My wife got me the perfect Valentine’s Day card.

I’m afraid I got her nothing. I had a severe flare-up of my back injury, and spent much of Valentine’s Day lying in an emergency room experiencing such intense agony that I was certain that I was going to die. Now it’s the day after, I didn’t die, but I’m now covered in patches and doped up on Valium. My response to my recovery was “Oh no, now I’ve got to prepare a week’s worth of lectures that include a whole lot of in-class problems, and I’ve got to make sure the lab crosses are on track,” so I’ve spent Sunday morning frantically updating lectures and sending notes to the students under the assumption that today was Monday and I needed to be ready for my 12:45 class.

I somehow moved from imminent fear of death to imminent fear of missing an hour of class is a serious long term concern over priorities to work over in my brain. I’ll put it on my list of things to get done this week. After I get through classes and labs.

Just letting you all know. I feel like I ought to remind everyone that you carry your self in a bloody gelatinous goo cradled in a bone bowl that you hold about 5 feet above the ground while tottering about on two long sticks, and a fall is a traumatic catastrophe, that no sensible designer would allow to persist. We ought to have four legs, or better yet eight, and our brain ought to be held much closer to the ground. Stupid evolution.

Also, the drugs we take to permit better healing ought not to put you in a stupor that leaves you chronologically confused and incapable of calculating the force generated by a 5 foot fall under an acceleration of 9.8 m/sec². Stupid medicine.

Stupid weather.

Anyway, I’m told it takes 3-5 days to recover from a stupid fall like this. I’m right on track, and insist that I will be recovered enough to inflict more genetics on my students by Monday. I’m supposed to be delivering an online quiz/exercise today, and I’ll have to see how that goes. Would you want to take a quiz composed by an addled brain?

This morning I started walking to work, and I stepped on some ice and went flying, to fall flat on my back, my neck, and my head. I remember that, and I recall curling into a fetal position, and then somehow magically I had gotten up and walked to the science building, climbed the stairs, and gotten in to my office. I have no memory of walking. But a half hour later I texted my wife, “I might need hospital” and blacked out again. Then she showed up in the office, and then somehow I’m in the emergency room. I kept blacking out.

Lots of tests followed. I was concussed but there was no brain bleed and no broken bones. I’m in serious pain, and my rib cage periodically clenches like a fist, but I’m coping with the aid of tramadol and some other muscle relaxant. I have a note from the doctor to excuse me from work for a few days, but come on, my job is not physically demanding, I think I can power through with the assistance of my wheelchair and a few drugs. Because I’m a stupid macho man.

I just found a photo of my maternal grandfather, Paul Clarence Westad.

The patch on his arm says he was an Army technician, 5th class — that meant he served in a non-combat role, but had specialized skills. He was a farm boy straight out of northern Minnesota, and I think his skill was being able to drive a tractor. From the little he said about his service, he was driving a bulldozer and building airfields on remote Pacific islands, but he didn’t talk much at all about what he did. He would tell stories about the giant lizards living in the rafters of his hut, and he had a secret stash of photos he smuggled out at the end of the war that showed burned and chopped up Japanese corpses, so I think part of his duties involved burial details.

He came out of the war with incipient alcoholism and possibly a bit of PTSD. He worked for the Washington State highway department driving a bulldozer, naturally enough, until the alcoholism left him a wreck. I have great memories of him when I was a child that turned into horror stories when I was an adult. I don’t know if I can blame the war, but maybe.

By luck, my mother and my aunts gave birth to three boys of roughly the same age: me and my cousins, Kelly and Don. Furthermore, they had second children who were all boys, my brother Jim to run with me, Matt to go with Kelly, and Tim with Don. When we got together as a family, that meant we had a built-in gang of 6 boys, and the adults could get us out of their hair by telling us to run off and do boy things. Catch garter snakes and frogs. Curl up and read a ragged box full of comic books. Go for a hike. Gather sticks to use as swords. Climb trees. Boys are predictable and controllable, to a point, and we were happy to run wild.

We weren’t all the same, though. I was the weakest of the bunch, a nerd who preferred the comic book option. Kelly was the wild child, the one who always had a pocket knife, who wanted to set things on fire, who sneered at the wimpy egghead, and who’d usually end up wrestling me to the ground to prove that he was the most macho. He was a piece of barbed wire with a leather handle. Don, on the other hand, was the actual big guy among us — Kelly didn’t pick fights with him — and was solid, secure, and reliably peaceable, an oak tree supporting his friends and family.

An anecdote told to me by my Uncle Ed:

Ed: “One of the cousins carved your name into the furniture in my room.”

Me: “It wasn’t me!”

Ed: “I know. You aren’t dumb enough to sign your vandalism, and Don would never try to get someone in trouble that way, so I know exactly who was responsible.”

Later, when I actually saw the carving, I discovered that they had misspelled my first name. It’s only four letters long!

Only ten years old, and we already had the personalities that would shape the rest of our lives. As you know, I grew up to be a teacher and biologist. Sadly, Kelly became even more of a trouble-maker, had a few run-ins with the law, and ended up dying of a heart attack, alone in an isolated house in Eastern Washington. Don became a Mormon, married a good Mormon woman, raised a family on a farm in Oregon, and was a pillar of his church and his community. He retired to Arizona, and lately was working to move his elderly mother to live near him so he could better take care of her. All of that was typical Don.

Yesterday I got a phone call to let me know that Don had abruptly died of a heart attack.

Now I don’t know what his mother, my Aunt Sally, is going to do. The reliable anchor of his family is no more. I’m waiting for a phone call with more news.

The gang of 6 boys is over (two of our brothers have also died), not that we were getting together regularly to cause trouble. It was reassuring to know that Don was was still solid and reliable, and now that is gone.

We had visitors this weekend! My son Connlann and his wife Ji, escorted our grandson Knut on the long drive from Washington state to Morris, Minnesota — and they’re driving all the way back today. My daughter Skatje also decided to trek from Madison, Wisconsin to our house, bringing our granddaughter Iliana. They’ve already gone back home.

So we had two grandchildren here at the same time and same place. Now we’re totally exhausted, but we’d invite them back any time for as long as they want to stay.

Here’s Skatje and Ji at the park.

Meanwhile, Knut was on the splash pad while Major Connlann stood sentry duty.

Iliana was on the playground equipment.

The one downside of this weekend was the Evil Cat, who was at her worst. She hated having company. Her thing was hiding under the furniture, snarling and hissing, reaching out to take swipes with her claws at anyone passing by. Including me. I got my ankles slashed a couple of times.

I hope they come back to visit some day, but the cat doesn’t.

I have seen a doctor. I was x-rayed. I was informed that I have lovely knees, with no signs of arthritic degeneration. I got a blood test for my uric acid levels — they’re normal. I got a pressure bandage. I have an appointment for the orthopedic doctor for next week or the week after. But there are no quick fixes.

I hobbled out in just as much pain as when I went in.

I guess I’m just supposed to cross my fingers and hope it gets better, and if it gets worse, see an orthopedist for more tests.

Right now that means I just sit and wait for a week or more, and walk as little as possible. I’m dreading having to get up to walk 10 meters to use the bathroom.