Virtual-Doug

Goin’ Back

The time is getting short.  Next Thursday, April 5, we will both be on the way back to Việt Nam.  And yes – the MGB goes with me this time.  We both are truly looking forward to being back with friends and former students.  We’ll have a chance to see how much Huê has changed since we left.  We’ll be able to eat in familiar places.  We’ll stroll down by the river in the evening.

But, this will not be a vacation.  We’re going back with a group called MEDRIX.  I have mentioned MEDRIX before in this blog.  It is a small non-profit group that works in Central Việt Nam and focuses on two areas:  health education and safe water. 

The MGB will be working on a project she was doing last year at this time – she will be teaching an English medical terminology class to the physicians at the Huê Central Hospital.  She had a blast doing that last year, and is truly looking forward to doing it again this year.  She can combine the medical skills and knowledge of being an R. N. with the English teaching skills she acquired while we taught in Huê.

Me?  I’ll be doing basic unskilled labor with the safe water team.  I’m not exactly sure what that entails, but I know we will be out in the countryside checking on places where MEDRIX safe water treatment units have been put in service.

Yes – I’ll be dragging my camera equipment with me, and yes, I will be blogging.  But, I have been asked to be the “official blogger” for the whole team, so I may not post to this blog as much as I would otherwise.  Be sure to check out the MEDRIX April team blog.  I put a link to it on the left.

We’ll be busy getting ready between now and Thursday, but hopefully, I’ll have time for one more post before we leave.

Something Personal: (Part Four)

This is the fourth and final post in a series that is somewhat similar to being on a shrink’s couch - - or maybe in a confessional.  They are a bit self-indulgent, but if you are still interested, you might want to read the other posts first.

Introduction and Retirement

Caring for my Mother 

Church

My heart is still in Việt Nam.

My trip in January answered the question: can I ever go “home” again?  Of course, I wasn’t teaching anymore, and some of the people I knew and worked with have moved on. . .

But I was home.

It used to be great fun to sit in the Mandarin Café and strike up a conversation with westerners.  Usually the talk would drift towards where everybody lived.  I had a practiced smugness telling westerners that the MGB and I weren’t tourists – we actually lived in Huê.  Great fun to watch their reactions.

We made some deep relationships there.  I’ve had IM and email conversations with former students asking me for advice.  Teachers are like that in Việt Nam – they are moral advisors to students, and have much more value in society than they do here in America.  The MGB and I both worked hard at making relationships – and we succeeded.  In some ways, I feel I have abandoned those friends.  Recently, one of our young friends found he would not be going to study in Canada as planned – and I felt I should be there as a sounding board for him.  Another asked me about her love of a young man who lived a long distance from her.

Of course, part of the problem is that I have returned to live in America where friends have absolutely no idea of what it was like to live in a very different culture.  After repeatedly seeing the glazed-over look in people’s eyes when I talk about how the world is seen in Việt Nam, I just don’t talk about Việt Nam anymore.  A few days ago, I visited a former colleague.  Most of her conversation was filled with cynicism about the United States.  Its hard to relate to that cynicism when I have lived in a place where the news is controlled by the government, or have seen deep corruption go unnoticed.  After living in Việt Nam, I realize Americans get such a heavy daily barrage of  news of media manipulation and discovered corruption that they don’t know how good it is in this country.  I have a clergy friend who expressed the same depressing cynical thoughts.  After living in Việt Nam, I realize my friends have accepted the news stories in totality without realizing that they live in a country with a truly free press.  The news in Việt Nam is usually stories of what the government predicts will happen, not what has actually happened.  But, not having lived elsewhere, they only fall back into partisan politics, cynicism, and disgust.

An argument could be made that it is not Việt Nam that I miss so much as it is the intentionality of our life there.  There was little to distract us from the fundamental jobs of being good teachers and making friends.  Life was Pure.  Life was Simple.

But, I’m still homesick.

So there you have it - my life on a platter.  As I said in the introductions to these posts, all four of these situations are intertwined.  For instance, I cannot live in Việt Nam as I must care for my mother.  I am trying to figure out if I should go back to work because I miss the focus of  our life in Huê.  Church and short-term missions and Việt Nam compete for my time, money, and love..

My life is good – I am not in crisis, just at another junction in my personal road.  Anyone who is my age can look back and see many such junctures, and in most cases, not only we survive them, but we learned and grew from them.  I’m sure that is the case here. 

I pray that when I am in my dotage, I will look back on this time as a period of strong growth.  Thank God in all things.

Something Personal: (Part Three)

This is the third of a four part series.  Each is a lamentation and thanksgiving about the current stage of my life.  Before reading this, read the preceding posts:

Introduction and Retirement

Caring for my Mother

Church

We attend a church that is a member of a main-line Protestant denomination that is dying.  Though our local church is only eight years old, it seems to have lost the spark that it once had.  Earlier in its history, it had a real feeling of excitement - of bringing the healing of Jesus to ordinary people, but the passion seems to have died.  For the MGB and I, there is a tension – we have close friends there, yet we don’t feel we are being nourished.  Rather than being spirit filling, much of the activity seems spirit-sapping. 

And that is frustrating.

Should we leave?  There is a definition that says insanity is doing the same thing over and over yet expecting different results each time.  The question for myself is whether I am just doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting my church to be more seeker-oriented and Spirit-filled.  On the hand, do I jump in with both feet and ask God if He wants me to be a part of the turn-around?

I have been thinking about personality lately.  I’ve known for years that I am introverted.  Most people think otherwise because I am comfortable speaking to large groups and teaching.  But the reality is that at the end of a long day, and when I need my batteries recharged, I need to be by myself.  In a similar vein, I have never been a “committee man.”  My mantra is that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was not painted by a committee.  I have never been good within organizations – always a bit of a lone wolf.

So why am I trying to work within an organization?  I recently “volunteered” to be a lay member of our church’s governing committee,  and the first meeting was a disaster.  There was much wrangling over words in the minutes – “he said she said” stuff.  There certainly wasn’t any room for the Holy Spirit in that meeting.   I was quite upset and spiritually very down.  The next day, I was talking with a man about working in Việt Nam, and I felt lifted and renewed. 

So – should I agree to put myself in a position where I am stressed and angry (church) in the hopes of helping do a  turn-around, or do I do work that is lifting and focused (short term missions)?  I had this same question in the post about retirement – could short term trips take the place of work and provide the intentionality I seem to need?

I don’t know the answer to the question – yet.

(Series to be continued)

Something Personal: (Part Two)

This is the second of a four part series.  I’m doing some self-examination, much to the boredom of others, but it is my catharsis.  If you’re interested, read the first posting about retirement  before reading this one.

Caring for My Mother

If you have children, you know the sense of full-time obligation that comes with being a parent.   

People my age are sometimes referred to as the “Sandwich Generation.”  Our children are gone, and we are enjoying grandchildren, yet we are still nourishing the younger generations in some way.  In our case, our son is doing quite well, and we have a daughter-in-law whom we would have picked ourselves.  But now, my mother has Alzheimer’s, and she has replaced our child as the person needing care and attention.  I might add, that with the Mystery Guest Blogger’s mother’s recent visit, it is easy to observe she too will soon need care.

And, all this has come as a surprise.

Have you seen the commercials on television?  – the ones with the elegant couple with graying temples and Eddie Bauer clothes?  They hug while looking across the lake envisioning the home they will live in during their retirement.  There’s another commercial of a guy wanting to pass his horse farm on to later generations.

You get the drift – plan well and retire well.  What the commercials leave out is that you may not be able to retire to luxury and travel even if you have the money.  You may have to care for Mama.  Of course, you could put Mama in a nursing home and do your world traveling anyway, but most of us are not built that way.

Of course, at an intellectual level, we’ve known all along that this would happen.  Obviously, people get older and need care.  But the MGB and I had not absorbed the extent of the change in our lifestyle.  As an example:  it has been a long time since we went out to dinner – just the two of us.  When we were working, we did that regularly as a way of catching up and getting reacquainted.  But when Mom lived nearby, she came to our home for dinner every night.  Five to eight o’clock (or so) was time devoted to Mom.  Now that she is in a rehab unit, that is 2hours out of the day.  Of course there is more to the obligation than visits – I am in charge of her very life.  Besides doing laundry, I also pay her bills.  Its me who must harangue the nursing home staff to cut her nails, to see if she was hurt when she fell out of her wheelchair, or to find where her missing clothes went.  I write a weekly “Mommy Report” to family and friends, and that takes more time.

I feel cheated, somehow. Cheated out of the retirement of travel and adventure I had expected.

And, of course, I feel guilty that I feel cheated. 

I sometimes get emails from readers who compliment me on the nobility of caring for my mother.  I don’t feel noble at all – I’m just doing what I’m supposed to do.  No folks – there isn’t any nobility in all this.

I admit I have changed my viewpoint on one issue:  I used to want to live a long time, but now, I see no use to living past the time when I am not of sound mind and body. 

And, I struggle with the question of why?  Why does such a cruel disease exist?  If you believe as I do, that there is an omniscient loving God, why does Alzheimer’s exit?  I don’t know, but I’m beginning to see that it has nothing to do with the victim – it has to do with the caregiver learning something.  Maybe I am in the early stages of developing a deeper understanding of “Its not about me – its about others.”

I’ll let you know.

(To be continued)

Something Personal (Part I)

MySpace  is where some people bare their souls for all the world to see, but for those of us who are older  immigrants to the digital world, we hold to a different level of privacy and are loath to share everything with the world.  I don’t reveal all of me on this blog -  casual visitors still know me as Virtual-Doug, and only some folks know my real name.  Nonetheless, I feel I must write something about myself, even if only for my own benefit.

On occasion, I go back and read what I’ve written over the past 3 ½ years of blogging.  Sometimes I gag at my own bad writing, a poorly thought out idea, or both.  At other times I think “I wrote that?  Wow!”  Sometimes it gives me a chance to stand outside myself and read what I’d forgotten I wrote.  Maybe after another 3 ½ years, I’ll read these posts.  I hope I’ll be amazed.

The past few months have been a sorting-out time for me.  When the Mystery Guest Blogger and I returned from Việt Nam in June, we had some curve balls thrown at us.  Sure – we were expecting curve balls, but expecting curve balls and dealing with them are quite different.

It appears there have been four major areas of change in my life – and by extension, the MGB’s life.  Those areas are:

•    Figuring out this whole “retirement” thing.  Its very different from work.
•    Caring for my mother.
•    My church
•    Việt Nam, and my love affair with its people.

Of course, the four are tangled together.  There is a complexity that is difficult to describe.

Here’s the first of the four:

Retirement.

Most Americans long to retire.  The rat race gets old.  Corporate ladder-climbing loses its importance as we grow older.  The thought of doing what we want to do rather than what the boss wants us to do is very appealing. 

But, Americans – particularly American men – find a large part of their identity in their work.  Upon meeting someone for the first time, the first question is usually “What do you do?”  Our work defines who we are.  Even in retirement, the question becomes “What did you do before you retired?”

I have no desire to go back to work full-time.  But, there is a need to be intentional in my daily life.  I could also say I need a reason to get up in the morning.  I’m playing with the idea of making a few extra dollars by teaching an online course to professors.   Of course, I may find something else to do – night clerk at a motel, or selling Avon products.  I admit I have added “Work and Money” to my prayer list as I seem to need the focus of work, and we could use some money to handle some of the “I wants” in life.  The “I needs” are taken care of .

I also have grown to love photography – and maybe I could make a little pocket change with it.  I recently became a freelance photographer for the local weekly newspaper shooting high school sports.  I’ve had a few parents ask me for prints.   Does any pocket change made with photography replace going to work?  I don’t know.  I truly don’t miss the rat race, yet I miss the focus.

I’ve also found there are different levels of being retired.  There is a generation gap, even within the borders of this retirement park.  I’m not ready for happy hours beginning at 4 PM, playing cards, or clogging shows.  If you don’t know what “clogging” is, then you understand the gap.  Clogging is a type of dancing – done by rural folks a long time ago.  I know as much about clogging as the cloggers would know about Eric Clapton.  In other words, we early retirees see life differently than our elders. 

I also wonder if doing short term humanitarian trips back to Việt Nam might replace work.  We would have to raise some financial support for that, but it would give both of us a focus.

Final point:  I’m not really ready to be retired, if “retired” means sitting on the front porch and whittling. 

(To be continued)

Alzheimer’s

This is a woman who once solved New York Times crossword puzzles in ink.  Now she is reduced to playing tic tac toe – a child’s game – with an Occupational Therapist who is attempting to keep Mom’s intellect stimulated..  As you can see, Mom lost the game, but she still insisted on placing her X on the board.

(As always, be sure to click on the photos to see larger versions.)

I wonder what goes on inside her confused mind.  She is a long way from being totally incapacitated.  She has no difficulty remembering who I am, though on occasion she refers to me as her husband.  Nor does she forget the Mystery Guest Blogger, even though she sometimes refers to my wife as “your woman.”  She knows she is losing  her mental abilities and that must be scary.  A few days ago, I was with her when lunch was served.  It was good food, but she ate little.  I was mildly embarrassed to do it, but I took a bite of the beef and said silly things like “Yum!  Good stuff!  You want to try this.”  I didn’t want to suffer her the indignity of treating her like a toddler, but could think of nothing else.  A few bites of meat, a swallow of iced tea, then two bites of cake.  After pushing the tray away, she looked at me and quietly said “Maybe its because I didn’t cook it myself.”

She knows.  Oh yes, she knows.

In a strange way, I wish she would get worse soon and spare her the agony of having a mind still perceptive enough to know it is failing.  It must be scary inside that mind of hers.  Very scary indeed.  I wonder if that’s why she is reflective so often, peering out into her shrinking world and wondering what the future holds.

Scary.