At thirteen I learned to drive a car with an automatic transmission, but as a teen-aged, car-crazed boy there were a lot of cars—some hot—that were off-limits to those who could not work a standard transmission. I was determined to learn. My coolness was at stake. Our one car was an automatic, but my grandfather, […]
Love
A Letter to Ernest Hemingway
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -Ernest Hemingway Dear Ernest, You are quite right. Very often, intelligent people are very unhappy—especially if by intelligence you mean only that narrow band of knowing lodged in the brain. For about four hundred years now, at least in our Western culture, that kind of […]
The Hardest Thing to Do
The hardest thing to do is to accept another person as they are. That truth resounded once more this week as I listened to a woman talk about a struggle with her sister. They were often at odds, she said, because their lives were so—blood—similar and yet so completely different. They had different career goals, […]
Blood is Thicker
This morning I was on the phone with a colleague. As we were winding down our conversation I mentioned that I had just returned from my annual family reunion. “Oh,” he said, “you know what my family calls those annual get-togethers? Dysfunction Junction.” We had a laugh. Families and their awkward attempts at reunion are […]
Parable of the Twin Fetuses
Life each day presents us with the unknown. What will happen? What will not happen? Our great fear is simply not knowing what comes next—and our ultimate fear is of the end. What happens when we die? The big fear—of death—is expressed in all the little fears that roil our hearts, the hundred things each […]
Second Marriage (Same People)
Today is my 35th wedding anniversary. Pam and I were married June 3rd 1978 in Panama City, Florida. After 35 years, my marriage is blessedly the most important thing in my life. But it wasn’t always. We all marry a fantasy, an idealized image of the perfect husband or wife. A few months or years […]
Love Wins–Every Time
This week was a rattler. The bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon sent a ripple through our nerves, through our families and communities. I heard from people whose children were there, a block or two from the finish line, heard the explosions, ran for dear life. Walked miles and miles to get […]
A Good and Perfect Gift
What happens to you when, a few minutes after delivering your baby, you are told there is something wrong? Yesterday I heard Amy Julia Becker speak. She had lived that scenario. Her husband, who had spoken with the doctor, came back into her hospital room, his eyes glazed with tears. “They say our baby may […]