My mother pretty much tackled everything as far as parenting in my teenage years was concerned but there was one nut she couldn’t see fit to crack (excuse the pun soon revealed). That was the ‘sex talk’. The sex talk is famous in parenting lore as an exercise in discomfort and probably every tact has been taken and few of them effective but, hey, this one’s a toughie so you have to have sympathy for the lecturer. My mother decided to turn the duties over to my dad (father #2) and set it up so when I’d go over...
Read more »

By the time I was 3 years old I was still without the use of the English language. I indicated my preferences with finger pointing and various grunts and groans. “Son, would you like some potatoes?”, and then I’d give some garbled response that, I’m assuming, my mother had learned to decode because then I got the potatoes. She was distressed that a 3 year old was still communicating like a caveman so, thinking that I might be retarded; she took me to the doctor for an examination. After the doctor had given me the once over he announced...
Read more »

Occasionally during the summers my mother and I would go and visit my Great Aunt Louise at her cabin in Brainerd, Minnesota but from about the ages of 10 to 12 I got to go alone, put on a bus with a note pinned to my chest and Greyhounded off to the north, land of a 1000 lakes and, just as importantly, Paul Bunyan! More on that later. In those days the world was a little less threatening and mothers could usually trust other adults to ‘watch out’ for children traveling alone. Today that concept is so foreign as...
Read more »

We’ve all got our various acquaintances based upon common interests and work relations and we’ve got friends we see on a more casual basis (often because of distance and time) and those that we see much more often and are a part of serious bonding and history. Friendships are a part of life that sustain us in so many ways that we’re probably not aware of but in nearly all instances, friendship takes work and mutual understanding and can even change form and shape through different stages of our lives. I value good friendships but I realize that we...
Read more »

There is no primer for how to deal with the passing of a loved one. There’s no simple formula, no self-help book, no real advice that can ever make it go down easier. There is only one tried and true procedure and although you’ve probably heard of it, here it is again in print: You stand there and let it hit you like a Mack truck and then get up and see how you feel. Sometimes there are some minor scrapes and bruises and other times there are complications. Birth and death are such primal life experiences and in...
Read more »

Having no siblings meant a certain freedom, one closely associated with solitary confinement but a freedom nonetheless. The freedom of being alone allowed me to dream, design and create without the distractions of a larger family. It didn’t help me socially at all because I was never challenged in the way that siblings challenge one another so I lagged behind in that development but… In the vacuum that was my home and my head I could just go wild without restriction and so there were many tasks that I gave myself to do and one that I decided upon...
Read more »

When I was younger I occasionally liked to fly kites from my yard, which was unusually large and offered plenty of runway to put it in the air and room to get it over the treetops. My success was moderate and more often than not a down draft would ground it on top of the neighbor’s roof before I could get any distance. But one day, when I was 13 or so, all the elements for kite flying – tail construction, wind speed and direction – must have been in perfect order because the kite hung like it had...
Read more »

On the long running sitcom Seinfeld, there’s an episode where Jerry’s friend George Costanza comes to the sudden conclusion that everything he thinks and does invariably turns out to be wrong and if that’s true then the opposite must be right. He immediately applies that convoluted logic to a beautiful woman sitting at the lunch counter: “Hi. I’m George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.” For comedic purposes she kicks a chair in his direction and alluringly invites him to join her. Laughs or logic? Well, a little bit of both because I often practice a variation...
Read more »

My father, by marriage to my mother (hereafter referred to as father #2), formally adopted me at age 5 and lived with us for the next few years or so until their eventual divorce. He was a brilliant man whose growth was tragically stunted by his mother’s stubborn refusal to allow him to accept a full scholarship in art offered him by the University of Michigan. She might as well have shot him in the head and finished him off because she had already crippled his creativity with her selfishness. Instead of a proud parent sending her gifted son...
Read more »