Eggs Rolls, Eclipses, and Life and Death Matters

Not satisfied with the egg roll recipe I produced from the Meals and Memories cookbook our family produced for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, Hiromi is poring over his Japanese cookbooks for a better one. He's on cookbook number 5 at the moment. He's sure there must be more veggie options for the filling than cabbage and onion. If I was as strongly of this persuasion as he is, I would substitute carrots for part of the cabbage in my recipe, and forge ahead. He is obviously more painstaking than I.

We're planning an Iwashige family meal here tomorrow, and egg rolls with rice is the main dish.

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After many years of feeding birds here and often seeing Downy Woodpeckers in the trees, but never at the feeders, this past week I finally saw one at the feeder--several times. We've had an abundance of Red-Bellied Woodpeckers visiting for the past few years. I suspect that at most feeders the frequency of these visitors is reversed.

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For the Friday afternoon activity yesterday, everyone at the high school went to the grade school to observe the displays for their Knowledge Fair--an expansion of the Science Fair they've done the past few years. Some of the displays I remember featured different kinds of foods--cultured milk products, other naturally fermented foods, and surprising food ingredients.

I did a double-take at Dietrich's samurai display when I spied what I was pretty sure used to reside in Joel's bedroom--a set of Japanese swords. I was right. They were borrowed from Joel. Also in the weapons department, Travis displayed a trebuchet that he had built with his Dad's help. Think of it as a catapult, for demonstration purposes, launching tennis balls, hedge balls, or softballs--all in lime green--waaaaay out into the ball field. Pity the person who's standing out there to catch, not knowing which of the three is flying toward him this time.

Someone demonstrated the fanciest marble rolling device I have ever seen. It was reminiscent of a small building in an Asian architecture style, with two possible routes to the bottom, each containing various nifty structures to traverse on the way down. The marbles automatically moved back to the top under the power of a small electric motor that forced each marble up through a tube to the spill-out location at the top.

Quite a few students chose to feature a specific country, perhaps a country that someone in their family had visited or lived in for a time.

The public Knowledge Fair event actually didn't happen till the evening, so a few displays were not quite fully functional in the afternoon.

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I got up a little after 5:30 this morning and looked out windows on all sides of the house to see if I could spot the moon and see an eclipse. I hadn't ever seen exactly when it would be visible here, and when I finally found the moon in the west, through lots of tree branches, I wasn't desperate enough to get into warm clothes and troop outside to get an unobstructed view. I think I was probably several hours too late.

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An email from Cold Stream Nursery and a look at their website reminded me that I wanted some time to locate a source for thornless hedge (Osage Orange) trees. I found it at Sunshine Nursery in Western Oklahoma. Along with this, there are also Elms with resistance to Dutch Elm Disease and Elm Leaf Beetles. This nursery specializes in trees, shrubs, and perennials that thrive in a harsh environment. They are either native plants from the dry southern prairies or from areas with a climate similar to that of Western Kansas and Oklahoma.

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LaVon Bontrager was in very precarious shape one day last week when he needed surgery while his body was hosting an infection in his blood. Everyone was warned that his heart could stop during surgery under these conditions, and the surgery team had instructions from the family not to try to restart it if that happened.

The tumor on his liver is blocking the bile duct, and an external drain has not been able to keep up with getting rid of this toxic substance that a normal body disposes of harmlessly.

In what seems like strange terminology contortions, the tumor is apparently not considered cancerous--not malignant, but benign. It's clear, however, that he cannot survive long, outside of a miracle, because of how it interferes with normal liver function. Benign does not seem like the right word for this kind of tumor.

LaVon is 53. LaVon and Mamie's son Grant is still at home. Greg and Angelene are both married and have children. LaVon is a minister at the Arlington Amish Mennonite Church. He was first diagnosed with colon cancer perhaps five years ago. (Ironically, no matter the outcome, he will go down in statistics as being "cured" of cancer if he survives past the five year mark.) Several surgeries, chemotherapy, and making use of alternative approaches have given him some very good months, but also some very miserable times since then. He made a deliberate choice not to have any more chemotherapy when he was informed by his oncologist that chemotherapy for the rest of his life was the best option he could offer. LaVon concluded that there are some things worse than death, and for him chemotherapy was one of them.

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Watching LaVon's journey inspires admiration for his acceptance of his own mortality. Understandably, it's harder for some of the rest of us to be at peace with what seems now to be inevitable.

I've been thinking in the past few days about how it is that fighting against disease can be a way to walk in obedience to God, and can result in God receiving glory, but giving up the fight and acquiescing to death can also be an act of obedience, and can also result in God receiving glory. Either choice, however, seems to have the potential for disobedience and selfishness.

For someone who has dependents or a surviving spouse, not being willing to have one more surgery that could result in many more years of good health--choosing death instead--is that a selfish choice? Or for the person without dependents, whose prospects for recovering health are dim, is it really best to pursue whatever medical interventions are offered as possibilities--at great cost in finances, stress, and discomfort? To choose an alternative route instead of more conventional treatment, or vice versa, to close one's mind to alternatives and pursue only conventional treatment? I don't know all the answers. Maybe I don't even know any answers.

I think I'll pray that God will make a course of action clear to me if I'm ever in a position where I need to make a life or death decision. I'll also continue to pray for others in that position now. Life and death are both too hard to face without God's help.

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Oh yes. On the egg rolls-- We've decided to add green onions, bean sprouts, shiitake mushrooms, maybe carrots and water chestnuts, fresh ginger, and garlic to the filling. We'll also add oyster sauce, and maybe a smidgen of rice wine, besides the soy sauce and hot pepper flakes that are already in the recipe. This will call for combining about four internet recipes with the "Plain Jane" recipe I already have. Sigh. I ought to be grading research papers instead.