11

Earliest thing I can remember is around age 3, being taken to the ER to have the wheel of a cereal-box toy car extracted from my nose.

When I was 4 I hit a kid at preschool on the head with a hammer. Happened to be on the same day my mom was there watching through a one-way mirror.

First day of kindergarten I was gaming with Cory Hoover over who got to sit on the floor next to Debbie Coia. Can't remember the teacher's name any more. Debbie Coia was super cute and I was the only boy invited to her birthday party. Up yours, Hoover.

Somewhere around that time I remember building a pretty tall snow-bear with my dad and also washing our yellow Torino with him in the parking lot of our apartment at Indian Valley. Or maybe I just remember seeing pictures of that.

I won first prize in a Halloween costume contest for my dice costume made from a cardboard box. It was really clever. I won $15.

Moved to 2113 Grovewood Avenue in Parma when I was 5. Lisa Kollar stood in front of our house waiting to meet the new kids. We walked to school about 6 blocks away all by ourselves. Our phone number was 749-2645. We had a party line.

New 1st grade teacher in Parma was Mrs. Sefkovic. She was tall and very pretty. She chastised Denine Tarzanek for dotting her i's with hearts.

My mom made dinner every night. Sometimes we went out to eat at Ponderosa. Once they were short on silverware and we shared steak knives with the people at the table next to us. They had this really good salad dressing that was kind of like Catalina.

Somehow my mom got stuck being the coach of my t-ball team the Lions. We lost every game. She was very pregnant that summer.

My dad used to shoot baskets in our driveway. My sister and I would argue over who would be "the getter," fetching the ball when it took a bad rebound. Sometimes this included being lifted over the neighbor's chain link fence and carefully avoiding the land mines left by their Irish Setter, Blaze.

In 3rd grade I wrote a semi-regular newspaper called "The Ivington Press" with my neighbor and classmate, Kelly Jester. We wrote a special edition called "The Arlington Press" for the bicentennial.

We always got to watch "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley" on Tuesday nights, but weren't allowed to watch "Three's Company."

My best friend was Ronnie Zeitz. We took swimming lessons together and once hid in a locker to avoid going to the lesson because the instructors were mean and shoved our faces in the water. His parents were divorced, which I didn't really understand.

My dad worked for "CNA" and was an underwriter, which I didn't really understand.

Sometimes our whole family would play Yahtzee together. My sister would talk into the cup to "Charlie" hoping he would give her a good roll. My dad would always tell us you shouldn't try for ones, you should leave the ones open, and take a 0 or a 1 there when you got an otherwise bad roll. Charlotte talks to "Charlie" now and I tell her the same thing about the ones.

My mom used to play cards with me. I liked gin rummy, she preferred crazy 8's.

My dad played catch with me in a very tiny back yard crowded with trees and a swing set. I probably missed 75% of the balls he threw to me.

In 1977 we went to Bradenton, Florida and stayed in the most stereotypical 70's condo you can imagine. We had a red dune buggy for the week. My favorite song was "Undercover Angel." My dad liked "Lido Shuffle."

One time on a Sunday morning when we had all crawled into my parents' bed, my dad suddenly got up and sang Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody refrain, "Goodbye, everybody, I've got to go..." and then proceeded to the bathroom. That was probably the funniest thing I had ever seen up to that point in my life.

We moved to Strongsville just before I turned 11. Chapman was an "open school" with no walls which was very progressive at the time. The first day I was put at a table with Jodi Jirik and Billy Fiori, who became my new best friend. There was another girl at the table I don't remember.

We had a black Ford LTD and most of the time didn't wear any seat belts.

Every day at dinner we asked my dad, "Whadja have for lunch?" Sometimes when our giggle boxes got turned on he'd threaten us with eating dinner in the basement. We never ended up eating dinner in the basement.

Both my parents were there every single day of the first 11 years of my life. My dad went to work, we went to school, my mom made dinner, we hung out and went to bed. We had a normal, sometimes boring, but always safe and stable home environment. They didn't do anything or try to do anything super extraordinary; they loved us, took care of us, and it was all just very regular. 

I can remember lots of times through middle school, high school, and beyond much more vividly, where they were present as my supportive parents and later as grandparents. I've been lucky to have both of them alive, healthy, and married now going on 45 years. When I see them now there is an implicit continuity; I know these are the people that raised me through early childhood and on into the adolescence and adulthood in which I can fondly and fully recall their presence.

Thing is up until 11 I honestly don't remember them very much.

-kpb 9/7/13

A Tale of Two Tumors

Here's what I thought about as Amy drove us to MDA for a 7:30am appointment today...

"Are you sure this is nothing serious? I mean, I knew he would be slow on some things but isn't it abnormal to be getting worse at some milestones?"

"I'm sure it's nothing. This is more than likely just the two steps forward one step back of having a special kid like this. There will be times when your heart breaks because he can't do the simplest things, then other times when you'll cry tears of joy because he surprises you with amazing success at something you thought he'd never do."

I was especially proud of that last little Bly-ism of encouragement, perfectly timed with a hand gently placed on the shoulder. From the moment I saw this teary-eyed shaky-voiced mom arrive to the registration desk just before closing time one Sunday night in September 2012 with her giggling happy little boy, I knew my main job was going to be confident reassurance, whatever she was bringing him in for. Of course she was extra nervous, what with a vulnerable Down Syndrome child, but urgent care late on a Sunday was surely not the place to get months of "unsteady wobbly walking" addressed, especially when that symptom was not even demonstrable during the visit. Referral to Special Services and we close up shop for the night.

Well this mom was not reassured. I had listened to her words but not to her teary eyes and shaky voice. She knew something was wrong. She knew her child's incoordination was not just a tick-box in what to expect from a child with Down Syndrome. She took him back to another clinic 2 days later. He was subsequently admitted to the hospital for workup of his ataxia. He was discovered to have an inoperable pontine glioma. Now I see his forever smiling 4 year-old face every time I go to clinic, as the picture from his memorial service last May hangs on the bulletin board in our staff room.

It would not have made a bit of difference to his ultimate outcome had I sent him into the hospital 2 days sooner. But it may have made a world of difference to his mom...to have seen a doctor that Sunday night who listened a little more closely, took the problem a little more seriously, and did not simply provide a trite Hallmark card moment and an escort to the exit. I know that at least a small part of her will always wonder...could that 2 days have made a difference?

Here's what I thought about as Amy drove us home to Galveston from MDA today...
I was fortunate enough to be completely asymptomatic while my glioma grew for months or even years. I was fortunate enough to have a seizure in front of 60 medical students and a half-dozen faculty, a clearly demonstrable and undeniable symptom. I was fortunate enough to have a wife who knew something was wrong and didn't let me drive. I was fortunate enough to have her cool head arrive on the scene simultaneous with 2 paramedics I've known for 20 years. I was fortunate enough to have my very best friends and most talented colleagues already waiting in the ER upon my arrival to expedite my workup. I was fortunate enough to have doctors caring for me in the hospital who would not have dismissed hearing music in my head as "nothing." I was fortunate enough to have a readily identifiable tumor located in a place that is easily accessible to surgery, with very little surrounding area of critical brain function.

I was fortunate enough to have a network of former and current students, residents, colleagues, and friends making calls and sending emails to get me appointments with specialists both here and at MDA within days that would have otherwise taken weeks. I was fortunate enough to meet with a neurosurgeon at MDA who only operates on gliomas, and was candid and respectful enough to tell me that the surgeon at UTMB is excellent and could perform my surgery very well. I was fortunate enough that he reiterated that he only operates on gliomas. I was fortunate enough to have a much trusted and valued friend, who now knows oncology better than I ever will, bluntly instruct me in a way that only she can, that the best predictor of long term remission in my condition is the effectiveness of the initial surgical resection.

Here's what I'll be thinking about when I go under the knife at MDA in a few weeks...

-kpb 9/3/13

Epilogue: The very construction and sharing of this story compelled me to contact this Mom, something I had needed to do but avoided for a year...to say how sorry I was for what happened to her child and how I had failed him...and to get her blessing to share this experience publicly. We talked for quite some time and she was amazingly gracious; despite her unmeasurable pain she actually comforted me and provided a bit of closure.

Here is an amazing thing she said to me: "Dr Bly, you have nothing to feel guilty about...you gave me two more days at home with him before everything changed forever." Profoundly humbled.

The Red-Headed Stepchild Country-Bumpkin Hospital

I first came to Galveston in 1993, looking to live and learn in an entirely different part of the country, and at an entirely different kind of hospital than where I had gone to medical school. I was in the north, I thought it was time to go south. I was at a huge hospital with a huge name and huge reputation, I wanted to try someplace smaller, more intimate and congenial. When I told the pediatric program director at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital that I was ranking UTMB Galveston #1, he furrowed his brow and said with condescension, "Why would you want to go to a place like that when you could so easily stay here?" I had many reasons delineated, but my answer to him in that moment was:

"I really like the people I met there."

It was clear from the condition of the facility that UTMB, a "state hospital," was not ripe with resources; the parking garage back home at RB&C was decorated cuter than the wards of the children's hospital at UTMB. I understood that this facility was in large part dedicated to the care of patients who could not receive or afford care anywhere else. I could see that the nature of such a place attracted doctors and nurses who believed in providing this kind of care, a self-fulfilling roster of caregivers who chose to "go to a place like that" precisely because it was "a place like that."

Everybody I met on my interview day was genuine, warm, welcoming, sincerely dedicated to their mission, and also frankly honest about some of the challenges of working at a "state hospital." But none of those limitations ever kept any of them from putting forth their very best efforts with every single patient...99% of which consisted of talking, listening, touching, and holding hands through recovery and sometimes all the way through tragic death.

One of the residents I went to lunch with said something that has always stuck with me: "Even as a resident here it's like being a small town doc. You'll see kids in your clinic, then you'll see them out at the post office and grocery store and they run up and hug you because you are their doctor."

I never made a better decision in my life. Clearly I was meant to come here...20 years on I have cared for many kids who needed somebody like me at an institution like UTMB. They do come up to hug me in the grocery store....and now many of those kids are grown with kids of their own. The love of my life was here in Galveston waiting for me to arrive, and we now have three wonderful children who have gone to preschool, played baseball, and marched in the band with those same kids I've cared for in the hospital and clinic. I cannot distinctly separate my life as a husband and father from my identity as a "small town doc," nor do I want to. This is the life I chose when I constructed my rank list back in 1993.

On Thursday I met with my neurosurgical counterpart at UTMB, a doctor I've known in passing for 20 years and shared a few patients with in consultation. He chuckled and referred to UTMB as the "red headed stepchild country bumpkin hospital." We don't have an intraoperative MRI at UTMB, maybe in 2 or 3 years but I can't wait 2 or 3 years. "There's nothing good about this, you know" he tells me bluntly. The first step is to get that whole sausage out of there and slice and dice it in pathology to better define the prognosis and next steps of treatment. "I know you're a doctor, you're one of us, all that...but when we're in that OR you're just a guy with a glioma I need to resect. And I've done that a million times on everybody from prisoners to bank presidents. And I'll do it exactly the same for you to the best of my ability. I can do this."

What's in it for me staying here? I have his phone number already in my phone. I may even try to wrap my arms around his substantial frame in the grocery store should I see him there. Everybody I know and love who is bustling around the hospital can pop in to see me for a few minutes or all afternoon as I awaken and recover, or as I wither and die. My wife and kids can spend as much time with me as I need or they want, and can come on a moment's notice without feeling rushed or as if they are inconveniencing somebody with yet another trip back and forth to Houston, all the while missing out on their own important milestones in middle school and high school.

Galveston and UTMB are my home and they are inexorably entangled. I need to believe in my home and my colleagues, as countless families have believed in me. What I have is not likely curable, but rather controllable for a period of time. I think that process, whatever the duration or final outcome, needs to be filled with the support and presence of the family and friends I have made here for the past 20 years, not all alone in a gold-plated marble-walled palace.

We have an appointment at MDA at 7:30 am on Tuesday. Eager to see what they have to say.

-kpb 8/31/13

A Man of Your Age

I recall beginning to emit a low-pitched guttural sound and then falling forward. Then...

nothing.

this is what happens when you die.

nothing.

The next thing I remember I was awakening, clearly being pulled out of the CT scanner, and CiCi, a nurse I knew from my days in the ER, was there telling me "Dr. Bly, you're in the ER CT scanner, it looks like you've had a stroke." A stroke? A Man of My Age? There was some conversation going on behind me, or maybe to me, or perhaps about me, regarding whether I was a candidate for TPA or not. "We need an MRI!" Metal needs to come off...my Rainbow Connection camp bracelets, my watch, my wedding ring are handed off to Amy...how is Amy here? It was Amy that pointed out my belt buckle and fasteners on my pants, and she got my pants off under a sheet in the hallway on the way to MRI. So that was cool that if my pants had to come off, the task was given over to my wife. And yeah I had peed a little bit :/

Then suddenly a bustle of activity and discussion about going off to MRI, MRI 1 or MRI 2, all the while I'm thinking "Wait you can't order an MRI in the ER." In and out of sleep and confusion I'm then in the MRI, somebody puts in earplugs, I remember doing that for patients I monitored in the MRI. My mystery music and DJ return, but I still can't identify that damn looping song!!!

MRI is boring. And terribly long. My legs are uncomfortable. I was in there for an eternity, staring at the faceplate, listening to that endless looping song.

Finally I get to a room where some neurology resident who goes to middle school with my son tells me my scans show that I have a mass, most likely a low grade glioma, since that is very common in a Man of My Age. "Glioma" is not an especially joyful word on the pediatrics side of the world. Apparently surgical resection is typically completely curative for a low grade glioma in a Man of My Age. They recommend going to MD Anderson in Houston, no rush but pretty soon. Um OK.

They're going to start me on some medicine to get my "seizures" under control. Oh, I had a seizure? Oh yes, a full-blown grand mal seizure right there in front of the first year medical school class on their first day of school. How awesome is that? Luckily there were a couple of doctors present who called 911(*) but meanwhile found me blue with a thready and then no pulse and administered CPR...so that's why my left ribs are hurting so bad. Good compressions guys!!!

Pretty uneventful night but challenging to sleep with an IV in each arm, broken/bruised left ribs, telemetry unit in my right pocket, and TED hose on both legs. Basically sleep without moving anything. In the morning the music was back and finally I knew the song!!! AM Radio by Everclear!! DJ and all!! But louder and more distracting than ever....what a feeling of relief to identify that song. I'm not crazy after all!!! Oh but I have a brain tumor. Meh.

The neurologists say the persistent music indicates I'm still having seizures so they add IV Dilantin. That mofo burns like crazy when it goes in my arm, but it shut off my internal radio immediately. Hmmm. Brain chemistry at work. Kind of takes the magic out of everything you know? Pretty soon I'm the happiest drunk on the planet with uncorrectable double vision...until somebody tells me "close one eye." Oh yeah, good idea. This is exactly like being as drunk as you can be while still conscious, but without all the bad effects. And no more Everclear. I could live like this.

Want to listen to my lecture and the aftermath? We were actually recording the lecture on my laptop for the Tegrity class management system, so have a few chuckles at my malapropisms then reel in horror at all the chaos starting at about 38:30...

Tegrity Recording of Lecture

Later I found out Amy received a text from one of the students who knows her since she was a kid and Amy took photos at her quinceanera, that 911 was being called for me (*edit 9/6/13: found out today it was actually one of the students, not one of the doctors, who called 911). Amy was already sitting outside waiting for me when the ambulances pulled up. Yet another reason why I love Galveston :)

-kpb 8/28/13

You Can Hear the Music

So after a perfectly normal busy day in urgent care Sunday, I got in my car and even before I hooked up my iPhone to play music, I could already hear music playing. I fiddled with the radio volume and double checked that my phone was indeed not plugged into the aux jack, did that head cocked eyes rolled brow scrunched thing, listening intently. Sure enough, a familiar tune (or maybe two) was playing, with kind of a DJ talking over it, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what song it was. While I couldn't exactly sing along, I could anticipate every beat of the song and syllable from the DJ. It was somewhere between "remembering" it and "hearing" it, and I couldn't make it stop no matter what I did. It was at once as if it was blaring full blast in both ears, but also as if I was trying to identify this song playing on a transistor radio from down the hall.

Tried thinking of another song ("Sweet Caroline" for some reason) and also started playing music through my iPhone. Now I had 3 songs playing simultaneously, melding into a pretty wicked mash-up, but eventually the mystery tune pushed itself to the front, while "Sweet Caroline" became drowned out in the background. The remainder of the drive, familiar songs I know well shuffled up on the iPhone one by one and they all sounded weird, like a new producer had remixed them or dug some previously unreleased versions out of the vault. Piano riffs I had never noticed were pushed to the front of the mix, while the vocal tracks were barely audible in some cases. Reminded me of being high, though it's been 30+ years since I've done that. I seriously wondered if I'd been drugged or if the salad I had for dinner was loaded with some potent MSG or something.

When I arrived home I told Amy about the mystery song and asked her to listen to "Don't Come Around Here No More" by Tom Petty - "does that sound strange to you?" She didn't know, not a big Tom Petty fan. Who is this woman I married? Went to bed without further incident. In the morning I went to 8am departmental morning report and felt perfectly fine. Returned home to work on a powerpoint (well actually a Keynote for everyone who expects me to be an Apple evangelist) for a 1pm introductory lecture to the 1st year med students on their 1st day of school. At about noon or so I heard the music again...could tell it was the same super recognizable and familiar song (or was it songs?), but still couldn't identify it. Kept playing that same ~30sec snippet over and over, louder and louder from inside my head. I actually yelled at it, "STOP IT!!" and amusingly thought how I was one step away from getting in an argument with the musical voice in my head. Told Amy, "I'm hearing that song and DJ again." Also told her she looked like she was in HD, or maybe a cartoon. I don't really know what that means. She told me I didn't look right and made me promise I'd call one of my doctor friends once my lecture was over, and that she was going to drive me to campus for my lecture. She planned to come pick me up between 1:45 and 2pm.

Upon arrival to the lecture hall, I texted a couple of my trusted colleagues that I was having some weird neuro symptoms and wanted to talk to them after my lecture was over at 2pm. Got immediate replies to call them whenever convenient, and fully expected them to tell me I was crazy lol. The lecture hall filled with eager 1st year medical students on their 1st day of medical school, and I began my lecture. Immediately I found myself tripping over, searching for, and mispronouncing words. I even made a comment something like, "Sorry, my brain isn't working right today, hopefully I can make it through this lecture before I have a complete stroke..." One of my course coordinators said "Yeah, you don't sound like yourself" and my course co-director approached the podium and said "Hey buddy, you want me to take over for you?"

I registered his question but could not respond, and just kept on talking...

-kpb 8/28/13

Why We're Moving Back to Galveston

I do not like the sand between my toes.

To be honest, I'm not really a big fan of the beach in general. I don't surf, don't boat, and get physically ill at the whole process of "fishing." Besides, I've seen enough things jammed into people's feet over the years in the ER to keep my own away from the mysteries of that murky water. Yet strangely that very beach is, in more than just a metaphorical sense, what's bringing me back to Galveston after the utter chaos Hurricane Ike brought to the city and our lives last September.

I came to Galveston to train in Pediatrics at UTMB in 1993. My primary reason for choosing Galveston was to live and work somewhere that was the exact opposite of the Cleveland Ohio area, where I had lived my entire life up to that point. Cleveland was a sprawling urban wasteland with a huge impersonal medical center and endless traffic jams; Galveston was a self-contained small town with a friendly mid-sized pediatrics program and a 5 minute drive to work along the Seawall. More simply put, in more ways than one: Cleveland was cold and Galveston was warm.

After marrying my wife Amy, a Galveston native (careful...don't call her a BOI...she was born in Spain), the sensible and easy path was to remain at UTMB after residency, buy a classic old Galveston house, and enjoy the small town Island life. I would often half-jokingly call my off-Island dwelling colleagues "sellouts" for choosing to live in and commute from League City or Friendswood instead of being part of the Galveston community where they worked. But as our three kids grew older, the usual issues about good schools, safe neighborhoods, saving for the future loomed larger as each day passed. For the past several years I had been pushing to become one of the "sellouts," trying to convince Amy that we should move up the road...maybe even very far up the road, like to the suburbs of north Dallas where I had interviewed for a terrific job. But we always came to an impasse. For every benefit I could rattle off about leaving - greater housing value, better schools, lower taxes, utilities, and insurance, safer neighborhoods and so on, Amy would counter with a very intangible but heartfelt and convincing "But Galveston is home..."

Following Ike we thankfully found that our house had escaped much serious damage, but nonetheless for several weeks it was unclear if or when Galveston would be habitable again, or what long term damage its infrastructure had really sustained. At my insistence we snapped up a year lease on a house in an established part of the South Shore area of League City, enrolled the kids in school in CCISD, with plans to sell the Galveston house and make the move permanent. Ike was the last straw for me...what possible value was there in going back to Galveston after this disaster? All the same old Island problems would be largely exacerbated. It was time to start the good life in the suburbs with exemplary schools, fewer expenses, little fear of hurricanes, and a brand new house in a cozy safe neighborhood.

We have indeed experienced many of those perks over the past year. We were pleased as could be with the way the teachers and principals at Hyde and LCIS welcomed and made made our kids part of their school families, and the kids made great new friends and enjoyed all the trappings of a prosperous school district. We immediately came to appreciate our quiet cul-de-sac neighborhood where the kids could play in the street without junkies wandering by, and could leave their bikes on the treelawn and find them still there the next morning. We made good friends with wonderful people in our new neighborhood, and didn't worry so much about locking up and closing the garage door all the time. We looked at homes for sale and new construction in the same vicinity and were often amazed at what kind of home we could get for the money in new subdivisions with names like Victory Lakes, Tuscan Lakes, and Harbour Pointe. The prospect of hundreds rather than thousands of dollars of windstorm and flood premiums was very appealing. Seemed like the sensible and easy path was to find just the right home to buy and stay there - even Amy started to agree.

But after a few months, things seemed...well, not quite right. Although we lived "close to everything", as my experienced suburban colleagues would always tell me, it took forever to get anywhere. For example, Cinemark 18 is six miles away but would sometimes be a 25 minute trip after twisting out of our windy subdivision and negotiating the 518-270-Nasa Road nightmare. And what is "everything" really? The mall? Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Half-Price Books? A thousand restaurants we'll never eat at that aren't really all that kid friendly? When it comes down to it, 99% of the time all a family like mine needs to be "near" is Target, Kroger, Home Depot, and iHOP. The other side of the suburban sprawl coin is the absolute absence of anywhere to go or anything to do that doesn't involve planning ahead and piling into the car. There's no spontaneous "let's walk up to the Seawall, get a slushy at Murdoch's, and build a sandcastle" or "let's ride bikes to the Spot then go bowling or the skate park". You can't walk or ride bikes to anyplace, and there's no real thrill in the ongoing exploration of a "master planned community" as opposed to the never-ending nooks and crannies of Galveston. Sure we could go on a bike-ride on the beautifully landscaped trails around one of the man-made "Tuscan Lakes" and admire the backs of the many homes and their "waterfront" lots...there's just no "there" there. This became especially apparent during the stir-crazy days of summer when keeping the kids entertained turned into a series of artificial and expensive adventures at Chuck-E-Cheese, Max Jumpin, Kemah Boardwalk, and Main Event...or trips to Galveston...

We attended League City events analogous to our favorite activities in Galveston: Movies in the Park, Evening Band Concerts, Carnivals and Parades. None of them had the same feeling of community that such events have in Galveston. Surely part of that was because we were "new in town" and didn't know as many people, but I had the distinct sense that I could attend these sorts of events for the next 10 years and always feel detached from the kind of genuine camaraderie I was used to in Galveston. It was as if the attendees converged from all over the sprawl of League City, absorbed their compulsory family-sized dose of fun and enjoyment, then packed into the SUV right on schedule and headed back to the subdivision for the night. Felt a little Bizarro-world. I also came to appreciate the pure honesty of "customer service" employees in Galveston who roll their eyes and with a heavy sigh ask "Whatchyou want?" rather than the Stepfordesque friendliness of kids at the counter in LC who politely stifle their sighs and eyerolls, but are undoubtedly just as disgusted with you and probably spit in your food anyhow.

And about those subdivisions and houses...which I began to cynically refer to as McMansions. Yes, they seem on the surface to be a great value for the money. But the pre-owned and newly-built-in-a-minute Perry homes and their like all felt very "hollow", or to borrow a phrase from a friend of a facebook friend, "dead inside." Not to mention that the "newer" home we rented had more issues to address in one year (thankfully by the landlord) than our Galveston house has had in 12. Our one-of-a-kind 96 year-old house in Galveston, with all its creaks and leaks even as it presently stands empty, seems very much alive...as does our neighborhood and even the city itself. I started thinking of Galveston like a coral reef, each family, each home, alive and vibrant with history, each contributing to a living community. Like a reef there are parts that are healthy and parts that are dying, there are threats from the inside and out. Galveston is both beautiful and ugly, it's cozy and a little scary, it's thriving and struggling. No offense to the many wonderful people we've befriended up here, but the suburban "coral reef" is more like what you find inside the Moody Gardens Aquarium...everyone in their own separate tanks with their own beautifully created habitats, the inhabitants are blissfully happy, safe and sound swimming about in their windexed and algae-free containers, but disconnected from each other and at some level missing the value of what a little dirt and grit...and sand...can add to their lives. The Island life, embodied by the Seawall, sand, and water, as well as a good dose of history, eclecticism, and grime, is undeniably real.

So pick your favorite cliché...The Grass Is Always Greener, Don't Know What You've Got Til It's Gone, There's No Place Like Home...they're all good. People who've listened to me carry on about getting off the Island the last few years now "shake their heads and look at me as if I've lost my mind" (thanks John Lennon)...unless they are from Galveston themselves. Those folks just give a knowing smile and say "Good to have you back." I may have lost my mind, but I'll be in the company of a wonderful community of good friends who can relate. I can now understand Amy's inability to put all this into words, and I'm not so sure I've articulated it any better than her old "But Galveston is home..." defense. We're headed back and I am very satisfied and resolved with that decision. After 16 years I can now proudly say, for the first time, that I am an Islander By Choice.

And I might even get some sand between my toes this time.

- kpb 7/28/09