Here I am in cyberspace. Me, Mike Mullen (no, not the former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman), here where I almost swore I'd never be. I never really said "never"; but I'm sure those of you who know me well thought that you heard me say it. And I was pretty convinced myself that I could resist this part of the computerized world until the very end.
Funny, sort of: It's that "very end" that's finally brought me to cyberspace, the Internet, blogging,
and all those computer places I've poo-poohed for years. The "very end" began in the summer of 2012, when I began experiencing breathing problems, which hospitalized me in December, which resulted in a diagnosis of incurable (I'm not ready yet to say "terminal") lung cancer, which brought our son Patrick home for the first time in several years for the week before Christmas and brought my brothers Bob and Tom for a week's reunion in February 2013.
All of this took place in the little town of Vicenza in northern Italy, where I've worked (until retirement in 1996) and lived since 1964. Just another "expat" American, wondering what the heck kept me over here all these years ( a question I'll probably try to answer later on).
During the brothers' reunion I read to Bob and Tom some things I'd written over the years, and they seemed to enjoy hearing them. Their enjoyment reminded me that many of my family and friends often told me how much they enjoyed my letters to them and that they'd saved many of them. I'd always thought I might collect those letters some day and put them in a "book".
Maybe now, I thought, is the time for that -- before I come to my "very end". Maybe my family and friends would enjoy other stuff I've written -- birthday and anniversary rhymes (I refuse to call them poems; too pretentious), a speech or two, other nonsense stuff -- and maybe I'll write some new things while I'm at it. So, I concluded that the only good way to get this project going was to jump into cyberspace.
Well, here I am.
But, before I start filling cyberspace with my so-called "project", an explanation of the "Rojo" name of my blog. My college classmates at Notre Dame called me "Moon" because of the popular "Moon Mullins" comic strip of those times. It was common for anyone named Mullen or Mullins to be called "Moon". I'm also known to become very talkative around full moon time; but I never really felt that nickname defined the real me.
My first nickname was "Rojo", given to me as a Jesuit High School freshman in Tampa, Florida, by my football teammate Chris Faggot. He simply explained that he was going to call me "Rojo" because I was "red in the head". He meant my red hair, of course (I used to have hair up there); but over the years I've come to realize that I'm "Rojo" inside my head, too: A red personality with passionate beliefs about the world's social order and sometimes prone to red hot anger at fellow humans who don't live up to my standards (and often, too, anger at myself for falling short of those standards). I guess you might call me an angry old man, but that's not the only characteristic of me as "Rojo". And I hope the things I've written that I'm now launching into cyberspace will reveal a lot of other traits (maybe a few good ones) of my Rojo-ness.
- Then, too, Patrick had been on my case for years about getting a computer, so we could communicate frequently in cyberspace (instead of just phone calls every week or so). While he was here he showed me some writing he'd done recently -- a short story and the beginning of a novel -- and I was both proud and jealous that he'd found the time in his busy life to take on some creative writing projects, while I -- supposedly the "writer" in the family -- had done nothing for the nearly seventeen years since I retired. All that inspired me to write about my five-day hospitalization ("The Pacer", etc., which you can read here later) and started me thinking about this project as a way to help me stay calm and keep busy until the "very end".
The Brothers' Reunion I mentioned earlier also helped this project along. Bob and Tom said they wanted to do something to help me through these tough times -- their idea was to fund installation of a shower in our house's downstairs bathroom -- but I suggested, instead, that they buy me a computer system to get my writing on the Internet for family and friends. Since then, however, our other son Marty and his wife Giovanna (always by our side because they live here in Vicenza, too) have donated the computer equipment and did the Internet groundwork. So, Bob and Tom -- God bless 'em -- are off the hook (unless they want to get me into a downstairs shower again).
Those of you who know us well know, of course, that Barbara is my constant inspiration for whatever I do (well, only for the good things I do; I take sole responsibility for the other crap). Now, during this trying time -- more trying for Barbara, I think, than for me -- she's just grown more loving and caring. Hard to imagine Barbara being more loving and caring than she's always
been, but it's true, and I think that's why I'm not suffering at all these days -- not physically and especially not psychologically. As the line goes in one of my favorite jokes -- about a man whose friends think he "looooks baaad" -- "but I feeels goood.
So, this is "Rojo's Blog", and we'll get it underway with more stuff next time. Hope you find it interesting and entertaining.
❤️
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