The Straight Skinny

Peace Lilly

In 1997, my mother gave Nancy and me a peace lily for Christmas.  It was a beauty, and it looked great in our house.  We were living in Oro Valley, AZ then too.

When we moved to California, the lily came along.  When we moved to Minnesota, the lily made the trip.

When we traveled back and forth as snow birds between Minnesota and Arizona, the lily made all the trips.  It experience, cold, heat, snow storms and long drives in the back of our truck.  It took all of this in stride.  When we started living full-time in Arizona, it was part of our household.  It was a member of the family.

I think Mother would be surprised to learn how well and how long we took care of this plant, but it was a special gift and we treasured it.  It was re-potted several times.  We kept it well fed and watered — usually.  It didn’t seem to mind being munched on by one of our cats, but it got even by making the cat sick. (Peace lily parts are poisonous we found out.)

Recently, though, the plant stopped growing and became infested with bugs.  We sprayed, watered, fertilized, kept it outside, kept it inside but nothing we did seemed to make it happy.  We assumed that old age got the best of it, and it just wore out.

So, a few days ago, it went to the land-fill.  Rest in peace peace lily.

Thank you, Mom.

Nancy

Dear Nancy,

In the past,  I would call on October 13 and wish you a Happy Birthday.  I wish it weren’t so, but I will not be making that call tomorrow on the day of your 63rd birthday.

So, rather than call, I will remember your birthday by writing this letter.  The letter is to you, but I guess I am writing it for myself as a way of not letting this October 13 go by as just another day.

When I woke up early this morning, random thoughts passed through my head, as they often do, and I remembered that, when you were born, I was nearly 9.  Only 13 years after that, my own child would come into the world.  That child, Marty, is now 50!  I wasn’t quite 22.  Back then, if I had been inclined to think about it, 13 years would have seemed like a very long time, but from the perspective of someone who is almost 72, 13 years is almost nothing.   That was a very quick leap from being 9 to being a dad.  I’m not sure I was any more qualified to be a dad at 21 than I was at 9.  Maybe should have given myself more time to get ready, but I don’t think that would not have made a difference.  Sometimes, these random thoughts are like a  movie I would never pay to see.

Moving on —– During your last days, I know you were very worried about how the girls and Doug would do after you left.  You probably had good reason then, but I am happy to report that, now, you would not have needed to worry so much.

Kristin called just after we went to bed last night to tell us that she had just landed a great job.  She was so excited.  It doesn’t have anything to do with food either.  She will be working for a company in Killdeer that makes electrical and electronic parts for aircraft.  How’s that for a radical career change?  The most amazing thing is that she can work from home.  Almost to good to be true, but she called again this morning still excited and talked more about it.  We are so happy for her.  The last five years or so since you were diagnosed with ovarian cancer have been especially hard for her, and it is good to see her get this well deserved break.

Those years have been tough for Karli too; probably in different ways.  She may be too hard on herself for not participating in what is going on in Bismarck since you left, but I think she is working though that.  I hope so.  I need to do a better job of staying in touch with her.

You will be happy to know that Karli and Mick finally had that visit with Aunt Margaret.  Peggy got them together, and they had a good time.  I think both Margaret and Karli needed that visit.  I hope they have more.  Margaret misses your letters.  It will be a dark day in my life when Margaret leaves; about as dark as it was the day you left.

Doug seems to be adapting too.  He starts the move into Good Samaritan on the 18th.  He’s had a very tough time, though, and still is, but the fact that he is getting out of your house and into a safe, caring environment where Kristin will not be his caregiver is something to celebrate.

Anyway, the girls have our phone numbers, and they know they have our full support and will always be there for them.  I don’t think you have to worry about them – much.

My dad and sister.

What do you think of these old photos?  I found them yesterday when I was looking through some image files on my computer.  They are from slides that I scanned years ago.

In the 70s and 80s, I sent Dad copies of slides that I took as a way of sharing my and my family’s life with Mom and Dad.   Over the years, Doug stored those in slide trays, along with slides that both he and Dad had taken.  Mom ended up with those trays after Dad died, and I shipped them to myself when Mom moved out of the Primrose and went into the nursing home. I scanned many of those slides, but most I did not.  Kristin is in possession of those trays now, and she will have the rest of them scanned.  Most of those photos will be of Kristin and Karli and life on Cherry Lane in Bismarck.  The girls should find them very valuable.

I like that photo of Dad and you.  I remember that tie.  Who could forget it?  Dad was a dapper guy ahead of his time.  He got a big kick out of dressing up, I think.  Pictures of him before he married Mom bear that out.

As far as Nancy and me are concerned, we are doing well.  Summer is turning into Fall, and the best time of year in this part of Arizona is at hand.  Wish you could join us to enjoy it.

We finally got over to California to visit your nephew, Eric, and his wonderful family.  Their Karli is already a teenager.  She’s a tall beauty and a great soccer player.  Ryan is playing Pop Warner Football and loves it.  When asked how Ryan is doing in school, Julie says, “OK this week.”  He must take after that person who was near his age when you were born.

As I said, your other nephew, Marty, recently reached his half-century mark.   Jan threw a surprise birthday party for him that I talked myself out of attending.  Shouldn’t have let that happen, but that is another story.

But, Marty and family are doing well from all reports.  Lindsey is living at home and works for Amazon.com.  Jan is still involved with her horses and looks every bit as good as she did the day she married Marty.  Maybe better.

If we are lucky, we will see both your Njaa nephews and the rest of their clans at Thanksgiving.

Nancy’s Marty and Laura are doing well.  Marty is making money hand over fist flying the left seat of Southwest’s 737s.  He and his girlfriend live in Henderson, NV.  They enjoy their life to the fullest.

Laura is still in New Jersey, and her beautiful daughters get more so every day.  They take after their mom.

I guess that is about it for now.  I’ll be thinking about you tomorrow as I do every day.

I love you,

John

Central North Dakota is German country.  Lots of German immigrants settled in the area before 1910.  Bismarck is named for Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, a First Chancellor of the German Empire and a hero to many German people during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Since I know that to be the case, I can’t use what would have now been my first choice of the meaning of the word Bismarck.  I could have guessed it was an Indian word meaning The Place Of Sadness.

That is what Bismarck is to me now.  This didn’t happen suddenly.  It took many years and many events for me to arrive at this feeling.

My connection with the Bismarck area began when my sister, Nancy, her husband, Doug Sande, and Team K² moved there in the 1970s.  A few years later, Mom and Dad left the town in which they had lived all their lives and in which almost all their friends lived, and moved to Bismarck too.  I was stunned by that move.  Never saw it coming, but I guess I should have.

When all of this was happening, my family and I lived in California.  We usually made a trip to Bismarck to visit the Sande’s and Grandma and Grandma at least once a year.  Those early visits were good.  Everyone was still healthy, and we had good times.

Some of the best of those times included the backpacking trips we did with Doug and Nancy to Glacier Park and the Beartooth Mountains in Montana.  Those were quality times for all of us.  My sister still remembers those trips with great fondness.  So do I.

After a few years, some of my Bismarck family developed health problems that changed everything.  My parents’ health declined, especially Dad’s at first.  Both my sister and Doug were diagnosed with problems from which neither would recover.  My visits to Bismarck usually became rather somber events.  Some where prompted by medical emergencies and other unhappy circumstances.  On some of those later trips, my sister was not the same Nancy who made those wonderful backpacking trips with us.

Then, Dad is suddenly placed in a nursing home.  I don’t remember the year.  To this day, I don’t know how it was arranged or who made the decision.  I didn’t know it happened until after he was in the home.  I feel now that I let Dad down by not being more attentive to what was happening in Bismarck.  In my opinion, the nursing home was not the best facility in Bismarck.  He died there in 1989.  His funeral prompted another unhappy visit to Bismarck.

During the late 1990s, at my wife’s insistence, I made annual trips to Bismarck to be with Mom on Mother’s Day and her birthday.  I enjoyed spending these times with her, but her health was declining too.  Osteoporosis was causing her much pain.

On some of these visits with Mom, I also had good visits with my sister, while at other times, her situation was troubling.  Mom was in a constant state of high anxiety about her, which severely detracted from her well being.  She was also very concerned about Team K² at the time.  Mom was good at worrying about everyone and everything.  I have first hand knowledge of that.  That characteristic degraded her health all her life.

For awhile after Dad died, Mom lived alone in the condo she and Dad had bought, but her osteoporosis became too severe for her to live alone, so I helped her sell the condo, and she moved into an assisted living facility in Bismarck.  She was never happy there, so a year or so later, on her own initiative, she moved into the Missouri Slope Care Facility, a nursing home.  It is an excellent place, but she was unhappy being there as well, and visits with her were often exercises in  unsuccessful attempts to be cheerful and positive.  She complained incessantly about the food.  Everything, even the breakfast cereal, was “swimming in grease”.  It was so sad to see her in that place.

In 2001, I was called to Bismarck.  Mom was failing.  I was with her when she died.  People said she was waiting for me to arrive before she let herself go.  I’m not certain that was the case, but, although a very sad event, it was good to know she was finally free of pain.

After Mom died, our best visit to Bismarck was shortly after my sister and Doug had made their last trip to Europe.  It was fun to sit with Nancy at the table in their house on Cheery Lane as she showed us her photo album and, with excitement in her voice, told of all the places they had been and the fun things they had done.  This was one of the best visits I have ever had with my sister.  It was like, “My sister is back from the dark place!”

Not long after that visit, the specter of the dark place returned.  My sister was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, the disease that will shortly claim her life.

So now we are poised to make another trip to The Place Of Sadness.  I know it is unlikely to be our last as there may be other sad tasks to accomplish there, but, if Kristin and Elli don’t choose to keep living there, I am sure our last happy trip there has already been made.

Team K Squared

Much has been written in blogs recently about the Sande family in Bismarck.  Almost all of it has been about my sister, Nancy, and and her husband, Doug.   Almost nothing has been written about Team K², their two daughters, Kristin and Karli.

Nancy, Team K² and Doug

In my last post, Nancy (Njaa) Sande, I indicated that my sister and I were essentially strangers to each other until relatively late in our lives.  The same is true with respect to my two nieces to an even greater degree.

While Kristin and Karli where infants and in their pre-teen years, we always saw them during our visits to North Dakota.  They were very cute, energetic towheads who we were sure were headed for careers in show business or academia.  Beginning with the time they became teenagers until relatively recently, we saw them infrequently during our visits.

Even though my contacts with Kristin and Karli have been very limited over the years, I still know some important things about them:

• Their parents adore them.
• They adore their parents.
• My mom (K & K called her Momo.) and dad (K & K called him Gaga. (!!??!!)) adored them.
• They were the reason Momo and Gaga moved to Bismarck.
• Both of them made it into show business.  That is a compliment, and, if you meet them, you will agree.
• Kristin is a wonderful chef.
• Karli is a wonderful writer.
• Kristin has found Elli (The Bear) with whom to share her life.
• Karli has found Mick (The Mister) with whom to share her life.
• Both Ks, The Bear and The Mister are wonderful people, which leads me to the reason for this post.

To get to this post, you have had to learn my sister is dying of cancer.  She is now at home under hospice care.  Her primary caregiver is Team K², which now includes The Bear.  Kristin and Karli have willingly put their lives and jobs on hold to be with and serve their mom during her final days.   They are also caring for Doug who has late stage Parkinson’s. (If you are thinking that life has been very unfair to this family, you would be right.)

Team K² is doing an awesome job in so many ways.   They fight through the sadness of the events to tell jokes and stories, listen to music and sit in the sun with their mom on the patio.  They provide meals,  take care of their parent’s physical needs and are participating in the planning of the final events.  And, there is so much more.

What all this means to my sister is indescribable.  She is so impressed with Team K² and is so grateful to them.  My sister fights through the tears to give me that pitch every time I talk to her.

Here’s another thing I know to be true:  Momo and Gaga (Sorry Dad.) are looking in from somewhere, and, while they could find what their daughter has gone through the last few years to be very troubling and sad, they are also extremely proud of their granddaughters.

Kristin losing her argument.

Karli winning hers.

Last November, I wrote in this blog about my sister.  What I said then applies more than ever now.

That post is repeated below.  What is new since that post is that my sister will begin hospice care next Tuesday.

On November 15, 2009 I wrote:

Nancy is my sister.  She was born almost nine years after me.  Until she showed up, I had Mom and Dad and lots of other things to myself.

When Dad took Mom to Fargo to give birth to Nancy,  I was being baby-sat by my Grandmother Johnson.  She informed me of my sister’s birth.  I remember bragging to my friends and their parents that I had a new baby sister and her name was Nancy Lee.  I was wrong about Lee, because, when Baby Nancy came home, she was Nancy Beth.

Things changed when Nancy came home.  I became yesterday’s news.  Dad adored her.  She was a cute little scudder, so no wonder.  Before Nancy arrived, Dad had taken up photography, and he took lots of pictures.  Many of them were of me.  After Nancy arrived, I seldom got in front of Dad’s camera, and Nancy became the most photographed person in the world for awhile.  New pictures of me became as rare as a Hispanic at a church lutefisk supper.

I don’t remember being resentful about this change of attention from me to her.  I think I rather enjoyed it.  It became easier for me to fly under Mom and Dad’s radar, and that was a very good thing, especially when it came to Mom.  She was the strict one.

During these early years at home, I don’t remember Nancy being very special to me.  I’m sure I loved her in a kid’s sort of way.  When she got older and could defend herself a little, I enjoyed tormenting her when I had nothing better to do.  Typical kid stuff.  For the most part, Nancy was below my radar.  I probably only tolerated her.  We were almost from different generations.

When I left home to join the Navy, Nancy was probably only eight years old – a lowly little kid.  I don’t remember hugging her and saying goodbye.  I don’t remember hugging Mom and Dad for that matter.  I don’t think we were a family of huggers in those days.

During the next several years I’m fairly sure I didn’t write any letters to Nancy.  I knew she was in a safe place and I didn’t think about her.  I’m sure she felt the same way about me.

Later, when I was married and had kids of my own, she seldom entered my thoughts.  I was living my life, and she was just starting out on hers.

When Nancy graduated from high school, we went home for her graduation.  It was then that I began to have a realization about how smart, funny and nice she is.  She was fun to be around.  It would have been nice to be her friend.

But, I went back to my life and she to hers.  She went to college and became a nurse.  She got married to Doug and had two daughters.  Still, even though we had more in common, we seldom communicated during all these years, but we got a little better at it.

After Doug and Nancy’s girls were grown, (They are wonderful people, by the way.) life became very cruel to my sister.  Our parents died. She became ill with one serious disease then another – a life threatening one.  Also, Doug was diagnosed with a serious, chronic condition.

I’m ashamed to say that this is when I finally started paying attention and began to understand how special my sister is.  In spite of these hardships, she fights on.  Although she has every right to, to my knowledge she doesn’t complain.  Self-pity is not her style.  She presses on with life as best she can.  The same can be said for Doug.  This has been going on for years with them, yet there isn’t a sense of defeat in that household.  Nancy and courage are synonymous.  I could go on and on.

Everyone needs a list of heroes from whom they can draw inspiration.  Everyone also needs a special person to top that list – a super hero.  I have mine.

I think I better throw a new post in here just so you know I haven’t given up on this blog or that I am ill or something.

Taken this morning.

First, I’ll report that our agave still has not bloomed, and the flower spike continues to grow.  If this keeps up, I’ll be made to install a flashing red obstacle warning light on it because it will become a hazard to air navigation.

Perfect Weather Zone weather has been perfectly outstanding recently which makes it hard to stay inside and stare into a computer screen.  When I have been inside, my recent efforts have been focused on installing new stained oak baseboard where the tile floor was installed, which includes most of the house.

If you old folks and not so old folks out there want to try something that will make you feel your age, install baseboard.  There’s lots of getting down on the floor and getting up again.  Lots of it!  My new knees are doing fine, but the rest of me aches.  It not as easy to do that as it once was.  Up and down, walk to the saw outside the front door and back, down and up.  The orthopedic surgeon in Minnesota gave me mega-dose Ibuprofen to help with knee pain before my surgeries.  Am glad I kept them.  Works well on sore muscles too.  I expect to be done with this work in about three weeks.

Recently, I was reminded that Marty, the oldest of my two sons, will turn 50 this year.  That does a lot to help me feel young too.  50!

I don’t know how many know the story of how it was decided Marty would be Marty (Martin).  Marty’s mother and I were living near Memphis before he was born, and we were brainstorming names this one day.   We were rattling off names, and I looked down on the floor to a stack of record albums.  On the top of the stack was an album by Martin Denny, one of my favorites at the time.  (I still like his work.)  I suggested the name Martin, and the rest is history.  Martin has a good Scandinavian ring to it too.  Funny, I don’t remember us making a list of girl’s names, but I’m sure we must have.

50!  I remember very little of my 50th b’day, I am sad to say.  It was so long ago!  I remember one of our cats walking on the box my birthday cake was in.  The lid of the box caved in and destroyed the good stuff on the top of the cake.

Today is likely to be the last day the high temp will be below 90 for a few months, so I’m getting away from this computer to make the best of the day.

I’ve taken many more photos of desert flowers and will be posting those in the near future.

Nancy and I have Posse Duty tonight.  Our turn to keep Sun City Vistoso safe from the irresponsible residents who leave their garage doors open after dark.

Baseboard work resumes tomorrow.  Wish Marty was here to help.

50!

School is on the right.

I learned the other day that my old grade school building in Cooperstown has been torn down, and, after they fill in the hole it left, they will pave the lot and put up a parking lot.

I’m guessing that the parking lot will serve the church that purchased the building and the gym next door a few years ago.  Last I heard, they were using part of the gym as their sanctuary.

They are the Cornerstone Community Church.  Previously, they were the Bethlehem Evangelical Free Church, the church I attended when I was growing up and within whose walls I would occasionally hear sermons that filled me with the fear of God, at least for a couple days.  There’s more about this in a previous post .

I’ve been told that the church got approval from the city council to remove the building, but they may not have followed state and federal law and regulations regarding removal and control of asbestos that may have been in the building.  The church may now be praying that the regulators go away.

I don’t remember much about the years I attended grades one through six in that building.  I can remember that I didn’t like being there much, and I can remember the name of only one teacher.  I don’t think I was very much inspired by any of them.  My most vivid memory of those years is the trouble I got into when I broke a classmate’s glasses with a snowball.

By today’s standards, that school was very unsafe.  I’m lucky to be here.

There was a small merry-go-round in the front of the school.  During recess, we would get that thing going as fast as we could to see who would have the guts to try to get on or off.  Some who would stay on for a long time would get motion sickness.  We had a centrifuge running before NASA did.

My class. Maybe 3rd Grade.

Numerous skirmishes would start on and near that thing.  If there was a teacher monitoring the yard, they usually couldn’t care less.  The fights were harmless anyway.  Usually just shoving and mouthing off.  There was nothing to fear.  Kids weren’t bringing weapons to school back then.

In the winter, large icicles would form from the rain gutter at one corner of the building.  When conditions were right, these things would be 3 to 4 feet long and be about 6 inches thick at the top.  During recess, some of us would try to knock them down with snowballs, and we didn’t think about what bad things would happen if a falling icicle landed on someone.  I don’t think we actually knocked one down with a snowball though.   Lucky!  Bet they never did fix that rain gutter.

At the back of the school, there were two fire escapes.  Between the platforms at the top of each stairway, there were two large ventilation hoods.  When we tired of the merry-go-round, or trying to impale someone with an icicle, we would climb one fire escape and use the hoods to make it over to the next fire escape.  This was a forbidden activity, but what the heck.

High school students would take a shortcut to their school a few blocks away that would take them through the yard of the grade school.  This usually happened during their lunch break when they would go to Stone’s Cafe for a burger and a smoke, or when they were going to or from band practice in the gym.  Some of them and some of us would taunt each other as they passed.  Many times, those doing the taunting were siblings or cousins, and they were continuing what they were doing at home.  Here again, this was all harmless.  We learned skills that would come in handy later in life.  Remember, this was Cooperstown, North Dakota, and most of the fighting was going on in Europe and the Pacific.

One of my favorite things about the building was the tunnel that went between the gym and the school.  There was an area in the tunnel that contained a large boiler that heated both the school and the gym.  It had a mechanical coal stoker that was fun to watch.  At least I thought so.  I’ll bet that boiler and the steam pipes going to the radiators in the rooms had plenty of asbestos in them.

I’m sorry that the old building is gone.  I hope they enjoy the parking lot.

Big Yellow Taxi

It’s a sad day here.  Otis, aka Otie, Buddy, Oat Wheat and Kitty, left us this morning.  Kidney and liver problems, along with old age, finally did him in.  He was a great cat, and we will miss him very much.

Go to Good Friends to read a post about Otis and his brother.