How I Built My First Guillotine

{Prompt: What’s your favorite story about trying a new activity?}

It all started with Charles Addams. He started drawing cartoons for The New Yorker in 1932. In 1938, he started drawing a rather darkly satirical family, who created a great deal of mischief in their dystopian world — the “Addams” family.

A popular cartoon by Charles Addams.

In 1964 — the year I was born — TV executives became interested in developing the characters into a show. The characters were given names — Morticia, Gomez, Lurch, Wednesday, Pugsley, Uncle Fester, Thing, and Cousin Itt.

The show took a satirical look at the suburban landscape of America, as the Addams family shared quite a different perspective of good and bad. They were eccentric, exotic, and borderline psychopathic, and yet they were still lovable.

The show would go on to run for two seasons, and rerun in syndication for years.

A faux movie poster of the original TV Addams Family.

In 1991, this pop culture phenomenon from the 60s was rewritten for the big screen, in a movie featuring Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston. It did remarkably well. Gomez and Morticia were as popular as ever.

Poster for the 1991 movie.

About this time, Dianne and I began hosting Halloween parties at our house. We probably had four or five parties under our belt when we were searching for a new idea — a new theme.

It had to be a theme with identifiable characters that people could try to imitate in costume. And it had to be a theme with identifiable sets and props that we could reproduce for the Halloween party decor.

The Addams Family theme had both of these in spades.

The characters were iconic: Morticia, who had a greenhouse of carnivorous plants, and cut the blossoms off of roses to make them prettier. Gomez, who loved to swordfight, and would run his miniature train just to blow it up with an explosive. Uncle Fester, who could power a lightbulb when he put it in his mouth. Lurch, who stood 6-foot-9, played harpsichord for the children, and went around with a feather duster cleaning the ghoulish furnishings. Wednesday, whose favorite doll was the one who had been beheaded; and Pugsley, who had done the beheading.

And the props were legion. The house itself was pretty much the definition of a haunted house.

TV backdrop of the Addams house.

Gomez and Morticia sat in the most unusual chairs, in their Victorian parlor, with a double-headed tortoise roaming about between the Shogun suit of armor and the giant standing polar bear.

The parlor of the Addams’s house.

There was a stuffed swordfish trophy mounted on the wall, with the shin and foot of “cousin Farouk” embedded in its mouth — the victim of an unlucky boating accident.

Cousin Farouk.

There was a playroom filled with torture devices, including a bed of nails, an iron maiden, and a pillory.

The ‘Playroom’

And somewhere in a corner of the house there was a guillotine. I think Gomez used it to cut his cigars.

The Addams’ family guillotine.

With this wealth of material to steal from (slash, make homage to) we set about preparing for an Addams Family Halloween party.

Somehow we procured a peacock chair — the wicker chair with a fan-shaped back made popular by Morticia. We purchased a disembodied hand prop to double as “Thing” that was perched as if it were in the midst of playing chess.

‘Thing’—playing chess.

I went to work on the creation of a fish trophy based only on my spotty recollection of the TV show, from childhood days of watching the reruns. I had no photos or source materials whatsoever. (Although Wikipedia existed, there was no RetroVision website with photos of the set — there was no https://hookedonhouses.net with a post called, “The Addams Family House, Where Every Night is Halloween.”)

It turns out the real set used a real marlin trophy, whereas my fabricated version more closely resembled a disfigured swordfish. And the leg of cousin Farouk was clad in shoes, spats, and seersucker pants. My version was a Party City prefabricated latex prop of a dismembered foot and ankle. It’s a pretty amateurish re-creation, but with the right lighting, and some imagination, it can still pass muster.

Cousin Farouk - our version.

And then there was the small matter of creating a life-size guillotine. This is where I went deep into the weeds of research on the form and function of a real guillotine. (This might have been the first time I went “surfing” on the “net”.)

Sidebar: I found out, in the process, that the double “L” in the word “guillotine” — a French word — is pronounced like a “Y” (because it follows an “I” — an “L mouille” in French). Pronouncing the “L” sound (phonetically, as “Gee-yo-teen”) is gauche.

The first guillotine was invented by Antoine Louis in 1792 (and ironically was built by a harpsichord maker, Tobias Schmidt), but it was named for Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, an advocate for a more humane form of execution. Prior to the “Reign of Terror” and the French Revolution, execution could vary from hanging (most common) to decapitation by sword (for nobles), burning at the stake, traumatic fracturing of bones with a breaking wheel, or dismemberment. So the creation of the guillotine was a blessing, really.

More importantly, for the purposes of set design, a real life guillotine is about 14 feet tall, and the blade weighs about 90 pounds. It is designed for the heavy blade to slide down with precipitous finality.

A real guillotine also has a tilting backboard, so that the condemned may be more easily forced into position with his neck below the blade and his head above the basket.

In my design, the guillotine was only 8 feet tall — a convenient size for purchasing lumber, and short enough to fit beneath a 9-foot ceiling. Mind you, I didn’t consider whether or not it would pass through a doorway when I built it, but as it turned out, it would make it into the house, and from room to room, when tilted on its end.

I built it with two-by-fours, one-by-fours, and particle board—no metal except for the screws, the pulleys, and the cleat (used to ‘secure’ the rope). I played around with the idea of allowing the fake blade to slide up and down the grooves that I had created from layers of wood; but in the end, I decided it was just too dangerous, even for a half-sized executing machine.

The blade was fabricated from particle board, with one edge “sharpened” using rasps, files, and sandpaper to create its deadly appearance. It was painted an “antique” metallic silver, and splattered with a bit of red, for effect. It couldn’t have sliced a thing in reality, but it certainly could have maimed someone, if it had been put in motion. Ultimately, I opted to bolt the blade in place. Still, it gave the illusion of deadly usefulness.

Quite a few of our guests asked, with a look of concern, if it really worked. That was the best compliment ever.

Dianne (Morticia) and I (Lurch) with our Guillotine.

Theatre Macabre

So I came to discover, what should have been obvious from the start, that Halloween parties are really a form of theater. Our job, as party planners, is to create the set decoration; add lighting, sound, and special effects; and assemble the cast, in costume and makeup (as much as they are willing).

The Halloween party also required a lot of the skills of a producer — publicizing the event (by creating and sending invitations), arranging the place and time, preparing adequate seating, and refreshments, offering costume prizes and taking photos. The only thing differing from theater was the need for scripted dialogue… and rehearsal.

Some would say that our Halloween parties were legendary. The first party in our house in Glen Ridge (in Cary) was based on The Shining. We had a bathroom door, chopped up with an axe, with a mask of Jack Nicholson, peering into the splintered gap. We had a Big Wheel sitting in the hallway along with the dead body of Dick Halloran. We had a typewriter sitting at a table with scads of paper printed (by computer) with line upon line of “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.

The Shining prop.

We created a party based on the song Hotel California with a complete hotel reception lobby for “sign in”. I still have the bell. We put “mirrors on the ceiling”, by using rolls of aluminum foil. (It turns out that pantry moths love to leave larvae behind between foil and drywall.) We created something of a “beast” out of papier-mâché, and we had a “feast” prepared with a conspicuous bottle of “pink champagne on ice”.

“Tiffany-twisted” hostess with two guests and the Bellman.

For a CSI party, we took mugshots of all the suspicious characters that arrived. We had fingerprinting kits, and I created a facial reconstruction of half a face with an amateur forensic-science kit.

A hellish pair at the entrance to the underworld.

We did a heaven and hell party, where I dressed as the prince of darkness (horns and all), while Dianne dressed as a devilish assistant. I achieved the pinnacle of my abilities in lighting design, fabricating flickering flames out of amber and red lit fabric, and creating crepuscular rays (heavenly beams) from spotlights mounted in the stairwell, pointed out through pearly gates into mist (produced by a fog machine). It was pretty good for a first attempt at recreating sunbeams.

Heaven above, Hell below. (Pearly gates not in this view.)

At the Roaring 20s party, the drinks were the main event. We had recipes for four or five prohibition-era cocktails, and we tried them all. We had a password for entry to the house, which could only be allowed by way of a side door. We had an old timey microphone as a prop for photos, and on the back porch, we had bales of hay, and jugs of moonshine, where the contraband was brought in by the bootleggers.

“On Air” - Two guests in full 1920s regalia.

For our Fairytale party, I constructed a two-story beanstalk out of foam pool noodles, plastic ivy garlands, and some snippets of floral greenery.

Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf near my beanstalk.

The kitchen cabinets were covered with brown paper and piped with insulation foam to create a “gingerbread house.” Sticking on all the hard candy onto the walls was the most time-consuming task.

Pocahontas and John Smith in the Gingerbread kitchen.

At our Wizards and Witches party, I ended up creating four D&D style dragons out of thick wire and masking tape, with some paint, glitter, and rhinestones for effect. The horns had to be made from iridescent polymer clay. I also spent some time creating some polished and varnished wands from some found scraps of wood (with magical potential).

Close-up of the Red Dragon.

The Human Element

The great thing about the Halloween party is the unexpected. You never know what the guests will wear, or do — how far they are willing to go. Some will arrive in a conceptual costume, designed on the fly, or at minimal expense. The couple (in the photo below) in construction vests and the sign, “Caution, Bump Ahead,” are punnily referring to the pregnancy bump and the newborn baby on the way.

Some will arrive in the most ornate and elaborate costumes you can imagine. The Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts in the photo below came in the most amazing homemade costumes I have ever seen. Needless to say, they won the costume prize. They set the bar just a little bit higher for the attendees of the parties to come.

Guests with Hansel (Dianne) and Gretel (me).

The cartoonist, Charles Addams, had a humorous concept, that served his purposes (for social satire) and the tastes of his audience. But his creation took on a life of its on, with a reinterpretation in the black and white medium of TV in the ‘60s, and the film adaptation of the Addams’s fictional world in the ‘90s.

The Halloween party is also a concept – albeit one filled with props, set designs, lighting and sound – until the guests arrive. Once the party begins, the “set” comes to life – it takes on a life of its own.

Dianne and I began throwing Halloween parties out of our mutual affection for the spontaneity and camaraderie of the Halloween tradition.

Over the span of a decade, I discovered that I also enjoyed the little projects that went into the creation of an imaginative backdrop. I fell in love with the creativity of set design and the theatrical arts. You can learn a lot of trivial knowledge and useful crafts in the slow descent into madness that is set and prop design.

Every now and then I need a gentle reminder that the party is the focus of the preparations. It’s not Broadway, and it’s not Hollywood.

The guests must be welcomed and refreshed, introduced and encouraged. The kitchen must be cleaned, and the counters well stocked, so that the guests can become satiated and inebriated.

The party must take its natural course, with an ebb and flow of conversation and recreation. It must draw to a close before we reach the point of gruff hostility, and we must thank our guests for taking the time (and effort) to attend and enliven our party.

After a night of peaceful slumber, we must go about striking the set, and return the house to its normal appearance and function – a cozy space for spending our days while we plan for the next adventure, or party, or both.

Every now and then, I wonder if I have a future in set design — if I should volunteer to work with Raleigh Little Theater, or give my kids a little help with their Halloween set design. I wonder if I could build a better guillotine.

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

Appendix - Halloween Party Tips

1. Start early

2. Buy another house if you can afford one, or better yet, an empty stage, just for the Halloween party.

3. Shop for cheap supplies at the hardware store or ReStore.

4. Require costumes, but make them as easy as simply wearing a hat for those folks who don’t spend their days on costume design.

5. Invite the right people—ideally extroverts… or sociable introverts with a passion for theater.

6. Don’t forget name tags (with numbers, if voting on best costume).

7. Have a photo area, with a prop and a backdrop, for photos and selfies.

8. Learn to work with papier-mâché and wire for creating large props.

9. Learn to create good sound and light design, or recruit a specialist.

10. Have TVs available for the World Series fans

11. Don’t try to work with dry ice. It’s not worth it, and it’s hard to find on Halloween Day.

12. Child-proof your home (because drunk people fall off of decks).

13. 100 candles can really heat up a room.

14. Don’t use anything in the house, that might be carrying bugs.

15. Set aside three or four hours to dress yourself (and relax) before the party.

16. No idea is too crazy, but some ideas are too time-consuming.

Witches and Wizards - Steve, Vicky, Dianne, Patrick

Appendix 2 - Our Halloween Themes (so far)
1997 - Un-themed
1999 - The Shining
2000 - Hotel California
2001 - Witches and Warlocks
2002 - Gothic
2003 - Haunted Hospital
2005 - Murder Mystery
2006 - CSI
2007 - Addams Family
2009 - Heaven & Hell
[Sabbatical from Halloween parties primarily due to opening and running Village Family Practice of Holly Springs - 2010 to 2016.]
2018 - Speakeasy
2019 - Fairytale
[COVID-19 Pandemic beginning in March 2020]
2023 - Wizards and Witches (and Dragons)

A Warlock and a Witch - circa 2001

A Creative Renaissance

{Prompt: Write a story about learning something new.}

I entered a creative renaissance, more or less, with the beginning of the new millennium. It came about because of the relative absence of demands upon the higher cortical functions of my brain.

Celebrating the new century

You see, by January 1, 2000 (Y2K), I was done with all the acquisition of knowledge that was required to practice medicine (which is quite a lot, I can say.)

I had finished twelve years of basic education, four years of college, four years of medical school, a year of public health, three years of medical residency, and three years of group practice.

I was pretty much free from all forms of academia, and free of the need to rigorously process and incorporate didactic knowledge. I had a sufficient mastery of family practice to work without additional study. I was ready to try something new — something creative.

At the bus stop on the first day of school (8/20/2000)

The same year — 2000 — my kids entered elementary school, starting their own academic careers at Bugg Elementary School, a magnet school in Raleigh that emphasized a paradigm of learning that stimulated the “multiple intelligences” of a child. I don’t pretend to know the full extent of the theory of multiple intelligences. I just know that Bugg Elementary encouraged children to learn through activities such as art, music, and drama. This, roughly, is when I, too, began a decade of creativity in the arts and crafts.

When they entered Bugg Elementary, Jasmine was already taking piano lessons, and Samantha was playing the recorder. Sam even played the Australian national anthem in front of her Australian first grade teacher and class, to an enthusiastic reception.

We signed them up for a drama camp around about third grade, and unwittingly unleashed a lifelong obsession with theater and the performing arts. Their obsession was intensified by attending Broadway shows in New York City, and a West End revival of Mary Poppins in London. The spectacle of light and sound must’ve engulfed their senses and seeped into their veins.

In addition to those exposures to music and drama, I created a bit of an art studio on the third floor of our house. I had a drafting table perched above a dozen drawers of art supply bins, next to several shelves of how-to-do-it art books.

I had a multi-pocketed travel case filled with my favorite art supplies: pastels, graphite pencils, and charcoals; watercolors, acrylics, and oils; and art-paper pads of every color, texture, and weight.

I took our girls to Michaels regularly to buy more art supplies — stamps, stencils, scrapbooking materials, markers, miniature Christmas trees, cross-stitch floss, precut mattes for framing photos, and more.

I discovered that Michaels had a room for doing group craft projects with children, and I took them back periodically on Saturday mornings to do a group craft in the “party” room.

Artist kangaroo - from polymer clay.

There was a period when polymer clay molding became the craft of choice. Samantha and I completed a pretty good anthropomorphic sculpture of an artist-kangaroo. Almost perfect, but the feet and the haunches were a little out of proportion. It’s rustic.

I attempted an oil painting just once — a copy of a photo of Montezuma’s Castle in Arizona — but the paint took so long to dry that I didn’t dare attempt an oil painting with the children.

I prefer the more fluid medium of watercolor to be honest, and I took a watercolor class in Cary, but even though I liked it, I didn’t really pursue it further. I was just dabbling in everything.

I began to cross-stitch for pleasure, starting with a simple kit called “Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much” - a pattern of a woman in an apron decorated with hearts. I changed the hair color of the girl in the pattern to match Dianne’s. My first cross stitch went to her.

Dianne’s Cross-stitch.

I went on to complete a harder pattern — a counted cross-stitch — for my mother, with the words of an old Methodist hymn set against the scene of a field of sheep. I gave it to her in a personalized frame with a plaque, and it still hangs in her house in Stanley.

Ultimately, I completed an epic pattern — The Fantasy Sampler, by Teresa Wentzler — which portrayed a princess with a flute, sitting in a field with a dragon. Within the decorative border, a different beast lay in each corner — a gryphon, a unicorn, a lion, and Pegasus.

It took me at least a year to complete. It includes large areas of cross-stitch worked over one thread (instead of two). It was much harder. It was riddled with mistakes that only I can see. I gave it to Samantha, probably on a Christmas, with assurances to Jasmine that her sampler would be coming soon.

Samantha’s Fantasy Sampler (pattern by Teresa Wentzler).

But by the time I completed the Fantasy Sampler, for Sam, I was exhausted with counting linen threads, untwisting knots in the floss, holding the frame in my left hand, and working the needle in my right.

We moved on to other activities. We were building model rockets to blast into the air. It was the revival of an activity that I once had done with my father and brother, many years before. The girls were pretty adept at this craft. They only really needed me to set up the launch pad and ignition system. And then the rockets zipped up into the air so fast you could only see the puff of smoke where they had been a second before. One summer they signed up for a rocket camp, out in the country, with a Lutheran organization. Those crazy Lutherans.

Books, Birds, and Beyond

It wasn’t all arts and crafts. We did some other things, too. The twins were reading books prolifically;, including each J.K. Rowling book as it was released. I didn’t think very highly of the representation of the (foster) parenting adults in the first one, so I didn’t read any of the others. In contrast, I enjoyed Philip Pullman’s books much more, and read the whole His Dark Materials trilogy. From time to time I read one of the fantasy or sci-fi books, that they enjoyed, just to stay in the loop.

In middle school, they joined a “Battle of the Books” club, and I joined them in reading a greater variety of books than usual. These books, written for adolescents, were some of the most disturbing works of fiction that I had read since Watership Down or Slaughterhouse-Five thirty years before.

Touching Spirit Bear, and Milkweed, are two that especially come to mind. Spirit Bear gave the most graphic description of a bear attack I have ever read, or seen, and Milkweed gave an unsettling description of the Warsaw ghetto and its effect on the central character—a boy.

The cover of Spirit Bear.

At first I read the books, meaning to create flash cards for the kids to use to prepare for competition. But after reading the selections, I came to realize that the genre of modern juvenile fiction was deep, dark, and sophisticated; perhaps the most meaningful form for dealing with difficult and polarizing issues that I have ever encountered. I began to read the books for their serious content.

About this time we also became obsessed with birding and the night sky. We collected a lot of ornithology and astronomy guides. We went out with binoculars to look for birds, and with telescopes to look for stars.

But we attracted dozens of birds to our own backyard with a small investment in a proper bird feeder, with a baffle and a stabilizer. We observed nuthatches climbing up and down the bark of our pine and oak trees. We observed Downy Woodpeckers, Waxwings, and Red-winged Blackbirds — my favorite with their screeching calls. You can see them perching on a willow by every neighborhood retention pond.

(I also started collecting Wild Republic birds, which are stuffed animals with “authentic bird sounds provided by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology”. They still sit lurking on a high shelf in Jasmine’s old room.)

A red-winged blackbird (photo credit: Matt Felperin)

At night, we went out once or twice to Lake Johnson with a newly purchased telescope, looking up at the night sky and trying to find different constellations. But first we had to try to set up the scope with proper orientation by the light of a small red LED. We found that the sky was so vast, and the earth moving so unexpectedly fast on its axis, that finding individual stars, galaxies, and star clusters was a challenge. One moment it was in sight, and the next it was moving out of the field of view. Astronomy is hard.

Science Olympiad.

With the renewed interest in these—my previous childhood pursuits (I haven’t even mentioned the stamp collecting)—I began to think that my children might have an interest in science and math. I volunteered to “assist” in the Science Olympiad club that Samantha and Jasmine had joined at Dillard Middle School. (The Big Bang Theory, was in its second or third season, by the way. Coincidence?) A neighbor, Kim Barritt, who lived at the other end of our street, was the science teacher who supervised the club.

So I jumped into Science Olympiad with the gusto of a true science geek. I think I started “assisting” with a construction game that involved finding the best solution for a mechanical problem, working in teams. Each team had a Ziploc bag of identical construction materials, and tried to build the tallest structure, within the given parameters. The kids were chattering with excitement. There was laughter. There were groans. It seemed to be fun, for them and for me.

Later we tried a “Write it, Do it” activity. The club was divided into teams of two. The first team member was given a completed object, and they tried to write down, in step-by-step directions, how the object should be constructed. Then the second team member, who hadn’t seen the object, tried to construct it from the written directions and the constituent parts. It was chaos. Beautiful, hilarious chaos!

Pretty soon I was completely invested, creating a curated collection of age-appropriate books and materials on subjects ranging from oceanography and meteorology to forensics and pathology.

I tried to convince Jasmine that she was bound to enjoy signing up for “Crave the Wave” because our world is burgeoning with a beautiful and complex array of light, sound, and liquid waves. And… furthermore… the mystery of wave-particle duality in subatomic particles is a perfect example of the ineffable beauty of scientific inquiry. She just didn’t get it.

A representation of wave-particle duality.

Ultimately, most of the kids just wanted to do one of the mechanical events. They wanted to build a bottle rocket, or a rubber band glider, or a Rube Goldberg machine, or a robot, or a trebuchet.

And who could blame them?

But there was a catch. In Science Olympiad, the machines were not only built… but they were also calibrated. In other words, building the machine was only half of the task. Once the machine was completed, it was expected to be tested, calibrated, and (potentially) improved.

That was a whole new level of preparation, for an adolescent contestant. Even for an adult, it was hard. In my own life, most of my projects were barely completed by the deadline. To plan ahead for testing and revisions of a completed project was extraordinary… bewildering… and a bridge too far for most of the kids.

Still, I think that they came to recognize its merits. Success or failure in the competition came to depend on the rigor with which engineering and scientific methods were embraced.

Tower and bridge constructions were visibly shattered when they couldn’t withstand the required force of weight. It wasn’t just a metaphorical shattering of hopes and dreams.

Jasmine built a contraption to drive an egg within inches of a wall on rubber band power, but with time running out, she failed to test it with an actual egg attached. Fatefully, during competition, when the egg was attached, the contraption did an unexpected wheelie, and veered off course completely. Lesson learned.

Jasmine (right) and a friend, with gliders.

Of all the activities that we did in preparation for Science Olympiad, my two favorites were the ones for “Food Science” and “Road Scholar.”

For Food Science, we had to prepare batches of chocolate chip cookies, but we had to use different forms of sugar, and vary the cooking times and temperatures. I think we spent most of a Saturday in the kitchen making chocolate chip cookies, observing remarkable differences in the outcomes, and making plans to spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of the perfect recipe.

Road Scholar was an event focused on surveying and orienteering. In preparation, I went out to Umstead State Park with the boys who had signed up for the event. We attempted to follow a set of orienteering directions with a map and a compass, making our way off the beaten path, and marching straight through the woods, hoping that we would navigate our way to the right location. It was a bit like searching for a geocache, but in the days before smartphones had reached their full potential. In a way, it felt as if we were lost, but we were not lost. We were just finding a different way to get somewhere.

I came to realize that if I had been a contestant in Science Olympiad back in my own middle school days, I could have easily entertained a career in food science, surveying, meteorology, or engineering.

Ironically, I really did major in engineering at Vanderbilt, but somehow they sucked the joy right out of it. In Science Olympiad, all the joy of discovery and design came rushing back.

A tower straddling a homemade template.

In the end, our small band of contestants didn’t win, but did respectably well in the regional competitions. Some of them crushed it, and some of them got a little crushed. But they all tried, and they all had team spirit. I watched as bottle rockets spun out of control, balsa gliders veered off course and robots got stuck. I waited nervously at the classroom doors to find out how our students performed at the testing stations in all those book-intensive subjects.

We got Dillard Dragon t-shirts made (one of the parents was a graphic artist) and we went out and painted our club mascot and school name in the Free Expression tunnel at NC State before the competition. And, at the end, we all sat in the bleachers to see the final results, as trophies were awarded at the closing ceremonies.

2008 Dillard Drive Middle School Science Olympiad team

Claire Nelson, Sam, and Jasmine with prizes and a duck.

Postscript

At the end of the decade, in 2010, I left my job at Garner Family Practice, and I opened my own practice, called Village Family Practice of Holly Springs.

I spent my Saturday mornings taking care of payroll and updating the Quickbooks account. I spent my evenings completing notes in the electronic medical record, and preparing bank deposits.

I was moving into the realm of a small business owner, dealing with marketing, finance, compliance, and service. The days of art and engineering were over.

Village Family Practice logo.

In 2009, Jasmine and Samantha went to high school, first separately at Raleigh Charter and Middle Creek, then together at Raleigh Charter. They more-or-less avoided science and math, shunning the chance to become doctors, biostatisticians, food scientists, or engineers. They were young and foolish.

I forgave them the zeal with which they developed a love for Shakespeare and Aeschylus. I allowed them to go on and on about the philosophy of Heidegger and “ways of being.” I watched them learning lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. I let them watch Glee.

We reunited briefly to obsess over college applications, but they only glanced at my spreadsheet of university options dismissively. In the end, they went to a school with a reputation for medicine and engineering, but located adjacent to a performance hall, and near a theater district.

They secretly majored in the humanities — Music Performance and International Studies for Samantha, and English and Journalism for Jasmine.

Now my binders of Science Olympiad rules, tips, and reference materials gather dust in the attic. A complete set of handmade science-word flashcards still sits in its card case, unused. The Rube Goldberg machine, in the crawlspace outside, is slowly decomposing.

The acrylic paints and indelible ink markers have all dried up and been discarded.

The telescope has been sold to an optimistic young college student living nearby.

The bird feeder has been dismantled to make room for Maggie to chase her magenta-colored spiky ball.

The Wild Republic birds keep a silent vigil in the guest room, formerly Jasmine’s bedroom, on the north side of the house.

The model rockets have been returned to their creators.

But in 2019, I retired.

A new era of creativity has emerged.

I make barn quilts.

I write stories.

I even finish Jasmine’s cross stitch—the Camelot Sampler.

It’s a new beginning—a renaissance.

The Camelot Sampler—for Jasmine

Multiply Life by the Power of Two

{Prompt: What was one of the toughest parts about raising twins?}

Raising twins is hard… for about two years. They arrive prematurely (about 4 weeks early, on average), and often require bilirubin lights for treatment of neonatal jaundice. Their breastfeeding can exhaust the mother. They double the need for diaper changes, and they take turns waking the parents at night.

But after two years, raising twins gets easier. They recognize their twin sibling as a playmate and compatriot. They entertain one another, and it gets easier for the parent to step away.

Even when their play becomes horseplay, there is less danger of one child hurting the other, as might occur with an older sibling. With twins they are more evenly matched. More likely to wear each other out than to cause serious harm.

They learn to share or take turns well before kindergarten (when most kids begin). Their food, clothes, and attention can be shared, making the care of twins—identical twins—quite efficient.

One meal can be split for both children… unless they have particular food preferences.

One wardrobe of clothes can be shared for a while… at least, until favorite outfits have been chosen.

Bedtime stories can be read to an audience. Books can be shared… until the passion for reading becomes all consuming. (Then, two copies of ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ are required on the day of the book launch, instead of one.)

Stuffed animals can be shared… until you pick a favorite.

The major problem is treating each child as an individual. We realized it was becoming a problem, when we realized that you were starting to pick your favorite parent… the way you picked your favorite stuffed animals.

We realized that we needed to have time with each child individually, giving each child some one-on-one time with each parent — a chance to pick up some qualities from both mother and father alike. We didn’t want either child to become too much like one parent or the other.

So we got you different clothes (partly to tell, sometimes, who was who, when the nail polish wore off). We might get matching pajamas, but with different-colored fabric… matching dresses but with different trim… different hats—a beret for Samantha and a newsboy hat for Jasmine.

We encouraged you to play different instruments. Recorder and flute for Samantha. Piano for Jasmine. Samantha had to focus on posture, breath control, playing a fixed melody. Jasmine had to learn melody with one hand and chords with her other.

There were different sports. For Samantha, it is volleyball— mother’s first love. Consequently, setting and receiving skills were paramount. Coaches had a high bar to reach for parental approval.

For Jasmine, it is Soccer — father’s (and the world’s) most beautiful game — a sport of improvisation and flow, only limited by the sidelines and by stamina — an introduction to a new lifetime obsession (Books being #1).

We even tried to create separate time alone with one daughter or the other. But that was awfully hard. The efficiency of going out together was just too great. And our twins got along so well with each other — a surprise to both Mom and me (who had such seemingly adversarial relationships with our older siblings).

You both loved to read. You both loved Broadway musicals. You both loved the kitchen, though Jasmine preferred baking and Samantha preferred cooking. You both came to love Halloween. You were both smart and creative.

I guess the critical period of self-actualization came in 9th grade. Although you both applied for Raleigh Charter (with uncertain levels of interest) only Jasmine got in, by chance, and for one year Jasmine attended a completely different high school.

Jasmine went to southeast Raleigh, became part of a new school, joined clubs, including Drama Club and the GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance), and made brand new friends.

Samantha stayed at Middle Creek, played volleyball and played in marching band, until she was allowed to enter Raleigh Charter, the following year.

This also tracks with my impression of Jasmine, as willing to take risks socially, willing to change course more easily, being more communal. Did I form that impression, because Jasmine went off to charter school first, or is it really true?

And Samantha: I see her as more thorough in her attention to a problem or activity, more focused on completing a task, more aloof. Do I see her that way because it was required by chance, or is there more to it?

Regardless of my perceptions, I tried to maintain a fundamental fairness in my time and my expectations, even as your interests and abilities diverged. I tried to treat Jasmine as a smart and capable person (even though I felt like she sometimes gave up too easily). I tried to moderate Samantha’s self-expectations (because she was hard on herself).

When you were engaged in the college application process, I tried to help you find places where you could have your own unique experience, but still be close enough to have your joint experience, even if it was away from Mom and Dad. I created the most elaborate spreadsheet of college possibilities you could imagine (carefully archived in a notebook in our time capsule treasure box).

I never dreamed that you would end up going to Case Western Reserve University together…

Or find jobs in Washington DC, and end up living together…

Or find jobs in Raleigh, and end up sharing a condominium.

Perhaps my focus on individuality was misplaced. The power of twinship is undeniable. Your differences are superficial and fleeting — your clothes, your hairstyle, your glasses, your scars, or your birthmarks.

But your similarities are deep and abiding. Your care for your friends, your geeky obsessions, your liberal bent, your love of nature and adventure, your shared history, your shared joys and losses.

I guess I wanted you each to choose your own passions and make your own ‘mistakes’. I wanted your lives to be your own, not a new version of your parents’ lives. I thought that you should be different from us, and different from each other, but that was a foolish conceit.

As parents… as role-models… we merely set the ball rolling.

Your intrinsic humanness, and your human experience, dictates the person that you become, individually. And the persons… the dyad… that you become, as twins.

Head to Toe (A Drama in Three Acts)

{Prompt: Tell me about the night Sam and I were born.}

Act I - Family Practice Residency

In 1994, I turned 30 years old, and I was a young married professional. I was working for the University of South Carolina / Richland Memorial Hospital residency program in Columbia, South Carolina. They offered me a spot to train in their program for the specialty of Family Practice. I accepted because it was in the same city where my mother had been born and raised. However, for me, the city of Columbia and the state of South Carolina were completely new.

Like Raleigh, Columbia is a capital city and a college town, but where we lived on the outskirts of town, we could only enjoy hearing the percussive thuds of the artillery exercises on the army base at Fort Jackson, or the muffled orders and squawking response of the McDonald’s drive-through behind our small, flat backyard.

And the closest park to be enjoyed was Sesquicentennial Park, where scrub pines provided only a smattering of shade in the heat of the Sandhills region. It wasn’t a very rich experience, except for the richness of the medical education on the residency rotations.

It was my third year of marriage and my third year of residency. I had the responsibilities of a senior resident, and I spent many hours in the clinic, on the wards, or on call. I was often on a rotation in one clinic or another, far from home. I probably spent 50 or 60 hours at work each week. I spent more of my waking hours at the hospital than I did at home.

Not only was I immersed in my medical rotations. I was also starting to think like a doctor. I was learning not only to care for my patients, but to appear caring and receptive.

I was learning to listen to a patient’s complaints and concerns with empathy, while also exercising some skepticism about their interpretations and self-diagnoses.

I was learning to split my thinking brain into one side, showing compassion, and another side, generating a differential diagnosis (a list of possible conditions) and a diagnostic algorithm (a set of discriminatory questions and examinations) with which to reach the diagnosis. Basically I was learning to split my personality into the outwardly caring persona (the “good doctor”) and the inwardly analytical logician (the “diagnostician”).

This is the headspace I was in when Dianne dropped in unexpectedly during my morning schedule of patients at the “continuity of care clinic” on campus in November.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“We’re having our babies!”

“What?” (Is she in labor? It’s five weeks before the due date.)

“We’re having our babies. Today!”

“What?” (She doesn’t look like she’s in labor. She seems a little… manic.)

“I had my ultrasound this morning, and they said that one of them is too much bigger than the other one, and they need to be delivered. Today! They called it twin growth disparity. One of them is taking all the nutrients, and the other one isn’t getting enough. So I’m scheduled for a C-section this afternoon. So get ready to have your babies.”

“Oh… Okay.” (Oh shit. I thought I had more time.) “Okay, I have to talk to some people to get my patients rescheduled. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

So I wrapped up clinic early that day, and I let the attending physicians know that I had an urgent family medical issue, that my wife was scheduled for a C-section. And I don’t really know what happened after that. Next thing I remember we were all in the operating room.

Act II - The Operating Room

A labor and delivery operating room is quite big. It has to be big enough to hold quite a lot of people (and equipment).

At the head of the surgical table, you find the still conscious expectant mother. She is able to witness (or at least hear) the entire proceeding. A partition is draped between her and her belly, and I am allowed to sit on one side of her, and the anesthesiologist is on the other. The partition, which is made of a light blue pleated surgical apron, keeps me and her from looking directly at the business end of the surgical shenanigans. On the other side of her head sits the anesthesiologist, on a surgical stool, with all sorts of monitors, medications, and machinery with which to ensure the health of the most important person in the room, the mother-to-be.

A newborn, mother, and the surgical partition.

In the middle of the action is the Obstetrician, the surgical assistant, the surgical nurse, and another nurse or assistant… or two. They are all standing in the “wings” of the operating theater as the surgical lamps cast a spotlight on the place where the twin starlets will emerge onto center stage.

A surgical team beneath surgical lights.

Off in the distance, below the foot of the table, there are two bassinets, and two or three pediatric specialists waiting to make their neonatal assessment, and if necessary, to perform a neonatal resuscitation. They are quietly talking behind the scenes (in this theatrical metaphor) as the action unfolds.

Everything goes according to plan. At least according to the surgeon’s plan. I wasn’t aware that the babies’ birth order was going to be reversed. The baby that was lower in the birth canal, who would have been the first baby born in a vaginal delivery, was the second to be born in the C-section. The baby that was higher in the uterus — the one that was smaller — had the honor of entering the world first, at 4:32 pm. She became Baby A — Jasmine Allison Gallup. Baby B was pulled out a minute later, at 4:33 pm — Samantha Bailey Gallup.

Samantha (left) & Jasmine (right.)

From my training, I knew that APGAR scores would be taken at one minute after birth and at five minutes after birth, and these scores would be strongly indicative of the health of the infants and their prospects for an uncomplicated hospital stay.

I don’t remember the exact scores, but I remember a bit of relief as the scores were announced. It wasn’t long before the babies were brought, one by one, from the foot of the bed to a place above the partition where Dianne and I could see Jasmine and Samantha up close for the very first time. The OR, and the world, just got a little more crowded.

A Measure of Viability

Act III – The Nursery

After the surgery is completed, Dianne is taken to post-op for cleaning and observation, and then to a room at the quiet end of the maternity ward for some much-needed sleep. I am invited to join the RN in the nursery for a little orientation to fatherhood.

The nursery is everything that the operating room is not. The operating room is like the definition of ‘chiaroscuro,’ — a combination of light and shadow, as the surgical lamps cast bright beams on the pregnant belly, and all else is in relative darkness.

The nursery is completely bathed in warm incandescent light, and if the overhead lighting isn’t enough, additional light can be found emanating from the neonatal incubators, which gently warm the fragile infants until their bodies can thermoregulate themselves.

While the surgical suite was filled with unfamiliar people and seemed crowded, the intake room of the nursery is empty, except for me and two babies, and the nurse, whom I know from a previous rotation.

The nurse is calm and capable — sweet and sympathetic. She goes through the “head to toe assessment” step by step, explaining each step to me as she goes along. She is explaining the process as if I am the newborn’s father… not as if I am an emotionally detached medical resident. This makes me feel like a father for the very first time.

I’ve actually done the Head to Toe assessment myself on other people’s babies. I’m familiar with all of the measures, reflexes, and areas of focus.

But first the babies must have a sponge bath. They are carefully cleaned in all their nooks and crannies. Their hair is combed and their bangs are swept to one side. They are given a new hoodie and a soft, warm baby blanket.

After they are given some loving attention, the focus is on their size and development. Head, chest, and waist circumference are taken. Weight and length are measured. Measures of physical and neuromuscular maturity are taken. Their arms and legs are pulled and stretched like a neonatal yoga class, to determine their level of actual maturity (as opposed to their predicted maturity based on the mother’s last menses and the calculated expected date of conception).

(A chart I probably used during my pediatric rotation.)

Each child in turn is examined for jaundice, birthmarks, hematomas, and other skin findings.

Each skull is palpated for the anterior fontanelle — the soft spot.

All four eyes are examined for a proper red reflex, to rule out a detached retina or other problem with vision.

Each mouth is examined for cleft palate and for a normal sucking reflex.

Each heart is auscultated for a murmur to rule out valvular heart defects.

Each abdomen is palpated for the liver and spleen.

Each umbilical cord is examined above and below the clamp.

The arms are examined for brachial palsy. The legs are examined for hip dysplasia.

The fingers and toes are counted and examined: 10 fingers and 10 toes for each baby.

The spine is examined for spina bifida and for scoliosis.

The genitals are examined for any sexual anomaly.

The neurological exam is performed, including a check of the rooting reflex and palmar grasp—so necessary for nursing.

I’ve done these examinations before. I understand the medical basis for the head to toe exam, but this time I am a quiet… a reverent observer.

Somehow the process and the checklist are a comfort, and a recovery… for me from all of the excitement and stress of the events of the day.

At the end of the exam, only one thing remains. A heel stick must be performed on each infant to collect a blood sample to send off to screen for hereditary conditions. Each baby in turn screams in protest as the heel stick is performed. Then each baby in turn is comforted — swaddled and settled into a nursery crib for their own recovery. I, too, am escorted out of the nursery.

My quiet time with my babies is over, and I return to watch over Dianne until she awakes.

She has precedence in the babies’ care now… in their nursing, their sleeping, and their comfort. I will help… by swaddling the infants and changing their diapers, supplementing their feedings with sugar water, wrapping them in ‘biliblankets’, and burping them.

But Dianne is doing the breastfeeding — balancing both infants on a horseshoe-shaped nursing pillow until they latch on. Now it’s her turn to examine them from head to toe.

Our birth announcement

I think that the “mom” in this inscription (probably to my brother) is my Mom, who came down to Columbia to help out.

Epilogue

The specialty of family practice prides itself on seeing patients across the entire lifespan, from cradle to grave. The knowledge and ability to evaluate and treat neonates, preschoolers, children, and teens separates family physicians from Medical Internists and General Practitioners, who only treat adults.

Cover of the American Family Physician

The Road Less Traveled

{Prompt: Have you ever been lost?}

When Dianne took over driving the rental Jeep in Northern Arizona, I began to really understand why they call the roll-bar grab handles the “Oh, Shit! handles.”

Navajo Route 13 was marked as a secondary highway in the fold-out official Arizona State map, but it was unlike any ‘highway’ I had ever been on. It was more like a forestry trail. It was paved only with gravel and dirt as it ascended the Lukachukai mountains towards Buffalo Pass, and it seemed like a dry mountain stream was taking the same path in the other direction, its bed meandering from one side of the road to the other.

Navajo Route 16 Scenic Byway

When I was driving (before Dianne), I felt like I was going slowly — really slowly up the road, taking every precaution to keep the Jeep’s undercarriage from hitting bottom. Nevertheless, the Jeep was rocking from side to side and Dianne was looking a bit green around the gills. She asked me to stop.

So we stopped in the middle of this rut-filled road, between Chinle, Arizona, and Shiprock, New Mexico, and we switched drivers. This was back in 1993, or ’94, before we had children — before we had a last will and testament.

I walked to the passenger side, mounted the floorboard, buckled up, and grabbed the grab bar.

Dianne walked to the driver’s side, adjusted her seat, buckled up, and grabbed the steering wheel.

Then she started up this roller-coaster road with good and proper caution, winding across the gullies from side to side.

It wasn’t long, however, before she had the Jeep bouncing up the road, with gravel spitting out from under the tires, at an alarming velocity. She had a smile on her face. She didn’t look the least bit ill, anymore. She was loving it.

I was truly terrified.

I never really realized before how vastly your perspective can change in the short distance between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat. As a driver—the one in control—the road seemed as springy and exciting as a children’s inflatable bounce house. But as a passenger—the one without control—the road seemed as jolting and ominous as the crashing waves of a storm at sea.

I was never so happy as when the road began to level out, approaching the mountain pass, and the “perfect storm” began to resemble a car ride once more.

But now we had a different problem.

There seemed to be a paucity of directional signs. And the signs that we did see were bright yellow, and said something like, “Caution - Gas Pipeline” or “Danger - Natural Gas Field”. It turns out that we were entering the Nacogdoches Oil and Gas Yard, a place for extracting natural gas near Roof Butte in Apache County, Arizona.

We would have happily driven right by, but the road we were on began to split with no discernible wayside markers. Dianne took one turn, in the direction opposite the setting sun, and then another. Each time, the set of road choices seemed nearly identical.

Now we began to pass clusters of metal piping, emerging from the ground, in different places. We were well and truly in the middle of a field of natural gas wells.

A natural gas well in a more serene setting

And then the graveled surface of the road began to disappear into sets of parallel tire tracks. And then the tire tracks began to fade into a fine layer of light snow. It was time to stop.

This was in the early 1990s, before GPS systems were widely available (about 2007) — before smart phones and the internet. Although to be fair, we probably were in just about the least accessible place in the US for satellite reception. This adventure would have been just as ill-conceived today, as it was three decades ago.

Dianne was happy, now, to give up the steering wheel, and we switched drivers once more.

I turned the car around, and headed for tracks that were more recognizable — less covered in snow. Roads that were more, rather than less, traveled by. Channeling my inner Wild West scout/tracker instincts, I tracked our way back to a promising-looking gravel road heading down the other side of the mountains in an easterly direction.

I felt a wave of relief, and my grip on the wheel relaxed. I began to breathe more easily.

We both gave thanks to our heavenly stars that we found our way back towards civilization.

The sun was setting behind us as we made our way down onto the flat plain of the Red Valley of the Navajo nation, and past the awe-inspiring Ship Rock, an ancient landmark on the Navajo lands of northern New Mexico.

Ship Rock at sunset

All in all, this was a trip full of adventure. I think, on this particular trip, we went from Scottsdale, Arizona (the home of Dianne’s Uncle Victor and Aunt Mary) northwest to Canyon de Chelly (National Monument) in Arizona; then north to the Four Corners monument at the convergence of the four states—Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah; then north again to Telluride, Colorado, and the Telluride ski resort; then west to Moab, Utah, and Canyonlands National Park; and then south to Monument Valley in southern Utah before we returned to Scottsdale, Arizona.

The places we went were spectacular. We saw the 800 foot monolith of Spider Rock from the rim of Canyon de Chelly — a place that inspired the cartoons of Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner.

Spider Rock & Canyon de Chelly (Anne McKinnell Photography)

And from the floor of the canyon, we saw the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi civilization at the White House ruins — a backdrop for the Chinle wash, lined by cottonwood trees.

White House Ruins (Jim West - Science Photo Library)

We saw the old western mining town of Telluride surrounded by the peaks of the San Juan mountains.

Telluride, Colorado

And we skied on the wide-open southern slopes above “Mountain Village” at the Telluride ski resort. Before dusk, we carefully followed the meandering and narrow Telluride Trail ski path back down the shaded northern slopes of the ski resort right into the city. The warm glow of the incandescent lights was enchanting.

The lights of Telluride beneath the ski slopes.

We took the Shafer Basin Road up the side of a canyon at Canyonlands National Park, to the Island in the Sky visitor center, in Utah.

Shafer Basin Trail (National Park Service photo)

And we rented bicycles in Moab to go on a “relatively easy” mountain trail overlooking the Canyonlands. Once again, we found ourselves in unexpected difficulty. It was described as “a little climbing” at the start of the trail, but the reality was much worse.

Our little climb was a steep gradient on a fire road with virtually no traction. The road was almost entirely composed of a layer of loose sand, one to two inches deep. We spent at least a half an hour making our way to the canyon rim, alternately pushing our bikes, and spinning our wheels.

Once we arrived at the top of the plateau, the trail was much firmer, composed primarily of red rock, making for a relatively flat and pleasant ride with incredible views across the canyons of the park.

A representative view of the White Rim Trail

When we finished the wonderful excursion at the top, we slipped and slid our way back to the parking area at the bottom, where another group of riders were just jabbering away about how nice and easy the whole ride had been. Dianne focused a piercing glare on their beaming faces and demanded to know, in what world this was an easy ride. Well… it turns out that their tour company had dropped them off — bicycles, gear, and all — at the top of the trail! For them, the entire ride had been an easy pedal and a coast downhill.

The Road Less Traveled

It seems as if (as a matter of conserving our savings, or as a matter of defying the norms) we have always taken “the road less traveled by”.

Sometimes that takes us to an amazing place—a snow-covered pinnacle with a panoramic view.

But sometimes it takes us into a maze of utility roads in the middle of a natural gas mining field…

Somewhere in the mountains of the Navajo nation…

With a crappy map and no emergency supplies…

As the sun is setting.

Appendix

- The Road Not Taken - by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Enjoy the Moment

{Prompt: What would you consider to be your motto?}

— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

A Good Motto

It seems like a really good motto should be in Latin.

“Esse Quam Videri” — the North Carolina state motto — is one of my favorites. It means, “To be rather than to seem.”

“Maius opus moveo” — my high school motto — is also appropriate. It means, “Accept the greater challenge.”

“Carpe diem” — a widely understood quote from Horace — may be the closest to the heart of my core beliefs. It means, “Seize the day.”

Misquoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, I’ve often said in real life, “It’s the journey, not the destination”, or more simply, “Try to enjoy the journey,” as I try to remind myself and my companions not to be so serious — to try not to plan every single second.

It seems like good advice, as I see those ideas reflected in the principles of ‘Mindfulness’ and in the practice of Zen Buddhism. I’ve heard that — in a nutshell — depression is too much worry about the past, and anxiety is too much worry about the future, so we should “Live in the moment”.

In reality, that’s really hard to do. Boy Scouts taught me to “Be prepared.” That’s pretty much diametrically opposed to living in the moment.

And in medical school, we learned to “First, do no harm.” But to avoid doing harm, you pretty much had to foresee the consequences of your actions or recommendations. I wasn’t able to foresee future outcomes back then as readily as I was after I completed my medical training.

As I’ve grown to realize from experience, many mistakes are made from rushing headlong into adventure. And yet, ironically, we learn best and most consequentially when we learn from our misadventures.

The lessons of experience are especially painful — and memorable — and eventually, in hindsight, they can be really amusing. So now, when I tell someone to “Enjoy the moment”, I often add the corollary, “If it goes badly, at least it’ll make a good story someday.”

View near the top of Beehive Trail

The Beehive Trail

And there are many such stories in my life of mistakes that became legendary. There was the time when Dianne and I went hiking up the Beehive trail in Acadia National Park — a trail described as “challenging” and “adventurous” — offering “stunning views of Sand Beach and the Atlantic Ocean”.

Somehow we missed the part of the description that warned of narrow ledges, steep drop-offs, and areas that required rock scrambling (or we found the details too dire or fantastical to be believed).

We were given a firm warning in the form of a sturdy wooden sign nearly blocking the path, with the bold words, “IRON RUNGS AHEAD”. We still had a chance to turn back and take another trail, but we just didn’t know what it meant. So we both laughed at the cryptic nature of the warning and moved on ahead.

As we walked up the rocky path, it began to look less like a trail, and more like a ledge! The scrubby brush and loose pebbles began to fall away, opening up views of the corrugated surface of the ocean and the distant parking lot down below— cars appearing to be the size of miniatures in a model diorama.

We began to pass, on one side, the trunks and branches of trees rooted far below. On the other side, the rock face rose, as steeply as a ladder. Looking up along the rock face, we could see the figures of other climbers shuffling along the ledges up above, and above them, the blue backdrop and clouds of the Acadian sky.

This is when, as our progress slowed and we caught our breath, we saw a few things—things we had rarely (or never) seen on a mountain trail before:

1 - some people were stopping, looking at one another, worriedly considering —or reconsidering— their plans;

2 - some people were turning back, carefully and apologetically passing us by, on the narrow path, as they retraced their steps; some shaken by fear, others muttering oaths to themselves, upset at having to give in to their fears; and

3 - Iron rungs, like the rungs of a mountain ascent, leading up ten to twelve feet from the ledge we were on, to other ledges above — each ledge with seemingly greater and greater distance between the climbers above and the ground far below.

At this point, the trail became a bona fide climb of the 450 foot rock face and our understanding of the warning sign was completely answered. Between the two of us, nothing was said, surprisingly, and with one accord, we grabbed the iron rungs and went on. Only now, the climb took on more gravity (pun intended) as we were fully aware of the potential for calamity with any misstep or folly.

Dianne went first, and she climbed upward with a ferocity I had never seen before or have I seen since. And I was right on her heels (literally and figuratively) as I followed behind and below. Neither of us dared to stop and turn around to ‘enjoy’ the view — afraid of recreating a scene from “Vertigo” and losing either our footing or our courage.

With a fine layer of sweat glistening in the sun, we approached the bare summit, where we were wrapped in a cooling breeze. As the path leveled off, we found an area of solid footing, well away from the precipitous mountainside, and took our first looks at one another since we began our mad scramble up. It was a look of relief and disbelief.

“You’re gonna have to call the helicopter, ‘cause there is no way we’re goin’ back down that trail!”, said Dianne.

I chuckled and nodded. I had already resolved to find another, less death-defying way down, if I lived to see the top.

“Put the fear of God into you, and you can climb pretty fast!” I said.

“Well, we’re NEVER doin’ that again!” she replied.

Dianne near Beehive Mountain on a return visit.

In fact, we actually did climb Beehive mountain again, but we took the easy, more circuitous trail to the top, and we enjoyed every moment, every view of the rugged, glacier-carved Acadia National Park, speckled with various hues of greens and evergreens on the ochre rocks, blue sky above and blue-green ocean below, meeting at the horizon.

Various dots of fabricated colors indicating the presence of fellow tourists, in colorful garb, hiking in the distance. From the safety of our “easy” trail, we saw a line of those colored dots in the distance, young and foolish (dare I say, intrepid) adventurers, snaking up the side of the steep eastern face of Beehive. And we were okay with that.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” - Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

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

Sidebar - a Word about Courage

In medical school, when learning new skills, and practicing them on patients, we embraced the mantra, “Fake it ‘til you make it,” meaning: betray no evidence of fear or incompetence until you can actually do your job without fear or incompetence.

There was no allowance for apprehension or hesitation from our mentors, and a patient’s cooperation and confidence could be easily compromised by any evidence of nervousness or inexperience.

We were expected to “See one. Do one. Teach one.” This is a great way to develop courage and proficiency, and it works in every art or discipline:

“See one” (demonstration of a procedure) carefully memorizing the finer points and the steps required.

“Do one,” whether you’re ready or not, and learn from your mistakes.

Reflect on your experience and prepare to “Teach one” to the next person up.

“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.”

- John Wayne