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Showing posts from April, 2018
In the winter, my grandparents' house smelled like cooked food, coffee, and wood smoke.  Is this why I sometimes light a wooden match, blow it out, and sniff the rising wood smoke?  I think so.  I do this sometimes before I write, before I try to make sense of a memory.  It takes me back to a simpler existence when I could afford to listen to my grandparents' stories while we drank coffee and ate cookies.
Every small town has a gauntlet.  Ours was Pool Hill. The way up to the town pool was a precipitous climb over loose gravel.  From its height, we kids would scan the Allegheny foothills before bravely pushing off on our banana seat Huffies, hurtling ourselves downhill.  Once, I did not make it.  A bloody mess, I limped back home where Dad, a former Navy Corpsman, patched me up. How was I to know that this would be the first in a series of life long gauntlets?  How was I to know the privilege of having someone to bandage my wounds?
Molly was a good dog.  She had been my jogging companion back when I would sojourn home from college.  She would eagerly grab the leash and deposit it hopefully in front of my jogging shoes, and off we would go, bounding down North Main Street on our way to Highland Avenue and, beyond that, the cemetery where I would do push ups and she would sniff around the gravestones. Her leash sits in my office now. I have an office, and it is filled with books and memories I sometimes find it hard to believe I -- a graying man -- made.
Like the other kids, my girls ran after Easter eggs this past weekend, filling their bright baskets, triumphant in how many they found.  I took photos, took videos, and did my very best to etch these memories on my heart as if it took any effort at all.  It was my oldest daughter's smile that resonated with me, however.  We were sitting on the back patio.  She had said something funny and knew it.  Hers was an amused, proud smile -- a smile of a just turned 11-year-old coming into herself.  My gaze lingered on her beautiful face then I counted the years and sighed.