of her in case she should begin to fall. With my help, she sat down upon the couch and I positioned the red ottoman in front of her and helped her situate her injured leg upon it. I gave her the two remotes required to control the TV. She turned it on and began to watch.

I don't have much to do with TV these days. To watch TV feels to me like a monumental waste of time and I can hardly sit through a program. In the winter, when the nights are not only dark but dominate the day, I pick out a program or two a week to try to watch when I am home, most notably the original CSI (although I pretty much lost interest after Gil left) and on Sunday nights, it has become a family tradition to watch Desperate Housewives and I do join in, mostly for the popcorn.

And occassionally, on a dark, cold, winter night, it is wonderful to cozy up to Margie on the couch and watch a video.

But I do not believe that I have watched a single program all the way through this entire summer - until tonight. Burn Notice. I watched just so that I could sit down and be with her. It was fun.

Another program followed - something with "Royal" in the title, and that is what she is watching here. But I was TV'ed out. I shot this single frame - my only frame for the entire day - with my G10 pocket camera and then came out here and put it in this blog.

So there you have it.

A short break

I hate to do it, but I must take a short break. Two days, perhaps. Possibly a week. Maybe a century. A century is short. Whatever - I'll soon be back.

Using her crutches, Margie made it out of bed, long enough for me to shampoo her hair. Afterward, she gave me a nice smile. She looks very pretty.

I walk about in hand and ankle cuffs, throwing rocks, as I listen to old songs play in my head

Although the nights have been cold, today was the third day in a row of exquisite, warm, sunshine and after Caleb returned from his late-morning coffee outing, I got him to agree not to go to bed until I could take a walk. I headed down Seldon to Church Road and, as I returned, I saw this vehicle pull out from Lower Serendipity. I should know the make, model, and year, I suppose, but I don't.

When I first saw it, I wondered if it had once served as a hearse. If so, I wondered about the people it had carried. I pictured an old man with pure white hair and a handle-bar mustache lying in the back inside a fine, blue, coffin, his hands folded on top of his chest over a black suit with blue pinstripes, taking his final ride. Then I pictured a tiny coffin.

I decided that instead, maybe it had been a woody, with surfboards piled on top. I pictured bleached-blond surfers and their bikini-clad honeys from the 1960's driving it along the edge of California seaside cliffs, damn near driving off the road because they could not keep their eyes off the waves breaking below.

I remembered driving along such cliffs, surfboard on top, the girls in the car screaming in terror at me to watch the road instead of the surf. I wouldn't have driven off the road. Even though I studied the surf, I knew at all times right where the edge of that cliff was.

I'm afraid the car was not a woody, it was a 1960 Ford Fairlane sedan and the girls did not wear bikinis. They were modestly dressed, actually.

Mormon girls. That's why.

A Jan and Dean song came into my mind:

I bought a cool wagon and we call it a woody

Surf City, here we come

You know its not very cherry its an oldie but a goodie

Surf City, here we come

Well it ain't got a backseat or a rear window

but it still gets me where I want to go

And we're going to Surf City, 'cause its two to one

You know we're going to Surf City, gonna have some fun...

...Two girls for every boy...

If I could but live my youth again, those girls would not be Mormons, or, if they were, they would be the wild ones (sorry, Mom).

One is only young once, and those who stand at the pulpit and preach to young people about what will bring them unbearable regret later in life can really miss the mark.

I walked under a sky that was blue, so deep, clear and clean and in the not too far distance, the mountains rose beautifully into it. The air was wonderfully warm and its aroma was sweet. Yet, I felt trapped, as though I was shackled in steel cuffs - both on my wrists and ankles.

This is how I had felt last summer, too, when I would get out and walk and see the sky and the mountains. This is because it was all inaccessible to me. I could see it, but I could not reach it; I could not go to it. I could not walk in it. This was because of the injury that I had suffered. I was horribly fragile and had a long way to go before I would heal.

And that's how the summer passed, and the fall, but always I was improving slowly and in the winter I began to feel new strength, but still I was limited. The pain in my right shoulder, upper arm and wrist was constant and that whole arm was weak. My range of motion was limited. Even a slight amount of stress, whether by bump or pull, could jar me with startling pain and seemed to threaten to knock me right back to where I had been.

Come the beginning of this summer, despite the fact that I still wore a brace upon my wrist and that the pain remained constant, there 100 percent of the time but usually at a low enough level that I could forget about it, I felt as though I were ready to go, full bore now.

I had a plan to do just that. I had what I figured would be a month's worth of field work - shooting pictures and conducting interviews - to do on the Arctic Slope. I created a fantasy in my head. Even as I did this field work - shooting and working oh, say, 12 hours a day, I would somehow find another eight hours or so to construct my 96 page Uiñiq magazine layout, write all my stories and get my publication press ready by August 1.

Then, I would cut loose for the entire month and do all those things that I had not been able to do last summer. I would hike in the mountains, I would canoe in the wild country, I would catch fish, including a king salmon, kayak in Prince William Sound and then at the end I would see if I could shoot a moose and put it on the table.

As anyone who has been with this blog knows, I had a great time on the Slope and I would judge my field work to have been quite successful. But how in the world I ever got the idea that I could put my magazine together at the same time as I did that field work, I do not know.

So I resigned myself to the idea that I had no choice but to use the month of August to put the magazine together - yet every now and then, no matter what, I would break away to go into the mountains, or onto the water, for one day, or even just an afternoon.

And then Margie fell. And now she needs me all the time. Even out here, on this short walk, knowing that Caleb was in the house with her should anything urgent come up, I was nervous and uncomfortable. I felt that I must get back to her quickly as I could. Those mountains were absolutely inaccessible to me. I felt trapped. Cuffed.

And then another old song came into my head, this one by the Everly Brothers:

Through the years our love will grow

like a river it will flow

It can't die because I'm so...

devoted...

to you!*

That "you" would be Margie. And being devoted does not necessarily mean romance at all; it does not necessarily mean holding hands and staring raptured into misty eyes. It means giving up what you so desperately want to do to be with that person when that person truly needs you - just as Margie gave up so much last summer to care for me; it means to be exhausted and to get up at any and all hours of the night, when you do not feel you can even open your eyes or raise your arms, to help that person through an unpleasant and painful task.

And even as I felt trapped and cuffed while walking in the open air under the bright sun, my Margie lay on the same bed where she had lain nearly eight days straight now, always on her back, never getting more than one foot... no, not even more than eight inches... from the bed in all that time.

And yes, I am devoted to my Margie. By so many standards upon which the marital relationship is often judged, I fail. Many is the woman who would have left me long ago. But we like each other. We don't just love each other. We like each other. We are friends. We enjoy hanging out together. And I am devoted to her. No matter how contrary to the idea of devotion some of my actions might seem by the so often artificial standards of the society that we live in.

So all those mountains must just sit there, for now, without me wandering through them.

I did not mean to get carried away like this. I should strike all this.

But what is that rock doing in the air, just beyond my thumb?

I threw it, and photographed as it left. See, yesterday, I threw an apple core into the bushes, for the birds, the squirrels, the bugs to eat. My throw was not good. In the time of my chidhood, if a boy had made such a throw his friends would have teased him, "you throw like a girl!"

It was a weak throw, and the core only traveled about 15 feet - the lingering result of my injury. So I decided that when I walk, I will stop every now and then, pick up a rock, and throw it, until I can hit a target a good distance away.

I probably threw two or three dozen rocks on this walk. I gripped the rocks the way you grip a baseball, and made a concerted effort to draw my arm over my head in good baseball style. It was difficult. It hurt. None of my rocks went much past 20 feet - until the last one. It flew maybe 30 feet.

So I am going to keep throwing rocks until they are frozen to the ground and buried under the snow.

In the midst of this coming winter, I will take Margie to Hawaii and I will rent a surfboard and with my strengthened arm I will paddle into the surf and then I will ride a wave.

It has been so damn long since I have ridden a wave.

So please, please... no more accidents!

Speaking of accidents... at the edge of Wards Road, over the tiny pond my kids named "Little Lake" when they were growing, I found this crash helmet in the weeds. See the indention that covers the nearby area? I could see that it was made by an up-ended machine, probably a four wheeler, most likely driven by a kid hot-rodding in wreckless abandon - maybe a little kid - just before (s)he went off the road.

But I don't know. Maybe it was a responsible adult. All I know for sure is that someone had an accident here and the helmet was left behind.

I wondered how bad it was? Hopefully, not too bad. Maybe Margie is not the only person around here laid up in bed right now.

The other day, Caleb bought himself an iPhone. He plays a game on it.

This is progress. I was able to help Margie out of bed and onto a chair, where she sat for a very long time and read a book. Since she can no longer babysit him, and Lavina had to go back to work, Kalib enrolled in daycare today, just as he did after she injured herself last January.

He and his parents did not get home until late, about 9:30, but they brought Margie's dinner with them. Hawaiian food -chicken and rice - cooked at that place in Mountain View, the name of which I forget.

I did not want to wait that late for dinner and so had eaten mine  - a can of pinto beans and a ham and cheese sandwich - earlier.

But Margie gave me a taste of hers.

Oh, geeze! Had I known, I would have waited until midnight, if need be.

That's how good it was.

It may have been the best chicken that I have ever tasted.

Other than Mom's, of course.

Oh yes - the Sarah Palin experiment:

It worked. I had the biggest flood of hits today that I have received since I posted the Barrow baby contest.

No - Sarah Palin did not draw as many people to the blog as did the Barrow babies, but she drew quite a few, anyway.

*My condolences to Congressman Don Young, over the loss of his wife, Lu.