Ramblings of this old distracted person who, at times, thinks he’s always right, or not.
64 and not much more
Absolution
Camp shower
Clover
Curiosity’s cat
Dad and my surprise
Dad’s news
The depression
Driving
The eclipse
Estate tax
Flying
The fog
The fork on the plate
The Tale of God, the Prophet, and the Bible
Hand me down
Hate
Killing me softly
Manure and other smells
At the mausoleum
Mediocre
Misdeeds
Misogyny
Mom’s Hand
Murder
My first house
On my walk
Our little town
Possessions
Poverty
Questioning
Revenge
The stores
The theft
Thin line
Time proved me wrong
Violent TV
Words
Wouldn’t hurt a fly
Questioning
It is often helpful to plan in advance of a conversation. Try to translate emotion driven questions into a format of that elicit responses to resolve a problem or issue, rather than responses that attempt to resolve an emotion. So work in advance to focus on the problem, and not the emotion.
When Looking for Facts, I Begin Questions With…
How
When
Where
What
Who
– Questions starting with these words cannot be answered with a mere Yes or No, so it is easier to elicit facts and statements. The answers Yes and No are the shortest ways to end a conversation.
The above words are the keys to effective communication!
For Approval or Rejection of a Statement, I Begin Questions With…
Am
Is
Was
Are
Were
Do
Does
Did
Can
Could
Will
Would
– When starting a question with such words, I make a statement (though it may not sound or be meant as a statement). It is usually difficult to know when the answer is truthful or merely placating. Questions starting with these words often lead to a Yes or No answer are best used when I seek simple approval or disapproval of my statement.
When Being Judgmental, I Use…
Must
Should
Have to
Need to
Got to
Ought
– These words are used effectively only when I am passing judgment on something, or in expression of social norms (traditions, laws and morals). These words are best used for my pulpit lectures and with people who share my beliefs. When trying to reach agreement (and agreement is always the more pleasant result), I try to avoid these words.
When Not Stating a Proven Fact, I Begin Sentences With…
I understand that
I believe
I prefer
In my opinion
I think
– These phrases generally express my beliefs (traditions, social norms, laws) and things that are not proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. Therefore my use of these words is most effective when factual information is absent.
In conversation, I Use Sparingly…
Why
But
– Why – This word usually leads to an answer that is in the form of an opinion, or it is whatever the respondent thinks I want to hear in order to be placated. Makes it difficult for me to know if the answer is factual, opinionated, or placating.
– But – Denotes a contradiction. Even when I use it in contradicting, it tends to kick in the respondent’s self-defense mode and limits the effectiveness of further conversation. I found it more effective, instead, to use the word “and” in its place, or to rephrase my question so I can use “and” instead.
We are so accustomed to using these words with ulterior meaning (intentional or not), that we all too often fail to say or ask what we mean, and don’t get the answers we really seek.
I suggest keeping a list of these words handy: HOW WHEN WHERE WHAT WHO, as they are the ones you want to remember to use most frequently. Keep the list where you can see and refer to it.
Take your time in conversation to recognize how you speak, and rephrase your questions or statements when you notice you’ve used one of these words incorrectly, as often as it takes to get the right sentence out.
Paraphrase answers using the above words correctly to more quickly reach mutual understanding and agreement.
When entering a conversation, I have obtained the best results when I set my mind’s focus on finding a solution, and on resisting the strong urge to lay the blame.
Words
Misused and overused words and phrases:
Some alter historical definitions, making it difficult for future generations to understand writings from various periods. Some use emotional and religious terms to alter attitudes in lieu of providing factual reasoning. Some are outright inaccurate in their use. And some are shortcuts to describe what our ignorance cannot.
absolutely
act of terrorism
actually
alternative truth
at the end of the day
before I let you go
blessing
but
carnage
crucial
deeper truth
devastating
early days
early hours
even more true
evil
exactly
fake news
great question
heinous
historical [race/color] neighborhood
horrific
how does it make you feel
I just wanted to ask
I mean
I was going to ask
I was like
I would say
if only
in real time
influencers
it is very important that
it’s been a minute
like
literally
lockdown
not entirely clear
not entirely sure
not really
on the ground
race
right
she/he says
should
sick
so
takeaway
thank you for having me
that being said
the real question is
unparalleled
unprecedented
vow
we need to
witch hunt
yeah
you know
Also quite ambiguous:
filled pauses
rising intonation (will we replace all punctuation marks with question marks to conform to how we speak?)
…and the plethora of terms made up to describe methodologies, policies, intended to impress or confuse, rather than to clarify.
Misogyny
Like other behaviors resulting from being around mentors who act in particular ways that we assume as cognitive biases early in our lives, modern misogyny and sexism seem to constitute, in part, subconscious protectionist reactions of males regarding roles which we have come to ensconce as a consequence of both men’s diminished role over the centuries as protectors and hunters, and more recent roles established by circumstances such as the industrial revolution.
Revenge
Revenge likely worked well for millions of years to remove a repeat threat, because we lived in small nomadic groups and didn’t hang around long enough for repercussions. Perhaps it eventually became part of our genetic code linked to survival.
Now that we live in very large groups whose members tend to always hang around, revenge no longer works the same way, but instead invites a chain reaction of backlash.
The Tale of God, the Prophet, and the Bible
From time to time God would appear to humans and impart knowledge at their level of understanding in order to help them appreciate and protect their resources. This is the story about the time they reached the ability to pass on knowledge through the written word, and God again made themself known to one of their prophets, resulting in the first writings of the Bible.
After the prerequisite niceties and formalities, God started with “Regarding you and your planet, to make a long story short, I took polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,…” and met a sudden interruption.
“I don’t understand what that means,” said the prophet.
God tried to simplify the explanation. “I started with complex carbon-bearing molecules…”
“My Lord, I don’t understand.”
God started again. “About four billion years ago I created the first cellular organism and…”
But before God could slip in another word the prophet interjected, “What is a billion, and what is whatever you said next? If I repeat these things the people will think I’m mad, and perhaps even drive me away, or stone me.”
Finally realizing that it was still too early in humans intelligence for such explanations, God decided on a parable, with a simple seven day timeline, that the prophet and their people could comprehend and pass on, with the expectation (knowledge, some would say) that the missing pieces would be added over time as humans develop the wisdom and tools to learn that there’s more to life than what we believe through faith alone. Eventually God would appear again, and again, as humans advance their knowledge and be in a position to understand ever deeper explanations.
“Ok, write this: In the beginning…”
Mediocre
I keep hoping that most people are better than me, while wishing I am better than them. Time and again, however, mediocrity wins the day, and I keep finding myself in the thick of it.
Flying
Airplanes fascinate me to no end. I am amazed, watching one soaring overhead, to realize that this huge mass is filled with humans like matches in a matchbook, moving hurriedly across the sky with its telltale roar created by forces that use huge quantities of non-renewable resources from mother earth and deposit them in our lungs and our lawns way down here.
How different they are from birds and insects, which fly almost as if without effort, flitting about at whizzing speeds without care for any possible obstructions and landing on seemingly impossible perches, their shrieks pleasantly sounding their presence in melodious form. To top things off, the worst thing about their exhaust might be that we our need to wipe it off our hats or shoulders.
Possessions
Owning something unique bestows a certain pride in suggesting we are different from the rest of mankind.
A person with little means may value the crocheted handkerchief of her grandmother as much as the billionaire may value her Picasso. To each priceless.
To each, their possession is priceless, with admiration from others feeding a sense of self importance to the order of superiority.
Poverty
Delayed gratification is more common to the rich and well educated than to the poor and ignorant.
It is the same whether referring to possessions or sex, or anything for that matter, and seems logical in the view that one will take advantage of something when it is offered if there is not something else to grasp one’s attention, especially if there’s fear that it would not be available for long, or again within a reasonably foreseeable future.
Wouldn’t hurt a fly
I try to convince myself that I wouldn’t hurt a fly by citing the fact that I usually try to catch flies that make their way into the house, and release them outdoors. But that’s oversimplifying things.
Curiosity’s cat
I am the cat, with a curiosity that has repeatedly risked all for the sake of some degree of satisfaction throughout my lifetime.
As a child I was allowed to roam free, alone and with my friends, in the seemingly endless fields surrounding our town. I only recall being reined in once, when we were found playing alongside a canal with fast-moving water. I was allowed to explore. My parents had a running joke that I liked to take things apart and, though there was always a part left over after I put things back together they still worked.
Until I married, I enjoyed friendships and acquaintances from all walks of life (most never met each other) in order to partake of the experiences in their worlds. I traveled alone so that I could immerse myself in adventures outside my circle, and many of my most memorable vacations occurred when I got in my car with a tent, sleeping bag, and no itinerary.
Many things fascinate me simply because they are not discussed or considered irreverent within our culture. But most times I just feel there’s more to know about something, so I delve into it. As a result, I have learned a little about a lot of things, and if my memory was better I might have become quite knowledgeable.
On both the good and dark sides, there are obsessions and compulsions that curiosity has spurred, overriding logic and desire. Some resulted in advantages, while others, as may be expected, have proven disastrous.
It would be nice to have nine lives like the mythical cat, to take my curiosity further.
Killing me softly
I’m gonna kill myself someday; I just don’t know when. Ok, I’ve been saying that for the last half century, so I should, by now, be in doubt about making such assertions.
What I could only call a feeble, half hearted attempt, when I was sixteen, was merely a call for help in my desperation.
I have given suicide a lot of thought, researched all the methods, even read Emile Durkheim, and figured that I have to be desperate about my future, or something, in order to follow through with it. The finality of it leaves a lot to be desired, mostly because I don’t know how it will affect the people I love.
If I eventually get to do it, I hope to gather the courage to plunge a knife into my heart. Of course, I would rather immolate myself for a greater cause, but I’m not that brave.
Thin line
It never ceases to amaze me how thin the line can be between tolerance and intolerance. Even though my tolerance has been tested many times, I have always tried to keep the line quite thick, with lots of latitude others and especially with myself.
I might attribute that to my boundless curiosity, which has taken me to so many places, both sinister and virtuous. Throughout my journeys I always found that one place is never devoid of the other.
Mom’s hand
Six years have passed since mom died, and every day since I picture her hand and hear her sigh, from a vivid memory of when I cared for her as she was experiencing increasing loss of her lucidity and physical abilities.
I could see the fragility of her hand through her paper-white skin dotted with age spots, the pronounced veins moving with the almost visible tendons, the dampened grip that once held me tightly like a blanket of security, the slender fingers that would touch me tenderly now knarled from the toll imposed by the years.
I don’t recall when the realistic recollection that played in my mind started losing its detail and focus and my tears eventually dried.
First thing in the morning as I wash my hands, the memory returns without fail, but now it feels distant, like a movie whose imagery has been animated and the detailed strokes of color replaced with blotches, the fine detail no longer there, and the sound replaced by subtitles.
The sigh that I now hear is mine, at the sadness of having lost that once crystal clear memory of the person in my life who loved me the most.
The theft
I must have been around twelve, and can still picture the incident more than a half century later.
On one of my frequent walks, I entered a five-and-dime store that I loved to explore. At one point, a rubber thumb protector attracted my attention. I looked around me. The waitress was busy behind the lunch counter, and I found myself alone in that aisle. With a certain degree of fear I picked up one protector and quickly stole it to my pocket.
I never could figure out why I did that. I never took anything from anyone before. I didn’t need it, and I don’t even remember really wanting it.
But I never forgot. I always regretted it.
I couldn’t make things right once the deed was done, and no matter how sorry I was, still I never figured out how to atone enough. It remained in my drawer for years, untouched, until the rubber started to disintegrate.
Estate tax
My dad would turn over in his grave if he knew how much of what he worked so hard for, to leave to his children, was eaten by estate tax. Having paid all taxes while he was working apparently wasn’t enough, he might say.
Born dirt poor, he eventually realized the American dream of a chicken in every pot. He worked to provide for us, his kids. To send us to school, to get us back on our feet when we faltered financially, and to help us with the purchase of our first home. His gifts to us on special occasions like births and weddings were quite generous. Neither he nor our mom were in any way ostentatious. They lived simply. They lived for their children.
He was always very honest, but I wonder if the tax imposed on his endowments might have made him wish he worked under the table and kept the money in his mattress, so to speak.
Furthermore, he might wonder at the government’s ignorance of the fact that we don’t need to be forced to put money in the economy since we do a good enough job of it ourselves by squandering what we have.
The eclipse
February 15, 1961 9:40 a.m. (7:40 UTC) total solar eclipse was just south of where we lived, so we would have seen almost total darkness.
Me, then 5 years old:
In the schoolyard, Signor Giacomini lent me a piece of dark glass, probably broken from an old wine bottle.
Sis then 10 years old:
I remember it clearly. The smoked glass and the dire consequences of trying to look at the sky without it. Very exciting! Not scary. Amazing that we get to see it twice in our lives.
Big sis, then 13 years old:
You made me remember it very clearly. I was at school in Codroipo, Dr Moras was our mad math teacher, all the girls had a crush on him. Almost every day he was late and he drove into the school yard like a mad man, with his red sports car causing stones and dust to fly. He brought to school pieces of green and brown glass, (we thought from the broken wine bottles he had drank from) we smoked them with candles, and we were able to see the eclipse.
I remember that Don Paolo told us about the apocalypse for the occasion. That sort of scared me, because in my mind I also expected a big thunderstorm and God’s voice to be heard from the clouds to repent.
I remember that the sun light dimmed gradually and then the sky went dark as night for a little while, then the sun gradually was out again. I was relieved that there were no thunder, nor God’s voice, which I must have really feared almost as much as nonna’s admonitions not to look, to close our eyes and pray or God would blind me!
Misdeeds
I may have performed thousands upon thousands of good deeds during the 23,000-plus days I’ve spent on this earth that no one will remember, but what will probably lodge in minds are a few misdeeds and a bunch of misinterpreted good deeds.
Camp shower
I took my first shower when I was around seven. Before then, with running water only available from the outdoor well, and later from the kitchen spigot, my three siblings and I had always been bathed in a tub weekly, with water heated on a wood stove and reused for each of us in turn.
It was at a summer camp, sponsored by the State, to which my parents sent me, much to my dismay and despite the tears and pleas against such separation. It would be the first time that I stayed with people who were not family or neighbors, nor even people I knew.
I cried that first night and wet my bed, even though I didn’t do that at home. In the morning, all of us were taken in our underwear to a room with a lot of showerheads in a row, a woman led me to one and proceeded to remove my underwear because they were wet. I cried in embarassment, because I was the only nude boy, and the woman just told me not to cry.
I did manage to get into the swing of things before long, especially after an older boy befriended me, helping me through my fears of such an alien place with so many alien people. But I’ll never forget that first shower.
Our little town
Our sustenance came mostly from our small triangular piece of land, maybe a quarter acre, where we grew all kinds of leaf and root vegetables, berries and tomatoes. We had an apple tree, a peach tree, and a persimmon tree, and I remember a lemon tree growing in a pot just inside our front door.
As various fruits and vegetables matured, we canned a lot of what we grew for our winter sustenance, and were stored in a small, dark room. When the garden succumbed to the cold weather, we ate the chickens, ducks, and rabbits that we raised, and which lived mostly from our food scraps.
What little that was left over after we ate was either used to make other meals, or was fed to our animals. The animal fats were used in cooking and made into soaps, and their feathers and pelts were used for bedding or traded. What we couldn’t eat, like bones, were cooked to make soup, and the inedible remainders were buried in our garden.
Our row of grapevines produced enough grapes to turn into wine and vinegar that we used throughout the year. We stomped the grapes in the same large plastic tub that we used for washing clothes and for bathing the children.
Everything was feritilized with the liquid from under our privy (with a small can tied to the end of a long stick), and the refuse from our chickens, ducks, and rabbits.
We purchased very few foods; mostly what we did not grow or raise. Milk and cheese came from our town’s cooperative, bread from the baker, and the general store provided us with grains, sugar, salt, and oranges around Christmas. A couple towns over we could find pharmaceutical basics, like bandages and antibiotics, and shops for fabrics and shoes. Once in a while we had red meat from a horse butcher in the next town, on doctor’s orders to help prevent anemia.
Our house was near the narrowest angle of our small tract, and at the point our flowers gave color to the street in a brightly contrasting variety. Just outside our gate was the communal well, where we hooked our buckets to the spout and pumped water by turning a large wheel. The handle was large enough to accommodate our behinds so we could play with it like it was a swing.
When indoor running water was finally installed, we had a spout in the smallest room of the house. Our wood stove provided heat for pots of water, for cooking, and for keeping the house warm in winter.
There were two main streets in our town, along which most people lived, and the smaller streets just led to fields. Families with large animals had larger plots, and behind us a vast quantity of fields of grains, bordered by small forests where I spent most of the time playing with my friends. It was a long walk to our elementary school, which was strategically located between the two towns that it served. And a similarly long walk to our cemetery. Several times each year the entire town participated in the religious processions that traversed the town from edge to edge.
The church and plaza featured in the town’s main intersection, along which were the grocer, baker, barber, the two bars (where we occasionally watched TV), the milk cooperative, and the kindergarten operated by the nuns who also taught us in religiosity.
My first house
I bought my first house when I was twenty-four, on a street that was on the edge between a university neighborhood and a poor one. I was so trusting, those days, that I used to leave my windows open, and learned to be more careful the hard way, when my belongings disappeared. My 13″ black-and-white TV was gone, but luckily, books weren’t worth stealing, and I really didn’t have much else, and hardly of any value.
I rented a floor, in order to help meet my mortgage obligations, to a young black, gay, modern jazz dancer. We became friends and spent a lot of time together talking about stuff and just passing time. I so enjoyed his dancing that I took every opportunity to watch his troupe practice and perform. He was there for about two years, yet when I found him on Facebook many years later, he only had vague memories of me.
This got me thinking about how old friendships ended, and I could only clearly recall the reasons for just a few. Could it be that I couldn’t remember the rest because it was I who dropped the ball? I want to think that such losses were out of my control, but the more I ponder on this, the more I feel that it was probably I who gave up first most of the time.
Frustration at my inability to adapt when the value of what I was offering no longer fit the bill?
The stores
Over the course of thirty years I managed up to about 140 employees. Though I made my share of mistakes, I did all I could to be consciencious of their needs and of their importance in our business.
I think I always wanted to give our employees more than my siblings were willing, and reforms that I introduced were frequently voted down. I was often in a position where I had to temper the needs and desires of the business with the needs and desires of our employees. I can’t say it was always a bad thing, since not all my decisions were good ones.
Perhaps due to having been in all degrees of employee ladders over time, I felt our need to satisfy financial and advancement desires of our front line employees. I always endeavored to inform and educate them, to get their feedback and recommendations, to ensure everyone was treated fairly and equitably, and to reward them.
I felt so responsible for our store closings that I spent countless hours working to obtain alternate employment for everyone we needed to lay off.
Now, years later, I wonder if I was ever really competent at any time in my life. I know that I succeeded enough times to feel competent, but was I really? Was I only fooling myself? Did I only imagine that the outcomes were proficient, viable solutions?
People always told me that I am a nice person. So were they just being kind to me in return, unable to find ways of telling me I’m incompetent?
Murder
Gazing through an address book from over 40 years ago, I got curious and searched some names online. Surprise!
The person who talked me into joining his seminary was murdered. Beaten by contract, and strangled to death by his wife.
I knew them both before they married. He was a very kind priest, and she was a photographer.
His last words were reported as “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
All day long my mind has been playing pictures of the anguish I imagined he was feeling.
The fog
I enjoy conversing with people, however I usually get into my fog afterwards, when my mind ponders all the things I could have expressed differently to better state what I meant. The less I socialize, the less I inhabit the fog.
Hate
I can’t recall any time in my life when I felt hate, or malice, toward anyone, and I have never been able to label anyone as evil.
Every person I have met has demonstrated to me some good.
When all else fails to convince me of that goodness, I imagine them as a helpless, innocent baby.
On my walk
Today I decided to take a walk to a market that is about two miles away, to take advantage of the beautiful weather and the newly planted flowers along the way. I went a bit out of my way to walk by a park, where a friend had planted some heritage roses that smell absolutely out of this world. Four hours later I’m finally back home.
On my walk I had come across a woman who worked in a laundromat near where I used to live, and we chatted for much longer than I realized. She is an immigrant, and so proud that her daughter just graduated from college and already has job offers. During all the years I’ve known her, this was always at the top of the list for her, and she and her husband sacrificed all they had to get their daughter through school, constantly encouraging her to work hard toward her/their goal. It was so heartwarming to be able to share in her happiness.
A couple blocks later I stopped to catch up with an old neighbor on his stoop, and as I stood under the shade of a tree I once cared for, we yammered on and on about this and that and the other thing. We recalled older times when the neighborhood had a stable population, and recounted the changes, one by one, that we saw over the years, evaluating each one relative to how we would love for things to be.
Eventually I got to the market, and on my way home, as I stopped for an espresso to-go, another old neighbor materialized for a long, enjoyable conversation. On his way home from work, he was looking forward to spending the evening making cider with his wife. This guy is about fifteen years younger than me, and I have only ever seen him with a bright smile and disposition. I like the way he walks, rather like a prancing dancer, and I linger for a moment to watch him walk away, and bring his smile to others along the way.
Manure and other smells
I love all kinds of smells, and a few instantly bring me back to my youngest days in memory as if by magic.
Manure in the fields is one of them. I don’t ever remember not liking the smell, as it came from the animals that I was frequently around, in my next door neighbor’s barn. I sometimes got to help forking away soiled straw and replacing it with clean straw. So I guess I was accustomed to the smell. But when spread on the fields it smelled sweeter, and each year it announced that soon the fields would begin to sprout with new green, the days will soon be hot, school will be out, and I would get to spend days playing with my friends, running through the fields, climbing trees, exploring miles away from home together.
Carnations in light pastel colors were always neatly planted in a row along the side of our house that faced the street. They were small, but their fragrance was unmistakable and strong, and one could not help noticing it when approaching or leaving the house. I have not come across carnations in this country with as full a smell as those I remember from my youth, but nevertheless I always find myself stopping to enjoy their odor. It took quite a while to figure out how much the smell reminds me of home, where comfort and love always awaited me.
Boxwoods are gorgeous little rotund creatures, with tiny leaves that densely populate their topography. I like to gently fluff them early in the morning when the sun starts to shine on them, and enjoy the aroma they exhude, and the cool feeling of their dew on my hands. When in a bunch, I can smell them from afar, and have even stopped my car for a moment to enjoy a long row of well kept boxwoods. At a house that I built, I placed about 20 around the entry, so I can have their smell every day to give me ever so brief glimpses of a feeling from my past. I’m sure I accompanied every procession to the cemetery from when I was four until my tenth year. The only sounds you would hear during that half mile were of the many footsteps on the gravel road, and the clinking of the incense burner that I or one of the other altar boys carried and swung about to keep the incense burning. I was solemn like everyone, and only started to understand their sadness when I was seven and my grandmom was in that wooden cot. A long row of tall straight cypress trees lined each side of the walk from the street to the entrance of the cemetery. My heart still skips a beat when I spot the occasional Italian cypress, but it was the boxwoods between their feet that I noticed the most, as their height was closer to mind, and thus easier for their distinct aroma to make its impression.
Clover
Nothing can quite compare to a field of clover. Like a soft magic carpet that is just asking to be brushed, caressed. I don’t know how many hours I spent on my hands and knees, or on my belly, as a little boy, because I managed to occasionally find the special ones with four leaves.
With every little white pom-pom flower that pushes up, the green of the entire field lightens as if it’s been absorbing the sun. Bees come from everywhere to gather their nectar and spread their pollen, and seem to almost form a silky moving layer above the pom-poms.
While on my frequent summer vacations with relatives, I especially liked to use the scythe for the coordination required to master each stroke in cutting swathes of clover at their base without touching the dirt, and moving the cut clover to the side with the wide back of the scythe, while moving forward a step with every swing.
The clover was fodder mostly for the cows, which gave us their sweet milk, butter, and cheese. In turn, their feces were used in making the manure that fed that beautiful field of clover.
Driving
I love to drive! In the half century since my first drivers license I have logged over 800,000 miles in vehicles I owned, borrowed, or rented.
As a fun exercise while driving, especially on winding roads, I like to keep the car’s tires exactly in the middle of the lane. On straight stretches with no one in view, I like to ride on the opposite side of the road, as it triggers a strong surge of adrenalin that keeps my senses on maximum alert.
I like to drive fast. I almost always exceed the speed limit, especially on roads that I know to be clear. Speed limit signs help me to gauge the safety limits I feel comfortable exceeding, though they’re rarely my speed. Road conditions, visibility, and the presence of people or animals are my real speed gauges.
There are a couple single-lane bridges that I just love to speed through. They’re both on hilly curves, and I can see just enough past the bridges at full speed to know if I need to quickly apply the brakes or press the throttle all the way down. Feels like a roller coaster.
Early in my driving I met with conditions that quickly convinced me when only very cautious driving will do. Driving home from work on an icy road, my car suddenly spun 360 degrees and landed against a bank of snow on the other side of the two-lane road. No damage to the car, but a helpful lesson that I carried to driving in all wet conditions.
I rarely made the wheels squeal. I managed to keep the speed at just below that point, and probably why I never lost control of my car. I only remember one time, when I was slowing down while approaching a turn and noticed the vehicle behind me was coming too fast, and would hit me if I slowed. I seemed to have reacted on instinct, as in a flash I touched my brake light for warning, geared down, and floored the gas pedal; it felt like I made the turn on two wheels. The driver stopped at the next intersection to thank me and to praise my driving.
My present car is full of dings, but none caused by me. I’ve only had a few fender benders. Once I was hit from behind, once from the side by a car leaving its parallel parking space, and once, the day after I got my drivers license, when I my rear fender hit a parked car on the corner.
Dad and my surprise
I have few memories of deep moments with my dad which I can still recall with the emotion I felt.
I was four in my oldest memory. Dad had sent me to buy bread, and on the way back I saw him jumping up and down, a smile beaming across his face, calling me to hurry and see my new little brother. He may have been happy, but I wasn’t so keep at being displaced, and the memory stuck.
A few years later, dad took me to see a national cycling race that was passing through a few towns away. He sat me on the package rack over the back wheel, and bicycled the few miles. We had gotten there a bit late, and caught only the last of the cyclists, but what I noticed is that all the kids had Italian flags, and I had none. All I remember is that I had really wanted one, really badly, and the memory stuck.
When I was 14, on the day he drove me to boarding school, he surprised me by telling me that if I wasn’t happy at school, he would come to pick me up. His comment struck me, as it was the first time that he was authorizing me to make my own important decisions. And that started a string of events that opened my eyes to the world.
Just a few years ago, after Pope Francis mentioned the value of “please, thank you, sorry”, he started thanking me daily for what I was doing for him. I had been keeping him company every night, and taking care of some of his needs during the day, as with my mom before that. I hadn’t really thought of it as something to be thanked for; it was my duty as a loving son to care for one’s parents when the time came. His thank-you’s started another change of outlook in my life, and grew my patience some with my nonogenarian dad.
When mom was starting to lose her memory, it took me a while to understand the angst that dad sent my way. “Look, she’s becoming senile”, he would holler. I just thought he was pissed off like he would usually get, when people didn’t pay attention to his direction and advice. He expected us to fix it. He was afraid. His life partner was no longer able to take care of him as she had the previous 65 years. He recognized his own mortality. He feared imposing on us should he need constant care, and from time to time when a health issue cropped up, he would tell us to put him away, so that our lives would not be disrupted. I told him my siblings and I would care for him, and did, until the end.
Hand me down
I was poor as a child, and we never had anything in excess. Everything I wore, from underwear to cap, were made and repaired by my mother, grandmother, and godmother. I even wore some things that my older sisters had worn at my age, and my little brother wore my things in turn. After he grew out of them, they were then given to another family. When they became unwearable, they became rags until reduced to mere threads, then buried for mother nature to recycle.
Dad’s news
My old dad would point to a report in his newspaper and declare it as truth, simply because the article appears in a vehicle he had come to accept, over his lifetime, as being truthful. As such, he had no interest in alternate views, as they would contradict what he accepted as truth.
When dad read newspapers, during his pre-WW2 youth, they were copies, as he couldn’t afford othewise. News from outside a relatively small radius of wherever he found himself, came from radio, and from townspeople who returned from trips to the outside.
Truth was relative. The government skewered the radio and newspaper news and programs to propagandize support, and those who returned from the outside were apt to exaggerate, or to report only the small part they experienced as representing the view of an entire town, for example.
Truth within the town was highly political as well.
Time proved me wrong
I became a U.S. citizen when I was 19, after my first trip back to Italy. It was a time when the Red Brigades had been terrorizing the nation, si there were armed military personnel everywhere who stopped people arbitrarily, and increased security measures at even the unlikeliest of places. I decided I wanted to become a citizen of that great country, the United States, where something like that could never occur.
The depression
It has been so difficult to try and accept that my opinion is no longer valued in the way I had grown accustomed. It happened right around when I turned fifty.
After our business underwent a severe contraction, we reorganized and enjoyed the normal ensuing honeymoon as anticipated. At one-third of the previous size, it became more like the small family business that was its past, and management took on more of the flare of family differences and less that of an entrepreneurship with family values.
So much of the work that I had done, the ideals that bore from my soul, went out the window. I remember that moment vividly. After I voiced my concerns rather loudly at our Board meeting, I found no support, and I went speechless. I didn’t hear what they were saying at that moment, because all my concentration was on evaluating the fight or flight options, and chose to fly.
It was one of the most depressing moments of my life, and it lingered. I delegated responsibilities, kept a disorganized work schedule, and lost interest in doing things that I felt were worthwhile, but that were not necessarily popular. I started drinking, and ran my life more in response to others’ immediate needs, with little regard for my own.
As time wore on, my confidence decreased, and simple tasks like repairing a faucet became herculean. I stopped helping in the neighborhood. My wife and I separated and divorced. I messed up an opportunity to build a house in the neighborhood, and had to move. Then in a matter of a few months my daughter moved in with her boyfriend, I retired, my dad died, and I felt all responsibilities sliding off my back.
Winter came, and I no longer saw any reason for going out. My car remained unmoved for weeks, and my exercise was limited to walks to the market for necessities. I became addicted to Netflix, watching all the old movies I always meant to see, and started looking like a potato on my couch. Little foreign aches started to develop, my sinuses started acting up, all of a sudden, and one morning early in January I got up to vertigo. Woah!
I can only imagine how my dad felt as his advancing age and limiting traditional viewpoints were alienating family members as he became more insisting about his advice. My attempts to help him find a role as a doting grandfather went unheeded, opting instead to forever feel like a parent with absolute control, expecting that only his solutions were worthwhile, and that life no longer had meaning when that was not validated. And it seems this illogical reasoning had also found residence in me, for my own situation.
Suicide was on my mind more frequently than ever. Depression was weighing heavily on me, and my lack of initiative was probably my saving grace. The antibiotic treatment for a purported middle-ear infection to solve all ills resulted in two weeks of diarrhea and a loss of a dozen pounds. A back ache that suddenly started stabbing me at will put me on the couch, and as I wasn’t eating from nausea, there was no need to walk to the market, lest I suffer an attack along the way.
The vertigo mostly went away, my appetite and weight came back, and I found a desire to change my diet and do a few things, starting with cleaning. Something felt different in me, and it took me a week to realize that I had not suffered an episode of depression since I started on the antibiotics. I was so reticent to celebrate, expecting that it would return in a vengeance as soon as I started out to the belltower, that I kept it to myself with a sincere hope it would last.
In my first attempt to do something that required a bit of exertion, my body gave out on me. I was sweating, breathing hard, and my legs and arms felt the burden heavier than I ever felt. Back home, after a rest I started going up and down my staircase repeatedly on bent knees, took out my old dumbells, and took up cigars again.
I made appointments with an otolaryngologist, an optician, and a dentist. And one day I found myself driving out in the country, relishing in the colors and smells, and the fresh air from my open window. It’s been four months, and I have not once felt depressed. I’ve been experimenting with my diet, focusing more on basic foods, like bananas, raisins, berries, nuts, oats, spinach, and eggs, with the occasional chicken soup. I couldn’t do without my coffee with soy milk all day long, yet have replaced some of it with plain water.
I’m still adjusting my diet and working on allergy shots for my sinuses to feel more like my old self of just a year ago, though something tells me it may not be possible to turn that back. I have not yet made the commitment, but I’ve been looking at the Atlantic coast of Florida, for a small town with weather more to my liking, and where I might find some way to feel more meaningful.
Violent TV
The first time I heard real gunshots, I thought somebody was playing with popguns, until I noticed the two kids shooting at each other on the other side of the street.
On television, I was accustomed to hearing a dramatized gunshot, accentuated with pings and echoes that make it feel like a big explosion that lasts a long time. The actors moved on cue, and the good guy always won. That wasn’t at all like the real thing.
The boys were running, shooting at each other, their faces displaying a determination that combined both bravado and fear. With each popping sound I felt deep pangs as if a life was being shattered for no good reason. Luckily, their clips emptied before anyone was hit, and they kept running as fast as their legs could take them.
I never watched television in the same way again.
The fork on the plate
When I was a little boy, dad sang and hummed as he worked, standing at his worktable in what might have been considered our living room, making suits from scratch. At meals, he would often gently beat a tune on the edge of his plate with a fork, sweetly ringing in my ears.
The beat! That’s what stuck with me as an emotion – much more than mere notes stuck together. As much as I love every kind of music that reaches my ears, there’s just nothing like the beat to excite me. I’ll cry through Schubert’s Ave Maria, but I’ll writhe with pleasure through Michael Jackson’s Thriller. My muscles tense up and convulse to the beat, as my mind floats into a different world.
The feeling is difficult to describe. It’s like the music is inside me.
Absolution
When I was six and my grandmother died, I felt a certain sense of relief in that I had one less sin, that of disobedience, to atone for in the confessional.
In many ways, my parents’ deaths brought me a certain degree of relief as well, not only because their suffering had ceased, but also because nothing I could henceforth do would cause their feelings in any way to be hurt.
64 and not much more
64 and, in a way, I’m hoping this will be my last.
Today I wanted to think back on all the wonderful times I have enjoyed. I wanted to recall all the pleasures, one at a time so it would take so long that I would never get to the sorrows.
Alas, what continues to preoccupy my mind, instead, is that my usefulness is greatly abating, and that my reliance, or burden, on others is on the rise.
My body has been increasingly pointing out to me with a vengeance its various parts that are failing, bellowing it won’t be long before I become so uncomfortable that I’ll be screaming to become feed for worms. Reminding me that evolution does not stop where I’d like it to.
I’ve never done a good job in taking care of my body, relying mostly on its own ability to quickly bounce back to the normal during my first half century. I had always relied on family and friends to cook, even though I often helped to prepare meals. However getting the proper nutrition since I have been on my own has been a challenge, with unhealthy consequences to my body that probably also accelerated my unhealthy mindset.
My brain has been losing memories at a quicker pace than ever before, my attention to detail has diminished, and I have developed unhealthy fears of exploration and of social interactions. As interests and family involvement naturally shifted over the years, people close to me moved into the distance both literally and figuratively, I found myself unable to re-align our interests, and unable to align myself with different people, and my mindset has evolved to the point where aloneness has become my normal. Not long ago I was still in pursuit of a loving sexual relationship to re-enter my life, but I no longer see myself in one.
Where once I think I was a model of patience and reason, I have been seeing myself change via increased irritation and impatience, that I tend to direct to the people who love me the most. To some extent this is probably due to my inability to accept that I am no longer needed to influence outcomes after 35 years of plying what I thought were my talents, and after 23 years of marriage. My biggest motivator was always in believing that whatever I did was benefiting others, and not feeling needed made me question my values, and if what I had to offer was ever of any real benefit to anyone. I know that I made plenty of mistakes that hurt others, but I never did so with bad intentions, and always tried to make amends when I could, yet I started feeling that everything I did was a mistake, and that I hurt others much more than I ever realized.
All that makes me want to look forward to the end of my life. I find some comfort thinking that everything that made me came from the earth, and I can make up for some of the crap that I’ve given back, by offering it nutrients before doctors get the chance to infuse them with offensive chemicals that the earth can’t easily reabsorb. But I’m not at that point yet.
What keeps me going are the frequent glimmers I get of potential contributions I dream up. My poor memory lets me forget my calamities and my mind goes off to what seems a distant place, where I hash out things I notice that could help make something or someone better. However where at one time I had an audience, now I can’t get anyone’s attention or don’t feel capable of pursuing it, and that’s how each glimmer flickers.
I do think that part of my shunning of family and friends is subconsciously intended to distance them from myself so that I would find it easier in ending my life. It would allow me to not deal with my guilt by not thinking as much about how it would affect them, and on how they would accept the fact that they could not have prevented it and that is in no way their fault.
At the mausoleum
It was cold at the mausoleum, and all I could think was how mom would always tell me, while I cared for her these past years, how cold she felt, no matter how many blankets covered her bed. Tears kept flowing, and I stopped noticing the pain in my stomach from the convulsions.
I touched the casket and felt a desire to hold her one last time, so that I, and not a stranger, could ease her into her final place of sleep. I waited there long after the crypt was sealed, and though fully cognizant of the circumstances, it just didn’t feel right to leave her alone.
Illusory Gobshite 