Been making a humble Thursday morning practice of popping in the coffee shop down the road before work.
Just to stand in line for a cortado and sit for a few minutes.
In between the standing and sitting, I always seem to find something to fill my cup.
This past Thursday there wasn’t much of a line, so I stepped to the front, ordered, and skooched to the left to wait.
The waiting area’s directly in front of where the barista prepares the orders.
I’m careful not to stare.
But I do try to catch a glimpse when they’re doing the pouring.
I find all artful pourers mesmerizing.
The person working Thursday is new-ish.
Been there maybe a couple months.
Don’t know her name.
Just her smile.
She began with the requisite two shots of espresso.
Then moved to the milk.
I’m always curious to see if a barista trusts in gravity and surface tension to do their jobs … and fills the cup beyond its edge.
It’s always magic to me to bear witness to how the molecules grab on to one another, and keep each other from flowing away and spilling.
I find a hope in that.
Like nature’s just waiting for us to learn from its example.
I’ve noticed that some baristas favor the control of holding the cup in one hand to bring the spout closer … while others place the cup on the counter to keep a steady target.
The delicacy of the draw gets me every time.
The mere idea of painting with a brush that only ever gets so close to its canvas.
Seems prayerful to me.
Any distance between source and vessel requires a measure of faith.
I’ve learned that the precise amount required has little to do with how great or small the distance.
Hers was one fluid motion into the countered cup.
But then, she did this thing.
Post-pour, she reached for a spoon.
I watched as she used it to gently skooch some of the foam where she wanted it to go.
My immediate thought was that maybe things initially didn’t turn out the way she wanted.
As she skimmed the surface, she cupped her empty left hand parallel to her right … as if protecting a flickering match from the wind.
Her left hand had no practical purpose, other than maybe just to let the right know it was rooting for it.
By which I mean it may have had the most important job of all.
Satisfied, she put the spoon down and ushered my cup forward to let me know it was ready.
“I’ve never seen anyone do that … with the spoon,” I confessed.
“I do it all the time,” she said. “That’s my move.”
So, she had made no mistake.
She just wasn’t done moving mountains.
I asked her her name.
“Jaye,” she said.
“We’ll call it the ‘Jaye,’” I said.
“Aww, thank you,” she smiled, also a signature move.
It was only then that I looked down … to see that she had used the spoon to crack a tiny heart open.
By which I mean she used the spoon to crack my tiny heart open.
Whenever I am asked to meet with a new employee, I always start with the most important question.
I mean THE most important question.
I preface it by letting the person know that I’m about to ask them the most important question that they will be asked that day.
Possibly, the most important question they will be asked all week.
I let them know in advance that the question is cosmic in its scope.
Then I hit ’em with it.
“What is the greatest pizza of all time?”
I then take a minute to make sure they fully understand the question’s magnitude.
“In your expert opinion, across the hundreds of assemblages of crust, sauce and toppings you have experienced in the entirety of your illustrious, pizza-eating career … what is the GOAT?”
As they deliberate, I invite them to give thought to why.
What is it about it that makes it the greatest of all time?
The ingredients?
Where or how the ingredients are sourced? Is it the style? The type of crust? The manner in which it’s prepared? Is it the individuals who make it? The ambience in which they experience it? The location where it’s located? Is it the company they experience it with? Perhaps it’s the time in their life that they first encountered it?
Over the years, I’ve asked the question at least a hundred times.
Everyone answers differently, but they all have one thing in common.
The way their face lights up when they tell me.
You should see how such love lives on their faces.
__
So, I’m waiting out a Sunday late-morning flight delay at the Kansas City airport yesterday.
Young fella sitting next to me sees me holding a small print of a cat in a cowboy costume that some friends (who know me well) gave me that morning.
Asks me about it.
I tell him.
Then he asks me where I’m going.
I answer and, out of politeness, ask him the same.
He tells me he’s going to Paris for 82 days, to intern for a ‘church-planting’ organization … scattering seeds in France.
Couple minutes later, he’s asking me if I know Jesus, and whether I’ve accepted him as the only way to salvation.
In so many words.
I mean, soooo many words.
Meanwhile, the voice in my head starts audibly exhaling in discomfort, “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…” while rubbing the bridge of its metaphorical nose.
I’m just a guy admiring a print of a cat in a cowboy costume here.
Meanwhile my concerned neighbor is talking all about sin and eternity … with much conviction.
Which I respect both the act and substance of.
He’s going to make a great intern.
Says that our days are not guaranteed. Anything can happen.
“This might be the last flight we ever take,” he says, gesturing to the door to the jetway.
I don’t disagree.
He mentions that Jesus is coming back.
Soon.
I suppress the urge to mention that history is littered with a lot of humans who over-estimated their gifts for guesstimating that particular arrival time.
He starts peppering me with a bunch of questions.
And keeps pressing me for a verbal … like a flight attendant prompting an exit row passenger.
Meanwhile, all I can hear is Paul whispering in my ear “… with gentleness and respect.”
I genuinely don’t want to be disrespectful.
For all I know, God might be eavesdropping on his intern.
I also don’t want to get deep … meaning the granularity of it.
But I do want to get deep … meaning the heart of it.
And I know that if I choose the latter, he’s just going to want to further litigate the former.
But I couldn’t help myself.
So I answered him … by saying that I have a wise friend who knows more chapter and verse than I ever will.
And that the wisest thing I have ever heard him utter isn’t a Bible verse.
When someone asked him a question he didn’t have an answer for, my wise friend said that he wasn’t sure.
And added, “I’m OK with God knowing more than I do.”
Which pretty much sums up my faith right now.
It’s taken me a while to get to this cruising altitude.
I can’t tell you exactly how close I am to any destination.
There are lots of clouds when I look up.
I’m not even sure how accurate my heading is … as I tend to overestimate the scale of things.
I’m just trying to hold things steady enough to eventually give me a better vantage point.
Which is no small accomplishment, given my fear of heights and poor sense of direction.
But I do have some people in my life right now who are generous in sharing their coordinates with me. More experienced navigators who have logged a lot more miles, spent more time with the map, and seen a lot more of the world than I have. Best of all, they are generous in sharing the detours and emergency landings they’ve made … in hopes that I either avoid, or at the very least, take different ones.
God bless bound-for-Paris Josoo (“rhymes with ‘tofu’” as he introduced himself), but I don’t think I gave him the exit row answer he and his pilot were hoping for.
But his soon-to-be-summer employer should know that it wasn’t for a lack of intention on his part.
After a few minutes, I needed to detangle, so I got up to stand where the boarding lines were about to form.
I confess to you that I hoped that neither God nor United Airlines sat us next to each other on the plane.
But sitting and sifting here, though … I kinda’ regret praying for that.
Because I just thought of something I wished I would’ve asked Josoo.
I would have asked him to talk to me about love.
About love that rejoices in truth.
A love that always protects.
Always trusts.
A love that in spite of everything … still hopes and perseveres.
I’d ask him to talk to me about love so Great.
Love that never fails … even when all other prophecies cease, all tongues still, and all other knowledge passes away.
A love whose planes never run late.
___
By which I mean … I would have liked to ask him The Most Important Question.
At least the most important one anyone would ask him that day, if not over the next 82.
I would’ve asked him about the greatest pizza of all time.
I’d take a good minute to make sure he fully understood the question.
So I could learn what, in his expert, pizza-eating opinion makes it the greatest … out of all the hundreds of combinations that he’s experienced in his illustrious, pizza-eating career.
Just so I could see how love lives on his face, and feel how it lives in his heart.
Trust me … I would rejoice in learning of his personal relationship with pizza.
Which would expand my humble understanding of how crust, sauce and toppings can go together.
And all I know for certain is that he would answer the same question differently than anyone else I’ve ever asked.
And that, by the end, I would likely be hungry to experience pizza the way he experiences pizza.
And if the Spirit was really moving within me, I might even ask him his perspective when it comes to anchovies.
Not to convince him, mind you.
Just to see if we had any common ground there.
All of which to say … I’m no theologian.
I’m content knowing that if there is a God … she probably looks at me the same way I look at prints of cats in cowboy costumes.
But it’s hard for me to imagine that she cares all that much that I don’t like crust.
My wife Karry doesn’t mind.
I let her have mine.
Heck, maybe it makes God happier to see us sharing.
And I would never deign to speak for her, but I imagine that if God made us in her image, then she probably autonomically smiles when she sees how our faces light up when talking about the greatest pizza of all-time.
Heck, she’s probably just waiting for us to ask her The Important Question.
So she can reply, in so many words, “Have you ever tried it with the Jesus sauce?”
So that we can see how a love that hopes all things … lives on her face.
After driving the six hours home from Philly last Sunday, I went over to the high school track … just to give my legs a stretch.
My son got there a few minutes before me, fresh from running some errands.
When we are at the track together, we run separately.
He’s much faster. Keeps track of his times and such.
Me … I just go for the medicine of it.
The track was empty when we arrived, but after a bit I spied a couple walking down the hill. From a distance I recognized a retired teacher from the middle school. I see her walking at the cemetery sometimes too, always with a spring in her step, a smile and a kind word.
All of which she possessed when she taught. Both of our kids had her for reading.
Whenever I see Mrs. Labella my memory goes back to our son’s first year of middle school … when Karry and I signed up for parent teacher conferences.
That was … what? A dozen years ago now? Thirteen?
I say this lovingly, but Peter was a bit of a handful back then … at least from our side of the equation.
Whatever internal motor was responsible for his initiative … revved very low.
Most of his homework got done with Karry’s foot in close proximity to his keister.
His default with most things was to expend the least amount of effort required. He had dual gifts for pushing buttons and refusing to admit any wrongdoings. We often said he would make a great lawyer someday.
He also exercised great agency over his energy and attention, which was often at odds with where the world wished he would direct them.
He was never in any great hurry.
His internal clock just kept time differently.
When we met his middle school teachers for the first time, we expected to come back with homework on what we could do better at home to help him succeed in class.
I’m not sure, but I think Mrs. Labella was first.
Peter wasn’t much of a reader then … or now.
Didn’t inherit my English major genes, though he does have a genuine love for language. He just has always preferred working with his hands. Loves making and fixing things.
Reading and writing? Not so much.
I remember Karry and I bracing for impact when we first walked into Mrs. Labella’s meticulously curated classroom.
We were indeed stunned by what we heard.
She said how wonderful it was having Peter in class.
How well-behaved he was.
How much she appreciated his participation.
We were like, “Um, our son?”
He didn’t even like to read.
We were kind of speechless.
I don’t remember Mrs. Labella’s specific words, just that she saw a light in him … that we were too close to see for ourselves … and reflected it back to us.
I now know that those were the days when we — or at least I — spent way too much time squeezing the parenting handlebars way too tightly.
As Mrs. Labella chatted with us, I remember appreciating being in the presence of a person who’d spent years in the company of 12- and 13-year-olds, who deeply understood the assignment, and who loved the important and sometimes hard thing she got to do … with exactly who she got to do it with.
Someone who commanded respect, took no b.s. … and was comfortable enough in her own skin to give Grace where and when needed.
In other words, someone who was born to be a teacher.
By contrast, I realized that Karry and I were as new to being parents of a middle schooler as Peter was being a middle schooler.
Maybe we were all doing a little better than we gave ourselves credit for, even if we were collectively a little fidgety in our respective chairs.
The rest of his teachers pretty much said the same thing.
Walking out of the school that night, Karry and I joked that maybe we had a budding actor on our hands. Had ‘em all fooled, he did.
We both knew that wasn’t at all true.
The truer thing was that maybe we were in too much of a hurry with our expectations.
That maybe our parenting motors were in need of revving a little slower.
___
So … fast forward … to last Sunday at the track.
I waved to Mrs. Labella and her husband when I caught up to them.
As I jogged by, she said she appreciated a piece I’d recently written.
For the record, I’m not sure higher praise exists for a writer than to get a gold star from a middle school reading teacher.
I told her it’s a blessing to have such good things to write about.
I ran on ahead a bit … then felt moved to double-back.
“In the spirit of not assuming,” I said. “That’s my son over there,” pointing Peter out on the other side of the track. “If he didn’t say hello, make sure you say hi when he passes by.”
“I’ll trip him if he doesn’t,” she said … still not an ounce of b.s. in her voice.
I was about three-quarters of the way through my next lap when, up ahead of me, I saw this.
My 25-year-old son and his middle school reading teacher.
It filled my heart full to see that he broke from his pace to walk with them.
Turns out, his internal clock has always understood time just fine.
They took a good full lap together.
I don’t know what they talked about.
Only that they each had a smile and a kind word for the other.
I imagine he told her what he’s doing now.
I imagine that she told him she’s not surprised one bit.
I found myself slowing my pace behind them … careful not to get in the way.
Just grateful for the medicine of it … in no great hurry myself anymore.
Watching the deliberate greening of the woods behind our backyard feels like having a front-row seat as a miracle unfolds in slow motion.
How it starts from the bottom and patiently works its way all the way up to the tops of the trees.
—-
Thursday after work my son and I rode over to the high school track together.
Checking the weather I mentioned to him the rains on the way.
He asked how long we would go if it started raining.
“I imagine the question will answer itself,” I said.
On Thursdays a youth fitness program meets at the track. A few adults break the kids into groups, from teenagers down to elementary schoolers, and run them through exercises and drills.
Was barely a lap in when it started raining.
The rain picked up speed quicker than me, and soon was coming down pretty good. No thunder or anything, just a hard, heavy shower.
I checked to see what the coaches would do with the kids. Figured I’d follow their lead. I assume they know more than me.
It was raining so hard, I fully expected them to call it … maybe take the kids inside the school if not cancel out of an abundance of caution.
But they didn’t.
They proceeded to line ‘em up and on-your-marks’d ‘em.
Made me smile while my nose dripped.
The rain kept up the whole time we were there, but the heavy part only lasted a few minutes.
For the remainder … it was just a quintessential Southwestern Pennsylvania spring shower.
I was glad for the kids … that they got to experience the gift of running in the rain.
The kid in me was grateful to be reminded, too.
By which I mean … the question answered itself.
___
Yesterday after work I went back to the track for some easy loops at the end of a long week.
My running shoes were still soaked from the night before.
It was pushing 7 p.m. on a Friday … and I was the only one there.
Only human, I mean.
The track sits below the school, so you walk down a hill to get to it.
On the grassy slope by the entrance, a robin was posted up … practicing her signature tune.
Robins are so common around here, sometimes I forget how beautifully they sing.
You catch one by herself, though, and God pulls up a chair.
Her crisp song cut the still air so clearly.
Every time I circled back to where she was practicing, I slowed down and gushed compliments.
It was like being in the front row of an empty amphitheater while the evening’s soprano was dry-running her arias.
If I’da had flowers, I’da laid ‘em at her feet.
All by herself singing a song she’s sung hundreds of times and singing it new for the first time again.
Paused at the coffee shop before work for a to-go cortado to shim my Thursday.
“Pete,” Morgan greeted me when I walked in.
Her expression seemed sombre, but that could’ve just been a pre-cortado take.
“I have to give you something,” she said.
Hands me a hand-written note.
“Dearest Pete …” it began.
__
Couple years ago I got the best birthday card from my daughter.
She would’ve made a good cave painter.
Her accompanying talk track illuminated the epic tale of her seeking counsel from Liam the Wise (whose official title is ‘barrista,’ but in this saga let’s call him “the Oracle”) on what all is involved in getting one’s mug hung on the wall behind the coffee shop’s counter.
Liam not only offered his wise counsel, but mapped directions to the precise mountain where the monks live who, for hundreds of years, have been humbly practicing their glass making craft of the perfect cortado vessel.
By which I mean he pointed her to a website.
Upon procurement of the mug, he told her that I need only bring it in and they would take it from there.
In Emma’s card I knew that I might just be holding the best birthday present I would ever receive.
By which I mean the card, and the heart that made it.
Ever since, when I walk in and see my mug hanging on the wall where I go to write my weekend medicine, I feel a tinge of what I imagine honored athletes feel seeing their jersey hung in the rafters of where they have done their best work.
__
“My Dearest Pete …,”
The note Morgan handed to me was from Emma. Not my Emma, but Emma who works at the coffee shop. She started while she was still in high school and still works weekends while going to the local college.
“It breaks my heart to inform you that I accidentally dropped your mug and broke it ….”
“I need a minute,” I told Morgan, and took a few steps back to read the rest, in which Emma profusely apologized, begged forgiveness and even offered to pay for a replacement.
She signed her note, “You’re most loyal and sorrowful barista, Emma.”
Which had me smiling by the time I looked up … appreciating that my Thursday morning had just found its shim.
By which I mean the note, and the heart that made it.
“She’s so upset,” Morgan said.
I asked when Emma worked next.
“Saturday,” Morgan said.
__
Saturday morning I made sure to arrive when the coffee shop opened at 8:30.
Emma was at the register, Liam at the espresso machine.
“I’m so sorry … I’ll buy you a new one,” Emma said as soon as she saw me.
I just shook my head.
“At least let me buy you your cortado.”
As Liam went to fire up the espresso machine, I stopped him.
And handed Emma a note.
__
“My dearest Emma,
You must know that there are few things in this world that I appreciate more than a hand-written note.
Reading yours brought a spark of joy to my Thursday.
If my beloved mug had to meet an untimely demise, I am grateful that it was at the hands of one who poured so many hearts into it.
You will not only appreciate that it was Liam who consulted with my daughter (whose name is also Emma) on the exact mug to buy me for my birthday two years ago (which will forever be my favorite birthday present ever), but that, when she did so, it came in a set of two.
So I commission the enclosed to your care … on one condition.
That you pour the first heart into it.”
She looked up from my note smiling the way her note made me smile.
“I always carry a spare,” I said, handing over the ‘Emma 2’ … for official christening.
She asked Liam if they could switch places.
“Only fitting,” he said.
“I don’t know,” Emma said sheepishly. “My latte art has been a little shaky … I’m out of practice,” she said.
“I know you have it inside you … and I mean that sincerely,” said Liam the Wise.
Told ya’ he’s the Oracle.
She took her time and filled it above the rim, trusting in the properties of surface tension and gravity to do their good jobs … so she could do hers.
It’s always magic to me how the molecules grab on to one another, and keep each other from flowing away and spilling.
I like how they are forgiving that way.
How the universe allows our fragile cups to be filled beyond their measure.
Paused for a coffee on my way to a morning medical appointment.
Got in line behind a guy in the middle of picking out a bunch of stuff.
“Gimme a couple of those, and one of those,” he said, pointing at the pile of yesterday’s pepperoni rolls they keep on the counter, and the breakfast burritos warming in a case next to the register.
Looked to me like he was being spontaneously thoughtful. Like it had just occurred to him to pick up some goodies to surprise whoever his peeps were.
I’m a sucker for spontaneous thoughtfulness.
After confirming that he meant ‘two’ for ‘a couple,’ the young person behind the counter reached for the pepperoni rolls.
After she picked one up, I heard her say softly to herself, “Oh, that one’s small,” then watched as she put the pepperoni roll she had in her hand back … and pull another out from the bottom of the pile.
The guy didn’t see her do it.
Had already skooched to the side to wait for his stuff.
Struck me as both the smallest thing and the biggest thing.
When it was my turn in line, I told her I appreciated how she put the small one back.
She smiled.
“Yeah, I can’t help it,” she said. “I always think about what I’d want, you know?”
I wanted so much to say, “Me too!”
Because that’s how I think about things … though I don’t sell yesterday’s pepperoni rolls for a living.
“Even when I pick something out of the case, I try and look for the ‘good’ ones,” she added.
What I loved about how she put it is that I knew exactly what she meant, without having any idea exactly what she meant.
Just that it had nothing to do with whether anybody else noticed.
I don’t know why something so small that wasn’t meant to be seen moved me so much.
I mean … if they keep sellin’ like yesterday’s hot cakes, somebody might eventually get the pepperoni runt, … so does it even matter?
I dunno.
Maybe because it’s been my experience that how you do the small things is how you do the big things.
Or maybe I just need reminded sometimes that there are others out there trying to look for the good ones, too.
Ran into a friend at the coffee shop a couple weeks ago.
At the end of our brief chat, he invited me to a men’s Bible study he leads on Sunday mornings.
Said they’d be starting Second Timothy first of the month.
Even though it’s been awhile since I stepped foot in church, I said yes.
My friend is good light.
So, this morning I found myself gathered around a table with seven other guys.
My friend began by giving some context around Paul’s second letter to his friend Timothy.
Asked if we had any questions before diving us deeper.
I had one.
I asked if it was known whether Paul had any specific expectation, when writing to his friend, that Timothy might share the letter?
Or, did Paul intended his letter ‘only’ for Timothy?
My friend said he didn’t really know. Asked the rest of the group.
They weren’t sure, either.
Wow, I said out loud.
Suddenly found myself deeply moved.
By the humble act of a person who knew they didn’t have much time left, writing a letter of encouragement — from prison, no less — to someone he loved dearly.
No expectations of shares or likes.
Pretty remarkable when you think about it, I said aloud.
Which part, specifically? A voice at the table asked.
I mean … the fact of us reading a letter from almost two thousand years ago … written halfway across the world from the church basement where we were gathering … that was aimed at encouraging a single person.
Just, you know, the miracle of that.
Prompted the person to my right to mention that recently he helped get a car started over at the local college for a student who had broken down. Said that afterwards, she sent him just the most wonderful letter. How it moved him so much that he took a photo of the card to share it with some folks he knew.
He quoted a couple lines from it that were still on his heart, so that it could be on our hearts, too.
I told him that he made me grateful I asked the question … for the gift of him sharing the story of his letter.
Ten minutes into a Bible study about a book we hadn’t even cracked open yet … and already a sermon on the power of encouraging one another in trying times.
Anemochory.
That’s what nature calls it.
The dispersal of seeds by the wind.
“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God.”
That’s what Paul calls it.
“We can’t change anything, but we can influence everything.”
That’s what the social scientist Robert Cialdini calls it.
Paul could not change the circumstances of his imprisonment. Of his impending death.
But he could send a letter encouraging his friend.
Regardless of our circumstances, we have agency over how we respond.
Of the energy we put into the world.
Paul’s letter to Timothy encourages us — to remember that encouragement is always an option.
Sitting around a table in a church basement grateful for asking questions, I am reminded that by encouraging one, others might be encouraged, too.
Even if I had the time or inclination to squeeze it all into a smaller suitcase for you, I’m not sure I would.
It’s just too damn good.
Not the writing itself … just the events as they unfolded.
This is me reminding myself that the most important choice is not this word or that word … it’s picking up the pen in the first place.
__
Couple weeks ago when the big blizzard hit, I was supposed to be in Lexington with my oldest for a boys weekend I’d gifted him / us for Christmas.
Our annual-ish pilgrimage to Kentucky to see the Wildcats men’s basketball team play.
Given the forecast I couldn’t see us making it back home on Sunday, which would’ve made a mess of Monday … which would’ve spilled all over the rest of the week.
So the night before the Friday we were supposed to leave, I made the tough call to cancel.
It was the responsible choice … even though it broke my heart.
Got screwed on our Air BnB, as our host had sub-zero interest in even a partial refund.
Lost out on our tickets, too, which weren’t at all cheap when I’d got ‘em at Christmas, and rendered all but worthless by the weather.
The heart-breaking part, though, was missing out on spending time with my son.
He’s just good light to be around.
Bummed and with nothing to do but wait for the snow that would require so much shoveling, I made a conscious choice.
I spent time imagining the weekend we might have had.
What we might have done.
Seen.
Tasted.
Noticed.
Wrote my imaginings down in my journal.
In minute detail.
Wasn’t the same, but it was warmer than wallowing.
And it allowed me to lavish some of my ever-fraying attention on what I appreciate about the gift of spending time in my son’s good light.
For the rest of the weekend, when I wasn’t shoveling or snow-blowing, I was imagining.
Treated it as if I was making myself a big ole’ pot of soup with no recipe.
Had no intentions of doing anything with it.
Just wanted to metaphorically stand in front of a boiling pot and inhale the steam while it all cooked down and the snow fell.
Nothing more than an exercise to keep my attention productively occupied.
Until a couple days later, I remembered that I owed my friend Jim a letter.
Had not sent him anything yet in the new year.
I try to make my letters worthy of Jim’s attention.
In reciprocity for the treasure he shares with me.
Jim’s a gifted poet.
In his 90’s.
Health has been failing him as of late.
Still writes.
Often achingly, always beautifully.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the act and the substance of what Jim shares with me.
For starters, he hand writes everything … in wobbly but persistent, near-calligraphic penmanship.
Sends me photocopies of his hand-written stuff.
The intentionality of just that — let alone how he makes words dance — fills my heart.
Our last correspondence was a golden phone call one evening a couple months ago, when he called just to let me know how much our correspondence means to him … and apologized that his short breath has kept him from going upstairs (where the printer is) to make me photo copies of his latest poems. The act of him, despite his circumstances, calling me … just to let me know that?
Better than getting a letter in the mail, let me tell you.
Though lately confined to the downstairs of his house, Jim’s aperture on the world remains wide.
He lets so much light in.
Despite his body failing him from a long life’s wear, his poet’s eye, ear and heart remain undiminished.
I find myself often saying aloud how I hope to someday write as well as Jim does in his 90’s.
In the days after the blizzard … seeing all the snow on the ground, I imagined that he probably felt even more cooped up than we did.
I tried to think of something I could send him that he might appreciate, but nothing came to mind.
I hadn’t written anything lately that I felt was worthy.
Then it hit me.
Maybe he’d appreciate some of the soup I’d been toiling over … about the weekend I never had.
So I sloppily ladled some of it onto a page, stuffed it into an envelope, and dropped it into the mail.
This is what I sent …
__
“Thursday, Jan. 27, 2026 7:49 a.m.
Dear Jim,
I hope this note finds you keeping warm. Karry just left for work, I think it’s one degree out. I am working remotely today so am anticipating a day of not having to leave the house, other than to walk to the mailbox and drop a postcard in the mail for Emma.
Oh, the weather of the world.
This past weekend Peter and I had planned to make our annual pilgrimage to Lexington to go see the Kentucky Wildcats play. We’ve done it for three or so years. Thursday night we decided to cancel our plans. I didn’t see us being able to make it back on Sunday, and we both needed to be home for work on Monday. The Air BnB host wouldn’t give us a refund, and we lost out on our tickets, but most of all, I just missed the experience of spending the weekend together with Peter. So, rather than wallow in disappointment, I decided to alchemize my circumstances … decided to write a story as if I was writing a journal entry commemorating the trip I imagined us having. Since I approached it as a journal entry, I allowed for the requisite frayed edges …
A brief excerpt
Saturday
I’d be the first one up, maybe a small pot of coffee, a deep inhale from a half-full bag before scooping grounds, let myself be seduced by the slow, gurgling percolation … pour a half-cup into one of the host’s old mugs fished from the cabinets, scribble a few words at whatever desk or counter, a weekend post card from Kentucky to Em … coax Peter awake early enough for … a cold walk over to Stella’s, ceremonially donning our Big Blue gear before heading out, he lending me a jersey from his collection, I’d pick John Wall given the choice.
We’d wait for two together at the counter to open up, and I’d rub my hand over the old coin embedded in the worn and weathered wood … confirmation.
Soak it all in like maple syrup … the tattoos and bleary-eyed chatter of the staff too young too early for a Saturday morning, listen for whatever they’re playing, maybe Tyler Childers …
… scan the poems framed on the walls on the way to the bathroom, one about Fallingwater … catch clips of expectant, game-day banter buzzing from the tables as I pass through.
Warm my hands around a mug of black coffee Kentucky straight from a fresh pot …
… agonize with Peter over our day’s biggest decision … go with Stella’s Hot Brown – the work of the angels — or just eggs, bacon, home fries well-done and those biscuits I sometimes dream about … yeah, proly that, leave the Hot Brown to legend.
He’d ask the girl about the steak and eggs … sometimes we’re just looking for someone in this world to help us say yes.
After ordering, the expectation and my topped off cup enlivening our conversation, I’d ask him his top 5 favorite Wildcats of all-time, and he’d give the cosmic question the attention it deserves … Herro, SGA locks for him, me, I’d proly reach all the way back to my first favorite, Kenny “Sky” Walker, who used to glide so gracefully from on high when he’d throw ‘em down … we’d refine and adjust our lists like safe-cracking thieves listening for confirming clicks til our waitress returns to put our plates down in front of us.
Us just staring like beggars for a couple respectful seconds … and before reaching for the salt and pepper … one of us would certainly say Grace out loud … and oh my gosh … is there anything better than first bites?
Couple years ago a wise person gifted me the notion that, wherever we are, whenever we are, it’s an opportunity to ask the question, “What’s for me here?” It’s baked in the idea that things don’t happen to us, they happen for us. That we always have agency despite our circumstances. That’s among the reasons I remain soooooo inspired and grateful for both the act and the substance of your writing, Jim. I remind myself that the most important choice that you make is not this word or that word … it’s picking up the pen in the first place.
Keep writing, my friend … “
__
Got home after 9 p.m. just this past Friday night, after meeting my wife and son for a comfort-food-filled dinner after a long Friday that dropped anchor on an already long week.
Proceeded upstairs, slow-dragging eff bombs across a few of the steps, sloppy-mop-style, as my right knee reminded me it is just not happy with me these days.
But before trudging down the hallway to get ready for bed, I stole a glance at the dining room table to see if there was any mail.
Saw an envelope on the place mat in front of my chair.
Stepped close enough to see my name scrawled in Jim’s persistent near-calligraphic hand.
Thanked the universe aloud for giving my Saturday something to look forward to.
Next day … I exercised monk-like restraint in waiting until I was sitting in the front seat of my car in the parking lot across the street from where I’d just finished a transcendent Saturday morning coffee date with my niece … to pluck Jim’s letter from my bag.
Whereupon I melted in place.
There were two pages in the envelope.
They weren’t photocopies.
They were the genuine articles, hand-written on notebook paper.
First page was a letter, dated Feb. 4.
With Jim’s permission, this is what he wrote to me.
“Pete,
Thanks, your letter of imagining, shaking me out of my accustomed lethargy.
Eliciting an immediate response, to your creativity — woke me up today.
Dull winter days, lasting forever chill, testing my old will to find something new and challenging to do.
Friends, like you, willing to take the time, and energy, to remember, with compassion, a lonely old man, far away, appreciated greatly — as we wait the renewed spring of life’s productivity.
I daily, nightly, pray for all your family, for love, God’s strength, to enliven your hopes and activity.
Keep sharing, and God be ever with you all.
Love and care,
Jim”
The note itself, poetry.
But the second page contained the poem.
Signed, dated and …
"Dedicated to Pete and Son's Imagined day,"
Imagine That!
I salute man's unique gift of imagining,
bringing life to an entirely new world,
of what might have been,
setting his feet on streets where he's never been,
feeling an intimate touch of impunity,
looking into eyes never meant for me.
Imagining, escape from a world of set destiny,
freedom to create, in god-like accuracy,
people, places and things,
of sheer, imagined fantasy,
perfectly fashioned and enjoyed, if only momentarily
my own separate world of autonomy.
The coffee is perfect, the eggs even better,
the son at my side, a co-conspirator,
not hindered by time, or other places to be,
we idle, an hour, in a diner's protective imagery,
reality forever bypassed, in this freedom's play,
to make a day go entirely our way.
Having had our opportunity, in spite of a short dismay,
life always has a way of disappointing us,
I have created a whole new day,
paper and pen and who's to say,
which of the two will last the longest,
in our time-clouded memory?
__
Oh my gosh.
I hope to some day write as well as Jim writes in his 90’s.
My heart was singing the entire 37-minute drive home from where I’d met my niece for coffee.
Had to pee by the time I pulled in the driveway.
Climbed upstairs and made a beeline for the bathroom that sits off my bed room.
On my way back through, I instinctively grabbed an old journal off my unmade bed.
Cracked it open to some random page that, it turns out, wasn’t random at all, and read the words I’d been moved to scribble on a page on some forgotten day some years ago … with only a vague hunch that my someday heart might need them to help me make sense of a cold world.
A quote from Rick Rubin.
“We share our way of seeing in order to spark an echo in others. Art is a reverberation of an impermanent life. Enduring affirmations of existence.”
__
From the thaw of a weekend-ruining blizzard … a poem for this world that would have never otherwise existed …
… If I hadn’t imperfectly imagined what was lost … and shared my way of seeing it like thrown together soup
… to warm an old poet’s heart … moving him to write and share spring once again.
Every bit of all of it … nothing more and nothing less than the reverberations of impermanent lives.
Disclaiming that I’m operating sans coffee this morning (boil water advisory in Washington County, which is so on-brand for a week and a world that could use some disinfecting), so please forgive any typos and dissents into incoherent, rambling despair ….
Broke my broken heart this week to read that Bezos eliminated the sports department at the Washington Post.
Poof.
As a former second-rate sports writer who knew enough to know what good sports writing looked like, knew enough to know his Murrays from his Boswells from his Angells from his Alboms from his Colliers from his Jenkins, knew enough to know that fields of play give professionals and teenagers the same Shakespearean stage to live out most of life’s tragedies and comedies, sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly, but always truly, and that in the hands of the right deadline saint, the record could show as much, who knew enough to clip, underline, asterisk, and scribble down golden turns of phrases like collecting seashells for keeping hoping some of it might rub off, who knew enough to know that when he read Roger Kahn’s Boys of Summer that one summer that good sports writers were just good writers who happened to write sports, who knew enough to know that the local versions of those deadline saints who I got to watch and read up close were (and are) just as great, and even greater for shining and reflecting their good light without big spotlights, who knew enough to inhale the scent of a new edition like bread come midnight fresh off the the press before proofing it for the later editions, who knew enough to know that the smudge on your fingertips after reading was what made for a sacred act, who knew enough to know that tomorrow those pages would be lucky to line bird cages before being tossed in the trash so don’t get too full of yourself, who knew enough to know that it was one thing to hit it out of the print park once, but could you do it again tomorrow? And what about the next day? Who knew enough to know that love and commitment are proven only in the act of showing up again and again and playing hurt to stare down a blank page and a deadline, who knew enough to know that to love something with your whole heart is to miss it with whatever’s left of your whole heart when it’s gone, who knew enough to know that when his mid-50s self stumbled into that Waynesburg coffee shop last summer and saw they had a take-one-leave-one book shelf, he reached for the cover-stained, out-of-print edition of Sports illustrated Great Baseball Writing like he was rescuing it from a burning building …
… which he was.
Who knows enough to know that it would be hypocritical this morning to ask if he knows anyone who subscribes to the Atlantic and would they mind sending him a PDF of Sally (who did it as well as any ever did) Jenkins’ elegy, “You Can’t Kill Swagger” published a couple days ago … and that, in the asking lies the blood, like ink stains on my hands for not wanting to scale the paywall for a whole damn subscription.
Letters for Maggie 