On A Lovely Day in September

For the past few weeks, I’ve been posting YouTube videos of obscure and forgotten hits from previous decades on my personal Facebook page.  This week’s selection, Lovely Day by Bill Withers, deserves some explanation.  It’s the twelfth anniversary of 9/11, which started out as a lovely day in Little Rock, where I lived in 2001.  It’s rare for the weather in New York and Little Rock to be exactly the same, but it was a cloudless day there as well.  The stiffling, sticky heat of summer was gone.  It made the air feel lighter.  People want to get out on a day like that, but instead I sat in front of the TV, just like most Americans did.  Such an ugly thing wasn't supposed to happen on such a lovely day.  

At lunchtime, I needed to be around other people, so I walked a couple of blocks to the River Market, which was a small food court in a restored old building.  I took my lunch outside to one of the tables under a big pavillion where a farmers market is held on Saturdays.  On a sunny day like this, all the tourists and office workers out there would sound like a flock of birds chattering.  But there were only a few tables occupied by small groups of people with stunned expressions, speaking quietly.  I wondered if my face looked like that and I thought, "This is all wrong.  It should be cold and cloudy on a day like this.  The weather should match everyone's mood."

I worked in the Stephens Building.  At 40+ stories, it’s the second-tallest building in Arkansas.  It was evacuated and I had an unpaid day off.  That night was cool enough to have the windows open in my loft apartment at a busy intersection downtown, where the Main Street Bridge crosses the Arkansas River.  The quiet that night on the normally busy street was surreal.  A car passed once every fifteen or twenty minutes.  Remember, this was before Facebook and Twitter.  If you wanted to know what was going on, you had to watch TV.  CNN and all the major networks had live coverage.  We were all joined together by the common experience of watching and worrying.  

Fast forward to the Concert for New York City.  It was a fund-raising event for New York and a much-needed pep rally for everyone, featuring performances by musicians and speeches by New York’s finest and bravest.  The nation was united in a way I haven’t seen before and certainly not since.  The anger and sadness were palpable.  Some of the performances touched my soul.

They showed a video that I’ve thought of countless times since then.  It showed New Yorkers going about their day.  Some of them were smiling.  It showed the diversity and character of the city.  Watching it that night, I was lifted up by it.  I realized New York was going to be OK.  The country would be OK, too.  I thought the choice of Lovely Day was perfect for it.  I was in junior high in the late 70s when it was a hit.  At the time, I thought it was just OK, with no strong opinion of it.  Thanks to that video, I love the song.  

I invite you to stop what you’re doing and watch this.  Turn off all the TV, the stereo, and ignore all the noises from your smart phone.  Yes!  You can do this for the five minutes and 28 seconds it takes to watch this video.  Pay attention to it.  Let yourself be uplifted by it.  

UPDATE:  The video I wanted to share is now blocked, which is a sad thing because it could have uplifted so many.  I could view it a few days ago when I wrote this post and embedded the video, so the decision to block it was made in the past few days.  Here's another video of Lovely Day so you can at least hear it.  Maybe they will make the other vedeo available again in the future.

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10 Years!

Ten years ago right about now I was in surgery and so was my kidney donor.  After months of tests, she was found to be a suitable donor.  Her offer to give me a kidney literally came out of nowhere.  Well, that’s how it seemed.  Actually, it came from God.  Only a few weeks after finding out my first transplanted kidney failed and I started hemodialysis (a date with misery three times a week), someone I’d never met was offering to give me a kidney.

First there was the jolt of losing the kidney.  Then there was the joyful jolt of a possible way out of that nightmare.  My emotions were like a pinball being bounced all over the place.

But, first we had to find out what her blood type was.

Over the next several months, one hurdle after another was cleared.  An infection in the dialysis port under my collarbone delayed the surgery for several weeks.

I’ve been under general anesthesia for more surgeries and procedures than I can (or want to) count.  Coming out of it, reality swims into focus much more gradually than when you wake up in the morning.  It seeps into your head as, one by one, your senses come back to life.  From there, it spreads lower to your arms and legs.  They can feel the blanket covering them and the temperature in the room, but they are too heavy to move.  At this point, you’re not sure you want to wake up further, because the place the surgeon cut and stitched is about to hurt, if it doesn’t already.

Then a post-op nurse says your name and asks how you feel.  All you can do is mumble or groan because your tongue feels thick from all the drugs.  Your throat is scratchy from being intubated for hours.  You want to say, “I feel like I was hit by a freight train.”  They spoon feed you ice chips, which melt on your tongue, waking it up.  The cool water soothes your throat.  

All of that happened that day ten years ago.  But this time, I woke up feeling more joy than I thought anyone could feel when they’re that groggy.  I joked with the nurses—something I’ve never done before or since at that stage of recovery.  Maybe the difference was having an organ from a living donor.  Maybe it had something to do with the lively, spirited nature of my donor.  It’s a question I’ll never be able to answer with any certainty.

In almost every living donor transplant, the kidney starts working immediately.  Somehow, I knew it had this time, even before the doctor confirmed it.

Over the past ten years, I’ve had cancer, gall bladder surgery, a major hernia surgery where they put a big sheet of mesh under all my abdominal muscles, and last year the Type 1 diabetes made an unwelcome return.  

The kidney held up through all of it.  It still works as well as it did in 2003.  At ten years, it has lasted twice as long as the first one from a deceased donor did.  

Just after the transplant, the additional vision loss put a damper on the post-transplant euphoria I normally would have had.  It has made my life much more of a challenge than it’s ever been.  Only recently have I realized that without her stepping forward so quickly to give me a kidney, I would have waited much longer. That means I would have been on dialysis much longer and my eyesight would have kept getting worse.  I might have ended up losing all of it.

I admit that too often, with all the hassles of being a middle-aged, legally blind guy adjusting to diabetes again, I forget that I’ve been given a miracle.

My resolution at this major milestone is to remind myself of that fact more often—especially when life is stressful and scary.  The kidney, in addition to keeping me alive and off a dialysis machine, is living proof that God loves me and wants me to be happy.

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My Youth (Circa 1986) Is Calling Me

It’s a quiet Saturday night and I want to get out.  The problem is all my friends are my age, which means too old to call up and say, “Let’s go out and find some excitement.”

Not only that, but I don’t think I have the energy to spend more than an hour anywhere tonight.  I don’t want to go out, but I don’t want to stay in.  So I just sit here feeling old.  I’ve been listening to music from the 80s on YouTube.  My youth is taunting me from the far side of a canyon 20+ years wide.  That little smartass.  I want him to shut up.  

Sometimes his bragging and boasting are pretty broad in scope.  Other times, he’s very specific about his exact location, mocking me with memories of it.  Tonight he’s shouting at me from 1986—a time when I felt especially bold and ready for a new adventure every day.  By early July, I’d been out of college a couple of months and in Tampa only a month.  That young version of me had no real plan, no idea what his next move would be.  But a fresh sheepskin and a wallet full of shiny credit cards keep that from bothering him.  These are his talismans, his shields from worry proof that he was a full-fledged adult.  He didn’t have these things only a few months earlier.  This was the time he dreamed of for four years.  Now he would savor it and take his place in the post-collegiate world..

Never mind that he doesn’t have much money and the humidity in Tampa is almost a hundred percent.  He’ll go out because it’s Saturday night and he’ll have so much fun it won’t matter that his clothes cling to him like they're afraid he'll go off and forget them at the nightclub or wherever else his whim might lead him.

If it’s July, 1986 he still loves the latest hit by Journey called Girl Can’t Help It.  It won’t end up being one of their biggest hits, but it will end up being his favorite song by them.  Maybe it was the steady, strong drum beat, like his steady, strong young heartbeat.  

He'd be deciding what to put on with his stereo turned up loud (to hell with the neighbors upstairs) playing his favorite Top 40 station, called Q Zoo.  Ironically, he's sliding into a pair of button fly Levi's 501s with a 28 inch waist and a madras shirt with the sleeves rolled up.  He surveys himself in a mirror and is quite please, thanks to his newfound habit of working out at a gym.  His confidence has seen a huge uptick.  This while We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off is on.  It seems this song is always on when he's getting dressed to go out or in the car headed out to prowl.

This song, World Destruction, might fill the dance floor.  He loves it and is pretty sure it isn't being played back in Arkansas.

He sees the movie Ruthless People and likes it as much as this Luther Vandross song from the soundtrack.

Maybe 1986 stands out so much because my body enderwent a bit of a makeover.  I found out i actually liked lifting weights and, even more surprising, it was working.  I heard this song, The Other Side of Life, alot at the gym.  It reminded me of what I was doing in Tampa.

By October, he's made several friends, almost all of them transplants from other states, just like himself.  There's a big street party in Ybor City at Halloween.  It's warm and people wear costumes leaving little to the imagination.  He spots several other young people, all with perfect bodies, dressed up (or maybe I should say down) as Baby New Year.  Twenty-two year old me has on old army pants, a green T-shirt, combat boots and a black bandana.  Rambo.  Word Up comes on and he climbs up on a 4-foot wall to watch the crowd dance in the intersection.  He sheds his inhibitions, along with his T-shirt, and carefully dances on the wall.  He feels free, alive, and fearless. 

Invasion of the Wal Martians

The Wal Mart shareholders meeting and extravaganza was last week.  Once a year thousands of shareholders and associates (employees aka Wal Martians) converge at Bud Walton Arena at the University of Arkansas campus here at Fayetteville.  There are free concerts by some big names in entertainment.  This year, Sir Elton John showed up.  Celebrities also make surprise appearances.  This year it was Hugh Jackman (who performed a song from Les Miserables) and Tom Cruise.

If you grew up here, as I did, it’s a bit mind-boggling that these people find their way here at all.  It’s a testament to Wal Mart’s influence and deep pockets.  Having the world’s largest retailer headquartered a few miles up the road adds a different layer of quirkiness to Faytown.  The Big W has always been up in Bentonville, but it hasn’t always been the world’s largest retailer.  If you've been here for a while it’s like having the goose that lays the golden eggs grow up from a gosling in your back yard.

I’ve just started writing a novel about Fayetteville that takes place just before and during shareholders week.  It’s a quirky humor story I’ve had stowed in my brain for a few years now and the time feels right to start it.  Friday night I took an information-gathering field trip to Dickson Street because I knew some Wal Martians would be there to dine out and cut loose after the last day of the event.  I took a friend with good vision so he could point out weird and funny people.

Since my vision got worse ten years ago, there are few things I miss more than people-watching.  

It was a perfect evening to be outside—low humidity and in the 70s.  We ate outside on the balcony at Hog Haus—a perfect vantage point to observe Arkansas’ favorite street.

I wanted to talk to at least one foreign Wal Martian and I wasn’t disappointed.  A table of British Wal Mart associates was at another table on the balcony.  One young woman had on a blue T-shirt with a Superman logo on front and a red cape with writing on the back.  It was something about the British version of Wallyworld and it was the ice-breaker I needed. 

It turned out she was from Yorkshire, the same part of England my family came from a few hundred years ago.  She chatted with us quite a while and I asked her if she’d seen Elton John before.

“No, he’s too expensive to see in England.”  I loved the irony of her seeing a fellow Brit performing in Arkansas of all places.  I wondered what the place must look like to all these foreign visitors.  Then her friend from Manchester joined her.  For a country around the size of Arkansas, the accent can change a lot from place to place.  Her friend said something that didn’t even sound like English.

“What did she say?” I asked my friend.

They all laughed.

“She said a lot of people here can’t understand her.”

Later we ran into other English Wal Martians on the street asking for directions to a karaoke bar.  Why, I wondered, would they want to hear karaoke with all these great bands performing?  But I didn’t want to sound like I was looking down on their culture.  I know Brits like to get drunk and sing in pubs over there.  Hearing an English accent (I never encountered people from any other countries) added a bit of surreality to a street long known as a place where you might see or hear just about anything.

My biggest laugh came when some women told us they were from an area of England called The Midlands.

“You know—where the big rugby stadium is,” she said.

We never heard of that and tried to explain where The Midlands is.

“Well, I figured you weren’t from Midland, Texas,” I joked.

“No, if I was from Texas I’d sound like this…”  Then she did (or tried to do) a Texas accent.  I couldn’t understand what she said even after she repeated it for me.  Trust me, it was hilarious.

By this time next year I plan to buy some Wal Mart stock so I can observe it all up close.  I’d like to think I’ll be finished with the novel by then, but it’s unlikely.  Part of the plot will require me to research a few things I don’t know much about.  I wish that information gathering could be as fun as Friday was.  Most of it will involve looking things up online.

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