Brothers and sisters

I saw something on Facebook today that sparked my creativity. It was a “test” called sibling wars and it wanted to know who of my siblings was smartest, most stubborn, most creative, etc. So rather than starting a war, I thought I would simply write a blog about my siblings. Each one of us has our own personality, strengths and weaknesses, but I love them all equally and feel so lucky to call them  family.

I’m the baby – at 58 – that means my oldest brother is now 69. His name is Gene. His full name is Willis Eugene and he was named for dad and one of my mom’s relatives. However, he’s always been Gene to me. When I was growing up in Roundup, Gene was always in a band. In high school, it was called the “Dictions.” Many people who were the age of my parents loved to go to dances and so I became known as “Gene’s brother.” My dad was known as “Gene’s dad.” I don’t think any of us minded because we were proud of Gene and his musical talents. I have many fond memories of my oldest brother. He took me fishing when I was little and I liked being included in his activities. I always thought he was very handsome, so I considered it a compliment when people told me that I looked like my oldest brother.

My sister Janet is 10 years older than me. She lived in Rapid City most of her adult life. Since I lived in places like Baker, Glendive and Mandan,  I generally lived closer to her than any of her other siblings. She was always like a second mother to me.  After raising her children she worked as a librarian in the Rapid City school system, which allowed her enough time to correspond with me daily through e-mails. Now that’s she retired, she seems to be too busy…ha ha. But I still appreciate the time we spend writing e-mails back and forth to each other. A couple of years ago, we were lucky enough to take a Hawaiian cruise together. Janet is not the traveler that we are; however, I’m so grateful that she and her husband Ed went with us. We have memories and photos of an unforgettable week in paradise.

My next sibling is my brother Randy. He was probably the most athletic of all my siblings. I remember that he was a pretty good pole-vaulter when he was growing up. Both of my brothers are also very mechanically inclined and I am not. Randy and I have had some memorable experiences together. In the winter of 1980, he moved in with me in my small apartment in Beach, ND, and we worked together at the Golden Valley News. I was a reporter and Randy helped with commercial printing and in the darkroom. He was actually a welder but had hurt himself so was looking for a different job as he was healing. There was no doubt that Randy was good looking and fun loving. The girls in Beach and Wibaux seemed to swarm around him. I knew that things had gone too far when most of the people thought that I was actually older than him. Obviously, he was “younger at heart” than his younger brother who was more studious and career-oriented. However, we have some great memories from our short time of batching together.

Closest in age is my sister Susan. Randy graduated from high school in 1971 and Susan in 1973, so there were a couple of years where Sue simply “ruled the roost.” She was very pretty in high school and married a local school teacher, who was very handsome. Over the years, Susan has been very close to us…all though she has lived the farthest away in miles. When my dad lived with us, we could always count on Susan and her husband Rich to help us out when we needed to be away from home, such as going to Brazil for Derek and Camila’s second wedding. Also they helped us out with dad when Derek and Camila had their first wedding.  Susan, like Janet, is another that likes to email regularly so we know what’s going on with each other…no matter how mundane.

So it’s hard to say who’s the cutest, who’s the smartest, who’s the most stubborn, who has the best hair…we all brought our strengths and weaknesses to the family party. So my final thought is this…our parents were equally proud of each of us. In many ways, we reflected their values of hard work and success, which is the legacy that they left each of us. As  we’ve aged, we’ve probably all mellowed and slowed down some, but in our hey-day, we were forces to be reckoned with. 

I want to see Jesus face-to-face…just not right now

The evening of September 12 was a “come-to-Jesus” moment for me. I was in my front yard mowing my lawn. Unknown to me, my heart was starting to slow down. The beats were getting fainter and farther apart, but, at the time, I only knew that I felt out of breath.

As I turned a corner, I saw a white flash of light in my eyes. In a snap, I knew I had been shocked. My life had been saved.

In January of 2014, I had a pacemaker/defibulator placed into my chest under the skin by my left shoulder. It had never gone off, so I wasn’t sure what to do. I walked into the house and hollered for my wife. I then went and grabbed the papers out of my dresser drawer regarding the device. They said that if your heart goes out of rhythm and your device goes off, well, it’s supposed to. So don’t be worried. Everything worked out right.

In five minutes, I felt just fine. My heart was back in sinus rhythm and I finished mowing the front yard. Then I put the mower away without even starting the backyard.

The next day at work, I got a call from the device clinic at our local hospital. They wanted me to schedule an appointment with my cardiologist – for that day! Normally, it takes up to six months to see a cardiologist and often the doctor doesn’t show up, but rather one of the physician assistants.

What transpired was a series of weekly visits with my cardiologist. At one, I had a test that showed that my heart was still functioning properly. There wasn’t any damage to the heart and my “push” was still in the normal range.

At another, I had an angiogram from my right wrist to my heart to ensure there wasn’t any blockage.

Here I was – a 57-year-old fat man with type II diabetes and a bad heart. Every morning and night I was taking a handful of pills to keep me on the straight and narrow…or so I thought until September 12.

I didn’t see this scenario playing out well. The doctors told me that high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes are a recipe for failure. Pills don’t fix, they just mask the symptoms.

I have a wife, two married sons, and a new grandson, a home, two cars, a garage – I’m living the American dream. I don’t have a job, I have a career. I like what I do and I’m paid well to do it. I have been frugal and saved for a nice retirement. We like to travel and hope to do more in our golden years. But the dream just about ended.

My heart problems started about 10 years ago when I was diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation, which causes my heart to go out of rhythm. The problem was escalated in 2011 when I contacted a virus that attacked my heart. At that time, I lost 60 pounds. But my weight loss was tied to my illness. Because I didn’t feel well, I didn’t eat. Once I started feeling better, my weight started to climb. While I tried to stay active, I found that I could eat more and faster than the exercise could take off. So by last fall, I found myself obese…and nearly dead.

I would like to say that my sons encouraged me to lose weight, but basically they both scolded me and told me that it was time to take bold action. Procrastination would no long work.

I had an appointment with my general practitioner in October and we discussed my health, my weight, my future, etc. He referred me to a weight-loss program that is run by Sanford Health, the same company as the doctor’s clinic and the local hospital.

My wife and I started on October 28. Within a month, we had both lost 20 to 25 pounds. Through this journey, we have learned to be creative when it comes to food choices. We have lived through Thanksgiving and Christmas, one Lions convention and one retirement party and have still continued to lose weight by making smart food choices.

Now, three months later, we are each 40 to 50 pounds lighter than we were in October.

So not only have I lost weight, but my blood sugar readings have shown significant improvement, and I’ve been able to reduce my intake of pills. I still take plenty, but it’s nice to take fewer pills.

I’m not at the end of my journey. In fact, in many ways, I’m just starting my journey to a healthier lifestyle.

I would like to thank the doctors, dieticians and others in the medical field for helping me, but more importantly, I want to thank my family for all their support. They have made this journey fun. 

Some thoughts on being a grandpa

We were at Disneyworld when we heard that we were grandparents. Our first grandchild was born March 10, 2016. Suddenly, the charm of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Magic Kingdom no longer had their grip on me. All I wanted to do was board an airplane and fly back to North Dakota and see Henry.

That’s how I’ll remember becoming a grandpa. Something so fantastic happens that you want to be as close as you can.

In the ensuing seven to eight months we’ve seen this little baby grow. He’s gone from drinking milk to eating food. He’s learned to crawl and pull himself up. He has also flown to Brazil and back…when he was three months old! I don’t think I boarded an airplane until I was in my mid-20s.

When people ask me how many times I played golf this summer, I tell them, “barely at all. Most Saturdays were spent driving to Minot to see Henry.” And every time we see Henry, he is just that much nicer. In fact, leaving him to drive back home is getting tougher and tougher. My consolation, however, is that I live 100 miles away, so I generally know when I will see him again.

His other set of grandparents live in Brazil. His maternal grandma will see Henry when she comes back to the United States for a six-month visit in January 2017. Henry’s maternal grandfather won’t see him until July 2017.

We are lucky to live so close.

It’s different being a grandparent. I won’t say its better, but it’s different. There’s definitely less stress and yet a grandfather wants the grandchild to know that everything will be all right. Even though we aren’t involved in every decision, nor are we around every day, we nevertheless keep a watchful eye on everything. And when it looks like everything is under control and the baby is healthy and happy, then being a grandparent is a blessing. It means that our children grew up and now have the responsibility of raising their children to be productive partners in society. The torch has been passed.

I didn’t have grandpas living when I was child. My dad’s father died 10 years before I was born and my mom’s dad died the year I was born.

I had grandmas and they were wonderful. I miss them always.

My own parents were superb grandparents to my children and the rest of their grandchildren. They lived 400 miles away, but they still kept track of how everything was going. And mom often had a few coaching tips that today seem invaluable to me. Mostly, she told me to “cool it.” Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. Children are going to go through stages. Sometimes they are fighting to become more independent, and that’s okay, because your child will want to stand alone someday, just as you did.

That’s good advice, but it’s hard to swallow when your child is a toddler and wants to walk into things with square corners and sharp edges.

And we loved to spend time with my folks and my wife’s folks when the kids were little. I’m sure that our children knew that if they were with their grandparents, the day or the occasion was extra special.

So as I look ahead to being a grandfather for the rest of my life, my prayer is this, “that the little ones know how much I love them and that a grandparent’s love is forever.”

Boyhood memories

I work in an office in Bismarck, North Dakota, so when the weather is nice enough; I try to go for a 10-to-15 minute walk during my coffee breaks. Yesterday was the first day in a couple of months that I had tried to walk outside as I’m afraid of falling on the ice. But the ice has now mostly turned to slush and the sidewalks are generally dry, so it seemed like a good day for a walk.

That is…until I came upon a section of street where there was no sidewalk. Instead, it was just packed snow where hundreds of walkers had been before me…and some dogs. I had to sidestep the doggie do-do and the yellow snow. I kept on walking until I reached dry sidewalk again. For whatever reason, that spot of dirty snow reminded me of walking in Roundup, Montana, when I was growing up.

And then I got to thinking about being a kid in the 1960s versus being a kid today. We not only knew our neighbors, they were our best friends…or in my case…some were also my cousins, my aunts and uncles.

When we learned to ride bicycles, we rode them all over town…and never once wore a helmet. Depending upon the age of our bikes, we would put a chain and a padlock on them when we rode them to school, but if we were at the city park, a grocery store or a baseball diamond, the bikes were perfectly fine without a lock.

We didn’t have car seats for kids. I stood in the front seat between my parents when we drove to Billings or Deadman’s Basin. My older siblings were in the back seat. None of us were wearing a seat belt.

If you were an adult, it was almost a certainty that you smoked. My mom and dad didn’t but my uncles and several of my aunts did. I had a neighbor who ran a grocery store and smoked cigars. My mom had two uncles, who were our neighbors, that smoked pipes and nearly everyone else smoked cigarettes. To be honest, I haven’t smelled tobacco smoke from a pipe in probably two decades, but I remember I used to like it.

Right before I got out of the car to go to Grandma’s house, mom would make sure my face was clean. If it wasn’t, you could bet she would lick her thumb and then scrub the grime off me with spit. I wasn’t the brightest boy in the world, but I knew that wasn’t sanitary. So I tried to keep my face clean…at all costs.

When I was in second grade, I had the honor of having to attend summer school. I think it was a week or two in the summer and it was either in the morning or the afternoon – but not all day. The extra schooling was to help my reading skills and comprehension. Anyway, I would walk to Central School from our home north of the hospital and my dog Lady would walk beside me. Then she would stay at school until I was done for the day and walk home with me. I loved that dog. I was away at college when she died and I was still crying.

Our dog wouldn’t hurt a flea…or so I thought, but she did bite a meter reader and maybe someone else that she considered an intruder. I don’t think we ever chained Lady. We lived by the hills so Lady was free to go and chase rabbits. If she caught one, she’d drag the carcass back to the yard and snack on it…for days. We always had bones in the yard that she had found and was snacking on.

We had a light pole on a small grassy island in the middle of an unpaved avenue. One of my mom’s two uncles would take turns walking to the light pole and turning on the light. I guess there was no electronic eye in those days that would automatically turn the street lamps on. In the summer time, we would play “Hide and Seek” and the pole was “home.” You could hide almost anywhere in the neighborhood, so once you were found; it was always a race back to the pole to see who could touch it first.

Dad changed the oil in the family car on that avenue and since it wasn’t paved, he never bothered to collect the used oil. It just ran down the avenue and sunk into the ground. That avenue is now covered with asphalt, but I wonder if all the used oil would now be considered a hazardous waste by the EPA. I’m sure somebody would make you stop that if you tried it today.

The world has changed plenty in the last 40 years, I’m sure it will continue changing. But I wouldn’t give up my childhood memories for anything. I think the 1960s were the best decade for being a kid and Roundup was a great town to grow up in.

If it weren’t for people like Keith McLean...

It all started out innocent enough. As diligent parents, Belinda and I faithfully attended parent-teacher conferences. When Derek was in sixth grade at the neighborhood elementary school, his teacher told us that he could use a little extra credit in his history class. I asked what he needed to do and she said, “Well, you know a lot of people. Perhaps you could find someone who is a World War II vet to come into our school and give the kids a first-hand account.”

My father was a World War II vet, but he lived 400 miles away from our home in Mandan…plus dad wasn’t one to speak up in public. So then I thought of my good friend Keith McLean, a retired bridge engineer in Bismarck. I first met Keith in 1986 when we were both members of the Bismarck Lions Club. A couple of years later and I would be secretary for the club and he would be the president. I liked the way that he ran the business meeting and asked him where he learned that skill. He told me it was Toastmasters.

In 1989, I joined Toastmasters and eventually became the District Governor, and my biggest supporter was probably Keith. He would even go with me to Minot and other places that I had to visit…mostly to keep me company.

Keith McLean when he was a bridge engineer. 

Keith also told me in 1988 that he thought our choice for Derek’s name was inspired because it sounded like “Dick Van Dyke” only it wasn’t.

So I had a good idea that if I asked Keith to speak to Derek’s 6^th grade class, the answer would probably be “Yes.” The next time I saw him, I asked him and he agreed to speak.

I met Keith one afternoon at Custer Elementary in Mandan and we went to Derek’s classroom. I’ll never forget Keith’s introduction. First, he wrote “1 million” on the chalk board. He told the kids, “that’s how many U.S. soldiers were in World War II and they were all over the globe.”

Then he wrote down the number “one” and he said, “I was one of them. I fought in the Battle of the Bulge and I carried a radio on my back, so if you are looking for a comprehensive history of the war, I can’t do that. But I can tell you what I saw in the European Theater as the Allied Forces battled the Nazis.”

Wow, I thought, this was going to be exciting. But the sixth grade kids seemed to be ignoring Keith. They were noisy and moving around. I didn’t think Keith was getting the respect that he deserved, so I asked the kids, “How many of your grandpas fought in World War II?”

This was about 1999, and to my surprise, Derek was the only sixth grader whose grandfather fought in the big war. No wonder they weren’t paying attention. World War II sounded like a lecture on the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece to them.

So I tried another strategy. I wanted them to understand how important the war was to our freedoms that we enjoy today.

I wanted to say, “If it wasn’t for people like Keith McLean, you might be speaking German or Japanese today.”

That’s what I wanted to say, but at that moment, the weight of that statement hit me straight between the eyes. Because I knew it was true. Like the lyrics in the old Johnny Horton hit “The Bismarck” it was true that “the world depends on us.”

Anyway, when I tried to blurt something out about Keith and the million other brave soldiers, my voice cracked and I started crying.

Well, that got the kids attention, and they stopped fussing around long enough to listen to him…but it did something else too. Derek got teased by his classmates because his dad came to school and cried in front of them.

That night when Derek got home from school, he said, “Thanks dad. Now I only have to beat up half the kids in school for a month before they forget you came to class.”

Hopefully, he was only teasing me. But to this day, Derek reminds me of the time I invited Keith to his sixth grade class and his dad sobbed in public. Not one of my prouder moments, but thanks to Keith, my dad and the other million soldiers, we have enjoyed countless freedoms and economic growth that other countries can only look at with envy. And we still speak English. 

Don’t just lengthen your life, broaden it too

A few years ago when I turned 50, my doctor told me that if I died now, people wouldn’t think much of it as I had already lived for half a century. His attitude shocked me because I didn’t consider 50 to be very old.

My mom had lived to be 82 and my dad was in his late 80s at the time, so it seemed to me that turning 50 wasn’t much more than a good start.

Yeah, I know people die in their 50s, so it seemed like a good idea to lengthen my years by taking better care of myself -- eating better and exercising more.  But that just increases your years. We also need to think about increasing our living by broadening our life.

I know a fellow who retired at 60 and has almost spent every day of his life since sitting in his easy chair in front of his TV. He’s now in his mid-70s. He’s happy, I guess, but his lifestyle seems a little one dimensional. After you get done visiting with him about the latest episode of the “Big Bang Theory”, we’ve pretty much exhausted his knowledge of current events.

Keep looking for the next
adventure

As for me, I want to not only live longer, but I also want to live broader. So I’ve landed on 10 things that a young person might want to consider to live a bigger life…not just a longer one.

1.  Get a quality education in a field that you will enjoy. The underpinnings of a broad life generally require a good job…because some things are going to cost money. If you can’t afford to travel, that’s going to be a problem later on. Going to college is also a great way to run into a lot of different people. Many will try to change you and broaden your perspective. Hemingway called this a “moveable feast.” College will stay with you forever.
2. Marry someone interesting and adventuresome. I always thought I wanted to marry a woman just like dear old mom until I met someone who was just like my 60-year-old mom and then I thought, “Hey, mom wasn’t always 60. When she was 20, she traveled to Florida to be with my dad who was in the service. She had spunk at 20.” And so I decided that marrying someone in their 20s who acted like she was 60 was a bad choice.
3.  Have children. They’ll not only keep you young physically but they will also keep you young mentally. It was because of our children that we took a leap of faith and bought a CD player, and a computer, and a….well you get the picture. Now in their mid-20s, they are still telling me about fashionable clothes, popular music and the hottest video games.
4. Travel. We have seen some beautiful places and met some wonderful people because we have a love for travel. We have an entire family in Brazil that loves us very much when we fly 4,000 miles to see them. We have been to Hawaii so often that sitting on the beach and watching the waves come in, one after another, is probably the only thing that we aren’t tired of. I’ve also literally been to the top of the world…north of the Arctic Circle. Even riding a speed boat over the rapids of Oregon’s Rogue River has been a thrill I’ll never forget.
5. Find a job that challenges you and then do that job so well that people around you feel like you are deserving of being promoted. I’ve had a couple of great jobs that fit my talents well. Generally, I tell people that I’m a writer…but that’s just the basic skill that I possess. I’ve built that one skill into many and it’s helped me provide more value to my employer which has increased my value to them and thus my paycheck. Like the old saying goes, the harder I work, the luckier I am.
6. Join a club or  a church and become a volunteer….or do something else that helps you meet people. Then try to do something that you would never dare do otherwise. For me, it was public speaking. I was deathly afraid of public speaking so I joined a Toastmasters Club in 1989. I not only learned to speak but I also learned leadership skills. When I was only in my mid-30s, I was a district governor of Toastmasters in North Dakota and western Minnesota and the experience was worth my weight in gold. It opened up so many doors…back then and still today.
7. The next time you want to say “No”, say “Yes” instead. There is an old saying that says “Success comes in Cans and not in Cannots.” By saying yes, I’ve had many opportunities to broaden my horizons. Right now, I’m on the board of directors of a church-based pre-school….because I said yes. I’m speaking on behalf of the pre-school to a group of ladies…because I said yes.
8. Remember, family comes first so don’t become married to your job. I’ve had lucrative opportunities present themselves that would have taken me away from my family. I turned them down because my family has always come first and I’ve never regretted that. Pound for pound, I get more love from my family than a paycheck. I want people to look at me and say, “There’s a guy who is always there for his family.
9. Wear a smile, crack a joke, and don’t forget to say you’re sorry if you make a mistake. In other words, be the kind of friend you would like to hang out with. Be approachable. And don’t take yourself too seriously.
10.  Find a hobby that you like and delve into it. For me, I probably have more interests than actual hobbies. Or maybe I’m a little too nervous to like anything too long. I like to garden, cook, read and watch sports. When I can, I like to go to professional baseball games. This has been a lot of fun and I’ll never forget my trip to the baseball hall of fame. I still have a dream of going to Yankee Stadium. I’ve been to New York several times and I’ve seen Shea Stadium and the Mets. I’ve also seen the Yankees, but that was in Minneapolis. I would like to see the men in pinstripes play in the House that Ruth Built.

So there’s my 10 tips….your recipe might be different, but don’t forget: Broaden your life. You’ll never regret it.

Unlearning “cat” habits

Golfing is going to start today, so I went downstairs to get our golf clubs. By habit, I shut the door behind me so the cat didn’t sneak down. About halfway down the stairs, it dawned on me….we don’t have a cat.

When I come from work at night, our golden striped kitty is no long waiting for me at the door. He’s no longer scratching against the computer when I write. His food is no longer in the entryway, the kitty box is gone…and yet I keep seeing the kitty out of the corner of my eye.

Somehow I have to “unlearn” all the cat habits that we’ve adopted.

Like yesterday when I took a package of frozen hamburger out to thaw on the kitchen cupboards. I no longer had to worry about Picasso eating half the hamburger before I got off work. Almost to my unbelief, I left the hamburger unguarded right on the cupboard.

And I’m not getting woken up at 5 a.m. every morning by a cat who wants to snuggle next to my face.

You could almost set your watch by it. Picasso would jump on our bed at 5 a.m., but before lying down, he would paw at our blankets for a couple of minutes to make sure nothing unexpected was going to jump out at him. Then he would plop his butt down…about an inch away from my face and then gently snuggle until his fur was rubbing my nose. 

While he might have thought this was the ideal pose, I would quickly move him and then Picasso would lay still…for about five minutes before leaping off the bed.

To go eat.

Or use the kitty box.

I wouldn’t see him again until I got up to shave. And then there he would be right at the bathroom sink waiting for me to fill up the sink with water, just like Grandpa did.

After satisfying his thirst, he would jump down, run out of the bathroom and hit our bed again. By the time I was done with my shower, he would be sleeping on one side of the bed with Belinda sleeping on the other.

I would eat breakfast and head to work. Belinda would get up and make the bed. Once the bed was made, Picasso would again lie down – this time on her side – and sleep until noon. Such was the life of our cat.

But alas. Picasso came down with something called irritable bowel disease. Although he was on medication to help him, our kitty lost his appetite. And he was losing his hair, and his bowel control…and we were losing our minds. So after a visit with the veterinarian, we returned Picasso to the animal shelter.

Our house is quieter, cleaner, more predictable and smells better…but we miss Grandpa’s cat. We have to unlearn that as well.