January 10, 2022

Sandy and I took a ride out to Lake Robinson, about ten miles from home. It’s a man-made lake—not to say artificial—created by Greer CPW, the local utility. This was a few Sundays ago, before the holidays. We walked around the picnic area and looked out at the deep blue of the lake, which extends for miles to wooded hills, hazy in the distance. We hiked out on a pier and talked to an old guy fishing for bass or crappie and drinking beer. He caught a couple of small ones.

A brisk wind blew, we pulled our collars up and headed back to the parking lot. Near our car, a young woman pulled a large suitcase from her SUV. From it she unfolded a bright yellow package, opened the SUV hood, and connected a pump to the battery and to the package.

While we watched, the package inflated into an eight-foot-long paddleboard. Under her sweatgear she wore a swimsuit. She tossed the sweats in her car and, while we shivered, carried the paddleboard and a long paddle to the boat pier, threw it in the water, and climbed aboard. As it glided away from the pier she stood up, thrust the paddle in the water and sailed swiftly out into the lake.  We watched her paddle away, in a few minutes she was a dot. I watched until she faded in the distance.

As we headed home, I thought: she’s way younger than me. Where did she get the enthusiasm, the savvy, the nerve, to hop on a slim plank and sail out to the middle of a deep lake? I’ve never paddleboarded. My friend Kevin, down in Florida, paddleboards in the Gulf.  Why don’t I try it? I looked up ORU, the company I saw branded on her paddleboard. They also sell collapsible kayaks, prices range to a few hundred bucks. The company offers a combination paddleboard-kayak, the “origami paddler,” which they say is “the world’s first folding paddleboard/kayak in one.” It’s made of recycled plastic.

I asked Sandy, how about a paddleboard or a kayak for Christmas? She wasn’t interested. She does water aerobics at the YMCA pool but isn’t one for sailing.  

I thought it would be fun to paddle around a lake, maybe do some fishing from a kayak. We have lots of lakes around here. Lake Hartwell, down on the Georgia-S.C. border, which we visited for our anniversary, is huge. Lake Jocassee is another big one up near North Carolina. Then there’s Lake Keowee, also northwest of us, a pretty boating and vacation spot.

I haven’t done anything about it. Inertia set in, inertia and distractions, obligations, the stuff you worry about every day. When I recall that girl sailing gracefully across the lake I still think it would be an adventure. But I’d have to buy the kit, assemble the paddleboard, and learn how to balance and sail on it. It would take some effort. But then so would lots of other things.

I’d like to visit Ireland, it’s on our list. We’ve never been there, although we have a common Irish name. Our daughter Marie spent a year at University College in Dublin. I regret now that we never visited her that year. The light bulb—let’s go to Ireland—never lit. We just plodded on, work, chores, the usual. My parents, who never traveled across the U.S., visited Ireland. Our kids have been to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Iceland, South Africa, Russia, Peru, the Caribbean, Europe multiple times. A few of those trips were work related, most were for fun. We went to Rome for our 25th anniversary. That was 19 years ago. We went to Prince Edward Island, a quick flight from Toronto, ten years ago. We did go to the Paris Air Show in 1988 and the Farnborough Air Show in England the following year—both work trips.  

We never finished the big road trip we started in 2018. We got halfway across the country, sickness got in the way. Now it’s a distant memory.

We still have the tent, sleeping bags, gas grill, and backpacks, they’re gathering dust in the garage. Then too, I still have the ten-foot-long surfcasting fishing rod and the spinning reel my mother gave my father for Christmas when I was a teenager. He used it maybe once. It hung in their basement until the house was sold. I grabbed it. That was 15 years ago. So the rod and reel set, while still in near-new condition, is close to 60 years old. Will I ever use it?

The years march forward, we stand by, transfixed by the world lately racked by absurdity and disaster. The mercury ran up to a freakish 75 last week, the tiny public skating rink laid out downtown for the Christmas season was closed for a few days. The manufactured ice was no match for the springlike temperatures. But nobody around here knows how to skate anyway. This is South Carolina, not Massachusetts.

We watched as Nature attacked: Midwest tornadoes last month, then fires in Colorado. Storms swept in last week. The rain stopped. Our sky stayed blue while northern Virginia got a snowstorm that trapped thousands on I-95 overnight. We then endured man-made darkness. Our new parish shut down because both priests got covid—no masks, no distancing. We noted the one-year anniversary of the attack on the Capitol. The insurrection is not over.

Still, we accumulate bright ideas: can we get our deck replaced? Can I take the grandsons fishing? Can we pull off the second half of the road trip? Can I finish the Bighorn trail run out in Wyoming in June?

It’s all on file in my head. Retirement can be lots of things, fearless, adventuresome travel to the great castles of Europe or the temples of India—whatever you like and can afford. It could be learning a new language or how to play guitar, helping out with Meals on Wheels (Sandy’s plan). It can be relaxing in rocking chairs in the backyard or sprawled by a pool drinking beer while slathered with sunscreen. It could be sitting on the porch whittling.

Then too, retirement can mutate into dreary griping about how the world treats us, no matter how the world treats us. We could be lying in a hospital ICU. We hope, when we say our prayers, we’re done with that. But it looks like I’m not buying the paddleboard. I’ll try whittling.

January 3, 2022

Young and old men and women slog up Table Rock Mountain. At 2,000 feet the southern skyline presents for 50 miles. A thousand feet higher the sheer rock faces that give the place its name drop sharply to the abyss. Creases have been chiseled intermittently into the stone to provide some footing, but don’t remove the hint of danger of a bad ending. The path then twists through thick woods to a near-vertical climb to the summit. The rocky surface opens to a panorama to the north, wide and spectacular, that engages the human spirit.

Going to Table Rock and similar places is one of the things we can do as one hard year ends and another looms. Sons, daughters, and parents who gathered for Christmas have left, some struggling with weather and covid nightmares. As always, year’s end brings the sweeping judgments and retrospectives: how did things work out for you?

This bleak December reinforced sadness and despair, we read about it every day. But the calendar pages turn to 2022, they move only forward. Table Rock may be a small respite, but the vastness of the setting lifts the heart. The climbers descend to the city. Their lives call them back to perseverance and faith. Some undeniable force for good may capture the soul, perhaps for a little while, perhaps forever. Call it mountain rapture, call it the power of the Almighty, impassive, eternal. It summons us to confront the world, and to act.

As these new days rush forward we turn to treasure memories of lives lost in 2021, some close and dear, parents, siblings, who still call to us. Then too, giants passed. In June Donald Rumsfeld, the youngest and later the oldest Secretary of Defense, died at 88. His legacy is tarred as architect of the Iraq War, although he didn’t authorize it. He took the blasts but never shifted blame to others who were more responsible for the nightmare the war became. He was fired after Republican Congressional losses in 2006 made him expendable.  

In October Sister Megan Rice, from a polar opposite world, passed into heaven at 91. A biologist who taught for 40 years in Africa and a disciple of the Catholic pacificist Dorothy Day, Rice was arrested more than 40 times for her anti-nuclear weapons activism.

In July 2012 she made history with two others by cutting through three barbed-wire fences and walking into the Oak Ridge, Tenn., National Security Complex. They wrote slogans like “the fruit of justice is peace” on the walls of a uranium storage facility. A security expert called the break-in “the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex.” Rice served two years in prison, after asking the judge to “show no leniency” towards her.  The Department of Energy funded an oral history project on her anti-nuclear convictions.

Some earned monumental stature. Former Kansas Senator Bob Dole, who passed in December, lived his long, brave, and tumultuous life without the use of his right arm after he was wounded in Italy in April 1945, weeks before the German surrender. George P. Schultz, who died in February at 100, held four Cabinet positions. As Secretary of State in the 1980s he helped end the Cold War by pushing for better relations with the USSR.

Gen. Colin Powell passed in October. As Secretary of State in 2003 he accused Iraq of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, but later admitted he was wrong. He apologized and years later rose to call out Trump’s lies. Vernon Jordan, civil rights crusader and later political insider, died in March. In his early years he directed the United Negro College Fund and National Urban League. He became a Washington operator but throughout his life identified with the civil rights movement.

Max Cleland, who at age 25 lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, died in November. He won the Silver Star and later became President Carter’s Administrator for Veterans Affairs. After serving one Senate term he lost his seat in 2002. Vietnam veterans Sens. John McCain and Chuck Hagel defended him against slanders by his Republican opponent.

A moral pygmy left the planet in February, that being Rush Limbaugh, who cultivated on-air political vulgarity and mendacity to clear a path for Trump, the master of the trade. Limbaugh milked “conservative” anger while acknowledging he never actually talked about conservatism. He called women sluts and said covid-19 was the common cold being used against Trump. He condemned illegal drug use on his show but in 2009 settled charges of doctor-shopping when he was found with thousands of painkillers prescribed by multiple doctors.

In 2021 America lost talented writers Joan Didion, Anne Rice (both December), and Janet Malcolm (June).  Didion dissected American culture in screenplays, essays, and novels, including the eloquent exegesis of the 2003 death of her husband in The Year of Magical Thinking, written when she was 70. In 2011, in Blue Nights, she wrote of the death of her 39-year-old daughter.

Rice, in her Vampire Trilogy, entertained and scared fans of Gothic fiction. Malcolm, who as a child fled Nazi Germany with her Jewish parents in 1939, produced a vast body of work for The New Yorker, writing passionate, incisive articles and books on psychoanalysis and crime.

Neil Sheehan died in January. He won the Pulitzer for A Bright and Shining Lie, a history of the Vietnam War. In 1971, as a New York Times reporter, he obtained the classified Pentagon Papers which, published by The Times, revealed high-level government deceptions that prolonged the war.

Famous people are famous for many reasons. Baseball star Henry Aaron passed in January. Vice President Walter Mondale, one of the true gentlemen of politics, died in April. Football coach John Madden and Harry Reid, longtime Senate majority leader who pushed the Affordable Care Act through Congress, both died a few days ago.

And so on. Some good people left the world. We can learn lessons they teach about virtue, about success and failure, about truth. We can do many things during the Age of the Pandemic besides live in fear. We can visit places like Table Rock to breathe the pure air.  We can climb our own mountains.

December 25, 2021

“It is a time for joy.”

The words echoed from the timeless hymn, even while today prompting disbelief, scorn. The world is ravaged by pandemic disease, starvation, violent political extremism. Refugees freeze in cruel camps. Russian divisions are massed on the Ukraine border. In the U.S., attempts to fight the latest covid surge collide with ignorance and propaganda. Civil war is not unimaginable.

But the Season returned. The past few weeks have seen the decorative lights go on at homes, businesses, churches, brilliant reds and greens, soft whites and blues. They’re laid out by people, not only Christians, but also Jews, Muslims, Hindus, who stand up to the indifference, cynicism, hostility that confront the confluence of ideas and emotions for centuries called the spirit of the Season. People sent greeting cards. Airports and highways were jammed. A few lonely journalists reflected on the happiness of their Christmas memories.

We managed to gather our family from distant states for a few days around Christmas, the first time in three years. Those hectic hours were filled with hugs, meals, gift-giving. We tramped around downtown, looked in the shops, and snapped photos of the beautiful trees in the Hyatt Regency lobby, donated by businesses and decorated by schoolkids. We were careful to wear masks.

Even for those who take pleasure in giving, December has been transformed by commercial huckstering into a retail torture chamber. Then, when exhausted by shopping, millions watched “It’s a Wonderful Life,” either warmed or baffled by the mawkish lessons it tries to teach. A few weeks ago The Washington Post ran a piece about Karolyn Grimes, the now-81-year-old lady who played George Bailey’s daughter Zuzu and spoke the immortal line, “every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.” She endured stunning personal tragedy, yet perseveres.

The “Wonderful Life” sentiments echo the words of priests, rabbis, and ministers: suffering is not our permanent condition; redemption and joy, the gifts of Christmas, are promised to every man and woman. The story of the Christ child born in a freezing stable draws snickers and laughter yet resonates today as it has through centuries.

The words about joy came from an elderly priest at an early morning Mass as he surveyed the poinsettas and fir trees set up around the altars. A couple of dozen folks sat in the nearly empty church on that dark, freezing morning. He spoke wearily, hinting of many Christmases past and the experience of many trials and tragedies, his own, but also of the human experience. We know that the bleeding crowd is always with us, as Christ said when the apostles wanted to give to the poor the coins they had collected.

The listeners sat in silence that morning, they didn’t have to be there. They know joy is not always with us, it is elusive, mysterious, yet transcendent. Those who endure the cacophony of the shopping season appreciate that all of us, even those who have little or nothing, are swept up. The memories of Christmas magic remain indelible: the anticipation, the tree, the lights, the bright colors, the special treats, the greetings, the grandeur and wonder of Christmas eve and Christmas morning. Those are the things we have always passed to the children, the children who now are the old-timers, the middle-aged, the parents of the youngest.

We do that today only by herculean effort. The cynics are louder because the reminders of the world’s failures are more explicit, more vivid, thanks to the unstoppable march of technology and self-awareness. The world is not the place of the Christmas message; at this moment in 2021 we see neither peace nor goodwill. We are turned inward, oblivious to the march of history through certain other late-December moments, to name only a few, those in 1861-1865, 1914-1917, and 1939-1945, when this country and the world suffered vast spasms of cruelty and unspeakable suffering.

Yet through those times men and women found within their souls the strength, the courage, the willingness to sacrifice and deny themselves, to mark the mysterious season of Christmas for the sake of the children, the elderly, the men and women at war far from home. From them and countless others before them we learn of and then witness the Christmas message.

So today in the face of the chaos of the packed shopping mall parking lots, the blaring nonstop commercial messages, the canned 24-hour broadcasts of carols, we can, if we try, understand that there still is a Christmas message, told in the Gospel of Luke: “And so Joseph went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to David’s town of Bethlehem—because he was of the house and lineage of David—to register with Mary, his espoused wife, who was with child.

“While they were there the days of her confinement were completed. She gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the place where travelers lodged.” (Luke 2:4-7).

Herein begins the message that foretold the vast shuddering of the history of the world caused by the birth of the Christian religion, even while animating the mystery (virgin birth? shepherds? angels?). But remaining is the lasting faith that called believers through the sweep of the centuries, the millennia, through cataclysms of suffering and reaffirmation that bring us to this moment, a moment of joy, Christmas, for men and women, and boys and girls, in our time.                    

December 20, 2021

I sometimes make the effort to confront my dark moods. Really. About eighteen months ago we went to Mass at Prince of Peace parish in Taylors, S.C., not far from our new neighborhood in Greer. We were visiting our kids and grandkids, and at the time had not thought of moving, here or anywhere.

If you’re Catholic, it doesn’t matter where you go to Mass. A Mass off the back of a truck in a Southeast Asian jungle is equal to Solemn High Mass celebrated by the Pope in Saint Peter’s in Rome, surrounded by cardinals in red hats and a thousand choirboys. Apart from the hoopla, or lack of it, the miracle and the mystery of the Eucharist is the same: the replication of the First Mass, the Last Supper on Holy Thursday (or whatever day it was) 2,000 years ago. 

By that Sunday, covid had slowed enough to allow most Catholic churches to reopen, with safeguards like mask-wearing and alternate pews off-limits. The diocese of Arlington, Va., kept it strict: masks and social distancing required, warnings to sick people to stay home.

Not here. Although the virus still raged in the Southland, at Prince of Peace people were crammed in every pew. Hardly anyone, including the old folks, wore masks. The priest distributing communion didn’t wear one. People around us coughed and wheezed. I shuddered. We bolted out of there. I sent an email to the pastor asking why the indifference? He wrote back: “We’re doing what the bishop directed us to do, no more.”

After landing here we watched Mass “online” for months. We then joined a parish ten miles away that resembled the one we came from.  For no reason, I assumed they’d be careful. I hoped they’d be careful. We went to the early Mass, it seemed more people wore masks. The priests wore them while distributing communion—until they didn’t. Over time, maybe numbed by bad news, people quit worrying. Indoor church functions without masks came back, as businesses reopened here and elsewhere.  

In September the Bishop of Charleston, the one who apparently told parishes to make covid precautions optional, released a letter defending people who claim their consciences told them not to get the covid vaccination. He dragged in some out-of-context quotes from Saint Paul VI about man bound to “follow his conscience” such that we’re to believe it’s okay not to get vaccinated if you really don’t want to, even at risk of endangering others. He wrote: “The State of South Carolina protects the right of any parent to refuse a vaccine for a child based on religious exemptions. The Diocese … affirms that all private and governmental organizations maintain the same protections of individual conscience and personal freedom.”

Still grumpy, I wrote him to complain. He wrote back: “there may be many reasons for someone to reject vaccinations, and it is not my place to judge those reasons.”

We watched the state’s statistics on covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths soar. We went on some trips. Masks were nearly invisible. We got our boosters. Then a few weeks ago we went back to Prince of Peace. We sat up front, away from the crowd. Then we noticed the masks. Not many, but more than on that first Sunday. The priests, or at least some of them, and some of the altar servers wore masks. I wondered if they had read up on delta and omicron.

The priests’ homilies were low-key, sticking to their reading of the Gospel and the lessons therein that come to us about belief, forbearance, compassion. We were in a place where the practice of faith is orthodox, traditional, the faith of those who remember the Latin Mass. I slipped into a couple of the early weekday Masses. “Today is the feast of St. Lucy,” the priest announced on Monday. He said a few words about Lucy, a third-century martyr under Roman Emperor Diocletian.  On Tuesday it was St. John of the Cross, the Spanish mystic-author of The Dark Night of the Soul.

I recalled St. John’s words. “Into this dark night,” he wrote, “souls begin to enter when God draws them forth … to the end that, after passing through it, they may arrive at the state of the perfect, which is that of the Divine union of the soul with God.”

We thought, about then, this is where we should be. I know something about those dark nights.

In front of the church is a giant statue of the Angel Gabriel thrusting a huge sword into a satanic figure. In the back there’s a portrait of Saint Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, a secretive Catholic organization. No multi-lingual banners here, the missals are in English, the only other language used is Latin. The liturgy is the pre-Sixties rite: the priest faces away from the congregation. I winced when one priest asked for prayers for “free and fair elections,” revealing himself as a disciple of Bishop Trump. The hard-right Republican gospel echoes loudly in these parts.

We set that aside. Folks were friendly, I set that aside, too. Folks are friendly all over this town. It’s the South and, after all, I’ve lived in the South, with a single year back in Yankeedom, since 1975. The attitude is, we’re in this together, here in Dixie. Those Democrats can stay in Washington.

Maybe that’s unfair. Meanwhile, we persevere. At 6:30 Saturday morning, at the end of the third week of Advent, we attended the Latin Rorate Mass in honor of the Blessed Virgin, the church lit only by candles. The life of the spirit often seems elusive, but it seeks us more urgently, lately, and now in this unique place.

We stopped at the parish office and filled out the form to register as members of the parish. The receptionist was friendly. She said the pastor wants to know who’s actually coming to Mass, not just who’s signed up and sending in a check.

That’s OK with me. I’m also generally OK with what the pastor, in his first homily after a six-month sabbatical in Rome, Turkey, and England, referred to fondly as the “church militant.” The receptionist said she’s a greeter, who holds the door open at the 8:00 AM Mass. We said we’d see her there. “Welcome, again,” she said, smiling.      

December 13, 2021

Landing in this place, and it could have been anywhere else, brought along all those grown-up decisions about what’s next. The move to an apartment, the house hunt, then the mortgage, the move-in, left us dazed. We made our truce with the hard-right South Carolina politics and the “Lost Cause” culture that sometimes drags us back a century. We live in a state of perpetual amazement.

We knew the house needed work. We made that decision nervous homebuyers often make, look at the positives, stack them against the negatives. The quiet street, no stairs, gas heat, small, level yard, sold us. We met a couple of neighbors, they seemed friendly. Apartment life, after six months, was getting old.

In the first week we got a painter to cover up the odd mix of brown and pink that the previous owner, Miss Jean, had lived with for years. Then the place needed a new water heater. In stifling August heat we replaced the furnace/air-conditioning system.

At some point Miss Jean, or maybe the owner before her, had a small deck built outside the back door. Over time the paint chipped, the handrails cracked and loosened. At our Virginia place I built a brick patio. Eventually some of the bricks shifted, water pooled in spots after a heavy rain. But it was permanent, indestructible. Our deck now is on its way to splinters and sawdust.

We sat on the deck on mild evenings, but couldn’t turn away from the decrepit wood and popped nails. We laid down an all-weather carpet, trying to spruce it up. I guessed I could strip the paint and repair the railings. Really, no I couldn’t. I’ve acknowledged my minimal carpentry skills. Something about settling in a new home shouts, “Call a professional.”

Beyond the picket fence that marks the boundary of our modest lot and the broad expanse—close to an acre—of the lot on the next street, we could see, in the distance, the neighbor’s beautifully stained deck. Why didn’t we buy that house, I asked myself. Probably because it wasn’t for sale, and if it were we couldn’t afford it. So we looked sadly at our deck. It had to go.

The next step up from the deck would be a screened-in porch. But we guessed screens alone wouldn’t keep the rain out. Then too, I like the idea of an enclosed space that could be used year-round, with wide windows to admit plenty of light. We decided to go bigger: a “sunroom.”

We learned the difference between “four season” and “three season” spaces. Four-season means a new room. Three-season is screened in and popular in these parts. Do we need an expensive four-season room? The overnight temperature may drop to the thirties in winter, but it usually warms up by noon. Still, I don’t want to sit outside in a heavy sweater just because I could.

We called a contractor we found on the internet. The fellow showed up maskless, we asked him to put one on. He stared at us, we gave him one.  

We sat at the kitchen table, he talked about his company’s experience and gave us a brochure. We described our idea. He noticed Sandy was wearing a “UT” shirt. “Are you from Tennessee?” he asked. “I lived in Cookeville for a while. Great area.” I paused, thrown off by this. “Did you go to Tennessee Tech?” I asked, a tad impatiently. “No. I was working there. Several years. Liked it a lot.”

I steered him back to the project. He talked about designs and materials, then we went outside. He produced an expensive-looking tape measure, took some measurements and photos. We gave him our email address. “I’ll send you an estimate,” he said. He waved and left, leaving his tape measure on the table. We waited a week, then called him. The receptionist transferred us to his line, no answer. We left a message, when can we expect the design and estimate? No return call.

We called again a few days later. Nothing. Weeks went by, we threw the brochure out. We found another contractor through “Next Door,” the neighborhood gossip site. A young fellow came by. He said he was with a family company but now is on his own. He showed us dozens of photos of projects. We showed him the deck. He said he’d come by Friday with an estimate.

Around noon Friday I called him. “I’ll be there Friday,” he said. “Today is Friday,” I answered. “Goodness gracious,” he said. “I’ll get there 4:30.” He got here at 5:00. He brought a one-page description of the job, including double-hung windows, and a faint drawing. “My printer’s giving me problems,” he said. We squinted. But the price seemed reasonable.

He leaned forward. “You’re better off with E-Z Breeze vinyl windows than glass,” he said. “We’d have to put in studs for windows. E-Z Breeze is a lot easier to install.” We had asked for windows, his design included windows. “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll email you a new design tomorrow,” he said. The next day passed, no email.

I never heard of E-Z Breeze. We visited a local showroom. The material gives to the touch, like plastic you use to wrap leftovers, although stronger. The salesman rapped it with his fist. “It’s tough,” he promised.

Five days later we got the email, revised to include E-Z Breeze windows: $3,000 higher. I wondered why the first estimate, with double-hung windows, was lower. Does that make sense? He wrote back, yes, the E-Z Breeze windows are more expensive, plus the door would be $925.

We called another company, a big outfit with an impressive website. Their guy looked at the deck and off the top of his head quoted $45,000. “You’d save a little with E-Z Breeze, but an E-Z Breeze space is just that, a space. It won’t add value to the house.”

I thought I got it. The vinyl windows are more expensive than glass but easier to install—no studs, no sheetrock work needed. Adding value won’t be priority here until after we’re gone.

He took some photos, as the two previous guys had. We sat inside, he gabbed about local real estate. I sensed he lost interest in our project when he saw me go numb at the $45,000 quote, almost a quarter of the sales price of the entire house.

“Whatever you do, don’t hire a guy with two helpers and a truck who says he’ll finish in two weeks,” he warned.

He was describing the last guy we talked to. I looked outside at the deck. The railing nearest the house had split, part of it curled upward. I imagined a sunroom, then the E-Z Breeze room. Then I thought about what else we could do with $45,000. I’m still thinking.