HURRAY!

Kids're coming home early this coming week.

Couldn't be better timing for me. Every year, this week and next are difficult for me. November 2nd's the fourth anniversary of Nancy's passing. You'd think I could grow-UP and deal with her death and absence better as time passes. Seems to get harder, though.

Simple truth: I really need to get off my butt and find a woman to love. I would, if I could figure out how to do it. What puzzles and daunts me is how to start looking? And where to look. I wasn't really looking for Nancy when I found her. She just miraculously emerged in my office. I turned around and saw her standing there. That was it. I deserve some credit. I never stopped paying attention.

Now I always feel outa step with my life.

It's my own fault. . .at least partly. I mean: my life DOES get better in some ways. Lotsa reasons: Tara&Jon and sometimes Taylor and Konnor fill the house with a sort of loving racket. Also, while it's not that Tara and Jon take care of me exactly. . . I know that they care about me. Include me best they can. I'm sincerely happy for their loving. . .the ways they take care of each other. . .the ways they include me best they can, though I try to stay out from under their feet.

Even though no mature adult would wish to horn in on this exciting time of their early loving, I can't help feeling lifted by watching the experience they're now having. Their love kinda splashes over onto me at times. I mean it's their love. But I can feel it, be glad for it, experience it close-up, be happy for them. Could be true that vicarious loving is better than none.

Plus it makes me remember. Good as that may be, remembering cuts both ways, no matter how hard I try to stop wishing things were different than they have to be. Still, nearly forty years of being loved by someone as wonderful as Nancy -- and loving her in return -- sounds like it should be enough for any man.

But it's NOT! Never will be. Simplest way to express it is I feel as if my life's been stolen!

Does some good to realize that all around me are people who've also had their happiness stolen. Most widows and widowers are within my own age range. Somehow they find each other -- or somebody else -- and couple up. Or not. Some bury themselves in their work. Other's seem to find other healthy ways to go on. I wonder about those I see who appear to deal with the loss so much better than I do. Many find other loves. Almost casually, they go ahead with their lives.

By contrast, on some level I'm always struggling. . .sometimes it's difficult. Sometimes I'm able to shake off the pain and sense of emptiness and loss. . .at least for a little while in the passage of each day. I'm determined to start doing better.

Helps to watch the Gutsy ones. I admire them. I have to wonder what-all's beneath their gallant exteriors. No good telling myself my loss has been greater. All loss is potentially devastating. Perhaps it's true: no living through it. Loss just goes on. Gotta somehow learn to live UP to it. Meet it head-on, face it down. Somehow compensate for it.

I know that! 'Swhy I'm determined to start volunteering immediately. . .knee surgery or not. Could be, I'll just limp around helping do stuff at the hospital right after my surgery. Last time I was able to stand up and move about stiff-legged the moment I woke up after the surgery. Gonna try to do the same this time. Prob'ly drive the nurses crazy. But I'm determined not to let this knee surgery slow me down.

Tara works in the hospital. Until I can safely drive, I'll ride in with her. Gotta be something useful I can do. I'm well-educated and broadly experienced. Gonna find something to do and get with it!


All that aside: what I want mostly to do in this brief posting is share some good news. I feel somewhat guilty, because the GOOD news comes at the expense of considerable BAD news for someone else I care about lots -- Mat.

The SUPER-good news? Marisa and Mat're coming home from Romania for about two weeks. Probably arrive here November 2nd. . .what would otherwise be a difficult day for me.

The BAD news. They're coming home because Mat's mother's companion has died. Mr. Keen has been very ill for a long time. His death introduces a sort of mixed turmoil. Nancy's death taught me the torment of such mixed turmoil. His release from suffering is good. What is left for those he loved, who loved him, is a forlorn emptiness that nags. It's not that I knew him. I didn't at all. Furthermore, I know Mat's mom only casually. Still: her loss reminds me of my own.

Mostly: I adore Mat. To the degree he worries about his mom, I worry about him.


One good thing: this coming Tuesday I'll be busy for sure. I'll be undergoing a heart catherization with the likelihood of at least some angioplasty in the process. As the procedure unfolds, the doctor'll fix whatever he finds needs fixing.

One really interesting aspect of the surgery is that instead of going in through my groin, this doctor employs a technique whereby he'll enter through my wrist. Indications are that this new technique lessens the likelihood of blood clots. So I'm told there won't be so much need for slow recovery with the wrist entry. I like that.

I like it especially because the following week I'm scheduled for knee replacement surgery. As I've probably mentioned before in some recent posting, I anticipate an accelerated period of therapy, too. But one of the neatest things is that Marisa&Mat'll still be here to spoil me with sympathy. . .which I'll no doubt milk for all it's worth. . .with both hands.

My new doctor's at least partly to blame for all this surgery. She's a do-it-get-through-it person. We both agree on that. I'm thinkin' all kindsa crazy-good-stuff like: Maybe I should get new skis and a flashy new outfit and get back to the ski slopes this winter. After-all, I'm in seriously GOOD shape for an old guy. New knee. New craziness. Furthermore, I wonder: if I find a woman on the ski-slopes, she's bound to be adventurous. . .no matter how old. Hmmmmnnn!?

I know I need to start looking. . .or at least start looking forward.


Well. . .bottom-line, I'm eagerly looking forward to Mat&Marisa getting home. The house'll be jumpin'! Good thing I'll have my heart back in shape!

Strange!? Since when has heart surgery seemed so much like a celebration? Feels good!

Gonna be a really good week!
Just wait and see!

A Time of Lonely Challenges

Sometime this coming Tuesday (11-8-10) I'll get my new artificial knee. I haven't yet received the promised call from Covenant Hospital informing me of the time I need to be checked in and ready for the operation.

Hopefully, I'll receive an early morning time. Then I'll be certain my surgeon-friend is fresh and prepared to do his very best work. Last time he did my knee FIRST. One result is that this present artificial knee has performed very well. I've made no excuses for it, have used it fully every day and worn it out. I'm a yogaphile, do vigorous weight-training, and walk long distances at a brisk pace three or four days a week. There are also two long stairways in my home. This daily regimen of exercise is a life-long habit beginning in my early teens. By long habit, I accept no excuses from my body. I make demands.

I've been making such demands of my body for most of sixty years. So, over the past decade, I've been pretty tough on this current artificial knee. It appears the new one will be a much-improved model, more sturdy, new metals, new type of plastic, with a much-longer spike that will seat more securely in my lower limb. One of the problems I'm currently experiencing is that the lower section of my current device works loose. Not convenient or comfortable. In fact, it hurts like crazy. I haven't really enjoyed my exercise regimen over the past few months. But I do it anyway.

Good habits die hard. . .even when those habits cause difficulty and pain.


I also expect a call soon scheduling a heart catherization. My recent stress test, the one that features two-three hundred pictures of my heart -- before and after stress -- apparently indicates I need some further exploration of the major arteries in my heart.

All this new exploratory and surgical stuff gives me the impression I may at last be falling apart. I don't like that feeling. Of course, I'm seventy-five years old. But I just saw my doctor this morning, and she didn't mention having requested a heart catherization for me. But then: could be I was looking at her instead of listening to her.

Seventy-five, and still not grown up!?

The thing I may've confused is her revelation that she is worried about the results of my recent stress test results. No doubt she wants my heart in good shape before she releases me for the knee surgery I would much prefer to have done first. Thing is, my heart isn't bothering me on my long walks and during yoga and weight training. But my knee IS bothering me. Still, I'm fairly certain that my new doctor will say to me: "First things first!"

Trouble is, I'm accustomed to having my own way with such choices.

Still, I imagine that with aging will come some changes in decisions like this. My new doctor took over and has requested a whole raft of exploratory tests. . .one or more each week for a number of weeks. She's attempting to establish a new baseline from which she can determine the true condition of my health. The heart cath is just one more such test. Another aspect of aging, I suppose, is that the results of some of these tests may require further and more challenging tests. Maybe even some necessary repairs. That certainly makes sense.

But so far in my life, that hasn't happened before, either because my old doctor was less interested, or my systems were more solid. Hard to determine which is closer to the truth. Could be a little bit of both. Could it be I'm aging at last, a process which is difficult for me to accept, or even sense accurately. . .perhaps because it's so gradual a process. I've always been a vigorous athlete. By habit I make demands on my body. Could be my present age and circumstance will demand some changes in my attitude. We'll have to see. I wonder: can I adjust to sensible limits?

In any case, I'm unaccustomed to discovering troublesome aspects about my health.


This has been an interesting and difficult decade. First, my beloved wife died. That entire process was difficult enough. Just as important, because of our closeness, I've found it difficult to adjust fully. Nancy was the sturdy keystone in the broad arch of my life. My best friend. My closest and most-trusted companion. We faced everything together with solid confidence. I still find it difficult to accept her death. She's so present to me, so alive to me. . .so essential to my sense of purpose, to the importance I ascribe to my life. As much as I loved my work, only recently have I realized that all these years, the real central purpose of my life has been to love Nancy.

All those wonderful years filled with purposeful work and Nancy. Presently, no work to do. Nancy gone. No one to love.

Leaves me feeling lost and empty.

And now, I'm apparently entering the final phases of my life. Will it be a period of painful and humiliating system breakdowns? A period of illnesses that I will have to face alone? I hope not. How will I find the stamina and courage to struggle alone through what may be so sorry an end to what has been a wonderful shared life?

I'll soon have some choices to make.
I'm not certain I want such a life.

The Changing-Doctors Ordeal

There's always something!

This time it's changing doctors. I've had the same doctor for thirty-five years. He's an internal medicine guy acting as my general practitioner. I liked him and respected him a lot.

But he got on my butt, insisting I begin dating a woman he likes. She's been a great friend of his for years. I never saw her. I suppose I've passed up some latter-day Julia Roberts. But at the time this happened, I wasn't ready to date, and especially not the best friend of someone I once thought of as a valued friend. Blow that: and you lose the friend you thought you had. Besides: the arrogance of his insistence angered me. So I may have lost Julia Roberts. But I certainly lost an old friend. Or someone I thought was a friend!?

Tough-scheidt! This decade -- probably my last -- is turning out to be a challenging time of letting-go of valued relationships. But especially NOW, I won't be told who to love. Nor, at this late period in my life will I permit anyone to push me around. Never did before. Won't start now.
I may be old. But I'm still my own man.


So! I have a new doctor. She's my daughter's doctor. And I really like her. She's wonderful. Bright and competent. Prob'ly mid-fifties, broadly practiced, insightful and thorough. And while I transferred my records. . .hand-carried them, in fact. . .she's running a wide variety of targeted tests to develop her own baseline understanding of my current health. She's studied my most-recent tests, is speculative, and wishes to determine a more thorough course of ongoing treatment for me. I like that.

She does something no other doctor has ever done before. She teaches me what all my tests mean. For instance: we got back this two-page, double-column set of numbers on my latest and most-thorough blood-test I've ever had. And she sat down with me, knee-to-knee, nose-to-nose, and taught me what all the numbers mean. Turns out my sugar's a little high. My father was a diabetic, so we need a retest and a diet-change -- at least. My doctor of the past thirty years must've known that. Why did he never tell me?

She did that also with my recent radiological stress test. Turns out I have some blockage and an abnormality I have been hearing all my life, but never understood. For years I've run long-slow-distance and have been a devotee of vigorous exercise. Why was I never told the risk I was taking? Thank goodness I've now become a long-distance walker.

I suspect this change in doctors is long overdue. I mean: I'm aging. I've lasted a long time. But had I known these things -- and other things my new doctor has taught me already -- I'd have made some changes long ago. Must be true: long-familiar, friend-type doctors get sloppy and over-confident after awhile. Might be why they outlive their friends.


Of course, the second reason I like this new doctor so much is she's so good-looking. Wonderful face, great eyes, perfect teeth. Nice-trim, well-conditioned body. Could be a runner, the way she looks. Smells good, too. She works close-up, face-to-face. I have to discipline myself to listen to what-all she's explaining to me. Because I have this (slight) crush on her, my listening mind shuts down. I like her expressive voice, her facial and body mannerisms, the thoroughness of her explanations, the way she answers questions. . .the way she listens intently and answers my questions with great clarity. She's so bright. At heart, she's a teacher. I see that in her manner. She mesmerizes me. While I know I need to listen to her carefully, my mind wanders.

She stands close to me when we speak. I keep wanting to take her into my arms and dance with her. Or something. . . .

The truth? I'm an incurable Romantic. Hard as I try to focus on our exchanges, my mind strays. I have to try NOT to flirt with her. I don't want her to throw me out of her office.

I keep confusing her interested and interesting bedside manner, which in my drifting mind I deftly convert to an inaccurate and inappropriate let's-get-into-bed-right-now-manner. Could be, I make one misstep, she'll chuck me out the door and I'll be without a doctor again. Worse, she may dump my daughter, too. Then I'll have TWO much-valued and lovely women angry with me and out of my life.

This new life is not easy!

Trouble is, my wife knew me so well. She told me over and over again, during those terrible final weeks of her life: "Find a woman you can love who loves you. It's the best thing you do. . . ." She released me with that project in her mind. Nancy's gone four years now. Notwithstanding I've been unable to get her out of my mind, in the past year, I find myself always searching, always hoping I'll find someone to love. Unattached, attractive women in my age-range are rare. Most are dead. Nor am I George Clooney!

My erratic woman-search is problematical in many ways. I've found a couple of women I really like. But then I can't keep Nancy out of my mind. I don't mean I actively compare them, though they share many of Nancy's wonderful qualities. Of course they do, or I wouldn't find them attractive. But then I get confused. . .WHO am I actually spending time with, actually loving: Nancy or this new woman? Makes me feel confused and stupid! And more than a little manipulative and RUDE. Makes me feel dishonest, whether I mean to be or not.

Makes me angry with myself. Who do I think I am to treat a nice person this way? If a woman chooses to spend time with me, she deserves my unqualified attention. I find myself drifting into seclusion, avoiding situations where I am apt to practice such inappropriate behavior.

Don't tell me I need counseling. I already AM counseling with a brilliant professional. And I sense at times I am causing her a level of exasperation that sends HER to her own counselor.

Counselors DO have counselors, don't they?

Likely they do, if they're dealing with me.

So, anyway, I've in love with my new doctor. But I think she's getting even with me. . .because tomorrow I 'm going to the dread Endoscopy Center for a colonoscopy.

Won't be the most fun I've ever had. But I've earned it. 'Swhat I get for getting a crush on my new doctor. Can't help it though. Since when has a prostate exam felt vaguely like a romantic interlude? Believe me. . .it did.

One more minor detail: my new doctor's married.


Never mind! This noon I'll consume the first of a series of two explosive concoctions designed to clear my lower bowel of unsightly debris. I'll be on the stool all day and into the night.

Tomorrow will be the one day in a long time I haven't been fulla scheidt.

That's why I'm writing today.
Tomorrow I'll have nothing to say!

Darkness and Light

I know it's truthful to say that darkness and light are a matter of will.

Darkness comes so easily after deep loss.

Light is more difficult. You have to insist upon light. Light comes only when you have courage enough to wrestle with darkness and drive it out.

I've been lucky. I've had a long-good life. For nearly forty years Nancy and I had a wonderful life. We worked together. I was a college professor most of the forty years we loved together. She was a high-school teacher and coach. She loved teaching and coaching, and she included me in everything she did, in every way she could. I never did anything really important. I just hung around, doing whatever little jobs for her she could cobble together at a moment's notice.

I did really important stuff like make sure my car-trunk was open, so that her pompon girls could store their coats there while they marched across the campus to the football game with the band, on gusty, frigid evenings. Plus I lugged a few extra pairs of shoes and lollies for any girl who might have forgotten hers. Dumb little custodial jobs like that. I never meddled in Nancy's planning or preparations for the teams she coached. That was HER work. I was her helper. I gladly did what she asked of me. And had fun doing it.

Thing was, though: I was a university professor who taught undergraduate and graduate courses for wanna-be and practicing teachers. Working with Nancy kept me involved with her students and colleagues at the school. Many of her colleagues took graduate courses from me. . .some of her administrators, too. So I had ready access to her school and had access to so many of the extra-curricular activities. I may have been one of the few education professors at my university who actually worked in a public school among busy teachers, and developed a feel for what went on in such a place. I knew and liked her professional colleagues. And I got to know many students really well. . .how they felt, what they knew, what school had come to mean to them in good and troublesome terms.

All that hands-on professional experience with Nancy was a great advantage to me. It helped me better judge the value of what textbooks and professional articles had to say about good classroom teaching and school leadership. I dealt with high-school kids every day. I liked them and developed with them the best relationships I could. All this made me a better, more minutely informed professor than many of my colleagues who rarely saw the inside of a school and never worked with teachers and students every day. At least I should've been better.

And I hope I was.

My wife's pompon squad was made up of two dozen or more really bright and skillful young women. At any time over the years, her team members occupied almost every student leadership position in the school. They worked in the offices. They were class officers at nearly every grade level. They were the bright and eager kids in every classroom. They worked for teachers at stenographic and teaching materials development tasks. They were prob'ly the nicest and hardest-working kids in the school. Beyond that, their parents were usually occupied with Nancy and me in developing and working at school fund-raising activities. Over the years I became a sort of universal grandparent to Nancy's pompon squad members. In some ways, we often came to feel like family.

Some families produced two or three daughters who went with Nancy through the pompon team experience. Most younger daughters followed their older sisters into poms. We went to camp together in the summers. We washed thousands of cars raising money. We inaugurated an elaborate series of challenging fund-raisers over the years, and a whole series of generous parents supplied wonderful leadership for those activities. Now, years later, many of those activities have become traditional. . .stuff like elaborate craft-shows that featured the same artistic vendors every fall, for instance.

Good parents are hard workers and skillful leaders. Good parents produce wonderful kids. Good parents make great friends, too. Nowadays I frequently run into these parents and/or their now-full-grown pom-kids. Usually these once-young pom-squad members have their own beautiful kids in tow. And, believe me, the old saying is true: "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!"

And it touches me to hear them say how much they miss Mrs. Meadows. Most of these new parents have enjoyed wonderful university experiences, have married well, and remind me so much of their parents (who are now happy grandparents) that I have trouble separating out the generations. I'm now seventy-five. In a short while, I expect to run into second -- maybe third -- generation pom-kids whose daughters have followed their mothers into rich pom experiences of their own.

I guess I should expect that. Most of Nancy's original poms were kids who had begun dancing lessons when they were maybe two or three years old. There is little else a growing teenager can do with a dozen years of dance lessons. Few become professional dancers. Many performed on Nancy's pom squads. Sometimes two or three sisters in a row. Sometimes two or more sisters on the squad at the same time. Older sisters help the younger. This sisterly help gives them an advantage at audition time.

Pompons is a challenging combination of dance and gymnastics moves. A three-minute competitive routine involves a long sequence of single-beat rhythms, incorporating several moves per beat. . .specific head, arm, leg and torso moves combined in such challenging ways as to be thrilling to watch. Soaring toe-touches and a wide variety of challenging jumps abound in a typical routine. Formation changes are continuous throughout the routine. The moves are performed in unison with great precision. Movements snap individually. Yet a routine soars to exciting music. Formations change and flow continuously. The girls are crisp and lovely, their hair done up tightly in trim braids, their uniforms colorful, trim, and modest. No doubt about it: pom-squad members are beautiful young women, practiced and masterful, proudly representing their schools.

Okay! I know. The truth? You have to SEE and HEAR a pompon routine to realize what it looks and feels like.

But about poms: you work with kids like this, you're apt to love school in general. You learn to appreciate how talented young people can be. Not just poms. . .all kids. . .because youngsters are so talented in so many different ways. After years of such work I've developed a different sense about teen-age kids and school. Even now, despite Nancy's absence, I thoroughly enjoy interacting with school-kids. I like those moments when I meet ex-pom kids in the grocery store or the mall. . .wherever. They've grown into remarkable people, energetic and responsible. . .good parents eager to introduce me to their own children.

Meeting these old pom-kids helps me. Seeing them, interacting with them, makes me know I'm making progress overcoming the emotional turmoil associated with Nancy's death, nearly four years ago. I know it for several reasons, but especially I realize it when I run into Nancy's pom-kids, engage them in conversations, learn about their careers and growing families. For months after Nancy's death, seeing old squad-members, catching-up with their lives, remembering the good times Nancy and I spent with them. . .all this made me sad. But increasingly, such meetings and remembering make me happy, make me laugh out loud. At least there's more joy than sorrow in such meetings as time passes. More light than darkness.

Emily Dickinson has a poem I've long-since learned by heart. It reflects the progress I'm making as I resolutely work through my grief. It goes something like:

We grow accustomed to the Dark--
When Light is put away--
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye--

A moment--We uncertain step
For newness of the night--
Then--fit our Vision to the Dark--
And meet the road--erect--

And so of larger--Darknesses--
Those Evenings of the Brain--
When not a Moon disclose a sign--
Or star--come out--within--

The Bravest--grope a little--
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead--
But as they learn to see--

Either the Darkness alters--
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight--
And life steps almost straight.


I think EmilyD used the dashes to mark the halting progress made through hard work with grief.

Emily helps me grapple with my sadness. I slowly come to recognize the truth of her words: darkness alters, though terrible loss remains. Perhaps, as EmilyD might say: though terrible loss remains terrible, perhaps even terribler. . .we somehow discover ways to adjust our sight until "life steps almost straight." and we can continue on, proud and "erect." The burden grows no lighter. Yet we learn to balance it more lightly. With strength of mind, we become grateful at last.

When sadness descends, I have learned to ask myself: "What if I had never met Nancy, had not known her at all?' It helps me to remember that for nearly forty years we lived together, worked together -- loved each other and the shared work.

My friends assure me: "You were lucky. Few have enjoyed such a rich and loving life." And when they say that to me, I think to myself: "YES! We were lucky!"

But I also know we were always mindful. We realized what we had together.

And we took pains to live together
with generosity, artistry and skill.

In Praise of Tactility

I've always been a touchy-feely kinda guy.

For almost forty years, my beloved wife and I lived in each others arms. We walked close together arm-in-arm. We bumped along hip-to-thigh through household tasks. She had great piano hands, and we bounced around on the piano-stool, sang and danced through our days. We slept in each others' arms.

Nancy was striking. A beautiful and magnetic person. She was five-foot-seven, hundred-twenty-five pounds, blond hair and green eyes: an athlete with a brick-house body. Most of my adult life I've been barely six-foot tall, a trim 175 pounds. By accident of nature, our bodies slid together and moved as one. Body and mind, heart and soul. . .we were a perfect fit. In fact, in the first year of our so-called courtship we slept single-file on a narrow couch-bed in what we fondly termed our INefficiency apartment.

And she was brilliant. In fact, my best friends said that to their knowledge she had only made one mistake in her life. (I never could figure out what that mistake might've been!) But she was the keenest listener, the quickest seer and thinker I've ever known. . .a natural-born leader. People always looked to her for decisions and approval.

She was warm and winning, approachable, a perceptive listener with a reassuring presence. Part of it was her wonderful face, the way she focused her eyes -- her entire attention -- upon those who approached her with questions or seeking directions. She cared so much, had such personal warmth, wielded such gentle power. She cared about the people around her. She helped them. She was a virtual fountain of creative energy, and she used that energy for others.

She touched people. . .literally and figuratively, she touched them. She worked close range. Her so-called social distance might've been no more than three feet. I mean, a teacher approached her with a problem, a need to discuss and share a situation. Such a person might stop four or five feet away. But Nancy was likely to reach out gently, place a hand on the other's forearm or hand, then step in close. People didn't step back. There they stood, face-to-face, speaking quietly, richly present to each other within a circle with a diameter no longer than two-three feet. Nancy's circle was a close, safe, and creative place.

She was, as I've said, a reassuring presence. She looked good. She was attentive. She even smelled good. She took control of so-called "problem-exchanges." She asked questions, identified and clarified problems. Like all good leaders, she involved people in the problems they brought to her. And such were her skills of shared problem-solving, so clarifying was her approach, that within that small circle, the person often came up with his or her own solution.

People loved Nancy. She helped them be more productive, more competent. Her special gift to others was largely this: she taught people they had the power to make their own lives better in myriad ways. It's a good thing to have the power to help people. It 's even better to teach them they have the power to help themselves. Such an approach to leadership is truly UNselfish.


As I said: those who worked with Nancy loved her. I certainly loved her. . .instantly.

I met her in July, 1970. I had left my university professorship to take the principalship of what was then one of the largest integrated high schools in the state of Ohio. It's now easy to forget how back in those days diverse settings were difficult places. Even today, without good leadership people with largely different economic and social backgrounds are apt to find life troublesome, filled with needless conflict. Nancy was by nature a healer. During her first year on our administrative team we became inseparable teammates, then deeply committed friends. We believed the same things and lived the same values. We thought alike, felt the same way about important things.

Friends always stuck their tongues in their cheeks and asked me: "Where did you find this woman? What's she doing with the likesa you?" I'd always laugh and say: "I didn't find her. She just walked into my office one day."

And it's true. In July of 1970, I took the principalship of this big and troubled integrated high school in Dayton, Ohio. I was working twenty-four hours a day,

Building my team.
Identifying strong faculty leadership.
Writing new administrative policy.
Meeting students and their families
at large picnics throughout the attendance district.
Learning the community.
Writing new policy and programs.
Making friends.

I was in the midst of writing a new health education program that involved a large community-service component. The program was necessary, in part, because a scheduling glitch had developed in the curriculum several semesters before I got there. Therefore, I inherited about six-hundred juniors and seniors who had not taken the state-required Health-Education class. And they couldn't graduate until they took the class.

Sometimes, a problem like this becomes an opportunity. Troubled schools often develop a pattern by which they export their problems directly into the community. I saw in this health-class dilemma a chance to export useful student-service instead.

As I discussed this program with my superintendent and assistant superintendent for curriculum, I said what they realized: in order for this program to work, we had to have a special sort of supervisor:

one who knew and was committed to the community,
one who knew and liked the merchants and service agencies,
one who was known, admired, and trusted.
A person of real strength and substance.
In short, a bright, energetic and winning person.

As we spoke about the program, my two buddies brightened up. They liked the service-learning idea. More important: they said the very person we needed was already on the faculty.

We had been discussing the program around lunchtime one Saturday. So I whipped out my pocket calendar and said: "Okay! This coming Tuesday is Bastille Day. Have this person meet me in my office at 6:o0 that morning."

Wayne looked shocked: "Bob! This is summer vacation. What kinda teacher'll show up mid-July for an interview at 6:00 in the morning during vacation-time?"

I winked and responded: "The only kind I'll consider hiring for a job this important!"

That Tuesday morning I came in around 5:30 and began sketching the program on the twelve-foot green chalkboard I'd had installed on my office wall. At about 5:55 I heard a kick-stand quietly squeak down. I turned around and saw Nancy standing there with her hands on the handle-bars of her bike. (This was inner-city Dayton. You leave a bike outside, you lose it.)

She was tall and tan and striking in a cute cotton tennis-dress. Long, gorgeous legs. Tiny footies in tennies at one end. Close-cropped golden-blond hair at the other.

She ignored me, her eyes fixed on the chalkboard. I was transfixed!

I had left three sections of the outline largely blank, knowing that the right person would surely understand how those sections might be written, and would appreciate being included in the creative process. I reached out and grabbed my empty coffee urn, tried to clear my throat, and barely squeaked out: "Coffee's gone. I'll get some more."

She shook her head side-to-side signifying no-coffee-for-me, her eyes studying the chalkboard. She still hadn't looked at me. Like all confident women, she stood there ignoring me, letting me look at her.

I'd consumed six cups of coffee. I needed to pee. I was smitten and speechless. Close to wetting my levis. I had never before seen such a striking woman that close-up. To say that I was totally disarmed is a massive understatement. I felt my reaction to her appearance was totally inappropriate. She had me back-pedaling. I was struggling for composure.

Finally, she approached me, still studying the chalkboard. She still hadn't even looked at me. As she stepped past me, she held out her hand, palm-up. I dropped the chalk into her hand and started for the door: "Some ice-water? Tea? Soda?" But she shook me off. We hadn't even exchanged names. In retrospect, over the years I came to know that such behavior was typical of Nancy. As a professional, she had the power to focus upon and study a problem. And later, as we spoke about the project she hoped to lead, she always said something like: "Sure I was interested in meeting you, in getting the job the superintendents spoke to me briefly about. but my major interest that morning was seeing your idea and judging your competence." Oooops!?

Believe me, this was a woman -- a person -- I soon learned I had to work hard to live-UP to.

Anyway, that morning we met, she focused all her attention on the green chalk-board. Not until we began discussing the project did she look at me. Which was a good thing. . .because I was in shock. I never really interviewed her for the job. Instead, we discussed the project and developed a deeper shared understanding of how it might work, and how we might make it work better.

And as the years of our friendship unfolded, whenever we discussed our first meeting, I would say to her: "I fell in love with you instantly that morning. When did you begin to like me?" She would always grin and say: "Well!? I saw your picture and the announcement of your appointment in the paper the week before. I thought you looked nice." Then she would laugh and hug me all-big. And kiss me. But she never gave me any further reassurance about that first meeting.

I didn't care. Over the four decades of our rollicking and adventuresome marriage, she gave me an entirely new and wonderfully challenging life. I'll TAKE IT! In my sanest moments I know she loved me. And of course she often told me so in the passage of a day. Mostly, Nancy acted out "I love you."

But that day of our first meeting: in a split second, she began to write in the open spaces on the chalkboard. I had to get out of there. I headed for the cafeteria for more coffee. . .for a chance to collect myself. When I came back to the office about fifteen minutes later, she had completed the diagram. Immediately, she fixed me with her eyes and began discussing the program: the things I'd written, the things she'd added. I was mesmerized.

And as she spoke, raised questions, problems, and solutions, I thought: "Geeezus! She's smart, too. . . ." And it's true: she was always the quickest and smartest and kindest of the two of us.

Still, that Bastille-Day morning. . .that was the morning I met and hired the woman who freed me and helped me grow the rest of my life. . .the woman I later married and loved more each day for nearly forty years.

Now, nearly four decades later I think of those final terrible weeks of October, 2006, when breast cancer spread to her liver and killed her. Be assured: those weeks we spent like every other week of our long-shared life. . .in each others' arms.

And since her death, no other woman has ever really touched me. . .or even acted as if she wished to. 'Sokay. I know I'm mostly an aging wreck of a man. I know that. I also know I've been well-loved by Nancy my entire adult life.



But I remind you the title of this posting is In Praise of Tactility. I began this posting with the sentence: "I've always been a touchy-feely kinda guy." And that's true. Still, since Nancy's death I've come to feel outcast. . .untouchable.

BUT! Just lately something really good has happened. My daughter has moved into this big gorgeous house with her two wonderful young sons. Taylor is seven. Konnor is five. They are truly lovely, smart, and delightful boys. Tara is much like Nancy. She has taken over and improved the household. Believe it: we three Lost Boys romp around and make a ruckus that nearly clatters the house down. They like to wrestle me down, dive onto me. . . . It's like we're right out of some loud and robust sword-fight-scene from Peter Pan:

ShiverMEtimbers!
TakeTHATmatey!
AvastLUBBER!
I'm gonna getcher GIZZARD!
Touche'!
GOTCHA!

And I get 'em screeching to my lumbering Tick-Tock-Crock and wild-One-Eye-Hook who're gonna GET'EM real good in just one second. We whack away all-wild with swords, just short of knocking the house down.

But really: it's the wrestling, the ARGHH'S and MATEY'S, the growling hugs, the way they pounce on me and drag me down and jump on top of me. . .the laying-on-of-hands: that love-touching is what has brought my rambunctious and rollicking inner-boy-child right back to life. . .long after I had come to think him dead. And along with all this shared boyish delight, there has also come rushing back much of the joy that Nancy and I so patiently built over the decades of our loving.

In those terrible final weeks of Nancy's life, she said to me again and again: "Find a woman you can love who loves you. . . ." I know that was the final gift she wished to give me.

But I'm aging. And I've learned over the passing years that I'm no longer attractive to the sort of woman I might wish to choose. In all these years of heart-break and struggle since Nancy's death, no female outside my family has ventured to touch me.

But that's okay. I know I can be happy. . .maybe even productive. Tara's come home for awhile.

And she's brought me my grandsons. ARGHHHHH!
The little pirates have touched me and stolen my heart.