Tag Archives: personal essay

A more beautiful place

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This holiday season, as they call it, I am thinking  and feeling about my family. For some reason knowing you’re likely in the home-stretch of things allows you a sharper awareness of the immense love you feel for family members, most all gone from life. I’m grateful for my instincts because I don’t mind being present in the experience.

Family life ended for me in December, 1969,  two months after my 16th birthday; an essay for another time.

Of course there are tears, at times, and, of course, there are momentary flashes of fury. Fury at the loss, at how long its been, fists clenched, and, literally, nothing and no one deserving of a blow exists on this planet. The stone cold fact is, nothing and no one deserving of that blow has ever existed on this planet.

So I allow the feeling of fury until it passes. It always does.

These days I’m thinking of my mother and father, ,Grandma and Grandpa, Mommom and Poppop (my mother’s parents), Uncle Harry, Aunt Dorothy, Uncle Peter, Marjorie, my sister, Rebecca, my childhood friends, a number gone now. My brother, Bobby. I think of my other mother, Leona, my birth-mother — a better human being has never walked the earth. We were  reunited on January 8, 1987. We were emotional and spiritual twins. She was an angel. I bet she still is!

Now, if there is something after this life, it damn well better include more time with these beautiful human beings  or else I’m not interested. When I walk through the beautiful museum hallways in my mind, all the above are there, masterpieces all.

There’s never been a more beautiful place than family.

Getting comfortable

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What is it I am home about? He asked this out loud in his kitchen as he poured his second cup of morning coffee. He could not focus. He knew this and wished it wasn’t so. He knew wishing warranted genuine sympathy and had about as much influence over life as a tree stump.

These days he felt himself to be a scramble of movements, tics, of a sort. Not a tic like some sudden facial flinch, but a shifting of the shoulders, a turn of the head, a stretch of the neck, a shift in sitting position. A restlesness coated in the sizzle of terror. Sometimes he’d notice himself walking back and forth from one room to another, a small trip in a small apartment, talking to his dog, a damn fine listener by any measure.

Movement. That was the thing. Move. Stay in motion. This is not an easy task when a lot of the world scares the bejeezus out of you. Movement, he was sure, was key to feeling better and, if he got really lucky, happy, on occasion. 

Getting comfortable in life was a never ending process.

The Sweet Taste of Morning

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The first hour, the delicious sounds of birds singing, the light only just making its way into the day, water on for that exquisite first cup of coffee. This morning the ground wet from through-the-night thunderstorms, more glory! A look through binoculars at the vegetable garden (don’t want to miss anything), smiling at the sight of newborn tomatoes. From nothing but a seed they are? Well then, aren’t we all?

Then it comes, that familiar unwelcome chill of fear, a feathery slightness to it, momentary. I am in my home, the place to be. Water ready now, coffee made. This morning in my Hummingbird mug. My father and I deciding so many years ago that Hummingbirds are signs of good luck. The feather touch of fear still there I go stand by my books and the fear, like a frightened animal, flees. The comfort of books, the comfort of books runs so deep. All of them are my friends, with me always, each there own world living safely in my home. Good company always.

And I know this sweet tasting morning is extra special. I am seven years sober today. I am alive and I am me, fully me savoring the sweet taste of morning. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Damn Ants

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I am two years old visiting Mommom and Poppop in Rumson. New Jersey. Mommom and Poppop are my mother’s parents and I adore them, especially Poppop. They have boats and a house on Highland Avenue that looks out over a canal that leads onto the Navesink River towards the Oceanic Bridge. Their home is a heaven to me.



I love Mommom and Poppop, especially Poppop. He reminds me of Jimmy Stewart. He speaks in a stumbling, soft-voiced cadence. His eyes always glow warmth and kindness. He also smokes a pipes. He keeps several of them in a lovely wooden pipe rack near his large wing chair. I love to put the pipes in my mouth and pretend I’m just like Poppop and my father. My father smokes pipes too. Both would prefer I play with the pipes only when they are around.



But I am an early riser.



Early one morning I crawl out of bed, make my way into the living room, climb up into Poppop’s large wing chair, remove one of his pipes from the rack, and pretend to puff away. Pieces of smoked tobacco fall from the pipe and speckle me in my white t-shirt and underwear. I don’t care. I’m having fun sitting in this big wing chair just like Poppop. I look out the window with the pipe stem firmly clamped in my teeth. I have to hold the pipe with my hand because it is heavy. I hear a sound, turn, and there is Poppop looking right at me, trying desperately to look annoyed at me for playing with his pipes when he wasn’t there.



I look down at the black speckles of tobacco all across my front and brush them away saying, “Damn ants!”



Peter & Poppop circa 1955

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The Possibility of Sunlight

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Of another relationship I say, maybe, just maybe. But not necessary. It is the page that draws me stronger now. On relationships I stay open, never pull the blinds to the possibility of sunlight. And while there are many whose hearts are steadfast in their desire for intimacy, few can actually live it. And that is the only landscape for my stride.

There are the array of partial intimacies, connections between two people, where, like two not quite fitted puzzle pieces, some of the edges align, and for that, anyone would be wise to be grateful.

In the meantime, I am drawn to the page, to the book, and, again, finally, to the physical. The long walks, the trails, the summiting moments, to climb back on the bike and break the hills that are like weeds in their prevalence here. And again to the gym, solitary in my task, regaining the vessel’s tone.

Then to the page, the garden, the sweet air, and always with the blinds open to the possibility of sunlight.
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