Three Poems From Childhood

Dear George,

I’ve been busy this autumn quarter with my OLLI writing courses, “Poetry Writing Workshop” and “Advanced Poetry Writing”.  This helps to keep blood flowing in my brain.  Childhood experiences are one topic I regularly draw upon.  Here are a few that stood out to me.

Love,

Dave

A Boy’s Dream  

Every Sunday my Grandpa Guy

gave me a new tin soldier

Heroes of heroes, strong and brave

with their rifles, bazookas, Tommy guns, swords

Only five, I soon commanded a mighty army

a force capable of defeating the Nazis

We fought fierce battles for hours on end 

Then one day my parents

took me to a restaurant 

where the owners had on display

an incredible machine

enclosed in a glass case 

Hundreds of inter-connected parts

moving together up and down

back and forth 

whirling about in circles

I watched as if hypnotized 

and daydreamed about it for weeks afterward 

If only I could find the right metal pieces

I could surely build a machine like that

Everywhere I went 

I watched for scraps of metal 

Then the idea came to me 

My tin soldiers

All those heads, arms, legs

So many little metal pieces

I could break them off

fit them together

and use them to build my machine

The hardest decision I’d ever faced

I did love my tin soldiers

But I loved that machine more than anything 

Alone by myself in Grandpa’s living room

I threw the tin soldiers as hard as I could

against the flowered wallpaper

but they were too solid to break

So I got Grandpa’s hammer

and smashed every one of them into pieces 

I spread the parts out on the rug

and began putting them together

These two, no those two

maybe these other ones 

A sudden uneasiness

Then panic  

Then total devastation

None of the pieces fit together 

Not a single pair

My world came crashing down

What was I thinking? 

What had I done?  

The pile of broken limbs and torsos lay before me

I tried putting the soldiers back together

but that didn’t work either 

I cried for hours

Fifty years later I told my dad

about my idea of building a machine 

He was incredulous

“We thought you hated your grandfather”

No, that’s not right

I loved my grandfather

I just had a wrong idea

* * *

Stuff We Learned As Boys 

I did my childhood in the 1940s

World War Two and its aftermath 

My dad left our family for the Navy 

But I still learned a lot about being a man

The major lesson

Men either kill or get killed 

We observed this, of course, in the Movietone News 

Ships sinking, planes on fire, corpses in a trench 

But also at the Saturday matinee

Swordsmen, gangsters, pirates 

G-men, Apaches, pygmies with poison darts   

We children spent our leisure hours playing military games 

Or cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians

I owned a six-shooter, a luger, a .45, a rifle with a bayonet

A hunting knife, a jackknife, a Bowie knife, a machete

Loads of cap pistols, water pistols, a machine gun that shot ping pong balls 

Not to mention my bow and arrows

When we weren’t busy shooting at each other

We played contact sports

Basketball, football, boxing, wrestling

Determining who could triumph over whom

Who were winners, who were losers

Men, we concluded, don’t show emotion

Tough guys dish out pain and can take it

Being weak is the worst sin of all

Looking back, this was not ideal preparation 

for marriage, family, parenthood, friendship

Perhaps it was useful for pro football or the army

* * *

The Time That God Nearly Passed the Test

My family wasn’t very churchy

so I depended on my childhood chums

for my religious upbringing

Mostly Catholic 

they taught me about the saints

the ten commandments

errant priests and altar boys

rituals of the Mass 

and, of course, Heaven and Hell

I wound up confused

in doubt of God’s existence

even though my chums told me 

I was wacko 

and in danger of burning for all eternity.

One day

I decided to settle the matter

once and for all 

I shuffled a deck of Bicycle playing cards

closed my eyes

and said aloud

“God, if you exist

prove it to me by 

letting me draw

the six of clubs.”  

I held my breath

pulled a card at random from the deck 

turned it over slowly

and stared at……..

The Six of Clubs!

Probably the heavens thundered

blazing lights, the sound of trumpets.

I broke into a sweat.

Disoriented

barely able to breathe. 

After an hour of stupefaction

I picked up the deck of cards again. 

“God,” I said, “I have to give

you one more test.

Just to be sure. 

If you let me draw the nine of hearts

I will absolutely believe in you forever.   

I promise.”

Then I drew the card

held my breath

turned it over anxiously

and…..it was not the nine of hearts.  

“That’s it,” I said to myself.  

“Nobody there.” 

But later I reconsidered. 

Perhaps He was insulted

and felt it beneath Him 

to continue going along with a 

thirteen-year-old boy’s reckless whims.  

“I proved Myself to you 

when you asked Me

and you chose not to believe 

the word of God.

So be it.”  

From time to time 

I still wonder about that.  

Whatever the case, it was certainly 

a peak religious moment

and it did make me think about miracles.  

  

A Plug for the Golden Years

Dear George, 

I wonder when I first ran across the notion of “The Golden Years”.  Maybe sometime in my twenties.   From the outset it struck me as a lie, manufactured to delude old people into feeling better about the horrors of aging.  Recently I found out that the phrase was actually coined for a 1959 advertising campaign for Sun City, Arizona, the nation’s first large-scale retirement community.  So it was a sort of lie after all.

Now that I’m well into the Golden Years, I find myself reevaluating the matter.  I turned 82 last July, but the early eighties, so far, have no connection to the frightening fantasies I harbored as a young adult.  My life, like that of many of my age-peers, is similar to our earlier adult years, but also more desirable in a variety of ways.  My opinions about aging have been shaped a lot by my experience in OLLI classes at the university where most of my classmates are in their seventies and beyond.  These persons tend to be bright, inquisitive, engaged, and enthusiastic.  Nothing like ageist stereotypes.  While we all know that the final years of life can involve decline and disability, I’m more struck by the positives that are associated with growing older (associated with retirement as much as with biological age per se).  Here are some of the pluses that I associate with the Golden Years.    

Completion.  I think that one wonderful thing about the 70s and beyond is that one has completed (or largely completed) many of their major life tasks.  For myself, I feel good about growing up in our family, my education, my career, marriage, parenting, many friendships.  Along with a sense of accomplishment, I’m no longer troubled by the strains that necessarily came along with these largely completed life roles.  A mixture of pride, relief, and contentment. 

Freedom from authority.  For most of the past decades of my of life I, like just about everybody, was subject to the dictates of parents, teachers, bosses, and other authority figures.  With a couple of exceptions (e.g., my wife and my doctor), these hierarchical relationships pretty much ended upon my retirement at age 71.  No orders, no supervision, no annual reviews, no performance monitoring.  I sleep late when I want to, pick activities I find pleasurable.  I’m largely in charge of my daily routine and, with that, comes a rewarding sense of control that was less evident in earlier life stages.   

Lowered stress.  I spent my career teaching and doing research in social psychology.  It was a good choice from me, but each year that I’m away from the workplace, the more I’m aware of how stressful my work world was.  I found classroom teaching to be anxiety-provoking.  Pressures for research and publication were a constant source of stress.  Managing relationships with a few dozen colleagues was often rewarding, but could also be unpleasant.   One of my work friends took early retirement and was convinced that it reduced his blood pressure and added ten years to his life.  I know the feeling.  It’s not that retired life is stress-free, but many earlier sources of pressure have lessened or vanished.

Less self-consciousness.    I’ve always been a rather shy, socially anxious person, though my sense is that this has decreased with age.  At this stage of life I have less need to create favorable impressions and am less concerned with what others think of me.  My sister commented a while back that I seem to have become more outgoing as I’ve gotten older, then added (tongue in cheek, of course) that that’s a regrettable development.

New Life Roles.  Being an older, retired person is a new life role, in and of itself, requiring problem-solving and creative adaptation.  Basically one is faced with the challenge of building a new life.  Being a grandparent is my most exciting and enjoyable new role, though less frequently in play for us because of geographical distance.

Wisdom and experience.  There’s probably a kernel of truth about wisdom being associated with seniorhood.  The older people are, the more things they’ve experienced, the more crises they’ve worked through, the more places they’ve been, and the more life stages they’ve traversed.  It’s kind of like visiting a museum.  By the end of childhood you’ve seen a couple of the galleries, but by your seventies or eighties you’ve gone through the whole place a couple of times. 

Growing old together.  Katja and I celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary this coming August.  Couples age and go through life stages just as individuals do.  We have both become more attuned to the hazards of aging and probably worry more about one another’s well-being than about ourselves.  I think we both appreciate that, and it makes for closer bonds.

Thankfulness.  Given average life expectancies in our society (currently about 79), I’m thankful to still be around, and I look at each passing day as a privilege and an opportunity.  A few setbacks or disabilities here and there are quite tolerable. 

Having written this, I’m feeling more enthusiastic about age-related matters.  In some respects, I find this the happiest time of life.  Of course it all depends.  Elderly persons may live in dire poverty, incur painful and life-threatening diseases, become disabled, be subject to elder abuse.  The “golden years” really refers to the post-retirement stage when individuals are relatively healthy and their activities are governed by their interests and desires rather than by health and safety concerns.   According to research summarized on webmd.com (2), the keys to a high-quality life after age 65 are good health, sufficient money, and finding one’s life meaningful.  Katja and I are doing o.k. on these dimensions (though health can bounce around a bit and meaning is sometimes elusive).  Here’s to our next adventure.

Love,

Dave 

SOURCES:

(1) rowleylegal.com.  “The Term ‘Golden Years’ Was Coined In 1959 As An Advertising Pitch For Sun City”  (Aug. 3, 2014) 

(2) webmd.com.  “What Makes the Golden Years Great?”  (May 31, 2007)

Thanks, World

Dear George,

We’ve been through a nervous three weeks following Katja’s complications from shoulder replacement surgery.  There’s nothing like losing the ability to breathe to make one appreciative of being alive.  While Katja still has an oxygen tank at home, she uses it a bit less each day, and we’re looking ahead to a full recovery.  Thanksgiving this year is an especially good time to reflect on all the good things in our lives, past and present. 

Thanks to Katja, first of all, whose has supplied most of the things that have made our lives enjoyable for the past 59 years. 

Thanks to our NOLA family, J, K, L, and V, who have helped make our senior years much more rewarding than we ever expected.  

Thanks to my parents for our extraordinary upbringing as kids and to my siblings with whom I’ve enjoyed my happiest times at our many family reunions at Farm.  

Thanks to a bevy of friends over the years who have generated much of our fun and frivolity.

Thanks to my Menominee High School teachers who gave me a solid grounding for moving on in the world and to Antioch College, a remarkable institution where I might have been the only Upper Peninsula graduate in history. 

Thanks to my graduate school mentors in social psychology, my university colleagues and grad students, and the university’s retirement plan which keeps us afloat.  

Thanks to my zumba and line dancing instructors who assist me each week in the battle against old age.  

Thanks to the OLLI program at the university where the poetry classes have given me a new avocation.  

Thanks to our Clifton neighborhood which makes us feel at home and keeps us well supplied with Skyline Chili and Graeters ice cream.    

In many ways we’re enjoying the most enjoyable time of our lives.  Relatively free of stress, entirely free of work pressures, no bosses or worries about “getting ahead”, and plenty of time to devote to enjoyable leisure pursuits.  That makes for a happy Thanksgiving.

Love,

Dave

Dreams and Life Stages

Dear George,

Like everyone, I’ve had recurrent dreams as long as I can remember.  Now, from the perspective of my elder years, what strikes me is how these have changed over time and how they reflected the particular life stage I was immersed in.  Here are some of the recurrent dreams that I recall most clearly.

Love,

Dave 

Childhood

My memories are fuzziest about my childhood dreams, but I do have a clear sense that they were usually scary.  Basically these were flight dreams in which I was in danger, terrified, and being chased by some powerful malicious entity.  Monsters, wild animals, Nazis, murderous criminals.  Sometimes this was in the forest.  I don’t think I usually got caught, mostly because the chase was so frightening that it woke me up. 

I haven’t had flight dreams for many many years, and I suspect they were particularly distinctive of childhood fears.  Being relatively small, weak, and vulnerable and being scared about a dangerous world.  This might have involved fears about parents, older kids, teachers, etc., but I suspect my flight dreams were especially fueled by comic books, Disney movies, and the weekly Saturday matinee cowboy, war, detective, and horror movies that we attended.     

Adolescence

I remember my most recurrent teenage dream very clearly, though it too is long gone.  In my waking life I had a part-time clerk job in my grandfather’s drugstore which required that I drive from our home in Menominee, Michigan, across the Hattie Street Bridge to the drugstore in Marinette, Wisconsin, the twin city where it was located.  The bridge was right next to the Menominee River dam where water came rushing down.   In my dream I was driving our family car across the Hattie Street Bridge when I suddenly discovered that the center section had collapsed.  Unable to brake in time, my car and I plummeted down into the rocks and white water to our destruction. 

I’ve always thought of this as my most creative dream.  A perfect symbolic representation of the anxieties connected with the perilous transition from adolescence to adulthood.  Clearly I feared I was doomed.  

College

I had the same recurrent dream as most other college students I’ve known.  It was finals week in the semester, and I suddenly discovered that I was accidentally registered for a course I’d never attended.  It was too late to withdraw, and I had to take the final exam if I had any hope of not failing.  I knew absolutely nothing about the subject matter.  The exam was starting in a couple of minutes.

There are lots of sources of anxiety during the college years, but constant evaluation and the threat of failure on examinations probably top the list.  

Early Career

My college exam anxiety dreams persisted for several decades, deeply rooted as they were.  However, once I became a classroom teacher, my student dream was gradually replaced by a complementary teacher dream.   Instead of a final exam, it was the first day of the semester, and I was notified by my department head that I was scheduled to teach a new class that I was totally unprepared for.  Like Nuclear Science or Chinese History.  The class was beginning in minutes, and I had to go in and bluff my way through.  In one variation of this dream, all of the students, one after the next, walked out of class during my lecture. 

It's interesting that students and teachers have pretty much the same dream.  I guess that higher education is fraught with tension, no matter which side you’re on.   

Later Career

Anxiety seems at the core of most of my dreams.  However, in middle age, perhaps the prime time of life,  I began having much more enjoyable,  anxiety-free dreams.  One version involved flying.  I would simply start waving my hands up and down, and then I would slowly rise upward to the ceiling or to the sky.  People watched in amazement.  An exhilarating, freeing feeling.  In another related version I would run at full speed along the sidewalk, then jump off the ground, and, amazingly, my momentum would carry me through the air for a city block or more.  I imagined myself breaking all of the records for the long jump at the Olympics. 

I see these as feel-good dreams in which I possessed special powers that were both unique and rewarding, including gaining recognition from others.  They came at a time when I felt in more control of my life – career, marriage, parenthood – and I apparently could afford to relax and enjoy my success. 

Retirement

Nowadays the dream that I have most often involves a return to anxiety, if not terror.  I suddenly recall that I had rented an expensive hotel room in another city a year ago and that I had brought all my books and other belongings and left them stored there.  I’d totally forgotten that I’d done that.  The current hotel bill was over a hundred thousand dollars, and I had only one day left in which to drive to the city and try to retrieve my belongings. 

I regard this as another age-related dream.  First, there is the sense of running out of time.  Second, what to do about an enormous number of belongings.   One of the things that worries me most in real life is what to do about the 60 years’ worth of stuff that Katja and I have accumulated and that fills our attic, basement, and storage room to overflowing. 

Postscript

For the most part, my dreams seems to mirror the central fears of my waking life.  What strikes me most is that changes in dreams follow changes in life roles.  Perhaps I will have a new recurrent dream in coming years.  It already makes me nervous to think about it.

Surgery Diary

Dear George,

I decided to keep a diary during Katja’s surgery experience this week.  Here is how it turned out.  

Love,

Dave

BEFOREHAND: 5 p.m., Wed., Nov. 6, 2019

Suffering from bad arthritic pain, Katja has been scheduled for shoulder replacement surgery for a couple of months.  Now we’re just 16 hours away.  We’re both nervous, though we don’t talk about it much.  Today I googled “Dangers of Shoulder Replacement Surgery,” and that was somewhat reassuring.  The website described a high rate of success for the operation with complications occurring in less than 5% of cases.  Still I worried about the 5%.  We’re both in an age group where the percent might be higher.  I thought about asking Katja to show me once again how to use the coffee grinder and the dishwasher in case of her demise but thought better of it.  She won’t be able to use her right arm for a month or more, so I will be getting plenty of practice in the kitchen.  She did have replacement surgery on her left shoulder about nine years ago, and my recollection was that recovery wasn’t much of a problem.  I told that to a friend who looked at me like I was crazy.  She said Katja was in pain for weeks afterward and I was totally stressed out.  I don’t remember any of it.  Apparently my memory operates to keep life as pleasant as possible, no matter how delusional.    I am just going to grit my teeth and tough it out.  

DURING: Noon, Thurs., Nov. 7, 2019

I’m sitting in the Surgery Visitor’s Waiting Room.  The surgeon will come here when the operation is done to let me know how things went, probably in about ninety minutes.  Katja seemed to be in reasonable spirits when they took her off to get a pain blocker in her shoulder.  However, her last instructions to me were that she is an organ donor, absolutely wants to be buried in a coffin and not cremated, and wants me to sit with her corpse for several hours to make sure she is actually dead.  I took this all in silently and gave her a goodbye (for now) kiss.  Both of us have had on our minds a friend’s wife who had routine minor surgery and died on the operating table.  I am trying to stay calm while waiting here by myself, though it is a strange, unreal experience. 

AFTERWARD: 3:10 P.M., Thurs., Nov. 7, 2019

A message board in the waiting room gives information on patient’s progress (e.g., incision, recovery, room).  As it turned out, I was given the wrong tracking number and was actually following the progress of a Robert Tucker.  When the volunteer discovered this, she said that Katja was now in recovery and that the surgeon would be talking to me any minute.  However, thirty minutes went by and no surgeon.  I started imagining that something terrible had happened to delay him.  The volunteer checked and said that the doctor was busy with another patient, but that a nurse would come out to talk to me any minute.  Another thirty minutes passed.  More terrible premonitions.  Finally the surgeon did arrive at 2:50 and said that the operation was a complete success.  Katja will stay overnight.  They will get her moving to try to avoid pneumonia.  If she is doing well she’ll be discharged before lunch tomorrow.  Whew!

HOURS LATER: 6:15 p.m., Thurs., Nov. 7, 2019

I’ve been in Katja’s spacious fifth-floor room for a couple of hours.  She is very perky, has no pain at all because of the block she received, and is in a good (drug-induced) mood.  Our son J** will arrive at the airport from New Orleans at 10:30 tonight, and I’ll pick him up.  J** is a rehab physician so he will be a big help.  Things are looking much more rosy.    

THE NEXT MORNING: 11:55 a.m., Fri., Nov. 8, 2019

Justin and I arrived at the hospital at 8:45 a.m., and Katja was overjoyed to see us.  I felt good to be all together as a family.  The occupational therapist and the physical therapist arrived shortly afterwards and went over the ins and outs of the recovery process.  Meds, exercise, doing tasks like dressing, things to avoid.  It all left me with a bit of trepidation.  If she moves her arm incorrectly, it could dislocate her shoulder and result in rehospitalization.  In any case, Katja was discharged at 12:30, and we headed home.  She was happy to be out but said she had also been happy being in the hospital.  I felt uneasy about the coming days and was glad to have J**’s support for the weekend.  Recovery will take 4 to 6 weeks.  We will see what happens next.  

Three Halloween Poems

Dear George, 

Next to Christmas, I think Halloween is the best holiday of the year.  All those treats, kids being out on the streets at night, the funny costumes, the possibility doing of tricks.  This past week I’ve been trying to capture the spirit of Halloween in poems.  Here are some of my efforts.

Love,

Dave 

All Hallows Eve: A Villanelle

The wind turns brisk and whistles through the night

Tricksters in masks scurry here and there

All Hallows Eve, a time for thrills and fright

A pirate and a ghoul wait at the light

A witch casts her spell, wide-eyed children stare

The wind turns brisk and whistles through the night

           

Vampires hug shadows, poised to bite

While a girl screams to friends, “Bloodsuckers!  Beware!”

All Hallows Eve, a time for thrills and fright

The smallest ghost clutches his lantern bright

Fierce howls of werewolves fill the chilly air

The wind turns brisk and whistles through the night

A band of zombies lurches into sight

Incarnations from some deep nightmare

All Hallows Eve, a time for thrills and fright

Kids bring bags of treats to their porches bright

Mothers and fathers are waiting there

The wind turns brisk and whistles through the night

All Hallows Eve, a time for thrills and fright

* * *

The Legend of Jack O’ Lantern

Jack O’Malley, the village rowdy

Staggered home from the pub one night

A dark figure sat on top of the oak

Satan’s presence filled Jack with stark fright

Jack quickly pulled out his woodsman’s knife

Carved a cross on the trunk of the tree 

Satan couldn’t climb past that holy cross

Till he promised Jack’s soul would stay free

Jack lived out his life as a scoundrel and thief

When he died, St. Peter locked the gate 

Jack sought out the Prince of Darkness

“Tough luck,” Satan said, “that’s your fate”

As Jack walked away Satan threw a burning coal

And Jack stuck it in a hollowed out gourd 

He used it as a lantern to light his way

As he wandered the countryside, spurned and ignored

The history of Halloween is ancient and hoary

But one fact is clear — Jack O’ Lantern’s story 

* * * 

  John Carpenter’s Halloween: A Poetic Synopsis

Michael Myers was born a monster

At six he killed his sister with a knife

Locked up fifteen years in the asylum

He escaped to resume his warped life   

           

Michael snuck back home to his Illinois town

There he killed a mechanic just for his clothes

He began to stalk Laurie, a high school beauty    

Her friends joked this weird guy would soon propose 

Dr. Loomis, the psychiatrist, raced to Michael’s hometown

Informing the sheriff of Michael Myers’ escape

“A monster so evil,” Dr. Loomis said

“No question he’ll murder, despoil, and rape”

That night, Halloween, Laurie babysat

Her best friend Annie was right across the street  

Michael Myers had followed both of these girls

He sliced Annie’s throat as if it were meat

Laurie’s friends Bob and Lynda arrived at Annie’s

Straight up to the bedroom to fool around

Bob came down for a beer, Michael slit his throat

Strangled Lynda to death, not the tiniest sound 

Laurie came to make sure that her friends were all right

Found the corpses of Annie, then Lynda and Bob

Michael jumped out in his white hockey mask

Grabbed Laurie by the throat, set to finish the job

At that very moment Dr. Loomis burst in

Shot Michael six times with his Magnum handgun

Michael tumbled off the balcony to the ground below

But looking for a  body the survivors found none 

POSTCRIPT

I went to this movie, walked home to my house

Michael Myers was hidden behind every tree

Supposedly an adult, I feared for my life 

Four decades later I still want to flee

Autumn Nostalgia

Dear George,
For almost fifteen years Duffy, Mike, Sophie, Donna, and I took at least half a dozen hikes at Miami Whitewater Forest every autumn.  Now that Donna has moved to Nashville and the sheepdogs have gone to the great beyond, my visits there are few and far between.  However, it does have the best hiking trails in the area, and my visit this week reminded me that autumn there is still a joy.
Love,
Dave