A Great Plenty

I've avoided posting much about my accident and subsequent recovery. While it may occasionally have made for interesting reading, doing so would have felt like a bunch of woe-is-me, narcissistic, looking-for-sympathy stuff. In strict definition of the the term, I have already received more overwhelming and humbling sympathy than a man could possibly ever deserve. In addition, most of my days are good, and most weeks are measurably better than the preceding ones. Minus the six pack and mutton chops, I've felt like The Wolverine in how quickly I've healed. I took the boys fishing shortly after getting out of the turtle shell brace, and I limp around pretty damn well for an old broken guy. I hit the gym pretty hard about five days a week, and I throw the football and frisbee with the boys frequently (I can't plant hard on my back foot yet, so my passes flutter a little, but all things in time...)

Anyway, the only real regret I have is that Max and Will and I have all suffered somewhat from our deprivation of nature this spring and summer. Since they could walk, we have been hiking whatever trails we could find, even the little one at Elmwood park that runs along the south side of the creek. I remember their faces alight while they trudged through the snow there one winter, and the way they ran laughing through the woods north of Omaha, and in the bluffs in western Wisconsin. This summer they got to come to the hospital and watch nurses try to find a good vein somewhere on their dad. While interesting in its own right, and an invaluable lesson in confronting adversity, hanging out at the hospital is a poor substitute for marching through sun, shade wind and rain. Their little souls, therefore, while taught some wisdom by the situation, suffered in the absence of nature.

So we went hiking on Saturday down at Indian Cave State Park by Nemaha, NE. We did about four miles on some very strenuous trails. Several steep grades shuffling through piles of leaves and some soft, almost spongy, earth. The boys groused a bit, as they had lost the habit of breasting these challenges, but their reticence was just more proof of the necessity of said struggles. We crested the last ridge towards the trailhead and, like they always do, my little foot soldiers realized the significance of the moment. We stopped and listened to the wind sing through the trees, and watched figures of light and shadow move in joyous harmony around us. They both talked about taking "photographs" to put in their memory boxes, all metaphor, of course for, "Remember this. Remember." They get it. I hope when they are middle-aged men, and I am old and perhaps more broken than I am now; I hope that sans eyes, sans ears, and stuck in a wheelchair on the deck or in the nursing home; I hope the three of us can perhaps recall the way the sun and wind felt up on that ridge, and the way the river glistened far off to the east. I hope we can recall how rich and just stupidly fortunate those moments were.

I tried to pay my brother Mike for part of the fishing trip one year, and he would not, of course, accept the amount I tried to give him. He took a portion and said, "That's a great plenty, Tommy." Those words, and the way he said them, stuck with me, and I think they're relevant here. A great plenty. That's how I'll remember this summer, I think. A great plenty, indeed.

much peace, tjb