Saturday, April 20, 2019

Soaking Prayer

It has been a roller coaster of a week, and I doubt this ride will end any time soon.

First off, thank you -- thank you! -- to everyone who prayed for my dad last week. His surgery went smoothly, and the initial reports were favorable. Sadly, that all changed on Thursday when we heard that the pathology reports showed showed cancer -- an aggressive cancer, a cancer that had metastasized. On Friday we heard that the cancer was probably not typically an aggressive cancer, but that it had indeed metastasized.

We are experiencing emotional whiplash.

I have no medical expertise, so I can't explain the differences between small cell cancers and large cell cancers. I don't know precisely what "deep tissue" means. I don't understand how a non-aggressive cancer metastasizes.

But I know Dad is sick.

As my mom declined, I certainly struggled with the big hurdles she faced -- the broken bones and the surgeries -- but some of her little sufferings were the hardest to face.

I remember sitting with her as technician after technician tried -- unsuccessfully -- to get a vein in her emaciated frame.

I remember glancing at a New York Times crossword puzzle -- the puzzle that Mom did every week, in about an hour, in pen, in perfect Cathodic school girl penmanship -- and finding the puzzle a quarter of the way done in a nearly illegible script.

I remember playing Scrabble and in her post-broken clavicle, post-surgical, post-nursing home that damn near killed her haze, my brilliant mother couldn't spell the word C-A-T and, worse still, she knew she couldn't spell C-A-T, knew she was supposed to be able to spell C-A-T, and looked up at me with tears coursing down her sunken cheeks. 

She was slipping, slipping fast. There was no denying it, and it broke my heart.

But this I know: We can pray.

And this I know, too: None of this is wasted. God has numbered our days and counted are tears and continues to work in the midst of our pain and suffering and loss.

Alleluia Community has a gift of intercessory prayer. We have seen a few true miracles -- defied the odds, baffled the experts, made the newspaper kinds of miracles. More often we see less dramatic but in some ways equally as astonishing miracles  --  the young woman diagnosed with terminal cancer who lived an additional nineteen years despite her diagnosis; the husband and father, also diagnosed with terminal cancer, who is going strong twenty-five years later; truly sick people who were not suddenly and completely healed but who went on to live and to love and to serve because of the consistent, soaking prayer offered up again and again and again.

And that's what I ask for my dad -- soaking prayer.

He is the heart of our family, we love him, and we want him to live to be a doddering old man. 

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Food Just Like Your Mother Makes

Tim is moving up in the world of food and beverage.

He was promoted from Dining Room Assistant (a.k.a Bus Boy) to Server (a.k.a Waiter) just in time to rake in some impressive tips.

Tim studied the Masters menu with all the diligence of a pre-med major cramming organic chemistry.

And what a menu! Their premiere Masters entree? Fennel dusted elk. Yes. Tim painstakingly wrote out flashcards detailing the dishes, the sides, the appetizers, and a lengthy list of wines in all their varieties.  Black Angus tenderloin with shiitake Madeira emulsion, raspberry infused duck breast with chambord glaze, and, of course, the fennel dusted elk.

"You should feel right at home," I told Tim. Oddly, meatloaf and macaroni and cheese are not on the menu at the Augusta Country Club.

I think Tim cleared over $200 in tips last night. I wondered if they're still hiring.

Up the street at the Augusta National, Kolbe is making some serious bank as a veteran member of Litter Patrol. The hardest part would be the hours. Kolbe clocks in at 6:00 a.m. and clocks out between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. If you're attending the tournament, be sure to drop some trash in the vicinity of the second hole. Kolbe's got you covered.

Meanwhile I am part-time Uber driver and
full-time director of laundry. Completely unpaid, largely unheralded, but mostly appreciated by the gainfully employed who really are thankful for clean polo shirts and aprons.

Tim is in the market for  a reliable used car. Call, text, or message him or me with any leads. I will happily wave goodbye to half my Uber duties.

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

National Siblings Day

Totally captures my three sons.



A Masterful Week

There's a little golf tournament that comes to Augusta every April. You may have heard of it.

Many Augustans open their homes to Masters guests. This year we took a baby step in that direction by renting out two rooms to college students who have internships at the National. These are students from the University of South Carolina enrolled in a course called "Golf Events," (a course which sounds much more fun than Macroeconomics, Money and Banking, Government Regulation of Industry, and most of the other classes I took back in the day). One of their course requirements is to spend spring break working the tournament. We have four very nice young men staying with us.

Hospitality for me means two things.

First, I clean with a vengeance. I sort and scrub and declutter with enthusiasm and vigor. Conveniently, the senior class yard sale coincided with my cleaning spree. A full truckload of Dolin castoffs-- a soccer goal and  a few board games, a pedestal sink and some old furniture --
went out the door in support of a good cause.

Hard deadlines are my friends. Oh, yes they are! I return items that have been sitting on top of the washing machine for six months. Hand me downs headed to the neighbors actually go to the neighbors. I wash windows I've been meaning to get to. In short, good has been done here. The kids' rooms look amazing.

But Hospitality seems to invited a second, less welcome guest: broken stuff.  I suspect that houses being houses things just break, but these things are much more noticeable when you have guests. Paying guests take it up a notch. On Saturday the AC began pumping out hot air. On Sunday the refrigerator started leaking. On Monday the toads started, well, um, making an awful lot of noise. (We have a small, ornamental pond that attracts the occasional toad except for about 48 hours per year when it attracts dozens of toads who are extremely loud because they're, well, happy. Note to the toads: You're not welcome Masters week!)

We called the HVAC guy. We put a towel under the fridge. I sent Ainsley out into the yard to catch the toads.

It's all good.



Monday, April 08, 2019

Prayers Appreciated

My dear Dad goes into surgery momentarily. I covet all your prayers for the best of all outcomes.

Here's my favorite piece written about one of my favorite people:



Two years ago I wrote the following post about Dad. I don't think I could say it today any better than I said it then. He still rocks!
My father's birthday came and went, and the post I had written in my mind never made it to the screen. My message is brief, and I lift it from the Gymboree t-shirt John wore last Father's Day:

My Dad Rocks!

My Dad rocks in a thousand ways -- some significant, some trivial.

Years ago, when my sister was considering an important decision, Dad offered some blunt advice.

"When you have kids," he shared, "your dreams die."

On the face of it, you would think those words stemmed from a life of disappointment and bitterness, from a person disillusioned and disenchanted. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When my parents first married, Dad owned his own business. It was a T.V. and radio shop. Dad is a mechanical wizard and has a passion for all things electronic. I'm sure he loved setting his own hours and being his own boss.

When children began arriving in regular succession, Dad closed his business and ultimately invested decades in a career with the Bell System. He was not his own boss and did not set his own hours. It was no dream job, I'm sure, but he was able to support us nicely, to pay tuition at Catholic schools,  to provide health insurance.

In short, he let a dream die.

In truth, though, Dad is a man of many, many dreams. The T.V. shop closed, but he went on to pursue a hundred other joys -- fishing and ham radios, model airplanes and chess. He loved the water and always dreamed of living on a lake.

He had a passion for boats. We always had boats. Yes, that's plural. Dad's record was owning four boats at one time. Dad would typically buy a clunker held together by a thin veneer of varnish and spend years refurbishing it. When I was a baby, he ordered a sailboat kit and built an entire boat in our basement. He then ripped out half the kitchen to get it out of the house. True story. The entire neighborhood and the local media turned out for the occasion. 

We often joked that my father had nine lives. He was forever slicing this or breaking that while sailing or carving or chiseling.

Around the office Dad was known as "Rapid Regan";  in our family he was "Gotta Go." He attended school years before anyone had heard of ADHD. Had he been born fifty years later, no doubt he would have had a lengthy string of letters after his name. I am sure he was a challenge in the classroom and at home. My boys love to hear the story of their Great Grandmother sending Grandpa to his room and then finding him inexplicably flying a kite out his bedroom window. No doubt there is a bevy of nuns who bypassed Purgatory entirely for having attempted to divert one Keith Regan from his chess manuals and radio magazines and in the direction of grammar and algebra.

Dad is something of a character. One of his most endearing qualities is his ability to laugh at his own foibles. We laugh right along with him. Last week I sat engrossed in a game of Scrabble and listened to my sister attempt to teach Dad how to check his email. Her tone alternated between patient and patronizing as he interjected "What the hell's that for?' and "Ah, forget it! Just forget it!"

After about sixty seconds of this,  my shoulders were shaking and tears coursed down my face I was laughing so hard.

Why? Because I've hear this identical exchange every! time! I! visit! I mean, every time. Don't you know these software engineers have formed a vast conspiracy to frustrate Keith Regan and Keith Regan alone?

Dad is still best friends with Lerew, a childhood pal. I will never forget the weekend they spent driving around trying to scam free Wi-Fi access. They finally succeeded by creeping in great stealth up the driveway of an exclusive club. They came home thrilled with their success and chuckling over their antics, two men in their seventies with multiple open heart surgeries between them. I wondered if they had thrown TP through the trees and scammed a beer or two.

I remember having coffee with my sister on my parents' deck as Dad fished offshore. We looked up to see Dad gesturing wildly, arms flailing madly. Kate and I immediately burst out laughing. No need to hear the dialogue. Make no mistake about it -- someone had just lost a Walleye.

Walleye fishing is a part of everyday life because Dad is living out his dream of living on the water. My parents live on an island in Lake Erie.

To me, that is a key part of their story. There is a time to do the right thing, to let a dream die. But, in Dad's case, he was really embracing another dream. He took hold of that new dream and didn't get mired in self-pity. He didn't count the cost over and over again. He found a life of purpose, of commitment, of excitement, of unexpected joy. In the end many of his dreams did come to pass.

That's a lesson I hope I have learned from my father.

Now in their 52nd year of marriage,  my parents are now, without question, walking through the "for worse " part of their wedding vows. My mother lives with chronic pain and rapidly diminishing mobility. Obviously, my dad lives with this as well. Pressing medical needs make life on an island in Lake Erie a tad problematic.

On a recent visit, Dad casually mentioned, "We need to think about selling the house."

The house. The house he built. The house on the lake.

Dad shared this with all the gravity of discussing new tires or having a tree removed. We need to think about selling the house.

Why? Because he is a courageous man, a man willing to let one dream die so that a more important one might live, a man who knows he will not succumb to bitterness and self-pity if things -- even really important things -- don't go his way.

I pray that he doesn't have to sell the house, but the fact that he can utter those words, can face that possibility, simply reinforces my longstanding view:

My Dad Rocks!