Tag Archives: love

Excursions, Postcards

Using my words …

Was just about to take Thursday’s first sip at the coffee shop when a severe weather event rolled in to my right. 

“Tell your Dad what you want! We came here for breakfast!”

Enters, yelling.  

I turned and saw a young mother standing in the archway that splits the coffee shop’s seating area from the bakery where you place your order.

I couldn’t see the child. 

Only hear him. 

Wailing. 

In full froth.

Though decades removed from the child-meltdown days, I still fancy myself a bit of a connoisseur.

I try not to stare, but I can’t help myself. 

It’s like rubbing a hand over old scars tied to humbling stories.

I’m drawn by empathy, not schadenfreude. 

Mostly. 

It’s the kind of thing that can only be appreciated at a distance. 

The kid was producing these long, drawn-out whines — persistent and consistent — at impressive decibels. 

Without optics, I put it at about a category 4 meltdown. 

Likely not a microburst, based on context clues.

The store had just opened. They had just arrived. 

And mom’s patience tank was already on empty. She wasn’t even feigning appeasement. 

She was dead-ass yelling at her child from another room.

“Use your words!” she barked back towards him.

If I was a tornado hunter, I’da been buckling my seat belt and double checking I had back-up batteries for my camera. 

That both of them had already completely abandoned any sense of their surroundings suggested that the meltdown had begun well before their arrival. 

And also that the wailing child may have come by his gifts … honestly. 

Regardless, it was clear the situation had been brewing for as long as Thursday’s dark roast of the day. 

“We are never coming back here unless you stop!” 

Ooh, I thought. Seemed a bit premature to play the “We’re never doing this again!” card.

Few chess moves left on the board after that one. Pretty much just the nuclear options.  

A child in meltdown is among the most humbling things in the universe.

Second only to trying to get the goddamn wheels on a Pinewood Derby car to go straight, at least in my experience. 

The harder you try, the worse you make it. 

I mean, here was a mother — otherwise the most powerful being in all the universe — letting herself get drawn in to her child’s energy. She’d completely lost her footing in rationality. 

Might as well have been yelling at the rain. 

After her “Nevermore” threat, she executed an exquisite “I’m-done-with-it” 180 (9.8 from the judges), and took a seat by herself at a round table near the front of the room. 

Signifying that this was now Dad’s problem. 

Also known as “tappin’ in the B team.”

Poor motherf*cker, I thought. 

Minute later Dad comes in carrying their order with their son trailing behind him … still wailing. 

He promptly engaged “controlled burn” protocols. 

Gently placed his wife’s order in front of her — like a zookeeper feeding an alligator — and then sat down at an adjacent table, giving Mom’s magma some space to cool while limbering up for his shot at quelling the hellion.

I’m bad at ages but I pegged the kid between three and four.

At the ripe age when one recognizes one’s agency and power to make themselves seen and heard in the world. 

“Hang on to that kid,” I thought in my head.

“Hold my sippy cup,” he replied telepathically, as he refused Dad’s overture to join him and defiantly took a seat at one of the tables in the coffee shop’s window. 

Where he immediately began kicking his legs as if he was on a swing, percussively thumping his heels against the window. 

It was glorious. 

Like watching Da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa of meltdowns.  

Took dad all of four thumps to stand up, walk over to the window and grab the child by the hand. 

Exits, wailing. 

They left the building for some air, and to give mom some visual separation, even if her peace was completely out of the question by this point. 

A brick alley runs alongside the coffee shop. I think that’s where they went. 

I could still hear the boy yelling from a distance.

Sounded like the coyotes that screech in the cemetery at night. 

Meanwhile Mom silently nibbled at her muffin while scrolling her phone. 

Boys were gone for a couple minutes, during which I patched together a backstory in my head. 

I surmised the parents had planned a summer day off. Had thoughtfully put together a day of adventure — maybe a trip to the city — starting with a rare weekday breakfast outing at Mom’s favorite place.  

They were likely on a schedule. Perhaps had to leave the house at a certain time, which didn’t align with the kid’s morning agenda. Probably wasn’t a long drive to the coffee shop, just enough for the child to find a cadence for his displeasure, whereupon he set his pace for distance and duration. 

I finished my cortado and returned my cup to the counter, ordering one for the road. 

Stepping outside, I saw Dad hoisting the child off the ground while standing next to an SUV with the back door open. 

He wore the exasperated look of someone trying to figure out the geometry of how to fit a big Ikea box into the back seat’s un-rectilinear opening … if the box had legs and was simultaneously pushing in the opposite direction.  

Mom was silently seething on the sidewalk, holding a paper bag with the vestiges of their breakfast that she’d likely toss in the garbage as soon as she got home.

They had reached the inevitable conclusion that sooner or later comes for all parents with best laid plans: time to cut losses and abort the mission. 

AKA the nuclear option. 

But then, I witnessed the most glorious thing. 

In the midst of trying to stuff his uncooperative child into the backseat, Dad caught sight of the coffee shop’s sidewalk tables.

I actually saw the spark catch his eyes and wrinkle his forehead. 

“Or,” he said to his wife, “We could just sit outside?”

This was everything to me. 

Despite the fact that he was overmatched, outwitted, and soundly defeated by a three-year-old and a morning that could not have gone more to shit, there remained inside him a flickering spark that believed, “This is still salvageable.”

It wasn’t, but that was beside the point. 

“Hang on to that Dad,” I thought in my head.

Made me appreciate just how quickly the days of the never-ending meltdowns … eventually do end. 

I genuinely wanted to hug him. 

But not enough to risk getting mule-kicked by the spawn of Satan he was trying to wedge into the car like an uncooperative Lagkapten ($79 from Ikea, ICYI).   

The polite thing to do would have been for me to just put my head down and cross the street. 

Instead, I waited patiently for the kid to take a breath. 

And then I took Mom’s advice. 

I used my words. 

“Excuse me,” I said sheepishly. 

All three turned to look at me. 

“Um, I know the time is not now …” I began. 

“But I promise you that there will come a time … when you will miss even this.

“That time is not now,” I quickly repeated. “But I promise you.”

Holding his tear-drenched kid by his armpits two feet off the ground, Dad threw his head back and laughed. 

Mom, meanwhile, closed her eyes and allowed herself a self-effacing chuckle, the first slow step to remembering that she was, in fact, the most powerful being in the Universe.

Their smiles made all my scars tingle. 

“God bless you guys,” I said, raising my to-go cup. 

It’s the kind of thing that can only be truly appreciated at a distance. 

Exits, remembering.

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Postcards

Standing in the Shadow …

I wanted to be outside this morning, before things got too hot.

Chose the cemetery for a couple reasons.

Shade, for one. Lots of trees.

I like the ups and downs, too. Lets you choose your own adventure, depending on whatever ambitions you bring with you.

I’ve also found that it’s just a good space for reflection … remembering … reminding oneself.

I park in a small pull over that can fit three or four cars, depending. Was still stretching out when someone pulled in next to me. I saw it was an older fella. I was going to wish him a Happy Fourth, but he was taking his time getting out of his car, so I just set off.

The route I usually choose starts with a downhill (I like to be kind to myself), and then a short climb under a canopy of pines, from where it drops a little before flattening out to a roundabout, where I will just do some loops for some easy distance, before hitting a straightaway that takes me past where I parked.

Midway through my first loop, I saw the gentleman who had parked next to me. I’m bad at guessing ages, but based on his silver hair, I’d put him a bit north of 70. He’s shorter in stature, but solid.

He walks with two walking poles.

Not fast, but persistent.

I waved as we passed.

“It’s good to be outside on the Fourth of July isn’t it?” I said.

“Yes it is,” he said.

And then I did this thing that I do sometimes, when I’m out for a run and encounter elders doing their outdoor things.

It might be a by-product of the endocannabinoids that get released in my brain when I’m moving. I’ve noticed that they like to take over my broadcast system sometimes.

I turned back around and said, “I just have to say … you inspire me.”

He looked up at me and smiled, surprised.

“I just have walking sticks,” he said, somewhat sheepishly.

And I said the true thing that I say sometimes.

In so many words, that there is no such thing as ‘just.’

“Well, I hope to live as long and be as wise as you someday, and get to enjoy being outside on the Fourth of July.”

“Well, I am enjoying it,” he confessed.

Then, for good measure, my endocannabinoids bid him adieu with a, “God bless ya’ sir.”

And we went on our respective ways.

Continuing past where I parked, there’s a straightaway that passes in front of the cemetery’s crematorium — or what my daughter affectionately termed the “Easy-Bake” during our Covid walks — and up a hill where I like to take a right and descend to another small roundabout that overlooks the veterans’ cemetery.

In the lead-up to Memorial Day, they put flags on all the markers and gravestones, and leave them up through the summer. The flags catch the natural breezes of the hill, and are always fluttering, which I always find moving as I am moving.

Among the things I appreciate about the fluttering flags is how they invite your attention.

“Looky here,” they say.

Which reminds me that the flags’ stars and stripes aren’t meant to be the stars.

What’s sacred is the ground beneath them.

This past Memorial Day I remember pausing at the roundabout. For some reason I felt compelled to slowly scan from right to left across the field to try and register each one of the flags on each one of the headstones.

Felt like a respectful thing to do.

I’m not sure how many veterans are buried there … a couple hundred at least.

As I scanned, it occurred to me how the graves spanned across many generations, commemorating service personnel from different places, backgrounds and homes. Who all answered and honored the same call, each for their own reasons, if they had a choice. Whose lives were probably all changed in different and complicated and meaningful ways — some ended — by their experiences in uniform.

The flags always catch me the way the breeze catches them.

Passing by them this morning, I felt compelled to capture the scene … for posterity.

Felt like a respectful thing to do.

I was barely a couple seconds into filming when the sun peeked from behind a cloud and cast the large flag behind me that anchors the overlook.

And all of a sudden I was standing in the big flag’s shadow …

… overlooking a Veterans’ cemetery …

… in a small town named for the man who once referred to the country’s then-new government as “the last great experiment, for promoting human happiness,” …

… on the Fourth of July of that experiment’s 250th birthday.

Standing still in the shadow of all of that, I found myself deeply moved.

And so I did my best to reflect … to remember … to remind myself.

My hunch — and this might have been the endocannabinoids talking — was that not many of the souls buried in front of me spent a great deal of time patting themselves on the back. That, when their service was done, they likely appreciated that what they came back to — country-wise and life-wise — was still very much a work-in-progress. With just as much work to do as had been done.

I’m hoping that each one of ‘em at least took a measure of pride in having done their small part in keeping it going and giving the whole experiment a chance.

After taking a moment to pay my respects … I picked up my stride again … just grateful to all those who came before me for the gift of being outside on the Fourth of July before it gets too hot.

And I said the true thing that I say sometimes.

In so many words, that there is no such thing as ‘just.’

May this experiment live long enough to get to be as wise as our small town’s namesake and country’s first president.

May we re-commit to the goal of promoting human happiness for all and co-create a world that promises no more and no less than what a good cemetery does — all the ups and downs you want, but letting you choose your own adventure, depending on whatever ambitions you bring with you.

May we close the gap between the truths and unalienable rights that Jefferson knew were self-evident to our creator, but still very much work-in-progress to those of us standing in our creator’s shadow.

And even if we don’t live long enough to see its fullest manifestation, may we at least persist long and far enough to inspire younger striders with our walking sticks.

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Postcards, Righteous riffs

The Sauce Boss ….

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? 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.

So that we might truly know the GOAT.  

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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. 

__

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. 

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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Postcards

Ink-stained elegy ….

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.

– 30 –

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Postcards

29 years, 149 days ….

Was pulling laundry from the dryer yesterday, under strict guidelines from Karry. 

Which she made me repeat out loud before she left.

Which didn’t upset me at all. 

We both know my track record.  

Set myself a timer for 10 minutes for the two pairs of leggings (black and gray) that needed pulled out early. 

At eight minutes, I still remembered black and gray, but texted her to triple confirm that both were pants.

After the rest of the load finished, I neatly (for me) folded and hung everything else. 

Even remembered to check the lint screen.

“She’d appreciate that,” was an actual thought in my head. 

It was covered from the full load.

The lint was the brightest purple.

From the big Eeyore sweatshirt she got at that Disney discount store in Orlando. 

Probably why it was on discount. 

Made me smile … not sure why.

Maybe because I was the only person in the universe who knew that something she loved made the world purple. 

Took me a few seconds to roll it off the screen and into a ball.

Thought about saving it for her.

Nah, she’d think it was weird.    

Took a picture of it before I tossed it in the garbage, though.

So I’d remember.  

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Excursions

Time, an appreciation ….

“But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.” — David Foster Wallace, “This is Water,” Commencement Speech to Kenyon College, 2005

__

Walked into the post office yesterday morning carrying the hand-written card and extra copy of Dave Eggers’ “The Captain and the Glory” I was sending to a best-friend for his January birthday. After picking out and addressing a padded envelope, I went to take my place in line … just as a mom and her young son were walking in. 

The boy, maybe eight, was carrying a package at least half as tall as he was. Could barely peek over its top. Based on the way he was waddling, the contents had some heft. 

Carrying the lighter of our respective loads, I let ‘em go in front of me.

The post office people behind the counter were in the process of switching shifts — logging in and out and whatnot — so our patience was, um, appreciated.

Mom asked the boy if wanted to put the package down while they waited.

“I’m holding it,” he said, defiantly, standing on one leg for a sec so he could adjust his grip.

I smiled at such innocence.

Obviously, his first time waiting in line at the post office. 

Within a few seconds he was grunting.

Mom moved her suggestion from the interrogative to the imperative. 

He remained a stubborn helper. 

However, his strength timed out before the glacial logging in process. 

He put the box down. 

Looked around and noticed the floor-standing carousel of gift cards strategically placed near where the line begins. 

Asked Mom if he could have a dollar for a Roblox gift card. 

Upon which she proceeded to explain the business concept of disintermediation to her child. 

Told him it was ‘cheaper’ to just purchase credits from the site, rather than going through a middle man. 

She wasn’t merely patient. She was generous.

You could tell they spent a lot of time together for how easy their conversation was. 

Reminded me how much I enjoyed conversing with our kids when they were young. 

How much I learned from the way their minds worked. 

“Thank you for your patience, can I help the next customer?” 

The son cupped his hands back under the box. 

Hoisted. 

Waddled over to the counter and heaved it up there himself. 

“I see you brought your helper,” said the freshly logged-in counter person. 

“She can’t lift with her one arm, so I have to carry things,” said the boy, carrying the conversation as responsibly as he did the box.

Over the next couple minutes of the transaction, the adults left space for the boy’s participation.

He complemented the clerk on her gift cards, relaying how he wanted a dollar one, but his Mom said it was better to buy credits online.

“Have you ever gotten a gift card before?” the clerk asked, as she processed the postage for the box. 

“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes my Mom gets me one … when I do good things.”

I inferred from the small sample size I was witnessing that he had a few credits in the bank. 

Meanwhile, a line began to form behind me, headed by a white-haired, tightly-coated, tightly-lipped older woman. 

Who was out of both stamps and patience.

As the boy elucidated on his upcoming birthday and that one time he was late for football practice, the woman’s huffs under her breath were oddly comparable to the boy’s grunts under the box.

I made smiling ‘what-are-you-going-to-do?’ eye-contact with her a couple times to give her frustration a chance to froth over. 

She returned a couple huffy head shakes and an unsmiling eye roll. 

In these moments I like to remind myself that the exact same experience is experienced differently by the folks experiencing it. 

The reasons for a tightly-coated elder’s impatience can be just as valid as a Mom’s inexhaustible well. 

The post office can sure test both. 

Sandwiched in between — both me and time standing still — I saw life flash in front of me. 

And over my shoulder. 

Before me … a Mom doing her best to teach her boy how the world’s supposed to work, while protecting him from how it actually does with her one good arm.

Behind me …  the world’s grumpy restlessness to just get on with it.

“Thanks for your patience … Can I help the next person in line?”

I waited an extra second so I could watch the boy reach for his Mom’s hand as they left the counter.

What to the world looks like an eight-year-old’s obliviousness to time … the 55-year-old knows is, in fact, the keenest appreciation.

 

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Excursions

Dancing with Vonnegut ….

I’d just finished writing my last coffee shop letter of 2025 when I remembered we were out of envelopes at home. 

Opted for a surgical strike at Shop N’ Save, as I also needed shampoo (ran out a couple days ago) and ginger beer (just in case New Year’s Eve called for Moscow Mules). It’s right down the road from the coffee shop, saving me a trip to Wal-Mart or Target, which I try to avoid at all costs. 

The lot was pretty full with folks picking up New Year’s provisions. 

Walking in to the vestibule with the shopping carts, I saw the gentleman from the Salvation Army tucked in the corner keeping his kettle. Delighted me to see he had his banjo with him. I see him often when I visit, though not always with his banjo. He plays softly, not too fast. Sounds like folk music to me, possibly songs from his native country, but I’m not sure. He and his kettle used to sit inside the store where it’s warm, but awhile ago he told me they don’t like him playing inside, so when he brings his banjo he sets up shop in the vestibule … where it’s not warm. The majority of folks coming in and out pass right by him. 

The feeling I get seeing him with his banjo in the wintertime is the same one I get seeing lightning bugs in my back yard in the summertime.

Feels like a gift. 

Since I never know where to look for my stuff, I walked through the main body of the store, past the deli and the prepared foods counter. Caught a conversation just as someone said, “I’m playing at the President’s Pub Sunday … from 11 to two.” I turned to see a local musician I recognized, a jazz guitarist, talking to a person in a wheel chair.

I kept on walking for a couple seconds … before turning back around. 

Found the guitarist by the apples. 

“Excuse me,” I said. 

He looked up. 

“Did I hear you say you’re playing at the President’s Pub on Sunday?” 

Yeah, he said … confirming the time.  

“Oh, wow,” I replied. “I didn’t know they had jazz there anymore.” 

Yeah, he said. “They have music every Sunday. It’s not always jazz, though.”

It’s been years since I visited the President’s Pub on a Sunday morning. 

Remember going there the Sunday after my Dad’s funeral, listening to jazz and spilling a couple glorious tears into an Old Fashioned … and buying one for the pianist who took my request for Stardust. 

Not sure I’ve been back since.

I turned the corner past the bread just as two older ladies bumped into one another. They hadn’t seen each other in a while and fell into a big hug with their winter coats on. Asked each other if ‘everybody’ was all right and doing well. I didn’t have to know them to know how much they meant it.

As they wished each other Happy New Years, I went to walk around them, but an older guy with a shopping court was moving with purpose, so I paused to let him pass. 

“No, go ahead,” he said. 

He had right-of-way so I deferred. 

“No … please,” he insisted.

It was a small thing, but I got the sense he was looking for a place to put some New Year’s Eve kindness, so I accepted his invitation.

I didn’t even make it to the envelope aisle before I saw a different version of the scene I’d just witnessed — two other ladies who hadn’t seen each other in a while. They actually ‘whooped’ when they recognized each other. 

More winter coat hugs and Happy New Years. 

And behind me, I again heard the music of the older man who let me pass inviting another stranger to go in front of him. 

He and his cart were on a roll. 

And as I took the scenic route to find my envelopes, shampoo and ginger beer, I thought of Kurt Vonnegut. 

Who liked to tell the story of a time he went out for envelopes. 

How his wife thought him foolish. 

“Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man,” Vonnegut said in a version of the story he told to PBS. 

“You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

“I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And ask a woman what kind of dog that is.

“And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”

After going through the self-check out, I did a quick inventory of the treasure I collected during my surgical strike …  

… a serenade from a kettle keeper who would rather be cold … as long as it meant he could keep his fingers dancing … 

… an older person out shopping for someplace to put his kindness … 

… the joy of New Year’s Eve winter coat hugs between old acquaintances.

The Shop N’ Save’s usually good for reminding me of things I forget I need. 

Though I didn’t see any babies, I had a helluva good time buying the envelope for my letter to my daughter.

On my way out I made sure to say thank you to the kettle keeper for playing me back out into the cold. 

And as I tried to remember where I parked my car in the crowded lot, I was already thinking of Sunday … 

… and whether the guitarist shopping for apples might know Stardust. 

 

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Excursions

The 12 Days of T-Shirts / Day 7: Fahrenheit 451

Joe Mugnaini’s brilliant cover for the first edition of Ray Bradbury’s incendiary novel. 

The book holds a special place in my heart for a couple reasons, on top of its timeless cautionary tale.

My daughter and I read it aloud together across many Saturday coffee-shop mornings when she was a young teenager, which was my first re-read of it in a good 20 years or so. What a wonderful way to be reacquainted. 

And during our re-reading, I was profoundly moved by a passage late in the book when Montag, on the run, encounters a group of kindred spirits living in the woods on the outskirts of town. And around a campfire, he remembers his grandfather. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back to this passage since.

Its still glowing embers warm me as much as the campfire that coaxed the words from Bradbury’s typewriter.

It’s not only been medicine to my heart, but I’ve shared Bradbury’s beautiful words with friends and kindred spirits seeking warmth in the darkness of their own loss.

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the (person) who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” 

Always makes me think of the gardeners I’ve known in my life.

Reminds me to keep planting.

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Excursions

The 12 Days of T-Shirts / Day 3: As You Wish

In the slim chance you are unfamiliar with the reference, watch Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride, or — even better (trust me) — go read William Goldman’s novel on which the movie’s based.  

“As you wish was all he ever said to her. 

“That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying, ‘As you wish,’ what he meant was, ‘I love you.’”

The perfect choice for weekend chore work in service of one’s Buttercup.

I find that wearing this liberates me from having to say much, which thereby lessens my odds of saying something dumb, and/or something that will get on Buttercup’s nerves. 

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