Tag Archives: letters

Fathers and Sons, Righteous riffs

A whole new day ….

So, um, all of this happened.

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. 

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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 … 

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“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 …  “

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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. 

Enduring affirmations of our existence.   

A whole new day, paper and pen and who’s to say … 

which of the two will last the longest?

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Fathers and Sons

Saturday Sermon …

So last Saturday afternoon …  my wife, son and I are sweating in the shade underneath our backyard deck, after triple-teaming the mowing and trimming in the high heat.

They ask me to come up with something fun for the evening. 

This never happens. 

They usually don’t trust me with The Decisions. 

Admittedly, my track record’s … spotty. 

Heat must’ve been fogging their judgement.

Sensing a fleeting moment, I brainstormed in earnest.

Found a movie I thought might fit the Venn diagram of our disparate interests — low-stakes, light-comedy with slapstick potential … no heavy themes or deep thinking required. 

Showing in Squirrel Hill at their delightful, restored (and air-conditioned) downtown theater none of us had ever been to. 

5:30 showing. 

About an hour’s drive away from where we were sitting and sweating at 3:30 in the afternoon. 

Gave us a good hour to get cleaned up. 

Ran the idea past the committee, along with a suggestion for dinner afterwards.

No violent objections.  

“Want me to buy tickets?” 

Nods.

“We’ll have to leave by 4:30. Everybody good with that?”

Before locking it in, I made each of them give me a verbal … like they do for exit rows.

So four-thirty comes. 

I’m showered, dressed and ready. 

Karry, too. 

I look out the window and see my son standing in the driveway. 

Changing his oil. 

I do a double-take.

Initiate seething protocols.  

Walk outside. 

 Say the dumbest thing I can think of. 

“You’re not changing your oil,” I say to the grown adult standing in front of me … holding a jug of oil. 

Which prompts the following exchange 

He: Be done in a minute. 

Me: It’s 4:30. 

He: It’s not going to take us an hour to get there.

Me: (clenching jaw, taking several seconds to locate the shit in my mind that I am losing …  before temporarily regaining the power of speech) There are few things I hate more than missing the start of a movie. Just sharing the fact of that with you.

I turn and go back inside. 

Seething level: roiling boil. 

I can’t help myself. 

The prospect of being late while waiting for others has always made me spiral. 

When my oldest was younger, I spent a lot of time spiraling. 

Oh, was he a dawdler. 

Among the greatest of his generation.

No amount of yelling or cajoling could ever make him move any faster.  

He kept time according to his own internal clock. Remarkably, he never let it stress him, either … no matter how much or how loudly it stressed those around him. 

Pretty much grew out of it by college, though. 

I hadn’t seen any evidence of it for years. 

So … finding him in the driveway changing his oil at Agreed-Upon-Go-Time … reminded me how awfully I used to deal with it when I was a younger parent.  

I knew (and remembered) enough to know that if I let Seething Protocols reach Def Con Hot Magma, the evening would not turn out well for anyone ….

And I could kiss any future contributions to The Decisions goodbye.  

It was at that moment that Jim’s letter caught my eye, lying on the dining room table.  

Had come in the mail that day. 

It’d been weeks since I’d since I’d heard from him, since I’d last sent him something I’d written. 

Knowing he’s in his 90s, and having come to expect his prompt (and extraordinarily wonderful) replies, I feared that maybe he’d been having health issues. 

So when I saw his familiar hand-writing on the front of the envelope while fishing the day’s mail from the box, it immediately sparked both relief and joy. 

Accompanying his letters are always recent poems he’s written. He writes them all out by hand, in near-calligraphic quality. Sends me photo copies. 

I keep them all in an overflowing manilla envelope in the top drawer of the desk where I’m typing this.  

He writes so beautifully and unflinchingly about his long life, about growing old. His verse bursts with both aliveness and ache, his words suffused with such wise noticings. 

I hope to someday write as well as Jim does in his 90s. 

While walking back from the mailbox, I decided on the spot to wait to open his letter … to give my Sunday something to look forward to.

But seeing it lying on the dining room table while feeling the minutes tick further and further past our agreed-upon departure, I could think of no better way to invest whatever time it would take for my son to shower and get dressed. 

So I reached for Jim’s letter like it was a life preserver.

Which it was. 

In every sense of the words. 

I was right … he had had a health scare. 

He wrote me from his bed at Washington Hospital, where he’d spent the previous four days in the care of doctors working to reduce the fluid in his lungs from his weakening heart. 

“Many tests, few new answers, long-time problem.” 

He was hoping to go home on the day he was writing me.  

Yet, as he always does in his lovely letters, he described the beauty he was finding in the world around him. 

Started by telling me how much he was enjoying the quality and variety of food they served him. And how grateful he was for the care and the company of the staff. 

And then, this …

“Jesus, talks of ‘The least of these,’ … helping, dealing with, the least, lowest of these.

Allie, hospital pusher of wheelchairs, lowest of lowest hospital staff, pushing me today … 30-33 years old, plain, drab reddish color uniform. 

My inquisitiveness, ‘Is Allie a short version of your full name?’ 

‘Yes.” 

Silence. 

‘Is your full name Alicia?’

‘Yes! You are the first person in my life to guess my full name!’

Amazed smile, new relationship … between lowly patient, and lowly pusher.

And another blessed, new friend today, to share my 91 years — of God’s gifts!” 

The weakening but still beating heart of a humbled soul still fully alive and leaning his flickering candle to the world around him.

His words immediately reminded me of my Dad, who, even when — especially when — he was at his most vulnerable, would go out of his way to make the people around him feel good.

“Boy you’re good at this,” I remember him saying to the hospice caregiver while she was changing the sheets in his bed with him still in it.

“You sure know your way around this place,” I remember him saying to the orderly whisking him in his wheelchair during one of his frequent hospital visits. 

To remain fully present to the world around you when forces are conspiring against you, even when you are at your most vulnerable? 

Well, let’s just say that there’s a lot to be learned from the Jims and Neal Riddells of the world. 

And from all those who keep time according to their own internal clocks. 

Jim’s words convicted me. 

Doused holy water on my Seething Protocols. 

Reminded me that there are far more dire circumstances than being a few minutes late to a movie. 

And, most importantly, reminded me to appreciate the blessings of our days. 

Of triple-tag-teaming the yardwork.  

Sitting and sweating in the shade.

Getting to choose.  

Watching the Greatest Dawdler of All Time … still perfecting his craft.

By the time Jim’s Saturday sermon finished reading me, I was as grateful as an old army chaplain for the variety of hospital food he would soon be missing. 

For the record, it was 4:43 when we locked the back door behind us. 

As I spied Peter’s car in the corner of the driveway, I pointed to the empty bottle of motor oil resting on the ground in front of its grill.

Said to my son what I imagined my Dad would’ve said. 

“Boy, you’re pretty good at taking care of your car.”

No heavy themes or deep-thinking required. 

Thirty-nine minutes later … we walked into the darkened and wonderfully air-conditioned Theater #4 at the Manor.

The opening credits, still rolling ….

 

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Righteous riffs

The Greatest Tribute (Ode to Jim)

A letter arrived yesterday from my friend Jim.

My normal custom for an early-in-the-week Jim letter is to save it to open on Saturday morning.

To give myself something to look forward to.

And to make sure I have the space — temporal, physical, soulful — to savor the treasure inside.

My friend Jim’s a wonderful poet. His letters are always accompanied by a few of his recent poems.

He happens to be in his 90s now.

When I grow up, I hope to someday write as well as Jim does in his 90s.

At his age he senses the nearness of death. As a former pastor he also senses the nearness of being called Home.

Having lived so long, having lost his wife, Mary, to dementia a couple years ago … he keenly appreciates the preciousness of days and time.

And stares it all down with a poet’s heart.

Has made a practice of sifting the everyday for meaning and for magic.

And somehow makes it all rhyme … figuratively and literally.

“Poetry is persistently plaguing me at night, and when, half asleep, I kick off the covers, I force myself to get up, write down a phrase, or a line or two, so precious that I just can’t chance to let it wander away.”

For the record, I’m a little over half Jim’s age, and when I kick off the covers at night, it’s to get up to pee, not scribble down epiphanies.

Jim inspires me so much, in both the act and the substance of his letters and poems.

We’ve carried on a correspondence for a few years now.

I’ve noticed a common refrain in his letters. A lament.

He’s always longed for his poetry to be published … so it can be remembered.

In a post-Thanksgiving letter, he wrote, “Doggerel, following me like a lost puppy, and when on Google yesterday, I found a host of famous lines of Tennyson … I asked, ‘Will anyone remember even one of mine?’ as if I’ll care after my death.”

But only a line later … “Sunday morning sun brightens the tarnished attitude I bring to life on these usual dull winter days.”

I can attest that Jim’s poetry is beyond worthy.

When I wrote him back, I asked him if he would mind if I shared his poems with friends.

And for once, when his reply arrived in the mail, I didn’t wait until Saturday morning to open it.

Something about the urgent pause of a New Year’s Eve suggests a break with custom.

“YES, you may share whatever comes from me. That is the greatest tribute that I know of … of my attempts at poetry … to be liked enough to share.”

In thinking how I might best serve your precious attention in this moment … I can’t think of any better gift to share with you than Jim’s gifts shared with me. Of his noticing in a sparrow’s visit a kindred spirit. His allowing a newborn sun to surround in warmth all that’s old in him.

So in this space between the holidays, between our no longers and our not yets, may we greet whatever lies ahead as if it were a Sunday morning sun.

May we approach it with the wisdom, persistence and awe of a 90-year-old poet still sifting this broken world for its good light.

May we ever be so alive to what moves us that we have no choice but to kick off the covers and call it by name, so we can share our magic words with the world around us.

May we always (always) have something to look forward to.

If you are so moved, you have Jim’s permission to like, share and comment. I promise to reflect your good light back to him.

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Postcards

My Life In Politics

Sorting through the dozens of bins that my Mom lovingly slash compulsively stuffed with just about every artifact from my childhood — Andy Warhol style — I was recently reminded of my one and only foray (so far) into running for public office. 

My campaign for Safety Captain in the fourth grade.

From the forensic evidence, it looks like I had my sights set on the presidency, but was forced to pivot at the 11th hour. Not sure if I lost in the primary, or received insider info that I didn’t have the votes, but it seems forces conspired to turn my attention to a high-ranking cabinet position instead. 

Also from the forensic evidence, apparently “safety” was not on Miss Barkett’s spelling list that week. 

Not sure what motivated me to land on Safety Captain as my Plan B, but I am retrospectively impressed by my 4th grade resiliency. This may have been my first exposure to the adage, “When one door closes on one’s quest for world domination, another one opens up.”

Apparently I ran a successful grassroots campaign.

Looks like I took great care in drafting my platform.

Like Lincoln tweaking his famous address on the train ride to Gettysburg, the last couple lines added in pencil suggest a deliberate approach. I imagine myself scribbling between classes, or ruminating after getting eliminated in dodgeball.

Didn’t waste a word, though.

The 54-year-old typing this only wishes his aim was so true.

I must’ve worn the object on the right as a button, as it looks like there are a couple pin holes up top. Didn’t skimp on the professional head shot.

Ahem.  

I think (?) I may have won. Hatfield Elementary alum please fact check me on this. 

For all I know I may have run unopposed, but I’d like to believe my sincerity counted for something.

From what I recall I served a fairly uneventful term. 

To say it was a simpler time would be an understatement.  

And by that, I don’t mean pre-puberty, though that proly also helped make the execution of my responsibilities a little easier.  

I’d like to believe I kept my campaign promises. 

To work hard. To not fool around.

I hope I tried my best.

I hope they liked me. 

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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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The Road Ahead

Something To Look Forward To

Going through mail late Wednesday night after a long week of long travel, I noticed a letter from a friend, a single rose amongst all the junk mail. Rather than opening it on the spot, I made plans to save it until Saturday morning, where I might savor it at the coffee shop down the road, where our friendship was born a handful of years ago. Lately, I’ve tried to make a point of giving myself things to look forward to. When it works well, my Saturday mornings become sacred spaces, a chance to replenish some measure of all the week’s taxes. 

Yesterday, though, had a few plot twists that kept me from filling my cup, both figuratively and literally. It was well past 1 p.m. and I found myself driving around after running a couple errands.  Robbed of my ritual, my head was not in the best of spaces. The coffee shop closes at 1:30 on Saturdays, so I’d missed my window. 

I was about to return home, where I’d probably grumpily wallow through the rest of a ruined Saturday, when I remembered I still had the unopened letter in my bag. On a whim I navigated to the Eat n’ Park off Oak Springs Road, which I hadn’t visited in years, but which was in heavy rotation when the kids were younger. Pulling into an open parking spot triggered a memory of an Eat n’ Park Saturday long past, when Peter, maybe 9 at the time, attempted to order a Boys’ Day-Out lunch consisting of mashed potatoes, a baked potato, french fries and potato chips. I remember telling him at that time that if his mother was with us, she would stab him in the eye with a fork.

I wasn’t really hungry, and I’d already had the morning’s coffee, but the idea of a big table and a comfy booth sounded … comforting for some reason. 

The hostess seated me near the front.

So, hours late, off schedule and way off course, I exhaled from my comfy booth and fished the letter from my bag.

Though deep into his 80’s, my friend Jim writes his letters with a calligrapher’s hand (though he saves his best penmanship for his poems).

As one whose handwriting has degraded so much that I have long resorted to typing my letters (though I try salvaging a measure of dignity by choosing a typewriter font … lame, I know), I delight in reading the hand of others. Tearing open the letter, I pluck just a brief note from my friend. Letting me know that the timing of my last letter to him was of great encouragement, as he received it on the day of his wife Mary’s passing. He had only months ago placed her in a personal care facility, after caring for her for years and through the Pandemic as she slipped further into dementia. In his last letter to me he wrote unflinchingly, achingly but beautifully about being physically separated from his wife for the first time in their 66 years of marriage. A minister and former Army chaplain during his long full life, Jim always writes mindful of God’s audience, which begs an even greater reverence from his fortunate reader. 

He closed his short note by sharing that his final Valentine’s gift to Mary was a new book of poems he’d written over the past three years, finished several days before she passed. The title: The Road Bends Upwards (those four words a poem unto themselves). 

He wrote in my letter that Mary chuckled when he read the collection’s dedication to her over the phone … 

Duck your head

Close your eyes

Take my hand

And we will walk this road

One more time 

Together

My eyes filled as I read his words.

The ineffability of the inevitable disassembling of a long love on this earth. And still the poet reaches for the only tool he knows to claim the shaky ground beneath him. Knowing the effort will come nowhere close to its mark. Just as any long love misses as much as it aims at. Grief rendered in all its aching beauty.

Yes to that. 

I still held Jim’s note in my hand when the server stopped by my table to take my order. I somehow managed to mumble an order without my voice catching and then just sat there. 

A few minutes later my server brought me my sandwich. I began mindlessly picking at it. 

From my booth near the front, I faced the hostess station, so got to see everyone who came in. 

I was maybe midway through my sandwich when I looked up and saw an older couple being led to their table. They had to be in their 70s, maybe older (I’ve never tried to be good at guessing such things). They cut quite a contrasting presence. He was bald, tall and broad. She was his diminutive opposite, short, petite with a shock of straight gray. Candidly, though, I may not have given them a second thought, still so deep and lost in my figurative and literal sitting with the contents of Jim’s letter … if it wasn’t for one thing that caught my eye.

They held hands.

And took their good time in no great hurry. Heads high, looking forward, not saying a word as they followed the hostess in front of them.

The way they held each other’s hand, in their mismatched nylon coats, I swear to God they walked the worn carpet of our old Eat n’ Park like they were walking down the aisle of a church.

As if they hadn’t lost a step in probably the 50 years that passed since their I dos. 

It was like, in each other’s hand, they were reaching for the only tool they knew to claim the shaky ground beneath them.

Yes to that. 

Thanks to Jim’s friendship, his letter, his example, I found myself mindful of God’s audience. How else could I account for choosing to wait to open his letter until Saturday? My careful Saturday morning plans blowing up?  Finding myself at an Eat n’ Park I hadn’t visited in years to crack open his beautiful letter? Looking up from my front row seat to catch the fleeting glimpse of an old love still standing the test of time? 

And in the process … giving me something to look forward to … well beyond the end of any week. 

So, in between bites of my turkey club, I claimed the shaky ground beneath me, to honor my friend and his beloved. 

To stab at the ineffable, knowing going in that the effort would come nowhere close to its mark.

Love misses as much as it aims at.

And, before I gathered my things and myself to return to whatever was left of my Saturday, I asked for the check of the happy old couple seated at their wedding table near the salad bar. 

For Mary and Jim 

Sun finds me sitting alone at a big booth near the front

Saturdaying a double-decked turkey club, 

toothpicked together much like my morning, 

triangled in quarters just how I remember it


when enters an old couple,

he big, tall and bald, 

she small, gray and boss, 

following the hostess in procession, 


holding hands and walking slow

maybe because they are just old

maybe just because it’s as fast as they can

or just maybe 


because the warmth of each other’s hands 

is their knowing secret, 

still bewitching them like a good campfire

after all these years into a slow savor


claiming the worn carpet ‘neath their feet

as their I (still) do aisle,

rendering my booth a front row pew, 

and me grateful for the gift of bearing witness,


enrobed in nylon mismatched coats 

a king and his queen, regal,

as the hostess now way on ahead

waits to seat them next to the salad bar 

Yes to that. 

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Fathers and Sons, Postcards

The world just went away there for a few minutes ….

April 3, 2020, 11:07 p.m.

A couple weeks ago Karry was violently cleaning out out the dining room, rooting through old drawers, filling garbage bags with stuff she didn’t want to think twice about. Of the two of us, she is, by far, the most qualified for the task. My wife is not the sentimental type. I, on the other hand, ensure that my wife will always have drawers to clean out. But in the midst of her editing, something gave her enough pause to seek me out downstairs. She tossed an envelope on my desk. “Yeah, you probably forgot about that one.”

On the outside of the envelope, my handwriting:

To: Peter

From: Dad

Christmas 2001

Inside, a letter. From me to my baby boy. Days before our first Christmas together.

Buried treasure.

I have no recollection of doing this.

Which is exactly why I did it.

I learned quickly during those eight months that time was no longer to be fucked with. From the moment Dr. Bulseco announced, “It’s a Boy,” we became unwitting passengers on a turbo steamroller, and would spend as much time under it as in the cab.

So, early on I made a point to mark time whenever I could steal a moment. Scribbles in a journal. Postcards from the road. Notes on a computer.

And evidently, letters to my baby.

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