Sep 23

Dining Here Tonight

 

You are dining in a fine, four-star restaurant this evening, being catered to by a world renowned chef. By far, this is the finest eatery you have ever been to and you’re apprehensive as you walk up, afraid you will feel out of place. You cannot make a reservation for Here – that’s the name of the place: Here. You cannot even get on a waiting list for Here. Seating is by lottery only, posted at the gate the day before, or by personal invitation from the Chef. You were invited.

Anticipation, they say, enhances the meal. For months you have been wondering what this famous chef is going to serve. Reading only high praise and stories of culinary bliss, you’ve spent many restless nights since receiving your invitation, tossing and turning, wondering why you got the invitation. You don’t order from a menu at Here; you simply enjoy what’s put before you.

The doorman looks at your invitation then hands it back to you. He removes his top hat and bows slightly as he opens the door.

‘Welcome!’ The Maître d’ shakes your hand with both of hers. ‘We have been expecting you. Right this way please.’ She first takes you to a photographer waiting in the kitchen, where you have your picture taken with the Chef!

The Chef gives you a personal tour of where he creates new masterpieces nightly, and again you wonder, why am I so special? The kitchen is enormous, spotless and so well-lit you are followed by a hundred silhouettes. ‘Everything in Here was sacrificed so I could create,’ Chef explains somberly. ‘It is for the flora and the fauna, for all the creatures great and small, we celebrate supper.’ With all the kitchen noise, you’re not sure you hear him correctly but nod in agreement just the same.

The dining area is small and silent by comparison, but beautiful and warm with original oil paintings on the walls, portraits of dignitaries that have walked this carpet before you. Your waitress takes you to your booth. All the waitstaff wear white tuxedoes with no ties, white gloves without fingertips and a black, pillbox-style chef’s cap that looks to be a few sizes too small. They move quietly among the guests.

The table with your name on it is Illuminated by a single candle. The light bounces off of the Waterford crystal and sterling silver tableware set on a white satin tablecloth that drapes over all edges. The plush leather bench is like sitting on a cloud.

Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s, From The Beginning, starts to play softly from overhead speakers.

You don’t like to dine alone, but yours was an invitation for one. You look around and see all of the tables are set for one. Your waitress brings your appetizer on a tiny plate made of pearl-blue, turquoise and dazzling-white bone china. It’s about the size and shape of a shucked oyster. A wonderful aroma of warm ginger emanates from a pinkish-orange dollop in the center that shimmers as she places it before you. It sparkles in the candlelight, speaking Morse Code.

‘The appetizer is called Mourning due,’ your waitress tells you.

‘Morning dew,’ you repeat. The first bite is warm apricot, both sweet and tangy and it melts in your mouth. The next bite looks the same but tastes like…  goat cheese? You’re not really sure, and the last two bites tease your memory even more. The four flavors blend on your palette to create a new taste that rises from within. Sweet, and you think, fresh as the morning dew. You wonder how Chef did that. Anticipation makes your heart beat faster.

The waitress returns, her smile a fixed feature, and asks in almost a whisper, ‘How was that?’

‘Wanting,’ you say in a dreamy voice, then remember where you are and add, ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong; it was delicious. It’s just that… I thought there would be more to savor.’

‘I’m sure the main course will be to your liking,’ she says, and removes the plate to the kitchen.

The booth is dim so you take the butter knife and cleave the top of the candle, then watch as the wax runs down and the flame jumps higher. You start to see your surrounding a little clearer. The wax trails slowly to the base where it pools like cooled lava. The candle starts to dim, so you cleave it again. The pool grows and the candle shrinks. Too soon, they will be the same size.

When your waitress returns, she has both your dinner and a pair of rose-colored sunglasses. She hands you the glasses and says, ‘To enhance your next experience.’ You put them on as she places before you a huge clam-shaped plate overflowing with food.

In contrast to the appetizer, your main course is way more than you can possibly finish. But you do. Like the appetizer, each mouthful is unique. You inhale, savoring the aroma of the first forkful; pan-fried trout so fresh you can hear the brook babble as you swallow. You play each taste off your palette: Delmonico steak, a favorite, and so tender you can cut it with your fork; the sumptuousness of a just-picked, still-sun-warm tomato with basil and mozzarella makes your shoulders go limp; glazed asparagus; chilled lobster dripping in warm butter; clams linguini with grilled portabella; shark fin so poignant it bites back. You take your time, chew slowly and sip iced-cold water between bites, and the world tastes better through rose-colored glasses.

The candle starts to flicker and shadows dance where none should exist.

The waitress sees your empty plate and says, ‘Chef will be so pleased.’

‘I don’t know where I found room for it all.’ you say, as you push the table away.

The candle burns out, but the waitress is quick to light a fresh candle. This one is repulsively scented like bleach and you ask her to change it. Quickly! She does.

But the odor hangs in the air.

Your waitress brings the dessert tray and at first you want to refuse. ‘I have no idea where I’m going to put it, but…’ You point to the one with the darkest chocolate.

‘You have selected Chef’s favorite; Bittersweet.’ She sets it before you. It is still warm.

The first bite makes you pucker and frown. You used to like bittersweet. It takes a few bites to acquire this new taste and you don’t want this meal to end until you have devoured every last crumb.

Keith Emerson’s Synthesizer wails inside your booth.

Anticipation somehow exceeded, you take coffee in the cigar lounge to settle your meal.

You sit back into an Adirondack chair and blow smoke rings towards the trumpeters and angels embossed in the tile ceiling, and wonder again why you were invited.

As full as you can be, as happy as you’ve ever been, you’re a little surprised to see your waitress walking up with a black leather folio in her hand. Without her pillbox cap, you don’t recognize her at first.

‘I hope everything was to your liking,’ she says as she hands you the fare.

‘I was invited!’ you say in an undertone. She just tilts her head slightly. But you cannot stay upset; it has been the experience of a life time, after all. You smile back at her as you realize that paying also affords you the privilege of adding your own two cents.

You say, ‘Honestly, I don’t see how Here rates four-stars, but I can’t tell you exactly why not. I mean, just the tour of this man’s great kitchen is worth any price, and your service was excellent. My compliments to the Chef; everything he cooked was out of this world. But he never did explain why he invited me.

‘And the main course seemed disconnected from the appetizer. I was expecting something else entirely after that Jell-O oyster, or whatever that was.’

With no response, you continue. ‘The meal was sumptuous, as one should expect, but you could have fed a family of four with what was on my plate, and in the end I was left with the taste of guilt.

‘And the dessert has an aftertaste that I can’t wash down, even after coffee and a cigar.’

The waitress says, ‘By Chef’s design, that taste will linger for as long as it was anticipated.’

‘You mean I’ll have this bittersweet taste in my mouth forever?’ You frown at her as you put your American Express card between the leather without even looking at how much this gastronomical experience has cost.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Your credit cards have expired, too. We have no way of processing them Here; in Heaven.’

 

Sep 21

Being Mortal*

bein-mortalHave you read Being Mortal by Atul Gawande yet? It’s a very interesting book on several levels. Being a writer, I learned from seeing him make his points through telling stories. He told stories about his patients, himself, and his family. It gave the book an intimate feel, like this could be happening to me or someone I know. If not now, maybe some time in the future?

 

From a psychological point of view, I could see that he wants to help people. He thinks that if he’s able to get you, his readers, think these things through now, when you’re healthy, then you’ll have the time you need. You’ll be able to reflect and come up with what you personally want in order to have your very best day each day that you have left.

 

I expected the book to be depressing. After all, it’s about the end of life. And, considering no one has ever come back from the other side, a lot of people don’t like to think about this, especially me.

 

But what drew me in was the strain of kindness, compassion, and hope that runs throughout the book, chapter after chapter. I could see that he wanted to prepare his readers to get the information we’d need to make decisions that would give each of us the best possible life right up to the very end.

 

He talks about how doctors are trained to save lives but not how to share bad information, tell patients their disease is terminal or help them make end of life decisions.

 

Over and over he makes the point, that when the doctor says, “We have this new treatment. I think it’ll help you,” the doctor is thinking one or two years. But the patient is thinking 10 or 20. This is a huge misunderstanding.

 

Usually the patient never asks, “How much time will this treatment give me?” and “How much of that time will be good time, i.e. time where I’m awake, alert and my pain is controlled enough so that I can enjoy spending it with my family and friends?”

 

Frankly, the doctor is relieved. He or she is not prepared, even in the last weeks, to say, “This disease is terminal. You have at most a few weeks or months, not all of them good. You might want to think about what’s important to you, something you’d like to do or say to the people close to you.”

 

He tells horror stories of doctors, right up until the very end, knowing the patient will probably not survive more than a week or two, offering new treatments. Why? Because doctors are uncomfortable saying things like, “This disease is terminal.” “There is no treatment today that can cure you.” “The most we can do is make you comfortable.”

 

My takeaway from this book is, after the doctor has explained all possible relevant treatments to fight the disease, three questions the patient or the patient’s family need to ask when someone is critically ill. They are:

 

  1. When you think about the research and your patients who have undergone these treatments, for each treatment you talked about, what is the longest time any of them got?

 

  1. How much of that time was “good time”, i.e. time where the person was awake, alert, and their pain controlled to the point that they could enjoy their day?

 

  1. If you did nothing heroic, instead just controlled the pain and treated the disease to slow it down, how much “good time” would you have?

 

I think the answers to these questions would be far more valuable in helping each of us decide what we want to do than just starting another new treatment.

 

 

*Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2014.

Sep 18

Coffee Shop Chronicles: The Details of People

Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company

Detroit, MI

July 2015

Here I am.

How dependent we are on our electronic devices.

I love that the baristas here write names on the for-here mug.  I feel personalized.  I’m drinking the Brazil, so this reminds me what cuppa of coffee to get next : this or try something new.

Wi-Fi here keeps flickering, and I can’t connect my tablet to the network.  So I’ll write here, in my journal, by hand.  There’s no going back now.  It feels personal.

Speaking of, I just had a conversation with the man next to me.

I always wonder what motivates a man in a business suit, complete with a tie and tie clip, to be in a coffee shop at 3:10pm on a Friday afternoon.  Me, I’m done with work for the day, and I’m waiting for a storytelling event nearby.

The man has an accent.  Middle-Eastern, I think.  It’s a soft voice, casual and smooth.  I would never know that if the Wi-Fi wasn’t jittery.

I met with my editor the other day.  She commented that she can run her entire magazine from her laptop at a coffee shop.

I agree.  It’s pretty amazing.  I can write for any publication anywhere and talk via email to anyone.  However, the life you write about is up there, beyond your keyboard, above your laptop screen.

Staring at my screen, I’d never have noticed his light blue, long sleeve shirt.

He would never have seen me smile at him.

Sep 16

Up from Under the Bridge, Eh?

Pure Michigan campaign ads had persuaded trolls—residents of Michigan’s lower peninsula, like me—to crawl out from our homes south of the Mackinac Bridge. It was Labor Day weekend, the last chance for many families to head up north before the start of a new school year. For my family, this was the perfect time to explore the beauty of our grand state’s upper peninsula. Our adventure began in the city of St. Ignace at the area’s number one, Trip Advisor rated, hotel: the Best Western Harbour Pointe Lakefront.

kellysept-2016-macbridge

Nicknamed Mighty Mac, the Mackinac Bridge is the longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere and fifth longest in the world.

After dinner, my husband, four children, and I sat around a bonfire with other hotel guests. I asked Zach, who was part of the hospitality staff, if he knew any ghost stories. He was busy unloading wood for the fire but sat down for a few minutes to share some of the rumors he was familiar with. I light-heartedly listened to Zach’s fanciful stories. What I didn’t know at that time was just how much this discussion would affect my psyche and influence my decisions throughout the rest of the trip.

Zach recalled the tale of a woman who had an extramarital affair. Townspeople killed the unfaithful wife by dunking her repeatedly underwater in what is known as the drowning pool, a twenty-feet deep, seaweed-infested lagoon on nearby Mackinac Island. The ghost of the woman reportedly now haunts that area.

Intrigued by this story, I later looked online for more information. I read through pages and pages of creepy hauntings that had frightened local residents and visitors, but I couldn’t find the exact story Zach had referred to. I discovered one other, however, that best fit his account.

Haunts of Mackinac author Todd Clements described the unfortunate outcome for seven prostitutes who were accused of being witches. The ladies were subjected to a test in order to determine their innocence or guilt. A large boulder was tied to each lady. Then they were thrown into the drowning pool. If the women floated, they would have been found guilty—considered witches—and subjected to further punishment: death by hanging. Since every one of the accused actually sunk deep below the surface of the water, they were vindicated of sorcery but had drowned in the process of proving their innocence. The women now make appearances as eerie, shadow-like figures floating above the lagoon or as huge, larger-than-life splashes on the surface of the water.

Other stories also indicate that the drowning pool is haunted by ghosts. But Zach didn’t seem to believe in ghosts at all. He preferred to talk about a story that was based upon measurable, physical evidence. He said that hundreds of bodies had been uncovered during construction of the Grand Hotel. “There were so many bodies, they eventually stopped trying to retrieve all of them, so there are still hundreds, maybe thousands, lying beneath the building.” That’s not a fact the hotel advertises on its webpage, but Zach was confident of its authenticity. He emphatically added, “That’s a true story.”

The unique history of Mackinac Island may support that claim. Indian chiefs were buried there; soldiers died there. Other people committed suicide and murder. Death is nothing abnormal, of course, but it does produce an odd result on Mackinac. The island is considered to be one of the most haunted places in Michigan.

kellysept-2016-bigfoot

This Bigfoot sighting occurred right in front of Muldoons’ restaurant and gift shop in Munising.

I suppose Zach has never seen a ghost, and so he finds it easy to dismiss the paranormal. But how do reasonable people like him react to legends of animal-like creatures such as Bigfoot?

Animal Planet’s popular television series, Finding Bigfoot began its eighth season in January 2016. Enough people watch the show to keep it on the air. Does that mean they believe that these creatures actually roam the earth? Or are they watching only to be entertained? Arguments run rampant in online forums as people seriously debate the question “Would you shoot a sasquatch?” Some believers say “I couldn’t kill it” and skeptics respond “You can’t kill something that doesn’t exist.”

Zach is probably a skeptic. He joked about having seen a similar phenomenon, the Dogman. It’s described as a large dog that walks upright on two legs and terrorizes the northern part of Michigan. Because Zach had laughed, I knew he didn’t want me to think that he truly believed in the werewolf-like animal.

But people in our remote towns are seeing mysterious things they can’t easily explain away. Documented reports are so convincing that I admit this: As my family and I hiked through the U.P. wilderness, I was on guard against two specific entities besides ferocious cougars, man-eating black bear, and venomous Massasauga rattlesnakes. I looked deeply into the thicket of the forest and wondered just what I would do if I crossed paths with the gruesome Dogman or the iconic Bigfoot.

kellysept-2016-wlakingsticks

Preparation for our hike included selection of the right-sized walking stick. Luckily, we found these at the trailhead.

I stayed on the trail best I could and kept searching for anything out of the ordinary. I quickly dismissed non-threatening deer tracks. I counted the number of toes in common dog prints and made sure to find four paw prints in stride with one another. I listened for evidence that my family and I were being studied and stalked. Were our feet the only ones to be thudding upon the ground? Why were the birds in the trees suddenly taking flight?

In one hand, I tightly gripped the three-foot long walking stick I had selected at the beginning of our hike. I used the stick to brush the tall grasses that lay ahead of me, hoping to roust camouflaged critters. Occasionally I practiced twisting the knobby branch up and out in front, like a jousting pole or a sabre.

The fingers of my other hand delicately wound around another item that empowered me with confidence. I reasoned that I wouldn’t use it unless the risk to my family was too great not to. Could I actually do it? I wondered and considered alternative scenarios. I knew that I might very well be faced with no other choice.

I was convinced at that point. Determined. If the worst should happen and a feral beast were to get too close, I would swiftly raise my arm, take aim, and throw my treasured, tasty, chicken pasty at the creature. No Yooper would let that staple go to waste. By the time he finished it, my family and I would be long gone and safely out of the woods.

Sep 15

Mount Adams

Crouched in a blinding sleet storm on Mount Adam’s summit, I was alone and numb all over. Stranded in howling mist and 50 mph winds, it was early afternoon on what was supposed to have been a normal tranquil June day in 1989. Any thoughts of a view south 3,000 feet above the Great Gulf to Mount Washington four miles away were gone. I could barely make out a weather-battered wooden sign a few feet away in a greenish-black maelstrom. Huddled back to the storm on a tiny summit, there were only a few boulders for shelter. I was elated to have climbed to the top and worried that no one else was there. Did every other hiker in the White Mountains know something I didn’t? Was this a serious miscalculation? 

Worse, I had lost sight of a four-foot-high rock cairn a little below the summit. It was the only marker showing my way back down, since there was no trail of boot-prints in the rocks at this altitude. I needed to quell a growing sense of unease. If the rock cairn didn’t reappear soon, I was in deep trouble. Having climbed the White Mountains and the Appalachians many years, I was experienced and in good condition, but beginning to realize I might be in over my head. 

Already tired from climbing all morning, the storm was sapping my energy. Even though the wind was blowing ice pellets, I badly needed water, food, and rest to make it back down safely. A sandwich and almost-empty canteen of water was of little help. Yes, I had gained the top, but the rock cairn was the first of many I would have to find while crawling down a massive boulder field in blinding weather. Wandering around Mount Adam’s summit in this storm was inviting death from exposure or a serious fall off a precipice. 

Far below at the trail head, four hours before, the day had been promising with only clouds and spotty afternoon rain. Just an hour ago, I had decided to continue into the growing storm, to be able to say I had climbed Mount Adams rather than simply on it, a now seemingly small distinction. Caught up here, I was barely hanging on, trying to think clearly. How long should I wait for the rock cairn to reappear? I finished the soggy sandwich and took another gulp of water, my hands now too cold to hold the apple in my backpack. Prospects of finding shelter were bleak, but I couldn’t stay where I was. 

A sheltering line of weather-beaten, stunted junipers lay a thousand feet below past the exposed Knife Edge on the Durand Ridge over a mile away. The junipers were gnarled and twisted from a lifetime of constant wind and weather; the last living things at this altitude beside lichen moss. I looked around and couldn’t see any lichen growing on the summit, a sobering thought. I had no way to call or signal for help. Even finding the ridge below would be an iffy proposition if hypothermia set in. The nearest Appalachian Mountain Club shelter was far below and east in a mountain Col of Mount Madison, and there would be little chance of finding it. Without Madison Hut as an alternative, I was left descending in a blinding storm along the Knife Edge. 

With winds increasing, it was difficult seeing anything through my rain-fogged eyeglasses, so I couldn’t make out a compass reading even if I wanted. There was a distinct possibility of never finding my way down, instead laying down in exhaustion to die somewhere under a boulder. Thinking was fuzzier by the minute, disoriented as I was by Adam’s deceiving wind gusts, but an outline of a rock pile appeared a moment in the swirling mist. I scrambled toward it before it disappeared. The next quarter-mile descent would involve crossing a field of slippery boulders, trying to locate more cairns in growing black sleet. Never having been in a mountain storm before, I hadn’t realized rock cairns are silhouetted against lighter sky while climbing but otherwise disappear into a bare stormy mountainside. 

How had I gotten myself into this and would I learn anything if I survived? My wife, Joan, found a Tee-shirt on a Maine vacation that said, “Hiking is Life! The Rest is Just Detail.” I was wearing the now-soaked shirt, but a detail like not risking my life had been forgotten. I was soaked from head to foot despite two supposedly waterproof wind-breakers, one over the other. Special hiking socks were squishy-wet, no longer insulating or protecting against abrasion. Waterproof hiking boots were soggy and chafing; special hiking trousers and underclothes sodden.  

After what seemed like an hour of carefully feeling my way down through the  summit’s boulder field, often losing sight of trail marker rock cairns, I finally found a path below approaching the Knife Edge. The welcoming field of stunted junipers finally appeared, meaning a little more shelter from the driving rain and slashing wind. I crouched out of the maelstrom to take stock, no longer lost but wet, shivering, and beginning to have difficulty walking. 

I still had another three miles and a few thousand feet to descend, almost three hours to the trail head. There was no way to avoid losing my footing on occasion in the rain-swollen stream-bed that had been the rocky Airline trail that morning. Each step became slower, legs and feet afire; a beating they would feel for days. It took more than what I thought would be three hours, and I was dizzy, almost delirious, by the time I reached the trail head parking lot in late afternoon’s drizzling rain. 

I sagged against the car, glancing up a last time. Mount Adam’s summit was now shrouded in a frightening storm, no longer visible. I began unzipping soaked clothes with fumbling fingers before setting the car’s heater to maximum, luxuriating in its warmth. 

The adventure had been both rewarding and dangerous. But, where had I gone over the line; that it was too hazardous to continue? Perhaps it was time to stop solo-climbing, because it wasn’t clear when I should have turned back. I still don’t know how other climbers balance the risk and reward of summiting mountains, but many have died working it out. The question is, will I turn back next time?