But the bigger story was the stellar medical care I received

This story is mostly about them. They work here, at Hospitales MAC in the hills of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where Rebecca and I spend January. I’ll start at the beginning, with my head lying bleeding on the bathroom floor — beautifully glazed bricks, but hard, very hard. My part will be brief. I’m the object and not the subject of this story.

Tuesday, AM

It’s 2 am last Tuesday, and I’ve collapsed. I remember being dizzy, disoriented, and nauseous as I walked through the bathroom door. And I have an image and sensation of my face on this floor. That’s it until Rebecca found me sitting on our bed with my head bleeding. She cleaned the wound and me and then determined I was out of immediate danger as I began to answer her questions, for example, “What year is it?” correctly.

Rebecca managed a doctor’s clinic for decades. As she monitored me, she was in texting contact with a physician friend. She was my angel of mercy who knows and knows people who know.

Eight years ago, I experienced a similar episode but without a fall. Again, early in the morning, I was wobbly on the way to the bathroom and sick to my stomach. There’s a fancy name for this condition: Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. The physical therapy treatment can be straightforward and includes head positioning to reorient chrystals in the inner ear. (source)

Who woulda thunk? Chrystals in the ear, and Bam!

Tuesday, PM

At breakfast, after looking at my head wound about two inches northwest of my right ear, Rebecca said it would be best to see a doctor. Fortunately, Theresa, our landlord, listed vital contact names and phone numbers on the refrigerator, including Dr. Leslie Maria Flores.

Rebecca made the call as she has improved her Spanish proficiency using Duolingo for two years. I’m stuck at Hola. Victor answered and set a same-day appointment time for noon. Other than a headache, I’m of sound 75-year-old mind and body. Because Victor spoke English, we decided I could embark on this adventure alone as Rebecca went to a Lifelong Learning class we had been looking forward to.

Taxi driver Carlos dropped me off at the entrance you see in the first photo. The lobby was small and spotless.

After sitting outside Room 211 for a few minutes, Victor came out the door with the Christmas wreath and asked if I was Paul.

He took my vitals inside an ante-room. “Your blood pressure is high,” he said. It was 160 over something. “That’s a lot higher than usual,” I replied, “I guess I’m nervous.”

Dr. Leslie Marie Flores, MD, poked her head out of a back room and said to come in. Two comfortable chairs sat in front of her desk. Through a door to a third room, I saw an examination area with windows looking out at the Bajio Mountains surrounding San Miguel.

Her consultation lasted about forty minutes. During it, she asked specific questions about what had happened to me the previous night. She honed in on a faint red spot over my left eyebrow: “I don’t think you raised your hands to block your fall. I think you blacked out. That worries me. We should do an EKG.”

After she cleaned my head wound, an emergency room physician who happened to be available arrived to suture the two-inch gash. He was about sixty and Flores forty or so. In Spanish, she summarized the details of my incident, including her recommendation for an EKG, with him nodding and gesturing approval. He then closed the cut with three medium-sized stitches.

Wednesday, AM

The taxi driver, Carlos, dropped me off the following day for two more appointments: the EKG and an ear cleaning for the pesky inner ears.

After the EKG, the technicians motioned me into the office of Dr. M. Karina Cruz Madrigal, cardiologist. One comfortable chair facing middle-aged Dr. Madrigal behind her desk. Her English was better than mine. “Your EKG is normal, but tell me the fall details.” I did.

“I’m worried you didn’t put your hands up to protect your face.” She put a heart model before me and said, “The heart is like a light bulb. As it ages, sending an electrical current from here to there takes longer. Your light bulb is 75 years old. Why did you black out?”

She recommended a three-day heart monitor because “the EKG only tests the heart for 20 seconds.” I said I would make an appointment with my Decorah physician when we returned to the USA in early February. And then I remembered my father got a pacemaker when he was 65. Yesterday, I made that appointment.

I’ve had my ears cleaned out so many times I even wrote a story about it.

My 65-year Love Affair With Nurses

Don’t you love to watch professionals at work

medium.com

Dr. Karla Lidia Chávez Vaca ushered me from my chair in the hallway into her office. By now, I was used to explaining why I was hanging around MAC. She listened attentively, asked very specific questions, and said, “let’s take a look inside your ears.”

“Yes, there’s plenty of wax in each.”

What followed was the most gentle, thorough removal of the cerumem build-up in memory. She then printed off eye exercises for vertigo she wanted me to do for a month followed by her What’s App number to conact her with any questions.

Friday, AM

I’ll bet you are interested in how much this care cost. First, I paid a fee at each office. Second, the total was $331, including three prescriptions.

As I write this story four days after falling, I feel immense gratitude toward my loving partner Rebecca and her physican friend Bill.

And to the four professionals at MAC Hospital in San Miguel.

Thank You.

How did I become the man I am?

My father was born on January 13, 1921. He died early on March 1, 1993, of sinus cancer, diagnosed too late. He was a chemical engineer who worked on the United States space program in the 1960s, retiring at 58 when the moon landing ended America’s full-bore commitment to space.

Here he is in the middle 1960s, with engineer colleagues.

Not one to let grass grow under his feet, Dad set up a bakery in his and mom’s basement. Applying his engineering mind to the development of bread products, it took him several years to perfect his baking technique. Eventually, he created several multigrain products that he sold at farmer’s markets in the late 1970s, well ahead of that health trend.

You would see contentment and delight over a big order on his face if you knew him as I did.

Two days ago was his 103 birthday. How do I honor such a man?

---

I sit here in the early morning, pecking out another Medium story — this will be number 491. Last week, in San Miguel, Mexico, where Rebecca and I are spending January, I taught a Lifelong Learning course on the U.S. 2024 presidential election. That’s seven courses to mature students since I retired in 2018, with another one planned for 2026. I’m three years older than my father. Where do these efforts come from?

Nature or nurture?

My money is on nurture. To prove my point, I’ll tell you a story. You can then multiply that by 1000 to calculate the impact of this man on my life.

Which is why a good father matters.

---

I was 12, a gang member, and a criminal. Vinnie and Mark joined me in a pact to steal one item each from Smith’s Drug Store a few blocks from our neighborhood. I chose a bottle of aspirin.

Mr. Smith, no fool, spotted one or more of us pilfering and called Mrs. Cleveland, a neighborhood busybody who ratted to my mother. You should know that this was my second offense in three years — what our gang of nine-year-olds pilfered is lost to time.

My dad knocked on my bedroom door the night we were tattled on. Peter, who was two years younger and with whom I shared I shared the bedroom, was somewhere else. I felt that something was fishy as my dad sat on my bed.

He told me about Cleveland’s phone call. “It will take some time before your mother gets over this,” he said calmly. He meant my mom would not speak to me for a while — It turned out to be a week. I still remember the morning she broke her silence. It was breakfast time. I was sitting at our kitchen table, and she was at the refrigerator, “Would you like some orange juice, Paul?”

Dad took a different approach. The day after his bedroom visit, he came home from work early. He never, ever came home early.

“Paul,” he said, “let’s go for a ride.”

In the car, silence.

He drove us downtown along the 4th Street east-west one-way to the Davenport Police Station. We exited the car, and I followed him through the front door. Still, no words, including by me.

I kid you not, an officer sat at a high desk, just like in the movies. He came down and approached us. My Dad introduced me, and the officer’s hand grasped mine and said, “Come with me.”

I followed him through several doors, with officers everywhere. We ended up in a room with several empty cells. I don’t remember what, if anything, he said on our journey. He soon returned me to my Dad, who was waiting in the lobby.

Silence all the way home.

---

Do you have time for another story? I’ll make it short. It involves the third Gardner boy, Pat, who is six years younger than me. Pat is 70 this year and 19 when he and Dad met late one Friday afternoon at a bar in West Davenport. In the 1960s, this part of town housed many factories.

Pat was a so-so high school student but a great athlete with a powerful left arm. He was so good that he got a baseball scholarship from a local community college. But he never went to class.

As Pat told the story, after they had settled at a table with a couple of beers, Dad looked at him and said, “Look at the guys at the bar. Many of them are here every night. Just sitting.”

Soon after, Pat got a job selling paint at Sherwin-Williams. He never finished school but became a regional manager at Sherwin over the decades, retiring a few years ago. Today, in retirement, he transports donated organs to hospitals around the area.

---

Character is built from the accumulation of stories like these. It’s like a sand timer hourglass, from father to son.

Looking back, I ask, How did I become the man I am?

---

Our second January in San Miguel de Allende

This is Rebecca and my second January in San Miguel, a central Mexican city of 75,000, much more than a respite from the USA Iowa cold.

How can I capture what I mean for you?

We walk sidewalks like this every day.

Which requires constant attention to the person coming toward you — and she to you. Because we’re 73 and 75, more often than not, it is we who are accommodated. Regardless of who makes the first move, it’s ego-deflating to think every moment about the other. And then be grateful for their pivot.

Of course, some hold their ground.

For a gentle stroke.

The weather, you ask?

Generally sunny and around 70 Fahrenheit by mid-afternoon, dipping to 45 degrees at night. Unfortunately, climate change has shortened San Miguel’s brief rainy season, causing severe water shortages. (source)

Are we making things worse with our jet-fueled arrival and departure, daily showers, and eight glasses of water? In San Miguel’s case, the WE is considerable as around 10,000 ex-pats, primarily Canadian and USAers live here.

Last night, we attended a literary reading on a packed cafe patio. Four American authors read from their work, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist. On Sunday, we couldn’t get tickets to an interview with Margaret Atwood by Martin Fletcher, a retired British journalist who we used to watch on PBS. Instead, we enrolled in a Lifelong Learning course on writing and storytelling, which Martin will teach next week.

This week, twenty-five mature students joined me for a course I taught on the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, also a part of the Instituto Allende Cultural Center’s LLP. Volunteers run this 19-course program. No one is paid. During our last week, we’re taking “Jung’s Map of the Soul,” which should help us recover from the election.

Speaking of civic renewal, sometimes art captures a feeling, externalizes it, and helps one move beyond. Say hello to my therapist, who works for free in the San Miguel Public Library’s cafe.

There are art galleries everywhere in San Miguel. Our favorite is the Fábrica La Aurora in a renovated textile complex, where I found this piece titled “The Search for Truth.”

Sometimes, a different environment can tweak what should be a constant quest in our lives. What is the truth about Donald Trump’s re-election? What is the essence of 10,000 North Americans descending on a Central American country? And why do I feel safer in a cartel-infested nation than in my own country?

Before I leave you, let me show you our accommodation. You’ve seen the view from the third-floor terrace. Here’s the gated front entrance common area.

The complex has four apartments. Rebecca is working at our dining room table. Just to her left, is a galley kitchen.

We have three small patios.

Where we ponder life’s truths in this phenomenal country.

This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.

The story will be based on the image of a nicely garnished tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich.

*

She still feels guilty, every Friday.

Today, a Friday, lunch will be fish sticks. Later, coincidence or not, Father John will say mass in the common room. She’ll attend the Unitarian service Sunday morning.

She raised her children in the Faith, as did her mother. But Kathy hated anything orange and Peter said those crusty filets looked too much like fingers. And Bob — how she misses him — was a Protestant.

So it started with hambugers on Friday. And ended with priests covering up for other priests.

She loves the food here, except on Fridays.

And isn’t fooled by the garnish.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Random word challenge #363: Horses

This tale was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.

This story is based on this image.

---

I’m not like Silver, Trigger or even Mister Ed. They were famous horses.

And full of themselves. All glitter, colorful bows, and pretty wrapping. Fragile. Easily shattered. And now, forgotten.

What does Thoreau say? Most live lives of quiet desperation.

Whether horse or human.

You’re like me, I’ll wager. No one would ever wrap you up and put you under a Christmas tree. Life has taught you to see through all that.

Now, at this ripe age, we’ve become friends with unrequited desire.

Disappointment doesn’t destroy us. Common wears well; fits comfortably, like an old saddle.

Yours truly, Mister Ordinary

Random word challenge #360: Monstrous

This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.

The last line is Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night.

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It’s a monstrous responsibility.

There’s something different about this night, even for nonbelievers.

Can you hear it? The silence. Wars have stopped, all too briefly. Yesterday, I overheard two old friends greet each other after years of separation, hugging with a heartfelt Feliz Navidad.

Everyone carries a little bit of childhood throughout life. And a lot of pain. I can’t make the suffering go away. But I’m part of the world’s magic — a cool breeze on a hot day.

However, I need your help. I can’t do this alone.

Please!

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Why couldn’t it have happened to this aunt, Sister Marilyn Thomas? She had worldly and other-worldly protection. Besides, this cowboy had just returned from protecting Davey Crockett, alias Fess Parker, at the Alamo. He would have lassoed or caught it in his coon skin cap.

But it didn’t. More on Sister Marilyn and my unlucky Maryalice shortly.

The year is 1957, and a lot is happening outside the Gardner household: Sputnik, the Little Rock 9, Elvis on Ed Sullivan, and the Cuban Revolution.

Inside, on a typical day, my father, Paul, worked as an engineer at Bendix Corporation. My mother, Dody, managed three children: myself, eight; my brother Peter, six; and my other brother Pat, three. There’s also a one-year-old beagle, Sam, who Santa placed in a squirmy turkey box the previous Christmas.

As you can see in the photo, Dody had been busy taping Christmas cards on the living room wall. Did she stand on a step ladder? Did my Dad help her? Did I? I have no memory of the process.

She would live in this house for 65 years, hosting Christmas’ for roughly half a century. Fortunately, she gave up the card wall after this incident. Violence and change were afoot, not only in Cuba.

Mom died in 2017 at the age of 96. I never asked her where the idea for the Christmas card wall came from. Or why the out-of-your-sight Aladdin lamp-shaped purple glass planter that lay to the right of the cone-shaped thing on the mantel under the cards sat too close to the edge?

*

Uncle Al, Aunt Maryalice, and cousins Jim, Dan, and Terri arrived from Des Moines late one morning, a few days before Christmas. Sister Marilyn, whom we called Fawny, had come from Dubuque the day before. She got the name Fawny because little brother Al couldn’t pronounce Florence, her given name.

Fawny was staying with her mother, also Florence. My maternal grandfather, Al Sr., had died of a heart attack in 1944.

Before I return to the foreshadowed event, I must say something about my mother. Normally high-strung, the string tightened when high-maintenance Al visited. They were cut from the same mold. Each married a calming presence. Maryalice was a red-haired, sweet woman who died of diabetes at 42 in 1970. My father, who exuded equanimity, died of sinus cancer at 71 in 1993. Interesting. Edgy Al lived to 88, my mother — no sense repeating myself.

Sister Marilyn, who refereed the Dody and Al matches, died in 2019 at 103. She had been a BVM (Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin) for 75 years. A traditionalist, she wore the square coif headdress long after other BVMs had changed to a rounded one.

My family only used the living room during Christmas when Dad lit a fire from logs piled in the garage. In the photo, you can see a corner of a fire screen to my left. You can’t see a handle or damper that opens and closes the chimney flue. Dad needed both hands to turn the damper, which he would do before dropping the first match.

On this day, Aunt Maryalice sat on the floor with her back to the fire guard. When Dad cranked the damper, the vibration moved up the brick wall to the mantel, nudging the triangular front of the heavy glass purple planter off the ledge where it glanced off the top of the fire screen onto my aunt’s head.

*

My WW II Coast Guard medic Dad retrieved his usual assortment of bandaids, cotton, and turpentine and treated her wound while my mom picked up the unharmed planter and took it to another room. I don’t think she ever put it back on the mantle. Uncle Al helped Aunt Maryalice to a chair across from the fireplace. I noticed a little blood, but otherwise, she seemed OK, if a little stunned.

The cousins waited patiently for the signal to attack the gifts under the tree.

Whenever I recall this incident, I wonder why Mom didn’t see the danger. The mantle was her territory, and everything was in its place. But the planter must have nudged out just enough that all that was needed was a little jolt. My mom was a worrier who always erred on the side of caution. Under normal circumstances, she would have put it somewhere else or suggested that Maryalice not sit under it.

It must have been because she was so distracted: three young boys, a challenging brother, a cloistered sister, an aging mother who lived alone, and organizing those cards. But there was one additional thing.

Our family always celebrated two Christmases, one Protestant and one Catholic. On Christmas Day, we traveled forty miles to my dad’s Protestant parents’ farm in Tipton. Paul Sr. and Edith hosted their five grown children and families. Christmas Eve was with my mom’s Catholic side.

Mom always felt underappreciated by her mother-in-law because of the religious difference. And she always resented that her mother had never been invited to spend Christmas Day at the farm.

She must have been stewing over all this, so she never noticed the purple planter was waiting to fall on Aunt Maryalice.

By the evening of that day, this incident would begin its journey in Gardner family lore.

Without it, would anyone remember the Christmas of 1957?

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Challenge #350: There is no random word or twist today

This story was written for Fiction Shorts.

We’re free— no random word and no twist, except today’s story will be a Drabble n’ a half — 150 words.

Freedom’s just another word for…

*

Setting: Church Bar, Baltimore

John: “Bill, you look a little down tonight.”

Bill: “Today’s my birthday, 75.”

“We’ve known each other for, what, ten years. You don’t look your age. Your two Bobby Burns are on the house. Why so down on your birthday?”

“John, do you believe in something more than us?

“If you mean a god, no. After all, I’m fixing drinks in a former church.”

“But humans have always created gods, something around 18,000. Doesn’t that mean something?”

“Maybe we’re afraid of being alone. If there’s no God, it’s up to us.”

“That’s what scares me, John. Have I lived all these years never really taking freedom seriously? I’ve always looked up and taken directives from someone, starting with the god of my childhood. Now that I’m nearing the end, I wonder, what if we really are alone?”

“It’s a start, Bill, another Burns?”

“Scotch, straight up.”

________________________________________________________________________________

Note: The idea for the setting for this story came from an article on churches that have been turned into bars. The idea for the title and theme came from my life-long spiritual quest and this article on spirituality.

Desperate, I read Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol for the first time in December 1972. I had just replaced — I’ll call her Mrs. Cratchit because I don’t remember her name — who had been driven into early retirement by the 44 6th graders sitting before me.

That’s right, 44. It was a Catholic school. My Catholic first-grade class had 60.

I say sitting, although that sounds like a regular classroom with a teacher in control. It was nothing like that.

Sister Nancy, the Principal who hired me, was also desperate. Mrs. Cratchit, to save her sanity, had decided not to return after Thanksgiving break. I would learn later that this group was the subject of several evening meetings with parents. Sister thought a man might bring order to the chaos.

I was 23 and had just earned a teaching certificate. With a few education classes, a student teaching semester, and a few months monitoring study halls at a local high school under my belt, I was a babe in the woods.

With a penis.

About to be thrown into the fire.

*

The penis part was relevant not only to Sister Nancy but to that young man. I quit every night, and I mean EVERY night, for the rest of that school year because I thought I was in over my head with no hope.

It wasn’t just the unruly kids. My academic major was Sociology — wasn’t it everyone’s in the early 1970s? But I had a self-contained class, meaning I taught everything.

I’ll leave math for another day. English was hard enough — there’s a reason I’ve hired Grammarly! Rooting around my classroom closet, I found copies of The Christmas Carol.

I bet you didn’t know there are exactly 44 characters in this Dickens classic. Of course not, but we read it out loud and acted out a few scenes. I also ordered the 1938 Alistair version from the local Education Agency, which is still my favorite.

*

Only in hindsight do I see that I was slowly figuring out this teaching gig. I’ve linked below a story about another nun who helped me figure things out.

At the moment, it mainly was chaos. And what it means to stick with something very hard without knowing exactly how it will end.

In May 1973, I handed out 44 report cards. Then, I went to Sister Nancy’s office and signed a contract for the following year.

I had become a teacher.

And had taken a step toward becoming a man.

To that kid, the experience suggested the possibility of redemption — an internal resource he has carried with him for fifty years.

Random word challenge #352: Sharp

This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.

The story will begin with “as gray as the day was…”

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As gray as the day was long, he thought.

He urged the minute hand tick in Geometry 65 years ago: five minutes and the bell. Are these those lost moments?

He thinks of her every time he sees a birch tree. Somewhere, he learned dead trees sustain life in a forest.

She often recited the day’s poem to him. Today’s shared “the quiet diminishment of daily life” just before the first sharppain.

Thank goodness for this bench. She liked sitting here; he was restless, anticipating the next tock.

He memorized it for this final moment: “Celebrate the meager light.”

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The poem in the story is “A Gray Day” by Elena Shvarts.

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