Boatdiver

 The photograph above was taken just a few weeks ago, back on the evening of the first Saturday in October.  Pictured, if you are not familiar with the Schaefer clan, is yours truly, the bearded one, and his much younger & better-looking brother, Joe.  

Cindy & I had spent the day driving over from Dayton to Joe & MaryAnn’s place outside Charlottesville, Virginia.  I like to tell folks “my brother lives in Tom Jefferson’s neighborhood.”  And, indeed, ’tis true.  Monticello is just a few miles down the very road they take regularly to get home.  

I snapped that “selfie” after dinner, though it wasn’t the first photo I took. The primary image would be a photo of my little brother, all by himself.  I had every expectation it would be the last photo I would ever take of him alive.  

I posted the image of both of us to Facebook on Sunday, just saying how good it was to visit family.  Lots of loving comments, not least of which was, “sure can tell they’re brothers!  Look at that hair!”  True enough indeed.  Best we can tell that DNA came from the Zimmer side of the genetic pool. 

What I did not post on Facebook was that Joe was dying.  Cancer.  Don’t know which one, but it got one of his kidneys three years ago, and recently made a raging return.  All the medical staff at the University of Virginia Hospital could do was prolong the inevitable.  Joe was very grateful for their care. 

After dinner Joe talked about what his body was up against, none of it sounded good, but he also talked about looking forward to doing some surf fishing.  Over breakfast the next morning, things continued to go well.  Joe was actually eating a little bit, something that had been a real problem of late.  

He stepped away from the table for a minute and came back wearing a heavy sweater.  Then the chills set in.  He said he thought it was “a fever,” and figured the best place for him was sitting in front of a burning gas fireplace.  MaryAnn encouraged him to take some Tylenol, but his last six-hour dose hadn’t expired yet, and Joe didn’t want to take meds before he should.  He’d wait out the chills.  This wasn’t the first time.  

In the midst of all that, with the reality we had a long drive yet that day, our visit expired and Cindy & I took our leave, giving Joe hugs and a kiss, wishing him the best.  On the way out, MaryAnn said she was determined to get some meds into Joe to calm his shivering.  She texted an hour or so later that she was successful.  

By day’s end, Cindy & I found ourselves at our Hilton Head villa, eager to get started on our two-week fall beach vacation.  By Monday morning, though, as I sat on the deck in a warming sun, I felt some words coming together for something about Joe.  I got the Mac word processor up and running, and out popped this tribute to a “flawed but really good man.”

Boatdiver

I have found the older I get the less I really know about the siblings I grew up with.  What I know about them — who I think they are — is primarily product of the years spent growing up with them on Fauver Avenue.  I am surely aware of the professional accomplishments of each and celebrate them for it:   Patty as an office professional for the City of Kettering, Mike as a guy supervising IT that kept natural gas flowing through the Midwest, Marty as the heart & muscle of the art department at San Diego Public Schools, Ted as a vice president at Kroger who spent time with employees in Memphis recently after the mass shooting in a store there, baby Susan as human relations chief for Bobcat heavy equipment sales & service for over half the state of Ohio. 

But there’s so much more I just don’t know about them.  What do they prize most in life?  What comes up in bed talk with their partner?  Who is the number one person in history they’d like to have a long conversation with over dinner, a cup of coffee, or a beer?  What horrors did they experience in their lives they never wanted to share with the rest of us, whether for not wanting to burden us with their pain or calculating their silence as a product of their own shame?  Or who or what do they think God really is, expressed in detail from their heart of hearts? 

One of those six siblings, brother Joseph William Schaefer, is especially in my heart today.  It’s easy for me to think of him as Joey, but he gave up that moniker long ago and reserves it for his own son today.  But for the younger brother who came into my reality when I was seven, a part of me will always know him as Joey, the kid who came up with the name Flufflo for one of our pet Easter rabbits.  I have this image etched in my mind of a smiling little Joey, who must have been about three, kneeling on the kitchen floor under a chair offering a leaf of lettuce to an animal who had absolutely no idea what in the heck was going on.  

I have another image in my head of him grinning while holding a hockey stick on the frozen waters of a pond at Eastwood Park, a site the city of Dayton monitored & kept a warming fire burning.  Not sure what other sports he enjoyed, but I know he sang in the choir at Belmont High School and somehow got himself and our youngest brother involved in the school’s performances of Oliver Twist.  Back then that seemed like a pretty big deal to an older brother.  

For some painful reason it was Joe who was identified, even by himself, as the “black sheep” of the family.  The oldest brother went to the seminary for high school, but all the others of us were proud to call ourselves tuition-paying Carroll Patriots.  All except Joe.  I was old enough not to be too interested in the development of the younger sibs, but scuttlebutt was Joey wasn’t much of a student.  And if his grades weren’t going to be that good, why pay tuition?  So off he went to a public high school where, I guess, he could either sink or swim. 

When all was said and done, he surfaced just fine.  Couldn’t tell you his grade point, but what the Air Force recruiter saw was good enough for the military, which did, indeed, morph into quite a respectable career in radios.  Personally, I never understood exactly what Joe did with tubes & transistors while stationed in Germany, but by the end of his career, he served on an Executive Branch team that assured President George H. W. Bush and later Vice President Al Gore would be in good communication with the powers-that-be back in the nation’s capital regardless of where in the world they landed.   Just last week Joe told a story of some shenanigans in Kennebunkport, Maine, when then-President Bush & Barbara were vacationing at the compound their family made famous.  

Let me just say that as I assess the life paths the Magnificent Seven all settled into, I have to conclude the black sheep of the family surpasses all of the rest of us in some pretty cool categories.  First off, he’s seen parts of the world the rest of us will only dream about. It may have been hot and our nation at war, but as the forward ops for the Executive Branch, he’s napped and had dinner in countless mess halls and restaurants not just across the country, but around the world.  And as that government radio guy, he’s been in proximity to consequential human beings the other six of us will only read about in the paper.  But Joe was there. 

You might wonder where the title of this essay comes from:  Boatdiver.  Well, that would be Joe’s internet handle, drawn from his love of donning scuba gear and descending into another world the rest of his sibs can only conjure by watching the  National Geographic channel.  Sure, he is a fisherman, like so many of us (somehow I missed that gene), but he’s seen water worlds that other family fisher folk only experience from the surface.  I think that is not only notable but freaking amazing.  Plus he’s driven over every covered bridge in the state of Virginia on his Harley Davidson, probably having been the organizer of the weekend event for regional bike aficionados.  

When our Mother passed away back in January 2018, Cindy Lou & I were on a Hawaiian cruise celebrating our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and her sixtieth birthday.  You’d think we’d be the ones the most miles from home.  Not so.  Joe was volunteering as a Knight of Columbus in the African bush trying to solve a serious problem for the locals:  providing them with a reliable source of drinking water.  On another trip, he & his buddies worked to create a building that would serve as a health center for folks who had to travel miles to see a doctor for a sick kid.  Fair to say young master Joey undoubtedly found his heart in very righteous places.  

No doubt Mom & Dad were proud of all their kids when we were young, and celebrated our accomplishments as we trod our individual paths.  I am amazed at the uniquely different roads we all took, connected yet independent of all the others.  As a brother, I am so proud of all of us, yet I’ve got to say, that Boatdiver guy is truly something special. 

I love you, Joe.  

Big T       

Joe’s pet nickname for me

Tom Schaefer

      October 2021

* * *

By the end of our second week, we got word from the family that Joe would be admitted to hospice. Medical staff could do no more. It didn’t take long for Cindy & me to know our drive home would include a return visit to central Virginia. 

So much more to say, but let me save those reflections for another day.  Let me close with these realities: 

Joe’s 64th birthday was 23 September 2021. 

All Joe’s sibs made it to his hospice bedside.

Joe was released from this worldly dominion 

on 23 October 2021.

Today’s elder idea:   Take care of each other.

A mantra Joe would be proud to own

                                                    Fauver Avenue, Easter 1964.  

                                                            Joe lower left in grey jacket.

A writer's life

Truth is, I have a lousy memory.  No doubt it’s getting worse, but for all of my life I have been aware of not remembering stuff I thought I should.  How many times did I stare at an essay test question in disbelief, realizing in that moment my brain had gone completely blank on what the hell that question was even about.  And names?  Oh, goodness.  Faces I remember pretty well, and the sound of voices, but names?  After Christmas break I’d have to study seating charts just to familiarize myself again with the names of my students.  

But this lament isn’t really about loss of memory, but the value of being a reasonably regular intermittent journalist.   (How’s that for a tongue twister?  :-)   One more time: a reasonably regular intermittent journalist.

Translation: I do like to write.  Never really thought of myself as a writer, until the book, surely not a news journalist, but I’ve learned in my retired life that I can sit here at the keyboard all freaking day if the muses are whispering to me.  Yesterday I cranked out over ten pages of fiction while sitting on the back patio, bluetooth keyboard in my lap, laptop computer propped up on the patio table just far enough away that my computer glasses still kept my eyes in focus.   I gave up when it got dark.

I also just like to babble to myself from time to time in personal journal entries.  Some grow into blog entries like this one, but most just reside on a page or two, written perhaps in the middle of the night when a memorable thought haunts me to the point that I just go write.  This summer’s long-running journal entry, begun back at the end of June, is titled “Simply grateful,” in homage to a good buddy who is in a medical fight for his life, who ALWAYS signs off in emails and on FaceBook as Grateful Mike.  As a journalist trying to capture the flavor of the season, that lovely touch of living really got my attention.  

My seasonal journals can get a bit metaphysical, depending on how intoxicated I am at the time, but pretty often they record important stuff going on in my life.  This summer’s first entry briefly summarized our Hilton Head Island villa-buying experience, but mostly dug a bit deeper into what I am comfortable admitting to myself.  

Translation:   After a lifetime of contemplation, a few of those years under the care of a psychotherapist, I seek to write only the Truth in my personal journals.  And as a person who evaluates nearly everything he learns, when a clarification of a thought jumps at me, it’s best to get to the writing right away, or at least make a note on the pad on the nightstand for consideration in the morning.  Sometimes it’s just a dream and doesn’t amount to much, but sometimes it seems mighty damn important.  

“New” personal realizations to me are akin to the “layer of the onion” analogy in which when one layer comes loose, something deeper, that frankly might have been there all along, becomes visible/memorable.  It’s just that I hadn’t made the mental connection until that moment & I figure that’s pretty important.  

And that stuff, my friends, is what I consider a prime benefit of a writer’s life:  recording the really good stuff as memory jog so you can treasure the road taken, and those not, at later times along a journey only I am on.  

I guess what I’m hoping is that my computer journals plus my stacks of old handwritten stuff & my poetry notebooks will find a safe place to hang out until somebody deems them a worthy time capsule into an old school teacher’s lifetime — at least for those few family members who get bitten by the genealogy bug.   

PS:  Just to clarify that reasonably regular intermittent journalist thing:  summer 2021 journal entries so far:  27 June, 30 June, 27 July, and 10 August.  Ten word-processed pages, totaling about 3k words.  Might mention thirteen new poems reside in the 2021 poetry collection, plus a few dozen pages of romantic fiction that I’m just about too embarrassed to mention.  I want it to be erotica, but Cindy thinks it’s just juicy romantic fiction.  Hmm…

Today’s elder idea:  Poetry is like a personal journal without the lock. 

Billy Collins

1977

 One of the few things I’m enjoying about being in my seventh decade on this planet is the frequency of a joyful memory popping through my gray matter and then contemplating it over the rest of my day and sometimes longer.  The memory at the core here, unfortunately, came up while doing one of my least favorite things:  attending a funeral.  But as I have come to know over all these years, sometimes cool stuff can find root in sad or even ugly beginnings.  

    This particular side road found a wider horizon when I asked a friend after the viewing to clarify her comment that she had a list of songs she wanted to be played at her own life memorial.  In emails on following days those songs from Josh Groban, Diamond Rio, and Wicked were enumerated and then added to a computer playlist of mine for further musical consideration when time allows.  

I countered that so far there’s just one song on my funeral agenda, one by John Denver: “Singing skies & dancing waters.”  I’ve had that song on my mind for quite a while now, but as the old guy I am, I had the immediate inclination to go find it for a good listen and a little bit more meditation.  

Turns out “Singing skies…” was a song on the 1977 Denver album I want to live.  A few things immediately jumped up to consider.  First off, John Denver was a national treasure back in the 70’s, selling a ton of albums, doing concerts internationally, starring in television specials and a movie or two, like Oh, God!, and pretty much taking up residence in my heart.  I sang in a band back then, so when a Denver song made our set list, it was usually me who got the lead vocal.  Didn’t take me long to memorize all of  “Rocky Mountain High” and in fact, held that song as a mantra that lead to my first expedition West with my young Ohio family in, as you might have guessed, 1977. 

I was 27 years old that summer with the goal of not only seeing, but experiencing mountains.  Denver sang, He was born in the summer of his 27th year, coming home to a place he’d never been before….  That was me, okay, though it would be a few more years before I actually applied for a teaching gig in Boise, thinking the City of Trees would be a good place to bring up two girls.  

While the idea of Idaho was energizing, too, it was that first drive across Kansas in our 1972 used Chevy Nova, fighting overheating on a very hot summer day, with the dream of Colorado mountaintops coming visible through a light high plains haze, that is still most precious to me.  Jenni was just 4 years-old then while Chris & I chatted about making a baby since she was about done at Wright State.  And we did!  Kelly became another lovely consequence of that first soul-searching expedition to the mysterious mountains that have called so many generations of Americans.

For my family in 1977, it was a couple nights camping in Estes Park, but the big deal was five days hiking up from Horseshoe Park to Lawn Lake, paralleling the Roaring River, that same waterway that would breech its dam a few years later, scouring out the mountainside while taking a handful of campers with it. Glad we went when we did.  

But in 1977, when John Denver’s I want to live hit the airwaves, it was still “Rocky Mountain High” that resonated with me on this family expedition.  And yet it was another song on that album that would become seminal in my life, but not for a few more years.  

By my early thirties, I was embarking on a Master of Humanities degree at good old Wright State that would not only give me a pay raise, but bring me to come to love Emily Dickinson, birds, and the Audubon Ecology Workshop in Maine.  If you know me at all, you know how important all those three have become in my life.  And in that midst, John Denver reached in to touch my heart yet again. 

To finish the MHum program, students were assigned an interdisciplinary project that sought to tie various elements of their study into a unique product.  For me that would be photography, a musical soundtrack, and content provided by Ms. Dickinson; her first editor, Mabel Loomis Todd; and the Audubon Camp on Hog Island.  I had had some success creating two-projector synchronized slide shows, and used all of those skills to create “The Road past Amherst,” which documented the summer 1981 trip to Maine, this time including both Jennifer and Kelly.  Along with some “Music for Films” by Brian Eno, I picked the song “I want to live” from that very same John Denver album to finish off my visual story.  I asked a good buddy and band member to play guitar while I sang and did a harmony.  To date, my version of “I want to live” is the only solo song I ever recorded.  All the rest I still have from those lovely days are with all of our band, Collage.  

To round out that all-important MHum project, however, I added another element: a long four-chapter paper with a partially borrowed title:  The Epic of Hog: The Todd Bingham Family and the Establishment of the Audubon Ecology Workshop in Maine.  In that paper I took a look at how important Nature was to Romanticism and how the benefactors of Audubon’s Camp, the Todd Bingham family, were products of that metaphysical thinking.  And again, if you know me well, you know exactly where “my book” comes from.  I expect Nature’s People: The Hog Island story from Mabel Loomis Todd to Audubon to be available, at long last, summer 2022.  

So, 1977:  such a time in a young man’s life.  For me it was my first foray into an enigmatic but frightening wilderness, plus the beginning of a life-long expedition that would bring me another daughter, a master’s degree, some confidence as a writer, and the roots of an upcoming love affair with Emily Dickinson.  

And I am pleased to report that all that 1977 stuff still brings me joy.  

Today’s elder idea:  

An excerpt from JD’s “Singing skies & dancing waters”:

If my faith should falter and I should forsake you and find myself turning away, 

Will you still be there?  Will you still be there?  

I’ll be there in singing skies and dancing waters, 

laughing children, growing old, 

and in the heart and in the spirit,

and in the Truth when it is told.

Excerpted from the John Denver album I want to live. (RCA 1977)