Port Townsend, WA 16-NOV-2023 – I’ve lost my sense of time: the unique feeling of how many days passed, or when something happened in the past, has left me. I attribute it to the stroke, but who knows? Like Billy Pilgrim, I’m adrift in time.
When I returned in August I flew to my house in Decatur and spent two weeks there, fixing and repairing and getting to know my three new housemates. I worked every day and saw my stepdaughter Samantha, her boyfriend Zack, and a very good friend Jason.
But, whatever internal clock I once had to tell me it was however many months ago it was, has left me. And, so it is, I’m not writing. I have things to write about, and to quell everyone’s fears.
It’s been nice to have people call and tell me they read this, and are worried that I haven’t written.
I’m fine, and doing well. I thought I was completely back, but when I speak with my family now, they tell me I’m speaking much faster now than I did in August and September, so, I am perhaps not the best judge of my recovery. I haven’t been in any large groups of people, I like to think I’d be able to hold my own. As I think about it, I may be a little slow in responding.
I had a cardioversion done, but my heartbeat was in sinus rhythm for only three days. I spoke with both of my heart doctors – yes, I have two – and we three agreed we would just leave well enough alone. So I am on one Metoprolol in the morning, and two Apixaban (Eloquist), one in the morning and one at night. I’ll be on these for the rest of my life. I feel as if I’ve somehow passed my due date: ten or fifteen years ago I would be paralyzed and speechless in a wheelchair. I have no fear of dying, it’s just like going to sleep and not waking up, but being disabled and unable to speak horrifies me.
I keep a journal, I always have, which allows me to track the days, what I’ve done, and my thoughts. It doesn’t help with the feeling of the passage of time, but it, and the pictures I’ve taken that are sequenced and located in iPhoto, help.
I have been busy, although it doesn’t feel like it. I’ve been making cheese! Quite good feta, hit and miss with brie, and I have a basket-cheese that will be ready for when we leave at the end of April.
I also shed all the extra weight I carried and am now working out 6 to 7 days per week: alternating bicycle rides with two hours at the gym, and ten minutes in the morning exercising with weights and calisthenics.
It takes so long at this age to build muscle, and what will come will not be the bulk that I once carried. I’m still not up to the weights that I was lifting in April, but I’m getting close. The rowing I’m doing is right back up there and getting close to what I could do in my 40s. I’m getting muscles across my back and my chest, my shoulders are filling in, and this morning I noticed I’m getting the beginnings of lats.
I’ve also been scanning pictures. I’m halfway through the second box I started when I returned. I’ve probably done 2000 since I returned in August.
I’ve worked my way through all of my parents’ photographs, seeing pictures of my mother’s father with whom she would have nothing to do. I saw the pictures of my ’56 De Soto when it was new before my aunt gave it to me in ’71 when they would only give her $100 for trade-in.
I was a little lost in time when I was scanning: I knew most of those people and it was time spent with them. I’m working, now, on a box of my parents’ photographs: my family, and my cousins. Again, I traveled back in time for a bit, to when we were the age of our children’s generation, and a little younger than they are now.
I have a videotape from a camera that was passed around one Christmas Eve that I’ve digitized and put up on YouTube. No one else in my family is much interested in it, but when we had our last Christmas together before my dad passed, it was all the same, only instead of myself and my sister and my brothers, it was our nieces and nephews with the same jokes and the same manner of speaking.
Flora has gone off to university and is doing very well there. Jennifer and I are thrilled. She has begun to make friends.
Debra has just gotten back from three weeks in Italy, which meant Jennifer and I had the house to ourselves. It was very nice.
And, my email has been hacked; I’m trying to recover it. It does give me something to do these days. I’m also trying to recover a calendar from the days of 68K Macs. I have two of those, but one blew out its video within an hour of plugging it in, and the second simply refuses to boot.
Jennifer and I have settled on what we’re doing with the boat for 2024 and 2025: we’re sailing it to Puget Sound and will keep it here. We’ll rent out the house from May through September and sail from south-central Alaska (Homer) to Puget Sound in 2024, then just sail around the San Juan’s and British Columbia in 2025. What happens after that is to be decided sometime in the future: Mexico perhaps, or perhaps across the Pacific, or maybe through the canal and up the Atlantic coast.
We’ll keep the boat in Port Hudson from October through April when Port Hudson converts from long-term to transient and then return in the fall for the next cycle.
I have a shopping list of things that I need to buy, and a list of things I need to do: repair the outboard, fix the leaky dripless seal, look for the freshwater leak, and on and on.
We’ll be aboard for five months heading home, Jennifer and me, with a few friends joining us here and there.
I’ve run on, and little of this has to do with Caro Babbo, but it catches you up a little bit and lets you know that I’m safe and sound.
Stay well, my friends. Please contact me and let me know how you are. Come visit us in Port Townsend, we have plenty of space.
Well thank goodness! Looks like you have a lot of work to get to. I’m doing the same things regarding family stuff. Got rid of the 1984 snow blower. It sorta works. The garbage guys asked me if I was selling it. I told them it’s Free. The boys were happy to get it. Seeing as how the last two winters were not to cold and not much snow on my driveway I let them have. A snow shovel will be sufficient, I hope. If I’m really stuck in, my next door neighbor will help out. As for my heath, I can still get around in a car, clean up stuff around the house inside and a bit outside. Enjoy your visitations across the sea! Avoid Iceland for now. You may never know when another volcano shows up.
I will Linda.
John . So glad to hear from you . I think as we get to a certain age things happen . I was diagnosed with Cancer at the end of last but with all the advances in medicine these days I am well and it’s under control. PeggyRose was sold and is now down in the med with a live aboard skipper . I am busy adapting my new boat . Looking forward to reading about your future sailing . Take care . Rob
Rob, I’m very pleased that the cancer is being treated well. That is a terrifying diagnosis. I haven’t been on social media lately, I’ll have to look at your new boat, or can you tell me about it?
I was wondering why you had been radio silent for a while.
It is good to hear you have been busy with life and it is no surprise to hear that you have been spurred on by your stroke. Modern medicine is certainly a wonderful thing, I am amazed with what was accomplished with Alan’s minimally invasive bypass surgery this past May.
Stay well my friend.
I’m going to try to write more.
I’m please Alan is doing well. And you, how are you?
Glad to hear everything is going well now. Liz and I are back on Aloha as of a couple of weeks ago, and currently anchored near Bahia Conception. We spent last summer in Bend, OR in our new home getting to know our Grandaughters. Please say hi to Jennifer for us!
I will. Jennifer will probably call at some point. She is trying to figure out where to go next and Mexico sounds promising for 2026. I’m pleased the house worked well and your having a good time.
Dear John
Great to hear from you and I’ve been wondering lately how you ‘re doing.
Lots of great plans for the future and I wish you lots more great years sailing and loving the adventure tgat cones with it.
So great to see your parents on your video.
Take care and a big hug from us❤️
Ankie,
My mother’s voice was so different than I remembered. It is a bit of time travel.
We’ll be coming through Vancouver in September, so I hope we’ll see you.
Trudi said she’s shopping for a boat.
John good to hear you are alive and well. I really like that photo of you at the dining table. It’s interesting to see how other people live what their surrounds look like. Just doing a 360-degree scan from where I am sitting at our dining table and there is a nautical knick-knack everywhere I look.
Your Aunt looks really stylish in the old photo. Wondering what inspired that pose I did a google search and found some great 1950s De Soto car advertisements. I could easily imagine her reading Vogue magazine and being influenced by some of the ads.
Keep up the writing.
Cheers Drew
Drew, I don’t really write there. I’ve been delegated to a table by a sliding glass door in the dollhouse (you’ve been here).
A cheesecake photo.
Grace was a hell of gal… but not very nice, and quite racist. However, anyone of color she ever met were wonderful people. I think she was mugged once.
We got along well because I understood her, which she misinterpreted as approving of her. Mac, her husband, was a wonderful, gentle man who adored her.
Where are you now?
Please have Jennifer give us a call, and we can chat about Mexico.
Will do.
John, it is so good to hear from you. I know this has been a difficult time in your life. But, on the bright side, you are getting better with time and still being John.
Darlene and I are doing good for being in ur 80s. We are spending Thanksgiving in Florida with our oldest son and his family. We will spend Christmas in Lithia Springs where we live.
Write when you feel in the mode and keep doing what you are doing. It sounds like it is working for you.
God Bless and take care my friend.
Don
Hi Don,
Yes, I’m still me. I don’t know how I would know if my personality had changed, except for what people tell me
I’m pleased you’re doing so well. You are a walking advertisement for that heart valve.
We’re going to spend Thanksgiving in Port Townsend with some friends and Jennifer’s children. It should be quite nice. One of the group has never been to the West Coast and has been working on a startup in New Orleans for the last 6 years, so I’m pleased to give him out for a while.
Have a great thanksgiving
Checkin’ in from here in NYC. Glad to hear your ‘voice.’ You sound in good spirits, and busy. Hope to see you soon.
Good to hear from you. Yes, I am all those things.
I may be there in the spring. I’ll call ahead.
Many thanks for the update, and good to see you writing again!
Ah, photographs and memories – was that Jim Croce or John Prine? Yes, I could look it up, but it seems apt to hang onto that uncertainty about these things that we used to carry comfortably in the days before the internet.
I delighted in skipping around a little in the Christmas video – thank you for that! Felt a bit like a digital voyeur, peeking in on another life. I’ll text you to catch up!