JUST BEING WITH MY WIFE IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME--REFLECTIONS ON MY FEELINGS TOWARD HARRIET ON VALENTINE'S DAY

Harriet and I recently celebrated our 28th Valentine’s Day together. We’ve never done a whole lot to celebrate this tribute to romantic love, but we’ve always done something. We’ve been married 28 years so as the reader can tell we hadn’t known each other very long when we decided to tie the knot in October 1980. In fact, we had met in March of 1980 on St. Patrick’s Day, a whole month after Valentine’s Day of 1980. By the time we celebrated our first Valentine’s Day together in February 1981, we’d already known each 11 months and been married four months.

By the way, our experience of marrying just seven months after we’d first met is just one more example among many that short engagements often do lead to very successful marriages.

Card From Walmart

The card I got Harriet this year came from Walmart. I didn’t spend very much time picking it out. Maybe the most shocking aspect of this confession is not that I didn’t spend very much time picking out the card, but that I, a practicing poet, used a store bought card in the first place. Yes, I do confess that I use store bought cards—and I enjoy doing it. I’ve written original poems to my wife before, and I am sure I will write more, but to this point the inspiration to write something for her has not come at the time of those annual milestones in her life—birthdays, anniversaries, and Valentine’s Day.

On the other, I do enjoy the experience of going to a store, mingling with the crowd, and picking out a card. In some past postings to Mind Check, I’ve confessed to the fact that I am an introvert—one of those people who normally gets a shot of energy from being alone rather than from being with others. Being with others is sometimes exhausting for me—all that talk, talk, talk. There are exceptions, and one of them involves mingling with crowds where we all have a common purpose, for example, sharing the excitement of being involved together in making purchases for a shared event like Valentine’s Day. Exciting!

Weekly Supermarket Shopping

I can remember when I first came to the Washington, DC, area in 1978. I had left my first marriage, and I was trying to reestablish myself in this new area where I knew almost no one. Yes, I was lonely. One of the things I would look forward to during this transitional time in my life was the weekly shopping trip, almost always on Saturdays, to the nearest supermarket. I didn’t have to talk to anyone. Just being with the other people in the busy supermarket where I could share in the energy that came from busy people with the common purpose of weekly food shopping was good enough.

Let me get back to the Valentine’s Day card that I got Harriet this time around. As I said, I didn’t give it that much thought when I picked it out, but I now think that I ended up with the best Valentine’s Day card I’ve ever gotten her. The main reason that it is the best is that the message so perfectly captures what I believe.

Back from Big Island

As I’ve previously indicated, Harriet and I are just back from the Big Island of Hawaii where we had a wonderful time. One of the great things about this vacation was that we were able to work on reconnecting family relationships that had gotten a little frayed after four years of separation. In case, I didn’t mention it before, we have family on the Big Island of Hawaii—son Scott, daughter-in-law Yumiko and grandson Sebastian, known as Sebi. We don’t get to see them nearly enough. Inevitably some bad feelings may get introduced into a relationship when family members don’t see each other for a prolonged period of time, and we wanted to make sure through this trip that negatives like these got smoothed over.

Hence the purpose of the trip was not to do anything for Harriet and my relationship, which was already as good as it could be, in my opinion. That was one of the ideas that I was trying to express with the card. Here is the message on the card, a Hallmark card in the “connections by Hallmark” series.

If someone were to ask me
What a perfect day would be,
I wouldn’t think of places
that have lovely sights to see,
I wouldn’t wish for sunny skies
or special things to do,
For I’d just want to have a day
That I could spend with you…
And if someone were to ask me
What would make a perfect life,
I’d simply say “I have that,”
for I have you for my wife.

To put the matter another way: I don’t need to make a trip to Hawaii or any other beautiful place to give meaning to my life. Just being with my wife is good enough for me.

Thank you, Hallmark and thanks for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my two latest books, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat and City Above The Sea And Other Poems are now available online. Links to the publisher Xlibris can be found on the sasaft website.

Copyright © 2009 by Stephen Alan Saft

BACK FROM HAWAII, THOUGHTS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF LOVE AND FAMILY

We are just back from the Big Island of Hawaii where we got a chance to perform the infrequent role of hands-on grandparents to the fourteen-year-old Sebastian. Sebi, as he is called, is a very fine student and a very fine basketball player, and we do not get to see him nearly enough. In fact, since his birth we have only had a chance to spend time with him about six times including a memorable time with him in Saporo, Japan, when his father was teaching at a Japanese university, all told less than 40 days.

The fact is that in the 14 years since Sebi’s birth we have only spent a total of about 40 days with the entire family, son Scott, daughter-in-law Yumiko, and Sebi. Why that has been the case I will leave to subsequent explorations. What this trip has served to demonstrate to me is how important family contact is. We humans are not solitary creatures. We are not meant to be alone even if we have a tendency to introversion, as I do. An introvert I may be, but a hermit I am not.

Highest Form of Feeling

Being with other people is essential, but no other contact is more important than being with family. Love, not romantic love, but what we refer to as agape or divine love, is the highest form of interpersonal feeling we can imagine. Under ideal conditions, that is, when our spiritual practices are manifest in us at the highest level it is what we feel toward everyone. Until we can attain the ideal, however, it is the feeling that comes most naturally to us when we are with family.

Let me express this principle in another, equally crucial way. How can I experience love for others but not experience love for my family? It is true that our family members have the capacity to hurt us more easily and more deeply than others can because of the bonds we feel through the sense of shared inheritance and shared experience. We aren’t expecting hurtful behavior from other family members, and when it happens it can hit us very hard and leave scars that last a lifetime.

Power Translates To Responsibility

It is for these reasons that, I believe, that family members need to work as hard as they can to treat each other with compassion and forgiveness. Because each of us has the power to hurt another family member more easily than anyone else, that is the very reason that each of us has the responsibility to be especially gentle, especially understanding, and especially loving in family situations.

In summary, it was wonderful being with family for the last nine days. I found it very renewing—and the gorgeous Big Island of Hawaii wasn’t bad either.

Thanks for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my two latest books, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat and City Above The Sea And Other Poems are now available online. Links to the publisher Xlibris can be found on the sasaft website.

Copyright © 2009 by Stephen Alan Saft

KEN WILBER BOOK IS INSPIRATION FOR MY OWN THOUGHTS ABOUT DEATH

A friend lent me her copy of Grace And Grit, Spirituality And Healing In The Life And Death of Treya Killam Wilber by Ken Wilber, and reading the book has been a very moving experience for me. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is wrestling with the question of death and dying and especially anyone wrestling with the question of death and dying from cancer.

That said, please be advised that Grace and Grit is not easy reading at all as it deals in considerable detail with the five year struggle of Treya Killam Wilber, wife of the author, with the complications from a diagnosis of breast cancer, very possibly all the complications that are possible from this disease. To put it simply Treya went through hell before her death, and Ken was right there with her, the perfect caregiver, anyway damn close to it.

Diagnosis Within Weeks of Marriage

Treya, born Terry Killam, had the misfortune to be diagnosed with breast cancer within weeks of marrying Ken Wilber, noted philosopher and writer. Wilber writes extensively on the interconnections of the spiritual and physical worlds. Treya and Ken then spent the next five years dealing with Treya’s disease. Demonstrating immense courage, Treya tried a combination of conventional and unconventional medical approaches and spiritual practices, particularly of the Eastern variety. Her attempts to save herself included a prolonged round of treatments in Bonn, Germany. Eventually, however, the tumors infesting her body including her brain proved too much to overcome, and she died at home with her husband and other family members and friends by her side.

In putting the book together, Ken incorporated a number of passages from Treya’s journals and letters. Hence the book is a record of two points of view—of Treya, the victim, and of Ken, the principal caregiver. In this case, the approach serves to underscore just how close this husband and wife were during the entire ordeal, the one exception being a dark period at about the two-year anniversary when the two drew apart and became hostile toward each other. Ken even contemplated suicide during this highly stressful low point in their relationship.

Facing Up To My Own Mortality

For me, the book proved especially useful in helping me hone my view of the difficult subject of death. I have had to face up to my own mortality at different periods in my life—first when I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 27 in 1966. None of us like to think of our own mortality. We prefer to think of ourselves as never dying, of living forever. Death is all around us, but we are adept at ignoring it. We prefer to think that it will never happen to us. We’re going to go on indefinitely forever, right?

Now having gone through my second bone marrow transplant about six months ago, the subject has presented itself once again. No, I’m not going to live forever. Yes, I’m going to die. Being able to accept the inevitability of death has a certain liberating effect. Since it’s going to happen to me someday, there’s no sense dwelling on it. No sense worrying about it. And it’s not just going to happen to me. I am not being singled out. It‘s going to happen to everyone.

Rules of the Game of Life

These are the rules of the game called life. The fact of death is a common bond that all human beings share. You can feel remorse about it, and as a lover of life I do, but it makes no sense feeling hurt or spiteful or angry, even though all of us do experience these emotions at some point.

I confess that at times when the reality seems more than a little overwhelming, I take some solace from a game that I play on occasion. It’s a game I play entirely in my own mind so you are not likely to know I am playing it. Sometimes I bring the game into play at a public event or in a social situation, let’s say at a not entirely enjoyable party. The game involves looking at each of the people around me and thinking, “It’s not just my fate, but you’re not going to escape nor are you or you or you or you, etc. None of us are because we’re all mortal.”

Basis for World’s Religions

At this point I could attempt to come forward with some profound statements about how the fact of death is the basis for all of the world’s religions. The common bond of our mortality including the common fear of death has led almost all of us to seek solace and hope in the answers provided by established religion. In my case, long a believer in the power of reason including the scientific method I have of late seen more clearly the limitations of these approaches and conversely have found more answers in spiritual explorations.

I find it ironic that as an undergraduate taking a required History of Religions course I found Hinduism the most difficult of the major religions to understand and appreciate. Now I find this ancient religion the easiest to understand and appreciate—specifically the concept that God is in all of us. The divine lives in all of us, ready to be discovered when we have the inclination. The greatest manifestation of this reality is love.

Thanks for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my two latest books, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat and City Above The Sea And Other Poems are now available online. They’re both available from the sasaft website and also from the xlibris.com website. And now it’s off to the Big Island of Hawaii with wife Harriet and godson Stephen to see my son Scott, daughter-in-law Yumiko and grandson Sebi. Perhaps I’ll have more to say about this trip in my next posting.

Copyright © 2009 by Stephen Alan Saft

MOMENTOUS YEAR REACHES ITS HIGH POINT WITH GODCHILD REUNION

This is an appropriate time to be reviewing the events of 2008. The start of a new year is just a week away, and it is normal at a time like this to be looking back and asking, “What kind of year was it anyway?”

One word sums it up for me. “Momentous.” The election of the first African American as President in our history made sure of that. As long as anyone will care about American history, the year 2008 will have its special consideration—as the year Barack Obama got elected. It was also a year that the high flying U.S. economy started unraveling, but let us hope that that end-of-year phenomenon will be short lived under the management of a new Obama Administration.

Second Bone Marrow Transplant

For me, 2008 was a year of special significance for several other reasons. It was a year during which I underwent the second bone marrow transplant of my life. The bone marrow transplant, which I had first gone through in 2002, was again urged on me to fight the reoccurrence of the blood cancer called lymphoma. It was also a year during which I managed to publish two books of poetry (see my website for more details: http://www.sasaftwrites.com), and it was the year that I was reunited with Stephen Johnson, my godson. In fact, the latter proved to be the most dramatic event of all for me.

I was lying in my bed in the bone marrow transplant ward on the ninth floor of the Reynolds Tower of Baptist Hospital, Winston-Salem, North Carolina sometime in mid July when the phone on the stand next to my bed rang. I picked it up, and the caller on the other end introduced himself as someone I had not spoken with in many years. He said his name was Stephen Johnson. He said he was my godson.

Hearing Name Is Enough

As soon as I heard his name, even before the word “godson” registered, I knew who he was. The emotion surged in me. Indeed we hadn’t spoken in many years—over 20 in fact. When we were last in touch Stephen wasn’t quite a teenager, probably 12 years old. And yes indeed he was my godson, my godson who I had abandoned for reasons, however misguided, around 1987.

His mother, a single black woman who had worked for my first wife and me as a cleaning lady in Brooklyn by name of Martha Jean Johnson, had asked me to serve as Stephen’s godfather just before he was born in 1968. He was a baby boy coming into the world in Harlem Hospital without a father, and it seemed to me that the least I could do was say “yes” to Martha Jean’s request. My assumption was that a godfather was expected to serve as a role model, and this was a responsibility that I felt flattered to be asked to fulfill. How could I refuse?

Share Room With Stephen

Even after I moved away from New York City, first to New Jersey, then to Maine, and then to the Washington, D.C., area I had kept in touch with Martha Jean and Stephen—at the very least sending them presents at holiday time. At some point when my first marriage was falling apart I fled Maine for New York City and spent at least one night with Martha Jean and Stephen in their Lower East Side apartment where Stephen let me share his room with him.

Just before wife Harriet and I were married in 1980, the second marriage for both of us, we met in New York where she was taking computer training. By then I had relocated to Washington, and both Harriet and I were working for a Washington, D.C. corporation in the satellite communications business. During that visit, we got together with Stephen and Martha Jean in Brooklyn Heights, and as best I can remember the four of us walked around this old Brooklyn neighborhood together, a neighborhood famous for its Promenade overlooking the Lower West side of Manhattan and New York Harbor. Brooklyn Heights had been the first place in the city where I had lived just after leaving graduate school at Yale in 1963.

Go To The Boat Show

Even earlier Stephen remembers my taking him to the New York Boat Show at what was then called the New York Coliseum up on Columbus Circle when I was still living in Maine and working for a publication called National Fisherman based in the Penobscot Bay town of Camden. National Fisherman would have an exhibit booth at the New York Boat Show every year as a base from which to sell advertising space in the publication and to drum up subscription sales, and those of us on the editorial side of the operation would also have our chance to be present at the show and to take advantage of what the big city had to offer.

The break with Stephen and his mother occurred in the mid 1980s, and it was entirely my fault. I fell on hard times, first losing my job with the satellite communications company, then a little more than a year later losing a new job as director of communications for an association in Silver Spring, Maryland. I had been sending Stephen and Martha Jean presents at Christmas time, as I indicated, but with the loss of the second job I felt devastated. By this time I had taken on the responsibility of trying to put my son through an expensive eastern college, and I had no idea how I was going to be able to manage it now with the loss of the second job.

Low Opinion of Myself

Not only did I stop the presents to Stephen and Martha Jean, but the communication as well—an act of extremism that didn’t have to be. I felt embarrassed that I was in such dire straights financially, and I’m afraid I overreacted. In my mind at the time, presents and caring about another human being were one in the same thing. It didn’t occur to me that Stephen needed the continuing attention of an adult male far more than he needed some extra dollars at Christmas time. Yes, I was suffering from a very low opinion of myself at the time. The loss of jobs will do that to you.

Now we jump ahead to July 2008. It struck me as a miracle that Stephen had gotten in touch with me. It struck me that I was being given a second chance to make amends to this man, now in his early 40s, to make up for my failures as a role model the first time around. I didn’t want to mess it up. I wanted to be the godfather now that I felt I had not been before.

Hyatt Hotel Jersey City

In the course of that fateful telephone conversation from my bed in Baptist Hospital, I learned that Martha Jean had died at least five years before. Stephen was married now, he told me. In fact, he had an 18-year-old daughter, but amazingly he was still living in the same Lower East Side apartment where I had once stayed and shared a room with him. Yes, I was older now with a much stronger idea of the responsibility that we bear each other. I wasn’t going to be so cavalier about my relationship with Stephen Johnson ever again.

Since then we’ve been together twice, first in Greensboro, North Carolina, where we met after one of my follow-up sessions at Baptist Hospital, then in New York during Thanksgiving when Harriet and I stayed at the Hyatt Hotel Jersey City and were treated to the breathtaking views of Lower West Side Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and where Stephen played the role of chauffeur and drove us all around the city. During the first visit we met Stephen’s adopted sister Melissa, and during the second Marsha, his wife, Camille, his daughter, and Cita, Marsha’s mother from Trinidad as well as Melissa, all wonderful people who we thoroughly enjoyed being with. And now we are just about to go to the Big Island of Hawaii with Stephen where we will be getting together with son Scott, his wife Yumiko and our grandson Sebi (Sebastian).

38 Year Reunion

As best I can figure—and I took the photographs that are a record of the event—Scott and Stephen were last together in 1970 when Scott was four and Stephen was two. Now they’ll be getting together again 38 years later.

Thanks entirely to Stephen’s courage and initiative, I’ve been given this second chance to make a whole new relationship with him, and I’m not going to squander the opportunity this time. This time I’m going to be the godfather that fate has meant me to be.

Thanks for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my two latest books, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat and City Above The Sea And Other Poems are now available online. They would make wonderful holiday presents for people you care about. They’re both available from the sasaft website. Have a healthy and happy 2009.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Alan Saft

WE MUST HELP THE U.S.AUTO INDUSTRY, BUT WE MUST INSIST ON FAIR TERMS FOR THE U.S. TAX PAYER

The fiscal crisis spreading like influenza throughout the world has for the moment infected the U.S. auto industry. Should the U.S. Congress use tax payer funds to bail out the U.S. auto industry just as it is currently bailing out the U.S. financial industry and attempting to bail out the U.S. housing industry?

Like each of the bail-out plans that has come before Congress, the U.S. auto industry bail-out score has been accompanied by a howling chorus of nay sayers singing an angry counterpoint. The negative lyrics of this chorus include such lines as “let them fail. We don’t care if they go out of business. All they know how to build is over sized gas guzzlers that pollute the environment.”

UAW Blamed

Still another set of lines pertains to the United Auto Workers (UAW) Union and unions in general. These lines say something like this: “It’s the UAW with a long history of sweetheart contracts with management, the result of the repeated capitulations of management over the years, that has brought the U.S. auto industry to the low state it finds itself. Now is the time to get rid of the UAW and maybe the industry itself will revive. And while we’re at it let’s get rid of all labor unions.”

What is to be done? The higher pay and benefits won by the UAW for its worker members over the decades of union contract negotiations has helped to make these workers and their families even more valuable contributors to society as tax payers, as consumers of products and services in their respective communities, and as involved citizens active in community affairs than would have been possible had they been members of an oppressed working class as they once were during Henry Ford’s time.

Good Pay Hurts Competitiveness

On the other hand, the case can be made that these same workers with their middle class pay and benefit packages have contributed to the declining competitiveness of the industry of which they are part as that industry attempts to compete with the products of foreign manufacturers with a work force often earning much less and receiving much less in benefits. They’ve accomplished that simply by doing what all of us humans do by instinct, that is, to seek to improve our situations in life.

Nor can we remove from blame the senior executives of these organizations with their obscene pay and benefit packages and the corporate jets at their disposal costing $35 million or more. They too have played a role in keeping the U.S. auto industry less competitive than it should have been.

Horrendous Ripple Effect

Do we let this industry employing hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country just go out of business? The ripple effect would be horrendous with not just assembly line workers but all the people who make the tires, the glass, the batteries, the electronics, and other parts as well as all the people employed at the dealerships out of work as well. No, we simply can’t let that happen. The unemployment figures are already alarming enough. Imagine those figures two to three times as high.

Do We Attach Strings?

And so I ask the question again. What is to be done? Now is a good time for a reexamination of the economic and political principles that lie at the heart of our most sacred assumptions. Do we attach strings to the bail-out funds for the industry? Do we say to both senior management and union rank and file, “We’ll give you several billion of taxpayer money. Now you agree to substantial pay cuts and benefit cuts until this industry can turn out affordable products that will compete with the products of the Japanese and the Koreans—products that have less of a negative impact on the environment ”

The answer in my opinion is a resounding “yes.” These same strings need to be applied, in my opinion, to all organizations receiving taxpayer hand outs. Communism is dead and good riddance to it. Even socialism has significantly less standing now than it did during the middle of the last century. We don’t need to be guided by these left wing philosophies, but what we do need is to uphold a middle ground philosophy that accounts for individual rights, but which still encompasses the interests of all of us as a group with common needs and interests as citizens or taxpayers—a community of common interests.

Survival With Healthy Economy

Our common need and interest is the survival of this country, survival with as healthy an economy as possible. This, I believe, is part of the concept of “happiness” as stated by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence—our “unalienable rights” including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

A political philosophy that comes closest to expressing this concept of a middle ground philosophy that respects both individual rights and the common needs of the members of society is called Communitarianism. One of its spokesmen is the philosopher Amitai Etzioni, who for many years was associated with George Washington University in Washington, D.C., my former employer. Etzioni has done a lot of critical thinking about supposed conflict concepts such as the rights of pedophiles versus the rights of society to be protected against pedophiles.

Etzioni’s Golden Rule

Etzioni proposes a new Golden Rule, which goes like this: “Respect and uphold society’s moral order as you would have society respect and uphold your autonomy.”

Okay, so what do we need to expect from the auto industry—both labor and management—in turn for the bail-out? Here are the terms I would impose:

• Cars and other vehicles must be built to the highest safety standards

• Cars and other vehicles must be built to last as long as possible. No more planned obsolescence.

• Warranties must be fully guaranteed and protected by federal law and fully transferable from owner to owner, that is, if the vehicles are fuel efficient

• There must be across the board commitment to hybrid technology including hybrid and electric car combinations. No new vehicles getting less than 20 miles per gallon. Outlaw them.

• A federal board—the Fair Executive Compensation Board--established by Congress to review and approve (or veto) all executive compensation above $250,000 per year, criterion number one for this board, the effect on car prices and competitiveness

• A federal board—the Fair Labor Contracts Board—established by Congress to review and approve (or veto) all labor contracts, criterion number one for this board, the effect on car prices and competitiveness.

Thanks for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my latest book, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat, is now available. It would make a wonderful holiday present for someone you care about. It can be ordered on line. I am also happy to announce that still another new book by Stephen Alan Saft, City Above The Sea And Other Poems, is nearing completion. In fact, you can also order it on line right now. You’ll learn more about both books at the sasaftwrites website.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Alan Saft

A NEW CAR OR HOW THE SELF THAT LOVES THE NEW TRUMPED SECURITY OBSESSED SELVES

Why did I buy a new car at a time like this? The economy is in the doldrums, and optimism about anything having to do with spending money for anything is extremely hard to find. Yet a couple of days ago I went to a car dealer in Blacksburg, Virginia, home of Virginia Tech, and traded in my 2003 Subaru Outback for a 2009 Ford Hybrid Escape equipped with four-wheel drive.

I’m extremely adept at questioning yesterday’s decisions, especially when it comes to decisions about spending a lot of money. I do this all the time. I’ll get very excited about some new acquisition. I’ll give passing attention to questions about whether it's affordable or not. I’ll quickly convince myself that I can handle the expenses, and then I’m back to musing on how much I want to have whatever it is. I’ll make the purchase, and within hours the second guessing sets in. Why did I spend all that money? How will I ever afford it?

Delayed Soul Searching

Why didn’t I go through such soul searching before the purchase was made? Why the intense questioning now when the purchase is a done deal?

An article in the latest issue of The Atlantic, one of many periodicals that I read, helps to explain the phenomenon and makes me feel that I am not such an odd ball after all. The article is entitled “First Person Plural,” by Paul Bloom (The Atlantic, November 2008, pages 90-98). Paul Bloom teaches psychology at Yale University.

Community of Competing Selves

What the article suggests is that in each of us is more than one self and that some of these selves often may be in conflict with one another. Certainly they can be driven by different motives. Says psychologist Bloom, “Many researchers now believe, to varying degrees, that each of us is a community of competing selves, with the happiness of one often causing the misery of another.” Later, he explains, “The idea is that…within each brain different selves are continually popping in and out of existence. They have different desires, and they fight for control—bargaining with, deceiving, and plotting against one another.”

In my case, one self gets easily excited about the new—new technology, new ways of doing things. This self can hardly contain itself when what is new seems to have a practical benefit and at the same time appears to be the socially responsible thing to do. I started getting excited about the idea of owning a hybrid during the spring of 2008 when gasoline prices began their steep rise. I became obsessed with the fuel gage on the Subaru. I’d watch it drop before my eyes as the vehicle traveled the windy mountain roads we have in this area, and I’d be struck with some dread as the thought crossed my mind, “Oh no, I’ve got to buy fuel again.” Then I’d feel more pain at the gas pump as the total on the fuel pump gage went beyond $50.

Negatives With The Subaru

I was also motivated, I have to admit, by the increasing sluggishness of the Subaru when climbing the kind of hills we have here in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, and my motivation increased even more when I returned from Baptist Hospital this summer, where I had my second bone marrow transplant, with knees that weren’t working very well and heightened sensitivity in the legs to any feeling of being cramped. I should mention that I now measure six feet three inches tall, and a good bit of that height is in my legs. (When I was younger I was over six feet five inches in height.)

Then too I need to mention that the odometer on the Subaru was getting closer and closer to the 100,000 mile mark, and under any circumstances it makes sense that I might feel that I was at some kind of decision point about the car.

Self Obsessed With Security

Hence the self that was easily excited about the new could assemble lots of supporting evidence to justify the idea of a trade-in. Another self, however, is obsessed with issues having to do with security. Overwhelmed by the self that is the lover of the new, this self kept pretty quiet until the deal was made. Only then did it adopt a loud and relentlessly negative refrain. “How can a person like you, retired and living on a fixed income, afford the significantly higher monthly payments for the new vehicle? Was this a smart thing to do?” it asked with a decidedly skeptical—even snide—tone to the imagined voice.

Then too there are other negative issues, but determining who the self is in these cases may not be so easy to figure out.

Given Your Health, Why?

“Given your health situation what are you doing buying a new car?” asks one such negative self. “You may not have very much time to enjoy it.” Then there is the issue of the down payment. Says still another negative voice: “You took a big bite out of your cash reserves to try and keep your monthly payments in line. Up to this point, you were using your cash reserves to fund your publishing ventures. You may never be able to put up the money to work with a print-on-demand (POD) publisher again after this expenditure.”

Obviously, this negative self isn’t thinking about the issue raised by the self who questioned my health and limited longevity. If I don’t have too much longer to live, what difference does it make if I won’t be able to afford to work with a print-on-demand publisher again? Another response to the negative self questioning my decision has been resounding in my mind of late: “Isn’t it time you found a publisher who doesn’t require any of your own money? Haven’t you earned the right to a publisher who will risk his or her own funds to publish your work?” Yes! Yes! Yes!

Preoccupied With New Car

Either each of the negative selves must be answered if I am ever going to have another moment of peace and get a chance to enjoy the new car or with the passage of time these negative selves must run out of energy. In fact, both parts of this proposition are coming to fruition. One way they are coming to fruition is through the new car itself. By focusing on the demands of the car, I’m having less time to listen to the negative voices. A case in point is the built-in telephone or specifically the built-in cell phone system.

Because Harriet and I are about to take the car on a long Thanksgiving holiday trip to Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, I am intent on getting the built-in cell phone system called Synch working so that we can send and receive calls without having to have a cell phone squashed to an ear. The built-in system takes over the operation of your cell phone. Calls come in to the center console on the dashboard, and they go out the same way. No need to use the actual cell phone itself at all.

Incoming Calls Okay, Not Out

To date, I’ve gotten half the system working properly—the part of the system that receives calls—but I’m still trying to have calls go out through the use of voice commands. That part of the system doesn’t want to work for some reason. If that problem persists, then I’ll have to make a trip back to the dealer to see the salesman who sold me the car and who seems to be an expert in the Synch system.

I’m also at an early stage of going through the main owner’s manual to learn the fine points of operating the car. The operation of a hybrid differs in some important ways from the operation of a conventional gasoline-powered car, and I am trying to learn as much as possible before daring to take the vehicle on a long trip, such as we plan in just two weeks.

By Nature An Optimist

In other words, I’m already quite involved with the new car, and this involvement is leaving me less and less time for the voices of my negative selves. By nature, I am a positive optimistic person. I suppose one can argue that the voices of optimism are still another self inside me. It looks like the positive optimistic self is starting to take over. It’s starting to quiet the negative voices. “Let the good times roll.” That’s what my positive optimistic voice is saying. “Yes, let the good times roll!”

Thanks for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my latest book, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat, is now available. It would make a wonderful holiday present for someone you care about. It can be ordered on line. I am also happy to announce that still another new book by Stephen Alan Saft, City Above The Sea And Other Poems, is nearing completion. You’ll learn more about both books at the sasaftwrites website.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Alan Saft

QUESTIONS ANSWERED: EXPERT PRESENTS HIS ASSESSMENT OF THE CASE

Kenneth Zamkoff, M.D., is an energetic man of about fifty—about six feet tall—with a salt and pepper beard that is half way between full and a starter. He is direct, energetic and even loud. Only someone who was stone deaf would have a hard time hearing Dr. Zamkoff. He is now my oncologist, as the oncologist originally assigned to me at Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Denise Levitan, is out on maternity leave.

I didn’t know what to make of him during our first meeting a month ago, but he made a much stronger impression during the meeting in October. Along the way, I had become aware of the fact that Dr. Zamkoff was a specialist in lymphoma and was specifically very knowledgeable about Mantle Cell B Lymphoma, my disease. When I first saw him in the examining room this time, he disappointed me with the news that he had never gotten my letter, that is the letter containing the questions that I presented in the last posting. He then heard me out as I put each question to him, and he provided the answers I was seeking.

First Question: Lymph Node

My first question had to do with the continued presence of the cancerous lymph node in my abdomen. What did this mean? The second bone marrow transplant had not eliminated the lymph node in my mesentery. Because it had not gotten rid of it, was this second bone marrow transplant a failure? “No,” Zamkoff answered, “the lymph node is smaller than it was, and it may be less active than it was or not active at all.”

So should we do something right away to find out about the activity level? “Should I have another PET Scan?” I asked. “Another PET Scan or a laparoscopic biopsy,” he answered. I wasn’t happy to hear the reference to laparoscopic surgery, which I had already tried, as reported in a Mind Check posting in the fall of 2007. The laparoscopic procedure, although short in duration, had come complete with its own memorable trauma. And so I pushed the idea of a PET Scan. Then he surprised me by turning the tables on me by confronting me with a couple of questions I was ill equipped to answer.

Already Tried Velcade

“And what is that going to tell us?” he asked. “How active it is.” I answered. “And if it is active, what are we going to do about it?” “I don’t know,” I responded. How could I answer such a question? “You’ve already tried Velcade, right?” he asked referring to the so-called wonder drug for relapsed lymphoma that had been administered late last year.

“Yes,” I responded, “and it didn’t do a thing.” “In fact, the node was larger after Velcade treatment than it was before,” he interjected while flipping through a sheaf of paper which must have been my medical records. “That’s the problem,” he responded. “We’re running out of options. I’m going to do some research and see what else we could try, but we’ve already done the obvious things.”

Go Home And Forget About It

He looked right at me. “My advice to you is that you go home and forget about it. My advice to you is that you go home and live your life.”

In other words, he was advising me not to think about the finger nail size thing inside me—the dangerous lymph node—but to get on with my life, that nothing was to be gained by worrying about it. However, just so I would not go home and become too complacent he risked contradicting himself by asserting, “ I can tell you this, it will come back.” Then to make sure I did not miss what he had said he repeated it. “Based on my experience with this disease, it will come back.”

Remission First Time

Any reason for hope then? “How much of a remission did you get from the first bone marrow transplant?” he asked. “Five years,” I responded. “Five years, okay,” he was almost shouting. “Now that is a reason for hope. Maybe you can get almost as much time out of this bone marrow transplant as the first one.”

And what about my knees? Could I or should I consider knee replacement surgery? “We can’t make that decision now,” he answered. ‘You’re not ready now. Let’s wait three months and see how you’re doing. If you’re doing okay, and you still think you want and need to do something about the knees, that will be the time to consult with an orthopedic surgeon.” Then he added for emphasis, “That will be your decision.”

That was my meeting in October with Kenneth Zamkoff, M.D., oncologist. What did I learn? Frankly, very little that I didn’t already know, but I heard it from an expert in my particular disease, and I heard it without hedging or cant. That gave me a lot to digest.

For an overview of the various writing projects I am involved with, please see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. My latest book Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat is available from the website http://www.Xlibris.com.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Alan Saft