Merry Christmas 2022!
Another year in the can. Only the editing remains. This year, 2022, a fistful of deuces. When I was a kid, 2022 was off in some distant future, when we imagined we'd have already colonized Mars and owned jet cars, like George Jetson. So we thought. Instead, we spend all day staring at our phones and posting pictures of cats on Facebook. Ain't technology grand? In my day, we actually owned real cats for when we needed a laugh.
Been a busy year! I started it by getting sick. I don't remember very much of it. But I sure slept a lot. Debbie once found me sleeping on the bathroom floor at 2 am. I lost ten pounds on the COVID/pneumonia diet. Debbie had to force me to drink water and enticed me to eat by dangling sugary donuts and cookies, stuff that normally I love. My memories of all this are sketchy -- there's about a 10-day period that are only a wispy hint of a memory. A couple of things I do remember. She called an ambulance and the next thing I knew, two burly medics were asking me questions. From my perspective, I answered them quickly, but from Debbie's, there was a fifteen-second lag between questions and answers.
"What's your full name?"
"..............Lee............
"What year were you born?"
"..............Nineteen.......
"Do you know the name of the President of the United States."
"...........I............wish.
When my oxygen levels sank into the low eighties, the hospital admitted me. Once there, my memory started tracking again because now I was on oxygen. And I started eating. Four days in the hospital. My most memorable moments were spent with the Dragon Ladies. Vampires, really. Around 3:30 am, they came for my blood. One of them brandished a corkscrew wine-bottle opener and stabbed my forearm, to let it breathe a little before drinking. One woman, hanging from the ceiling, said, "Relax! I am the blood whisperer!" A few screams later and they left.
Finally, home to rehab. I was very weak and had lost about a third of my lung capacity to something called "pulmonary infiltrate" -- the educated way of saying, too much crap in my lungs. I had to drag an oxygen machine around with me for three weeks. I got tired of blowing into the stupid little spirometer and bought a tuba instead. Now, I could improve my lung capacity and annoy my neighbors at the same time. In March, we drove to a small town outside of Philadelphia to buy the tuba. I actually did a lot of the driving, and we got to see much of the beautiful Pennsylvania landscape, complete with mountains and Amish horse wagons on the road.
In April we drove out to Omaha to attend the burial of a wonderful friend, Dale McHenry. He was dean of the business school at the community college, where Debbie worked as his secretary. They moved nearby to Williamsburg, VA in the late '90s. Debbie and I followed a year later to Virginia Beach, and we maintained our friendship. A good man. While in Omaha, we visited other friends and former colleagues. It is gratifying that so many of my old colleagues came out to have pizza with us twenty-two years after leaving Omaha. I try never to take friendship for granted. On the return trip, we met an old friend, Sam Caccamo, in Indianapolis for dinner. When it comes to stereo equipment, he's the pusher and I'm the junkie. We checked into a motel just east of Columbus, Ohio, and in the middle of night the fire alarm in our room went off. I hadn't completely recuperated yet and thus had no trouble sleeping through the alarm and the intrusion of the firemen who arrived to investigate, leaving Debbie to deal with them. We took the scenic route home through Winchester, Virginia. My high school band marched many a Cherry Blossom parade there, a short fifty years ago. The parade route was about five miles long and usually on the hottest day in May -- they coordinated their schedule with a sadistic weatherman.
Debbie is quite the history buff, so in September, we took a mini-vacation in Gettysburg, PA, to visit the Civil War museum and enjoy some of the local cuisine. There's a restaurant in the town of Westminster, MD, called The Rock Salt Grille. I recommend it, it's worth driving out of your way to get there. We met up there with my old friends from college, Kevin & Ann Schmalz, and I ordered the most expensive sandwich I've ever bought. $22. They call it a Seafood Club, and consists of a huge crab cake, shrimp salad, bacon, and homemade whole wheat bread. Also met up with some old Penn State college chums, Rick and Linda Hoover. Rick was a computer programmer like me, but holds a Ph.D. and has probably forgotten more about software than I ever knew. Rick was the Penn State Music Department's designated hitter -- that is, he's a percussionist. I played countless concerts and gigs with Rick. Linda is a singer. We all know the same people, whose ears were lit on fire that evening. The most interesting exhibit at the Gettysburg museum is the Cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg. Think of a cyclorama as a painting in the round. Gettysburg's is longer than a football field and tall as a four-story building. But it told only one story, namely, the great and bloody tragedy of the Civil War.
In October, we rented a house on North Carolina's Outer Banks, near the Kitty Hawk Memorial, where the Wright Brothers flew the world's first airplane in 1903. We entertained several visitors in succession that week. We failed to deplete Kitty Hawk of its beer. Excellent seafood. Met up with an old high school chum, Bruce Loughry, lives down that-a-way. We hadn't seen each other since we were both mugged at Hampton's Buckroe Beach, back in 1971. Bruce is a musician, too, a rocker and plays guitar. Our rental house had a panoramic view of the Albemarle Sound and the mornings were glorious. Odd floor plan, though. Our bedroom doubled as the foyer. Panoramic view was restricted. We went with my brother Jack and his wife Gracey to the Wright Brothers museum, and watched "Leave It to Beaver" with our Pastor, Ken and his wife, Michele, while drinking scotch. Now, I finally understand Eddie Haskell.
Debbie is never one to allow any sort of organizational or leadership vacuum to go unfilled. There were two openings on the condo's board of directors. She and another woman promptly stepped forward as the sacrificial lambs volunteers. Her new title is Director at Large and In Charge. She says that means she has no official duties, but those might rain down upon her at any moment. Best as I can tell, the Board does a good job. We've been here five years and haven't needed a "special assessment" yet -- and we just had to replace our roofs, which is a good sign they've been planning ahead. My own planning abilities are limited to noticing when we are out of beer.
This week, our church has an evening candlelight service on Friday and a Christmas service on Sunday. Debbie is music director and has warned the church that I'm singing a solo. The year started out hard, but is ending more gently. We try to follow P.J. O'Rourke's advice on having fun: "Have it all now, it doesn't keep."
Christmas is both serious and fun. We live in a serious world with serious consequences, but are saved from them because the Lord of all creation paid us a visit, first wearing swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, and finally a crown of thorns. He was born so we can be born again. That's what puts the cheer in Christmas.
Love, from Lee & Debbie
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