Smudging my digital fingerprints

My digital life is too complicated. I have too many usernames, addresses, accounts, IDs, passwords and profiles.

I started off intentionally trying to keep some parts of my digital life separate. Keeping home away from work. Keeping family away from hobbies. That sort of thing. But I am beginning to wish I was part of a younger generation that doesn't compartmentalize life that way. With all these accounts, it would be much simpler to just let me be me, regardless of which hat I'm wearing.

I am so tempted to just go through and start merging or deleting accounts and just let Google or Facebook be my conduit to the whole digital realm.

But that scares me too.

I thought I simplified my life when I was able to merge calendars and check multiple e-mail accounts on my cell phone. But I got digging around some of my accounts tonight and realized I don't know which one I use for some services anymore. And don't even get me started on things like phone numbers.

I couldn't tell you what my direct line phone number is at work if it wasn't printed on my business card. If my phone ever breaks and I'm left stranded on the side of the road, I wouldn't know who, or how, to call anyone for help. I guess I could call my parents. I remember their phone number. They've had the same one since 1973. That I can remember, but their address, which changed some years ago to make it easier for police and fire department find their house, well I haven't known their address since then. I think I have it in my GPS. If the battery is charged.

The day the mountain blew

For many Northwest residents who were old enough to remember it, May 18, 1980, invokes powerful, visual memories of the destructive eruption of Mount St. Helens.

Those too close to the mountain died. Other who were close enough to the mountain could actually see the eruption, and for those east of the blast, they can remember the massive ash cloud turning the sky dark and raining ash and pumice hundreds of miles away. Our house was in the path of the ash, but like most of the rest of the nation, my family watched the events on the TV news and read about it in the newspapers.

We weren't at home when the mountain blew.

We were visiting family in Nebraska. I was 14 at the time. Why were were in Nebraska at that time of year, I can't remember. My parents couldn't remember either. As dad remembers it, we heard of the eruption when we landed in Rock Springs, Wyo., for fuel. He thinks we were headed to Nebraska when we learned the news. But given that it was a Sunday, I wonder if maybe we were heading back to Oregon, and that news of the eruption turned us back.

To this day, I have bad memories of the Rock Springs airport. We seemed to have a helluva time getting past Rock Springs on our family flights to and from Nebraska. If we were ever to have heater problems or other mechanical issues, it required landing in Rock Springs. And there was absolutely nothing for a kid to do at the Rock Spring airport, which is way the hell-and-gone away from town.

I don't remember learning about the St. Helens eruption in Rock Springs, but I remember spending extra days in Nebraska, stressing about the school I was missing as a nerdy 8th-grader who wanted to get back home and not really understanding why this mountain, thousands of miles away from where we were then, and hundreds of miles from where we were trying to go, was stopping us from getting home.

Once we did get home, days later, it was a little easier to understand. There was still ash residue at our house in Eastern Oregon. Some friends had collected some of it into jars and told stories of what had happened there the day of the eruption.

I could empathize with all those European travelers earlier this spring who were unable to travel because of the volcano erupting in Iceland. I had been there too, 30 years ago. Although we were traveling by a small private plane, life and plans had to be put on hold until the air cleared.

Until Sept. 11, 2001, there had really only been 2 dates etched indelibly in my mind as major events of my lifetime. One was the day my daughter was born. The other was the day Mount St. Helens erupted.

In the years since, particularly after my daughter moved to Portland, I've gotten a bit nervous when St. Helens goes in to her more active periods. She has a might long reach when she's angry

For my family, we suffered a little inconvenience due to the mountain's wrath. Others suffered far worse. The scar left on the mountain itself is a very visible and permanent reminder of the awesome power Mother Nature can unleash when she's so inclined. Some of the Northwest's most scenic locations are a tribute to that power -- Crater Lake, all the volcanoes of the Ring of Fire in the Cascades, massive basalt flows, the Columbia Gorge. Perhaps it's knowing there is potential fire hidden beneath the icy caps of those mountains that adds to their beauty, majesty and mystique.

Thanks, to a very special nurse

There's one nurse I appreciate above all others this National Nurses Week. I've never been her patient, but I know Monica's nursing knowledge, compassion and caring firsthand.

She's my daughter's mom. She was, and is, amazing for that one, important fact and more than 19 years of making difficult choices. She's deserving of respect and admiration for that alone. She's part of my family. Our relationship, our family dynamic, is not always easy to explain. Our relationship was not always so good or so close.

The reason I appreciate her as a nurse was a turning point in our personal relationship. Circumstances allowed me to get past a lot of old, personal baggage and see her in a new way due to her professional abilities and personal compassion.

About a dozen years ago my dad was in a serious car crash. I was living in California and got the call that my dad was in a hospital in Eastern Oregon. I could tell, even over the phone, that my mom was worried. I made arrangements to get home as quickly as I could and asked Monica if she could pick me up at the airport. She graciously accepted and drove me straight to the hospital where my dad was in intensive care.

Monica had been an intensive care nurse at another hospital. She went with me into my dad's room in the ICU. The room looked pretty much like any other hospital room, but my dad looked anything but normal.

There was a tube down his throat to help him breath. His bald head bore the unmistakable signs of road rash. He was scraped and bruised all over. His hands were puffy and swollen, so that his wedding band cut into his ring finger, turning the flesh slightly cyan. The ring would eventually have to be cut off to keep him from losing his finger.

Beside his bed hung an assortment of bags pumping fluids and drugs into his body. Monica read the labels and her face sank. And my heart sank right along with it. She could tell that he was in bad shape by the medication they were giving him. Before I could muster the courage to ask her how bad, she summoned up her nurse's professionalism and started going down the litany of things hanging on the racks, telling me in layman's terms what they were and what they did.

One was a paralyzing medication, to keep him immobile while on the ventilator. There were IV fluids and another medication to make his kidneys produce urine so the fluids didn't build up in his system, which obviously was not working too well based on his swollen, bloated appearance. The others are lost to time, faulty memory and the shock of the moment. These were intense drugs for someone needing intensive care.

He had white stocking-like things one his legs designed to prevent blood clots in people who are lying still for long lengths of time. A urine bag hung at the foot of the bed.

I don't think I've ever felt so helpless. When Monica dropped me off at my parent's house I tried to thank her for picking me up, taking me to the hospital and explaining the medical treatment. I tried to thank her for being my friend. I tried to speak but couldn't, the words caught in my constricted throat and got hung up on my trembling lips. She offered me a hug, which a gladly accepted. In her embrace I broke down, crying like the small boy my parents brought to that very house 25 years earlier.

In short order, I'd been hit with all sorts of stuff. There was the realization that my dad might not make it and I could not do anything about it. I had never stopped to consider that someday he might not be around and I might become the man of the family.

At that moment, I found that the woman entrusted with our daughter's primary care was also the person to whom I entrusted my own vulnerability and fear. She was the person I also turned to for advice for my father's care.

Dad eventually got better and was discharged from the hospital, although he didn't know I had even been there. He'd been in a drug-induced coma for much of his care. While Monica was not his nurse I am convinced that neither he, nor I, would have come out of the ordeal nearly as well without her help. Neither dad, nor I, are very good at asking for help. Lots of people helped my dad in the immediate aftermath of his crash, from the good Samaritans at the scene, to the ambulance crew, to the doctors and nurses at the hospital, to the family and friends that came to his bedside at the hospital.

When we are at our weakest, our most vulnerable, we need people to look out for our interests and our well being. Sometimes we need them to make critical decisions we can't make for ourselves. Sometimes we aren't even conscious enough to see their faces or know their names. Oftentimes those people are nurses.

I feel fortunate that my daughter, who seems to catch every bug that passed through the area, has a mom, who is a nurse, to watch over her. And I am grateful that a dozen years ago, when my dad and I needed help, Monica -- and other nurses who's names I never even learned -- were there.

Thank you, Monica, and all nurses, who give so much of yourselves to care for others.

Can a former love be a friend? It depends

I posed the following questions the other day on Twitter and Facebook: Is it normal, or abnormal, to have exes as friends on Facebook or following on Twitter? How many exes do you have friending/following?

I wasn't sure if I would get any responses at all, but I got several. I appreciate people willing to share their thoughts on the issue. Here's what I got:

3 people responded on Twitter; 8 commented directly on the Facebook post and 1 sent me a message on Facebook.

Women commented more than men. 3 men replied, compared to 9 women.

Two of the people didn't divulge what they thought was normal behavior. Those comment questioned what the definition of normal was and whether I was normal.

And that's really what I was trying to figure out: Am I normal? There are women among my Facebook friends and Twitter followers than I have had relationships with in the past. Based on the replies I got, that's not uncommon. Six of the the 12 people who replied indicated that still had contact with people who they dated or had relationships with. Two other did not say if they had former lovers among their friends, but they indicated it was "normal" to do so.

Five people included numbers in their replies, which ranged from 1 to 12.

Two women who are both married indicated that their husband is aware of the relationship(s) they had with the person or people who are also Facebook friends.

Two people had pretty strong feelings about the issue and do not maintain contact with people they have dated. I respect those views and I even understand them a little better now than I might have earlier in my life.

One of my exes had similar views when we were together. She kept no photos of people she had dated and had seemingly tossed out all mementos of any kind. The fact that I still had some contact with some people from my past caused stress on our relationship. So, I cut off a lot of ties to my past during that relationship, not just to people I had dated but also to friends and family members. In the end, the relationship died (or was killed) by something else. I found I needed the people in my past to help me move forward and have tried to rebuild ties over the years with one notable exception -- the woman who had been so jealous of my past. It would be difficult to find any signs of her, or our time together, in my life now. I know she is on Facebook, but have made no effort to reach out. She taught me how to do that.

I don't know if I'm normal or not, but I most identify with this comment I received via Twitter: "I think it's a shame not to be friends with people you once loved. I understand it's not always possible."

In there interest of full disclosure, there are people on my friends list on Facebook and/or who follow me or I follow on Twitter who I have dated in the past.

Thanks to all who responded to the question. And thanks to women who have been such an important part of my past who are still part of my life, though in a platonic and far more limited way.

But the biggest thanks should be reserved for the understanding and trusting spouses, lovers and partners who are willing to allow people to maintain some form of contact with the people who have been important in a lifetime. Not everyone can, or wants to do that.

I hope whatever is normal for you and the important people in your life helps you find fulfillment and happiness in your life and relationships.

The man with the long beard makes an unlikely Santa Claus

I haven't written a post here in about two and a half months and that post was about a trip my dad and I made to Nebraska for his brother's funeral, and in the time since that post was made two of the people we saw on that trip have also died.

The latest call came today. My dad called me while I was at work. He never does that. My parents rarely call, but when they do it's almost always bad news.

When I got the call in early November about my Dad's brother in-law Doug dying, that was not too much of a shock. He was not in good shape when we saw him in September. He was 86 and in failing health. It was sad, but not a stunning development.

One of the reasons I felt it was important to make that trip was to see and spend some time with family because I knew some members of the family might not be there the next time I was able to get back there. My dad is the youngest of his siblings and my parents are now both in their early 70s. I think I've only been back to Nebraska four times in the last 27 years. All four of those trips were for funerals. There have been funerals I've missed too, like my grandmother's. I'm not a big fan of funerals. I'd skip my own if I could, but missing Grandma's was hard, even though I had said a tearful goodbye to her when she left Oregon for Nebraska not long before her passing. I didn't go back for my Uncle Doug's funeral either, but was glad I got to sit and talk with him and hear him my dad share stories just a few weeks before he died.

The call today threw me for a bit of loop though in a very different way. Dad was calling to tell me that my cousin, Mike, had died. I have a lot of cousins that are quite a bit older than me, but Mike is not one of them. He's actually younger. It's also upsetting because a member of my family is gone and I didn't really know him that well, and now I never will. Sadly, there are far too many members of my family that I don't know very well. Too may years and too many miles separate our time spent together.

The amazing thing I experienced on the last couple of trips to see family is that the years and the miles didn't seem to matter. The family bonds are still there.

My cousin Mike served as host on the last trip my dad and I made to Nebraska together. Mike gave up his bed during our stay and he made sure we felt at home. He also helped us catch up on the happenings within the family and took us out on the town one evening.

I was quite impressed with Mike. His mother has been quite ill, recovering from a stroke, and Mike has been taking care of her. He had become her full-time caregiver. I remember asking myself: "Could I do that?"

I didn't know the answer, if push really came to shove. The best I could come up with was maybe. And then again, maybe not.

Mike had also cultivated a distinctive look for himself with an amazingly long beard. He looked like he was auditioning for a spot in the ZZ Top lineup. I kept expecting him to flip it over his shoulder, or swoosh the hairs back and forth in dramatic fashion like Pai Mei in Kill Bill Vol. 2. How did he manage to ignore that thing dangling from his chin?

I know Mike had a keen interest in music and played guitar, but I never heard him play. There is much I don't know about him. Over the years I've been much closer to some of his siblings. His sister Tammy was my babysitter when I was young. Mike's brother Bill was a little older than me, but I always looked up to him, almost like a big brother. I always wanted to hang out with Billy. I wanted to be like Billy. He just seemed so cool to me. Mike's brother Randy was older still, and I didn't know him as well when I was young, but we have got to know either other quite well in more recent years. Randy moved in with me for a while when I was living and working in Hermiston about 20 years ago. He is funny and can always make me laugh. Because he was older, and had maintained his ties to Nebraska, even over years of working in Oregon, he knew more about the older generations of the family. He was my connection to the family. Their oldest brothers, Steve and Keith, were already out of the house by the time of my earliest memories. They were more like uncles than cousins.

When we were children, I didn't spend much time with Mike. He was the same age as my brother Ron and I felt too old, too mature to hang out with the younger kids. Ironically, I did every thing I could to hang out with Bill, who was about as many years older than me as I was older than Mike. Bill was much more magnanimous with his time than I was with mine.

I regret that now. The regrets are piling up with age. I used to arrogantly tell a former girlfriend that I had no regrets. It may have been true then, back in my college days, but then there wasn't much life lived to realize the mistakes that would haunt me. Now the haunting spirits of regret emerge with frightening regularity.

I got an e-mail from Mike a few days ago. It included a whole bunch of pictures of a guy who builds scale model airplanes out of metal. I thought about writing back just to see how things were going. But I was annoyed too because all the photos attached to the message were clogging up my e-mail program and it was taking forever to see the text of the message and the photos. In frustration I just tossed the message into the trash and never hit the reply button. Hindsight, being what it is, I certainly regret that now.

If I could go back a few days, I would write to Mike and say something, anything. And if I could go back to those college days I would not be so boastful about lack of regret with a certain young woman. Isn't that how it goes? Once so proud of a lack of regrets, now here I am facing regrets about things said and things left unsaid.

It's easy to forget that I come from a big family. I'm glad I got to go back to Nebraska in September to spend some time with Mike and Uncle Doug and so many other members of both sides of my family who I now so rarely see. We don't get all the time we want to do all the things we want with all the people we want. I'm thankful for the time I got and for the chance to learn how strong family ties can remain, in spite of time and distance.

Grieving can be a lonely experience, but it's mitigated when it's shared with others close to you. I'm so sorry for the loss Mike's death will mean to family and friends, particularly to his mother who has been able to live in her own home with Mike's help.

I really haven't been looking forward to Christmas this year for a very pathetic reason. Finances are tight and I am not going to be able to buy gifts for as many people as I would like to and won't be able to spend as much on the gifts that are given. I was even thinking about not going to see my parents and brothers to avoid any awkwardness over gifts or the lack thereof. Silly. And sad that it takes the loss of a cousin to remind me of what I should already know. Certainly there will be a some grieving over this holiday season, but I shall attempt to make this also a season for celebrating life and family -- those I will be fortunate enough to see for Christmas, those far away, and those gone but not forgotten.

Mike, Steve and Keith West at graveside services for Clyde West in September 2009 at the Mitchell, Neb., cemetery.

Heading back up the Oregon Trail

My dad and I headed back to Nebraska for his oldest brother's funeral last week. It was good to see family, but I wish it were under more pleasant circumstances.

Happy birthday, baby brother

Tuesday, Aug. 25, is my brother Dean's birthday.

The year Dean was born was an eventful one for our little branch of the West Family Tree. As my mom was getting ready for labor, my dad was buying a business in the thriving metropolis of Echo, Ore.

About a month after Dean was born, my dad piled all of our belongings into a moving truck in Western Nebraska and then he piled my mom, brother Ron, me and newborn Dean into a small plane and flew us to our new home in Oregon. We landed literally right outside our new backdoor. Our new home, on a small private airstrip out in the country, was also the home base for my dad's new business.

I doubt my brother remembers the trip. I was about a month shy of my 8th birthday. I can't say I remember a lot of it myself either.

It's hard to believe all of that was 36 years ago.

I was trying to figure out what to do for my brother for his birthday. My first thought was to shave part of his head, so he was a hairstyle more like the ones sported by my dad, brother Ron and I. But since I won't actually see my brother on his birthday, I opted instead to embarrass him long distance with a few photos from his recent past.

Happy Birthday Dean!

Prom night

Tonight is prom night for my daughter and her boyfriend. Here are some pictures of them getting ready for the big night with a little help from my daughter's mom.

Much too old to feel this damn young

My daughter turns 18 today. I'm not quite sure how that happened. I mean, I've been witness to her growth and maturity over the years, so I know it's her and she is, indeed, a young woman. But I don't feel like I'm old enough to have an adult daughter. Some days I don't feel like I'm adult yet myself, particularly in my after-work-hours life. At work, I feel mature and in control, but afterwards, not so much.

Oh, sure, I see signs of the middle-aged dude I undoubtedly am when I look in the mirror. The gray hair is not young-guy hair. The wardrobe is no longer a young-guy wardrobe. But inside my head, I still feel as mixed up, confused and insecure as I did on the day she was born. OK, maybe not that confused.

That was a very confusing time. Little did I know that tiny little girl would change my life so such massive ways.

Our story could have been much different. I feel lucky to have her in my life at all. The time around her birthday has always been a special time. Even when I lived far away, I used to time my vacation to spend her spring break with her, which always fell right before her birthday. Now that I've moved back to Oregon, I get to see her much more often, but I miss those intensive week-long visits sometimes, especially near her birthday.

Suzanna is a senior this year and will graduate from high school this summer. Then it will be college and all too soon she will be starting her only life with her own career aspirations and life. There is no guarantees that we will be able to be together for birthdays and holidays and family outings.

I've learned to appreciate every moment, every conversation. Each one is one more than I thought I would have.

Suzanna is very much her mother's daughter. She is beautiful and smart and a loving, giving person. I could not be prouder of her.

Happy Birthday Suzanna. I hope you have a great one and I look forward to celebrating with you this weekend.

2008, we hardly knew ya

I have been so busy dealing with weather adventures, holiday issues, family stuff and work that I really haven't realized that the New Year was almost here.

I used to say the New Year's was my favorite holiday. It's a date with so much optimism. It was a nice counterbalance to the pessimist in me. For many years, Christmas tended to be a disappointment. It think i expected too much of myself and those around me.

That changed somewhere along the way. I think that happened when I quit concentrating on myself and the things I wanted and started thinking about concentrated on my daughter and making the holiday good for her in some way.

Maybe that's what they mean about the spirit of the season being about giving rather than receiving.

So, maybe now that Christmas is better, great even, I have less need for a hope for a better year to come along because the one ending was ending on something of a sour note.

In the long run, maybe that puts less pressure on the new year, when the old one ends well. And all, in all, 2008 turned out to be OK, thanks to family and friends. That is if you don't take the economy and my bank account into consideration. But 2009 promises to be a big one too. It's the year my daughter graduates from high school.

Nothing says the holidays like sharing a communicable disease

In addition to enjoying great food and wonderful time with family over the Thanksgiving holiday and weekend, I came home with a cold.

I knew I would probably get one. Spending parts of four days with a sick family member made it unlikely I would escape in perfect health. And as long as the bug is out of my system by next Monday, it's all good.

I have a trip to take next week. Vegas baby!

But for now, I'm curled up under an afghan and wishing my sinuses would clear.

Pumpkin magic

It wasn't my normal time of year to come home for a vacation. In the years I lived in California, it became my routine to come back to Oregon during my daughter's spring vacation, which was always close to her birthday. And whenever possible, I would try to come home as close to Christmas as possible.

Why I came home in October eight years ago is lost to posterity. But for a change I came home near my birthday. I got to thinking about that trip over the weekend. I had to do some research to figure out just when it was I made that trip.

The reason it came to mind is that over the weekend I visited one of the same spots, with many of the same people important to my life. We went to the Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island in Portland to pick out some gourds for carving. There was a certain symmetry to the visit. I wish I had a scanner to scan in some of the photos I took on that trip eight years ago. I would love to post them side by side with some of the pictures I took this weekend.

Eight years apart, but it was like that pumpkin patch was a portal through time. Same place, different times, all side by side in my mind and my emotions.

Unravelling a family mystery

I've never known much about my family history. I spent my early childhood in a small town in Nebraska that both of my parents' families had lived in for a long time. I knew one of my great grandparents. But I never really knew much about my family heritage. About all I knew was that my mom's side of the family was German and had come to America from Russia.

That's all.

My father's side has been a complete mystery. From the few conversations I've had about the family line with my father, I think that lineage is a mystery to him too. For the most part, it's been a mystery I've not felt too compelled to solve.

Something seems to have changed.

I'm not quite sure what inspired me to do it, but I've started looking into my family tree. Maybe it's the fact that they were talking about ancestry recently on the Today Show (although I didn't see any of those segments, just the promos for them). Then, there was a commercial for a website that allows people to trace their family tree on TV the other day. And as simple as that, I started a search.

Maybe it should not be such a surprise that I've become captivated by this exploration. It sort of fits what I do for my day job. Finding information, looking for records, trying to answer difficult questions is part of my job.

If the path I've followed is true, I've traced my father's line back 10 generations, to the year 1680 in England, before I ran out of leads. I've been able to get back about the same number of generations on one branch of my mother's side of the family, also to England, where that trail runs cold in 1724. I'm not sure if I can expect to find much about my maternal grandfather's family or not. I did find records indicating they were German, but I have jet to find a name for my grandfather's grandfather. So, the search will continue.

I've enjoyed the challenge of trying to add small pieces of the puzzle together to learn what the next piece reveals. It may not result in a story for print in the normal way I deal with stories, but it may tell me more about my own story, the things about myself that I never knew I wanted or needed to know.

Now, as my daughter is becoming a young adult, it seems like that's a story that I may want to tell her one day.