Monthly Archives: May 2009

Breaking Mountains

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It is time to come alive again and break me some mountains.

It has been my history to take on what for me are formidable physical challenges in response to life’s meaner blows.

Many years ago for example I joined and went to the McBurney YMCA on 23rd Street between 7th and 8th avenues in New York City almost daily as a way of breaking free of a year’s seclusion. A seclusion I’d gone into after being shot up and held-up at gunpoint in a matter of months.

Years later I would run two marathons in two weeks as a response to my mother’s 1992 suicide. I am a slow poke and with six marathons under my belt I’ve never run one under five hours.

And then there was the 175-mile bicycle ride in 2003 and the 1,000-mile bicycle ride in 2004 to strike back at my own brain injury and give hope to any and all who’ve sustained brain injuries or been beaten-down in any way by life. I did those rides while working for the Belvedere Brain Injury Program based in Albany, New York. I am not linked to Belvedere anymore for reasons I won’t go into – for now – bit I can tell you I wouldn’t recommend the program to a cadaver, much less a living being.

The year 2008 was in many way one of the most brutal I’ve been through in a life that by any standard has had its fair share of brutal years. As I’m sure you, my dear reader know, when life knocks you down you find out quick and certain who your friends are and who are, well, full of shit.

For me 2008 and some of 2009 was cement-thick with depression. A kind of physical immobility took place, I had been frozen still by life, largely as a result of treatment inflicted on me by the above mentioned Belvedere, more specifically, its owner, John Mccooey. My days would consist of staying tucked under blankets, sitting at the computer trying to write, reading, watching movie after movie, and, other than a weekly workshop I would facilitate with some extraordinary people, and attendance at meetings linked to a 12-step program I belong to, that was a out it. The all of me had grown still.

Like a slave breaking free of chains and shackles, I have begun to break free in the past few months, so much so I plan on breaking mountains. Let me explain. Back when I was getting into the intense bicycle riding I named the task of reaching the top of a steep climb, breaking hills. I’d see a steep climb coming up and say, I’m breaking that hill.

And so it is with mountains. There is the 3500 Club in the Catskills, a club you become a member of when you climb all 35 of the 3,500 foot or more mountains in the Catskills. Four of them you have to climb twice, once in warm weather, once in winter. I began this quest a few years ago and plan on resuming it in three weeks.

Next, or maybe even along with, I will take a run at being a 46er, someone who has climbed the 46 highest peaks in the Adirondack Mountains.

I will call the task of reach summits, breaking mountains. Like I said, it is time to come alive again, and break me some mountains.

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Memoir Excerpt: The Boy

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I am born October 2, 1953 in the French Hospital in New York City. My mother was a single 20-year-old woman who seven days after my birth would, as the expression goes, surrender me for adoption to the Spence Chapin Agency. I was placed with a foster mother for a view weeks and then, when I was about five weeks old, I was adopted by Sanford and Virginia Kahrmann, then residing in a place called Shanks Village in Orangeburg New York.

My father worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey and taught English at Columbia University. He was a World War II Army veteran. Long after he died I would learn he was among those who liberated the people in the Dachau Concentration Camp. My mother was a Columbia graduate who had married and later divorced an RAF pilot she met while living in London during the war. She would later tell me that one of the reasons she divorced her first husband was he had no sense of humor. I remember wondering why she didn’t notice this until after the wedding.

My mother was 10 years my father’s junior. He was born in 1914, she in 1924. They’d met after the war when she was a student in one of his classes.

While I don’t remember the first time I saw the boy, he was there as long as I have memory. He was rarely around when my parents were there. I knew my father would love him, I was not so sure about my mother. I don’t know if my mother ever saw him. He was rarely around when she was.

I can’t tell you the first time I saw him because I don’t remember when that was. I knew I liked him and I knew he liked me, and for me, that’s all that mattered. I never told anyone about him because I didn’t think anyone would believe me. I never had to say anything to my father because I secretly believed my father saw him too, and anyway, there was never a need for words when it came to things like us . It was like that between me and my father. With the three of is, me, my Dad and the boy, it was like that too. The boy loved us and although we never said it out loud, we loved the boy.



Now it’s not like I could see him all the time. He’d just kind of show up. Sometimes I wouldn’t see him at first. I’d be doing something, playing in my tree house, listening to music, walking in the woods, and there he’d be. A lot of the time he was smiling at me. He always seemed gentle to me, very kind and gentle. I knew he was kinder and gentler than I was. It’s not that I thought I was terrible, well, maybe a little. The boy looked plenty strong, but I knew from the beginning I’d protect him with my life. I don’t know how I knew. I just did. I also knew he had answers to questions I wasn’t ready to ask yet, or hadn’t thought of yet. Maybe there were answers I wasn’t ready to know and the boy knew it. He was smart. We were both smart.

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Wonders Await You

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If you know life is a gift, and I hope you do, you may find it troubling how many of us, myself included, waste life now and again. It is not that wasting life is my intention, or the intention of others when they waste there, sometimes we don’t even realize we are doing it. Wasting life is often the net result of life wounds, life circumstances, and the way some of us were socialized into experiencing ourselves.

Well, I say life wounds, life circumstances and socialization be damned. At least be damned when you weed your way into the soil that is my life and disrupt it, poison it. I will till my own soil.

All the wounds, circumstances and socialization patterns do not deserve to rob us of remembering to live, and giving ourselves permission to do exactly that. No, things will not always go the way would like, or work out the way we hope, but sometimes, more than you might think, they will.

If you never give yourself permission to live, you’ll never find and experience the beauty and glory of life, no matter how big or small, the latter two notions defined solely by the eye of the beholder. For example, big to me is watching Goldfinches, Black Capped Chickadees, and Purple Finches on my bird feeder, or rabbits scamper about my back yard early in the morning. Thunderstorms are big too. They make me turn off all house sounds and crack open windows because I don’t want to miss a moment of the enchanting forest of sound. Small is the kind of car I drive or whoever the hell made and designed the clothes I’m wearing. I’m grateful for the car and the clothes, but they don’t, for me anyway, compare to the wonder of the birds and thunderstorms just mentioned.

I don’t know what the big and small glorious moments of life are for you. I do know you deserve them, even if you think you do not. So, while I’m tilling the soil of my life, I hope you do the same for yours. Remember to live. Wonders await you, if you give yourself permission to live.
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Remember to Say I Love You

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Remember to say I love you. Life is too short and too precious not to. If this sounds like a silly saccharin-like sentiment, I can’t help that. If you are one of those who finds it difficult to say the words, try saying them anyway. You deserve the gift of saying them and there are those who deserve the gift of hearing them – from you.

Don’t assume that people know you love them and therefore believe it is not necessary to say it. Even if, as you believe, they know, there is still something wonderful about hearing the words, so give yourself permission and turn them loose.

I was prompted to write this piece when I read this morning that the wife of Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Scott Schoeneweis was found dead at her home Wednesday. The body of 39-year-old Gabrielle Dawn Schoeneweis was found on the floor of the master bedroom by her 14-year-old daughter. I’ve dealt with my fair share of death in life but I can’t even get my mind around this one.

What I do know is that life happens to us whether we like it or not, and that includes death. So, if you love someone, tell them, and I hope people who love you remember to tell you, you deserve to hear it to.

My love to you all,

Peter S. Kahrmann

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Colonoscopies, Sandpaper, Attila the Nurse & The Great Escape

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I finally overpowered what some might call an irrational fear and went for my first colonoscopy. The entire colonoscopy experience established two things beyond a reasonable doubt. First, the colonoscopy itself is nothing, you go to sleep, wake up, and it’s over. It’s like you aren’t even there when it happens. Second, the day before proves that despite all the aren’t-we-soft-and-fluffy advertisements, toilet paper is made out of sandpaper. Not the fine grain sand paper, but the really course sandpaper, the kind you might use if you wanted to get the bark off an Oak Tree.
Actually, I learned a third thing. How to escape from the hospital after the procedure. No one calls it a colonoscopy there. You are there for a procedure, thank you very much. Procedure my ass which, come to think of it, is exactly what they did.Anyway, you are told to have someone drive you home because you will still be under the influence of the anesthesia. In my complete and utter lack of wisdom I decided I was going to drive myself home and, if I didn’t feel I could drive, I would call a cab, the latter being an option, I would later learn, that medical professionals frown on,
When I arrived I was directed by a rather fierce looking tiny nurse, we will call her Attila, to a curtained-off cubicle and told to take off all my clothes, and yes, I could leave my watch and Saint Christopher medal on. “Who is driving you home?” she asked, her pen hovering above a form on a clipboard, her mouth foaming with venom. “Uh, I’ll be calling a friend of mine to pick me up,” I said. A complete and utter lie.Attila’s eyebrows shot up, nearly reaching her hairline, and I swear to God a puff of red smoke came out her nose. “Number?”
“Pardon me?”
“Phone number. We need the number, what’s the number. We will make the call.” More smoke.
Convinced I would be led before the nearest firing squad if I did not come up with a number, I gave her my friend Chris’s number hoping to God he wouldn’t answer or would at least handle it well if he did.“Good,” Attila said. “Clothes off, we’ll be with you shortly.”
It’s amazing how a tiny person can scare the hell out of you. Once the pro-ce–dure is over you are brought to another curtained-off cubicle where you are allowed to get your bearings and then told to get dressed. Once told, I got dressed. Now the question was, how the hell do I get out of here and to my car? How do I escape? I felt fine and able to drive.
But, there was Attila, pulling back the curtain with the same damned clip board in her hand.“Where is your ride?”“I’m sure he’ll be here.” 
“I called and left him a message, you can’t leave until you have someone to drive you.” Another puff of smoke, more venom foam, and damned if she didn’t paw at the ground with her right foot.
“He’ll be here,” I said, figuring my next move was to figure out which door led to the waiting area which led to the hall which led to the elevators that would get me to the first floor and freedom. We were on the fourth floor.
“I will call again,” Attila said, snapping the curtain closed, leaving a puff of smoke in the air behind her. 
I waited a few minutes and pulled back the curtain. Off to my right I saw a door open and close. When it was open, I saw the waiting area. When no one was looking I made my move. In the waiting area I stopped at the checkout desk to make my next appointment. I was handed my appointment paper and had just begun to turn towards the exit when I smelled smoke and felt a firm chilling tap on my shoulder. I turned toward the tap and there was Attila in full venomous foam, snorting blasts of red smoke out her nose. “You have no ride, now get back in there until you have a ride.”
I followed her back inside feeling very much like a little boy who just got caught playing hooky. Ten minutes later I see another opening! I am out the door in a flash, through the waiting room at high speed and soon I am punching the elevator button hoping to God one gets there before Attila catches me. The elevator arrives, the door opens, and in I go. And elderly couple get in with me. On the ride down the elderly man is standing to my right.“ How you doing?” he asked.
“I’m okay, actually. First colonoscopy today.”
“Surprised they let you leave by yourself.”
“Well…” 
He knew what I was doing. He said, “Mind if I give you one piece of advise before the door opens?”
“Sure.”
“You might want to take the hospital band off your wrist.”
Bless that man.

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