You’re Such a Good Boy

Trisket (taken last night)

Over the past year, I often watched you sleep.  At times, your legs would twitch and I imagined you dreaming of when you were younger and could run with grace.  In your sleep, were you still circling the house at full speed, stopping only to chase squirrels up trees? 

Over the past year when we would take a walk, I would take the lead and you moped behind.  As I slowed down to your speed, I would wonder if you recalled dragging me along behind as we headed into Hastings or up the canyon by Cedar Creek.

Over the past few months, when I watched in sadness as you bumped into walls and furniture, your cataracted eyes glassed over, I wondered if you remembered the hours we’d play in the kitchen. Your sharp eyes followed my hand as I tossed popcorn. You’d snap each kernel out of the air, seldom missing.

Since moving to Savannah, as you struggled in the humidity and heat, I’d wondered if you recalled how you loved the snow, running through it as you scooped it up with your snout and tossed it in the air, snapping at the falling flakes as if it was popcorn.

I am thankful that to the end, when you would stand beside me, you’d press your neck on my lower thigh, at the right height for my fingers to bury themselves in your beautiful mane. And I always loved how you’d stand into the wind, letting the tufts at the end of your ears fly back, as you sniffed and enjoyed the breeze.  Sadly, I missed our long walks around town, our hikes in the wood, and how you sat like General Washington in the middle of the canoe as we floated down river.  

You were so gentle with that little girl, the one who picked you out of the litter and named you for a cracker. You always looked out for her and for that reason alone, I am eternally grateful. The two of you grew up together, but you grew old much too fast. Seventeen years is a long time for a dog, they say, but it’s not nearly long enough.  

The house is way too big, lonely, and sad tonight. I keep listening for the sounds of your clanking tags and the tap of your toenails on the hardwood, but only hear the cold rain splattering on the deck out back. We’re all going to miss you, Trisket.  You were such a good boy, a pretty boy, a big furry fluffball!

My favorite picture of Trisket and me (2007)
Taken on the Thornapple River

Lee, another death in 2016

Pere Marquette, March 2007

Like many people, I’m glad that 2016 is over.  The Presidential elections were terrible, but so were all the deaths of celebrities I’ve watched or listened to for much of my life.  On a personal note, it was one year today that in an accident on the deck of a sailboat, I ruptured my quad tendon.  I am able to walk, but still can’t run and don’t have the balance I once had.   And then there were the personal losses that came in December.  My grandmother died mid-month and on the 29^th, I had two good friends to die.  I met Lee shortly after moving to Michigan in 2004.  His was tragic as he was much younger than me and leaves behind 4 kids, his oldest being the same age as my daughter.  The other friend was in Myron, who was my parent’s age.  I met him and his wife when I first moved to Utah in 1993.  She died about four years ago and Myron had moved to California to be near his daughter.  Both will be missed.  Here are some reflections on Lee: 

 

Thornapple River, May 2014

I never saw it coming.  We were fishing upstream with spinning rods, floating in a canoe in the rather swift current of the Pere Marquette.  Suddenly we were caught in the branches of a leaning tree.  I quickly laid my rod on the thwarts and grabbed a paddle, but before I could react, the boat was pulled up almost 90 degrees with water pouring in.  The next thing I knew, we were both swimming.  It was late spring and the water was chilly.  The ultralight spinning rod I'd been using slid off into the water as did everything else.  We grabbed the rest of our gear as it bobbed downstream and dumped the water out of the canoe.  I then went diving for my rod, but never saw it again.  We finished our paddle.  We'd caught a few trout and a head cold, but we laughed about our situation as we stopped at a Bob Evans for dinner on our way home.  It was the first of my adventures with Lee.  I will never think of the Pere Marquette River without thinking of him.  Late in the next winter, with four inches of fresh snow on the ground, he and I would be wading into the icy water in search of steelhead.  We didn't catch any, nobody was, but Lee still managed to catch a couple of trout.  He always seemed to catch fish when on no else could. 

Thornapple River, Winter 2013 

Lee died early in the morning of December 29th.  He had been defying death for the past decade as he suffered from an autoimmune diseases that caused brain tumors and brittle bones. He last few months were spent wearing a "turtle shell" as he had so many broken vertebrates in his back.  He was also confined to a wheel chair.  This was hard for a man who had played competitive hockey and loved being outdoors.  I hadn't seen him since I moved from Michigan in the summer of 2014.  That spring and summer we'd paddled together a couple of times, which was enjoyable as I'd seen him more in the hospital than on the river my last few years there. This was in one of his good periods, when he was able to get out regularly.

Although I was almost 20 years older than him, I looked up to Lee as an example of what it means to be a father.  He loved his children and delighted in their achievements.  He enjoyed sharing his knowledge of fishing with them or watching them play tennis.  When his marriage ended, which broke his heart, Lee did everything he could to focus, not on his needs, but on his kid’s needs.  Lee had a deep faith, which was displayed during and after his divorce.  He exemplified a Christ-like life of grace and sacrifice, as he sought to be civil and to avoid blame while looking out for what was best for the children. 

Since moving South, we occasionally exchanged text messages and emails. I knew he wasn't doing well.  He’d been told in the fall that he’d be confined to a wheel chair and that he had to wear a turtle shell-like brace because his vertebrates were so week.  I told him that I would be back in West Michigan in late January and promised to buy him a beer.  He said he’d look forward to that.  Sadly, I’ll be drinking that beer by myself.  

Remembering Grandma

Grandma in 2009

          I lost my grandmother this week.  For a guy who's been bald up top for longer than he'd like to remember, it was a blessing to have a grandmother for so long.  I just got back from the funeral.  I hope there is no prohibition against telling humorous stories about grandmothers, but I’m pretty sure she’d approve.  When I was young and we’d visit, she’d force her youngest son, my Uncle Larry, to share his comic books.  I would lie on the couch in the living room and read Archie, and Dennis the Menace, and Mad Magazine.  I’d laugh till I cried.  Fifty years later, my grandmother could still recall my laugh.

Fry and Prickett Funeral Home

          We gathered yesterday at Fry & Prickett Funeral home in Carthage, North Carolina to say our goodbyes before going to the graveyard next to Culdee Presbyterian Church.  I remember my first visit to that big old house with a wraparound porch that would look, if it hadn’t been recently painted, haunted. I was seven years old.  My great-grandma McKenzie, my grandmother's mother, had died.  It was in the summer and the men of the family were mostly out on the porch smoking, as many were in the habit of doing back then.  No one was smoking yesterday.  Few do anymore, most of those who did are no longer with us.   My grandmother could have been a poster child for an anti-smoking campaign as she was the only grandparent that I had who didn’t smoked, and she outlived the three others by forty or more years. 

Entry way (viewing rooms on either side)

          But back to that first visit to the funeral home, when I was seven.  My mother ushered us kids inside and into a dark room accented with heart-pine paneling.  We went up to the casket.  Everyone said my great-grandma looked natural, as if she was sleeping.  She looked dead.  Mom pointed out her hands, freckled with liver spots, and asked, rhetorically, how many apples she'd peeled? And how many pies she’d baked?  Yesterday, I looked at my grandma's hands, the liver spots having been cosmetically covered, and thought about her peeling peaches.  She made the best peach ice cream.

          From the time I was eleven until I started working at sixteen, I spent a couple weeks every summer with my grandparents.  One evening, the summer between my seventh and eighth grade, I went with my grandparents to J. B. Cole's orchard in West End to pick peaches.  We were after big juicy peaches known as “Redskins.”  They’ve probably have changed the name to be politically correct.  But these were the best peaches.  They grew to the size of a soft ball.  When you bite into a ripe one, juice would run down your chin.  They made delicious peach ice cream and look beautiful, canned in jars, where they waited to be baked into a pie during the winter. 

          J. B. Coles was a “pick-and-pay” orchard.  My grandmother wanted to get a couple bushels to can in Mason jars for winter.  A few overly ripe peaches would be saved to enhance a bowl of cereal in the morning or to toss into the ice cream freezer for a Sunday afternoon treat. We were hard at work, finding ripe peaches and softly placing them in baskets, so as not to bruise them.

          My grandparents were working one side of a tree and I was on the other when my grandmother asked: "Jeff, did you cut one?"

          "Did I cut one?" I couldn't believe my ears.  My stomach was a little upset and I had released some gas.  But I couldn't believe my grandmother was asking about it?  Asking, “if I’d cut one,” made her sound like one of my crude classmates.  How could she even tell?  She was on the other side of the tree.  I’d worked hard to release it slowly, without making a sound.

          "What?  I asked, hoping I was mistaken about her question.

          "Did you cut one?"  This time her tone was harsh and accusatory. 

          I began to sweat and wondered if I was about to be disowned by my own grandma for farting.  Finally, I confessed, "Yes, a small one."

          "You put that knife away,” she yelled.  “These aren't our peaches until we pay for them." 

          I had just confessed to a sin I had not committed.  

###

          My grandma was a saint.  It's too bad she was a Presbyterian and not a Catholic. All Presbyterians are considered saints once dead, so it’s nothing special.  But the Catholics have a special category for those who over-achieve in goodness and have performed a miracle in life.  My grandma was always good and she had her miracle.  She’d sobered up her brother Dunk, who was a drunk, and mostly kept him that way the last twenty years of his life.

          But my grandma wasn't Catholic.  In a way that would have made John Knox proud, she always cast a skeptical eye toward the papists.  I learned this the summer before confessing the uncommitted sin against a peach. 

          My grandparents were visiting.  We had spent the afternoon on Wrightsville Beach. I was in love that summer with Cathy Nucci, my first real girlfriend.  She and I would later consummate our relationship with a kiss out by the baseball field at Roland Grice Jr. High. On this day, at the beach, we were out in front of the Lumina, the same spot where we always went.  This was also the same area the Nucci family would set up camp when they were at the beach.  This made it convenient for seeing Cathy in the summer as I was four years away from a driver’s license.

          I loved that dark hair, dark eyed girl with olive skin.  We held hands while lying in the sand and played in the surf.   We were an idyllic couple, Think of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in that classic beach scene in the movie, From Here to Eternity.  The only difference was that Lancaster had to fight off the Japanese.  But then, I had to fight off Cathy’s older brothers as they attempted to drown me.   

           My grandmother was born a McKenzie.  You can't get much more Scottish and Presbyterian than that.  The Nucci's were Italian and Catholic.  Maybe that was why her brothers were always trying to drown me. 

          Later that afternoon, as I was drying myself after having showered the salt from my body, I overheard a rather heated conversation between my mom and my grandma.  They were in the hall and either didn’t know or didn’t care that I was right next door in the bathroom.  My grandmother chided her daughter-in-law, my mom, for letting me hang out with a Catholic girl.  "What if they marry? she asked.  I assumed we were destined to wed.  We were almost teenagers and were in love.  So it felt as if my own mother stabbed me in the back when she responded, "Helen, they’re going into the seventh grade.  I don't think we have to worry about a wedding anytime soon."  It turned out my mother was more concerned about me drowning at the hands of the Nucci boys than me living a blissful life with Cathy.

Couldn’t my own mom see that we were in love? 

          Of course, Cathy and I didn’t make as a couple out of the seventh grade.  As for my grandmother, my granddaddy died in my sophomore year of college.  A few years later my grandmother married Earl.  He was Catholic...  Of course, he later converted and a Presbyterian minister officiated at his funeral. 

          Goodbye Grandma.  Thank you for encouraging me to laugh.  

Fishing with Granddad: Joe's Fork

When I was a child, I used to spend a couple of weeks a summer with my grandparents.  I have written a few stories from these summer adventures before.  See "Confessing" and  "Saving Damsels."  This is another story about fishing with my grandfather.  

Joe's Fork in the fall of 2007, a mile up from the old millpond

"Were you able to dig us some worms?” my granddad asked as he got out of his truck. 

“Yes sir,” I said, “some nice ones.” 

He smiled and headed into the house.   Dinner was being served.  At the table, after he said grace, Grandma berated us both to put on plenty of Off™.  We ate quickly and I ran back into my room and put on long pants and strapped my Kabar™ knife to the belt.  Granddaddy collected the rods and placed them in the back of the truck along with tackle boxes and a can of worms.  We crawled into the truck and pulled out onto the highway, heading east.  About a mile later, the road snaked down into a hardwood swamp.  We crossed Joe’s Fork on a small bridge.  We could have waded across without getting our knees wet.  As we began the climb on the other side, granddaddy turned onto a two-track dirt road that led back into the woods.

 

“Where are we going?” I asked as we bounced in the truck and bushes swished along the sides of the truck. 

"To an old mill pond.”

"What kind of fish will we catch?"

“There should be some nice bream, maybe a jack or a bass.”

“Is the mill still there?"

“No, it burned.” 

“When was that?” I asked.

“I’m not sure.” 

“But the pond is still here?”

“Yeah, the beavers have damned it back up.”

“When you were a boy, did you ever bring grain down here to be milled? 

“No, it was before my time.” 

Realizing I wasn’t going to learn anything about the mill, I thought I might see if there was anything to know about the current residents. “When did the beavers move in here?”

“In the late forties, I think.  Your dad was a boy.”  He paused for a moment as he drove the truck into some brush so he wouldn’t be blocking the road.  It didn’t seem to matter much to me, for the road didn't appear to be well traveled. 

“You sure ask a lot of questions,” my granddad said as he turned the engine off.  Getting out, we sprayed ourselves with Off™, grabbed our rods and stuff and walked back toward the dam which the beavers had restored.  

On the edge of the dam, we dropped our gear.  The vegetation was thick around the pond.  Granddaddy wouldn’t be using a fly rod in here.  We’d both be fishing with worms.  I tied a hook to the line, put a small weight just above it, and attached a bobber about 2 feet high.  The pond was pretty shallow.  Once I had my rod rigged, I stepped out on the edge of the dam and cast into the middle of the pond, just shy of a water moccasin bathing on a log in the waning sun.   Granddaddy headed around the pond and found a place where he could cast his line out and be freed of more questions. 

My bobber floated undisturbed, as I swatted mosquitoes and deer flies which swarmed around my head, pausing occasionally to wipe the sweat from my brow.  It was a hot and stifling in the swamp.  After a few minutes with no action, I was becoming bored.  I slowly reeled in the line, and cast it again, right beside that big snake.  I didn’t faze it, but neither did anything nibble on my worm.  I pulled my line in again. 

“If you don’t leave your line in water, you won’t catch any fish.”  Granddaddy yelled over at me.  He normally didn’t say much when fishing.  He didn't want the fish to be spooked by the talk.  

I cast again, this time dropping the hook just inches in front of that big old moccasin’s head. 

I waited: ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds, a minute.  Nothing was biting.   After a few more minutes, I retrieved my line and made another cast and then another.  The whole time that water moccasin held his position.  I wondered if it was dead, but I knew better.   Maybe it was mocking me.   I could feel the snake getting under my skin.  I retrieved my line again.  Looking in my tackle box, I pulled out a large jitterbug, a top floating lure that works wonders on the bass right around dark.  I tied it on my line, and cast it just short of the moccasin.  I reeled it in, the lure jittering back and forth across the water.  

“What are you doing fishing with that?” my granddad asked.

A Jitterbug

 “Nothing was taking the worms,” I answered as I made another cast, just to the other side of that moccasin.  The snake didn’t move with the line lying across its back.  I slowly reeled, bringing the lure up beside of the log upon which the snake had perched itself.  Then I jerked the rod back hard and snagged the snake in the back with the lure’s treble hook.  The snake snapped around, his cottonmouth angrily exposed.  Then he slipped off the log and started swimming away with my lure.  I let him have some line, but tightened the drag. 

“What did you do that for?”  My grandfather yell, as he beat a path over to me.  “That snake wasn’t bothering you.” 

The snake turned around.  Instead of fighting the line, it started swimming toward me.

“What are you going to do now?”  He asked.

I pulled out my Kabar knife and held it along with my rod.

“What are you going to do with that?” he asked.

“I’ll stick him,” I said.

“Put that knife away,” he yelled as he picked up a stick what was maybe five feet long.  “Use this,” he said handing it to me.  “You hooked him, you take care of him.”  

It had seemed like a good idea, but now I wasn't so sure of it as this was one large angry and deadly poisonous snake.  Thankfully, when about twenty feet away, the snake shook the lure free, then turned and swam in another direction.  I reeled my lure in.  I’d been saved from an angry snake, but now I had to contend with an angry grandfather.

“We’re done fishing,” he said, packing up his gear.

As we walked back to the truck, I heard distant thunder.  A cloud was building that would bring an end to this hot day.  I crawled into the passenger side of the truck.  I knew better than to ask any more questions and my granddad maintained silence for the drive home. 

I was pretty sure there would be no ice cream and Pepsi float before bed.   At least the wind from the approaching stormed would cool the house.  

###

Catching Up with a Lost Friend

Self-portrait for Phil's class, 1980

 One of the blessings of social media and the internet is that we can reconnect with people.  Last week, I re-connected with my first photography teacher.  I was right out of college and took a class with Phil Morgan.  One of our assignments was to photograph our day.  I was working nights at the bakery and remember taking a photo of my day beginning with me making oatmeal and tea before heading into the plant at 1 A.M.  Not allowed to take a camera into the bakery, I had a shot of me in my white white uniform (I am not sure where those photos went) and another of me at my desk that morning(an "iPhone" copy is posted here).  Even though I had graduated from college, I was still taking some economic classes and maybe that's what I was working on.  I miss that curly hair!

During the class, Phil and I stuck up a friendship.  At the time, his wife, Sandy, was dying of cancer.  She was the first hospice patient in Wilmington.  I remember a one person show he had shortly after her death, at St. John’s Gallery in Wilmington.   He had documented their sad journey. A few years later, he had another show titled “Behold the Woman” at the Front Street Gallery.  I was able to find the program in my old journals  (I had written notes of the exhibit on the back), Click here to see some of Phil's work.  His black and white "environmental portraits" (people in their work or living surroundings) captures the human element.  Having worked for the Charlotte Observer, Phil documented the Civil Rights movement and has a collection of photos from Appalachia before the mountains were gentrified.

Over the years, we have both moved around and lost contact.  The last time I saw Phil was before the adoption of a son or the birth of a daughter.  I was living in Utah at the time and was back visiting my parents in Wilmington during the Azalea Festival.  It’s been nearly 20 years but I hope to see and catch up with him the next time I'm back in Wilmington.

My photo of Phil on the Waccamaw

 I don’t remember if it was 81 or 82, but I was going with a group of folks down the Waccamaw River.  I invited Phil. There were a half dozen canoes.  We put in at where the  river begins at the outflow of Lake Wacamaw, paddling through the cypress, hardwoods and pines of the Green Swamp.  We stopped at lunch on Crusoe Island where Dodo showed us how to carve out cypress canoes,  We also got to see the snake collection of Dodo's neighbor.  That evening, we camped along a high bank of the river, built a fire and talked late into the night.   Phil went to bed first and called me from our tent.  A mouse had invaded and was scared and pressing up against the rear trying to get away. After watching him for a moment, we backed off and the mouse took off.  The next morning, if I have the right trip in mind (I took a couple down the Waccamaw), we fixed eggs in half of oranges wrapped in tin foil and baked in the coals of a fire (try it, it’s good).  Then we paddled down to Highway 130, where we pulled off the river south of the town of Old Dock.  After connecting this week, Phil sent me the photo below, taken at the end of that river trip.  I’d forgotten about that shirt (Kudzu Alliance, which was an anti-nuke organization) and that hat (I wonder where it went?).   The canoe in the front is mine.  I had purchased it when I was sixteen.  A few years later, it was stolen. I then brought the Mad River that I still have.  It was exciting to look at this photo and remember.  

That's me in my mid-20s, just coming off the Waccamaw River

Last year I reviewed The River Home, a book by a man who grew up on the Waccamaw in South Carolina and, as an adult, came back and paddled the entire length of the river from the lake to Georgetown.  

Last Week

Graduation

  I'm going to break one of my blog rules and talk a bit about my family as I share with you some photos from last week.  It was a lovely and crazy week as my daughter graduated from high school on Wednesday, in a very impressive service.  It was one of three evening events that started on Monday night, when we gathered in the gym for honors night.  She received a number of awards and accolades including a special honor for her achievements in history and government.  She also received one of the two music awards and honors as the top student in AP statistics.  She also received her cord for having an "A" average throughout high school.  She attended a Catholic all-girl's high school operated by the Sisters of Mercy.   On Tuesday evening was baccalaureate which, like graduation, was held in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist.  The photo from the left was taken by the school photographer as I was sitting to the right in the crowd.

Coming into town for graduation was her brother and his family from Utah.  It was great to see them.  The oldest of their boys had several things he wanted to do:  see an alligator, see a turtle, see "my fire trucks," see the railroad museum and sail.  We accomplished it all.  The week was a lot of fun!

Heading out of the harbor
Photo by daughter-in-law as I'm at the helm

Little Sage

A future sailor?

Have a good weekend.  Any exciting plans?

Good bye to all that (what's been happening to my leg)

My legs in better days
Hiking in Picture Rocks, Michigan, 2012

I love my legs.  They have taken me many places in this world and have served me well.  Prior to January 9^th, I would walk an average of 20 miles a week.  I love walking, whether in town or through to the neighborhood or maybe to the marina.  As any of you who have read my blog knows, in my past, I’ve done extensive backpacking trips including the Appalachian Trail.  So when on Saturday, January 9^th, a freak accident on the foredeck of a sailboat occurred, in which my leg was pinned and my body fell back causing something to snap in my leg, I found myself for the first time since an infant as unable to walk.  I also felt the most horrible pain I’ve ever experienced.  That day, I visited the emergency room.  An x-ray later, I was assured that no bones were broken, that I needed to be evaluated by orthopedic surgeon.  Hopefully, the PA said trying to cheer me up, “it’s just a bad bruise.”  They sent me how with crutches and pain pills. 

On Monday, I showed up at an orthopedic clinic.  I was first seen by a physician assistant.  In thirty seconds, he felt my knee and then asked me to kick (I was sitting on the table).  As much as mind willed my leg to move, it couldn’t.  He frowned.  “It’s up to the doctor to diagnose, but I am pretty sure you have a torn quad tendon.”  I had only a general knowledge about what he was talking about and asked why he was so sure.  He pointed to a gap in between my knee and thigh, how the patella (knee cap) was lower in my left leg, and said that inability to kick with the leg indicated the tendon wasn’t connected.  “How bad is that?” I asked.  Shaking his head, he said, “Bad.”  The doctor agreed and said that I’d have to have surgery.  Furthermore, although he wanted the swelling to go down, I needed surgery sooner than later for my quad muscles would begin to retreat up my thigh and become more difficult to reattach in surgery.  Over the next week, I had a full MRI on my knee to confirm the damage.  During this time, sleeping was often disturbing as I’d wake feeling my quad muscles retreating up my thigh.  It was a weird feeling.

After surgery

Eleven days later I had surgery.  I went in thinking that they were going to drill an anchor into the patella and then attached the tendon and I’d have a two week break before I could began rehab.  When the surgery was over, I learned that there was a complete mid-tendon rupture and because of this, the doctor had to sew the tendon back together.  My recovery would be even longer.  For the next six weeks, I’d have to have the leg in a straight brace to keep from having any movement of the knee so the tendon would be able to grow back together.  I was on morphine (as I am allergic to many of the other pain drugs), but on the second day when the block they’d given me in the leg wore off, my pain level went through the roof.  I waited in anticipation for each dose of morphine.  It didn’t end the pain, but it generally put me to sleep.  I also keep ice on the knee (with a handy pump that could keep ice water flowing around my knee.  I spent most of the next ten days in a morphine stumper with an ice knee. 

Left to right:  First brace, sock puller-upper, adjustable brace

After a week, I was told I could put weight on my leg.  I did go into the office but only for the mornings.  I’d catch a ride home at lunch and if anyone wanted to see me, I’d meet them at home.  I was never able to be comfortable more than an hour or so behind my desk with having my leg in a straight cast.  Even in my office, I spent much of my time on the couch, where I could sat my leg out where it was supported.   During these weeks I had to be helped in and out of the shower (which was a once a week treat).    The rest of the time I was just doing sponge baths but since it was so hard to move, I wasn’t really working up a sweat.  I’m glad I endured this in what goes for winter here in Georgia.  I also wore short pants almost all the time (even into the office), the exception being going to church, but even then I had to find “breezy” dress pants that allowed me to keep my brace on under my pants.  The other problem was putting socks on my left foot.  They even make a funky sock “puller-upper” which I used.  I could generally get shoes on but someone else had to tie my left shoe.   During this time, as the morphine began to wear off, I started reading more and putting together puzzles.

Brace with movement
(this was once they allowed me 90 degrees)

Six weeks after surgery, they allowed me to have 30 degrees of movement in my left knee.  I felt free.  For the first time in two months I could drive as I couldn’t get my leg inside on the driver’s side of any of our vehicles (with the exception of the golf cart and I did use it frequently).  With 30 degrees of movement, I could walk more normal instead of walking with a peg-leg.  This couldn’t have come soon enough as my hips and back were beginning to ache from my peg-leg strut.  I was also sent to rehab.   The horror stories that were the tales told by those with knee replacements weren’t my experiences as they had to go very gently with me, slowly pushing my knee movement further while working to strengthen the quad muscles.  Since my problem was with the tendon, which was still growing together, they took it easy on me.  It took four weeks before they got me up to 90 degrees (but when I was not in rehab, I had the brace to keep me at 30 degrees.  Then, after another month, they allowed me 90 degrees of movement in my knee all the time and in rehab they continued to work my knee.  Currently, my left knee can easily move to 120 degrees and they can force it to 126 degrees, which is about 10 degrees lower than my right knee.  After another month of having the brace that ran all the way from my thigh to ankle set at 90 degrees, I graduated to a much smaller brace. 

Current brace

At this time, the doctor released me to do things like sailing and kayaking (But no basketball, tennis, pickleball, or returning to active duty as a volunteer firefighter. That will take more time).  In rehab, they began to work me on weight machines (instead of the easier exercises I’d been doing there).  I am now doing these exercises every other day and on the odd days doing the lighter exercises at home.  I am also now able to bike and have been trying to put in 20 or 30 minutes a day riding.   Although I am slowly getting back to normal (I can walk a mile and a half now, but then I’ll need to ice my leg), I have a ways to go.  I will probably always have some issues with my left knee as the tendon is shorter than on my right knee.  But I am glad to be back sailing (I’ve yet to kayak) and to be able to walk, even though I haven’t got my distance back to anywhere near where it was before.  That will come.  

The Last Puzzle of this season
This one was hard and I ended up losing a piece