Always Bring an Extra Bag

The other day I was out perambulating Miss Lucy. I started out in the culdesac near my house and Lucy obliged with a truly prodigious pile of excrement which I gathered up in the poop bag I had brought with me. I temporarily deposited the bag next to my mailbox, as is my common practice, and continued our walk. As we made our way down Aprilbud Drive the thought entered my head that I had not brought a second bag for the trip. For a minute a sense of dread passed through my mind, as memories of previous “one poop bag” walks had been attempted with disastrous results. But, surely after the mountain of feces I had just collected from her, I would be safe this time, I told myself.

But, as is often the case where Lucy is concerned, the worst case scenario usually prevails. So there we were walking past the Oley’s beautifully maintained, meticulously groomed yard, when Lucy decides it’s time for round two. A one sided conversation ensued:

Me: Seriously, Lucy? Are you kidding me right now? 

Lucy: …..crickets……

Me: So now I’m gonna have to go all the way back to the house to get another poop bag, then come all the way back here to clean up after you?? How rude?!

Lucy:….low growl after big stretch….

Lucky for me, a sweet neighbor had just left her house next door to walk her dog and offered me a spare bag, saving me the trouble of the return trip. After dropping the completely purged Lucy back home I continued on my 6 mile walk without further embarrassment…except for one thing. On two other occasions I nearly stepped in even more canine bowel movements. As someone who walks this neighborhood religiously this is a relatively new phenomenon. We Wythe-Traceians have a pretty good record of cleaning up after our pups. As someone who has walked through several of our surrounding neighborhoods I can attest to the fact that we compare favorably with most in this regard! The sudden appearance of un-bagged doggie number twos can only mean one of two things…either dogs are roaming the neighborhood unleashed or one or more dog owners have temporarily taken leave of their senses, forgetting the number one rule of dog ownership in the suburbs—never leave your dog’s dumps in the streets! (Alert readers will note the great lengths I have gone to in this post trying to avoid the word shit). 

So, just a heads up to all of our fantastic neighbors, always bring at least two poop bags when walking your dogs. I could tell you about the time Lucy went through three bags in one thirty minute walk, but that’s a story for another day!

Happy walking, everyone!

To Whom Much is Given

Tomorrow is Labor Day, my last official one while still an active member of the working world. Since my first full-time, non-summer job was one I took during my freshman year at University of Richmond, it turns out that my working life encompassed the years from 1977-2024. Any inspection of those years will conclude that I had it much better than most of my ancestors, and maybe slightly worse than a much smaller number. I was fortunate not to have been of soldiering age during any major or minor wars. I never had to experience anything approaching the difficulties of the Great Depression. My working career coincided with no significant illnesses or debilitating diseases. In my 47 years of working I cashed exactly one unemployment check. I have never been fired. I have never once asked anyone for a raise. I have never had to plead for paid vacation because it has never been available to me. For the last 32 years of my career I have not been provided with any benefits like health insurance, a 401-k, or pension plan of any kind, a secretary, assistant or office. All of these things I was responsible for providing myself. In addition, as a self-employed business owner I was responsible for both the employee and employer contributions to Social Security. But this was the life I chose. I wanted to be my own boss, and it wasn’t cheap.

If I had it to do all over again… I would. I didn’t have the personality type required to work for anyone else. I was too stubborn, too unwilling to give away any of my autonomy to someone who may or may not have had my best interest at heart. For my way of thinking…benefits and a guaranteed paycheck didn’t seem worth it. I fully understand why so many chose differently than I did. I feel no sense of superiority to them. To be honest, over the years there were many, many times when I envied those guarantees. Having no guaranteed income while raising kids can be a gut-wrenching experience. But again, I was either too stubborn or too stupid to do it any other way.

I am profoundly grateful for the many opportunities I was given to succeed. I feel lucky to have been born where and when I was and to have lived in a country that allowed me to make my own way as I saw fit. I am thankful for the public schools that educated me. I am thankful for the great and good neighbors who encouraged me along the way. I thank God every day for the family I was blessed to be born into, the mother and father who taught me how to care about somebody besides myself, to look out for people less fortunate then me. 

Kids entering the work force today have many advantages that I didn’t have. The technology available to them is too staggering for me to even comprehend. But I feel sorry for them in a way too. No kid can get a job working 30 hours a week and hope to put themselves through college like I did at University of Richmond years ago. The cost of higher education has ballooned to such ridiculous heights that nobody can work themselves through anymore. It was hard enough back then. Today it’s impossible.

But every generation makes their own way. My Dad survived not only the Great Depression but also a stint in the South Pacific in WWII. He graduated from U of R on the GI-Bill as a father of four while working the graveyard shift at Reynold’s Metals. My struggles look like child’s play next to his. All of us, everyone…stands on the shoulders of those who came before us. I hope that my shoulders hold up for my kids and their kids. It’s the very least I can do. Its like my Mom used to say, “To whom much is given, much is required.”

Helpless

For men of a certain age what I am about to share will sound familiar. Or, maybe not. Maybe it’s just me demonstrating my penchant for selective incompetence. Although I have developed many fine skills over the years, there are certain things involving the care and maintenance of my health where I seem cursed. I taught myself how to play the classical guitar when I was fourteen. On three occasions in my life I have broken 80 on the golf course. I have run a successful business for three decades. I have written four novels. And yet…when it comes to keeping up with all things medical, I am a colossal failure. In the last thirty days alone I have discovered that I had been taking a medicine that the doctor had told me to discontinue, I have lost an entire bottle of meds and had to have an exception made from the insurance company to have it replaced, and finally yesterday completely botched getting a shingles vaccine!!

So, it is shingles vaccine season around here since Pam got hers last week. This week was my turn. Pam sent me a text suggesting that it was…easy. “Just go to the app”, she says, “and click vaccines. My reply might sound pathetic to some of you, but considering my track record, not unpredictable. “Are you sure I can do this?” I asked. What I was hoping for was something along the lines of, “Oh, never mind, I’ll do it!!” But no, there was a glitch in the app that would not allow anyone else but me do the honors. So, I forged ahead on my own, giant, gangly opposable thumbs doing their best. After several false starts I managed to secure a 3:00 appointment for yesterday afternoon. I actually picked up on the instruction found in the fine print that asked me to remember to show up 5 minutes prior to my scheduled appointment and check in via the app from the parking lot before entering the store. At this point I was feeling quite confident.

I presented myself to Emma, the purple-haired technician who is somewhere in the midst of transitioning between the sexes and who happens to be the only competent employee in the Pharmacy at my CVS. I gave he/her my name with a surprising amount of confidence. But then Emma says that there is no record of my appointment. I smugly handed her my cell phone with the confirmation of said appointment on the display. She looked at me with all the empathy of a DMV clerk and said, “Mr. Dunnevant, your appointment is with the CVS inside the Target on Broad Street.”

“There’s a CVS inside the Target on Broad Street??” I asked. 

“Yes Sir,” Emma replied.

“But why would I set an appointment there when this is the pharmacy I’ve used for 30 years?”

“Did you set the appointment using the app?”

“Yes…” I mumbled, a sinking feeling stirring somewhere in my intestines.

“Yeah, well, sometimes the app brings up the wrong location as the default instead of sending you to the one you normally use. You have to be careful when using it.”

So, once again my uncanny knack of screwing up all things medical strikes again. Instead of being 5 minutes early, now I had to fight broad street traffic and find this stealth CVS inside of Target. I walk in ten minutes late and the whole thing is over in five minutes. When I informed Pam of my travails she texted this reply…

“Dang…you are helpless without me!!!”

Speaking of shingles…I have already had them, several years ago, I’m told. Although I have no memory of it. When I told Pam this she looked at me like I had two heads. “What do you mean you don’t remember having shingles?” But it’s the truth…I have no memory of it at all. It couldn’t have been but so bad, right? Now, I can remember the starting lineup for the New York Mets in game six of the 1969 World Series, but having shingles? total blank. She tells me it was on my back. Maybe thats why I don’t remember because I never saw it. Whatever the reason, this is par for the course. 

And she is right…I am helpless without her.

Time For What’s Next

On December 31, 2024 I will be retiring from the investment business after 42 years. I made the decision over a year ago and am now making that decision public. I will be selling my business to Blaire Greenwood and Allison Lane of Greenwood Financial Group, people who happen to be two of my dearest friends in this world. I’ve known them both since they were annoying toddlers. Now they are annoying grownups who I love dearly. Knowing that they will be the ones taking care of my clients in the future has made the decision to retire much easier to make.

So, why now? Lots of reasons, really. First of all, it’s very hard to do anything for 42 years, but even harder to stop doing it. It becomes ingrained into who you are. But my line of work is the sort that you can’t do just a little of. You have to be all in, all the time. The business is fast moving, constantly changing—an ever evolving and chaotic enterprise. The regulatory regime that has risen up around the business has become oppressive, keeping up with the mountains of compliance edicts have become a full time endeavor in and of itself. There isn’t a place for part-timers. At the end of the day, I would just rather be at the lake in Maine.

2023 wasn’t my best health year. Had a scare or two that required several tests and medications, and also caused me to ask myself some questions like, “why the heck are you still working?!” My cardiologist informed me that the way that the human body handles stress at age 66 is far different than the way it handles that same stress at 36. He suggested politely that maybe my body was trying to tell me something. I have listened.

It’s ironic that I have made a living helping other people prepare for retirement but now that it’s my turn I feel apprehension. It’s not the money part that brings anxiety. It’s more like how do you replace a 42 year career? The answer is that you don’t. You transition to something less consuming, less burdensome, more relaxing. You find ways to embrace your new freedom. I’m confident that I will, mostly because I’m absolutely sure that this is the right decision for me. That doesn’t mean it will be easy. It also doesn’t mean that it isn’t a little scary.

Here’s the part about retirement that I don’t like. First of all, I hate the word. To retire from something is to withdraw, to quit, to disengage. All of those words sound like surrender to me, like giving up. That’s not me, it’s not who I am. But, there it is, staring you in the face. You spend four decades building something with your bare hands, making something valuable out of nothing, then you realize you can’t do it anymore. You turn over the duties and responsibilities to others, younger people with more energy, more drive. There’s no other way to spin it…you’re quitting. But quitting isn’t always bad, right? I mean, after the first bowl you quit eating ice cream. No matter how much you might want a second bowl, you quit because eating a second bowl would make you a pig and you would regret it the next morning when you step on the scale.

The worst part about this notion of “retirement” is the idea that naturally flows from it…that your best days are behind you. Suppose retirement really means that you have already done the best work of your life? That there are no more dragons to slay? If I ever get to the point where I believe that there is nothing great left for me to accomplish, I’m going to be in trouble. The task on the morning of January 1st, 2025 will be to find it.

I will not miss the constant, never ending, relentless pressure of the equity markets. I will not miss the sometimes crushing burden of responsibility that comes with being a trusted advisor to nearly 300 people. But, I will miss the people I work with, their friendship, the feeling of camaraderie, being part of the shared struggle.  I will miss my clients, many of whom I consider like friends and family. But, it is time. Time for what’s next.

A Morning at the Hospital

Hospitals hold a special place in our hearts. They are at once a place of life and death. They are places filled with highly skilled doctors, nurses and technicians who have the power to perform miracles, to literally rescue us from the grip of death. But they also stand aside helplessly when their skills can’t overcome the relentless power of disease. These talented men and women break the wonderful news to us that we have given birth to beautiful healthy babies. They also tell anguished wives and husbands that there was nothing they could do. No wonder they keep making television shows about hospitals. It’s the place where our stories begin and end.

My hospital story wasn’t nearly so dramatic. I arrived at 6:00 am and left at 10:00am, but those four hours produced quite a few life long memories. The first one concerned an elderly black man who was rolled in to the registration office by a van driver. The man was quite old and obviously didn’t know where he was. The conversation between the driver and the admissions clerk played out for all to hear. The old man was from a nearby nursing home. The driver’s only job was to deliver him for an unknown procedure. There was no family with him, no friends, just a confused old man who could hardly speak above a whisper. I watched this unfold with my wife sitting close beside me, knowing that there were literally dozens of people out in the world praying for me, people from all over the place who know and love me. The old man had no one. It was one of the saddest things I had ever witnessed. To be old and sick is one thing and plenty bad enough. But to be old, sick and alone is far worse and about as tragic as the end of life gets. Even as I sit here writing this ten hours later I can’t get the man out of my head.

Eventually I was wheeled back into a room where a cheerful, smiling nurse spent 45 minutes getting me prepared for my Cardiac catheterization. This involved lots of patches, wires and needles and she never stopped talking while she worked, telling me every detail about what it was she was up to. It was kind of like a radio play-by-play man at a baseball game. I found the information soothing, if not very helpful by way of explanation, it was the sound of her voice that was the important part. She exuded confidence. Confidence is good, especially when one of things she was up to involved shaving particularly private sections of the human anatomy. That’s another peculiar thing about hospitals. There is absolutely no place or reason for modesty.

I was then whisked around several hallways and one elevator ride to an extremely cold operating room where three cheerful women sat about setting me up for my procedure, all the while completely ignoring me. Their ongoing banter concerned the status of a friend’s recent disastrous first date with some guy he had met on Grindr. One of them managed to introduce herself to me with the line, “Mr. Dunnevant, I will be your bartender today.” She smiled and I think I did too, but shortly after this brief exchange my level of consciousness started waffling back and forth between detached and dead to the world. Time ceased to exist in this nebulous state of semi-awareness. I saw a gigantic screen with circles and streaks of white. I heard the murmur of voices speaking some unknown tongue. I saw an image of the old black man slumped in his wheelchair, then the muffled voice of the doctor, his mask-covered face close to mine telling me that everything went well. 

Then it was back to the prep room and my play-by-play nurse who spent the next two hours interrupting my sleep every fifteen minutes to make some kind of adjustment to the small incision on my wrist. The next thing I know she’s wheeling me out to the circular driveway where Pam is waiting for me in my red Cadillac.

The outcome was very good. There were no blockages, no need for stents. I can now officially stop worrying about my heart, a huge blessing for which I am extremely grateful. I come out of this experience grateful for a great many things—healthcare workers, nurses, doctors, and the miracle of modern medicine. And yes…for hospitals.

But the last thing I will think about before I fall asleep tonight will be that old black man in the wheelchair. I need to give him a name. I feel like he needs to be known, that somebody needs to give a damn about him. His name will be…Emmett. It was all a terrible miscommunication. His family—wife, sons and daughters were told the wrong hospital. They showed up at St. Mary’s. As soon as the mistake was caught, they all showed up in the waiting room and gathered around him before he went for his treatment. 

That’s the story I choose to believe, and when I pray for him tonight I will also pray for his family.

Book Club

I checked out my very first chapter book from the library at Claiborne Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana as a third grader. It was a biography of Mickey Mantle called The Commerce Comet. I have been reading books ever since. I wrote my first story when I was a sixth grader at John M. Gandy Middle School. It featured a frustrated student at that very same school who one day received the gift of flight during a terribly boring lesson on punctuation. I have been writing stories of one kind or another ever since and wishing I had paid closer attention during the whole punctuation thing. However, after having lived a life so immersed in literature, last night I attended my very first book club meeting. I had no idea what to expect and consequently felt no small amount of anxiety as I walked through the front door of the Wythe Trace Book Club, made even worse since the featured book up for discussion was A Life of Dreams and I was the guest of honor. Pam was with me serving as my interpreter in case I said something stupid, and for moral support. Everything is a bit better when she is with me.

I was greeted by the host with a warm hug and the happy sound of 16 ladies enjoying each other’s company along with a wide and varied selection of wine. I had heard that wine played a key roll in these affairs and I was not misinformed. After a while the host made the announcement that dinner was ready. Cheeseburger sliders and salad along with two items taken from the book—pound cake and Doritos! So cool.

Eventually everyone gathered in the living room with chairs lined up all around the room. The host started by asking me what my inspirations were for writing this particular story. As soon as I opened my mouth to answer I felt oddly relaxed, all the anxiety having mysteriously disappeared. Then she pulled up the discussion guide questions that I wrote for the book back in April before the publication date. I had looked back over them earlier in the day as a refresher and discovered that even I didn’t know how to answer half of them! But I reminded myself—with the help of my daughter—that once fiction gets released into the world it no longer belongs to the writer…it belongs to the readers. Well…the royalties come to me, but you know what I mean!

What followed was a spirited and very smart discussion of A Life of Dreams. These ladies weren’t amateurs. They were serious and thoughtful readers who kept coming up with observations and insights that had never occurred to me when I was writing this 13 years ago. Their enthusiasm for the story and its characters was an amazing thing to witness and quite gratifying for this writer. On our walk back home Pam said she was proud of me and that I seemed so relaxed and confident. For once I believed her. I was relaxed and confident. But it was easy to be with such a fun and engaging group.

So, a shout out to the Wythe Trace Book Club and Wine Bar Extravaganza. Thanks so much for the invitation.

My Appointment

The handsome man enters the examining room with two students in tow. He introduces them as such and asks if I object to their presence. I say “no” while wondering why a couple of high school students would be shadowing a Cardiologist around. Wait, they are med school students? No way. They look like babies. Speaking of which, I look again at the handsome Doctor and ask him how old he is, a legitimate question to ask someone who will be soon tinkering around with your heart. He vaguely replies, “mid-thirties”, which means he’s probably 31…younger than my son. This is a good thing, I’m thinking. Steady hands. He’s Indian. I have trouble pronouncing his name. All the nurses in the office tell me he is the best, that I will be in very talented hands. I believe them.

I had open heart surgery 21 years ago when I was 45 years old. This issue is unrelated to that and not nearly as serious. Still, if you have ever had your chest opened before, the thought of revisiting the scene of that jolting trauma is not something I look forward to. This time there will be no 7 inch scar, no horrifically painful recovery and hopefully no hospital stay. This time I will be in and out the same day. A friend of mine who recently had this same procedure said the bill was $200,000, about what my open heart surgery mitral valve repair and five days in the hospital cost back in the day. Thank God for Medicare. I’ll pay 300 bucks.

I’ll be glad when it’s over. I don’t like thinking about my heart. I much prefer that my heart would mind its own business and pump blood like it’s supposed to. When you start thinking too much about any internal organ it becomes hard to stop thinking about them. Every hiccup feels like a crisis. It’s stupid to think this way and a huge overreaction, but it is what it is. The irrational often overpowers the rational when it comes to visits to the Cardiologist.

But my young, handsome doctor with the tongue-twisting name seems to have everything well in hand. 

I just wish we were talking about my appendix instead of the heart.