After a week and the better part of another out west, out where, on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, temperatures flirted with a decidedly coquettish 70, where, in Montana, temps hit the upper 80s, albeit with the humidity in the temperate 30s, we bird-dogged this summer’s heat wave home to Iowa.
Driving east from Rapid City, South Dakota, we saw temperatures climb from the mid-90s to 100, eventually to 106, the road crews on I-90 somehow undeterred. Me, at the same time, cursing my whereabouts, blessing the car’s air conditioning, wishing somehow that sometime soon all this, this intimation of hell, would break.
We’re home now ten days, and I’m still breaking sweat.
Oh, sure, it has rained, often and to notable effect, that much water on so much hot rock creating nothing more than a regional sauna. And the temp here has dipped, maybe, to the upper 80s, only to rebound to, what, to some, a tepid, 95; to others, a balmy 97.
“I’m Irish,” I tell Karen, as I, suffering, surrender, heart, soul, arms- akimbo in abject submission, to the nearest air conditioner. “I’m built for cold, bleak islands.”
Indeed, Iowa itself, neither particularly cold, nor in any way bleak, let alone an island, unless imagined as some landlocked island of corn, is hardly hospitable to the likes of me, even as it makes itself home on so many other levels.
Heart of the heartland, the state certainly wears that heart on its sleeve, welcoming one, all, even as it welcomed my own family almost a dozen years ago, the only test that, and a test somewhat less than a test at that, of winter.
“Been through an Iowa winter?” we were asked, asked often, as newcomers to Iowa, those winters from the first scarcely requiring attention compared to the winters we had known in northern Vermont.
“When does winter start?” our own Vermont-born kids asked, halfway through our first Iowa winter, their disappointment measured as much by inflection as by the dismay on their faces.
And every summer here since, even as the corn, year after year, revels in heat, in humidity, I crank the air conditioners, only, only to make life here, at least summer here, otherwise tolerable, somehow still tolerable.
Outside, though, I die, die by degrees, wishing fewer of them in summer, fewer even in winter; wishing this summer, every summer, to feel what I so rarely feel: alive.
© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
All that matters…
I have written here in recent weeks of place, of time.
But so much of our recent trip west had to do with people, with family—with a sister, brothers, their spouses, children—family I’ve long not seen, never less than loved, too long neglected, so often missed; and yet another sister, beyond those other siblings, herself absent.
I am myself the oldest of five, and I confess that while I often see my youngest brother, who himself lives conveniently in the same state, I have not seen my next younger brother in 12 years; his wife in 17; our youngest sister, since she married, moved to London, in 26 years. For her, for me, half her life ago; she then only then just beyond a girl; now a woman; a mother, mother of a daughter; a daughter to the very great credit of mother and father; those years between, those many years, my profound loss.
What had brought us all together, on the west coast of Washington’s Puget Sound, was the wedding of my niece, Courtney, older child of my younger brother Michael—he whom I’d not seen in 12 years—to fiancé Joe.
The wedding itself simple, but eminently elegant.
The reception a chance for me, my wife Karen, our daughter Siohbán; that sister Meghan, her husband Kevin; brother Michael and wife Carol; another brother, Patrick, and his wife, Dawnelle; nieces Courtney and Ellie, nephew Sean, and yet another, much younger nephew, Gavin, to tie time’s loose ends, as much as anyone could tie any number of years into so many hours.
But, ah, those hours, those, those glorious hours!
A father’s toast, heart-spoken and forever.
The mother of the bride plotting, beforehand, to sabotage a Polish tradition—one foreign to anyone but the bride herself, who had once worked in Poland—but a tradition sabotaged much to everyone’s amusement, especially, with more than a nod from that mom, to those of us at mom’s table.
A wedding preluded by deluge, consummated by rainbow.
The laughter. All that laughter. The love. All that love. All that evening. That night long.
And me, wishing I’d not lost these years, any lost memories.
But time is, of course, relative.
Einstein wrote as much, even as he saw time in terms of physics, of relativity itself.
And for me, time, too, is relative, decidedly relative.
My brother Mike, my sister Meghan, our youngest brother Patrick. Another sister, Moira, whom I much miss, much love, whom I only wish had joined us in Washington.
All five of us separated by time, by space, even as time itself continues to collapse, not respecting any one of us, not respecting time itself.
And, now, Courtney joining Joe.
A generation beyond ours joining hands.
Ensuring that all that matters, beyond us, beyond them, beyond anyone who ever calls any one of us mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle…is that this love, the one that binds, that which made us all of us, this one Saturday, one…that this love, in the end, still matters.
© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon
But so much of our recent trip west had to do with people, with family—with a sister, brothers, their spouses, children—family I’ve long not seen, never less than loved, too long neglected, so often missed; and yet another sister, beyond those other siblings, herself absent.
I am myself the oldest of five, and I confess that while I often see my youngest brother, who himself lives conveniently in the same state, I have not seen my next younger brother in 12 years; his wife in 17; our youngest sister, since she married, moved to London, in 26 years. For her, for me, half her life ago; she then only then just beyond a girl; now a woman; a mother, mother of a daughter; a daughter to the very great credit of mother and father; those years between, those many years, my profound loss.
What had brought us all together, on the west coast of Washington’s Puget Sound, was the wedding of my niece, Courtney, older child of my younger brother Michael—he whom I’d not seen in 12 years—to fiancé Joe.
The wedding itself simple, but eminently elegant.
The reception a chance for me, my wife Karen, our daughter Siohbán; that sister Meghan, her husband Kevin; brother Michael and wife Carol; another brother, Patrick, and his wife, Dawnelle; nieces Courtney and Ellie, nephew Sean, and yet another, much younger nephew, Gavin, to tie time’s loose ends, as much as anyone could tie any number of years into so many hours.
But, ah, those hours, those, those glorious hours!
A father’s toast, heart-spoken and forever.
The mother of the bride plotting, beforehand, to sabotage a Polish tradition—one foreign to anyone but the bride herself, who had once worked in Poland—but a tradition sabotaged much to everyone’s amusement, especially, with more than a nod from that mom, to those of us at mom’s table.
A wedding preluded by deluge, consummated by rainbow.
The laughter. All that laughter. The love. All that love. All that evening. That night long.
And me, wishing I’d not lost these years, any lost memories.
But time is, of course, relative.
Einstein wrote as much, even as he saw time in terms of physics, of relativity itself.
And for me, time, too, is relative, decidedly relative.
My brother Mike, my sister Meghan, our youngest brother Patrick. Another sister, Moira, whom I much miss, much love, whom I only wish had joined us in Washington.
All five of us separated by time, by space, even as time itself continues to collapse, not respecting any one of us, not respecting time itself.
And, now, Courtney joining Joe.
A generation beyond ours joining hands.
Ensuring that all that matters, beyond us, beyond them, beyond anyone who ever calls any one of us mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle…is that this love, the one that binds, that which made us all of us, this one Saturday, one…that this love, in the end, still matters.
© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Watching snow melt…
July 10th, and on our way west from Iowa, Wyoming’s Big Horns are the first of the big mountains to scratch the horizon, the highest, Cloud Peak among them, syruped with snow.
And the next day, along the Beartooth Highway bridging Montana and Wyoming, at, what, 10,000 feet, snow banked at the road’s edge to 10 or 12 feet, names carved, graffiti-like, in the walls, those walls of snow, the names of wife Karen and daughter Siobhán now among those many names, and likely there for weeks, if not months, a year, memoriam.
By the time we had rear-viewed Yellowstone, snow was, however, passé: we had seen it, walked it, even, in July, formed and thrown snowballs.
And then came Montana’s Paradise Valley, snow still drizzled across ranges east and west, every last river and stream all but riotous with run-off.
And me outside a cabin, this cabin, in that valley, there in the sunlight, watching snow melt.
Someone, the old line goes, has to do it, so why not me?
And, given, I’m told, that the snow on one nearby ridge has not melted in three years, this could well be a full-time job, one, even if I’m not yet qualified for, I might grow into.
Doing little more this.
Little more than watching.
Watching what has year after year unfolded, decade by decade, century after century.
Winter at last relaxing, unpacking kit and case, drop becoming dribble, dribble a trickle, trickle a rivulet, rivulet to run to creek to river. And, by August in Montana, kids from bridges leaping, those rivers at last tamed by summer, summer already languid, languid with the imminence of fall.
But back to watching snow melt.
Think of that now, this moment, whatever else you might this minute be doing.
Because there is, even now, snow melting, not all of it seen, let alone under anyone’s careful scrutiny. If not in the Rockies, then the Pyrenees, the Andes, the Alps, the Urals.
And someone—you, even—should be watching, watching snow melt, watching life happen, watching time, time itself, those seconds become droplets and on to rivers, to bays, to the ocean of life itself.
And your hand, your one hand, the rest of you maybe now, maybe making love, that one hand, though, liquid in the sunshine, catching what cannot, not now, not ever, be entirely caught…
© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon
And the next day, along the Beartooth Highway bridging Montana and Wyoming, at, what, 10,000 feet, snow banked at the road’s edge to 10 or 12 feet, names carved, graffiti-like, in the walls, those walls of snow, the names of wife Karen and daughter Siobhán now among those many names, and likely there for weeks, if not months, a year, memoriam.
By the time we had rear-viewed Yellowstone, snow was, however, passé: we had seen it, walked it, even, in July, formed and thrown snowballs.
And then came Montana’s Paradise Valley, snow still drizzled across ranges east and west, every last river and stream all but riotous with run-off.
And me outside a cabin, this cabin, in that valley, there in the sunlight, watching snow melt.
Someone, the old line goes, has to do it, so why not me?
And, given, I’m told, that the snow on one nearby ridge has not melted in three years, this could well be a full-time job, one, even if I’m not yet qualified for, I might grow into.
Doing little more this.
Little more than watching.
Watching what has year after year unfolded, decade by decade, century after century.
Winter at last relaxing, unpacking kit and case, drop becoming dribble, dribble a trickle, trickle a rivulet, rivulet to run to creek to river. And, by August in Montana, kids from bridges leaping, those rivers at last tamed by summer, summer already languid, languid with the imminence of fall.
But back to watching snow melt.
Think of that now, this moment, whatever else you might this minute be doing.
Because there is, even now, snow melting, not all of it seen, let alone under anyone’s careful scrutiny. If not in the Rockies, then the Pyrenees, the Andes, the Alps, the Urals.
And someone—you, even—should be watching, watching snow melt, watching life happen, watching time, time itself, those seconds become droplets and on to rivers, to bays, to the ocean of life itself.
And your hand, your one hand, the rest of you maybe now, maybe making love, that one hand, though, liquid in the sunshine, catching what cannot, not now, not ever, be entirely caught…
© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Home
…is, I know, where the heart is.
And my heart, for all that Iowa has done for me and for my family over this last decade, has never entirely been here, never entirely been at home.
Always, I have hankered after the Vermont I knew, always wishing I might have again what I had once known.
And, if not Vermont, then Montana, maybe Michigan, maybe Wisconsin.
This, my wayward heart…
This heart wanting more than any one life might willingly give me.
This heart, this past week, out west, and finding itself…at home
And how to explain?
Those mountains speaking to some deeper sense of myself. A certain wildness, certainly absent in Iowa. A rough edge here in Montana, a reminder of a place not yet entirely tamed. And, yeah, the heat, this heat, usually intolerable to me, but tempered, tempered just enough, by low humidity.
And something more…
That thing intangible, all but indescribable. That sense, that if I were strung now, strung here, here in Pray, strung between two trees in a hammock, I’d be at peace.
© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon
And my heart, for all that Iowa has done for me and for my family over this last decade, has never entirely been here, never entirely been at home.
Always, I have hankered after the Vermont I knew, always wishing I might have again what I had once known.
And, if not Vermont, then Montana, maybe Michigan, maybe Wisconsin.
This, my wayward heart…
This heart wanting more than any one life might willingly give me.
This heart, this past week, out west, and finding itself…at home
And how to explain?
Those mountains speaking to some deeper sense of myself. A certain wildness, certainly absent in Iowa. A rough edge here in Montana, a reminder of a place not yet entirely tamed. And, yeah, the heat, this heat, usually intolerable to me, but tempered, tempered just enough, by low humidity.
And something more…
That thing intangible, all but indescribable. That sense, that if I were strung now, strung here, here in Pray, strung between two trees in a hammock, I’d be at peace.
© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon
A farewell to paradise…
Behind me some 2,000 miles, Iowa to Poulsbo, Washington.
And since then another day’s drive, this one east, another 700 miles.
East now as far as Livingston, in Montana, to the gates, to the gap, to Paradise Valley. The three of us—Karen, daughter Siobhan, me—holed up in the Murray, as Peckinpah once did, albeit without bullet holes in the walls to commemorate our stay.
And out there in Paradise…
This morning, this last morning, I’m alone in Paradise Valley, Karen and Siobhan in the car, me scuffing dirt car-side, the sun chinning up over the Absorakas.
Not far away the Yellowstone rippling, loudly rippling, river meeting rock. The smell of hay from nearer fields, hay as redolent as July itself, the bales themselves rounded, tumbled into some semblance of a stack. Cows from across the road lowing, reminding me, if reminding were necessary, of life.
And rimming the horizon, the Absorakas themselves, the highest still skirted with snow, those skirts tattered by sunlight. Clouds this morning skirling peaks. The air crisp, but waiting to warm again to 90°, the heat’s saving grace its low humidity.
A last look, this last look, and eastward to home…
© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon
And since then another day’s drive, this one east, another 700 miles.
East now as far as Livingston, in Montana, to the gates, to the gap, to Paradise Valley. The three of us—Karen, daughter Siobhan, me—holed up in the Murray, as Peckinpah once did, albeit without bullet holes in the walls to commemorate our stay.
And out there in Paradise…
This morning, this last morning, I’m alone in Paradise Valley, Karen and Siobhan in the car, me scuffing dirt car-side, the sun chinning up over the Absorakas.
Not far away the Yellowstone rippling, loudly rippling, river meeting rock. The smell of hay from nearer fields, hay as redolent as July itself, the bales themselves rounded, tumbled into some semblance of a stack. Cows from across the road lowing, reminding me, if reminding were necessary, of life.
And rimming the horizon, the Absorakas themselves, the highest still skirted with snow, those skirts tattered by sunlight. Clouds this morning skirling peaks. The air crisp, but waiting to warm again to 90°, the heat’s saving grace its low humidity.
A last look, this last look, and eastward to home…
© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Along Mill Creek Road…
Today, along Mill Creek Road, Montana’s Mill Creek itself did what it has done for millennia, times like these, times when winter’s snowpack has meant an extended spring, creeks like Mill Creek, roiling as it has so often roiled before, meeting the Yellowstone River, the river itself belly-high, spreading itself hip to hip, water, so much water, rippling between.
Out here in Montana’s Paradise Valley, life literally flows on.
The valley itself at the whim, the wile, of that Yellowstone.
The river, yet again, declaring ownership of its banks, reminding those living nearby that those banks are fluid, that life itself is ever subject to change.
This one river announcing itself one year, surprising another. Those mountains now and forever rimming the horizon.
All that is different is that I am this year witness.
Witness to this life.
To this creek, this river.
To life itself.
Life rippling rock to rock. Bank to bank.
Those banks widening, this year to accommodate life’s flow, as it has always before accommodated life’s flow. And, another year, barely breaching rock.
And me, looking, listening to that water meeting that rock. The creek itself today exultant.
Me, at the same time, so small.
This speck, my life, against this landscape, against all of time.
And me today sixty…
Out here in Montana’s Paradise Valley, life literally flows on.
The valley itself at the whim, the wile, of that Yellowstone.
The river, yet again, declaring ownership of its banks, reminding those living nearby that those banks are fluid, that life itself is ever subject to change.
This one river announcing itself one year, surprising another. Those mountains now and forever rimming the horizon.
All that is different is that I am this year witness.
Witness to this life.
To this creek, this river.
To life itself.
Life rippling rock to rock. Bank to bank.
Those banks widening, this year to accommodate life’s flow, as it has always before accommodated life’s flow. And, another year, barely breaching rock.
And me, looking, listening to that water meeting that rock. The creek itself today exultant.
Me, at the same time, so small.
This speck, my life, against this landscape, against all of time.
And me today sixty…
Saturday, July 2, 2011
All we have is what we bring into the room
Practice medicine, and getting a CBC, checking a potassium level, ordering a TSH is as easy as asking. Want a chest x-ray? Need a head CT? What about that ultrasound to rule out that DVT?
Write it. Sign it. Done.
Less easily ordered, less easily done, is that CT of the soul. The ultrasound that tells those of us in Palliative Medicine that there’s a herniated depression, a pocket of anxiety, some fulminant pain. The x-ray that reveals that this patient never got along with her daughter, but loves her, loves her to no end, would never hurt her, even if it means not making her power-of-attorney, not having her make those, those terrible decisions. That another patient’s son, faced with saying goodbye to his father, had yet to learn to say hello.
All we have is what we bring into the room.
Any experience. Whatever medical knowledge. Some amount of insight, of intuition. None of it measured in milligrams, colonies, rads.
Oh, to see what cannot be seen…
To enter that patient’s room and to know, not just a creatinine level, not only a sodium value, but to already have depression’s number, to have seen the spirituality films, to understand, by some algorithm of the EMR, that this patient’s pain is not in her back, has nothing to do with her diagnosis, will never respond to narcotics.
To see what can’t be seen…
Like the fifty-two-year-old woman I saw yesterday, only recently diagnosed with rapidly advancing pancreatic cancer.
How to measure the fact that her husband loved the light in her once, loves that light still, will love it forever, even when that light is out.
That, as he said to me, pleasantly, with no anger toward the world shuttering his world, and me believing him from his first word, “You can’t tell me anything worse than what I have already heard.”
That their youngest child, a daughter, will be married in September.
That her mother once never questioned seeing her younger daughter’s wedding day.
And that patient herself?
Beautiful.
Head without a hair. Earrings defiantly in place. Cheeks summered, red. And now and then a smile. A smile transcending any and all pain. Her face itself transcendent. A face all at once reflecting all she is, all she loves, all she is so likely to so soon lose.
My hand reaches for hers, and hers, tellingly, reaches for mine.
“My father had pancreatic cancer,” I say to her, almost whispering, lest her husband, talking to the nurse, hear me acknowledge the obvious. “I understand.”
But, of course, I don’t.
Sure, I lost my father to pancreatic cancer.
But this woman is losing her one loved life to the same thing.
And her husband, his tears dammed by his smile, his laughter, is himself losing the girl he married. The girl, who at 18, bore their first child. The woman who has shared his life since, and who for more than 30 years returned a love that appears more than love.
How can I understand?
Maybe one day with that CT of the soul. That ultrasound of anxiety. That x-ray of family dynamics.
But today all I know is what I somehow know.
Labs more or less normal.
Imaging unremarkable, except, of course, for that mass.
Nothing, really, by the numbers physicians so often care about.
But my own father dead of pancreatic cancer.
This woman, her husband, losing the life they loved, the one they, like all of us, took for granted on too many a day.
And she herself beautiful.
Her face, her eyes, those cheeks, transcendent.
© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon
Write it. Sign it. Done.
Less easily ordered, less easily done, is that CT of the soul. The ultrasound that tells those of us in Palliative Medicine that there’s a herniated depression, a pocket of anxiety, some fulminant pain. The x-ray that reveals that this patient never got along with her daughter, but loves her, loves her to no end, would never hurt her, even if it means not making her power-of-attorney, not having her make those, those terrible decisions. That another patient’s son, faced with saying goodbye to his father, had yet to learn to say hello.
All we have is what we bring into the room.
Any experience. Whatever medical knowledge. Some amount of insight, of intuition. None of it measured in milligrams, colonies, rads.
Oh, to see what cannot be seen…
To enter that patient’s room and to know, not just a creatinine level, not only a sodium value, but to already have depression’s number, to have seen the spirituality films, to understand, by some algorithm of the EMR, that this patient’s pain is not in her back, has nothing to do with her diagnosis, will never respond to narcotics.
To see what can’t be seen…
Like the fifty-two-year-old woman I saw yesterday, only recently diagnosed with rapidly advancing pancreatic cancer.
How to measure the fact that her husband loved the light in her once, loves that light still, will love it forever, even when that light is out.
That, as he said to me, pleasantly, with no anger toward the world shuttering his world, and me believing him from his first word, “You can’t tell me anything worse than what I have already heard.”
That their youngest child, a daughter, will be married in September.
That her mother once never questioned seeing her younger daughter’s wedding day.
And that patient herself?
Beautiful.
Head without a hair. Earrings defiantly in place. Cheeks summered, red. And now and then a smile. A smile transcending any and all pain. Her face itself transcendent. A face all at once reflecting all she is, all she loves, all she is so likely to so soon lose.
My hand reaches for hers, and hers, tellingly, reaches for mine.
“My father had pancreatic cancer,” I say to her, almost whispering, lest her husband, talking to the nurse, hear me acknowledge the obvious. “I understand.”
But, of course, I don’t.
Sure, I lost my father to pancreatic cancer.
But this woman is losing her one loved life to the same thing.
And her husband, his tears dammed by his smile, his laughter, is himself losing the girl he married. The girl, who at 18, bore their first child. The woman who has shared his life since, and who for more than 30 years returned a love that appears more than love.
How can I understand?
Maybe one day with that CT of the soul. That ultrasound of anxiety. That x-ray of family dynamics.
But today all I know is what I somehow know.
Labs more or less normal.
Imaging unremarkable, except, of course, for that mass.
Nothing, really, by the numbers physicians so often care about.
But my own father dead of pancreatic cancer.
This woman, her husband, losing the life they loved, the one they, like all of us, took for granted on too many a day.
And she herself beautiful.
Her face, her eyes, those cheeks, transcendent.
© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon
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