Today is my birthday.  I woke up this morning, put my feet on the floor, and gazed down the valley formed by a shadowy pair of snow-kissed mountains, leading to a sun washed hillside in the state next door. A breathless voice inside my head whispered, “What a ride!”

I was blessed from the start by being born free in the greatest country on Earth, at a time when I’ve been privileged to witness many of the most significant changes in its history. I’ve seen everything from wooden trolley cars to rockets in space, crystal radios to laptop computers and tasted the whole enchilada in between! Oh, I’ve only caught the trailing edge of much of it. I only vaguely remember steam locomotives and the clanking of a milkman’s bottles or the clip-clop of his horse, for example — but however short the while, I’ve sampled some of the greatness.

Mom told me I was a breech birth and arrived in this world a week past due. I’ve been ass backwards and late for everything for more than six decades since. She always said I’d probably be late for my own funeral. That may already be true, since I’ve been sliced and diced during a couple of pretty serious surgeries and I’m still here to sport the latest in love handles at the beach on summer Sundays. Besides, as I’ve told friends so many times, “I have all of eternity to enjoy eternity but I’ve still got so much to do here, I’d like to stick around as long as possible.” Mom was in labor twenty-four hours without anesthetic because she was afraid they’d use instruments and my head would have an odd shape. I guess there wasn’t much she could do about the shape of anything inside it!

My youth was rooted in a simpler time when kids were still allowed to be kids. We actually played outside by day and sat around with the family, spellbound by the Golden Age of Radio at night. During my post-kidhood, it has been an honor to serve my country, exciting to be a ‘Jack’ of many trades, master of most — and a pleasure to have married two great women, the second of which still slips her slippers under her side of our bed every night. We’ve built the home of our dreams, and after nearly 32 years, I’m still lucky enough to fall in lust a couple of times per week and in love at least once daily. There are a bunch of pretty great kids running around this world too, just because I showed up and was finally smart enough to hand my heart to someone with a gentle touch.

I’ve experienced the challenge of managing some of the country’s sales elite and the delight of speaking to thousands of people, before it was mandated that radio D.J.s play “Ten more in a row with no unpleasant interruptions.” I worked with Tony Gallano who was the first cameraman to televise a major league baseball game — they had to lash him to the parapet at Yankee Stadium so he wouldn’t blow away!  And with Barney Beck who did the sound effects for The Lone Ranger and The Shadow, as well as newsman Lester Smith who was reporting live when J.F.K. was shot — and later when he was buried.

I’ve met U.S. Presidents, theatrical royalty, legendary musicians, iconic athletes and even Fay Ray, who monkeyed around with that big ape that climbed the Empire State Building. At 85, she still had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen! It was all at the end of an era and, even if I was too late to be a part of the greatness, I was early enough to touch at least some of it before it was gone.

More than once I’ve stated that I have no regrets but this morning, as more than half a century flashed across my mind’s motion picture screen, I realized I’ve been wrong. I do have one. It all happened so damn fast! To paraphrase one of my true and trusted friends:  If I can’t leave some kind of mark on this world, I hope someday I can leave at least a smudge.

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Life can be a fascinating ride but once you’ve rounded the corner at sixty, with youth only a distant image in your rear view mirror, the road can get a little bumpy and your suspension may not be the only thing in need of repair.

For me, that road led to the hospital more than once during the previous fifteen years but, so far, they were able to catch everything before any serious damage was done — even the cancer. My body had already shown it could do untoward things to me yet there I was, knocking on Social Security’s front door, never having experienced the joys of a colonoscopy. I figured it was about time. As it turned out the test itself was no big deal but the prep, which was a robust exercise in posterior protein spills, used nasty as a starting point and moved straight downhill from there. The important thing, however, was the negative result — no polyps, no questions, see you in five years.  Thanks Doc!

If nature’s cruelest joke is trapping a twenty year old kid inside a quarter million mile body then, to me, it seemed the most Vigi could need might be a renewed inspection sticker. She was the healthy one. Like many people she was, also, apprehensive about the prospect of  ’going through’ a colonoscopy. I assured her there was really nothing to it and, now that I’d been there-done that myself, I dared her to be next. Not to be outdone by someone known as Novocain Norris at the dentist’s office, she accepted my challenge, invented a few new adjectives during her prep and submitted to the test.

I sat in the waiting room half dozing, half listening to my i-Pod, not noticing that the usual half-hour had slipped into an hour and a half. When the doctor finally appeared he said, “She’s just waking up. I’ll take you to see her in a minute. First, let’s stop into my office, we need to talk.” I was never very good at tying knots but, suddenly, there was a perfect half-hitch inside my stomach. When he closed the door behind us, I noticed that the half hitch was now securing a ball of dough roughly the size of a small country.

Pointing to a row of back-lit pictures clipped to his wall he said, “We found a tumor about the size of an orange.  This type of tumor is usually cancerous and we need to get it out of there as soon as possible.  I wanted to discuss it with you alone before we tell Vigi so nobody looks too surprised.” As he explained the options, that dough in my gut began to rise, straining against the knot. I could hear myself asking questions and the doctor answering, as both our voices disappeared down some dark, echoing tunnel.  Then, he led me into the recovery room where this incredible smiling face looked up at me and two outstretched arms pulled me downward for a kiss. The biopsy confirmed cancer and only a few short days passed before she was looking up at me, again, from the gurney.

I had always been the one lying there counting ceiling tiles and Veege was the one standing next to me, looking frightened and helpless. It’s funny — when you’re the one who is down, you know that everything is fine and you’re going to be alright. Hell itself is, actually, reserved for the one who loves you but can only watch and wait. For the first time I fully understood the horror she must have experienced each time I’ve been on the cart! Now I was feeling it and I hated it. I was amazed at the number of impossible scenarios the human mind can conjure up per second.

Just before they wheeled her off, I placed my hand firmly on the doctor’s shoulder, looked him square in the eye and quietly said, “I know you’ll do your best but remember you have two lives in your hands, because I have no reason to be on this earth without her.” He could see I wasn’t kidding and assured me that he understood.  Then, the lady who is the bright center of my universe and her green-gowned entourage disappeared behind the large stainless doors that led to our future.

The good news was they were able to remove all the cancer cleanly.  The less-than-scintillating news was she would need six or seven months of precautionary chemotherapy. As rough as that was, and I was by her side through it all, nothing affected me as deeply or left me feeling so alone as looking down at the lady I love lying on that gurney.

The road has bumped us through the hospital again since then, and let me tell you first hand, you don’t get used to the feeling. Recently I’ve informed several of our friends that, “We don’t mess around with simple colds or flu. We save ourselves for the big stuff like heart disease and cancer.” In fact, I’ll bet neither of us has caught so much as a sniffle in almost ten years — until now. Maybe this is a turning point. ”Gesundheit!”

Look for Bananas Crackers and Nuts Podcast links under
“Recent Podcasts”… also check out the Podcast Page.

I don’t take compliments well — and I guess a gift is sort of a compliment with a bow on it.  It must be, because I seem to short circuit the gift giving process like a shiny penny in a rusty fuse box.  Right now I’m sitting here feeling as guilty as a bad electrician with a whole pocket full of shiny pennies.

As if it’s not enough that I frequently buy exactly what I want just before Christmas, I actually have the audacity to inform Vigi that she can consider the purchase as my present [from her].   Through the years, we’ve shared any number of conversations about post-holiday return lines and the kind of unappreciative person who so thoughtlessly trades away someone’s carefully selected gift.  That having been said, return with me now to summer of 2009 and The Pocono 500.

This was our first live NASCAR race and we had a ball — from the first chest-rumbling roar of the start to the smell of burning rubber during the winner’s figure eights after he took the checkered flag!  I snapped some terrific photographs; make a note. Also, understand there is not another track within 500 miles of home, the ‘cheap seats’ were eighty bucks apiece and I am married to the world’s most thoughtful and caring woman.

Another key to my current crestfallen state is knowing that pretty much wherever I go, my primary purpose is to take pictures. The Pocono 500 was a great photo opportunity and a race happened to break out.  I went to Williamsburg National Historical Site to take photos and they happened to have a lot of neat, old stuff around. My cameras love to go to the beach because there’s always lots of sand and this really interesting ocean parading her ever changing moods and textures right in front of my lens. For me, that’s what it’s about!

Christmas morning as Vigi handed me her present she said, “Now, if you don’t like it I want you to feel perfectly free to take it back.”  I was suddenly reminded of a certain Italian immigrant friend, many years ago, who was delighted that his wife had given him permission to ‘cheat’. I remembered the quote as clearly as my certainty that Aldo had heard only the words but not her vocal inflection: “Go. You want to fool around with other women that’s fine with me.  Go!” I could feel the horns of my own dilemma poking at my hindquarters as I began to tear at the colorful paper.

Peering between the flaps of the outer box I saw two smaller boxes inside. One contained a set of noise cancelling headphones, the other a handheld racing scanner that would allow me to monitor conversations between drivers and crews at any track in the country. I didn’t quite leap out of my chair with delight — in fact, I sank deeper into the cushioning when I learned Veege had been researching this gift since August.  Not only had she talked with a number of racing enthusiasts and investigated several products but she actually contacted the son of someone she works with who is a NASCAR driver!

Everyone knows guys like toys, right? And this was a toy of the first magnitude. Normally I would love to own it, especially considering the gift-giver and her determination to get everything exactly right. But do I simply say thanks, pull it out of the closet every few years and park it on the seat while I wander the track with my cameras — or should I believe her ‘feel free’ statement that originally accompanied the red bow and green paper? Well, I’m married too long to feel free but maybe not long enough to feel smart. What I do feel is the ‘Aldo’ in me rising and the jingle of all those shiny pennies in my pocket.

As of this writing I am still weighing the same alternatives, in the name of practicality — cowardly waiting for some great revelation of biblical proportions or for Martians to come take me away, whichever happens first. Did you know they’ve recently discovered water on the moon?

P.S. – 1/7/2010:  Without the aid of epiphanies or aliens, and foolishly employing Spock-like logic over better judgement, I refunded the gift this morning.  She may still be speaking to me — I thought she made a noise.

Look for Bananas Crackers and Nuts Podcast links under
“Recent Podcasts”… also check out the Podcast Page.