Growing up me
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There remains, for me, a magic to Christmas Eve a carryover from youth, augmented with the new memories being created, added to the repertoire Thou the idyllic Mel Torme and Norman Rockwell versions of iconic song and picture were only loving adornments to the Christmas Eves I remember their annual, wistful reappearances are welcome The Read more
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Flights of fancy via wings of balsa when an extra nickel added a propeller we took wing on wind-looping imagination gliding sometimes to gentle landings more often crashing with aplomb-tinged disappointment when repairs were beyond the pale Images silently soaring, frozen in in time and flight still life, real life in balsa and backyard – Read more
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When I was a kid we planted trees by the lake 72 pine seedlings hauled north in milk cartons arranged on the back floor of a ’39 Dodge the trees and I were small, green, pliable in need of nurturing the Dodge sits now in a junkyard, the remaining pines scrape the sky I remember Read more
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We kept colorful marbles in old Mason Jars, pilfered with Grandma’s blessing rabbit’s feet and other youthful treasures smelled like Grandpa’s Dutch Masters under that cool flip-top lid Our baseball cards were safe beneath our beds, in rubber- band locked P.F. Flyer boxes our glass and cardboard personal Fort Knoxes Read more
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My mom found the dead chipmunk I had brought home from the lake. It was the end of the summer I was ten; the stripe-tailed rodent had come home at peace in a blue and black JC Penney shoebox I said contained ‘stuff.’ He sure looked stuffed. A car – or maybe Ivar’s Jeep – Read more
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He was a shaman always clad in sacramental wool plaid shirt, dirty cap there are no mountaintops in Minnesota’s northwoods Enlightenment here comes from atop decaying tree stump aside rustic leaf and pine needle carpeted trails cutting through towering pines, birch, oak you stop, sit for a spell solemnity in this place dictated with wry Read more
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It wasn’t a muscle car, never garnered a ‘cool’ never showed up in a Beach Boys song (though we sure got around) friends thought me an automotive fool At 19, I bought a ’69 Plymouth Fury station wagon, brand new to some unknown nuclear-family when I was only 10. No family to haul on vacation, Read more
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Never have I been further from my youth then when I returned to the scene of it places, people, things change time, people, lives elapse Going home is a metaphor smorgasbord; abandoned cabin overgrown with woods, withered by age dirt roads now paved familiar sights still sturdy though showing some age roadside greasy spoons now Read more
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I was a good friend of her brother – he knows, but has never said a word On the rare occasions we still meet he smiles a knowledgable, unbelieving, remembering grin and I always wonder, after all of the years that have passed, just how much she has told him… or if he figured it Read more
Ponderable polemics, poetic 