A Major Paradigm Shift

On December 1st, 1979 I married Karen Stack in a house trailer renter by her sister Kass in Jackson, Wyoming. Probably should have seen the  rocky road ahead when the JP showed up in his painting clothes but after a short ceremony, I was married to her. It was a relationship based on two people rebounding from romances with deep roots which both ended badly but we were friends at least which is probably the reason the marriage lasted as long as it did--32 years.

I had been seeing and courting Barbara, Karen's childhood friend who has recently divorced her husband after he had had a brain aneurism/stroke and that had changed so completely that he had become such a different person that she could no longer stayed married to him. Karen told me later that she had always been jealous of Barb and her material wealth and had been not so much enamored with me but wanted to take me away from Barbara as a kind of conquest. we had become friends because I shared my frustrations and fears with someone I thought could help me to understand her very complex friend and any problems we had encountered as lovers. Big mistake but only to be realized much, much later.

Anyway three years into our marriage we had twin daughters, Jessica and Erin to whom I became totally devoted. Not only did a paternal instinct blossom that I had never known but as a result of Karen's nature, her returning to work fairly quickly, and what I saw as a minimal maternal instinct, I became very maternal as well. My relationship with the girls, I believe is much stronger than than theirs with their mother. The inevitable differences of opinion arose over how best to raise the children and Karen and I had both come from completely dysfunctional families that we had any true idea of what to do with regard to raising children was absurd. The children survived and became strong in spite of their parents.

But almost from the second of their birth Karen displayed a jealousy about my relationship with the girls and as a result a rift began. As the kids grew and issues regarding rules and behaviors became life lessons our differences grew more substantial as did the distance between us emotionally. Our marriage became more and more strained, different bedrooms were established, sensuality died of atrophy.  My illness became a burden for Kare and her resentment of me being in the hospital for long stretches, going onto "disability" created a very large green eyed monster and the resentment began to cut off communication became minimal or reduced to grunts and expletives. when my father died, he left me a house and an ex-"wife" to take care of. I was asked to resign my teaching position, and the kids didn't really need us around anymore. We moved into the house in Texas and the marriage began to decay further. Almost simultaneously Karen was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and she too quit working, her lifetime goal, and we lived off of social security money and my retirement account.

I couldn't stand staying at home and doing virtually nothing and eating two meals a day from fast food restaurants-each of us eating in different rooms. So I started tutoring a few hours a day at a local university. It got me up, using my brain and talent, and it brought in a little "egg Money." Eventually I garnered a part-time teaching position at a different college and this brought out a new jealousy in Karen. She hated this job of mine! She hated that she had to fend for herself for the hours that I was away. Everything was a battle but we never talked about the elephant in the room "du jour." I sought counseling for depression and my marriage. She refused to go because of the cost. All medical expenses were being covered by medicare so the excuse was phoney. She did see a psychiatrist for her sleep aids and she had no problem seeing her rheumatologist. But a psychologist was out of the question and her psychiatrist (one that we had shared but I later abandoned because I felt she has breached our trust when she told Karen things I had said during our sessions.)

Anyway, an epiphany! I began to share my difficulties with an old high school friend and she encouraged me to try to make Karen go to marriage counseling with me but after three years of begging from nearly everyone in her family, she absolutely refused to go. It seemed pointless for only one of us to continue to go alone so thoughts of ending the marriage grew. My high school friend had been through similar situations with her husband and she encouraged me to stay. I didn't. I was also offered a full-time position at school. I grabbed at the chance to be back among the living again.

In April of 2010, I told Karen that I wanted a divorce. June 15th, 2010 the divorce was final and I was alone in my father's house (while it slowly decayed around me) and I didn't feel any of the anger, sadness, or angst that was so prevalent in my life when I was married. I had resigned myself to working the remaining days of my life and dying alone and I was completely OK with it! I felt alone but free and almost alive.

Three years into this monastic life loneliness set in. My tendency not to share my troubles with others but always be available for them has left me without any real friends and stuck in a house that is my second job. As a condition of the divorce I agreed to give Karen half of the profits from its sale. Not so much because she said, " I've earned it by being married to you!" but rather to avoid any lengthy battle to get out of the marriage.

Life begins again and anew. I had been in Austin, Texas for four years and had a pseudo family ( children of a woman who called herself my father's common law wife), many acquaintances, and no clue what was available in Austin to "do." I spent most of my free time for the next three years trying to make my father's house sellable. Mostly just trying to stay ahead of the decay of an older home. Finally, it went on the market and sold! The profits split and all communications ceased with the "ex."

The truly great by-product of our marriage was our daughters. For them I would do anything. Just two day ago Erin, daughter number 2 by 3minutes told me she was pregnant with my second grandchild and I was filled with such great joy, i could hardly contain it. My (our) girls are not without scars from my marriage. But they knew everything was not great in Camelot. I had waited to divorce Karen until the girls were thirty years old and their reactions stunned and devastated me. They reacted as if they were very young and were terribly hurt and confused by the events surrounding the divorce. Most likely because I hold my emotions close to my chest and their mother has always treated them more like they were her friends than her children. She shares everything with them, even if the things she shares are misinterpreted or patently false. Karen's mind had always shown a penchant for over theatricality and grandiose embellishment. My relationship with my girls is not good because I don't call often enough and they live so many miles away. I am dedicated to improving our relationships. The relationship that I have with Jessica is very, very different than the relationship I have with her sister Erin.

This all sets the stage for the next most important paradigm shift. It has been three years since my divorce and I am ready to find some good friends and maybe even find a new Love, if that can happen for someone like me.

Chronic Pain

Life was cruising along "normally" until something went terribly wrong with my pancreas. I would have these very painful attacks of pancreatitis which would last from five to seven days and usually end with me in the hospital having the symptoms treated but no etiology discovered. The attacks started with one or two per year and then increased in frequency and severity. Out of sheer desperation I went to the west coast's expert on pancreatic disorders. He subjected me to five hours of invasive and abusive testing only to discover nothing. However, the probing, prodding, and biopsying sent me into the worst pancreatitis attack to date and it lasted for eight months. Since that time I have had unending pain and nausea.

Living with wracking pain and nausea that feels like being on the verge of purging all of the time is Hell. Every second of every day I fight back the urge to cry out from the pain. It never goes away. I have been a patient at a pain management clinic for the past three years. Pain management is an experimental process whereby the doctor starts the patient out with different combinations of pain killing drugs and increases or decreases doses depending on the efficacy of the prescription. If the drugs don't work, then a new regimen is started with a new combination of drugs. During the three years with this physician I have been through five trials. The latest just two days ago. Thus far the drugs have only taken the edge off the pain and made it bearable to get up and do the daily activities of life. Still the pain persists. It's there all day, every day.

Living with the side effects of the drugs isn't much better. Narcotics, especially opioids, naturally depress the central nervous system. They also depress the patient. The first regimen of drugs involved using Fentanyl lollipops for breakthrough pain management. The lollipops, unbeknown to me, each contained two teaspoons of confectioners sugar and over the thirteen months of using these lollipops the sugar took it's toll on my teeth. Thus far I've lost eleven and had nine crowned. This newest regimen of drugs (Methodone and Oxycodone)make me feel like a zombie all of the time. I have no motivation, I'm sleepy or sleeping all of the time. I think the doses are just too high. I just can't imagine somebody wanting to feel this way. People pay outrageous amounts of money to get stoned like this on purpose. I don't like the lack of sensation and loss of mental acuity that the drugs induce. I have little or no motivation to do anything. I have a myriad of projects I should or want to do but I just can't get moving to do any of them. I'm not that kind of person and I don't like what the drugs have done to my personality. But then I'm not sure I'm brave enough to stop taking them. I don't know if I could stand the pain. I know the depression is at least partially a result of the drugs but there's also the loss of my past lifestyle due to the pancreatitis that contributes in a major way to my depression. I once was an energetic, funny, enthusiastic, high school math teacher. I don't know if I still have what it takes to do that job anymore. I really want to try it again and be successful at it but I just don't know. The not knowing fuels the depression as well.

I'm in this downward spiralling pit. The pain makes me use the drugs. The drugs make me depressed. The depression worsens the pain. Around and down I go, ad infinitem. Something has to give, if I'm ever going to have some sense of normalcy in my life again. Motivation being lost like it is keeps me from accomplishing the things that really need to be done but I just can't shake myself into action. Everyone has advice but it doesn't help. I'm the kind of person that has to do it himself and I just don't seem to have it in me now to get motivated. It's like there doesn't seem to be any point even though I know there is. I need to work on my house so it can be sold and we can move into something more manageable. The fact that it's my departed father's home doesn't help either. Ghosts. I feel bad that I don't go out and do the things I used to enjoy anymore. There doesn't actually seem to be anything that does bring joy anymore. Living with a person who's as bad off or worse than I am really places some pressure on me to take up the slack but most days I have trouble getting dressed---for what? My depression was getting better for a while but I've hit a bump in the road and it doesn't take much to set a depressed person back sometimes a long way. I worked very hard to become certified to teach in Texas filling out endless forms, fingerprinting, background checking, taking six hours of examinations on teaching standards and mathematics, all at a cost of nearly a thousand dollars but I missed the boat and everything came through at the end of June and there were no teaching positions available by then. It seems to have been all for naught. That was a lot of work for nothing. I augment our Social Security Disability income by tutoring college students but it's too spotty to count on and the income too little. We're slowly going under financially and I can't do anything about it. Thus the spiral continues.

I'm writing this for me to help me gain perspective and vent. Maybe reading it over and over, something will jump out at me and help me climb out of the pit. Doubtful, but one never knows. All I know is that at the present rate of descent I'll be so depressed that I may be unsalvagable. And then there's the pain. Ever present old friend always there to gnaw at me. Round and round we go. Where we stop nobody knows.
What a fun ride this is.

On Teaching

Over the past thirty plus years of teaching I’ve learned that teaching is a bundling of many arts and sciences. The obvious sciences are psychology, biology, and physiology. Knowing the way the brain accepts and processes information is an obvious must. Being acutely aware of the stages of physical and psychological growth is important. But knowing the background and prior experiences with school, family, social groups are equally important. Assessing prior experience and strengths in my particular subject (mathematics) is another key issue. Judging the individual learning styles/modalities and the classroom dynamics at a brief glance may be the most important of all of the sciences/arts for successful teaching and learning. I say at a glance because the students and teacher are thrown together on the first day of school and an immediate assessment must be made for the sake of both behavior management and optimal learning. Judging the classroom dynamic quickly allows for knowing your audience and how to manage them as teenagers with all the incumbent baggage that goes with that but also for what strategies for presenting your material will work best for that particular group. The arts of course include theatrical, interior design, and stand-up comedy to name just a few. The teacher must be theatrical to capture the attention of students who would rather by their very nature and socialization, be chatting away about more significant things to them. The teacher must be dramatic at times to drive points home and often must also be a jester to ease tensions between students or with the subject matter. Mathematics has always been the “hard” subject and brings with it a special and named anxiety. Humor, I have found, is the best way to relieve some of the tension generated by the mathematics I’m trying to teach. Being able to see when individuals or even larger groups are not connecting with the material being taught is paramount. Arranging and decorating a classroom to encourage learning and positive attitudes and safety is definitely an art to be mastered. If everything comes together properly success still isn’t guaranteed.

Teacher education programs give their students (prospective teachers) a whirlwind tour of the psychology and biology of the stages of human development from birth up to adulthood, mostly Piaget, Bloom, and Skinner. I went quite a bit further in my studies to earn a Master’s degree and studied the previous psychologists in greater depth but I also studied Aristotle, Plato, Freud, Jung, Erickson, Vigotski, Maslow and a host of other notables. The prospective teachers are taught behavior management techniques many of which don’t apply or can’t be used when matters get really serious. We are taught the laws which govern our relationships with our students but the kids have the upper hand from about 5th grade on. They know how to frustrate teachers so that no learning has to or can take place. They employ a sort of a bad behavior filibuster technique. A twenty-one year old, new graduate thrown into a classroom with only a very few weeks (12-18) practicum is really being thrown to the dogs. A true trial by fire. The kids can smell fear and prey upon it. Many times I’ve seen caring committed first year teachers quit after their first year or be fired for not being strong enough to lash the lions and tigers back onto their barrels.

Even the seasoned teacher can be challenged by a classroom dynamic which by totally random computer generation is not a good one. Today’s classroom mimics society far closer than ever before. Ethnic tensions, rampant sexuality, all too common drug use and a preponderance of learning disabilities all jumbled together in a classroom of students whose ages can differ by five years makes for a real challenge for the teacher. The “state” expects every teacher to be able to manage such a group and impart a mandatory curriculum with the outcome being satisfactory performance on standardized examinations which determine the students’ advancement or even graduation. The performance on the examinations is also used as an assessment of the teacher’s performance and competence. A sad state of affairs since the students consider the examinations folly and do not, in too many cases, even try to do their best on them. When poor performance is shown on the examinations, the teacher’s competency is called into question by parents, administrators and district personnel. A vicious cycle ensues. Teachers try harder (as if we weren’t trying to begin with) to get the information into the student’s heads, act as cheerleaders to get the students to really try to pass the exams but often it seems for naught. The kids don’t care.

There is a mentality among many high school students of entitlement and this is most visible around their lack of effort, especially on the standardized examinations they must take three or four times each year. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), I believe, exacerbated the problem. Districts have always administered performance/achievement examinations to mark progress of students within the district, specific schools, and even specific classrooms. Often, prior to NCLB, states have had examinations for achievement evaluation and promotion. Now we see these tests having “higher stakes.” Students must perform at minimum standards which are never really very high in order to advance grade levels and most importantly graduate. Nowhere is the emphasis or onus put on the students to take responsibility for their performance. Still the teacher’s competence is called into question when students perform poorly. To some degree this is appropriate. I have known my share of poor teachers. But still the kids don’t care. They feel like they’ll make it in the world without graduating, without a higher education. Often with students from upper income level families I hear, “I don’t have to do well I’m going to inherit my parent’s business or money.” It makes one wonder what values are being taught at home.

The term in loco parentis is bandied about in teacher education courses to promote a sense of responsibility in upcoming teachers. The fact that we as teachers see these children for more hours during the day and week than their parents do is important. But all too often it is used as a way to lay blame anywhere but on the parents. During their very early formative years, mothers and fathers should have been teaching values and a work ethic. But it seems that regardless of income level parents are too busy with other activities to interact with their children and they come to school with little or no self-discipline or respect for others. Rather, they come laden with their parents’ biases toward other people and school. Low income students have parents who work two and three jobs and are raised by surrogates within the family or raise themselves. Upper income students are farmed out to preschools and playgroups where little is done to promote respect for teachers or education. They more often promote a sense of needing to be entertained.

I’ve heard, “school is boring” too often. Why? Students are programmed by preschools, televisions, and Playstations. Teacher presentations don’t have commercial breaks, reset buttons and every lecture is not fun. Having to work is foreign to the student. It’s hard to believe that a fifteen year old doesn’t know that homework is key to practicing and therefore understanding classroom material. Where were they from Kindergarten through eighth grade?
We are charged now with training them to see the value of education as a lifelong pursuit and the key to a successful life. In mathematics especially, we teach more than formulae. We teach skills for solving problems which can be applied to any situation–a flat tire at night on a dark road, interpersonal conflicts, etc. Getting the student to make the connection is the hard part when they ask questions like, “When am I ever going to use this shit?” Of course then we must act as moral referees and correct poor uses of language as well as coming up with examples to show practical uses of our material which fits into the students limited experience base.

We are charged to with discouraging drug use, premarital sex (without actually calling it “sex”), and promoting self-esteem and actualization. All this and we must keep exacting records of each lesson, attendance, problems and celebrations. Out of 186 days or so in a school year nearly a month’s worth of class time is taken up with school assemblies, pep rallies, standardized testing, and other school-wide activities. Athletes, choir members, thespians, musicians, student government officers, debaters all miss class time to participate in extracurricular activities as well. All cutting instruction time down and interrupting the student’s progress toward a class’ curricular goals as mandated by the state and/or district. When they miss class, who teaches them the material they missed. The responsibility is still squarely on the teacher’s shoulders.

If prospective teachers were told these things, I believe, far fewer students would enroll in education. The quality of student entering the major is dubious as well. We’ve all heard and some take great offense at, “Those who can do, those who can’t teach.” Personally, I not only take offense at the statement but I name it Bullshit. I have done and done well. I chose to become a teacher to have a positive impact for change in society. As a roll model and a demanding teacher, I have impacted many students’ lives and I believe for the better. Prospective teachers are cranked out of universities as little automatons who teach the only way they know: the way they learned or were taught. They do not have the experience base outside of academia to present material in different ways. They teach strictly from the textbook and without it they are lost. I would rather not have a textbook at all. A teacher should know their material so well they can teach it ten different ways and if some students still don’t get it be able to make up an eleventh or twelfth strategy until everyone can understand the material. Older teachers get into ruts. They have been teaching the same classes so long that they have the textbook memorized and teach the same thing the same way they did their first year of teaching in their twentieth year. Now that’s boring. They have and use the same tests year after year and about the same success ratio as well.

Then there’s the matter of compensation. For all of their education, typically a Bachelor’s degree and two years of teacher certification classes, the average teacher makes far less than their counterparts in industry, business, or technology. Automobile assembly line workers make $45.00 per hour. Teachers make as little $25 per hour starting wage. We are far better trained to do what we do than the auto workers. Always, however, someone will toss out the comment that we only have to work for nine months out of the year so don’t deserve more. What they need to know is that we are mandated to continue our education at our own expense on our own time to remain certified. The required number of recertification hours varies from 50 to 200 depending on the state and district where one is employed. University tuition, conference fees and time are all uncompensated but nonetheless mandatory. We work twelve months a year. Our free summers are spent analyzing our curriculum to better present our course material to try to garner better success on the part of our students in our classes and on the standardized examinations. We work weekends and holidays to be prepared for our jobs. Factor these things into the salary and we make maybe $15 per hour. Cashiers at grocery stores make that

Now it may seem as though I don’t like being a teacher but it’s far from the truth. I love teaching. I love the interaction with young minds and seeing the little light bulbs go on. I enjoy their energy and am energized by it. I particularly enjoy working with a student who has never had much success in mathematics and seeing them succeed. I like the relationships I have with my students. They trust me when adults are usually considered the enemy or too out of touch to understand their problems. We won’t tell them we had the same feelings when we were in high school. I thrill to see students come to me for advice and work out solutions on their own while they talk to me. I love my subject matter and enjoy the challenge of getting my students to at least appreciate the beauty of mathematics, if not actually loving it themselves. Most of my closest friends are also teachers as well. We share the comradery of the trenches. We are frustrated when we don’t succeed. We take it personally when a student fails, especially when we know the student had the potential for success. And then there is the real reason we went into teaching: to have an impact on the future and society. We have positions of incredible power. We can change the future of the world, if we are successful. And lastly, we are consummate professionals who are committed to our jobs and to our students.

Belated New Year's Resolution

Yet another sleepless night. Noises seem to be magnified and try as I might to drown them out with my iPod the noises seem to wheedle their way into my brain and I can’t shut them out. So why not blog?

Here it is February and I haven’t committed in writing my New Year’s resolution(s). I have found a student to tutor in math for $25 per hour. Nice guy. He has ADHD and Dyslexia but it doesn’t seem to hinder him in math. He’s super polite and calls me “sir” all the time–it make me feel older somehow. But I guess that’s just how he was raised. I can deal with that. So finding a job could be checked off but I need to make about twice what I’m making with him to pay for my doctor’s visits and prescriptions. I guess I’ll send some fliers to class with him and go introduce myself to his professor and let him know I’m available.

I haven’t been very religious about going to the gym because working out alone is lonely and weird. But I have to do it to lose weight and regain some of my lost strength and stamina and avoid the potential for diabetes or worse.

Because of some of the things President Obama said in his inaugural speech I am more motivated to become involved in life and society again as a participating member. My financial state is also a big motivator. I broke down, bucked up and finally sent my information to the Texas Board of Education for certification as a teacher. I have been telling everyone how much I miss it so now I’m in the works to go do it. Worst that will happen is I’ll have to take two examinations one on teaching practices and one on mathematics. The one that worries me is the teaching practices exam because all of the catch phrases have changed since I first started teaching and I’m afraid it’ll be like reading Sanskrit. I also had my fingerprints taken again. I hope they don’t come back matching some axe murderer's!

Anyway, if all goes well, I might be able to return to teaching high school soon. I really have missed the drama and rotten behavior. I’ve missed the human contact with students and other teachers. There are still things I don’t like about it: paperwork, Nazi-like administrators, and parents who think they know better how to teach their kids but those things go with the job and are endured.

When I’m teaching I feel like I am making a difference in the world; one kid at a time. There are little life lessons to be passed on to each generation outside the math curriculum like playing fair, being nice to each other, and accepting differences. Teaching gives me the opportunity to change lives and society in a small way. It makes me feel useful and important. These I miss most of all.

I desperately want to get back into being creative and seeing the lights go on in the faces of kids who thought they couldn’t learn math. That’s what I’m best at. It’s why I call teaching "my calling". It’s what I do best and what I love to do. So , if all goes well with my certification, I may be able to start before the end of the year part-time and get on full time next year. That’s my resolution.

Being home on disability for three years has been depressing, lonely, and boring. I can’t stand to be bored. I’m never bored when I’m teaching. Another plus is that even in the worst economic depression there's always a need for teachers.

Family History: For My Children and Posterity

Around the holidays our thoughts turn to loved ones and family. Family: the most basic if social units. A person's tie to past, present, and future. Personally, I have always been jealous of people who could put names and events to folks in their family tree for generations back. I can trace my roots back only as far as my grandparents on both sides. My father, Wilton Frank Minckley, was a very little man in stature (5'2 )and psychologically -- a definite Napoleon Complex. He was stoic as a rock when it came to talking about his family. He was more than happy to talk your ear off about his accomplishments but talking about his father and mother was somehow very painful for him and it was just never discussed. I know that I was bounced on my grandfather's knee as a babe but don't remember the event. I found out in my forties that his mother was still alive and well into her nineties.

ACT I: My Father's Side of the Family
Because of the unknown event(s) which made speaking of them (his parents) so painfully difficult, it fell to me the dutiful more detached son and grandson to go to Oregon with my father to make arrangements to have my grandmother put into a nursing home for her health and safety. An institution she detested so much she escaped twice and walked several miles home. No easy feat since she had broken her foot in her seventies and never seen a doctor for it. The foot healed improperly and walking gave her quite some pain. I had to later, at the request of the city where she lived, take charge of demolishing her home: my father's childhood home. It had fallen into such a state of disrepair that it had become dangerous and my father could not bear to deal with it. While on that trip, I took my grandmother out to dinner at the local Denny's and pumped her for information. A simple meal of a hamburger, fries, and a strawberry shake --her favorite treat. Coincidentally mine too. She was a bit senile but I got a good story several times during the course of that meal. During the great depression and before, large families which could not support all of their children would farm out their excess children to families who wanted to and could take care of them. A sort of indentured adoption. This was the case with my grandmother. She was born into the Sweigert family somewhere in the Midwest and shipped off to the Allen family in the tri-cities area of Washington. She had several sisters one named Myrtle who lived in San Diego, California and the rest I never discovered. While she lived with the Allen family she was fed and clothed, sent to school (only through elementary school) and otherwise she worked to earn her keep. Kind of a Cinderella thing.



Sometime later she met my grandfather Wilton Edward Minckley. They courted as was proper and eventually married. He always referred to her as "little mother." She too was barely 4'10 tall by the time I met her. She told me nice things about my grandfather like how tall and handsome he was and that he loved to work with wood as did my father as do I. He had been a logger, a soldier (WW I), a longshoreman, a restaraunteur, and a tugboat captain: guiding huge ocean going vessels up the Columbia River to Portland. He got very sick shortly after my birth and left home one night rented a motel room and died there-1955. My father found out about his father's passing via telegram. I don't know if he attended his funeral. This left my grandmother all alone and ill-prepared to cope and my father still was not emotionally able to bring himself to be with her or help her. She had always been told what to do or had it taken care of for her. Banking and taxes and such stuffs were not her strong suit.


However, she managed with the help and kindness of her friends from her little Methodist Church where she had sung in the choir and taught Sunday School for over fifty years. She knew four generations of children from that church. Her friends from church taught her how to survive on her own. She was left enough money to get by on and had Social Security as well. When her home began to sink into the poorly drained soil she actually went out and bought another house with a huge barn. She even rented the barn out to various entrepreneurs--boat wrights, mechanics, and even a surfboard maker.

The old house continued to sink so that by the time I was called in to demolish it the main floor was actually a few feet below ground level. My father once told me he could run and play under the house until he was in Junior High School. It had to have sunk at least six feet into the soggy bog that was the yard. The cause of this catastrophe was the city of Warrenton, Oregon. They offered to trench the property for proper drainage for a fee that grandmother thought too expensive so they drained everybody else's property onto hers. The city engineers never explained the details or dangers of not trenching the property would cause. The city of Warrenton, where she lived, sits about as far north and west in Oregon as you can get without standing in either the Pacific Ocean or the Columbia River. It is surrounded by three large rivers one of which is the Columbia--more than a mile across at the mouth. The rain never ends there either. The property just turned into a big sponge and started to suck the house back into itself.

I also had the onerous duty of taking my grandmother to the site of the demolition where the local volunteer fire department practiced putting out fires on the rubble that was the remainder of her home. This obviously crushed her spirit. Her little shoulders shuddered and sagged even more than normal. She also asked me if I would take her to her husband's grave site which brought tears to both of our eyes. She told me I was a good boy for doing all of these things for her. I felt like a complete schmuck.

I had one more task to help her with and that was to take her shopping for foundations ; undies and stuff. I left her alone as I thought she'd be embarrassed to have me hanging around while she bought such things. I was approached by a very red-faced bald man who instructed me to remove my grandmother from his store and never to bring her back as she had been busted for shop lifting. Her excuse was that they simply were charging too much for such things. I had to chuckle as this also seems to be a genetic trait in our family. I explained to the red faced store manager that she was in her nineties and probably just forgot she had the items but he retorted with the fact that she was regularly caught doing this. I paid for the items and we left. I took her back home and had to return to my home, then Salt Lake City and within three years she passed away in her nursing home. It was then that I found out my calculations were a bit off. She died at 101 years old. She passed quietly in her sleep. Her heart just gave out after a long and fruitful life.

The lack of information or misinformation I had from my father led me to believe his father's name had been Jesse, So when it came to naming our twin daughters, Jessica seemed a logical choice for one since I thought it was my grandfather's name and Jesse is the tree of life in the Hebrew tradition. Erin was named for her mom's Irish heritage. All was good. Until I was informed that Jesse was my grandfather's twin brother. Still all in the family. Besides who would name a girl Wiltonia in this day and age

Anyway, on March 1, 1923, my father Wilton Frank Minckley was born in Seaside, Oregon. And grew up in the now sunken and burned house. He attended Seaside High School. Learned to play the violin, and run track. He was a popular, funny guy according to the letters I have found from his old high school girl friends. He attended Linfield College where he graduated with a dual degree in Mathematics and Music. About this time World War II broke out and he joined the navy, only barely meeting the minimum requirement for service because of his height. He made it by one-half an inch. He served one tour of duty in the Pacific Theater mostly patrolling the coast line of Alaska--the Aleutian Islands. A cold and Godforsaken place. Temperature without wind chill factor are about the same as the north pole. He left the service as a Lieutenant.

He returned home and had some sort of huge blowout with his father over use of the family automobile. He left home the next day and went back to school at the University of Oregon to pursue a degree in architecture which he did. Some where around his birthday in 1952, he had a fling with Elizabeth Jean Bechtolt and nine months nearly to the day of his birthday out sprang a bouncing baby boy--me. I don't know if my parents married before or after my birth but it was not destined to be. Five years later he bailed on us. He sent child support. Showed up sometimes for his weekend visitations. He even remembered my birthday sometimes. Now granted, in hindsight, I can say my mother was crazy and an alcoholic but he just left me there to deal with it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

ACT II: My Mother's Side of the Family
Elizabeth Jean Bechtolt was born somewhere in Germany. Her parents like many other European Jews saw the handwriting on the wall with the rise of Nazi-ism and fled to the America when she was very young. Details of their trip and their settling in Oregon are vague due to reasons discussed later. She grew up on a farm in Medford, Oregon. Her parents were Levi(LAY vee) and I can't recall ever hearing my maternal grandmother's name spoken aloud. Betty Jean as my mother preferred grew up with two or three brothers and a sister--Judith. Judy lived somewhere near us in California. One brother was a Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton. His name was Ronald. He always seemed angry when we saw him. The other two I never met. On two occasions I recall going to Medford to visit her family on the farm. I loved it mud everywhere and a cow named Bossie. I got to ride her. My grandfather Lee (as he Americanized his name) was huge. He was a logger and farmer and I remember watching him buck bails of hay from a wagon pulled by Bossie into the hay loft which seemed twenty feet in the air. Grandmother Bechtold cooked marvelous pies from fresh berries and apples she collected from the area surrounding her farm or from her own little strawberry patch. They were practicing Hasidim or Hasidic Jews. I always liked the ceremonies at mealtime with them. They both were very kind to me. My mother had pretty much given up on the faith and I was not well schooled in the religion or culture. I just knew I was one. She told me very often to never forget it.

My mother had a string of loser boyfriends (who were generally referred to as "uncles" when they had sleep overs) after my father divorced her. And she worked at pretty unskilled sales type jobs even though she had a college degree also from the University of Oregon. She was a tall and strikingly beautiful woman with long auburn hair (which I found out later came from a bottle)who always dressed to the nines. She worked at the make-up counter at Macy's for a while and then at Pier One Imports for a while. A beautiful woman who drank to excess and who had a mean streak a mile wide and many times longer. Combine the two and look out. Once I came home five minutes late from my friends house and she met me at the door with Gallo wine jug in hand and as I climbed the last step to the house she smacked me with the bottle sending me sprawling and bawling back down the steps. She cracked my jaw that day. Other times it didn't seem like I had done anything and I got whipped with a belt (the buckle end) or a coat hanger. Anything seemed to do. I bore the brunt of here depression and anger since my father had cut out. I told him about these things but he couldn't bring himself to confront her.

The responsibilities of grocery shopping and liquor and cigarette runs fell to me as she came home from work and fell into bed. I would be given money and a note to go get wine and smokes from the guy at the bowling alley and money and a list to go grocery shopping. The house had to be spotless when she got home too or my ass was grass. This set of duties started when I was about seven. I got pretty good at it too. A gallon of Gallo Burgundy and two packs of Pall Malls every three days. Groceries once a week. I was lucky thee grocery store was only four blocks away. I had to bring the groceries home in a cart and then take it back.

Soon after the jaw incident, Betty found a new loser to take up with--Eckhard Heinrich Jessen. He was a German national with an ex-wife and two children of his own. I met his kids once. We didn't get along well at all. I was told that they had gotten married and that Eckhard was my new stepfather. Great He knocked me around too only he used his fists. The second trip to Medford, Oregon to visit my grandparents took place in mid October when I was nine years old. I suppose the reason for that trip was to introduce my grandfather and stepfather to each other. I remember a lot of shouting inside the house. I was sent outside to play or pick fruit or something. Just before leaving for the trip back to California they bought a Mallard duck. He sat in a box in the back seat with me the whole ride home by car. We became best buddies. Once home he had free roam of the yard and all the snails he could eat. I couldn't wait to get home from school to play with my duck. Then came the day before Thanksgiving when my mother gave me a large knife and told me to go out and cut the duck's head off God I cried for hours and couldn't bring myself to do it. So I was slapped around a bit and then forced by Eckhard to watch him slaughter my pet and then he made me pluck the bleeding carcass of my best friend. For that alone I hated him with a passion and I ate only mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving that year. Within a year, we were packing up our house and moving to Hamburg, Germany. I was nine years old and had taken a two week, crash, Berlitz course in German and off we go to New York by plane and then to Germany by Ocean Liner. I remember only two things from the trip--I got to see the Statue of Liberty as we left New York harbor and barfing my guts up for several days as we crossed the Atlantic. I still get sea sick to this day. Maybe psychological.

We arrived in Germany on a rainy day. Caught a cab and went to his parent's home. His father's name was also Eckhard but he was a calm, patient man and nice to me. His wife, I was told to call her Nana, had been cooking all day and laid out a feast for our arrival. She even let me help her cook Gooseberry pies. They were so totally opposite their son I thought and think to this day he must've been a changeling. We stayed with them until an apartment could be found and then saw them only infrequently thereafter. Eckhard's father owned a kind of hardware/housewares store in Hamburg and he was pretty old so Eckhard the younger took over so his father could semi-retire. I worked on Sundays cleaning the floors and emptying the trash and such. My mother spoke no German but was supposed to be a sales person at the store. Instead she would send me on cigarette and wine runs until I had to go to school. She became a housefrau so to speak. She rarely went out. She'd cook and clean house and I'd go explore the neighborhood around our apartment house. The exploration ended all too soon with the advent of school.


I was to have gone into the sixth grade back in America so the closest translation to that was Sechste Klasse or sixth class. Unfortunately much was lost in translation. The Sechste Klasse was the last year of high school in Germany and most of the rest of Europe. If you passed the year you could go to the University, if not you were sent to a trade school. So my classmates were all 17 and 18 years old and I was nine. I learned to speak German while they learned English. I read Steppenwolf in German and learned calculus before algebra. And there was no fooling around, corporal punishment was severe. I only got nailed once for asking a classmate when recess was. But that once was enough At break times and lunch all of the guys played Fussball or soccer on a gravel covered field with a ball slightly larger than a softball. They ate bread and cheese and had wine or beer with their lunches. No such luck for me. I always got a good old American sack lunch my mother or I made each morning. I learned to swim there as well. The only two sports anyone did were swimming or soccer and I hated swimming--too much like work and you don't get anywhere except the next wall. Toward the spring of that year my class took a long bus tour field trip visiting many lovely little towns still functioning at their pre-war pace. We visited the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) where I interrupted some American soldiers playing war games, that was kind of cool. The were using wax bullets and one of the let me shoot his gun. It was kind of hard to explain to them why a ten year old American boy was out in the forest alone in the middle of their war games but we figured it out. The class slept in youth hostels as we traveled. While in the Black Forest the teacher made it a point to stop at a lookout spot that scared me to death. We stood on one side of a barbed-wire fence looking at guard towers and angry barking dogs less that three hundred yards from us--the East was all I was told, It was the point at which East and West were at their closest. I could see hatred in the eyes of the guards in those towers like they'd mow us down and not even blink. I cried but no one noticed or cared if they did. The next stop was Munich, a beautiful modern rebuilding city. We took a side trip of a few miles to visit another historical monument: Dachau. I cried and vomited. Everyone noticed this time and wanted to know why but I had lost my lunch and my voice. I just walked around like someone dead staring at the buildings and machines and fences. I didn't really understand at the time what I was looking at but I knew the place was evil beyond all compare and wanted to run away and hide. I stayed in the bus while the others ran around and played at things. I didn't understand until years later. I didn't speak a word until we were back in Hamburg two days later and found it difficult to eat or sleep on the way home.

Life at home became more and more tense. The adults drank and yelled at each other and I tried to do homework or played with the few toys I still had. Turns out we didn't really pack up our whole house. Most of it was sold or given away. As the tension between my mother and Eckhard grew, he began to hit her more. The last straw came when I stepped between them while he was beating her and called him an "aschloch" - asshole. Pow! He knocked me ass over tea kettle, across the kitchen and into my room. He then preceded to wail on me while I was screaming about my arm hurting and thinking it was broken. The neighbors came to the door and asked if everything was OK but they were told to mind their own business. Thankfully, one of them called the Polizei who didn't want to mind their own business. Eckhard left to sleep at his parent's house that night and my mother and I packed our things and caught a flight home to San Jose, California via Greenland and New York and never looked back. When we arrived back in San Jose aunt Judy picked us up and we went to stay with her for a while. A very short while. When she saw me all bruised and arm in a sling (unbroken, just bruised) she called my father to come get me. Which he did while my mother slept off a long flight's worth of drinks.

ACT III: Do Overs
While I was away, however, my father had remarried and was living the high life. He and his new wife Barbara (a Catholic) went camping, skiing, sailing and were devout party animals. Meanwhile, my mother came to collect me when she sobered up since she had legal custody of me. At the urging of Barbara my father did the honorable thing and sued for custody. I'm not totally positive that he would have done it of his own accord. My mother told me that I would see the judge the next day and told me quite emphatically what to say so that I would stay with her. The emphasis was with a hanger this time. The custody battle came down to a meeting with just me and the judge. I sat in the judge's chambers with him and he asked me who I wanted to live with and why. I told him I wanted to live with my father and lifted up the back of my shirt to show him why. The last time I saw my mother she was sitting on a bench in the courthouse hallway waiting for me to come out. I left with my father and Barbara. I was eleven. I haven't seen or heard from her since and frankly I'm rather glad. But because of this I know very little of my mother's family history. I did find out later that she had never actually married Mr. Jessen so that part of the family tree can be erased.

Synopsis of ACTS I-III: We Put the Fun in Dysfunctional
Thus far, I've had three sets of grandparents I barely knew. A painfully clam-like father and a violent mother whom I never saw after age 11. And a fascist stepfather and now a snobbish stepmother. My father married and had one child. Divorced. Married again. Divorced again because of a 27 year long affair with a Texan(female.) My mother married had the one child mentioned above. Divorced. Disappeared.

ACT IV: My Contribution to the Family History
Life with a step parent can be a challenge for the step parent and the child. Coming to terms with an eleven year old boy must have been very difficult for stepmother Barbara who had divorced her first husband and left her three daughters with him to raise. I had been through plenty myself so we all just tried to maintain a peaceful coexistence for the most part. I went to school. They went to work. This would go on for the next six years. When I came back from my rather rigorous German education, I was placed into sixth grade and was bored out of my mind. The childishness of the education system left me wanting, especially in mathematics. Sixth graders learn pre-algebra math. I had already conquered calculus in a foreign language. I didn't make good grades because the teacher didn't or couldn't understand how I got the correct answer without using his/her method. I still have a copy of a note sent home by my counselor saying that I should be placed in a trade track curriculum as I didn't seem to grasp mathematics even though I seemed to get fine grades in all of my other subjects. This caused quite a few problems at home. I tried to conform but it just wouldn't happen. Major Barbara had a cure for that I needed discipline. So for the next five summers I was shipped off to a Summer Camp in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. At first I thought I would hate it but it grew on me. Not a militaristic kind of place but a place where you learned to rely on your mates and they on you. For eight weeks each summer we hiked and backpacked the Rocky Mountain National Park rode, groomed, and mucked horses and their stalls. Short straw always got to ride the Honey Wagon (a large wagon loaded to the gunnels with horseshit) out to a dump site. It took a week to get the stink off. I preferred the mountaineering and rock climbing part there you just stunk of smoke and your own sweat. I liked it so much I went as I said for five straight years and won every major award to be had. While I was away having fun my parental units were in Europe. One new country each year. So I figured they were just trying to get me out of their hair figuratively as my father had been bald for as long as I had know him. Again I digress some.

In seventh grade I became the class clown. I thought I was funny and my classmates seemed to agree. I had far more female friends than guy friends and was picked on quite a lot as I hadn't grown like the other guys. Probably from malnutrition and stress. I got to know Mrs. Mamie Brady, my counselor from seventh grade through high school, very well. She went to bat for me several times. My father, at the behest of my stepmother, enrolled me in a Chinese self-defense class in San Francisco. I rode the train from Palo Alto to San Francisco three times a week for the next five years to learn how to defend myself. I did and the bullying dropped off substantially when I got to high school and hit a major growth spurt in tenth grade. I escaped/graduated out of junior high distinguishing myself only on the soccer field, a new sport in America, and in chorus. I could sing. Who knew?


Once I hit high school it started to feel more like a place of learning for me and I excelled. I had German and Chinese discipline on my side now. I took German for my language until the teacher found out I had spent more time there than she had studying the language. So I opted for Latin, where I first learned the parts of speech of English. I loved English and History classes because I could speak my mind and not be punished (so long as it was germane to the topic at hand.) European History came especially easy for me as I had been there and actually seen some of the places we studied. Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics were my forte though as I had already had these at a higher level than American schools presented them. I still played sports: football for a year (it bored me spitless), Soccer of course and Tennis. My coupe de gras, however, was choir. I actually made into madrigals as a sophomore I made many more guy friends and fell in love every time I turned around. High school girls were heavenly and ephemeral. I always chose to pursue the girls who were older than I or already had boyfriends. My love was dashed against the rocks too many times. I had my share of successful relationships too. Oddly enough they came when I wasn't looking. There was a lesson too late learned Of all the things I did in high school choir, madrigals, and school musicals were probably my forte. I sang and sang and sang. I loved it. It was in choir that I made my most lasting and best friendships. The two who come to mind I only recently reconnected with: Cesar Cervantes and David Grandstaff. We did everything together when I could pry them away from their girlfriends. Cesar ended up marrying his first high school sweetheart Chris Cuisinot and David ended up marrying four times. There were many other friends and good times but there all just fond memories now.

I did meet one character when I was sixteen who had just moved into the neighborhood. Right behind my house in fact. Cassius Smith and he spoke German too. His father was a Colonel in the Army and he had lived all over the world. We hung out and he invited me to go on a camping trip with his Boy Scout Troop. This was the Sixties man I said, “OK but no uniforms and NO saluting.” Their Scoutmasters were Cassius' father, a hugely obese man, and a sixty-something year old guy with a bum leg who had been at the job for most of that time. Even after all of my objections, I was in a uniform the next week and a member of their troop for the next two years. In that time I won or achieved every award possible. And for twenty-five years thereafter, I was a Scoutmaster myself.

I turned eighteen during my senior year and two tremendously significant things happened that day. One I grabbed the morning paper first thing to check for my draft lottery number: 100. I was screwed. They were taking up to 150 or 180. The other happened as I was going out the door to go to school all hangdog with the sword of Damocles (the draft) already hanging over my head, my father said, "You had a brother." No elaboration, no explanation, no follow-up, nothing. Just you HAD a brother. Obviously I had not known. That was my birthday present that year. He never spoke of it again and refused to elaborate when quizzed.

Graduation came and just like our caps, we all scattered like Autumn leaves in the wind. Some to college, some to work, some to war, too many who never returned. I don't like talking about that part of my life, so we'll fast forward to me entering Linfield College in beautiful, isolated, backwards, McMinnville, Oregon. Why There? Well, my father made it very clear that he would pay for any college I chose to attend , so long as it was Linfield College. OK. Enough said. I went to Linfield College. Did I mention that at that time Linfield College was run by the American Baptist Church? Mandatory daily, one hour morning chapel, coat and tie, or no breakfast. Everywhere I turned there I ran into trouble with one hyper-Christian group or another. You had to belong to one of them or you couldn't be in musicals, play sports, write for the paper. I tried out for the football team and made the coach's cut but a player still had to be accepted or approved of by the Federation of Christian Athletes panel. It was like the inquisition revisited. They asked many questions regarding my religious philosophy and beliefs. I made the mistake of not taking the whole thing seriously. That's when I got myself in trouble. Not only was I cut from the team but later that week I was invited to a good old fashioned blanket party. For the novices, that's when a group of big dumb jocks catch you between buildings at night, throw a blanket of your head and kick the living shit out of you. They did leave me a consolation prize though. They branded my arm with a Star of David.

If I'm anything I'm determined. I stayed there for two years in spite of the constant threats. I joined a fraternity of like-minded guys and either studied or drank for those two years. I began as a vocal music major but when the choir director grabbed my crotch to get me to sing higher, I pretty much gave that major up and took up Chemistry but the only things older than the periodic tables in the classrooms were the professors. I finally settled on political science with law school in mind. I helped start a Soccer team at the school and earned my Varsity letter. I joined the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. And I did meet one girl brave enough to associate with me and we fell deeply in love. So much so, that when she decided to move back home after her sophomore year, I followed her to Renton, Washington and we made plans to get married. We got engaged and set a date. Meanwhile, I went to work for the Boeing Airplane Company for a year and a half. One fateful day I came home a little too early and found the bed occupied by two folks only one of whom I knew. I left, she moved out and kept the ring and the TV. I went to work and drank for the next six months until the owner of the pub I was frequenting told me I was wasting my time pining away and should go back to school and that I couldn't come back to his pub until I had graduated. I took his advice and applied and was accepted to the University of Oregon for the next semester.

I arrived in Eugene and lived in the College Inn (a sort of private dormitory/apartment house) for the first year there and studied my butt off. Then I decided it would be great to have the fraternity experience again but the chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha had folded ten years earlier. So I began to recruit a core of guys to start a colony. That gave me something to work on. I did meet a Sorority girl who swept me off my feet. We saw each other for nearly a year during my senior year. She was the only girl friend I had at the University of Oregon. When graduation came she had already moved back with her family for the Summer and I had no way of contacting her before I left to go figure out the LSAT/Law School process. I never got to say good bye or find out if she was interested in me staying around. I was also scared out of my wits as to what I was going to do and become in addition to being flat ass broke. I left like a big chicken and pined over her for quite some time. Even some today.

I had other interests as well, I played rugby and lettered. I was a Teaching Assistant in both the Classics and Political Science Departments. I worked as a waiter, a bar tender, a pump jockey at a gas station, and painted houses. I graduated with a degree in Political Science with an emphasis on revolutions and minors in Anthropology and Classical Languages (Greek and Latin.) All with the intention of going to law school. While I was away at school my parents had moved to Salt Lake City, Utah where my stepmother got a position in the Nursing School at the University of Utah as an Assistant Dean. So when I left Eugene I went to Salt Lake City. It took about twenty minutes for me to remember why I went out of state to college. Pa and Ma had their comfy little life and it was clear that I wasn't really welcome in it. I took the LSAT and applied to five law schools and was denied by all. Oh God, now what was I going to do? Within the month I had found an internship at the University of Utah with the Fraternity and Sorority Coordinator and found a one bedroom apartment. I moved out while they were away for the holidays visiting my stepmother's eldest daughter; another event to which I was not invited. And so began my adult life.

ACT V: The Working Years and More
I worked at the internship for two years. Then I worked for a year or so in the University Bookstore as an accounting clerk until I found a position open at a small college in Salt Lake as the Student Union Director. The job entailed running the Union Building, advising student government, coordinating cultural and social events and concerts for the college. I did that for two years --the pay was shit: $4500 per year. It paid the rent and bought groceries but that's about all. Always looking, I found a position as a full-time math tutor for a Federally funded program back at the University of Utah. It paid better, had benefits, and I took it. I worked there for fifteen years and worked my way up to second in command as Coordinator of the Upward Bound Program and an Associate Instructor's status in the Mathematics Department.

It was while working at the Student Union at Westminster College that I met an attractive woman who reminded me of my long lost love from Oregon. At first we had a cordial, business-like relationship. She was an intern in the Women's Center which was housed in my Union Building. Later she invited me over for lunches and then dinners. She had recently divorced but hadn't told me. It wouldn't have mattered. We dated for the remainder of her senior year and when she graduated she moved the very next week to Seattle with very little warning. As we dated I met her roommate and became good friends with her. Karen, the roommate, and Barb, the love interest, had been friends throughout their twelve years of Catholic school education. I could ask her questions about her roommate (my love interest) and she could give me insight into her behavior. When she moved I was kind of in shock. Karen helped me through that period. Unbeknownst to me she had a crush on me from our very first meeting. We continued to pal around and then started to get serious. She was my best friend and now a lover. On December first, 1979 we got married by the Justice of the Peace in Jackson, Wyoming in her sister's double wide trailer to the tune of Here Comes The Bride played on a harmonica. I married and Irish Catholic woman. I shoulda known betta.

Karen was in Nursing School and I was working full time and working on my Master's Degree in Education. We got married when we did because we were both on break from school and I think she planned it that way so I wouldn't ever forget our anniversary. It's the day before my birthday. I think our marriage went so well through the rough years everybody else has because we were friends before we got married. We also had been completely independent for years, had our own pots and pans, towels and sheets, etc. Karen had been renting Barb's house and I had my apartment now a two bedroom unit. My rent was cheaper so we started out in my now two bedroom apartment. There was a problem though. It was a man cave and a greenhouse. It was decorated in early fraternity style and every surface had a plant on it. I had even made the little balcony into a greenhouse. I hardly ever had to turn the heater on. But I had to make room for her things and compromise on decorations. Many of the plants had to go. And they went, after a fierce Irish tirade: Karen opened the freezer door and a plant which lived on top of the fridge fell on her. We yelled and screamed and the plants went out the balcony door and into the apartment complex parking lot three floors below. Most of the plants anyway, I kept a few of my oldest and dearest and largest friends. We shared all of the household duties cooking, cleaning, laundry. Got our first joint account at the bank. We played house and studied for the next year and a half. Eventually we both graduated. I still worked for Upward Bound and she went to work as an Emergency Room nurse. She worked the swing shift and I worked until 5:00pm. We saw each other after midnight and on weekends. A perfect arrangement; can't get into a fight by yourself.

Life went on like this until Karen said she wanted to have two kids--I opted for one but lost that battle. On April 1, 1982 we went to a friend of Karen's from high school who is a radiology technician and had our first ultrasound. She moved the little monitor thingy around and got a full view of a little person in there. Then she pushed some buttons and two appeared. I thought she was just duplicating the first electronically. But no. We were having twins. I started crying out of pure joy. Karen started crying because she was mortified. Her older sister had twins who were the children from Hell. We opted not to know the gender. We had narrowed boys names down to a reasonable ten or so but hadn't even considered girls names. I think one of my birthday presents was a set of twin daughters. On August 24th, 1982(just about nine months after my birthday) my life changed forever. The twins went to full term and they weighed fourteen pounds combined(6 pounds fourteen ounces and seven pounds two ounces.) The ultrasound just prior to delivery showed an umbilical chord wrapped dangerously around someone's head and neck so the doctor recommended taking them by Cesarian. I was in the OR for the whole thing gloved, gowned and ready to do whatever I was supposed to do. Karen held up like a champ and as I was talking to her a nurse handed me this little tiny baby all covered in cottage cheese and said clean her up So I, while being petrified of dropping her and breaking her, gingerly, delicately, cleaned little fingers and hands, toes and feet face and head all the while crying my eyes out. Then the nurse got snippy and said, get a move on daddy another one's waiting. The second cleanup wasn't as scary but I was still crying holding my second daughter while Karen held the first. Then I had to go out carrying the most precious commodity on the planet: my daughters to get weighed, foot printed, and suctioned out and stuff. Meanwhile Karen was having stuffing put back in. All together she lost twenty-five pounds during the operation from babies water and placenta(e). The OBY-GYN took cell samples at the placenta end of each umbilical chord and placenta to see if they were identical or fraternal. He swears they are fraternal. Their dentist, much later, swears they must be identical because of dental anomalies they both share that only identical twins could have. We never cared too much about that, they were always two different people to us. However for the first three days of their lives they were named baby A and baby B because we couldn't decide on girls names Finally through high level negotiations we settled on the fist born as Jessica Lee (Jessica, as mention before erroneously, Lee for my middle name and my mother's father) second born (by three minutes) became Erin Jean (Erin for Ireland and Jean was my mother's middle name, Karen's mother's middle name, and Karen's middle name.) Up to that moment, I had always thought babies were ugly. But mine were beautiful. I finally got something right.

Karen tried breast feeding but she couldn't produce enough to sustain the girls and she eventually dried up completely. That meant of course bottle feeding which meant I could have quiet, personal time with my girls from a very, very young age. Something that continued up to the point in sixth or seventh grade where friends became more important than parents. Karen went back to work after only a month's recuperation from major abdominal surgery. So we went back to: I worked the day shift teaching and she worked the swing shift in the ER. That really meant we worked two shifts back to back. Teaching then taking care of the babies or taking care of the babies and ER nursing. We were exhausted most of the time. Friends went by the wayside, hobbies were put on hold and 100% of our time was invested in the girls. We tried babysitters but they just couldn't handle two babies or kids as they grew older. Most, if not all, of the romance in our relationship died of exhaustion. We barely saw each other because of work schedules and when we were home together Karen napped a lot. The one saving grace in all of this was that they slept through the night most of the time from the very beginning. We were fairly democratic about who got up with them when they did wake in the night taking turns to let the other sleep. I am pretty much a night owl/insomniac so I just took care of it because I was up. But Karen took her share of turns even after working a long shift, sometimes 13 hour shifts.

The girls grew like weeds and it seemed like it was overnight they went from preschool to graduating from high school. But I have many fond memories of their growing years and the time I spent with them making dolls for each of them. Putting together a train set that took up a whole room in our basement. Brownies and Girls Scouts, school plays and musicals and art work everywhere. The growing up years is their part of the family story to tell.

I decided to become a high school math teacher so I started taking evening classes to complete my certification. I eventually quit my Upward Bound job of fifteen years and completed my teacher certification and went to work at St. Joseph Catholic High School in Ogden, Utah (about 45 miles from Salt Lake City.) Then I took a position at Highland High School where the girls were going to school. I worked there for five years until I got sick of the administrators and their interference. I moved to West High School, still in Salt Lake, and stayed there until we decided to move to California to be closer to the kids who had both gone to colleges in Southern California. It was no problem finding a job teaching math so again I worked at a school with condescending administrators for three years and moved to another for two years. That is when my health problems came to a head. In 1999, I had my Gall Bladder removed in an emergency surgical procedure as it had become completely necrotic--it had died. Each year thereafter I had increasing numbers of pancreatitis attacks. They increased in intensity as well. The first few years the attacks put me in the hospital for two to three days. The doctor's treated the symptoms but not the cause. They couldn't find one. As time went by the attacks took longer to recuperate from--days to weeks. Finally, while at Jurupa Valley High School, I went to one of the country's experts on pancreas problems. He probed, did internal ultrasound, and took many biopsies. The outcome of all of this was a six month stay in the hospital. I was fed through IV lines and went from bad to worse. I was left with more pain than I had ever had and constant nausea and vomiting. I missed the first half of the school year. Just after Thanksgiving I was released as things had finally quieted down and with mediation I could function moderately well. I lost 100 pounds and was as week as a baby. After the holiday break I returned to school and had three more episodes with a week stay in the hospital each time. In April of 2006 my father passed away and the stress of that, the funeral, and the mess he left me to deal with set off another attack. This time the principal asked me to resign as I obviously wasn't doing my job.

So in May we moved to Austin, Texas and into my father's house which came with a woman he had been playing house with for twenty-seven years. I had one more major attack and this time I started leaking pancreatic fluids into my abdomen. One of the pockets of fluid blocked off my biliary duct, stomach, and pancreas. I was dying. One surgeon had guts enough to try a risky surgery to clear up the leakage and the blocking fluid body. The surgery was obviously successful. But I was weak, and still had all of the same symptoms: excruciating pain and uncontrollable nausea. I live on major doses of narcotics and anti-nauseants. I was declared disabled in 2007 and now live on $1300 a month. The house is in a state of disrepair and what would have taken me a few weeks to repair now takes me months and months. I haven't had an attack for almost a year now. Although I feel like I'm always waiting for the other shoe to hit the floor. Meanwhile while Karen was working to support us and I'm in and out of the hospital, she is diagnosed with Sjogren's Disease, Lupus, and Rheumatoid Arthritis. She is also declared disabled and her monthly income is reduced to $1700. So here we are in the middle of Texas trying to make a house payment, Cobra insurance payments, and pay for the other necessities of life all the while going further into debt.


ACT VI: The Future: Still under construction in my dreams.

Always Swimming Upstream

Why does it seem like I'm always swimming upstream when everyone else is floating downstream? Why do I try when the odds are always against me? It's days like today, rainy and gloomy, that I wonder, "why have I always gone the other way?" Why do nice guys finish last, if at all? Why do I always arrive to play when the game's already over? Why does it always hurt so bad?

I could have been a lawyer or banker and made loads of money but no, I chose to be a teacher and dirt poor. I could have joined the status quo and been blissfully ignorant. Instead, I chose to remain a radical and to fight ignorance and intolerance. Swimming upstream again.

Why do I look back into my past and think I can get the good parts back when they've been so long gone? Why do I hope for things that aren't meant to be? Why didn't I see it then and hold on for dear life? Probably because it was not meant to be. But I don't like that answer. I don't want to accept it. So I go back and try again. Only to find myself swimming against the current again.

It makes me stop and wonder whether I should even try to overcome my present situation. Having chronic pancreatitis means constant pain that rates from ever present throbbing to gut wrenching and constant, never ending nausea. The twisted and shattered vertebrae in my back shoot electric pain spasms from my neck to my toes all night, making sleep all but impossible. Fighting the pain makes me tired. Having the pain never ease up makes me so depressed death seems like a holiday I just might like to take. Will eating leaves and twigs, going to the gym, and seeing a shrink stop the constant pain and nausea I live with every day? I don't know what direction I should swim in anymore. Should I, can I go back to teaching? I don't want to give in to the pain but the pull of that black hole I am climbing out of is really strong. It would be easier to just let go and accept what seems the inevitable. I want very badly to be healthy and happy again but I forgot why. I can't remember the point anymore. I'm tired of swimming upstream all the time.

I want desperately to be happy, to be in love, to be active, to feel alive. I want to be around people who think and feel and who are creative. I want to teach. I want to feel wanted and a little needed. I want to feel like I'm making a difference. I've been stuck in a kind of eddy that's made it difficult to see which direction to swim but I bet it's upstream. I know that I have to fight to get to a place where I can find the things I want because they're worth it. And I want them desperately so, here I go again......

Be Careful What You Wish For......

When my children were wee tots we used to take them everywhere. We'd wheel them around in either the Lincoln or the Cadillac. The Lincoln was a stroller for twins that sat them in-line facing forward and the Cadillac sat them side by side. The advantage to the Lincoln was that it was really no wider than a regular stroller only longer. Much longer. The stretch limo of strollers. You could share the aisles in stores with other shoppers. The advantage to the Cadillac was that it took up the whole aisle and you could effectively stop traffic in both directions. The Lincoln had about a four foot turning radius and the Cadillac could turn on a dime. Those were great times terrorizing malls and stores with the twins.

Inevitably, however, someone would stop us and want to see the two little ones. Some wanted to touch, some tried to pick one or the other up. When I was driving this was not a problem. When I said "no," they seemed to get it that "no" meant "no" and "go away" and "don't bother us." With the mom it was a different story. People would pick them up, pinch their cheeks, 'coo' and burble at them. Jessica was for the most part tolerant while Erin hated strangers and let them know it. Inevitably and I mean inevitably the woman who stopped us (after having asked "are they twins?" Duh!) would say--oh, oh, here it comes--"I always wanted twins." ARRRGH! What are you nucking futs?

They could never know how much work it was. How much sleep was lost. How all consuming multiples would be. It's not a geometric relationship (like twice the work.) It's more like an exponential scale like 2 to the power of ten the amount of work compared to a single child. But the joy factor went the same way and the awe factor as well. We chose for economic reasons (and perhaps others) to raise the children in shifts or what we called tag-team parenting. Daddy was a teacher and mommy was a nurse. Daddy went to work around 6:30am and came home just in time to tag the other caregiver who went off to work the swing shift until 11:30pm or 3:30am. Last guy home from work usually got to sleep first and the other got up with the kids. Most often we were both up all the time with them because it took all hands on deck to get the jobs done and the babes rocked back to sleep. Afterwards you just collapsed anywhere until the next movement or feeding or bad dream.


Because of this work/childcare schedule, I got to spend eight hours alone with my girls playing, learning, painting, cooking, and building things. I think our greatest single accomplishment was a train setup that took up one whole room of our basement. We laid out the track, made and painted all the little buildings and the people and animals who inhabited our little town right down to the fishing pond with me fishing off the dock. We played at that for years it seems. I got to know them in ways I think most men don't get to because of more traditional jobs and family roles.

The girls went through all the stages from being my little pals to thinking everything I said was dumb and I couldn't possibly understand anything. They went from daddy's little girls to beautiful women in no time flat. We went from doing everything together to wanting and gaining total independence. From little pink babies to prom dresses times two to full grown women. All, it seems, in the blink of an eye. One minute we were scrounging around in train stations for railroad spikes, or going on outings together, doing pal stuff. The next they were graduating from college and starting their lives as young adults. The calls home for help, advice, and just to say hello come less and less frequently. The parental sense of usefulness wanes. To those nutty women who said "I always wanted twins," the sense of loss grows exponentially as well. Having one child grow up and move out is nothing compared to two at the same time. Your sense of purpose is seriously diminished. The psych folks talk about the empty nest syndrome and cutting the umbilical cord--letting them go and what to do when the kids finally move out. It's hard with just one child but with two it's damn near unbearable!


The sense of loss is sometimes overwhelming. In a few short years I feel as though I've lost everything. My kids moved out and away. One got married and one is devoted to her work. My health went to hell and I lost my ability to do what I really love to do. My father died. I felt and still to a large degree feel useless and all too often hopeless. With help I'm working through these feelings but I still can't help, especially now, think that those ladies who wanted twins were really insane. Who would want that kind of grief and loss.

My kids and I are reestablishing our relationships and boundaries but I still miss the old ones. I miss being needed. I'm working on my head and body to get back to teaching. And I'm dealing with the sense or being an orphan when your last parent dies. I must say it's as hard a thing as I've ever done to let go of the bike and let them ride away. I am getting out and away from my stressors. Networking more. Talking to adults. Even blogging. Who'da thunk it? Sometimes I sit around at night and hope one of them will call but I also know they're busy being big people now like I was in my mid-twenties. I guess it's hard for adults to grow up after investing so much time and energy in their kids. Letting go means having to fill that void with something else. Spending that much time with kids makes it easy to forget how to socialize and how to entertain yourself. I'm getting better but only slowly. After all, it's been twenty-six years since I've been out of the social independence pool.

To all those bubble heads who stopped us and said, "Gee, I always wanted twins," a caveat. Be careful what you wish for it might just come true. True you'll never know the joys I had knew with my girls but you'll also be spared the pain of letting go times two. You'll never get to use those two rhymey names you wanted to give them or dress them exactly alike all of their lives. But then you'll never know the flu times two. You'll never know the so very vast hole it leaves in your life when they grow up and move on.

Move on. That's the hard part. So much invested time and energy that parents don't really know each other any longer. Not the children's fault but choices we made long ago to not be like our parents who left us home alone or with older siblings, or sitters and continued on with their lives in spite of their family situation. Strangers sleeping in the same room or house more like roommates than married people. Time for the old folks to get it together or get out of each other's way.
I wouldn't trade one second of my life spent with my children. It has been the greatest thing to ever happen to me and I thank the powers that be for that time every day. They could call more often but then things don't change much here so there wouldn't be much news from our end. It's just nice to catch up on their accomplishments, friends, and stuff. But they probably think that's boring to talk about but I love to hear their voices when they describe what's going on for them. I'm as proud as any parent could be of my children and their choices in life. Their courage and strength and convictions. I always will be. And I'll always be on the other end of the phone when and if they ever need me.

But for the women who wanted those twins back when, I just feel sorry for them. They never got to know all the pleasures and pains of having twins but I really don't think they considered all of the realities before they made that wish. So, be careful what you wish for, it just might come true!