Christmas
05
May the
Sister Marlene enters her seventh
year of successful kidney pancreas transplant and is adapting to her artificial
leg. Her voice box is as strong as ever,
as
At the start of this year, my thoughts of building the World Service Corps proposals to address troubling national and international issues were replaced by thoughts about one of my life’s heroes, mentors, and giant characters.
Michael Rubel, the benevolent
dictator of the impossible to build, codeless Rubelian Castle of Junk, http://www.worldservicecorps.us/rubelia.htm
who blessed some of us by allowing us to play in his castle building sand box,
had a heart attack in December 04.
Thousands of us were seriously worried, but Kaia, Michael’s wife, would
not allow any of us to visit, which heightened our concern. In January, Kaia said that Michael wanted to
see Pharmhands Glen Speer, the
Michael, seldom one to follow
institutional rules, and against the hospital’s directives, signed the papers
to release the hospital from liability and checked himself out in late
December. Michael did not return to the
winding staircases, seven-storied castle, tool shops filled with a million
archaic yet functioning tools, unfathomable security systems, thirteen
fireplaces, and dogs, horses, and hogs of the Castle. Instead, he had provided for the Castle and
his beloved dog Jasper to go to the
MCR was taken from the hospital to Kaia’s in-law unit at her children’s home about a mile from the Castle.
When Glen and I arrived, one of the strongest men I have ever know, (Thank God he never learned how to play football on the fields I played and instead plied his moxie and muscled talents lifting telephone poles and boulders) was a white, pasty, sapped man confined to a recliner chair in the small bedroom off of Kaia’s small dining area.
Michael Clark Rubel could hardly utter a weak sounding “Hello.” His wave barely lifted his hand 3 inches off of the chair arm. All of us Pharmhands were scared for the loss of the giant character and spirit that Kaia and we loved.
Throughout life, Michael has had an elite circle of nuanced and direct advice givers to whom he would listen. Stade, Stanley, Glen, and Skipper were in that special group. Advice or opinions from me were usually followed with a bemused smile -- and later guffaws. But, perhaps because he knew how my Mom had recovered from the stoke that doctors claimed would keep her in a vegetative state for what they suggested would be a short life, MCR let me start him on an alien-to-him jock’s workout program.
With concurrence of former Troll’s House resident Dr. Steve, Michael began a three a day workout program that started with moving and tensioning his lifeless muscles. In weeks, his workouts grew to small weight lifting, stretching, standing, stepping in place, baby stepping, walker-walking, and then walking --- all tied to a new diet that Kaia was fashioning.
Adjacent to Kaia’s home is an elementary school and playground. On its distant corner is a mailbox. By the second month of workouts, MCR was allowing himself to be coerced into walking outside, then to and along the schoolyard fence, then to the mailbox rest stop, and sometimes beyond.
Michael, being a Glendoran institution, was known by neighbors and school kids, as was the Castle and its characters, which included Jasper. Since puppy-hood, Jasper only left the walled, wired, barbed, and gated Castle with MCR. Now, however, in his noticeably depressed state, Jasper was sneaking out from beyond the Mad Max security systems. Not to fear though, neighbors and school kids would return Jasper to the Castle whence they knew he belonged.
Why mention a sad and bewildered dog at Christmas?
As Michael recovered to the point where he could walk and care for himself, so Kaia could go back to running Honhold Library at the Claremont Colleges, he maintained he would not revisit the Castle. Not just because it was a “past era” of his life, but also because Jasper would be, “devastated if he knew I were alive and had ignored him.”
One day around August 05, Michael told Kaia that someone was knocking at the front door. Kaia twice looked out and assured Michael that no one was there. Michael, known for his ability to hear termites chewing, persisted. The third time Kaia went to check, she opened the door.
No, termites were not gnawing. But a black, sheepish dog was scratching.
That pesky dog who evaded the impossible Castle’s electronic gates, roamed the neighborhood in search of his Master’s creosote laden scent, had found a mailbox, a school yard fence, a sidewalk, and then a house that smelled like a leather walking, overalled, creosoted delivery man lived there.
Today, growling Jasper smiles contently as he lies at MCR’s feet and plays in the big yard with the house’s two other dogs, Buddy and Mattie, and Christopher, the Big Dog.
The Christmas Moral? Even if you wear old shoes, funny looking overalled clothes, and smell too often like creosote, if you walk and hunt enough searching for an impossible dream, you not only can build impossible Castles, but also make lasting friend of dogs and people along the way.
May your Christmas stocking overflow with the spirit that good friends, loving dogs, and reaching dreams brings.
And if you haven’t signed the on-line World Service Corps Petition http://www.worldservicecorps.us/sign_the_petition.htm and helped make that “impossible” dream happen http://www.worldservicecorps.us/how_to_help.htm please do, so that millions of Americans can spread the true Spirit of Giving for at least the next 20+ years in pockets of need at home and abroad. The best Christmas gift America can give its and the world’s hurting and angry is the gift of a million WSC volunteers helping make the world a safer place.
If Christmas’s namesake, Jesus, were running Congress, don’t you think he would help make the WSC legislation happen? For full details www.worldservicecorps.us, or to play back televised five minute news interviews on the WSC proposals click http://www.worldservicecorps.us/television_radio.htm.
May the
Dwayne
Thanks to