Poetry: A good shattering
by George Daranyi If the choice is: Receiving An old platitude Or A comfortable lie Or A good shattering From the truth Of your life Choose the shattering When life delivers The Big Cut You could live in A state of perpetual disappointment Of Pathos Of Weakness Or You could choose A good shattering Choose the shattering Where you gulp For air Like a fish In a stale pond Where your eyes Don’t stop bleeding Te! ars Like the mother Of a...
An initiation by fire
by Spencer Sherman The fire that started in the ninth floor records room became the largest commercial building fire in Philadelphia’s history. When 1,500 of us were evacuated, the city’s firefighters poured more than 12 million gallons of water onto the blaze. I panicked. My records! I thought. My lists of prospects! My customer profiles! Deal reports! Transaction data! These were the tools of my trade. Their destruction, as I saw...
Getting by on the sly in LA
by Ray Olvera Jaded, cynical, bitter, ready for a change, I met Randy at a job I was completely unprepared to fulfill. I’d graduated from a network administration business program and passed the six Microsoft exams necessary to call myself an MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer). Unable to land a job after countless interviews in the tech industry, I began to tell employers that I could handle and excel at just about any...
Want to move mountains? Move father first
Until I felt a resolution with my family, I could feel no peace and harmony with others or myself. Like a good detective, I had to return to the “scene of the crime.” I had to get the statements of those who witnessed what happened. My research only caused more upsets within my family, but nobody said getting to the truth would be pretty.
How a greeting card saved my life
by Mark Bruskiewicz I was sitting in my living room “celebrating” the finalization of my divorce, drinking a bottle of wine in solitude. I felt alone and miserable. The day’s mail sat on the table. Seeing an envelope that wasn’t a bill, I picked it up. The envelope contained a card from my father. Stunned, I opened it, The card said little, way too little, reminding me of how little my father had been in my life. The last...
What, me a dad?
Jessie pushed back a length of her brown hair. “I want to have a child,” she said, “and I’m questioning the future of our relationship.”
That was bold. From baby books to all-or-nothing? If she wanted a baby and I didn’t, that left little room for negotiating, unlike compromising on a movie or a restaurant. My truck waited outside. I could get in and drive away. With the cash in my pocket and the stock I had in my own name from before the marriage, I’d be OK for a while.
My reverse mid-life crisis
by Roy Biancalana The most life-changing moment of my life occurred when I realized that nothing needed to be changed. I call this realization “my reverse mid-life crisis” because it is the opposite of what typically happens to men. Usually, when a man reaches middle-age, he becomes dissatisfied with his professional path and/or his partner, then he makes changes to find “it.”My life has been the exact opposite...
The forgotten language of fathers and sons
by Peter H. Putnam, Jr. In April 1998, my father is lying in a South Carolina hospital with a ventilator plugged into his throat. He has no voice. He once sang “Impossible Dream” in an impossibly deep bass voice, now this man has no voice. He lay prone, a child. He is no longer 6 feet tall, no longer the frightening, booming, hair-cutting, wisecracking, story-telling giant of my childhood. He is a a dying man in a hospital...
The Big Lie: How the truth changes us
At first, I was unable to bring the words out of my mouth. I choked on them. They struck me as completely silly. I broke down in hysterics. I couldn’t decide if I was laughing or crying. The I realized that I was doing both at the same time. It was clear that the words had reached deep into some previously hidden part of my psyche, touching a truth so profound and so imponderable that my rational brain simply couldn’t deal with it. I had found a truth, I began to understand, that had affected my life in many subtle and not so subtle ways. I had sabotaged all those jobs because I had no right to be there.
Acceptance is not approval
by Mike Hernacki I’ve been on a journey of self-discovery nearly all of my 64 years. This journey has been most intense for the past 15 years, during which I’ve learned many valuable life lessons, including the difference between acceptance and approval. I have a niece whose father died when she was a toddler. I’ve always felt fatherly toward her and stepped in when I felt she needed paternal advice or protection. There was always one...
Dark waters and the dark night of the soul
by Brad Nixon I’m eighteen, working in the British Columbia bush with a bunch of guys. Wild and carefree, full of crazy and adventurous energy, we worked hard and played hard. Late one evening, following a trip to the local bar, on our way back to camp someone suggested a swim — skinny-dipping. Being the height of summer in the interior of BC, despite the lateness of the hour, everyone agreed this was a truly excellent idea....
Little Wings: Realizing I’d become a man
by Wayne Lee I’m lying on a padded table, watching while Dominic tattoos little Mercury wings behind my anklebones on both feet. It’s a few days before my sixtieth birthday, and this is my present to myself. I’ve earned these wings. I deserve them. I’ve wanted to do this since I was 21, back when I was a dancer. I’m not a dancer anymore—in fact, some days I can barely walk — but I wanted to remind myself that, by God, I can still fly....
Compassion and truth saves a relationship
by Alan Huyshe A relationship that had gone stale and distant suddenly changed one day. She said she’d met another man, had been seeing him for more than a month, and she was in love. I used the new-found courage and “warrior energy” that I had found in myself. I called her to face me and talk about this in person, not do it over the phone. She came and we sat down to talk. At first, there was a hardness in her that...
A Man’s Call to Man-Making
by Earl Hipp My wife and I met the Sudanese refugee Ojulu Agote and his family in 1993 through the sponsoring organization that brought them to the United States. Ojulu had experienced the horrors of tribal warfare and then the abuses of refugee life. After making his way through countless bureaucratic barriers, he was without any material resources. He and his family, living in a cockroach infested one-bedroom apartment, were facing...
Poetry: A knowing heart
by Eric Diamond Be thankful for the grief in autumn, rust on weathervanes, sour plums, and soothing words for the sad, four-leav’d heart. I let bygones be bygones, then went after bigger fish to fry. Try my speckled perch with artichoke heart. Numbed by news, dark grey overcoats of despair huddle in doorways in the city they call Broken Heart. Owls track scurrying field mice, while hawks cast shadows on wounded squirrels. Both covet...
The night that changed my life
by Jean-Marc Bouchard In January 2004, when I was 42 years old, I spent my first night in an empty two-bedroom apartment I’d just rented. The place had no furniture, no oven, no table, no couch. At three o’clock in the morning, I was alone and freezing in my sleeping bag. How could I know this old hot-water heating system was not able to do its job when the temperature fell below minus 20 degrees centigrade outside? It was...
Thanks for cheating on me
by Jeffrey Wilson By January of 1994, I had achieved my vision and had a “perfect” life – a beautiful wife, two young sons, a house in the suburbs, and I had been named to the management succession plan of the Fortune 500 company where I worked. Everything was just right. A month later in February, I discovered my wife was having an affair. After many lengthy discussions, arguments, and begging sessions, she agreed...
Facing my family anger gene
by Tim Campen My father was a man who lived a difficult life, and he passed along genetic characteristics to me that I wish he’d kept to himself. He was born in 1919, and at the age of eight suffered a sewing needle puncture to his left knee that became infected and quite complicated to treat. His subsequent hospitalization and year out of school, combined with the permanent damage to his leg, changed his life in a way he never...
The day my mom died
by Forrest Arnold The hospice nurse sweetly touched my mom’s fingers and toes, checking the color of her skin, then patted her cheek gently and said, “Today’s the day, Rosie. Today’s the day.” When my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was full of fear. She said, “You know I’ll be dead in five years, don’t you?” I think it was her certainty that shook me up the most. That...
A Devastating Despair
by David Wolff Nine years ago in the deep jungles of the Orinoco River Delta in Venezuela, I was working as a family practice doctor with a team of volunteers. The indigenous people we served had never before seen medical doctors. I met a young woman who never spoke a word to me, yet our encounter changed my life forever. She sat looking down at the limp infant child that lay across her lap. His vacant stare and sunken dry eyes...
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