STARTING SCHOOL

August 24, 2010 - Seattle, WA - 80+ degrees, no cloud in the sky!

• It felt like starting 1st grade all over again. We arrived at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance just before our first appointment at 11:00 am. Drove into the wrong parking lot, so Kriss and I walked over to the right building while Hanna and Cleo found parking. One office after another, one new face and name to remember. Question: Why am I here? Not a simple answer. Mostly, we want to prolong my life and continue to serve God. Forms and more forms. Homework; read reams of material, but don't doodle on anything or nurse Dorothy will not be happy with me. All the nurses and staff are obviously "called" to work here. Those that are not weed themselves out in short order. You are surrounded constantly with the process of life and death. It's like a fast forward view of human existance. You see people literally reborn with successful transplant outcomes and people who look ready for their last breath. Grey, frail, shuffling through the halls, clinging to the dignity of humanity, buoyed by the compassion and care of the staff. Shockingly, many of them come alone. How do you face this without an entourage of loving family? I am an amazingly rich man. Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote about true wealth; he essentially felt that the only treasure in life was deep human relationships. The value of shared life experience was worth more than any material possession. You can have every "thing" in this world, but if it costs you your soul; "a quoi ca sert?" (what good is it). I can't help but pray for everyone around me. Like people stranded at sea in a lifeboat, we wait for healing, we desperately cling to the hope of remission. God is with us all. Healer of the nations, be merciful and give us life!
• For the rest of this week it will be meeting after meeting, procedure after procedure; Finance Consultation, how will you be able to pay for $250,000 worth of treatment?, praise God for a good Medical Insurance; EKG to test heart health; Conference with Dr. Fero, head of the Rose Team;
• Social Work Assessment, am I stable enough to get through all this; Dental Exam; Bone Marrow Analysis, including sedation and recovery; Pulmonary Function Test; Dental Examination/Followup;
• Orientation  for family caregivers
• That's just the first week. It gets a lot more involved and complex week 2. By the grace of God we will persevere. We are held afloat by the prayers and love of God's people. We can never thank them enough for all the compassion we receive.

Lapla Country School - September 1957 - Golden Valley County - North Dakota

I don't know if I slept a wink last night. I have been waiting three years in order to walk the 1/4 of a mile up the hill to attend Lapla School with my brothers and sisters. Their are 5 Petersons enrolled at Lapla in the Fall of 1957; Danny, Ophie, Tom, Kathy and me, Robin. My parents tried to get me enrolled when I was 5 years old, but the school board would make no exceptions in spite of my ability to read and write. By the time I was 6 years old, I could read, write, add, subtract, multiply and divide to such a level that my father called me his "little mathematician". On more than one occasion, the "Old Man", J. O. Peterson, would tow me into Beach, ND and find some farmer having coffee at the lunch counter inside the Husky Gas station. "Pop" would pull out a couple of sheets of addition and subtraction figures and challenge the farmer to a contest with his "little mathematician", the loser had to buy lunch. I don't remember ever losing that contest, and I can still remember how good those hamburgers tasted. They grilled the buns lightly with real butter before slapping on the hamburger, cheese, mayo, ketchup and dill pickle. The fries were made by hand in the kitchen and filled up a 5 year old for at least 3 hours.

Mrs. Kittleson was our teacher, or warden, however you wanted to describe it. Lapla was a classic one room country school, with no running water and two privies 40 yards from the school house for sanitary purposes. Some interesting playground equipment was installed between the school house and the outhouses. They were so well anchored into the ground that they are still there today. An old building for storage stood out within the wind-break trees and we would find treasures inside from time to time. I was so excited about my first day in school that I was beside myself, literally. After perfunctory introductions and the arranging of students by grades, it was time to say the Pledge of Allegiance and get started with 1st grade English. There were a couple of us in 1st grade and Mrs. Kettleson appropriately began to teach us the alphabet. I was so bored and hyper that I made some smartalect comment about how dumb this was and things went downhill from there. Noting that I could already read and write, Mrs Kittleson finished our lesson and sent us back to our desks with double lined paper to practice writing the alphabet. This was not living up to my expectations of what a thrilling adventure going to school could be. I filled up my page in minutes. With nothing more to do, I decided it was time to wander around the classroom and check in with other brothers and sisters to see if they were doing something more stimulating. Thus began a day long series of inappropriate actions on my part and escalating responses by Mrs. Kittleson. At first, she calmly and kindly informed me that students must remain at their desks so that they would not disturb or distract other students from their tasks. As she was informing me of these essential pedagogic principles, brother Tom kept making faces and taunting me out of Mrs. Kittleson's range of vision. She ended this instruction with that infamous warning about severe consequences for students of any age who refused to follow school rules. Within minutes, I had finished reading a book about some animals who lived in a house filled with bags of popping corn. Somehow the house caught fire and they had so much popcorn that it all popped and was pushing the occupants out the doors and windows. I decided it was time to check in with fellow siblings. Mrs. Kittleson decided it was time to set an example. She marched me to her desk, laid me across her lap and proceeded to give me the lightest spanking I had ever had. The entire time she kept explaining how sad this was that I had to be punished on my first day at Lapla School, but that she felt it was necessary to put an end to this inappropriate behavior early in the day. My response was to make ridiculous faces at my fellow students during the spanking and I couldn't feel it at all. After the third administration of corporal punishment with increasing severity, Mrs. Kittleson was feeling the strain and decided she would tie my feet to the base of the desk by my shoelaces to insure that I would remain seated. Well, it wasn't long before she turned her back to write something on the blackboard and I reached down and untied my workboot laces and this time I eluded her grasp for several minutes before judgment #4 was inflicted. Nearing the end of her tolerance for this most difficult of Peterson children she decided to tie both my feet and hands to the desk, just to insure that I stayed put. Somehow I managed to get loose once again and this time she put some real effort into the spanking and I decided maybe it was in my best interest to accede to her demands. Maybe it was her final statement about sending a note home to my father at the end of the day that turned the tide. For whatever reason, I was a fairly model student the rest of the day and then began to dread the note sent home. It came swiftly and decisively. Pa read the note, grabbed me by the seat of my pants and gave me a couple of serious swats and my delinquant days at Lapla School were ended. My father sent a note back to Mrs. Kittleson explaining that maybe she might give me more advanced work to do and that he was certain that she would have no further problems with my behavior, he was right. Within weeks I learned to appreciate Mrs. Kittleson. She figured out how to stimulate my curiousity and exploit my level of knowledge. We had a visit with the Little Beaver Country School sometime in the next few weeks. Mrs. Kittleson suggested a competition in addition and subtraction amongst Little Beaver 2nd and 3rd graders and Lapla students, including one first grader, namely, me. I'm not sure whether or not she had a bet on the side with the Little Beaver teacher concerning a certain 1st grader who she was certain would win, but she was awfully nice to me for the next few weeks. The only thing about winning math competitions at school was that there were no hamburgers or french fries for winning and I had to be content with just human adulation. At least I thought it was adulation, later in life I would realize it might just have been jealousy or resentment. My career at Lapla School was cut short within 2 months of its beginning. My parents decided I would do better under my Mother's tutelage at the Little Knife Country School where she was the only teacher. Thus ended a promising start to an academic career in Golden Valley County, North Dakota. I would never again attend school in that county, but if you visit the Lapla Schoolhouse, now moved into Beach, North Dakota as a museum, you can find my name in the list of students registered for the Fall term 1957.