Under Repair

It’s the second day after the "total joint replacement" of my right hip. I’m in the physical therapy rehab room on the 4th floor of the Dixie Regional Medical Center.

With one exception the six other patients in the room are one day behind me in their surgeries. All of us are still tethered to “IVs” hanging from rolling IV poles and have tubes draining fluid from our operations into round suction boxes pinned to our clothes. We ambulate using walkers with catheter bags attached.

Two patients have knee replacements. The rest, like me, have a hip replacement. Each of us is assisted by our spouse wearing an official “coach” badge. Together, we learn the exercises that will be repeated ad infimum over the six-week recovery period. With my wife’s (Blanche) help, I start the next set of exercises.

One... two... three...

Suddenly, what I see around me flashes a scene from the musical: Fiddler on the Roof.

Tevye comforts his wife Golde with the question: “Golde, do you love me?” We have reached the plot point in the story where Tevye learns the essential thing necessary to his character development in the story – what love is?

(At the stories beginning, Tevye expresses his frustration with the lot fate has given him and fantasizes in the song, If I Were A Rich Man.)

Now, his daughters are falling in love and getting married. Tevye desperately hangs on to tradition as his world changes around him. In his confusion he asked Golde, “Do you love me?”

She bushes his question aside.

He asked again.

Golde sidesteps again.

Tevye persists.

Golde finally faces his question and enumerates the things she has been doing for Tevye for 25 years and concludes with the statement: “If that’s not love, what is.”

Embarrassed by the discovery of their mutual love, they temper it with the word “suppose” and concludes with. “It hasn’t changed a thing, but after 25 years it’s nice to know.”

But, it has changed everything! Tevye and Golde will never be the same again. The center of their world has shifted from tradition to love (Tevye realizes that he is a "rich man".) and it is this shift that allows Tevye in the final scene to give her disowned daughter Chava his blessing.

Five... six... seven...

On the plent (raised exercise table) next to me a woman with a blood plasma bag added to her IV pole is laying on her back. Her husband is sitting next to her on a stool clasping her hand in both of his hands. His head close to hers. He whispers encouragement.

Across from me on plents and reconstruction bikes this scene is repeated – patient and spouse working together, physically close – all of them 18 inches or less apart – a magnetic like force between them. I hear Golde’s words, “If that’s not love, what is?”

I loose count.

“How many?” I asked.

”Two more.” My wife answers.

Nine... ten.

I feel a congratulatory caress across my back and like Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” — I’m a rich man.

From my tub to yours,
Rex Roadunner

Grumble! Grumble!

My father was a geek. In the 1920's before geeks. The "bees knees" for geeks in high school before there were geeks, was the "Crystal Set". They were homemade from a small crystal encased in lead, an antenna and ground wire, a wire to poke the crystal, headphones and wire rapped around what was handy to serve as a capacitor. It was portable, needed no power source, and my father could listen to it in the tree house, the garage out back, in the cellar, or pull the covers over his head at night when he went to bed.

Later, my grandfather bought the family a "Superheterodyne Radio" with glowing pregnant vacuum tubes and filled his home with the outside world. A country cousin of mine had a neighbor walk five miles to his home every Sunday afternoon to listen to Toscanini  and the New York Philharmonic. It was Magical! Unbelievable!

What? The iPad is just a big iPod! Grumble! Grumble!

 Ah! Progress: "The  Smart Phone" The strongest muscles in our face are now our squint muscles.

Bigger is better —much better. and as Steve Jobs said, "very intimate."

There is a sleeper here. It's the Video Podcast.  What are the possibles??????

A Video Podcasting Orson Wells will show us the way. So, pull the covers over your head.