I'm a Fan of Fans

A souvenir fan that Dylan and Jake brought me from Las Vegas.

Dylan and Jake were in Las Vegas two weeks ago for a friend's wedding, and they stayed on for four days to see the sights and visit other friends who live in the area. When they returned from their trip, they surprised me with a souvenir that I just loved. Not because it was expensive or imposingly magnificent (and I certainly hadn't expected them to bring me anything), but because it was so incredibly thoughtful. 

All of my children have a real gift for choosing things they know will be meaningful to me. I've never been one to have a long list of "What I Wants" or to desire expensive gifts. At my age, if there's something I want that badly, I'll figure out a way to get it for myself. But if you give me something that simply made you think of me, I will treasure it forever.

The wall of Japanese fans in my home office.

So why was a Las Vegas fan so special? The guys checked out some souvenir shops and looked at the usual souvenirs like refrigerator magnets (which are fun, too), but when they saw the fan, they knew it was perfect for me. Jake remembered that I have a whole wall of treasured fans in my office at home and just knew I would love it. He was right!

When I lived in southern California, I worked in a Japanese factory located in Anaheim for almost two years (May 1978 to March 1980). It was called AF Seal, shorthand for American Fuji Seal. All of our executives and most of our management were Japanese men newly arrived in the USA to oversee this new American branch of their company. Some barely spoke English, which made for some interesting situations, along with the inevitable small cultural clashes.

Employees of AF Seal outside our new facilities on Jan 24, 1980.

All of them loved this country, though, and worked hard to assimilate. Most of them adopted American names based on celebrities they admired. The president of the company called himself John, after John Wayne. Another executive called himself Kirk, for Kirk Douglas. My favorite supervisor, production manager Neil, was a fan of Neil Diamond (like me).

For them, work was family. In Japan, employees spent far more time at work than they spent at home, so they cultivated a supportive environment in which relationships mattered. We had parties for every excuse possible, including everyone's birthdays. We had barbecues and ballgames at the park, to which our entire families and our personal friends were welcomed. They even tried to get us to come to work early to do calisthenics with them, but we lazy Americans found that to be a bridge too far...

AF Seal production staff on my final day on the job, Feb 29, 1980.

These men returned to Japan regularly, for personal or business reasons, and when they came back to work they would often have small souvenirs for us. Most often it was a traditional, decorated Japanese fan. Hence, my lovely collection. I display them because they mean a lot to me. I admit freely that I totally hated wrestling with glitchy factory machinery day after day, but the people I worked with were absolutely wonderful. The fans on my wall are a reminder of their kindness and generosity, as well as their occasional bemusement at our American ways and attitudes.

Me with my sister Karla (ages 25 and 19) on our final day at AF Seal.

Oddly enough, AF Seal eventually became family for me in more than a fanciful sense. After she graduated from high school, my sister Karla joined the team. Then, when the company brought over a huge printer, my brothers LeRoy and Jeff hired onto the night crew of the new printing department. Only our youngest brother, Darryl, didn't join up. He was still in high school.

That meant that when our family decided to move to Arizona on March 5, 1980, AF Seal lost four employees all in one fell swoop. I won't lie. I was thrilled to get out of the factory life. Still, it was hard to say good-bye to those who had become like an extended family to us.

Examples of the heat-shrink labels we produced at AF Seal.

In case you wonder what we manufactured at AF Seal, we made heat-shrink labels for products like Kraft salad dressings and wine bottles for various wineries. I still see them on many grocery shelves today. You know the ones, where you twist the top and hope it breaks at the perforations like it's supposed to, so you can open the lid under the plastic.

At AF Seal, the labels were printed onto long, wide sheets of plastic (my brothers' jobs), which were then sliced into narrower sheets. Those were sent to the seamers, which folded and flattened them and glued them along the seam, which was very tricky. That was the machine I ran during my final months with the company. From there, the long rolls of labels were sent through the cutters, which cut them to their prescribed sizes (as seen in these photos) and perforated them. That was the department where Karla worked, and those were the machines I operated for most of my time at AF Seal. Finally, of course, the labels were assessed for quality, and then packaged and shipped off.

Those were some great times. Good memories. But you couldn't pay me enough to work in a factory again!

The Hospitalizer

My son Dylan got taken down by "swine flu" (H1N1) when he was twelve.

September 19, 2009

Coming down with respiratory flu is never fun. Most of us probably remember the "swine flu" pandemic of 2009-10, when death rates rocketed and people all over the world wore surgical masks whenever they ventured outside. That one hit close to home for us, when my youngest child contracted the disease. Dylan was an extremely healthy, athletic twelve-year-old who was fine one day and knocked off his feet the next. For a full week he was scary-sick.

That particular flu, H1N1, is especially deadly because it targets healthy teens and adults as much as it does the young, the elderly, and the immune-compromised. H1N1 is, in fact, the same strain of flu responsible for the deadly Spanish Influenza pandemic that infected 500 million people worldwide and ultimately killed 3-5 percent of the world's population, somewhere between 50 and 100 million people. Ironically, the Spanish Flu pandemic began exactly 100 years ago this month, running from January 1918 to December 1920.

This season's predominant strain of flu is the more traditional H3N2, which mostly targets the very young, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems, as we normally expect from the flu. However, H3N2 is also a master of mutations, making it unpredictable from year to year. It has outdone itself this season, outfoxing the vaccine and overwhelming health workers, hospitals, clinics, and flu-related supplies with unprecedented numbers of the infected. According to reports from the CDC, the 2017-18 flu season is on track to become the worst since the 2009-10 "swine flu" pandemic. As of January 9th, recorded cases were up more than 500%. And it hasn't peaked yet.

The CDC estimates that about 12,000 Americans die during a flu season considered to be "mild." This year, there is concern that the number could be closer to 56,000. Most deaths so far have been among the elderly, but the number of pediatric deaths has been unusually high, as well. Particularly frightening are the many reports of healthy adults dying within days of their first flu symptoms.

In fact, I read that this flu was dubbed "the hospitalizer" in Australia, the continent that suffered from their own H3N2 epidemic throughout their winter flu season before it moved on to us. Keep in mind, the autumn/winter flu season in Australia is from about March to August.

Homemade chicken noodle soup! Thanks to those 

who brought us dinner every night for a full week!

Why am I so interested in this year's flu epidemic? I can't really recall the last time I had a case of respiratory flu, or if I ever really had it before. If I did, I was young and healthy enough at the time to throw it off quickly, like a bad cold. This year, though, I came face-to-face with H3N2. And it was ugly.

And I wasn't alone. I can't remember any other year in which so many people I know, and in many cases their entire families, have been afflicted by such serious illness over such a short period of time. This year's flu doesn't mess around. It moves in with two suitcases and gets down to business.

I (foolishly) expected to be healthier after I retired in June. After all, I'd no longer be surrounded by a classroom full of coughing, sniffling teens every day, right? Not so. In November, I got an especially virulent stomach flu that put me down for nearly a week. Then, on December 5th, I came down with a head-cold and a mild sinus infection that lasted a little more than a week. Not the worst ever, so I congratulated myself on surviving so well. I even told a few people that I should be done with illness until next year. Oh, the lies we tell ourselves.

Just one week after the cold was gone, I was stricken one evening with a horribly raw, burning pain in my throat. What? Not another cold so soon! It was a Thursday evening, December 21st, and Christmas Eve was only three days away. I had plans! This couldn't happen!

But it did. I was diligent in drinking plenty of fluids, resting, and taking home remedies like vitamin C, garlic oil, echinacea, and essential oils. Nonetheless, on Saturday afternoon my temperature hit 101 degrees, accompanied by the most awful body aches of my life and a horrible case of the chills. I shook from head to toe, and feared that I'd bite the thermometer in half (next up, mercury poisoning?) because my teeth were chattering so badly. When Mark woke me to drive him to work the next morning (Christmas Eve), I could hardly stay upright. My temperature was still 101 and the "roadkill" feeling was even worse.

My daughter Sarah, bless her, came to my rescue. She drove her dad to work, and then she took me to a walk-in clinic (the only one in town open on a holiday), where a nasty nose-swab confirmed H3N2. After taking me back home so I could go back to bed, Sarah picked up my ridiculously expensive Tamiflu prescription ($70, not covered by my insurance) and then set me up with chicken noodle soup, saltine crackers, and ginger ale before she went back home. 

I discovered later that Tamiflu is only effective if started within 48 hours of initial symptoms. By the time I took the first dose, it was more like 60 hours after my sore throat began, so I'm not sure whether my $70 was well spent. The drug somehow inhibits the flu virus from replicating itself as  quickly, so the hope is that it gives the body's own immune system more time to fight it off.

Now that I'm on the mend, I shouldn't complain. It's true that I was miserable--miserable--for more than two weeks, and the timing was awful, affecting both Christmas and New Year's Eve. All I could do was sit in a corner, away from my uninfected family, and watch my kids prepare the meals, carry out our traditions, and wait on me. I'm deeply grateful for their diligence, but being so sick sure puts a damper on things.

On the other hand...I survived. I've read of so many others hospitalized with pneumonia and so many others who died unexpectedly, far too young. So I am grateful. While I had all the usual symptoms listed on the health websites--sore throat, fever, body aches, chills, congestion, cough, headache, vomiting (mostly phlegm), diarrhea, and exhaustion--the congestion never went deep into my lungs and the mucus stayed clear during the entire illness. 

Although, I did have the most interesting wheeze from my upper respiratory tract for almost four weeks. It was constant and annoying and kept me awake at night, but it was never boring. Sometimes it sounded like a tiny flute, sometimes like a newborn kitten mewling, sometimes like a miniature goose honking, and other times like a whole variety of sound effects! I don't miss it.

It took more than two weeks, but eventually most of the symptoms disappeared. The only lingering effects are some continuing drainage, an intermittent cough, and most of all, exhaustion. That's the part I'm still fighting, trying to regain my strength even though it's been 4 weeks and 5 days since this whole thing began. Don't get me wrong, I'm much, much better now, and long past the contagious stages. I just find I have to portion out my energy on a daily basis. Like, today I will do dishes; tomorrow I will do light shopping; the next day I will do laundry; and so on. One task pretty much drains me for the rest of the day.

At the end of the first two weeks of illness, I felt slightly more human, so...well, you know how we are: I expected to be able to jump right back into regular life. I tried, but I crashed, and I crashed hard. Literally, just looking at the cover of a magazine and thinking about reading it (because what else could I do all day?) made me unimaginably tired. So I cried a lot and despaired of ever getting my life back.

That's when the wonderful ladies from church stepped in and took care of us (by then, Mark was sick, too, although he recovered much faster than I did, being much younger than me). For an entire week they brought us a delicious warm meal each evening. We enjoyed thick, rich beef stew with garlic bread and apple pie; homemade lasagna and garlic toast; garden salad topped with rotisserie chicken, and rolls on the side; handmade tamales; homemade chicken noodle soup and French bread; and chicken fajitas on low-carb tortillas. Thanks so much to the Rogers, Halls, Badgers, Stewarts, and Prestwiches for their love and generosity! I didn't feel like I deserved such attention, but it made a huge difference.

The past week has been better, as long as I don't push too hard. I'm confident that I'll be back to full strength in a week or two, able to resume my normal life. That said, I've given my kids instructions that, in the event I ever contract the flu again, they're to take me directly to the hospital and tell the staff to hook me up to the necessary IVs and sedate me for about four weeks, because I never want to experience being that sick again!

Welcome, 2018!

Happy New Year! Celebrating at 12:05 a.m. on January 1, 2018:

Dylan, Jake, Chris, and Sarah.

Two thousand eighteen. I can hardly get my mind around it. As a teenager back in the late 1960s, I couldn't even imagine being alive in a year called 2018. The now-not-so-far-away year of 2020 was a  far-distant date for science fiction, not real life. And, really, could any of us at that time have imagined we'd be in our sixties someday? For real?

Yet, here we are. 2018 has arrived, and I am a twice-divorced sixty-three-year-old retiree who has finally learned to let the dream go. All three of my children are independent and capable adults with their own homes and families, who love me but no longer depend upon me. And it's all good. Tough, sometimes, but in the end...good.

Jake's always-delicious homemade lasagna.

One of the great blessings I look forward to at each year's end is being able to see in the New Year with my children...at least, those who still live nearby. Unfortunately, I was still quite sick with flu for New Year's Eve. The fever and aches were gone and I was supposedly no longer contagious, but the congestion and cough were still painful, and the short walk from the couch to the bathroom required a stop to catch my breath.

However, as on Christmas Day, the kids were there to take the pressure off so I could just relax and enjoy being with them. Sarah came over after church to wash my dishes for me...the same piles of dishes we'd used for Christmas dinner six days earlier, still sitting in pretty much exactly the same places they'd been left on December 25th. Bless you, my angelic firstborn child!

Jake had to work on both Christmas Day and New Year's Eve, but after work on New Year's Eve he'd gone home and whipped up one-and-a-half pans' worth of his marvelous New York family recipe of lasagna. Then he brought it over around 7:00 that evening and put it in the oven to bake. Although I was still nauseous and couldn't eat much, what I did take was indescribably yummy...and I saved myself a good-sized slice for the next day!

Decadently gooey brownies for dessert, by Sarah.

Meanwhile, Sarah had prepared us a tray of baby carrots, celery sticks, sliced cucumber, and olives with some French onion dip, plus a bag of chips on the side, so we could snack while awaiting dinner. Dylan worked until 9:00 p.m. on New Year's Eve, so we didn't all sit down to eat until almost 9:30, after he'd arrived.

Sarah also baked the brownies and prepared the fudge I'd intended to make but just didn't have the stamina for. Unlike her amazingly perfect gravy on Christmas Day, Sarah's nemesis is fudge. She never feels like she can get it to the smooth texture she wants. You know, like those silky, shiny fudge platters you see in magazines. Thus, I always make the fudge this time of year...until now. While it's true that the top was a bit rough-looking, the part beneath was great: perfectly smooth and delicious as it's supposed to be. And every bite has been eaten and enjoyed!

Sarah's pan of fudge.

Fifteen minutes before midnight, we put on one of the TV programs showing the Times Square Ball in New York City so we could watch its descent at the stroke of twelve (although it had actually already fallen two hours earlier, when it was midnight on the Atlantic seaboard). The kids donned their party hats, including Chris's crazy homemade hat he'd made with his "consumers" at work, and we filled our plastic "champagne" glasses with nonalcoholic sparkling cider. Then we counted down the final seconds before shouting "Happy New Year!" and toasting the New Year with a clinking of glasses.

Welcome, 2018! You will bring us challenges and trials, along with difficult transitions and frightening uncertainties, but you will also bring hard-won successes and new beginnings and unforeseen joy. Happy New Year!