When you were little, do you remember peeking through your fingers at the movies? The action would be picking up and you weren't quite sure if you wanted to see it all. So you peeked. You could see just a little bit, which was plenty, and you kept peeking until you got to a better place in the storyline. Peeking for me started the first week of January, when the…
A friend told me of the day her daddy died. She was 4 years old at the time, eating her chicken noodle soup, when she heard the devastating news. She sat over her bowl, tears sliding down her face, landing in her noodles. "Don't cry", she was told. "Don't cry." That lunch happened almost seven decades ago, but her memory is as vivid as ever. Her mom didn't…
I imagine all of us, at one time or another, have squinted into kaleidoscopes. They rank right up there with Slinkys and Silly Putty, am I right? Ahh, someone hand me a newspaper, let me recreate a childhood memory. Back to kaleidoscopes. Simple to operate: we hold the tube in one hand, put our eye to the viewfinder, and twist it with our other hand. First…
I'm starting this note at 3:30 - the time in my day when Jack typically called to say he was on his way home. We'd talk about what he'd built that day, the wood he'd used, how easy or hard it was to work with, how much glue he'd gotten on himself in the process. He'd describe the various procedures he'd followed in constructing a stringer, a horse, or…
I'm having real coffee this morning. Real coffee has always been the first order of business each new day ("decaf coffee" being a contradiction in terms, you see), but in these first weeks of Solo Living, I haven't always managed to pull it off. Earlier this week, for example, I ground the beans, measured the water, and shortly thereafter poured disappointingly hazy brown liquid into…
Rollercoasters. I think you either love them or you don't. Jack was one who did. Favorites included the ride that twirls like a corkscrew, the one that goes straight up and straight down, and even the one suspended over water that swings back and forth two or three times until it flips over entirely, slows a bit and starts again. And though I have never liked rollercoasters, nor…
My brother and I spent time talking finances with a guy at the bank. Turns out when he's not talking stocks and bonds, he runs, and in fact had recently completed a triathlon. He swam for a couple miles, biked for a bunch more, and, when he "was really warmed up," ran for 26 more! How did he keep going, we asked him. "Well, around…
One of Jack's coworkers recently brought me three rulers that had gotten left behind on his bench, and the sight of those three rulers has me thinking. My first thought is Andy Rooney's comment that he found it easier to go out and buy a new screwdriver than to find the other three he had somewhere in his shop. My next, closer to home, is that Jack…
Some years ago, to fulfill a birthday wish, three friends and I went ice skating at Rockefeller Center in NYC. To be clear, this was not my wish. I don't skate, not in the truest sense of the word. But I do love my friends and I do hate missing out, so I bundled up and came along. While one of the four of us (wisely,…