Judgment and Growth
Meg and I had a wonderful week of vacation. Many of you have seen the pictures I posted online of beautiful water, beaches and other sights. It was a truly lovely trip in that way. But the real draw wasn’t the tropical island of St. Maarten. It was the opportunity to spend a full week with my parents. We only get to see them in person a couple of times a year at best.
Of course, you know the core joy in that comes in sharing memories and telling stories; stories about trips and family and incidents. And, because it was just the four of us – my parents and my wife – a chunk of those conversations were recounting things about me. Things that I had said, including the fact that I was completely verbal before the age of two and basically haven’t shut up since. And then there were stories about things that I did. Most of those were familiar but some happened before I could remember and others filled in perspectives around the events of which I was unaware.
Read More
Roots and Wings
Anyone who lived through the 1960’s remembers what a turbulent time that was. It seemed America was coming apart at the seams. By 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and both president John Kennedy and his brother, Robert (who was running for president) had been assassinated; thousands were dying the war in Viet Nam, and college campuses were taken captive by raging students with Molotov cocktails … and I? … I was a high school teenager… which (at least for my parents) may have been the most frightening thing of all!
Read More
Adopted into Life
Some moments in life are forever. One of mine came on a date, my third date with Meg. She had this little boy Bobbie who was 4½ and we decided to take him to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit? That was a fun movie, we all loved it and were chatting about as I drove them home. We were in Meg’s car which had a bench seat in the front – you never see that anymore – and Bobbie was right between us. We were stopped at a traffic light in Lakeland, Ingram Avenue and Main Street, westbound on Ingram to be precise, when he turned his little blonde head my way, looked up at me and said, “Can I call you daddy?”
Did I mention this was our third date?
Read More
