Authenticity

December 17, 2025, will live in personal infamy.

Lisa had dropped me off at the vascular surgery clinic before one o’clock that afternoon.

Now, I had undergone the same procedure before we met, almost fifteen years ago. My left leg, exclusively ropy with varicose veins, had increasingly been a problem throughout our relationship.

It began, unbeknownst to me, when I was twenty-seven, the age at which I walked into a printing plant for a job. My duties included running something called a Lawson. That manually fed three-knife trimmer kept my right foot busy operating a pedal. Its left mate was free to fall prey to gravity. My sedentary limb would ache during the long hours spent manning the machine.

Soon after I moved to Oregon, nine years later, I noticed the spidery precursors underneath my skin. As 2011 approached, I was ready for a doctor’s intervention. By the summer of ‘25, the condition had worsened again to the point that I returned to the same guy’s office. A plan to carry out conservative treatment –– three months’ worth of wearing a compression stocking –– collided with the reality that my carrier would be dropped from the local network by January the first of 2026. The surgeon agreed to hurry things along.

Of course, my ablation went longer than normal. Maybe the specialist sought to more thoroughly rid me of my symptoms. Anyway, around three, they told Lisa that I had already been discharged. When I was finally released after regular business hours, I discovered her livid in the darkness enveloping the parking lot.

Christmas Eve, a week later, saw my leg so raw and bruised (I’ve included a picture from that morning although, I warn you, it’s not for the faint of heart) as to overrule my attendance at family festivities. Held in Selma, an hour away, Lisa’s sister hosted. Her trio of terriers loved to jump onto and scratch up their visitors. I couldn’t imagine the pain.

That’s how I came to remain, for Christmas, 2025, alone. How do you pass the time in that situation? I reviewed the choices that had brought me to that day. Blaming my propensity to suffer in silence begged the question: isn’t my behavior still the same as when I stood on the bindery floor and sacrificed my venous system to cut some books down?

Last year, I released a memoir without any fanfare. My experience with the publishing world kept my accomplishment quiet. Who’s authentic anymore? One reviewer slams a project when I don’t pay for their editorial service. Another praises my work and proposes to sell me positive reviews. A third offers a one paragraph-long synopsis in which they get my name wrong (which seems, since it happens only once, like an artificial intelligence glitch). After getting a blank contract from a firm, I am warned to be wary. It’s all exhausting.

Consequently, I will reissue Shaky Places: How Parkinson’s Altered an Artist on a (Mostly) Metaphorical Road Trip here. Thirty-six chapters at one a month should take three years to finish. Should anyone care to skip ahead, the paperback is available on Amazon.

It is, starting with the dedication, what I know to be true: “For my parents, without whom I wouldn’t have had a life at all, let alone a good one.”