Sometimes, objects from our past can surprise us by assuming unexpected new significance.
The Tao of the Cash Register
Category: Memoir
The Power of Peanut Butter
My father was some kind of sandwich genius. In fact, he was remarkably intelligent in many ways, even brilliant, some would say. A Presbyterian minister by training, he was a ruthless and determined chess player. He read more books in a month than I read in a year—and he remembered them in uncanny detail. And when … Continue reading The Power of Peanut Butter
What Life Smells Like These Days
There’s just something about incense. I realize that may sound strange from a middle-age man who is neither a Reiki practitioner, nor a musician, nor a Tarot card reader. I’m not even sure when I started appreciating a thick haze of aloeswood in my study. Incense, with its evocative fragrances, has the power to call … Continue reading What Life Smells Like These Days
Blogging to Complicate Yourself
My daughter makes a point of being the first person to “like” my new blog posts. I freely admit that I await with eagerness the WordPress notification that she hit the button. She’s a rising senior in college in New York City, and her two summer jobs keep her busy; so these days she reads … Continue reading Blogging to Complicate Yourself
Defiant Spaces
Despite those moments of stillness when I notice, almost accidentally, the slow sway of the fir branch, or the gray spider moving along the windowsill, life most often feels like a headlong sprint. When we’re young, time’s advance doesn’t trouble us: It carries us reassuringly toward maturity—meeting that girl at the football game, getting a … Continue reading Defiant Spaces
Putting It All Out There
Until I enrolled in the Skidmore Summer Writers Institute for a two-week course on nonfiction writing, I’d never heard of Philip Lopate, the man who would be my instructor. I guess that shows how little serious reading I’d done in “literary nonfiction.” Lopate, it turns out, is the king of nonfiction, having written four collections … Continue reading Putting It All Out There
My Glorious Lacrosse Career
The year I played lacrosse at Manual High School in Denver, the team posed for its yearbook picture holding beakers and wearing safety goggles. I’m not sure whose idea that was, or what connection existed between chemistry and an ancient Native American sport. Recently, when I came across that image in my Thunderbolts yearbook, my … Continue reading My Glorious Lacrosse Career
What Masculinity Looked Like
Masculinity is a freighted word. I can’t conjure those five syllables without calling to mind certain classic images of maleness. It’s like there’s a memory chip in my brain that serves up the same old picture, even when I change the search terms. The same phenomenon is true, I think, for all kinds of deep-seated … Continue reading What Masculinity Looked Like
Living Life in the Low Beams
The final chapter of my book Midpoint: Manhood, Midlife, and Prostate Cancer, ends with my nervously checking the results of my first post-surgery PSA test. The news that day was good—none of the antigen was detectable in my blood, which indicated that, for then at least, the cancer was beat back. Since then, I've lived … Continue reading Living Life in the Low Beams
Rethinking the Whole Manhood Thing
It had been more than six months since we’d seen this couple. My wife had been teaching abroad for a semester and during her absence I didn't go out much. Now that Barbara was back in the States, though, our social calendar was repopulated with evenings out like this one. We met at a favorite … Continue reading Rethinking the Whole Manhood Thing