Tag: son
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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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John Tumbledown’s House
I pushed the button on the camera and heard the shutter snap. I captured my son midway through his pirouette in the field, in the field in front of the old farmhouse. Something caught my eye just as the mirror flipped up in the camera. Something in the farmhouse. I lowered the Pentax slowly from…
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Reflections on Father’s Day [My Split Personality]
My wife showed me the mirror. “Shall I toss it?” I looked at the brass Art Nouveau frame, just enough Erte to grab my eye. “No way,” I said. I was standing on the deck and I held the object d’art up and found my reflection. The glass was broken in several places. My face…
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The Skeleton in the Taxi
The Division Head in the private school where I taught was very adamant. “All this stuff has to go, Pat. Everything you don’t use in a year should be cleaned out.” I looked around the Middle School lab and began to make mental notes of what needed to be tossed. The chemicals, of course, had…
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Lord Knows, I Tried
I believe that giving the gift of music to one’s own child is very important. This tendency to pass onto a child is something I got from my mother. When I was about ten years old, she signed me up for private piano lessons from a Miss Shepard, who lived next to the Presbyterian…
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Travels 27: Falling In Love Again [The Final Installment]
The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense. Take what you have gathered from coincidence. The empty-handed painter from your streets, Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets. The sky, too, is folding under you And it’s all over now, Baby Blue. –Bob Dylan “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” Carpe R-Pod.…
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The Odyssey Westward: Travels Part 1
Go my sons, put away your books. Buy yourself stout shoes. Walk the hills, the mountains, the valleys and the deserts. In this way, and no other, can you learn of the world and its ways. –Paraphrased from a quote on a 3 x 5 index card clipped to the dashboard of a ’60s VW…