That Dreamy Little Cabin in the Woods

There's no accounting to taste. Just exactly why it is some people adore Terry Redlin's perfectly darling paintings is unfathomable to those art lovers who declare unequivocally that any mess by Jackson Pollack is (ahem!) real art.

It comes as  no surprise that one might find a Terry Redlin or two on the walls of Woodbridge Clinic, since among the residents it would be difficult to find an admirer of, say, Piet Mondrian: I'm guessing Terry Redlin lovers almost certainly abound. 

I can't quite make out the painter who did the image framed and hung on the wall outside the bath, but I noticed the painting when I was next in line for a dunking. Like almost anything by Terry Redlin, a powerfully comforting source of light drops a heavenly radiance over it all. Here, it's a cabin in the woods (you're surprised?) surrounded by a gorgeous forest, every last limb of the blessed pines encircling the place hung heavily with lovely lake snow. Comfy. Sweet. Nary a mosquito. 

For years my wife and I nurtured a dream of buying a cabin like the one that lights the whole scene so warmly. We thought (maybe I should say I) that maybe we could swap the bare naked prairie of northwest Iowa for some Minnesota hideaway beside still waters or lost among towering pines someplace breathing out warmth like this one. The image the picture offers is almost exactly the sweet image we (one of us especially) painted in our hearts. 

When the opportunity finally arrived, we backed out of our Terry Redlin dream. Family matters kept us in Siouxland, the emerald eastern edge of the plains. A painting like the one on the wall of the home, right there at the nursing home's bath, I reckon will never, ever be ours. 'Twill always be the dream it was, both of us far closer to 80 than we'd like to scribble down. 

Redlin's work is not great art, nor is this knock off; but it did get me thinking, which is something great art should at least begin to offer. I was  in line for the bath, waiting for the soapmeister to wheel me in for my turn in the suds. When I looked up at the painting, I wasn't thinking of Terry Redlin, wasn't even thinking of the perfect charm of the log cabin in windless, saintly pines all around.

I've been here at and in the home for coming up on three weeks. How long I'll stay is anyone's guess. There are things I have to learn, I'm told, things I have to master before I'm shoved out into the world behind a walker or throned in a wheelchair, things as elementary as how to put on shoes, or get up from a toilet--unbelievably difficult stuff when for the most part you've got no legs.

Amazingly, just about the moment I looked at that sweet little warmly-lit cabin, the I couldn't help believing I had no business dreaming of the place because I had no way of getting there. That heavenly cabin has no ramp. It's beaten snowy path is no place for a wheelchair. I couldn't cross the bridge. I couldn't even dream.

I've changed, I'd guess. I never would have thought of what I couldn't do. What I saw was that I could never even get there.

For the record, the bath was big and soapy and hot on my swollen, numb lower legs, just what I needed. . .just exactly what I needed.

Sunday Morning Meds--from Psalm 4

 

aftermath of flooding just off our land

“Many are asking, ‘Who can show us any good?’”

As we’ve said before, the very first word of the very first Psalm is the life’s wish of every last human being who has inhabited or is or still will inhabit this earth. What everyone wants—no exceptions here—is to be blessed. Like that man whose image graces Psalm 1, everyone—red and yellow, black and white; rich and poor; urban or rural cowboy; all genders; all creeds (and none); mass murderers and untrammeled saints—all of us want to be happy.

David’s characterization of the cry of “the many” here in verse 6 is thus perfectly understandable. He’s right. The questions we’re all asking are “Who can bring some joy into my life? Who can turn my mourning into dancing? How can I be blessed?”

Relative degrees of prosperity mean little, of course. Those of us who live in the affluent West often suffer more emotional woes than those whose lives, near and far, are at or below the poverty level. Which is not to say, of course, that the poor don’t plead the same question, which is, really, “who will help us?”

Even though the question David brings to our consideration is the question we all know well, just exactly how he means the comment seems to me to be up for grabs. Spurgeon can’t help but see in David’s characterization an implied criticism of the wicked; they’re rapaciously sinful appetites are constantly a-whoring, constantly chasing ill-fated images of happiness. But Spurgeon was a believer of his time, and his propensity for determining who is and who isn’t “the wicked” is legendary. To me, drawing the kinds of deep lines is a much tougher job than he found it to be.

I’m not sure that David is lambasting the wayward wicked with this line. What we’ve just come from in this very strange little psalm is a treatise sympathetically offered to those same sinners. “Here are the things you all should do,” David says, and then lays out his 12-step program. He’s concerned. He wants their blessedness.

Furthermore, at the end of verse six he uses the collective pronoun us; it seems to me that what David is saying about people is meant to be about us, not just, well, them. We all want somebody or something to show us good.

I may be wrong, but I’d like to read this verse as penitence, not preaching. That kind of reading at least brings some greater unity to the song. This odd little psalm began with a short but deeply felt request to God that the speaker heard (vs. 1). Then, it turns to sinners and howls (“how long. . .”), but that tone subsides into a warmly offered how-to, a description of the means by which those far, far away from God can draw closer.

In verse six—like verse one—David once again talks to the Lord, and I’d like to think he’s pointing at those who’ve listened to his little sermon. As he’s pointing, he’s asking God for the blessed warmth of His generous face on them, and on us, on all of us.

I guess I’d like to think that this isn’t a Psalm that shoves unbelievers into the fiery throes of hell, but puts in a good word for those folk, just as affected as we all are with wanting to be blessed.

Shine your love on us, Lord, he seems to me to be saying. We’re all lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.

Feeling Small

“Before my addiction, I used to love rock climbing,” so says, James Browning, one of the tough Appalachian guys Arlie Russell Hochschild interviews in Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and Rise of the Right. Hochschild’s concern is an ill-fated march by neo-Nazis, a prelude to the 2020 “Unite the Right” Charlottesville protest. What Hochschild wants to explain is the profound drift toward far-right politics the region has taken in the last few decades.

But this man Browning finds his way through the tribulation of joblessness and a besotted drug culture to moral redemption elsewhere. A rock-climber before his own addictions, he regains some balance high above the Appalachian Mountains. “Look out at these mountains on one of my first post recovery climbs, I felt part of life, “ or so says Mr. Browning. “I felt big. And I felt good.”

For four weeks now I’ve been institutionalized, a citizen of a land and a people unknown to me before. I’m in a nursing home, my third, because I’m crippled. I hope not to be thusly maimed in some distant future, but for right now I’ll say it again: I’m crippled. For some unknown reason, my legs don’t work. My quads, as the PT likes to say, have simply checked out, which means I’m largely subject to the loving hands of what seems a hundred nurses and CNAs, most all of which, let me say, I’ve discovered to be delightful. They dress me, take me to the bathroom, bathe me, pull up my drawers, and put me to bed.

They’re here, as am I, but they leave, end of shift. I don’t.

It would be vainglorious, in an odd sort of way, to think of myself as incarcerated, but I can’t help feeling that way some times, given the fact that in an earlier institution if I even stepped out of bed, alarms would shriek and the room would soon be thick with CNAs, most of them equally flustered and fascinated as the boss takes hold of my helplessness and returns all that doesn’t work on its own to the sheets.

If you’re asking yourself right now if it’s easy to get down about things, the answer is yes, of course. What I know about depression is camped far, far way at this point, but it’s not particularly difficult to feel the darkness. My wife is here daily; she leaves in early evening, so that the absolute worst part of my day is her going home. On the other hand, it’s a joy to send her off, knowing she’s going to the place I’d love being.

She called me last week, late morning, because she had news, “Big news,” she said, proudly, confidently. Honestly, I didn’t know how to react since she’s not one to overuse superlatives.

She couldn’t tell me about some miraculous healing—how could she know? I had no clue. “I give up,” I told her. “What is it?”

“You’re a great-Grandpa,” or so said a brand new great-Grandma.

I was alone, of course, in my cubicle. No one to grab. No one to hold. Maybe that was why—I don’t know, maybe that’s what explains the tears coming up like minor flooding. I found myself helpless to stop, even though, believe me, I tried. They just came. I didn’t ask--in fact I don’t know that before in my 76 years I’ve ever, ever bawled my eyes out for sheer joy.

I put the phone down and cried some more.

Neaveh Kay, eight darling pounds. Mom, Dad, and baby all well.

There wasn’t much to say. Maybe that’s why the tears.

So one of those CNAs dropped by just then and found me slobbering, still wiping my eyes. I told her the news without sparing superlatives and tried to apologize for the water works.. She told me not to be stupid. I had her crying too.

It’s probably idiotic for me to wonder why the waterfall? What was it in me that prompted emotion unlike any I’d ever felt before; but right there in the institution I kept seeing a lovely picture of fresh snow on a broad field. That fresh snow held footprints—my Mom and Dad’s out front, then mine and Barb’s, then, slightly smaller but no less distinct, Andrea’s and Piet’s—the brand new grandparents.

Finally, came two more, Joce and Lucas, the new mom and dad,

Then way at the end, two tiny little footprints. Right there in the snow lay five stories, that new one pinched and pigeon-toed, tagging along and holding its own.

Somewhere in Appalachia, I can’t help but hope that this James Browning, who beat the rap to which so many of his peers fell, is staying up there on the top of the Appalachian Mountains. “As time went on,” he remembers, “ and I felt more reattached to the world, when I reached the top, I felt something different. . I felt small,” he says, “and I felt good.”

That too, I can’t help but think—that too made me cry.

Sundday Morning Meds--from Psalm 4

“Many are asking, ‘Who can show us any good?’”

As we’ve said before, the very first word of the very first Psalm is the life’s wish of every last human being who has inhabited or is or still will inhabit this earth. What everyone wants—no exceptions here—is to be blessed. Like that man whose image graces Psalm 1, everyone—red and yellow, black and white; rich and poor; urban or rural cowboy; all genders; all creeds (and none); mass murderers and untrammeled saints—all of us want to be happy.

David’s characterization of the cry of “the many” here in verse 6 is thus perfectly understandable. He’s right. The questions we’re all asking are “Who can bring some joy into my life? Who can turn my mourning into dancing? How can I be blessed?”

Relative degrees of prosperity mean nothing, of course. Those of us who live in the affluent West often suffer more emotional woes than those whose lives are at or below the poverty level. Which is not to say, of course, that the poor don’t plead the same question, which is, really, “who will help us?”

Even though the question David brings to our consideration is the question we all know well, just exactly how he means the comment seems to me to be up for grabs. Spurgeon can’t help but see in David’s characterization an implied criticism of the wicked; they’re rapaciously sinful appetites are constantly a-whoring, constantly chasing ill-fated images of happiness. But Spurgeon was a believer of his time, and his propensity for determining who is and who isn’t “the wicked” is legendary. To me, drawing those kinds of deep lines is a tougher job than, apparently, he found it to be.

I’m not sure that David is lambasting the wayward wicked with this line. What we’ve just come from in this very strange little psalm is a treatise sympathetically offered to those same sinners. “Here are the things you all should do,” David says, and then lays out his 12-step program. He’s concerned. He wants their blessedness.

Furthermore, at the end of verse six he uses the collective pronoun us; it seems to me that what David is saying about people is meant to be about us, not just, well, them. We all want somebody or something to show us good.

I may be wrong, but I’d like to read this verse as penitence, not preaching. That kind of reading at least brings some greater unity to the song. This odd little psalm began with a short but deeply felt request to God to be heard (vs. 1). Then, it turns to sinners and howls (“how long. . .”), but that tone subsides into a warmly offered how-to, a description of the means by which those far, far away from God can draw closer.

In verse six—like verse one—David once again talks to the Lord, and I’d like to think he’s pointing at those who’ve listened to his little sermon. As he’s pointing, he’s asking God for the blessed warmth of his face on them, and on us, on all of us.

I guess I’d like to think that this isn’t a Psalm that shoves unbelievers into the fiery throes of hell, but puts in a good word for those folk, just as affected as we all are with wanting to be blessed.

Shine your love on us, Lord, he seems to me to be saying. We’re all lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.

Wet drawers

 

There are so many nurses, so many aides, so many cnas and techs, that remembering names is impossible. She had some miles on her, this one--she was what my mother would have called "a hard woman,' but then many of them n the care center were. My people are Calvinists; they don't let themselves go.

The requisite tattoos lit up both arms. Her hair, brushed up in a bush, was multi-colored, an entire branch thereof faux-orange. She's neither young, nor tidy, but, like the others, no matter how she parts her hair, she's good at what she needs to do. She's been my nurse before and  gives me no comfort but the best. 

 I've been in hospitals for the last four weeks now, had literally dozens of nurses, and I can't help but wonder if pre-requisite to the profession is a perfect ear for jokes amid a thousand acres of sheer grace. Still, this darlin' seems vastly more fastidious about my care than her own.

I'd sounded the red button with great reluctance. After all, had I worked at it at all, I might well have gotten away with my soaked bottom. I'd argued with myself about it, tried to conjure a dodge, then finally tossed in the towel. That urinal--what a wonderful invention that is!--isn't without its shortfalls. Fifteen minutes earlier I'd wet my drawers when something or other misfired. There I sat in a lounge chair beside my bed, my legs largely worthless, around a lap full of wee.

I'm quite sure I could have covered up the entire discretion, could have stripped off the soak, found a fresh pair of Jockies, and not had to fess up. I mean, I'm 76 years old, Ph.D. in English, dissertation long ago parked successfully in the library of my alma mater. I told myself I was too dang old to lie--I'm going to call some nurse in here and tell her no matter how young or old: "Sweetheart, I just peed my pants."

When she showed up, I realized I'd been hers before. This nameless,"hard woman" had already proved herself a champ.

"The truth?" I asked. That she knew me made it easier. What the heck?--I told myself, so I just let her know. "I wet my fricken' drawers," I told her. 

She was already working at my shoes. Never looked up. 

"I'm so sorry for what I'm putting you through," I told her.

She stopped on a dime. "Think you're the first?" she said and started ripping at the other shoe. "It's no big deal," she told me, pitching a sock in the corner. "You should know that."

She directed me to the rocker, stood me up like a rag doll, and jerked at that offending piece of clothing. "Shoot, you just got to go on, got to get up and go on."

It was that simple. There I stood, drying out. 

"Doesn't amount to anything, believe me," she said. 

"But it's embarrassing," I told her. "I'm old enough to be your dad and I wet my drawers?" I said. "I feel like an idiot." 

Not one word. Not one glance. You couldn't help but know this wasn't her first rodeo. Then it came. "Oh, don't go feeling sorry for yourself," she said, cleaning me up. "You just got to pick yourself up and go on. "It's what I tell my son all the time, you know?--shoot,  it's what I tell myself--'you got to go on.'"

"How old's your son?" I said, sitting now, back on the Lay-Z-Boy.

"He's 13," she told me, slipping me back into a dry pair. "He's autistic," she said. "He's autistic and he's ADHD and what not else and it's what I tell him, and shoot! it's what I got to tell myself."

It was something I might have avoided, I think, scrambled around the room in my wheelchair, getting a clean pair, pulling it up myself. 

No one might ever have known.  

Sunday Morning Meds--from Psalm 4

“Offer right sacrifices and trust in the Lord.”

My wife and I have developed our own language.  If I say—as I did last night—that tonight I’d be going to a “should thing,” what both of us know I mean is that I really don’t want to.  I’d prefer to stay home; in fact, I’d much, much rather stay home.  But I’m not. I’m going. It’s a “should thing.”

 What both of us know is that, in life, often as not, we have to do things we’d rather not.  We do them because we should. In the Christian’s life “should things” compel us much more often than they do, I’d guess, in a life that isn’t entangled in the commitments that rise from church and school and what not else with a halo.

 Is it good for me—doing a whole raft of “should things?” Wouldn’t I be better off emotionally if I didn’t get collared by responsibilities that, with just a little tweaking, might well be seen as, well, appearances anyway?  “I really should be there,” I say sometimes. Can conscience ever be a burden?  Don’t all of us want to flip off the world once in a while and go our own way?  I sure do.  Don’t tell anybody, but often as not we get downright sick and tired of “should things.”

 Of course, I choose to live in a small community, where what it costs to flip off the world is nothing to sneeze at.  Where’s there’s no anonymity, there’s more responsibility, or so it seems to me.  My wife and I live in a virtual Wal-Mart of “should things.”  Just about every blasted night there are “should things.”  Maybe I’m overstating.

King David’s twelve-step program in Psalm 4 continues in verse five with a couple of “should things”:  “offer right sacrifices and trust in the Lord.”

Honestly, I don’t have much trouble with the trusting, but his first command strikes me as a “should thing.”  It shouldn’t, but it does. Which is another conundrum, I guess, isn’t it?

If you want to get answers to prayers, David says, here’s a list of things to do; one of them is offer “right sacrifices.”  It’s not even a matter of should here, it’s a matter of must.  Sacrifice.  Give of yourself.  Echelons of therapists be hanged, if you want to sleep well (which is, in a way, what Psalm 4 is about), there simply are things you should do.

I remember reading Abraham Kuyper’s suggestions for “should things.”  He advised that if we really wanted to be near unto God we should act like him: we should forgive, we should love unconditionally, we should seek the best for others, we should sacrifice.  You’ll know him best by doing what he does—that’s what Kuyper suggests. It made sense when I read it, and it makes sense today when I think it through. But oh, my goodness, what a multitude of “should things.” And they’re all so demanding, so tough.

Yes, my dear, there are “should things.” And yes, me, we ought to do them. Some should things are really must things.

And we’ve certainly got this much up on David, the poet king. We know darn well that some massively important things were done deliberately for us—and those events weren’t “should things” either. Start here: a cross, a death, a trip to hellishness.

Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God.

Sunday Morning Meds--from Psalm 4

 

“. . .search your hearts and be silent.”

 Flannery O’Connor, I remember reading, one of the finest and most well-known writers of the 20^th century, was almost totally inconspicuous in her classes at Iowa Writers Workshop. I believe it. Every year I taught, I had a few silent types that knocked my socks off when they handed in an essay.  Teachers love talkers, but classrooms that sound morgue-ish doesn’t necessarily mean that the minds that inhabit it are laid out cold.

 Generalizations are always hazardous, but, historically at least, the annals of the American West are rife with stories about white folks—immigrant farmers, cavalry lieutenants, even French trappers—who grew awfully uncomfortable with the silence Native folks felt imperative before a discussion. Then again, the history of the West wouldn’t be as jaded if white folks had kept their mouths shut a whole lot smore than they did.

 Given our politically-charged media culture’s incessant yapping, it’s probably understandable why some people would opt out and seek the enforced silence of the monastery. Just this week, a good friend told me he’s been spending time with the Benedictines at a monastery not all that far from here. Thomas Merton and Henry Nouwen have wide and devoted readership; it’s difficult to know whether, a couple decades ago, Kathleen Norris’s Cloister Walk begat a phenomenon or merely rode the wave. To many—and to me—silence often looks good, probably because it’s hard to come by.

 I stopped at Mulberry Point all by lonesome on Thursday because I knew that the overview of the Missouri River right there, a magnificent panorama, simply takes your breath away—and the words that come along. Sometimes silence says everything we really need to hear.

 I’ve become familiar with old folks’ homes. My mother was in one for a long time; we visit my wife’s father every Sunday afternoon. I’m sitting in one right now. Silence often pervades those places, no matter how cheerfully they’re decorated. I suppose the silence in those homes doesn’t make life there any more moral or high-toned. 

But here in Psalm 4, it’s a command. In this 12-step therapy regimen David is creating in this psalm, he raises a finger and says, simply, “Listen! Just be quiet.

He means me. Be still, he says. And here I am on this Sunday morning, going on and on. 

Be still, David says.  Just, be still. 

Lord, help me.

 

So many tears

Sometime last week--feels like last year--I came to the point where I'd heard them so often I could narrate MSNBC's story lines before they aired. I could but won't fall into a litany. I don't have to. If you think on your feet at all, you can return quickly--some outrageous utterance by the man who would be king, hurricane coming up on Florida, Kamala trying to woo white men. 

I don't watch TV much, but when you spend your weeks in a hospital, once the  visitors are gone, there's not much to do but find the remote and back peddle through the channels, hoping for the best. Shebang! I stumble on Joe Kinsella (Kevin Costner) just outside of Terrance Mann's (James Earl Jones) apartment. It's Field of Dreams, of course, right there on the untouchable hospital TV, and I'm in. Haven't see it in  years, but for land's sake I'm in Iowa. Wouldn't miss it.

Rolls along nicely--haven't forgotten Kinsella's darlin' little wife, nor the blessed moment when, once again, all those woolen suits steppin' out of the rows like a some ghostly team for a season opener. 

What I'm remembering as we so merrily roll along is that people claimed Field of Dreams was a man's show because it's about fathers and sons, someone said it's about fathers and sons.

And then the last scene comes up, Kinsella/Costner out there on the magical diamond, when one last player walks up--his estranged old man. Takes him and us a while to recognize him, then bang! they talk. Well, even if they don't talk, something big and huge for the heavyweight dreamer happens when they're together. Something's fixed.

My eyes feel like the back rollers on my mother's old washing machine, turning out tears like wash water. I'm bawling like a baby is what I'm saying because the last of my visitors left hours ago, I got no roommate, and who's going to see me anyway?--when just like that, the room lights go on, and in come a couple of sturdy, tattooed nurses for some fool ritual. They could care less that the prof-guy in 504 is a blubbering baby. I repent, but they're thrilled--and so am I. 

I get to feeling that my instant tears are some manifestation of my being alone for so long, and the condition--whatever it is--that makes it impossible for me to move once I sit down. The whole madness colors my days and ruins my nights, so much so a Danny Thomas hospital commercial just wipes me out--you know where that big-chested dad says how there's nothing worse than watching your own little kids suffer?--all I got to do is see the guy.

But it wasn't some baseball dream or some blessed dad praying for a kid with a plague. Last night it was something altogether different. Barb called. Our granddaughter Jocelyn had the baby we've all been looking forward to. "You're a great grandpa," Barbara said. She could just as well as said, "You're king." Wouldn't have come out any different.

I bawled. Three nurses came by to perform their ritual humiliations, and I could not have cared less. Ducts stayed open to flood. They too were thrilled.

So our daughter's daughter had a daughter. That makes me Great-Grandpa. 

Couldn't be happier.

Where'd I put those Kleenex?

Rehab ward(s)

I honestly don't know when or whether  I shall return to this page, so dutifully fulfilled for so darn long, but I owe long-time readers of this blog some explanation.

For the first time in weeks, I sat down with my laptop and wrote this little story out for some friends who wondered where I went and why I stopped writing.

This, if you missed it elsewhere, is that story.

*

My fingers are more than a little unsure of themselves, but then the computer isn’t responding all that well either, having been on break now for more than a month. I’m using the old Mac instead of the desktop that sits at home, friendless, and me?—I’m exceedingly fidgety, wondering whether the words will be there.

 But I owe a number of you some sort of explanation of my wholesome silence.

 I’ll try not to make it a novel.

Way back in November, 2023, I walked two miles, then sat down for a game of Monopoly with my spouse and my youngest grandson, who’s now a high school freshman, but, back then, was, Trumplike, interested in buying the whole city.

When I sat down on the couch, I told myself the position I took was an odd one for an old man, but I was feeling no pain. That’s when and where it began—an aching in the small of my back. I was only partially aware, back then, that something had shifted.

There were some moments of searing pain, however, enough so that our doctor and others recommended back surgery.

I’m a veteran of back surgery, had one back in 2000, in fact. I wasn’t gleeful about another surgery, but what was going down in my ever more bungled body told me it was time to try. I signed up and in.

Two weeks later my legs and knees broke down.  Hence, the hospital stays—Orange City for a few days, Sioux City’s St. Luke’s for a week, then Orange City again—for the last week.

I probably don’t need to tell you these words are my very first attempt to sit at the keys and compose like the old days. I couldn’t carry it out before and I’m not sure I’m doing it now.

The bottom line is this: I’m sitting in a hospital room telling you that if you’ve missed me here in the last month or so, I’ll likely be back when it doesn’t cost me so much just to move around.

So here lies our immediate future: either we choose to do some more physical rehab in a suitable institution, or, very soon, I return home and we live by some difficult strictures.

Meanwhile, we’re doing okay, but standing in the need prayer.

Thanks to all of you.

Jim

And that's not the whole story. Tonight I'm sitting in Marcus, Iowa, in their old folks home, in a new section dedicated to patients requiring physical rehab. It's not at all cramped here or stodgy, and the nurses are like all the others--really capable of having a good time.

But don't be fooled. I want to go home.