Category Archives: Rearview Mirror

Rearview Mirror, Righteous riffs

Colophon: March 6-10

In no particular order … an incomplete, un-edited, accounting of the stuff that got me through the week:

Monday afternoon, inviting some student leaders from BYU’s Experience Design program to our team’s weekly meeting. Co-creating the agenda with Michaela, a senior in the program. Her showing up prepared with some custom slides to guide the menu we’d discussed (she, a badass). Their team giving us a prompt for our Story Circle, “How did you get here?” Every answer a window into each other’s Story. Me, choosing not to overthink it, confessing how I am here in spite of myself, and (still) basking in awe at that fact.

Not getting back to sleep Monday night and instead of the obligatory trying in vain to doze, getting outta bed and going downstairs to write, finishing something for Karry to read on her late morning work break.

Getting a hand-written letter in the mail from my niece on Monday, and saving it until Wednesday morning, when I knew I would need it most. Walking outside to tear the envelope so I could savor it while listening to the chattering birds whispering their reminders that today matters. 

That letter filling my cup full, and me needing every ounce of it on a Wednesday that drained it to the dregs. 

Leaving the office late, depleted, for home and Peter texting me asking about dinner. Said I was thinking pasta since I assumed I’d be solo. Five minutes later, he shooting me a recipe he found and a shortlist of ingredients to pick up on my way home.

Getting home a few minutes before him, filling the pasta pot, getting out the cutting board, peeling the garlic, making us salads. He coming home from his Wednesday classes and commencing to chef up the new recipe. Calling new tunes for me to hear (he’s digging Ghost these days). While he worked and I sipped from a freshly cracked Malbec, our easy conversation the best Wednesday medicine. Filling our plates full and watching Duquesne in the A-10 tourney. While the Dukes lost, Peter’s delicious dish earning an automatic bid to our future family dinner bracket. Coming this close to crushing an entire box of pasta between us. Sun-dried tomatoes … who knew? 

In my Friday morning feed, a jet-lagged Patti Smith, from her tender room, her cat Cairo in her lap, honoring John Cale, her late-husband Fred Smith, and her kindred spirit Robert, on the anniversary of the latter’s day of passing, reading just the most beautiful passage from their story, Just Kids, the product of a promise kept, nine years in the making.

Staying up late Thursday night putting slides together for a Friday client meeting that I really wanted to slay. Rising early Friday morning on little sleep but with an epiphany. Scrap my slides. Tell a story. On my 45-mile commute into work, randomly tuning in a random episode of a podcast I’d only dipped toes in, and the episode the perfect pre-presentation pump up, had me literally clapping and shouting affirmations at the stop light into the industrial park, drawing the most curious stares from the car next to me. Clicking into my client meeting shot out of a cannon and fully caffeinated, naked of slides, armed only with a (glorious) story. Me OK with whatever the outcome, knowing I served their curiosity and attention as best I could, and gave them the best possible window into my humble offering. Authenticity over polish. 

My Friday work week ending on the highest of notes with my monthly connection with my P.S.F. (Professional Serendipity Friend), and listening to her gloriously effervescing hours after returning home with her husband from a sacred return pilgrimage to New Orleans. Us feverishly making notes of treasures to share with the other. Our conversational jazz making time melt (like all good jazz does). 

Karry calling me on my way home, confessing the weather too gray and cold to go back out in (me agreeing), and she calling in a takeout order from the Catholic Church Lenten fish fry across town, me picking it up, and us sitting lights out in the living room in the glow of Friday night whatever’s on, communing over church kitchen cole slaw, fries, hushpuppies and Heinz-baptized cod.  

Saturday morning, listening to Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way, steaming coffee in my favorite Saturday mug, my antenna still up … and typin’. 

Amen.

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Rearview Mirror

The Colonoscopy Chronicles

(Don’t worry, nothin’ oogie ….)

Around St. Patrick’s Day, someone at work mentioned that the odds of finding a four-leaf clover are something like 1 in 10,000. I have no idea if that’s accurate. I just know two things. 

1.) I don’t think I’ve ever found one in my life.

2.) My mother-in-law Betty found them all the time.

Before every one of Karry’s nephew’s baseball games, Betty would arrive at the ball field early and, pluck a four-leaf clover from the grass and give it to Justin before warm-ups. He tucked ‘em in the inside ring of his ballcap. By the end of the season, his cap was lined with four-leaf-clovers like Stargell Stars. Though I never asked him, I bet he felt invincible taking the field.

That story encapsulates everything you need to know about Betty Fordyce. She made everyone she met feel lucky for knowing her. 

Our hearts broke when she passed from colon cancer in 2006. 

When I went for my annual physical this year, my family doctor informed me it was time for a colonoscopy. Wasn’t psyched about the prospect, but I thought of Betty when I scheduled it. Since her Mom’s passing, Karry’s been begrudgingly vigilant with her screenings since she’s deemed higher risk.

March was Colorectal Cancer Awareness month. As the CCA reminds, about 150,000 will be diagnosed this year with this highly preventable disease. In 2018 a large study found that “colonoscopy was associated with a 61% reduction in colorectal mortality.”

Those are much better odds than finding a four-leaf clover. And, statistically speaking, much better protection, too.

Many of my friends have either turned or are approaching a big, round birthday milestone this year. If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to get your screening. FWIW, the wake-up music is spectacular.

They say you always remember your first time. Just in case, I figured I’d capture a few things for, you know, posterity ….

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Postcards, Rearview Mirror, The Road Ahead

18,250 Sunrises ….

Not comprehensive, or in any particular order … just what comes to one’s mind upon being gifted approximately 18,250 sunrises ….

  • That, when I was a desperate for a date to a fraternity party, she said yes. And the subsequent circles we danced to Meat Loaf (if I recall), and the subsequent goodnight kiss, and the Johnny Walker Red that may or may not have been responsible for the courage behind that kiss, and, indirectly, the subsequent 29 years.
  • That I got to be on the same stage with my Dad when he’d close his eyes and shred Harry James’ opening solo on Two O’Clock Jump. The numbers of all the good charts we used to play (#95, #39, #124, #20, #209, #93, #117).
  • Gathering with my best childhood friends every Christmas to decorate a tree, sip some Old Crow, and bear witness.
  • A big sister who let me pick out my first rock n’ roll record at the National Record Mart.
  • A daughter who still says yes when I ask her to read with me, and who savors a good turn of phrase as much as her old man.
  • A sister who sends me a card, cartoon, or clipping every week to let me know she’s thinking of me.
  • A son who asks me to hit golf balls with him even though I am beyond redemption. And on the grander scale, a gracious soul who forgives me for having tried way too hard.
  • Running under all those perfectly aimed and timed fly balls Dad launched just within the waffle-pocket reach of the oversized, Reggie Jackson model Rawlings he bought with the best $25 he ever spent.
  • Em’s Saturday morning omelets with toast (oh, and while I’m there, her home made mac-n-cheese doused with Red Hot in the manner of holy water).
  • An older brother who, like the good offensive lineman he was, wore down my parents’ resistances to allow me a clean running lane through my teenage years.
  • Roger Khan, Roger Angell, John Updike, Myron Cope, Gene Collier, David Halberstam, Roy Blount Jr. and all the others who taught me that good sports writers were just good writers who happened to write sports.
  • The small graces … squeezing toothpaste on her toothbrush in the morning … walking down the driveway together after taking out the garbage … standing at the sink doing dishes …. blowing kisses to the window while leaving for work in the morning.
  • My favorite Sunday night Oldie’s DJ.
  • A sister who raised two beautiful souls on her own and now gets to enjoy her grandchildren, and the occasional glass of wine with her baby brother.
  • A neighborhood that knew the best recipe for growing adults was to let kids be kids.
  • Preserving the capacity to be awed.
  • A mom who saved everything, including the before-and-after-orthodontic molds of my teeth, the BEFORE sample prompting my daughter to re-coil, “That looks like it’s from a North American primate,” which is pretty much exactly what the girls in middle school thought, too.
  • That holding hands still makes everything OK.
  • Parents who gave me time and space to figure stuff out.
  • Chicken wings from Drovers, two with everything and fries with gravy from Shorty’s, a Poorboy without tomato, small fries and a Pabst draft from Potter’s.
  • Charlie Watts proving that eighth notes and a bemused smile are all one needs to build a pocket big enough to fit an entire world (translation: more is not always better).
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins writing his arse off for an audience no bigger or smaller than God herself.
  • Laurel Highlands Class of ’88.
  • Jazz on a rainy day and blistering guitars ‘neath a starry sky.
  • Our only family vacation growing up … to Gettysburg and Valley Forge during the Bicentennial. The sound of pee hitting a coffee can in the backseat on our no-stop drive to the middle of the state.
  • The bewitching crackle of a campfire.
  • The 1-4-5 progression.
  • How the very specific scent and feel of crisp late summer Southwestern PA mornings always makes me think of high school band camp.
  • The old, tiny teacher’s desk from Areford that mom salvaged and refinished … that makes me think of where I came from every time I sit down to write at it.
  • The best days in my life, summed up in eight words. “I do / It’s a boy / It’s a girl”
  • Remembering to look up.
  • Making her laugh so hard she cries.
  • When they were small enough to carry.
  • Knowing it’s in as soon as it leaves your hand.
  • That little dip in our neighborhood that breezes you five degrees cooler like a kiss on the cheek when you’re running down its hill
  • Ray Charles singing America the Beautiful.
  • A dry Kettle One martini and/or listening to Paul Desmond (same thing)
  • Every letter I’ve received in the mail and kept.
  • Riding in Dad’s Sherwin Williams van on Sunday afternoons looking for a playground hoop with a good net.
  • Being Santa Claus. Until you’re not.
  • Winning the in-law lottery.
  • Peter’s brown-sugar, oven-baked, banana ‘recipe’ he fashioned when he was seven years old, that, when properly muddled with vanilla ice cream, is the key to the universe.
  • How the smell of second hand smoke always makes me think of Mom.
  • City Lights Bookstore.
  • The sound of rain on a metal awning.
  • Nieces and nephews who made great daughters and sons, better sisters and brothers, and even better mothers and fathers.
  • All the encouragers.
  • That I remembered to write most of the good stuff down, to remind me when I forget about the good stuff.
  • Chapters left to write.

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Rearview Mirror

Of bad Christmas presents, super smart ladies, and hiding the marshmallow ….

Dedicated to my cousin, Dr. Jennifer Wallace.

I love how my mother loved to write letters. She’d buy those long yellow notebooks by the packet and kept stacks of reserves on top of the kitchen fridge. She burnt through them almost as fast as the cigarettes she smoked when she curled up at the kitchen table to write, pen in one hand, lit Salem in the other, one foot on the chair, knee to her chest. 

From what I recall, she mostly wrote to her sisters: her older sisters Ruth and Doris, and her younger sister Janet. (Mom was the sixth of seven kids … though the oldest baby died at childbirth). 

____

As a kid I always held a special expectation at Christmas for the packages we’d get from my mom’s sisters Janet and Doris.

Their contents never had anything to do with whatever I’d petitioned Santa for. As a result, the annual postmarks from Coopersburg, PA (Janet), and Dayton, Ohio (Doris) always heralded a surprise or two. 

ESPECIALLY Aunt Janet’s. Her boxes always contained the quirkiest, goofiest, orneriest stuff, which was very much in keeping with her personality. You never knew what you were going to get, and were never disappointed. It was stuff that always left you asking where on earth did she find that? The stuff that made you smile long after the Christmas glow had died to embers. Having to wait until Christmas morning to open Janet’s gifts was always excruciating. 

By contrast, Aunt Doris’ stuff was usually a lot more austere, reflecting her personality. Doris was a business school graduate. I never saw her much, but I perceived her as pretty serious, worldly, super smart, professional (in the days when that was not what society necessarily expected of its women). Her holiday packages were always distinguished by a large can of Planter’s peanuts for Dad. Every now and then Dad would get a tall can of cashews. My childhood self registered this as lavish. Although Dad (and I) loved peanuts, we never splurged on them, never had them in the house. In my childhood memory I perceived cashews to be an extravagance beyond our means. It’s funny to think about now, but I always ascribed a special ‘fanciness’ to Aunt Doris’ annual cans of Planter’s. Overall, though, her gifts were practical, not spectacular. While always welcome, the arrival of her Christmas packages never registered the same high level of anticipation as Aunt Janet’s.

Until 1987 and the Christmas of my senior year of high school. In the annual package from Aunt Doris there was a surprise – a special gift for me. Last Christmas before college, I remember allowing myself high expectations for what was inside. It was big. Felt heavy in my lap. Too heavy for peanuts. I unwrapped it in earnest … to discover … a red, hardcover Webster’s College Dictionary, along with a note wishing me well in college. Really? A dictionary? I remember at the time putting it in the same category as getting a pair of socks. I considered it about the worst Christmas gift my 17-year-old self could imagine. She didn’t get me the way that Aunt Janet did, I remember thinking at the time. 

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