A day at the beach

Terri crosses

 another bridge with son, Anthony, in Brunswick.

Beachgoers take cover from the hot at Old Orchard Beach.

OLD ORCHARD, Maine - It wasn't the warm water, beautiful women, comfort food or the scorching sun that made Monday's family outing at a crowded Old Orchard Beach on July 4 so spectacular.

What made this such a banner day for the Blasis, besides celebrating the nation's birthday with thousands of tanned beachgoers, was watching my courageous wife swim again.

Anthony knows how to keep his cool at OOB.

It was worth the 20-minute drive around side streets and a fusillade of obscenities to find a vacant parking spot to avoid paying $20 to leave the car with the local shyster. I can't justify parting with 20 bucks when a quarter-of-a-mile walk from the car to the beach works for my pocketbook. I can cope with huge crowds, long lines and put up with messy public restrooms, but handing over $20 because I don't want to walk a few blocks is insanity.

While other men might have been checking out other women, I couldn't keep my eyes off my wife as she tackled wave after wave. 

Just seeing Terri swim without pain or fear was a damn miracle. 

Beachgoers avoid the heat and stay in the water at OOB.

Last year, my wife was recovering from six hours of life-saving back surgery - with no guarantees. The risks were high and we were still dealing with the death of my mother and the slow onset of my father's Alzheimer's disease.

For nearly four months before her surgery, Terri needed a cane or a walker to limp through the day. She missed six months of work. Her pain was endless as her failing back made it impossible for her to enjoy life. This is a woman who walks, swims, hikes and lifts weights. She is a ball of fire, but she was about to burn up as her conditioned worsened.

Eleven days after my mother's death and on her birthday - she would have been 74 on April 19, 2010 - Terri under went nearly six hours of back surgery for a disk that was about to sever her spinal cord in her neck. But there was more to this complicated procedure. Doctors also had to correct spinal stenosis in her lower back.

According to the Mayo Clinic's Web site: "Spinal stenosis is a narrowing of one or more areas in your spine — most often in your neck or lower back. This narrowing can put pressure on the spinal cord or spinal nerves at the level of compression."

Terri was terrified and my son and I were apprehensive about the entire operation.

We were fortunate to find a gifted neurosurgeon - Dr. Guillermo J. Candia, who works at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. He is a dedicated doctor who is forthright and doesn't take the long way around the barn when explaining the pluses and minuses of any operation.

Anyone who has endured the high anxiety of sitting in the waiting room when a loved one is under the knife knows that hours seem like days. And when you see a nurse racing the down the hallway with a crash cart, you leap to your feet and pray it is not your wife who needs a jump start to keep her from leaving this world.

Well, the operation was a success and Terri survived thanks to the capable hands of Dr. Candia, who gave us back our lives and Terri's health. 

Back on the beach

The sweltering heat brought huge crowds at Old Orchard Beach. The traffic was mind-numbing, but the water was warm and clear and bright sun lit up this pristine beach and all its beautiful people.

Terri couldn't stand sitting in the hot sun and headed for the water despite a strong undertow and huge waves.

She wasted little time diving into the strong waves and came up smiling each time she surfaced. She handled OOB's powerful surf with ease, and that was a milestone for her.

A year ago she was using my late mother's walker to inch around the block, but on July 4, 2011, Terri Blasi didn't miss a step or a stroke when she splashed down at OOB and made her own waves.

Essential personnel

"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." 

~Mignon McLaughlin

Dear Terri,

Happy Mother's Day!

I am fortunate that you remain by my side. We have lost so many people the last few impossible years, and we will never get them back.

Anyway, you know I love you, and thanks for seeing me through the darkest moments in my life. Remember, I would stand up for you until I dropped.

You are a special person who has experienced her own journey into the abyss, but I think we found a way out of that deep, awful hole together despite those tumultuous periods in our lives. We have turned out to be wonderful parents who created this extraordinary son.

I am grateful to you for keeping me from falling into this muddy pond of grief. There has been a lot of sorrow the past two years.

Mother's Day will now serve as a day of remembrance for our mothers who both passed away last year. But I will also look upon this special day as a way to honor a special person and remarkable mother.

I am still baffled at how you put up with me. Living with me is like being on board a runaway freight train barreling down the tracks without a conductor. And yet, you found a way to tolerate a man whose passion for life can be quite overwhelming.

I am also impressed with your courage for undergoing life-saving back surgery last year, knowing all along that nothing is guaranteed when you face the surgeon's knife. Those four months, which were filled with uncertainty, foreboding and sadness, put an enormous strain on both of us. Thanks to our steel anchor — Anthony — we discovered a way out of that maze of sorrow and apprehension.

After 21 years of marriage, I think we both have come to appreciate and truly understand the phrase: "for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health."

Happy Mother's Day, Terri. And thanks for making my life richer and more exciting. I appreciate it.

Your husband Tony

Preserving the union

AUBURN, Maine — Marriage requires tenacity, compassion, understanding and the willingness to go bungee jumping — every day.

It's right up there with cliff diving, treasure hunting, rafting on the Amazon or driving in Massachusetts.
 

When two people give monogamy a chance, well, it's like jumping off a bridge with with an enormous rubber band attached to your midsection. You are taking a big chance on a person who just wandered into your life and turned your world upside down - all in the name of love and happiness. 

It is also sort of like leaping out of a perfectly good plane with a parachute. You are counting on that chute to open, but in marriage you are putting all your money on your spouse to help break your fall - every day.

Anthony and Terri hanging out at Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth last summer.

Marriage isn't a cakewalk. It requires a lot of damn work, patience and stamina. Anybody who tells you its a cinch suffered head trauma after the bungee cord snapped.

I have been married 21 years and I still don't know if I am doing it right. But I can tell you this, it has been one helluva of ride and I would be the first in line to try it all over again with just one woman - Terri. We have been married for over two decades, which is a test to our endurance or insanity - take your pick. I believe our union is held together by two people who really dig each other, and there is no secret to our affection.
 

Terri is one of the most resilient and remarkable human beings I have ever met, and get this, she finds a way to put up with me each day. I am glad she is not billing me for this successful relationship. I could not afford to pay this kind soul, who turned out to be an outstanding mother and raised a fine son.
 

Truth be told, we have experienced our ugly moments and tragic events that puts every marriage to the test. Our union is not perfect, but we try to make it function each day. It will always be a work in progress - especially when you are raising a child, and that is another full-time job that puts additional stress on a marriage, but we both would not have it any other way.


I was fortunate to listen to an audio essay on National Public Radio during an afternoon commute. I must apologize for forgetting the producer of this wonderful piece. The speaker wisely said that marriage requires both spouses to bring their excess emotional baggage to the relationship and then unload it together. Terri and I have unloaded a lot emotional issues together over the past 21 years, and still our marriage survives.

 

That wonderful radio essay is not only accurate but endearing. Marriage is work and every relationship needs a tune-up as the years pass.
 

Despite 21 years of marriage, which we are celebrating today, I can honestly say I wouldn't bat an eye if I had to jump off a cliff with Terri over the next 20 years. 


She's worth the fall.

Keeper of my soul

Remember, you hold my heart in your soft and gentle hands while we continue take a firm stand and struggle against this bland life.

So for goodness sakes, let us never part because
you are indeed a work of art

You are the keeper of my soul, a beacon of light

so please don't lose sight of our love,
or I just might fade into the night

We've been together for decades now

The years fade, yet we continue to wade through time

as we turn a blind eye to the passing of our primes

Our love still endures and I will always find you oh so alluring

Your charm and compassion will never be out of fashion. You are a fine mother like no other.

And there's your son who understands you will always be number one.

And now we have this opportunity to celebrate another anniversary

We've experienced our numerous ups and downs, but 

that never stopped us from clowning around

We have lost so many loved ones along way, and 

even though it's not OK, we still find a way to make it through the day.

So let us honor this union and hope there will be more reunions

Let's take the good with the bad in a marriage that has withstood its tribulations and temptations

So remember, this heart you hold, which is frayed and has some tares, should always be handled with loving care

Anthony Blasi, March 24, 2011

A woman of substance

We didn't know what to think of each other when we first met 21 years ago. We were from two different worlds, but over the next decade, Dorothy Millett and I would find common ground - at the kitchen table.

I was a boisterous and an opinionated young man who didn't mind speaking his mind. Dorothy Millett was a 67-year-old widow who didn't say much over the phone whenever I called to speak with Terri. She was abrupt, and I felt short-changed because our conversations amounted to just a few words - and she was about to become my mother-in-law.

It wasn't until our numerous lunch dates in Dot's kitchen was when I really got to know this extraordinary woman, who could take whatever was left in the hallway pantry and turn it into a gourmet meal.

I knew she wasn't sure who the heck this guy from the Boston area was and whether his intentions to marry her daughter were honorable and true.

I just thought she didn't like me!

And yet, despite a few rounds of haggling over our wedding plans, Dorothy Millett and I eventually stopped eye-balling each other and grew to like and then love each other despite our differences.

But Dorothy and I were united by a common interest - our love for Terri, who made us both feel special because she is such a special person.

And I came to appreciate her Yankee ingenuity in the kitchen and her old-fashioned horse sense when it came to life's problems. She knew how to simplify life's curve balls in a world that has a knack for complicating everything. She was, in my opinion, a leading authority on common sense. She, along with my mother, became my inspirations in the kitchen, too.

Of course, Dot's culinary talents went a long way to winning me over and making me feel right at home in her humble abode. She knew the fastest way to reaching me was through my stomach, and as a growing young man, who could say no to her culinary delights.

I often told her that we should open "Dot's Kitchen,' and added we could make a fortune because she was such a genius with the average recipe.

A free meal at Dot's dining room was like hitting the lottery or winning Sox tickets to a game on hot August day at Fenway Park.

But what was really remarkable about this woman, who had the stamina of a 40 year old and whose mind was still sharp, was that she had the nerve to adopt a child in her 50s and raise her in a safe and loving household without any fanfare.

And while she was bringing up Terri, this unselfish, civic-minded woman, who was also active in her church, still found time to improve other people's lives in her community.

I have had nothing but respect for Dorothy Millett, who always asked for my mother and father and took a vested interest in my son.

She was one of those human beings who played a huge role in the lives of two people trying to find their way in the world.

I will miss her, and her absence means life will never be the same for Terri and me, and that is why Dorothy Millett's passing is such a huge loss to her family and friends.

Dorothy's death, while not unexpected, has nonetheless left us all feeling empty.

I will miss Dorothy Millett for a number of reasons.

I offer the Millett family this written tribute to a woman whose common sense and integrity were beyond reproach.

My deepest condolences to all who knew this fine woman.