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.

This morning, I was holed up in the local hospital getting some routine tests done. I’m getting old, I get aches and pains, so every once in a while I have to go in and get inspected detected injected and selected, just because. If anything unusual is going on in my body, I go in to find out if it’s anything to worry about. The latest unusual thing is that for the last several years I often get arthritic flare-ups in my ankles and knees, but this year, to my surprise, my joint pains are gone. Just completely ache-free. I go for walks and my limbs are moving smoothly with hardly a glitch. This is not right, I am not at all used to this. Maybe my legs have died and are twitching zombie-like with no feeling?

I gave the doctor a small bucket of my blood and they measured all kinds of stuff, and to further my surprise, I am 100% grade-A normal, every indicator smack in the middle of the range. I have no excuses anymore. I am weirdly healthy.

We checked Vitamin D (because Minnesota) and Vitamin B12 (because Vegetarian) and again, boringly average and perfectly normal. My blood pressure is 120/70, like it’s supposed to be.

Oh, one enlightening exception: my %monocytes and %eosinophils were both absurdly high, but the doctor deflated my excitement by telling me that right now, that’s also entirely normal — those cell types are indicators of viral infections, and we’re still seeing symptoms of a recent pandemic. I guess if you’ve been exposed to some mystery virus in the last 4 years, you’re likely to have the proportions of those immune cells elevated.

Just to be sure, I also got my COVID and flu vaccines.

I am not accustomed to this degree of normality. I am not used to this at all. It might mean I’m about to die mysteriously.

My son, Major Conlann A. Myers, has been published in Army Communicator, with a short history and current status of the 51st Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced (ESB-E) (his unit) on page 35, if you’re interested. I know I am. This is the best we get, though – vague statements about the broad general area of deployment, next to nothing about timing.

The 51st ESB-E is postured to deploy to the United States Central Command area of operations (AoR) in 2024 as the first full ESB-E, taking over a mission that has previously been filled from ESBs and providing new capabilities to the area of responsibility. The mission will provide the Army the opportunity to improve the tactical network supporting U.S. forces in the AoR with the newest equipment and prove out the ability of the ESB-E concept to fully replace existing ESBs.

We know it’s soon and it’s the Middle East, and we’ll be worrying the whole time.