How many times have you looked back at a missed opportunity and said that? I think most of us have more than once. A few years ago, a good friend of mine died. I called him Ronnie, he called me Johnny. We had known each other a very long time.

Over the years we made many plans for things we could do together as we collected our Social Security checks. Our planning included all the activities that we both enjoyed. Kayaking, diving, bike riding, fishing, and camping were just a few of the trips we planned. Then he got sick, and died.

My Creed

His death not only left a huge hole in my heart but also one in my life. My retirement, a few years in the future, was arranged in large part around all the adventures we had planned together with our wives. I took a close look at my life and wondered why we had put all these plans off for the future. I wanted to change my life so I/We could say, “I/We did.” Not we should of. Out of this, I wrote, “My Creed.” It has helped me in troubled/painful times. I read it to get me back on track if I realize I’m drifting off. Perhaps it can be of help to you also. I have copied it here for you to use if you think it is worthwhile.

This is today, tomorrow may never come.

This is today, yesterday is history.

Every morning when I wake up, it will be today.

I will launch each day with a positive attitude.

I will not criticize anything, for it accomplishes nothing.

I refuse to utilize my limited time doing things that accomplish nothing.

Today, I know I am equal with all others in our allotment of daily time.

All of us have the same number of hours, minutes, and seconds.

Today, I will waste none of my allotted time.

The minutes I wasted yesterday are already too costly.

Today, I refuse to use my time worrying about what might happen.

Instead, I am going to use my time to make things happen.

Today, I am determined to improve myself.

For tomorrow someone may need help.

I must work hard today, so I will not be found lacking tomorrow.

Today, I must accomplish/learn something, no matter how small.

Today, I will do the things I should do.

Today, I will stop doing things I feel are bad for me.

At the end of each day, I must be a better person than I was when it started.

My worth to myself and others is proportional to the way I utilize my time.

Things are not different.

I will not imagine what I would do, if they were.

I will make my life a success with what I have now, not what I wish I had.

I will arrange what time I have, to make the most of my talents.

I will listen carefully to others for they are but mirrors of myself.

I will not wait till tomorrow to say,” I love you.”

I will treat everyone I encounter in life as a true friend.

If I do these things, today will be a good day for me and those around me.

There are times when we feel something about our lives but we can’t seem to put our deep feelings into words. I have struggled with this in my writings. Even in writing my blog I find myself searching for the right words that I believe others will understand what I mean, when I use them. I have solved this dilemma on occasion by changing the format of the words I use.

I find, at times, I can express myself better in a poem than I can trying to talk or write about it. I have kept a copy of some of my poems that I have created over the years to express what I was feeling at the time. I am going to share a few with you. Perhaps you will identify with the emotion that produced each one. If you do, you will know more about me than you need to. But that’s OK. We’re friends.

I am including two from my collection, here, with no introduction. If they speak to you, I don’t want to slant them away from your world by telling you about my world. If they don’t speak to you, just enjoy. If you are an English teacher, please give me some slack on the format.

The New Path

You asked if I ever think of her,

I answered of course I do.

My mind wanders back to my past,

Where memories that are buried seem to last.

But worry not, my dear sweet lady.

For when I think of the present, I think only of you.

My reflections are both happy and sad.

A wonderful life together

That ended too soon.

I held her hand for hours

Until her last breath and her soul left the room.

How could I not remember her?

She was the core of my life.

For thirty-five years

She was both my lover and my wife.

But she is gone and no longer exists.

She said to me before she left

On this one thing I must insist,

Your life must continue forward

Grief must not stop you

Don’t fall behind, you must resist.

Love is everywhere, if you look you will find.

A life alone is not meant to be.

Find someone that is not like me.

Your memory will last, but I represent the past,

You’re on a new road now,

New faces, new places, new fields to plow.

Now, sweet lady, I am with you

And all she said has come true.

Mine is a new life, we’ll call it Act III.

And we will explore it together,

Just you and me.

Giving is Living

The alarm went off, I climbed out of bed.

 Was gunna take a shower,

But made coffee instead.

 It always helps, to clear my head.

Life is good, oh yeah, life is good.

Turned on the news to find out,

What politicians were all shouting about.

The same old thing, all still fighting.

 I decided to see if the fish were biting.

Life is good, oh yeah, life is good.

Went to the lake to get my boat,

Was grateful to see it was still afloat

Picked up some bait and put it on my hook.

Caught me some bass and a big Chinook.

Life is good, oh yeah, life is good.

I laid down my rod and took a look.

I had more fish than I could cook.

It was okay that I had more than I need.

I know others that have families to feed.

Life is good. Oh yeah, life is good.

Cleaned those fish, put them on ice.

Then filleted them out real nice.

Took um to some homeless, ready for the pan,

Gave them to a person who was the lead man.

Life is good. Oh yeah, life is good.

He gave them to some folks,

That were doing without.

They were so happy

You could hear them shout.

Tonight, we don’t have to do without.

Life is good. Oh yeah, life is good,

If we just do what we know we should.

Giving is living and that is true,

It makes Life good, for both me and you.

As much as I enjoy writing my blog, there are times when the neurons in my brain are on vacation and not much help in deciding what to write about. I have decided to share with you a chain of events that have been and are very important in my life. Perhaps you will have something similar in your life.

The year was 1897, and the Southern Ocean, circling the Antarctic, was doing what it is famous for. The waves were huge and the ship being tossed around was the Belgica. It was on the way to the Antarctic to try to be the first to locate the south magnetic pole. The ship became caught in the ice and held over winter. They didn’t reach the pole.

In 1898, the ship and the men that survived, escaped the ice and returned back to Europe. One of those men was a young sailor named Amundsen. He would later become one of my heroes.

You’re wondering why all that is important to me? In 1898, while those explorers were escaping with their lives from the Antarctic, my grandmother was giving birth to a son on a farm in Southern California. He was her tenth child and they named him John Reseck, later to become my father.

In 1911, Amundsen and Scott, another Antarctic explorer, had a race to the geophysical south pole. Amundsen got there three weeks before Scott. About an 800 miles round trip. The Scott party of four men were returning to their starting point which was a sturdy hut, were stopped by a storm which froze all of them to death, just 11 miles from the hut and safety. That was in 1912. The hut was left just as the men had left it in 1911, when they started their trip.

In 1958, I was near the hut with Dr. Miller, studying the nearby penguin colony as a member of a five-man team of biologists. We were the first sent by the USA to study the life in the Antarctic and its coastal oceans, when we got caught a storm. The storm collapsed our two-man tent and we had to take shelter in Scott’s hut or meet the same fate he and his men had just 46 years earlier. We slept on the wooden floor in our sleeping bags being extremely careful not to disturb anything. The hut is now protected from anyone. Only historians are allowed near it.

A few years ago, I was looking through a big book on the history of the Antarctic. I turned a page and there was a photo of me with my name under it. I was shocked! Then I became delighted. I then realized that this was a history book, and I was in it. Oh my God! Am I really so old that I am talked about in a history book? All of these emotions passed through me in about a ten second time period. I looked in the mirror and confirmed that I was old enough. They said that I was the first person to dive through the sea ice of the Antarctic’s Ross Sea. I thought about it. What a horror to be listed with those other men as being the first to do anything. I was delighted again.

One of the complaints I hear often as we strive to be as normal as possible in our pandemic mode is, “I don’t have anything to do.” After the house has been remodeled and the garage painted, what do I do now? We are told to stay outside if we are in a group, and keep a distance from others if we can. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. I have a friend that figured it out.

I received an email asking if I would like to participate in a beach clean-up. It fits all of the requested criteria. We would be outside and not close together for any length of time. I said ‘yes’, jumping at the chance to do something that I thought was contributing to the health of my world, which includes the world’s beaches, as well as my personal heath, both mental and physical.

It was great fun. We met at the beach at 6:30. One of my friends there was in a mechanical scooter. He needed a beach wheelchair that had big wheels which wouldn’t sink into the sand. The lifeguards had one he could barrow. I said I’d push him. The wheelchair acted as my walker, and away we went.

We were cleaning the main beach in Laguna. It was close to where we live. What a haul we made! I pushed and Rich picked up what we discovered with a three-foot tool that had a grabber on the end. We made a great team and what an adventure it was.

We found two shoes but they didn’t match and they weren’t my size anyway. We dug out a quilt and a beach towel which were buried in the sand. The most interesting item we found was a girl’s black lace bikini bottom. We looked really hard to find the girl, but no luck.

It was an extraordinary day. It was legal, safe, social, and a wonderful outing for us.

I’m sure you can come up with a day that is extraordinary to enjoy, if you close your eyes and let your mind wander. There are so many things in each of our personal worlds that we tend to ignore or just take for granted. Pick one and turn it into an adventure. Your mind and body will thank you.

I promised you at the end of the last blog that I would share with you, as I enter Act III, my continuing pursuit of a self-image. Without one you are invisible to yourself; you have no direction. The tendency is just to sit and biodegrade. I needed a process to prevent that from happing to me.

My father told me when I was very young, “Life is hard, but don’t worry, it will get harder. Just handle it. Never consider giving up.”

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I had a several self-images that had given me direction in my life. I was identified as a biology teacher, a diver, a martial art teacher, and even a bicycle racer, during different segments of life’s path. Each one moved me forward. When I retired and moved to Washing state all of that was left in the past. I had a new life in a new environment. No friends and no direction to guide me on my path forward. It was scary — the time had come for me to, “Just handle it.”

I made a list of all the skills that I thought I was still competent to do. Across from it I made another list of all the things I thought I would like to do.  I drew lines from one list to the other to see what would rise to the top of most skills to work with. Boating and the marine environment was the winner. That was good because I had a boat and now lived only a half mile from the harbor.

The second highest on my list was to volunteer to do something worthwhile. I had available the perfect solution. There was the Coast Guard Auxiliary unit in Port Ludlow, where I lived. I joined it and so did my wife, Sharon. Between the two of us, we worked 40 to 50 hours a week, for 18 years. We were “Coasties.” Then we retired (again) and moved back to California. Sharon wasn’t well and we wanted to be close to our family and doctors.

We weren’t concerned about self-image then, just her health. Her life path was narrowing rapidly and after a year, ended. I was 80 years old and needed a new image to carry me forward, as I had promised Sharon I would. I made new lists; they were much shorter than they were when I was younger. The container/body I lived in had many dents and damaged parts, but was still usable.

Two things topped the list. I could still write, (I had written two text books and two training manuals for the Coast Guard), and use my camera. I became a writer and a photographer. It has worked for me. Since then, I have written six books, and produced eight Photo posters in the last six years.

Technology is racing past me on a motorcycle as I now stroll down my life’s path with my walker, and I love it. When someone asks me something now, I raise my arms and say, “I know nothing.” The great part of it is there is so much to learn now, I can now identify as a student of life. My dad would be proud of me, I’m just handling it.

I refuse to give up. I will dance along my life’s path just as long as my container will hold all my parts together.

            All of my life I’ve been a Wonderer.  I wonder how and why things work. We are born wonderers. Everything we encounter is new. What a marvelous time that is for us. Watch a young anything and feel the excitement they’re experiencing as they see, touch, smell, and taste every new thing they encounter. I work at keeping my wondering active through empathy as I watch the children I’m privileged to encounter in my daily life. They’re in the process of deciding what they’re going to be. We have to be something, in our society.

            The years pass, the number is quite variable, and we become adults. Now we know everything we have to and move into the process of survival in a society that requires us to furnish food, clothing, and shelter not only for ourselves, but for the family that we’ve acquired along the way.  And to do that, you have to be something.

            In my world, I became a teacher. My father decided to become a mechanic – – that was his world. Like you, we both became something. (Think. Who are you? What do you call yourself, in your world?)

            If you’re lucky, the time will come when you can retire. We work hard for many years to reach this Act III OF OUR LIVES. A time to do whatever we want. It’s wonderful for a while, then a strange feeling creeps into our lives. Perhaps it’s the desire to still be productive in some way. Perhaps you’ll feel the need to become someone different from how you spent your life up to this point. Today’s technology is moving so fast that if you take a long nap, you’re left behind.

            My father, a master mechanic for 35 years, came to live with me at age 86. He’d been retired for 21 years and lived in a mobile home. He was deaf and just worked in his garden most of those years. I had a new Ford pickup and he was admiring it. He said “I’ll keep it tuned up for you.” He opened the hood and looked at the engine. He just stood there for five minutes looking it over. He turned to me with tears in his eyes, I’d never seen this man cry in my life as he spoke the words I’ll never forget. “I have no idea how this engine works. I won’t be of any help to you.” He turned and went into the house. I started to cry then. A proud, old man had just lost his identity. He’d lost who he was his entire life. He was now invisible.

            I decided that wasn’t going to happen to me. When it came time for me to retire, I was going to find myself a new identity. In the next blog I’ll share with you just how I worked at that.  

Each month Karin and I try to find something new to learn. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, just enough to keep our brains from forgetting what it’s for. It can be a new use of our computer, a new way to do things we already do – – just something to keep the neurons in our brains awake. That and exercise to keep our mobility working so we can keep moving are number one and two on our must do list.

I’ve read somewhere that running a mile every day will increase your life span. I tried it and I think it worked. I felt a lot older than I ever have and decided that I didn’t want to feel that old anymore and stopped running. Exercise is still top on my list but not to the extent that I feel old now.

We are on the move again now that it’s safer and things have loosened up. We both have our two shots and don’t mind wearing a mask if it makes others feel safe. I don’t understand those who refuse to wear a mask. They are so self-centered that they don’t give a (bad word) about how anyone else feels. I look at this as having a mental illness, or at least having a sociological disorder.

Karin just got back from a trip to visit her family in Missouri. She flew there but took the train home, it was a three-week trip. She’d never taken a long train adventure before. It turned into the adventure when the train didn’t show up in Flagstaff, Arizona. Her daughter, who lives in Flagstaff, drove her to Needles on the Colorado River where another daughter, who lives in Chino Hills, drove to Needles and picked her up and brought her home to Aliso Viejo, to me. Each daughter had an eight-hour round trip to get back home.

During the three weeks she was gone, I flew to Alabama for one week to visit my family. It wasn’t supposed to be an adventure but it turned into one when the plane couldn’t land in Denver due to weather. It was diverted to an alternate airport where we (a daughter was with me) were on the ground for over four hours yet weren’t allowed to leave the plane. The total time we were in that plane was ten hours. When we were finally cleared to fly back to Denver, we couldn’t get a flight to Birmingham. We ended up taking one to Atlanta where another daughter drove three hours to get us and three hours to take us back to Alabama. The total trip lasted 23 hours.

All I can say is thank God for daughters. Between Karin and I, we have five daughters and we needed four of them so we could just make a family visit. I kept reminding myself that even a bad day has good things to learn. I learned that my new hearing aids, which have no batteries and plug in each night to charge them, only last 18 hours, and when they die, I’m totally deaf. That was a good thing for me to know. Karin found out that you can never trust a train to be on time. We both feel much smarter now. Maybe.

On a recent stay in Oceanside, Karin and I were taking a walk around the harbor. It is a two-mile walk that is always interesting do to – – a constant and changing activity. There was a barge just off the rocks that formed the side of the harbor. A woman was using a small dip net to take tiny fish out of a large reservoir in the barge and putting them in a bucket.

Karin stopped to watch. The woman got in a row boat, with her bucket, and rowed ashore. There were two boys on the rocks fishing. The lady dumped her bucket into a bucket the boys had. She then rowed back to the barge.

Karin looked at me and asked, “I wonder what I just saw?” She had never been around fishing boats before. She was not satisfied with my answer of a bait barge and asked a bunch of questions.

I explained how the bait boats go out at night and net the small fish when they come up to eat the plankton that rise to the surface at night.  The bait boats put bright lights over the side to draw the plankton and the little fish come to eat them and get caught in the nets.

The bait boats come back into the harbor before sunrise and transfer the fish to the bait barge tanks. In the morning, the fishing boat charters stop at the barge on their way out of the harbor and transfer the fish into the tank on their boat. The fishermen/women now have bait to fish with.

The charter boats go out and fish for whatever time they are scheduled for. On the way back into the harbor the deck-hands clean the fish and receive tips from the fishers.

Karin was fascinated, and said, “How many people are involved with putting a fish in the frying pan?’ I had never thought of that. The boat crews, boat yard maintenance workers, the bait barge staff, and even the gas station attendants who put fuel in the boats. You could include everyone clear back to the geologist who found the oil and the people that built the boats.

It was a question that was above my pay scale and made me realize how totally dependent we are on each other. How many people, trucks, boats, etc., did it take to fill your coffee cup this morning? I don’t know either but I’m glad I drink coffee so they all have a job to feed their families.

Karin and I decided we should do our part and eat more fish.

The last two weeks in Hawaii were good weeks. The second unit we stayed at was set up better for us to write. We got a lot of work done – – Karin on her book, and I on mine. The birds kept us company all day, every day. When we left, I’m sure they missed us, like we missed them.

Being back home was kind of a shock after a month in Hawaii. We took care of the things that had piled up while gone, which took us a week. Then we went to Oceanside for a week to help us adjust to mainland life again.

We had walks along the beach, spent a day at the Wildlife Safari Park in San Diego with all the animals, and worked some more on our books. We’re now home again and continuing to adapt to our new normal which I think will still be with us for a while.

An interesting incident happened that I would like to share. It’s funny, but true. I was having lunch with a friend and I said something that my friend challenged. We do this all the time. It makes for stimulating conversations that we both learn from.

He said, “I always rely on logic to solve problems. Logic never sends you on the wrong path.”

I said, “Maybe.”

His answer was, “There is no maybe about it. Logic is based on facts.”

My mind was struggling to do what it used to, which is to process quickly, come up with an answer. “OK, a test is in order”

“Anytime.” He was glowing with confidence.

“Right now, let’s start with the facts.” My brain finally woke up. “Driving is something we all know about. Using myself as an example, the facts are:

            1. I am 86 years old.

            2. I can’t hear well, at all.

            3. I am legally blind in my left eye.

            4. Both my feet are numb due to physical damage to them.

            5. My response time is much longer than a younger person.

            6. My brain can no longer multitask nearly as well as it used to.

Do you accept these facts? I asked.”

“I sure do. They are obvious. Oh, sorry about that.”

“You’re right. They are obvious, and they all go together to cause a problem. I am not as safe a driver on the road as I used to be. Every time I drive a car, I am putting myself and other drivers at risk. Do you accept that as a problem?”

“Now that you point it out, I do. Let me know when you are driving so, I can stay off the road.”

“I have the solution. I have to limit the time I spend behind the wheel. Do you agree that will help mitigate/solve the problem?”

“I do. That is also a fact.”

“It’s a simple solution based on all the facts, if I drive as fast as I possibly can all the time, I would greatly reduce my time behind the wheel. You have to agree to that. It is based entirely on the facts.”

He thought for moment, called the waitress over, and paid the bill. Then he turned to me and said,” Maybe”.

Perhaps we should always consider before we conclude with “Maybe“.

We settled in at the Mauna Loa Village, in Kona. A genuinely nice unit, its just ten steps from the pool. I have a pool-workout that lasts one hour. I do it every other day, so being close is a plus for me and Karin who also works out in the pool.

We had a surprise when a friend that I hadn’t seen for 52 years read in my blog that we were in Hawaii. He was here too. It has been a real treat to hear how his life evolved during all these ears. He is also a “water person” and we found we had a dozen mutual friends. He is 70 now and still swims three miles in the ocean most every day.

Karin and I have taken a few walks and enjoy the smell of the sea mixed with fragrance of all the flowers. What a powerful sense of smell is! It brings to the front of the memory list many moments in my life. Some of quiet introspection, some of maximum excitement being pulled through the water by a 300-pound fish on the end of my spear, some of just sitting around a campfire on the beach with my family all around me.

We are both writing every day. Karin is editing the first draft of her new book, and I am working on the start of a new one. I published two books in 2020, so I am resting. No pressure, this is a great place for that.

We found a place where we can rent a kayak for the day. That is in our plans now. We will be moving to a new resort on the ocean front in two days and be there two more weeks.

Getting here was not fun but being here is good. These birds will miss us when we leave – – we have breakfast together every morning. In October, we will be coming back to the island of Maui for two weeks. Karin and I realize that we are truly blessed.