Weathering the Storm
St Louis, MO
January 29, 2019
The snow is snowing, the wind is blowing, but I can weather the storm. – Irving Berlin, 1937
Lining the retreat from our arrival gate at Lambert Field, like artillery regiments on the Plains of Abraham, was a cavalcade of jackhammers reverberating with the intensity of amateur archeologists seeking relics of Lewis and Clark beneath the tiles of Terminal One.
Back home, the door of Pastis bistro bears a hand-scrawled note informing that the Provençal restaurant we’ve frequented for almost two decades, and at which Alexander had bussed tables for only two weeks, is indefinitely closed for ostensible “renovation”…and likely replacement.
Even the Ritz-Carlton is throwing off decibels and dust. This month began a twelve-week face-lift of the Club level that by day rattles walls and shakes ceilings, but that by April should provide a soothing sanctuary for strained nerves.
Inevitably, thru indifference, inertia, or indolence, any edifice can begin to crack or crumble…or to crave fresh applications of new shingles, sturdy bracing, or fresh paint.
Behind our house the chimes of power-saws and electric drills for two weeks beckoned bolts, beams, lumber, and levels on a crusade to reinforce or replace perfidious posts and faithless footings under a back deck we will soon convert to an enclosed sunroom.
Within the main walls of our castle, plumbers, carpenters, and carpeters have infested and inspected the basement to assess how…and for how much…it can be made habitable and hospitable to a relatively immobile relative.
Our fragile bodies…bearing the weight and wages of sin, trial, error, and time…in many ways resemble the decrepit structures we raise or raze.
Indestructible and immortal in the bloom and bustle of youth, indifferent and inert during the throes and tumult of middle age, and sagging or cracking under the accreted years of advanced age, our corporeal temples must eventually pay their pence, retire their debts…and return to dust.
Before cashing our check, kicking our bucket, giving up the oxygen habit, and proceeding to Paradise, Purgatory, or Perdition, we instinctively call a few Hail Marys to keep the game going.
We summon Hippocratic plumbers, carpenters, painters, and electricians to patch, scaffold, enamel, or reinforce the piping, framing, siding, and wiring of our crumbling bodily shell.
I am fortunate, if I play my cards right, that Rita will be general contractor to these asclepian handymen when her husband’s mind and body deteriorate in his declining years. Given the nature of some of these notes, she no doubt wonders if the descent hasn’t already begun.
Not that she’d have had time to notice…
For months Rita has spent each day bearing the burden, enduring the ordeal, and managing the frustration attendant upon the physical and mental demise of a loved one.
Parkinson’s disease, failing kidneys, abiding diabetes, and deteriorating memory have conspired to afflict her father and lay primary claim to each of her lengthening log of waking hours.
Rita’s father could ask for no advocate more dedicated and devoted than his diligent daughter.
She served sentry for a month at his inhospitable hospital, and now stands guard by the hour at his understaffed and overwhelmed rehabilitation center. More than once she has intervened to prevent him being administered the wrong type or quantity of what could have been lethal medication.
She sternly yet diplomatically rousts or reproaches caregivers if they drift into complacency or nod off in neglect, and deftly deploys strategic gifts to grease passive palms with the subtle acumen of a practiced politician or low-key lobbyist.
She brooks no patronizing, suffers no fools, and spares no effort to ensure the care and comfort of a man who sacrificed all he had to extricate his only child from the jaws of the Soviet Union.
She persists, out of loving devotion and filial obligation, to not only insist on adequate attention inside these facilities, but to seek appropriate long-term accommodation when he leaves…even if full-time care must be arranged in what may soon be our newly retrofitted basement.
A Sicilian motto advises one to never do favors, but always compile debts.
Rita is obviously no Sicilian.
Innate compassion and familial commitment inspire her benevolence. The notion of favors and debts don’t cross her mind. Her instinctive munificence abhors repayment…it is its own reward, and ours.
Meanwhile, outside my hotel, the wind is rising, the snow is falling, and the temperature plummets so low that it is liable to get the bends.
We expect it to dip below zero the next couple nights, and perhaps during the day…no doubt eliciting condescending smiles from Katy and Perry, braced in Chicago against Fahrenheit readings so low they are almost identical to their centigrade counterparts.
In Atlanta this morning, we read that errant expectations of stray snowflakes forced school closures and event cancellations, sending cheers from the mouths of students and chills down spines of anxious Super Bowl planners.
Of course…nothing happened.
Mark Twain reputedly recollected that throughout his life he had endured many horrible events…a few of which actually occurred.
Storms frequently threaten, often never materialize, and usually do no harm.
Periodically, one slowly arises, gathers ominous momentum, and sluggishly settles in…like a wayward son with a video game console and a sociology degree.
When it does, the best of us do as Rita has done. We gather our wits, summon our strength, and weather the storm.
And know that it will pass.
JD
