05-JUL-B-6

AFTER A “LONG-RUNNING MONTH”

AND A SHORT-SCRAMBLE DEPARTURE RUSH, DERWOOD IS IN BEAUTIFULLY SUPERB CONDITION,

I AM FIT AND TRIM, AND I LEAVE WITH A HEAVY HEART THAT ECLIPSES MY ENTHUSIASM

FOR THIS TWO VENUE/TWO NATION/TWO ADVENTURE TRIP ON A SUNNY SUMMER AFTERNOON FROM THE DERWOOD WOODS

July 24, 2005

It is takeoff time, and I am awaiting my soon-to-be-freshman medical student Amy Fiedler as she and I will sort surgical packs and stop for Chinese dinner as she drops me in Dulles, to be meeting me in two weeks in the Frankfurt Airport August 5 to continue a conjoint travel with the other participants on to Asmara Eritrea. Today, I leave Derwood—and it has never looked better—the yard all trimmed and cleared of all downfalls, weeded and mowed and with a park bench in the shade to match the nice young buck in velvet standing behind it. The unused new Master Bedroom Suite is in good shape, and I have done all the cleaning out of the house, trash, refrigerator, and the papers have all been mailed in for the ELDP courses that are due when I am gone.

I have been running each day, from eight to twelve miles, and packaged up the good Ultra light Reeboks for their return—startled to realize I have put on over fifty miles each week of the last month. The Audi is tuned and gassed for my return, and my beautiful “retreat” here will be vacant with the mail being held even though Jim the postman will come to nap in the hammock and keep an eye on it.

Amy was a student in the tropical medicine course to which I had lectured about eighteen months ago. She, and each other member of the class came up afterwards to express their appreciation for what I was doing and said that they are “wannabes.” She asked if she could apply to go with me, and I assented. Now she has the good news, that as a consequence of that epiphany, she applied to medical school and will start GW this August as a freshman—immediately from Eritrea from which she is returning early for orientation.

FAREWELL CALLS

As I got ready to have Amy come over and begin packing up a few more packs of surgical gear, I got a call from Emily, from Craig Schaefer, and made one to sign out. I got Virginia as she explained she had been out riding Porter in the morning and now was simply doing housework which I had completed at Derwood. She asked if I were excited about the trip and I responded I had been previously, but now had to leave distracted by a heavy heart. “Why? Because of me?” Yes. “Don’t you know that you can never entrust another with your own happiness by now?” I guess she is right and has good reason for passing this advice along, since her heart is rather easily promised and retracted at the next change of heart, which has happened more often in her history than in mine.

Yes, I should have known that lesson before, particularly since I might have learned from every other man who has been so foolish as to give his heart in a commitment to Virginia before, and entrusted her with his happiness. At least one of them is very bitter about it and three others have no continuing contact with her at all and had arranged an immediate substitute. The one person other than I to whom this warning advice should be passed on is named David, since he has a very predictable future if he is not entering this dalliance for anything other than a short-term lark—which I, unfortunately, never had. But, I do know that my happiness is innate, and those who cause unhappiness in others generally do not fare as well. As her sister had written to me, she is at one and the same time the easiest and the hardest person to love. And, as both her mother and sister had written to me, she is paradoxically so tough and strong, and simultaneously fragile—so maybe she should take her own advice, and learn that real strength comes from commitments she can live with to bring her security and happiness, rather than recycling the same mistakes. But, my job is not to dispense advice to someone else who now claims to have it all figured out, and who is discarding something that was once the most precious thing in her life on which she could confidently depend.

I hoped the best for her and wished that she might thrive. I have some concerns that she is coming down off the crest of her “self-esteem improvement course” in singing the opera gig in Italy in which she had discovered for herself that she could sing still, and that she did not want to sing, but wanted to teach, and that in a small comfortable environment such as Simpson, whatever insecurity might be from investing herself in such a small scale academic outlet. And, she wanted a much smaller life than she could have with the continuously challenging stretch with me. She asked “Who does your housework?” I explained “I do.” She added, I do not like doing housework, and would have to have it done if someone could afford it for me. I said, “That is why I would be an ideal mate.” She responded: “That all depends on what kind of mate someone is looking for.” Since this seemed to be her day for a determined upbeat series of digs at all I might represent, I wished her well and hoped (against reasonable expectations) that “she might thrive,” and said “Goodbye Virginia.”

I felt relief after signing out, since I could see the whole burden of carrying a soon-to-repeat cyclic crash, while she props up her self esteem now with the horse show scene and a number of other conspicuous and superficial material things, rejecting what I represent as real and wonderful, but just not for her. I would agree, and the consumerism and superficiality, from enhanced appearances to socially trophy association in the Hunt Club Ball—I am grateful for having missed that bullet and being on my way to something more worthwhile if less fashionable among the beautiful people.

AMY ARRIVES, GOES OVER PHOTO ALBUMS,

AND WE PACK UP FOR LATER ERITREA TRIP,

THEN LEAVE DERWOOD, CHINESE DINNER,

AND DULLES DROPOFF

Amy arrived, and we did our thing. She had taken the Tropical; Medicine course as a GWU undergrad at which I gave my lecture on tropical surgery. She took a year that she spent at Georgetown getting a Master of Science in Microbiology, and is entering medical school specifically to do what it is that she found in the discussion we had. At dinner I learned that she comes from Troy, Michigan and graduated form Troy High School. Now she will be living out the dream, as will Sherry Wasef, a year ahead of her as a GWU sophomore medical student who will collect the bags and repack with her on August 3.

BOARD BRITISH AIR 292

AND FLY TO TROUBLED LONDON

I was selected for “random special inspections” but I was also very cooperative and had extra time so it went well. I had typed up the paragraphs above largely to be sure I had a full charge in my accessory batteries to hold me through the long flights that will have me arriving in Baku, Azerbaijan tomorrow night on the juice stored in these batteries. So—Bon Voyage to you, too, as you travel along with me!

REG FRANCIOSE’S FATHER,

PASSING ON AS I SPEAK TO EACH OF THE FAMILY,

AND THEY SHARE A LAUGH OVER HIS
”FINAL PRACTICAL JOKES”

Aloft, I have one other story to tell. Reg Franciose, had just returned from his Peruvian holiday in climbing with Gene Moore and son, and had arrived back at work when he was called to Barrie Massachusetts. There his father, who had had severe emphysema and had had lung reduction surgery five years ago, was getting very short of breath, and his time was short in his long struggle with the disease of COPD. Reg called me on Friday just as his father had slipped into coma and had been set up in the living room in a hospital bed with suction apparatus and the whole family gathered. Reg talked with me for a few minutes and we talked of the significant people in our lives. Just then he abruptly said “I gotta go.” It was that moment that Reg Senior had chosen to die.

I called today to speak to the whole family. Reg’s Mom is particularly appreciative of me, and remembers what I had done for Reg in GWU med school as well as subsequently at Colorado, and is still thrilled that Virginia had sung an Italian aria at Reg’s wedding with Sue. Now, after any number of other adventures they have shared, Reg and Sue now have the unlikely status of parents of baby Emily.

Reg had interesting stories about his father and his elder brother being practical jokers. Immediately after his father’s death with the whole family in attendance, the refrigerator filed with food went out. There was no hope in the repairs that were promised on Wednesday of next week. Sue found a rental agency, and they sent over a refrigerator to transfer all the food to and it was forgotten until a truck pulled up and burly men got out to move the rental refrigerator in past the body lying in the living room. They tried to explain. The new refrigerator was hooked up and re-loaded, with an accessory plug in the basement. Other family arrived, such as Reg’s brother Wayne and his boys whom he used to call the “Disgustos” and with whom I had made climbing vacations in Colorado. A few thought they might be helpful by going outside and doing yard work to prepare for Monday’s funeral. They mowed and trimmed, and hooked up the electrical appliances to the one of ten plugs they pulled in the basement. You guessed it. That single plug was the one that the rental refrigerator was hooked to and they wound up having to throw out all the food they had struggled so valiantly to save, even as incredulous workmen had steered it into the house around a recently deceased body. Reg Franciose Senior is still having a good laugh on them, and even his wife joined in when she spoke with me in a hearty laugh—a good day for him, even if it seemed a bad day for all others.

I have watched a single movie before trying to sleep, an action murder mystery with Michael Douglas called “A Perfect Murder” in which the woman is having an affair with an artist lover named “David” and her husband hires him to put a hit on her, which backfires. I dedicated a more reasonable time to trying to nap through some turbulence, having written a birthday letter of farewell which I will try to mail from London, the scene of our last really wonderful time together on our return from Malawi, when we stayed over since Virginia had lost her passport. The times, the are achangin’ and London may be a more troubled spot now than either the Baku Azerbaijan to which my onward British Air connection flies or the Asmara Eritrea where the long and brutal civil war is finally over. Who would have thought the unarmed Bobbies on the Beat would now be in hot pursuit of the suspicious foreigners (who comprise the majority of most big cities in all Europe, London not being an exception,) with “shoot to kill” instructions? And, here, I thought my life had recently changed for the worse!

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