July 28, 2025

Sandy’s birthday came around. “Don’t buy me anything, we’re spending enough money,” she said. We went to dinner with family and friends. She made her own cake, without candles. We sang “Happy Birthday.” The restaurant gave her another hunk of cake, which she didn’t eat. It was a nice evening.

Friends sent cards, the kids called. I drove up to Caesar’s Head State Park, near the state line, looking for something not mass-manufactured. I picked up some South Carolina earrings, hoping they didn’t look too much like the ones I bought last year, also at Caesar’s Head.

The real meaning was the six-year mark since the strokes. We were in Bridgeport, Pennsylvania that day, visiting our son and daughter-in-law. It was the hottest day of the year in the Philadelphia area, close to 100F.

The day before, on the drive up from Virginia, Sandy felt dizzy. Then early the next day, July 20, 2019, her left arm went numb.  “Time for the ER,” our daughter-in-law said. She drove Sandy to nearby Bryn Mawr Hospital, a stroke treatment center. That night she was in the ICU.

The next day, on her birthday, she had an MRI. A neurosurgeon conducted an exploratory cerebral angiogram, which meant inserting a wire fitted with a sensor through her femoral artery into her brain. The finding: several mini-strokes, called transient ischemic attacks or TIAs, caused by narrowing of arteries in her brain.

She went through a week of tests and scans at Bryn Mawr, her blood pressure monitored continuously.  I stayed at our son’s and daughter-in-law’s place in nearby Glen Mills and battled rush hour to the hospital every day. The docs’ consensus: a recent change in her blood pressure medication had caused pressure to drop, restricting blood flow to her brain.

Cardiologists and neurologists who examined her debated the right level for her blood pressure, controlled by medication. Either too high or too low would be risky, as with anyone. Her pressure had to be kept at a higher-than-average level to ensure adequate brain blood flow.

She left the hospital with new prescriptions. In coming months, more appointments, more tests, including a stress test involving a treadmill, a plan for a new lifestyle. A year later we packed up and moved away.

Birthdays are a bigger deal for some than others. They’re important for young kids and their parents, with parties, cake, presents. After the 21st things calm down for most adults. Work and relationships are center stage, life gets complicated. Forty is often a big one, we had people over for my 40th. After that no memories for a couple of decades. Birthdays amount to rushed phone calls.

Years fly by, people start to pay attention again. I put on a surprise party for Sandy’s 50th, the kids came home from school, friends showed up, hugs and photos all around. A priest new to the parish stopped by, he has become a friend. We made a big deal for my 65th, hiring a place for a dinner with music and dancing. Hers was lower-key, in the back yard, her childhood best friend flew up from Atlanta.

The years exact their price. Birthdays become acts of defiance or irony. Am I really this old, is the question. Mortality crashes the parties, no kidding. We know the last birthday party, when it happens, is a lot closer than the first.

Our son drove down for last week’s birthday and stayed a few days. The grandsons had fun with their uncle, who they see maybe once a year. He and I took them out for Chick-fil-lay, putt-putt golf, ice cream. They were thrilled.

He walked around downtown with us, we got lunch, window-shopped. He bought some books, we sat in a quiet tearoom and sipped tea. He cooked dinner, we talked about his work in medical physics for cancer oncology, the patients, the treatments, the tough cases. He made some points about health, fitness, diet, that whole routine, which is his career.

He headed back to his place in Jersey. I thought once again of the symmetry, my life formed there in the urban north of the state, he now settled in South Jersey just across the Delaware from Philly. 

All four of them, the boy and three girls, are keeping pace with us in birthdays, like everyone else. The youngest girl is next, in October, then the grandsons. The eleven-year-old is starting middle school, the younger boy is three years behind him.

Sandy’s big day is still in the season. The health things are center stage. She is getting her early morning walks in, getting to the gym, watching the carbs, as we all should be.

Birthdays reaffirm connections across years. “I’m so glad you have become my friend,” one young woman wrote. “I love you Sandy,” a little girl wrote in her card. The kids, the young adults, the busy working folks are present, so are the old ones, the eighty- and even ninety-somethings, women who she sees at the YMCA senior gatherings, some in tough shape, who need Sandy’s touch of kindness, concern, love, sometimes just a phone call.

We are looking at down time through our South Carolina summer, blasting heat, the grass and trees parched, the air conditioning roaring. The days sometimes seem to drag but weeks speed by, the routine we recall in Virginia and in Tennessee, just a bit worse in the deeper Deep South.

The suffocating days pass, like that hot 2019 Bryn Mawr week, when the docs puzzled over her but found answers. She marched forward across the years and birthdays. This one, with good people near, was special. They are all special.

July 21, 2025

The bounce house, or bounce room, is part of the Greenville, S.C., Pavilion County Recreation Center, a few miles from our house.  The Center is mainly an ice-skating rink, open to the public, also used for practice by the local minor league hockey club. The bounce room occupies 7,000 square feet of the place, roughly a basketball court.

I’ve taken the grandsons a few times. I pay the $19.95, the girl behind the counter fastens bracelets to their wrists. They run for the half-dozen giant brightly colored inflated devices, a couple of which resemble slides that extend nearly to the ceiling. Kids climb a ladder and fling themselves happily down, landing on a soft mat. There’s a sort of maze, a pit full of soft balls, a tunnel, a big round enclosure. Everything is soft, pliable, bouncy.

With several dozen children present the place is bedlam, yells, laughing, crying, with minor bumps. Kids do sometimes miss the mats and land hard. The moms (I’ve yet to see another male) rush over with a hug, a Kleenex, a gentle word. Mostly they sit together chatting or looking at cell phones. I’m at a small table by myself, watching the kids run around, slide, play.

Sometimes my attention wanders. This is not kids’ play as I remember it. Sixty-plus years ago, in my Jersey hometown, we played stickball in the street, dodging traffic. We wandered through the rough woodland behind the neighborhood, a forest probably a half-mile deep and two miles long, well out of sight of our moms. We camped and fished and skinnydipped in a creek that flowed through the woods. We brought home bloody knees, mud, and poison ivy. Once I was sprayed by a skunk.

The woods are still there, declared a protected natural area by the county. Six or seven years ago, my younger brother, who then still lived in the neighborhood, led me on a walk and showed me my name, carved in a fallen treetrunk, along with the year: 1961. Someone had carved “I love” in front of my name–no idea.

Today it’s the bounce house. No one gets dirty, no one gets hurt, no one is out of sight of mom for more than the minute it takes to dodge from one bounce device to another. The $9.50 admission fee is for the entire day, 10 AM to 8 PM Sunday through Thursday, and to 10:00 PM Fridays and Saturdays.

The bounce house offers safe exercise away from the TV and computer games. It’s temperature-controlled, kids aren’t out in the summer heat or winter cold. They’re in no danger of being hit by a car, or of meeting people parents don’t want their kids to meet. They’re not going to tear up their clothes. They’re in no danger of anything. Parents will gladly pay $9.50 for that.

With all those positives, bounce houses are doing a booming business. They host parties for birthdays and other occasions. A few years ago our daughter and son-in-law held a bounce-house birthday party for the older boy, the formula being play, pizza, birthday cake, pictures. Parents drop their kids off, no worries. The employees, usually teenagers or college kids, set up tables, host the party, set up for the next one.

My suggestion for this Pavilion visit was ice skating; skate rental is included in the admission price. Skating offers the same pluses as the bounce house, with the additional challenge of actually skating. The idea stirred memories—my hockey skates and hockey stick, Christmas gifts from my parents so long ago, skating on a neighborhood pond and on a local lake.

They chose the bounce house. Like other bounce-house parents and grandparents, we knew the routine. The kids would get their bracelets and scoot to the giant slides and start climbing. I’d take a seat and watch or read something. It’s the bounce house. That’s what happens.         

So it went for 15 or 20 minutes. Lots of kids were there, some wearing teeshirts from a local day camp. The place was loud. My two were out there, sticking together, up and down the slides, as usual. Then they walked toward me. The older boy asked, “Can we go, grandpa?”

I looked at my watch. I had forked over the $19.95. I thought they’d play for an hour, minimum. They both looked serious. They were done with bounce house. We headed for the door. Near the front desk a crowd of boys and girls were lacing ice skates. I paused and watched for a moment.

We got some fast food. I didn’t ask why they cut the bounce house visit short. But it seemed that those 15 minutes were the same as any 15-minute segment of all previous visits. The kids climb the ladder, slide down, climb the ladder again and slide again or move on to another device. Then the next, until they’ve done them all.

Later I thought again of my adventures as a ten- or eleven-year-old. We were outdoors, the greatest difference with the bounce house routine. If it was raining my parents or my friends’ parents might let us watch cartoons until the sun came out. Then: go out and play.

Today’s kids do play outside. Even the youngest are on fall and spring soccer and Little League teams, with practices and games scheduled, coaches teaching. The kids are in uniforms. Parents pay fees, buy equipment. They sit in the stands or stand on the sidelines, taking pictures, cheering, sometimes groaning. There’s the prospect of advancing to the next level, the middle school or high school team. Then what?

We sometimes see kids tossing balls, or kicking them with each other or with parents, and somehow feel good about it. It could be that the good for our grandsons is that the positives of the bounce house: the contained space, the structured play, the absence of even minimal risk, the near-total parents’ surveillance, just get old. Maybe the kids are over it. Maybe they’ll try stickball.

July 14, 2025

Last fall I wrote that everything is big in Texas: big business, big ranching, big energy, big tech. Now we add horror, grief, government deflecting. On TV last week a Kerrville police officer said, “as bad as it was, it could have been worse.”

We drove across the state twice in 2018. Outbound across the Panhandle we saw flat, dusty ranchland dotted with cattle. The return a month later, from El Paso to Fort Stockton was more of the same, empty desert, rolling prairie, massive, out of proportion to everything else we know.

Then, Hill Country. Eventually we crossed the Guadalupe River where it passes under I-35 between Austin and San Antonio.

Heading west, we stopped overnight in Shamrock, between Oklahoma and Amarillo. It’s a speck on the vast state map, a couple of modest historic buildings, two or three motels, fast food, St. Patrick’s Catholic church. We had breakfast at a place just north of town. Six old gents in cowboy hats were the only other customers.

We headed west toward New Mexico. Wind moaned over the desolate landscape. We stopped at the Cadillac Ranch, where old Cadillacs are half-buried, hood down, in mud. Then nothing but prairie and sky. We drove on to Albuquerque.

The return put us on I-10 east out of El Paso. We skirted the Mexican border for maybe 60 miles, driving with the big trucks at 80. The interstate turned east into green Texas vastness. We passed the start of I-20 to the oil country and pushed into Fort Stockton, biggest town on the Stockton Plateau.

An RV campground advertised with a giant “God Bless You” sign. The lady in charge gave us a tentsite next to the interstate. Long-haul trucks roared past through the night.  We left before dawn, drove 100 miles to Ozona, gassed up and turned onto U.S. 290, the direct route to Austin. We stopped in Harper because it’s Sandy’s maiden name.

The town says it sits “at the headwaters of the Hill Country” near the Pedernales River, which flows west-east toward Austin. This is part of what’s called Flash Flood Alley. We stopped at the Longhorn Café, then drove around Harper, passing an exotic animal farm. Llamas and camels stared at us from their corral.

The Hill Country, setting for the Guadalupe River tragedy, rises and falls in gentle inclines and descents. It’s cattle and wine country, pretty and green, showing off nice homes and estates. The highway winds gracefully around the curves past the vineyards. Eventually traffic picks up as you close on the Austin suburbs.

We were about 20 miles north of Kerrville, the county seat of Kerr County, through which the Guadalupe flows. We stopped in Fredericksburg and looked at the tourist shops, then headed to Austin.

Hill Country continues into the city. Austin—this was seven years ago—was even then a bedlam of traffic and sprawl, McMansion-type homes going up in cookie-cutter subdivisions along eight-lane local highways. An old Virginia friend who relocated to a suburb northwest of downtown now lives next to a steep precipice above a creekbed that becomes a raging flood after a heavy rain. Like the Guadalupe on the July 4 weekend.

Texans love Texas. Years ago someone I met from just outside Austin, on a work assignment in D.C., urged us to retire in the Hill Country. Every weekend she flew home, she missed the place that much. A Marine officer I knew from New Braunfels, a German-heritage place between Austin and San Antonio, swore it’s the best place on earth.

We paused in San Antonio and saw the Alamo then stopped at the Riverwalk, the famous tourist trap. We got tired, and picked up I-10 again, heading for Houston. At some point we turned southeast onto a traffic-choked spur to Galveston. We got there, got a room on the seedier end of town, ate at a Denny’s. Texas was becoming a chore.

In the morning we walked on the beach through the jungle humidity, took a picture to prove we were there, then headed for America’s oil refining strip from Beaumont, past the Gulf Coast’s oil rigs, gas cracking plants, and tanker piers. We drove through Louisiana’s Atchafalaya River Basin, America’s largest swamp, 20 miles of bogs and mangroves. The Hill Country was a half-state behind us.

We now are seeing and reading about Hill Country police chiefs, mayors, and state officials groping for answers. The National Weather Service says it issued a flood watch at 1 PM July 3 for south-central Texas. At 1:14 AM July 4 NWS sent a flash-flood warning for Kerr County. CNN reported that County Sheriff Larry Leitha says he didn’t get the word until 4:00 or 5:00 AM, when 911 calls started.  

“We’re putting together a timeline,” he said last Wednesday.  At this writing apparently no one had a copy of the emergency management plan for Camp Mystic, where close to 30 girls died.

Floods kill millions worldwide. In the U.S.:  Johnstown, Penn., in 1889, the St. Francis dam failure (Los Angeles) in 1928. Ohio River in 1937. Katrina in 2005, the Dayton great flood of 2013, Floods all over, Massachusetts, Vermont, Idaho, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina.

Last fall Hurricane Helene killed 250 people in five states, North Carolina leading with more than 100, many in remote places where wilderness rivers rampaged. Helene was a monster storm.

The Hill Country flood came in a ferocious night rain. People in charge are saying they didn’t know about the forecasts, the warnings, the alerts. Children slept close to the river. Teenage counselors saved most, not all. As of right now the flood has killed 129, 160 still missing.

The political types who didn’t have a plan now are talking. The state legislature has scheduled a hearing. Meanwhile thousands are wading in Guadalupe muck, still searching, coping with grief, honoring families. Nightmares are big in Texas. So is humanity.        

July 7, 2025

The mercury was forecast to climb into the nineties, but the men planned to finish before the heat set in. The early morning air was humid, yet cool in the deep shade.  Their target was four miles, a rough endpoint of a stretch of easy descent. They left Grant’s truck at the trailhead and moved forward.

The trail was soft, the canopy thick overhead. They moved easily over the first hundred yards and made a gentle turn. A piece of orange fencing blocked the route, a hand-printed sign warned “landslide,” a remnant of Hurricane Helene nine months ago. Ribbons tied to branches showed the detour. They slogged uphill around the wrecked patch, then turned down onto the trail.

Heading east from Laurel Valley off U.S. 178, the Foothills Trail follows gravelly, rough Horsepasture Road in a kind of arc, then turns west and climbs. The trail builders years ago installed wooden steps at steep points as an aid to casual hikers. The steps intrude on the natural slopes and actually slow progress. From the road level the men climbed three or four stairwells as the trail followed the hard slope.  

The trail repair team had bulldozed an alternate path along the rocky, root-lined first climb. The men stayed on the original trail, following the white Foothills blazes. The trail wound up, up, they bent forward, moving deliberately.  Beyond another sharp upward turn they found a short stretch of level ground. Then more climbing.

At the near-two-mile point the forest opened up a bit, the trail widened. They exhaled, past the worst of it. Ahead they found gently rolling terrain. The trail now was soft, easy going. They quickened their pace past hundreds of hurricane blowdowns, chain-sawed and pushed off the trail. The thousand-year storm had scarred the forest, opening stretches of once-dark woodland to sunlight. It was nature’s way.

At two miles the rolling country inclined upward again. The forest thickened under dense deep-green canopy which, it seemed, the storm had left unscathed. They moved into the heart of the Jocassee Gorges Management Area, a massive expanse of mountain forest straddling the N.C.-S.C. state line, crossed only by winding trails.

The trail inclined downward, curling towards Laurel Ford Creek. At three miles they could hear the laughing of fast water. They glided through young forest growth, feeling the air grow warm as they descended.  

At close to four miles the trail opened to a ladder, recently built, at a ten-foot drop. They climbed down into a lush, moist jungle, the new growth entangled with towering oaks and maples. The ground was muddy, lined with briars and vines, the trail now bordered to the south by a rock wall. They moved forward, hearing the roar of the creek.

They crossed a bridge, paused, sipped water, then checked their map. Virginia Hawkins Falls looked to be another half-mile. The trail ahead faded into thick woods. They rehitched their hydration packs and moved on.

The trail zigzagged across the creek over sturdy bridges. The creek rushed on its winding course, lined by tangled underbrush and fallen trees. The rock wall rose into heavy forest. Young trees grew in impenetrable thickets, blocking the sky, the heavy air grew heavier. They followed the white blazes and descended another long flight of forest stairs to a narrow clearing alongside the falls.

They stared at the cascading water as it gushed over the falls from ten or twelve feet high, raising an airy mist then flowing over a rocky streambed to a quiet pond and west toward Laurel Falls. A large flat rock served as a bench. They both gulped water and ate something and watched the clear water on its picturesque path. Grant, the athlete, climbed down to the water’s edge for a closer look.

The waterfall, the moss-covered rocks of the creekbed, the young growth rising into the treetops, conveyed the sense of deep rainforest transplanted from some tropical place. The dense greenery crept down to the water’s edge. The only sound was the creek’s flow over the rocks.

In 1904 the Argentine-English writer and naturalist William Henry Hudson wrote Green Mansions, a romantic novel set in the Venezuelan jungle that draws the reader into his perception of the mystical beauty of woodland.  As his narrator travels through wilderness, he says, “I felt purified and had a strange sense and apprehension of a secret innocence and spirituality in nature, a prescience of some bourn, incalculably distant, perhaps, to which are all moving.”

The men sat for those few moments within and surrounded by a vast, silent green mansion, a sublime creation of nature: the vernal, dense forest wildness, the humid air of the Carolina summer, the rich woodland soil, the remoteness from crowded places. They rested, watching the falls, feeling the delicate serenity of the natural world.

They stood, their legs stiff from the break, and reversed course. It had been nearly five miles. They trekked slowly up the first set of trail stairs and moved back along the creek, stepping over fallen tree trunks.  

They recrossed the bridges and picked up their pace. At the end of the straightway beyond the fourth bridge they slogged into three short steep switchbacks. The easy outbound descent became a battle uphill. The sun bore down, mosquitos swarmed. In an hour they found the rolling, sunlit trail, and leaned forward into the fast return.