Virtual-Doug

Time to Sigh

There have been a lot of celebrity deaths lately:  Farah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Karl Mauldin – I’ll even include Billy May.  Many accolades are being written and spoken for them.  The fact that we know who they are means they impacted our lives – at least a little.  I do not begrudge them either their fame or the attention given to their passing.

Then I look at my mother.  She will be 93 next week.

Think of that – ninety three.

Just as celebrities die, so too will my mother die.  Like most people, she is not a celebrity.  Millions will not mourn her passing.  There will be a small story in the obituaries and a small gathering when she rejoins the earth. 

And that too is fine.

Mom made close friends in many places:  up-state New York, Massachusetts, Hialeah, and Port St. Lucie. She didn’t live here in Texas long enough to make friends – she only lived in her little house for six months before she fell, broke her hip, and was hospitalized.  Her dementia has prevented her from making any new relationships.

All those years – all those people Mom knew and worked with and cared for and prayed for and worried about and laughed with and shared meals with.  All those people she loved and loved her.  All those people she shared life with.

Unlike the celebrities, she will die alone.

New Photo Site

I got very bored with my old web site of photos – I wanted something with a little more pizzazz.  I also wanted to be a bit more selective of the photos I post.

Take a look – and let me know what you think.

www.dougyoungphotography.com

The Return

My Vietnamese friends have never seen me with one.

Most of my pre-retirement colleagues were surprised when I got rid of it.

And I suppose boredom has brought about its return.

I’m talking about my ponytail.  I wore the last vestige of rebellious youth until a few years ago.  A posting on this blog detailed how I had it cut off just before we went to live in Việt Nam.  Since our return from Huê three years ago,  I was beginning to tire of the conservative-keep-your-hair-short-because-you-are-an-old-man look, but yet I knew the expanding thin spot on the back of my head was accentuated by the old pony tail, so I decided to do something different.

Hence, the little wisp of a pony tail – and if need arises, I can tuck it into my collar.  I’ll let it grow as long as it wants to grow.

See how exciting my life is?

Father’s Day

He died way too young – in April, 1966 - when he was in his fifties.  I was just out of college, had begun my military service, and getting used to being married when he died.

But Dad had the impact on me that fathers are supposed to have.  He showed me what it meant to be a man.  And he loved his children’s mother.

I think of Dad fairly often now, prompted by my frequent visits to Mom.  I try to imagine them as a young couple – today we would describe them as “beautiful people.”

Just as we Christians and Jews are told to “Honor they father and thy mother”, the Vietnamese culture values filial piety – to love and care for your parents.  As I used to tell some of my students, I am a little bit Vietnamese.

Someday soon, Mom will be with you again Dad.  I just want to tell you how much I appreciate the love you had for your oldest son.

Happy father’s day!

The Mom Report

 Mom had her other son visit her this week.  Not that she knows who he is.  She has slipped a lot in the last month.

Mom suffered another stroke in May, although we didn’t know it was a stroke until she began to recover.  To be honest, I thought the end had come.  I visited her twice a day for awhile, making email reports to family and close friends.  I made the mental, emotional and spiritual switch to knowing my mother was going to die soon.  Not only was I comfortable with her impending death, but I quietly prayed she go – or, as I told her quietly, it is time for her to be with God and with her husband.

There was nobody more surprised than me to see her sitting in a wheelchair one day.  I have no idea how her thin frail body survived – she had eaten very very little and drunk even less.  I was convinced her body had been shutting down.  But, after a couple of weeks, she was sitting up and trying to grasp the world around her.

But the stroke is evident in her continued decline.  Before, she would light up with recognition when I came in the room, but now she struggles to know who I am.  Before, she would laugh readily, but now she needs something unusual to spark a laugh.  Before, she talked even if most of her words were babble, but now she talks very little.  Before, I seldom found her in bed, but now she is in bed except when the staff puts her in a wheelchair for an hour or so.  Her walker stays in the corner, folded up and unused.

Immediately after her stroke I tried to feed her a little pudding or other easy-to-swallow food, but ½ cup of snack-pack pudding doesn’t provide much nourishment.  The nurses said she ate only a mouthful or two of food and she drank little or nothing.  There is an emotional toll to feeding your own mother – a knowledge that you are doing for her what she did for you as a child.  I didn’t resort to “playing airplane” or other childhood subterfuges to get her to open her mouth, but I remembered to put very small amounts of food in the spoon and not be in a hurry.

Alzheimer’s is a hard teacher.  It has taught me I should not predict the disease.  Only hindsight is accurate, and I believe it is accurate to say Mom has moved on to another stage of dementia.  I cannot be specific in what lies ahead for her – I only know she has moved closer to the inevitable conclusion of the disease.

It was hard watching my brother.  Spending a part of my daily life with Mom as I do, I have had the chance to adjust slowly.  While I am sometimes hit with an occasional bout of depression, for the most part, I just throw an emotional switch when I visit her, then turn the switch back on as I leave.  My brother has had no such luxury – he gets the full jolt of seeing Mom’s decline.

Once upon a time, I was a soldier.  I learned the deep importance of duty – not in a way that implies negativity, but in the positive way of knowing that obedience has its own rewards.  As an old man now, I take great pride in knowing I did my duty as a soldier.  Some day, I hope to take equal pride in having done my loving duty – to honor my mother and my father.

This and That

Yes – I’m still here.

Lately, I have been rather busy with my mother.  She will be 93 this coming July, but I have my doubts she will make it.  Last week, I truly thought she was gone, but she is the original “Tough Old Broad.”  I have been trying to keep our far-flung family informed and I am truly blessed to have a wonderful family supporting me.

I need to say this – most of the emails and notes I get are very supportive and helpful.  I am not going to say this is easy, yet it’s also true that the mother who loved and raised me - was my mentor and strength - died sometime ago.  Nancy Reagan said it well when her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s – it is indeed “The Long Goodbye.”  Mom has been in a nursing home for two years, but had Alzheimer’s long before that.  My visits with her now are for her emotional well being because she certainly has little cognition left.

The high school sports season is winding down – which means I will have a quiet summer until August when football starts.  I went to go shoot a baseball playoff game the other night, but a line of heavy storms came through, rendering the field unplayable.  The coaches called around, found another field about twenty miles away.  The first pitch was thrown at 9:50 pm, but as the teams ran onto the field for warm-ups, I had this photo opportunity.

Field of Dreams?

(Be sure to click on the photos to see a larger version.)

Finally, Trang is finished with her second semester as a graduate student.  I’m convinced she does more work by accident than I do on purpose – she is always studying.  She will take a course during the summer session, but right now she is in Houston enjoying the food and company of the large Vietnamese population there.

She’s also looking forward to having another grad student in Texas.  In July, Tuan will arrive for his doctoral work in San Antonio.  Tuan (but usually called T-Bone) was one of our regular visitors when we lived in Hue.  He would walk into our apartment asking if we had anything to eat.  The Mystery Guest Blogger became “Mom” to T-Bone.  We’ll see you soon, Tuan.

MEDRIX in Viet Nam

Just to show you that I have not been entirely unproductive since my last post, here is the slide show I did for MEDRIX.

The Mom Report

Think about it, Dear Reader – you are reading a blog that has not been updated since March 19.  That’s almost a month ago, yet you still bring up this silly blog and see if there is something to read.  I know what such laziness says about me, but what does it say about you?

Life has been busy since we returned.  One bit of excitement was the lack of a computer.  My desktop caught a hiccough and I went into withdrawal as I could not process photos.  However, I cannot use that as an excuse for not posting – I can use my laptop for that.

Mom, however, is the same.  I was really quite fearful she would not remember me after a month away – though during my time in Viet Nam, I was very surprised to hear from my sister that Mom remembered her name.  The first day I walked into the nursing home, Mom spotted me and burst into a smile.  Of course, she does not know my name nor my relationship to her, but she knows I am somebody important to her.

One thing also remained the same as when I’d left – she was not wearing her upper dentures.  A couple of days after I came back, she had also sat on her glasses, bending them badly.  I got them repaired for her, but I will spare you the photo I took of her with neither her upper teeth nor glasses.  I ain’t purty, folks.

Instead, here is the matriarch herself.

What else have I been doing since our return from Viet Nam?

That’s a good excuse for another post – hopefully before another month elapses.

Time to Go Home

It’s time to go home.  I need a haircut.  I’m tired of living out of a suitcase.

As much as I love being in Hue, some things wear thin after awhile.  Because we Americans have so much electronic “stuff”, we always want more electrical outlets.  We always bring along our 220 volt multiple outlets and still have to swap different devices to be recharged.  Think camera batteries, laptops, mobile phones, AA batteries.  Recharging batteries is complicated by the fact that electricity is disconnected when you leave your hotel room.

We’ve been riding around Hue on Trang’s motorbike.  It’s kinda kewl to be using her bike.  I am reminded of Trang every time I use the key – she put her key on a pony tail ornament and used it as a key ring.  It’s been a little threatening to my masculinity to be seen with such a key ring.  Thanx for the use of your moto, Trang.

And, we rode out to visit her family on the moto.  Trang’s village is north of Hue – about 15 kilometers – and her brother and sister came to show us the way.  It really was a most pleasant afternoon – nothing fancy, just nice conversation with nice people.  This was the Mystery Guest Blogger’s first visit to Trang’s home.  The ladies of the house prepared some great food and of course, the hospitality was wonderful.  Thanx to Tuan for going along as translator.

Speaking of Tuan, we celebrated with him when he found he was accepted to the doctoral program in environmental science at the University of Texas-San Antonio.  He is also a budding photographer.   We went out to the Thanh Toan bridge a few days ago because we both wanted to experiment with a post-processing technique.

Once again, it’s time to leave.  Yes, it will be nice to sleep in my own bed and to see my cat again – but shall also miss my second home.

Where’s the Student with the Answer? (by the Mystery Guest Blogger)

When we taught the English majors at the College of Foreign Language at Hue University, I enjoyed challenging the students.  My freshmen Speaking students, all 151 of them, were not used to asking questions in class.  If you question the teacher, the teacher might be made to look at fault as if you had not been properly taught, so it isn’t done.  Students also were definitely not used to speaking their mind in class and then being challenged to think deeper.

In each of the 3 classes, we talked about the prosperity beginning to come to Viet Nam.  Many of these young people were likely to be the first in their family to go to college, and had dreams of succeeding on a ‘western’ scale.  This dream is within the reach of all of them.  They graduated in 2008, and the ones I have tracked have jobs befitting their education as professional translators and educators.

During our year and a half in Hue starting the spring of 2005, and on our annual trips back, we have seen increasing evidence of disposable income among Vietnamese.  Disposable income is a sure sign of prosperity to me.  Fewer and fewer adults are riding bicycles; this is transportation largely for school children now.  A large proportion of shops and restaurants are enclosed in glass, instead of grates and shutters, to accommodate the air conditioning.   Cell phones are so common even the sic lo drivers, generally the lowest economic level on the traffic scene, have them.  Gives them an edge to get to the gazillion unloading tourist busses quickest.  You don’t even have to hunt for an ATM anymore, and all the hotels and many, many cafés have WiFi.  Expensive long distance calls to relatives in the states have been replaced by Skype calls on the internet, and it is not unusual for families to have a home computer and DSL.

Back in the day, the topic I threw at each of my students for English discussion was “When Hue becomes so affluent that every family owns a car (much nodding of heads and self satisfied smiling), where will they park them?”

Well, it is happening.  The increasing presence of the private auto is being felt in Hue.  Four years ago, the only cars seemed to be taxis and the occasional government car.  It is not uncommon now to see a car waiting at the curb for a passenger.  I am told cars are being parked in suitably large first floors of homes (you have to know the architecture to realize how well this really works), and city Vietnamese, so used to locking their gate to enclose motorbikes and bicycles, are modifying those gates to allow the family car.

I can’t prove there have been more private cars on the street this month, following me on my bicycle, honk…honk…honking their presence to me.  But there have been.

And I have counted three times this month, a car parked at the curbs of eating establishments while passengers, presumably, are inside eating.  One day a pair of business men pulled up to Phuong Nam while I enjoyed my lunch, asking where they should put the car.  The proprietress told them to put it down the street a little ways, in front of the bicycles and motorbikes, but definitely not right in front of the restaurant.

 Can meters lining the streets and high rise parking decks be far behind?  I never thought to ask my students.