Feline Fortitude

Fully supporting the New Year resolution, Minerva reads to Kathy from "How To Quit....."

Tokyo Vignettes

...Or, What Do You Do When You Realize It's Holiday and Everything Is Closed?

You could visit Tokyo Tower, but don't go up to the top...


You could get some interesting coffee from a vending machine:

(Reminded me of a Sylvester Stallone movie)

Or, you could find an English Pub and have pub food, with beer, cider, or coke.

(Deuce and Sandy, take note.)



So even if the Edo and Sumo Museums are closed, you can still have fun in Tokyo.

Tales from the Crypts: Uninvited Holiday Guests

Has anyone ever shown up at your place for the holidays, unexpected and not really wanted? Did you graciously succumb to the holiday spirit and invite them in, along with whatever baggage (human or otherwise) they brought with them? Or did you do the Ebenezer thing and gruffly shoo them away from your doorstep? Perhaps in a moment of weakness you did invite them in, only to later suffer the pain of getting them to leave.


We had very welcome arrivals in our house this holiday season. Our twenty-something bright, attractive, smart, and witty daughter/stepdaughter not only graced us with her own presence, but she also brought our two family cats. Five months have passed since we were last together, so we were delighted to see all three of them arrive.


Little did we know that she also carried some very unwanted and definitely not invited guests. She as well was oblivious in the beginning to the ultimate pain that she would suffer in getting rid of these nefarious interlopers.

Mr. Strept O. Coccus and his paramour Ms. E-B Virus had found the perfectly susceptible holiday party hostess: a young, hard-working and dedicated graduate student who had severely challenged her immune system for weeks as she finished a demanding semester and got herself and two cats ready for trans-Pacific travel (including stressful interactions with the U.S. Army and the Government of Japan); followed by a 14 hour flight over as many time zones. As soon as golden girl settled into our home and recovered from her jet lag these clandestine culprits quietly invaded her tonsillar crypts and promptly set about reproducing at will. As they and each successive generation of offspring multiplied themselves, soon the young lady's entire oropharynx (tonsils, adenoids, arytenoids, and all the soft tissue in between) were jammed with raucously partying microorganisms.


Seldom herself the life of any party, this unwilling hostess found the pain of this microreverie nearly unbearable. Courageously she fought off the discomfort through Christmas Eve and midnight Mass, but by the next day the celebration had spread throughout her soft palate and into her cervical lymph nodes. With the pain came fever, chills, malaise, and generalized body aches. These germ guys can seriously party. She was left no choice but to take to bed for extended periods of time, forcing cancellation of a trip north and putting her return flight to the USA in some jeopardy.


Enter the hero! After three days of suffering it was time to call in the antimicrobial strike force, led by Sgt. Clin D. Mycin. This fearless fighter of micro-terrorists swiftly and efficiently went to work. First the force eradicated the younger germs just as they began to reproduce themselves, then Sgt. Mycin took on the older troublemakers. None would be spared. Total eradication! 


Within 48 hours, order was restored, swelling and inflammation were curtailed, and pain was alleviated. Her strength and energy returned. Happily restored to good health, our heroic young lady returned safely to the east coast of America, ready to dive headlong into yet another demanding semester to be followed by yet another trans-Pacific trip for her brother's high school graduation. Only next time there will be no cats to transport. And she will be better rested and more resistent. Really.

Reflections on "St. Elsewhere"

This Emergency Department scene from the early 1980's TV show, "St. Elsewhere" recalls similar scenes from the Phoenix hospital, where I practiced emergency medicine at the time. Although we had no one of the stature of Denzel Washington or Ed Begley, Jr., we experienced similar dramas and challenges as the ones depicted in that iconic TV drama. Back then I had neither the time nor interest to watch more than a partial episode. I was a full-time emergency physician and chose to spend my leisure time in non-work related activities. Did teachers watch "Room 222"? Did law enforcement officers watch the plethora of police shows on TV at the time?


Nowadays my family and I often watch TV series on DVD because we appreciate the closed captions and lack of commercials. About two years ago we got into classic TV drama series with "Picket Fences". Now "St. Elsewhere" fills our viewing time.  In the process, our teenage and twenty-something offspring seem to enjoy  glimpses of life in the "old days," which I find entertaining as well.


"Did you ever do that, Dad?" 


"Actually, yes." The TV show realistically portrays both the science and art of medicine at the time...including now obsolete practices like intracardiac adrenaline.


 "No way could someone be in labor and not even know she was pregnant! Right, Dad?" Well, yes they can. Happened twice in my practice. Both full-term. Truth can be stranger than fiction.


Watching "St. Elsewhere" over twenty years later brings back a flood of memories, poignantly so because quite a few years have passed since I worked a regular shift in the emergency department. Few places on earth put you so close to real life drama, to personal tragedy and triumph. I still remember some of the patients I saw and treated. My heart still aches recalling the times I had to tell a family that their loved one had passed. "We did all we could" sounds even more trite now that it did then. But I also recall the thrill of feeling a faint pulse where seconds ago there was none, the welcome whisper of a scant breath bringing new oxygen to an almost dying body, the return of a blood pressure as bleeding was stopped, and the joy of telling an anxious family that all would be okay.


As a young narcissistic emergency physician I was hooked on the adrenalin rushes of those challenges and triumphs. A good shift was marked by the numbers of major trauma and cardiac patients seen and resuscitated. (How I pitied my internal medicine colleagues who must deal with chronic, unexciting maladies day after day after day.) But as the years went on I experienced more tragedy than triumph. The dramas of the human condition played out in the ED often reflect the one-to-one statistical correlation of life to death. The only variable is when and how one will die. When that final moment occurred on my shift, I was never empowered to change destiny. In death or in life, I was simply the instrument of a higher power's plan.


Once I recognized and accepted that reality, I matured both as a physician and human being. Success was no longer measured by blood pressures and respirations, but by the degree of compassion and empathy given to fellow humans in times of life crisis. That was when I became not just a physician, but a real doctor, and where I found the true meaning of my honorable profession...rooted as it is in the Latin word meaning "to teach" and reflected in the tenets of the Oath of Hippocrates.


The young resident physicians portrayed in "St. Elsewhere" are not yet real doctors, although some are further along than others. Their fictional mentors, Drs. Auschlander and Westphall, do understand that their professional value is fully vested not in themselves but in service to their patients. Their vital role in the drama is to instill those values in the young physicians who follow them. Some will get it, and their careers will mature. Others will not, just as Chief of Surgery Dr. Mark Craig still doesn't understand it, and never will. Here too fiction reflects reality, and little has changed from the 1980's to today. 


I ardently pray that today's Auschlanders and Westphalls, whoever and wherever they are, will prevail.

I Saw Kathy Kissing Peko-Chan...

Christmas eve day Kathy (who is an excellent driver!) drove the four of us to Kamakura with promises of the world's tastiest waffles at one of the many fantastic little restaurants in our favorite Japanese town. She adroitly motored across the Miura Peninsula, along Zushi Beach, and into Kamakura. After a short narrated tour of the main drag, she turned left onto a very narrow street - beckoned by one of those ubiquitous semi-official men waving large wands that resemble light sabers. Another helpful Japanese gent very professionally guided her into a primo parking spot from where we alighted just steps from the main drag.


Unfortunately the famous waffle restaurant was closed, so we lunched in the Fujiya restaurant, home of  Peko-chan. This cute young lady is not only a long-time favorite character in Japan, she is also Kathy's alter ego (well, one of them). We especially love her around the holiday season. She was in front of the store, all decked out in Christmas red, so who could resist a loving buss on the cheek...even if it did make her head bobble a bit (Peko's, not Kathy's). I always enjoy bringing Kathy to Peko places because her unabashed cuteness (Peko's AND Kathy's) always fills us with joy .


The remainder of the day we meandered the little shopping street, munched on freshly baked rice crackers, bought Kate a really cool hat, petted a CC look-alike cutout cat, and noted the "White House" complete with Texas Flag. 

On our return trip to Yokosuka, Kathy once again demonstrated both her driving and navigational perspicacity by first finding the Yoko-Yoko expressway, then cleverly leaving it at the Zushi exit to avoid a traffic jam, thence winding through very long tunnels and unfamiliar roads right back to the CFAY main gate. 


We all avow that Kathy-san certainly earned and deserves her very special Peko-chan holiday gifts this year. Peko would be proud as punch. We certainly are.

Guest Post, by CC and Minerva

CC: See, Minerva, I told you they didn't abandon us! We are one intact family again.


Minerva: Well, except for James, who got us into this six years ago. Plus, I don't think the blond one is going to stick around. She's allergic to us, you know. Plus, she has a life.


CC: There you go again, Minerva. Always the cynic. We wouldn't be here now if not for her. She's my new hero.


Minerva: Yea? What makes you think they're not going to ship us off to some other foster-home as soon as we get used to this one?


CC: Minerva, they did not bring us all the way here just to send us somewhere else. Besides, they're nicer than they used to be. That big guy hasn't even called us "mangy" yet. And the tall one doesn't  move from his computer when we run under his bed. He likes us in his room! Furthermore, we haven't been here a week and they've already cleaned the litter box. 


Minerva: Big woop. They don't leave food down all the time like they used to. So now you have to wake the big guy up at 4 a.m. every day to feed us. But at least he gets up, eventually. What are we going to do when he's not around? Huh? I suggest a big dinner, because you won't know when or if you'll get breakfast.


CC: Well, be an optimist for once. You look 100 times better with the weight you've lost since that redhead put us on a diet. You're quicker on your feet too.


Minerva: Yeah, that redhead was a real hoot. Guess we showed her, huh? Now that next lady, the other blond one, she was really nice and she actually understands cats. I could have stayed there. But,... I guess this is better.


CC: Of course it's better. This is our home. What, you want it to always be like that high class cat resort where we first stayed? That was vacation. This is real. This is our life. This is as good as it gets. And, you know what, Sister? It's pretty darned good.


Minerva: Yes, it really is. Even I will admit that. 


Hey, look, she's heading to the bedroom. You know what that means! Reading time! My favorite part of any day! Okay, so it really is good to be home at last! 

Both: Happy Holidays, Everyone! Wherever you are.

Do Cats Get Jet Lag?

Hard to tell, since cats mostly sleep during the day anyway. This is where I found them when I got home from work today. That is my desk chair that they have thoughtfully warmed for me to plant my backside after walking home in the brisk winter chill. (Well, chilly for here in Japan. I imagine the 39 degree wind chill would be golfing weather in Michigan.)

It is nice to have the cats around the house after a five month separation. They wasted no time in making themselves right at home by immediately resuming their positions as heads of the household and quickly whipping their human servants into place. They spared no effort in getting Kathy to resume her role as designated reader. After all, they do have a lot of literary catching up to do.

As for the heroic transporter of said cats, I haven't seen much of her since she walked through the portal at Narita Airport. She seems to be on a different schedule from the rest of us. But that is very understandable given not only the 14-hour time zone difference, but also the frenzy of activity leading up to her long trip across the wide ocean. We do expect that she will eventually be awake during actual daylight hours...probably just in time to suffer through it all over again after her return trip to the States at the end of the month. Would not count on her to be the life of any New Years Eve parties this particular year.

"The Degree of Neurosis...

...depends on how one responds to ambiguous situations." When faced with difficult challenges, my mother often paraphrased that line from a Saul Bellow novel. She never actually articulated - at least not to me - which responses would be more or less neurotic making. That was left for me to discover as I grew into adulthood.


I've generally witnessed two somewhat dichotomous approaches to resolving ambiguous situations. I personally favor the problem-solving approach, namely that through analysis and creativity - and perhaps some luck - we can clear up ambiguity through the light of reason, novel ideas, and perseverance. This approach often leads to unfamiliar recesses of thought, so it can require considerable risk-taking, and it is sometimes very hard; but ultimately worth both the risk and the effort.


This is an effects-based process: First describe the desired outcome ("Begin with the end in mind" a la Covey), then figure out a path or process to that outcome. Next describe obstacles to that path, and determine how to eliminate or mitigate them. Finally, consider the downrange consequences of actually achieving the outcome through that particular process. If the consequences appear to be too dire, work out how to mitigate those. Throughout the process, dare to think "outside the box" (trite though that expression has become). As a last resort, when all novel choices fail the test, choose an alternative outcome or look for a different process. Ironically, the ambiguity is never completely erased and one is often critically aware of the risk involved in charting a new path. So this approach does tend to keep one right on the edge of the personal comfort zone, sometimes right on the border of neurosis. But that is where true creativity and innovation reside. If I find myself feeling too comfortable about a proposed course of action, I wonder what about it I'm missing. 


The antithesis to that analytic and creative approach is practiced by the (seemingly) myriads of people who strive to resolve ambiguity by throwing a cloak of rules on top of it. For the most adroit proponents of this latter approach, life has no ambiguity at all, and therefore no risk. One simply needs to find and apply the right rule. They are seldom at the edge of their comfort zones because the rules that govern their decisions create comfort. Original thought? Out of the box ideas? Novel processes? No need for any of that. Outcome? Don't bother with that. Only the process matters. As long as I have my rules, I am comfortable and life is smooth. Neurosis? Wouldn't know one if it hit me in the head. We often find practitioners of this approach in positions of quasi-authority, where their decisions - or refusal to make any - can wreak neurotic making effects on others. We often call these people "bureaucrats", an unfortunate association since many people who work in bureaucratic organizations are very imaginative and not at all driven by rules for their own sake. Perhaps "autocrat" is a more pertinent moniker. Rules are, of course, important and necessary...as means to achieving a good desired outcome. But when an imaginative thinker and rules-enslaved autocrat clash over an ambiguous situation, the result is often very unpleasant, especially for the creative one.


A recent case in point for our family was the process of moving our two cats to Japan from D.C. We left them behind last summer when we moved because the airline rules clearly state that they will not accept animals when the weather is hot. Not a bad rule in itself, but the downrange consequence of our compliance was to foist the ambiguous burden of cat care and feline transport to several surrogates. Most affected was Number One Stepdaughter, whose life is already quite full both personally and academically, and who never saw the "future mover of cats" memo tacked behind her bedroom door when she was growing up. 


No problem, right? Simply interpret and reinterpret multiple poorly written documents summarizing rules of two different countries, the U.S. Army, and the airline; and deal in an unfamiliar environment with well-meaning but not forward leaning individuals for whom rules are comfort, and who could not imagine stepping even a toe outside the box. Doing so over 6,000 miles distance and 14 hours time difference from the real cat owners/parental comforters simply adds relish to the challenge. Neurotic making potential? Major Generals could decompensate over less.


Fortunately, the analytic/creative process succeeded in finding the simplest of solutions, plus we had a patronus in our local U.S. Army veterinarian. He helped us correctly interpret the  rules-laden documents and then guided his U.S. counterparts to the proper  solution...consistent with the rules, no less. So, while some of our nerves may have been seriously tweaked over the last several weeks (and assuming the desired outcome actually occurs as expected), we are happy to report that our degree of neurosis remains constant. All things are relative, of course.

Kannonzaki Revisited, Part 3

Once completing this flat stretch along the bay I'm back on Route 16, heading slightly inland and climbing  some rolling hilly terrain that steepens toward the top. It's less than a mile climb, with a fairly rapid descent on the other side (Note to self: That rapid descent will be a steep climb on the return leg). Then the road winds gradually down into an almost idyllic little marina that looks and feels like a quiet fishing village. Boats and launches predominate along the water, and again one sees little fishing establishments and people wearing rubber boots and carrying fishing gear.

Another gradual incline runs past the Yokosuka Art Museum on the right and comes to the Kannonzaki Keikyu Hotel and SPASSO Spa on the left. Very inviting. An alternative to taking the road past the Keikyu Hotel is to turn down a short street to the water and thence along a boardwalk (real boards this time) that eventually joins back up to Route 16 near the lighthouse. Expecting a chillier breeze as the overcast deepened, today I took the high road. I soon crested the small hill and came upon the welcome sight of the Kannonzaki Lighthouse parking lot, just where I had left it back in the summer of 2008.

Descending the hill toward the parking lot I was delighted to see the Jizo statue at the entrance is still there, and that someone is still taking care to properly clothe it. These simple, almost primitive statues are often seen in cemeteries around Japan, where they represent children who have died. Jizo is said to be the protector of children, women, and travelers. I surmise that this one is close to the lighthouse for the latter purpose. It was carefully decked out in a full length white faux cloak and plastic outer raincoat. A child-size knit hat and scarf completed the ensemble. Jizo looked warmer than I was.

A quick trip across the lighthouse parking lot to the bathroom and water fountain, and I was ready for the return run to the base and home. The rain began just as I started back, and it stayed with me all the way home. I realized I had totally blown the clothing decision at the start of this run. However, the breeze was mostly a quartering tail wind, so I didn't feel too cold or wet until I got closer to the base.

The rain increased all the way home, so I was a wet, cold, and tired runner by the time I took off my shoes in our foyer. All in all it was a great run, where I got to visit many fondly remembered sites along the way, and to be out and about in Japan is always rewarding.

I will continue to head in that direction for my biweekly long runs, expanding the distance every two weeks.  It's a great way to experience the local area and takes some of the monotony out of those time-consuming training runs.

Kannonzaki Revisited, Part 2

After my refreshing stop in the neighborhood park, I continue my run along a thriving commercial area that includes a baseball batting range and three Wal-Mart/Target/Lowes look-alikes: Homes, Livin, and Ave. The going here is a bit congested with a constant flow of Japanese frequenting these shopping complexes by foot, bicycle, or automobile. Cars are the least threatening because the driveways are controlled by Japanese sentries with their lighted batons that resemble light sabres. Aware of my approach, they resolutely stop the traffic when I'm still a good 20 yards away. I always smile and say, "Arigato", and they always smile and bow politely.


Shortly after the enclave of home shopping malls I pass a large commercial fish market and then an inlet featuring several small fishing enterprises. Japanese folks in rubber boots and coveralls hustle about with tackle and gear. In the summertime there might be seaweed drying in the sun, soon to become nori. Logically perhaps, I good looking sushi restaurant appears just ahead.


About a half mile after the fish market I turn around an apartment complex and leave the road for the boardwalk (okay, cement walk) that runs next to Tokyo Bay for about a mile. To my right is Maborikaigan, a residential neighborhood where quite a few American naval officer families live. This whole area is built on landfill, and it is one of the more picturesque places I've ever run. On a nice day, people sunbathe on the rocks, but even on a cool, overcast day like today a few people are fishing from the edge, taking photos, or just out for a stroll or run. The bay is a panorama of water in motion, small islands on the horizon, and a plethora of ships and boats of all sizes and shapes. In spite of its beauty, this stretch along the water can challenge a runner, because it is unprotected from the climate, and leaves one vulnerable to whatever wind or weather whips off the bay. Today it was a crosswind, so even though it was cool it was not as annoying as the cold winter winds that blow directly in your face and cut your motivation in half. Enjoying the crispness of the breeze washing over me from left to right, I  did wonder what I would find here on my way back.

Kannonzaki Revisited

The Tokyo Marathon is less than three months away, so it is time to get down to serious training. That means a long run every two weeks, increasing the distance by 2 miles from the previous long run. If all goes according to plan (which it never does) I'll complete runs of 20, 22, and 24 miles before taking on the 26.2 mile marathon on February 28. This weekend I needed to do a 14 miler, so I revisited one of my favorite courses from our prior tour here. The run from Yokosuka Base to Kannonzaki Lighthouse is not only a good run, it's also a neat cross-sampling of the country and culture.


One challenge of running long distances this time of year is deciding what to wear. It is not a fashion thing…Lord knows I'm never to be confused for one of those guys on the cover of Runners World magazine. The trick is dressing right for the weather, which can be variable and unpredictable. The standard gouge is to dress for the end of the run, meaning that if you are comfortable for chillier conditions at the start, you will likely overheat as the body and ambient temperatures warm up. Well, today's prediction was for intermittent rain showers later in the afternoon, with a northerly breeze to make the 54 degree high feel more like something in the forties.


I added some long running pants and light jacket to my shorts and long-sleeved shirt and headed out the door. The out and back distance from the Base to Kannonzaki is roughly eleven miles, so I planned to do three miles around the base first. I had barely gotten started when the sun came out and the breeze lightened up. After two miles I was already hot, so I circled back home, shed the jacket and long pants, and resumed my path to the gate. By the time I egressed from the base it was overcast again.



Running left from the gate one first passes the Kanagawa University of Human Services, which houses schools of dentistry and nursing. Typical of any Saturday, students were coming and going from classes. School at any level in Japan seems to be six days a week.



 
Mikasa Park sits just beyond the Kanagawa University. This park features the Battleship Mikasa that was the Flagship of Admiral Togo Heihachiro during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 – 1905. This park is a favorite gathering place of the local Yokosuka citizens, complete with fountain and bandshell, and is also frequented by Americans from the nearby base.

After Mikasa Park the run heads out onto the ubiquitous Route 16, which seems to be everywhere in Japan. One first passes a very large parking lot that is a staging area for newly manufactured automobiles to be loaded onto ships to countries where the driving configuration is opposite Japan's. Strangely, this huge lot that could accommodate several football or soccer fields was completely empty today. A sign of the economic times?



Continuing along Route 16 a family park nestles between the road and the bay. On a nice day many people are there, playing basketball, riding bikes, or just enjoying family time. When I that park the weather was turning more overcast and chilly, so little was happening. It's one of my favorite sites along this run because it sports a very nice public restroom and a water fountain where I can refill my water bottle. I always stop here.

To be Continued....

A 3 (or 4 ½) Hour Tour

Last September when our ship was in Noumea, New Caledonia, a colleague asked me if I'd go with her to the Tjibaou Cultural Center, which I understood to be a museum of the history of the island. Thinking that I might pick up some good information on New Caledonian culture that I could share with family and friends, I agreed to go. We were fortunate to avail ourselves of the car and driver provided for the use of our Chief of Staff, who was hopelessly tied up with work on the ship. And thus began a unique adventure in sightseeing.


 

Our driver, a New Caledonia native of French lineage named Eric, was probably bored to tears sitting around waiting for "Number One", as he referred to the COS, to decide to go somewhere in the car standing by just for him. So he offered to give us "a leetle tour" en route to the Cultural Center. This little tour turned into a 4 ½ hour in-depth excursion throughout Noumea, including many places where tourists and visitors never go, as well as a full accounting of Eric's personal history and philosophy of life, the latter being more interesting than the former.


 
Eric grew up in New Caledonia, the son of a Sicilian mother and French father, and later traveled and lived abroad. His first wife was Turkish, and they lived for 13 years in Germany. He has a daughter, Jamilla, who is 19. Later he lived in California, which he didn't like because he thinks the people are too phony and nosy and status conscious. But he loved his visits to Arizona because climate-wise it is most like New Caledonia of any other place he has lived. I felt that on my long runs there, which reminded me of the terrain around Lake Pleasant just outside of Phoenix. The climate is very similar, warm and dry; not hot and humid like Guam.


 
I've forgotten all the details of Eric's subsequent sojourns, but he is now back in New Caledonia where he works as a driver and tour guide, particularly in demand for German tourists since he is fluent in their language. His current wife is Polynesian. Three weeks previously she gave birth to premature twins at 26 weeks gestation (near the lower limit of viability). The wife, whose name sounded to me like Asuncion, was still in hospital and the baby girls were still in neonatal ICU. Meanwhile Eric was working 18 hour days driving VIPs and giving tours and philosophy lessons. Two things were clear: He is deeply in love with his wife, and he is a deeply religious man. He is both a philosopher and theologian, and his French gift of gab, accent included, makes him very entertaining. For him, a highlight of the trip was taking us to a shrine overlooking the city, sporting a statue of the Virgin Mary entitled, "Notre Dame du Pacifique." This shrine was built entirely by private citizens, and Eric proudly proclaimed that she is named not just Our Lady of New Caledonia, but of the whole Pacific! "Thees is only right, because she was built by zee people, and we are all ceeteezens of zee Pacific, no?" He then smugly described how he and his wife attend Mass on this hilltop every Sunday. I thought of our drafty church back in D.C. with the poor acoustics, and figured that in this shrine one could better feel the presence of God.


 

When we finally got to the Cultural Center it was closed for the holiday. Undaunted, Eric talked the guards into letting us in anyway, without paying the 500 Frank entry fee. So we got a (lengthy) privately guided tour where we learned all about Melanesian life and work, as well as a healthy dose of Eric's personal philosophy about race relations and local politics, which could be briefly described as "live and let live." We also learned that this New Caledonian Renaissance man has a bit of medical knowledge as well, because he adroitly steered us away from low-lying wetlands as the time of day approached peak feeding time for mosquitoes. "Vee have some Dengue here, you know?"


 
So the short excursion to the cultural center for some photo ops turned into a 4 ½ tour, but the price was right ($0) and the car was air conditioned, and I did learn a lot and appreciated this quasi-theologian's fresh outlook on life and love. We finished with a private tour of Kanak homes and beaches, as well as a very idyllic beach resort area that became my favorite running destination for the remainder of the port visit.


 

So you just never know when a person or place is going to unexpectedly enter your life, and impact you in an unanticipated yet memorable way. Though we will likely never see Eric again, that day we made a friend. He was on the pier when the ship departed, and we waved to him enthusiastically. I was personally hopeful that with us out of his life he could finally devote his time to his wife and newborn daughter.

Now and Then in Vietnam

I rode my bike in Vietnam a couple of weeks ago. Our ship was in Da Nang for an historic port visit. One day some friends and I rode our two wheelers to China Beach and back, making a bit of our own personal history.

That may not be such a big deal. We had ridden together in several prior ports and enjoyed the exercise, sightseeing, and camaraderie. This ride was different, and for this particular cyclist incredible: Vietnam, me, friends, bikes...and happy Vietnamese people enthusiastically hailing us as we passed. I never dreamed I would experience any of that.

As a new college graduate forty years ago, any vision of myself in Vietnam included a helmet, a rifle, and the risk of not leaving the jungle alive. Several of my high school friends had been exactly there. Were it not for my (belated) acceptance into medical school in the summer of 1969, I very well could have found myself cleaning a rifle in the hot jungle instead of poring over purple stained slides in a chilly histology lab on the other side of the world. By the time I graduated from med school the war was all but over, and the doctor draft a thing of history. Nevertheless the Vietnam war was a powerful force in my life and in those of many of my contemporaries.

Whether or not we ever actually set foot in Vietnam, my generation of baby boomers often knew it as a source of intense agony and ambiguity, a painful coming of age. Our transition from optimistic children of the fifties and early sixties to disenchanted and bewildered young adults of the late sixties and early seventies was a trauma that persisted well into our later years. Raised by parents of the "Greatest Generation" in a time of peace and prosperity in America, we boomers had embraced their core values of patriotism, old time religion, loyalty, devotion to duty, and a belief in the just rewards that any American could expect from faithfully adhering to those values. The Vietnam war and the division it caused across our nation deeply sullied that dream. The resultant disillusionment affected my generation in ways we could not begin to understand, let alone assuage. Vietnam was our inherited original sin, a national shame, proof that Americans can sometimes be ugly, and that the difference between right and wrong is not a thin, distinct line, but a broad span of gray.

Many of us wasted a lot of time and psychic energy in our subsequent adult lives in fitful starts and stops trying to restore that peaceful serenity of our childhood and adolescence. But it always eluded us. Vietnam had happened. America had not only finally lost a war, we had lost our honor, our integrity, and our pride. Vietnam symbolized a failure of the American dream, and it was therefore a place, virtually if not actually, where many Americans swore never to go again. I was one of them.

In my mid-twenties, voting in my second presidential election, I cast my ballot in vain for the Democratic challenger to the Republican incumbent. We wanted out of that Vietnam era. We wanted change in America. We got "four more years" and more disenchantment.

I steadfastly avoided military service largely because of the scars Vietnam left on our nation and our military. For sure, those core values instilled by my greatest generation parents did occasionally remonstrate me for not serving my nation, but I needed only to conjure up images of that terrible conflict to quickly put those noble thoughts out of my head. Then all of a sudden Desert Storm happened, and I witnessed a picture far different from what I had seen in those Vietnam newsreels years ago: a professional, poised, and compassionate military that quickly earned the respect and support of Americans, even if we were not entirely sure why we needed to liberate Kuwait in the first place. Less than a year later I was a newly commissioned medical officer in the United States Navy embarking upon a life change and adventure from which I have never looked back. Some 18 years hence that adventure brought me and my bike to Vietnam where I rode with my friends to China Beach and met friendly, enthusiastic Vietnamese all along the route. And in that instant I felt a bit of that same tranquility that I had known so many years ago. It was an unanticipated and welcome sort of closure.

An American sailor riding a bike in once war-torn Vietnam does not change history. But that simple event does show that very little in this life is forever, neither peace or war, neither success or failure, neither good events and people or evil events and people, neither suffering or happiness, neither pain or joy, tears or laughter. What remains, then, is to transcend the inevitable ups and downs through adherence to true constants of life and to take joy in simple things, like being able to ride a bike at all.

And what are those true constants of life? Well, in their youth our greatest generation parents had experienced their own terrible world war. And although they seldom really talked about it, afterwards they steadfastly rebuilt their personal American dream by living those core values that they tried to teach us baby boomers. Turns out, they had it right all along.