“Life is full of surprises.”
That’s a phrase many of us have heard — or even said — from time to time. I found myself wondering if anyone was famous for saying it, and I found two famous men who were credited with it in recent years.
One was British Prime Minister John Major and the other was narcoterrorist Pablo Escobar.
If I had to guess, I would say you’re more likely to get good surprises when you’re young and surprises that are not so good when you’re older. If you’re 5 years old and your dad comes home to say he has a surprise for you, it’s usually a good one. If you’re 75, surprises aren’t as much fun.
This morning my wife awakened me at 5:30 a.m. with a fairly horrible surprise. Most of the floor space in our house was covered with water. She told me she had no idea how it had happened, but when I looked in the master bathroom, I saw that the water was running in the bathtub and the tub was full — in fact, overflowing — and the water was deep enough on the floor that I splashed when I walked.
In fact, I was splishin’ and a splashin’.
Really, Mike? A 67-year-old song, sung by a guy who died nearly 50 years ago?
It seemed appropriate to describe something that was definitely a not-so-nice surprise. I spent several hours sopping up water with bath towels, but I doubt I was 25 percent of the way done, especially since nearly all the rugs and carpeting were essentially soaked to the bone.
So we called our handyman, the wonderful Freddie Doughty, and he was here in less than an hour. He has been working all afternoon drying the carpets and rugs and cleaning the baseboards to minimize the possibility of mould.
How did it happen? If you have been reading what I have been writing recently, you know that of the two people living in the house, one of us is having severe cognition problems. In fact, we just returned home yesterday from five days in the hospital. We have reached the point where she doesn’t remember that we have been having nurses in the home four hours a day for about a month.
We are scrambling trying to find a nursing home with memory care and I’m hoping we’ll be able to get something set up within two weeks or so.
It truly is heartbreaking, especially when you see the mood swings that come with what’s known as sundowning. When we were getting ready to leave the hospital, she gave me a lovely little greeeting card thst thsnked me for keeping her “alive and happy” and saying how much she loved me.
Less than an hour later, I was hearing how much she hated me.
The picture above is from nearly 20 years ago, when we climbed to Kearsarge Pass in the Sierras over Independence Day weekend. I remember feeling so old then, but I was only in my mid fifties. How I have pain in both hips and torn ligaments in my knee and I rarely walk outside the house without a cane.
I have often compared my lifespan to playing 18 holes of golf. I have said for many years that if I could live to be 80 without being a burden to others, that would be a long enough life for me. Well, if I’m playing 18 holes, I am about to putt on the 17th green. I’ll have one hole — a par four — left.
It isn’t as if I have more that I want to accomplish. I have finished my third and fourth novels and they are at the publisher. Once I can hold physical copies of “Heart’s Desire” and “Twice in Love With Amy” in my hands, I will feel like I made it to the mountaintop as a writer.
All that’s left after that is taking care of my lovely wife and seeing what happens for my children and grandchildren. My daughter Pauline won an award this year as the best consular officer in the world for the U.S. Foreign Service.
In the world.
The entire freaking world.
She will be an ambassador someday, and that will be quite an accomplishment for someone who joined the Foreign Service straight out of UCLA more than 20 years ago. In fact, it was the Foreign Service that really made our relationship. When Pauline was finishing school and trying to find a career, she asked her birth father in France if he knew of jobs where she could travel around the world, help people and still make a good living.
No jobs like that, he told her.
Then she asked me the same question. I told her to look into the Foreign Service. Second-best advice I gave to my kids.
Only better advice was when I told my son 80 percent of life is just showing up.
Pauline, center, with her colleagues
So it has been a very good life. As for the course, I’ll devote the 18th hole to my lovely wife Nicole.