family stories

  • This Quilted Shore

    This Quilted Shore

    It is summer in Ocean City. Biplanes pull banners advertising seafood buffets while below dolphins arc through the surf. The lettuce and peas are out of the ground and the tiny gardens fronting the summer houses are blooming hydrangeas, daylilies and lavender. It is June and summer is still cool and refreshing here.    Karen…

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  • Beneath the Skin

    “Mr. Lem. Taylor, an old citizen of this county, last week, cut a minnie ball out of the upper part of his thigh he had been carrying in his body for twenty-five years.”   That was the first line of a newspaper clipping from the Baxter Springs Delta, dated June 16, 1887. Whoever wrote the article…

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  • “Why are we here?” Karen asked this nonchalantly, as if she were wondering why roosters have combs on their heads. I was hoping she was talking to herself—or that the question was rhetorical. But since we were driving to Houston, I was a captive audience. She persisted. “Why are we here?” “Well,” I said, “maybe…

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  • Last night, Karen and I spent an evening at Kiddie Park. Some of the rides from my childhood are still operating. What an uplifting place. It exists for one reason. To make children laugh and smile. Not to mention the taller children like me. And if you are becoming a little jaded and cynical, one…

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  • Save the Dancer

    Save the Dancer

    A well-meaning friend once told me to dance like no one is watching. It didn’t take. I dance like people are watching. I was dancing at a wedding recently, (Apache, Jump on it) and it occurred to me that no one cares what I look like when I dance. I know this because if they…

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  • Living an Interrupted Life

    Living an Interrupted Life

    For those wondering how I am, I’m better. The warm February weather helps. There’s also a certain kind of magic in a Margherita pizza, especially when savored al fresco under the slanting rays of a winter sun—my wife Karen’s happiest place. Karen and I are simple folk; she was born in the projects of Trenton,…

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  • Moments in Time

    Moments in Time

    I’ve been hanging out at the office with Emery, my 10-month-old granddaughter. She comes to work with her mom. Emery makes me laugh, and I make her giggle. She is a lousy employee; she sleeps a lot and doesn’t get much work done. On warm, sunny days, we walk around the pond next to our…

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  • Musings at 35,000 feet

       I recently picked up my son and daughter-in-law from the airport and the subject of airliner models arose. My first flight was on a Lockheed TriStar L-1011 equipped with a headphone sound system and I listened to Carly Simon’s, That’s the Way I Always Heard it Should Be. “You say we’ll soar like two…

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  • Wind Dancer

    My granddaughter, Holland, just got a new pair of sneakers. She looks down at her feet and marvels that just fourteen months before her feet were tucked in the fetal position. Okay, maybe she can’t recall those moments in the womb before she burst into the world like shimmering sunlit foil. So I imagine for…

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  • Treatment begins

    Saw this quote and thought how appropriate for Karen’s life. “If every single person who has liked you in your lifetime, were to light up on a map, it would create the most glitteringly beautiful network you could imagine. Throw in the strangers you’ve been kind to, the people you’ve made laugh, or inspired along…

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