Uh, not Ireland.  This was taken at the National Portrait Gallery in London, which faces Trafalgar Square.  We spent several days in London prior to beginning our bike tour.




 

                                                 



                                                                       
 



               

                               

Young men destined for imagined greatness

Young men with lives suggested but not promised

Young men with secret fears and the need to know if their fears are universal

Young men

We of the 11th Engineers

 We vowed with conviction that the bonds formed in the hills of Pendleton and quench tempered in the cold rain of the central highlands would never be broken. 

 *****************************************

I sent my deposit in today to attend a reunion of the 11^th Engineers which will take place next month.  I am grateful to a small group of men who have persevered over the past five years to plan and execute a few gatherings.  I attended the first one but missed two others.

 It is an odd assemblage.   

 Some of the young men I lived with in that spring and summer of 1969 have not aged well.  They have had hard lives.  Their stories are tinged with regrets, bitterness and depression.  Returning to school after Viet Nam was out of the question for many due to finances, short term priorities or lack of foundation.  Careers consisted of numerous unskilled jobs strung together in a pattern of underachievement and subsistence compensation.  They were not unscathed by drugs and alcohol.

 Others, to be sure, have enjoyed lives of affluence and comfort.  They are fewer in number and less prone to tell their stories at a gathering of the 11^th Engineers. 

 I live with statistics.  I consciously recognize that in any random assembly of men of a given age there will be distribution curves on health, education, income and satisfaction but I can’t help wondering.  What would life have tasted like for the young men who became the 11th Engineers had it not been for that first gathering of the pikes?

                                

 We had so much vitality, so much potential

We accomplished so little

We of the 11^th Engineers

                                    
 

                                   

Allison (holding one of my granddaughters) and Shannon

Allison is my oldest daughter.  I love her with every ounce of my being.  She is sweet, considerate, kind and compassionate.

Allison was born 34 years ago in a hospital in a small town in central Texas that had the word Baptist in its title.  While I do not clearly remember the exact name of the hospital, I can still vividly picture the scene in the office of the Director of Admissions and Administration as my (then) wife and I adamantly asserted our request that I be allowed in the delivery room during the final stages of labor and delivery.  The director patiently listened to our argument before telling us in a slow, patronizing, southern drawl, that our request was perverted.  Dr. Scanio, our obstetrician, had already granted his approval but his support was overruled by the archaic policies of the hospital. No doubt our youthfulness and our Chicago accents worked against us.  On the day Allison was born I was sequestered in a waiting room 30 yards from the maternity unit and only permitted infrequent and brief visits with my wife during her 14 hours of labor.

I first saw Allison 30 minutes after she was born.  Dr. Scanio wheeled her into the hallway leading from the delivery room to the nursery.  Allison was inside an incubator made of clear glass with an aluminum frame that was painted aquamarine.  It was not unlike a heavy duty aquarium.  She was completely immobile and sound asleep as the doctor paused long enough for me to examine her through the glass.  He anticipated my question as I looked up from a crouched position.

“She’s fine, Dad.  The incubator is just a precaution that we use with all newborns for at least 8 hours until their temperature stabilizes.” 

As he finished his comment he struck the top of the incubator hard with the palm of his hand.  The thundering noise and vibration from the blow caused Allison to convulse and emit a shrill cry that pierced me like a lance.  I shot out of my crouch and the doctor instinctively stepped back, keeping the incubator between us.

“See, she is strong and healthy.  She is perfect; beautiful.”

My impulse to deck him was very nearly overwhelming. 

As an infant, I do not remember Allison ever crying.  She was a happy, smiling baby.  As a young girl she was warm and loving; a daddy’s girl who loved to rough house.  As she matured she was an excellent student, a hard worker and a continuous source of pride and joy.

She majored in Psychology and Business at Notre Dame, completing her degree in four years flat.  Her post graduate work has been in social services.  Her occupational pursuit is unselfishly devoted to marketing and coordinating organ donations in the state where she lives.  Not surprising that she would choose a career in which she serves people facing adversity.

In the summer of 2005 she married a wonderful young man who shares her aspirations, her dreams and her burdens.

Young and so very healthy, she and her husband also shared their visions of family.  He, one of 11 children himself, believed two kids would make their world complete.  Allison allowed that perhaps the number was three.

And they patiently waited.

And they waited.

Siblings were having kids, schoolmates were having kids; neighbors were having kids; co-workers were having kids.  Kids were dropping out of the sky it seemed.  And they waited.

After three years, doctors visits and testing lead to supplements and conventional treatments.  Treatments progressed from very conservative efforts to rounds of artificial insemination attempts followed by a lengthy and involved campaign of in vitro fertilization.

Allison called me very early Monday morning to tell me that she had a positive home pregnancy test result the previous evening.  Minutes before the call, she had taken two more home pregnancy tests, which also had positive results.  She was ecstatic.  Thanks to Allison and her husband, the makers of home pregnancy tests have been immune from the general downturn in the economy.  She has had countless disappointments as scores of tests over the past few years have been negative.

Monday afternoon she kept her already scheduled appointment with her fertility doctor who is a reproductive endocrinologist.  The baby is due in early May!!  Allison still requires significant treatment from her endocrinologist over the next three months and it is important that she, for the first time in her life perhaps, put herself first. 

Today she told another family member, who shall remain nameless, that she was pregnant.  Regrettably, this family member knew the steps Allison and her husband have undertaken to create a new life.  This family member angrily denounced Allison for breaking the sanctity of marriage and violating natural and divine law.  He used words like “masturbation” and “mortal sin” and “morally reprehensible”.  He quoted catholic magesterium teachings, the true and accurate instructions from almighty god, that specifically condemn in vitro fertilization.

As an infant in an incubator, I was Allison’s protector; her guardian.  She is an adult now and she and her husband have strong wills and well founded values.  She has come to disbelieve as strongly as I have in the foolishness of supreme beings and eternal life. 

Words still hurt though. 

Excuse me; I need to go deck somebody.