Category: Family
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Coal For Christmas
I am a grandfather now, feeling every ache and sadness of my sixty-eighth year. The stories that my father told me about his father have taken on new meanings. I’m the old one now. I am the carrier of the family history. When a recollection of a family event comes to mind, be it a…
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The Scent Of Christmas Caught Me By Surprise
There is a chain of markets in Florida called Publix. It’s employee-owned and from what I read in the local paper, Wal-Mart hates them. But that’s another story. I was browsing the aisles in my local Publix for some fruit to put in my cereal. I found blueberries but they’re from Peru. Don’t they grow…
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After Dinner/Up In The Sky
When we were kids we called them vaportrails. Now, I call them contrails. Those streaks across the sky made from the jet engines of jet planes. Either term is okay. It’s simply the condensation of the water from the exhaust of the plane, turning into visible water vapor. It wouldn’t be incorrect to say…
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Never Draw Straws On The N Train
[The Raft of the Medusa, painted by Theodore Gericault. (Source: Google search.)] This afternoon, my wife and I actually left Manhattan and made a trip to one of the boroughs. On purpose. We rode out to Astoria, Queens (where my wife grew up) to visit my son, Brian and his girlfriend, Kristin. We had a…
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I Knew Her When
I knew Mariam when she turned fifty. She wasn’t extremely happy about that “milestone” to say the least. When President Bill Clinton turned fifty (he celebrated up here in Lake Placid), he was asked how it felt. His reply: “It’s kind of sad knowing that more of your life is behind you and not in…
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Kodak Moment
My son, Brian, just turned 28 on July 14. He is a part of the last generation of people (in America, I suspect) who had their childhood photos of them taken with film. I have boxes stacked in my closet of envelopes containing hundreds if not thousands of pictures of him, my daughter, my family,…
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It Was 28 Years Ago Today: Changing Views
I saw him when he was born. I watched and began to wonder…even back then. I thought about what I had seen. I went to the Delivery Room window, looked out over the parking lot… and wept. Taken in the long view of human life, I had just witnessed something most men have been kept…
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My Dreams Are Made Of Iron And Steel
I don’t dream the way I did in past years. I miss that because those nighttime adventures were something to behold. The visions of H. P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker and Steven Spielberg were mere cartoons when compared to the places I would go in the hours beyond midnight…when REM sleep was most active. Very rarely…
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The Empty Bedroom
This was once my bedroom. There was a time when this room was packed full of the stuff of life… From a crib made in the mid-1940’s, I would look out at the flowered wallpaper. Maybe a mobile hung just out of my reach, and moved about when a breeze caught it from a partly…
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Unexpected Memories
Seventeen years ago today, my older brother Denny, passed away. It was not a sudden unexpected death but a slow decline with cancer. His family misses him terribly. My brother, Dan and I miss him. I think about him a great deal. We were a family of four boys. Denny was the second oldest, born…
patrickjegan 