In The Cigar Box

In keeping with the tradition that I mentioned last December, this post is the poem included on our Christmas card for 2013.  It is always a joy to write the poem.  When the words resonate in the lives and memories of those who read them, joy is enhanced as the words ripple out like the flickering light from an old film projector.  Here it is:             Flickering Forth Moisture laden clouds reached down to touch the pavement; the Season’s first deep chill hovered low, invading every crevice and Finally freezing autumn’s colorful leaves strewn about by biting breezes  Sent to announce autumn slipping aside as winter’s grasp tightens. Dressed in our sleepers or flannel pajamas, we huddled before the Warming glow of our --- computer screen.  Insert the digital video disk. The title page “Memories” flickered forth with the first frame captured From eight millimeter movies made when film was the highest of...

I stood there, incredulous. A low, throaty tone from the train whistle intermittently reached back to the depot platform.  Watching the red lamp on the last car of the Southwest Chief rolling through the misty twilight of pre-darkness, my chin dropped to my chest.  The train was soon invisible as it sped west toward the remnants of orange cast by the setting sun in its last gasp of day.  My wife was on that train.  I was supposed to be on it too. There is no defense for having missed the re-boarding call.  Conductors called out “all aboard” in the well hewn style that rises above the din and chatter of potential passengers and departing patrons.  The locomotive whistle blew its three short blasts and repeated its piercing call at least three times.   Anyone with a modicum of awareness knew that it was time to board, time to depart, time to rejoin loved ones waiting in their seat or compartment.  I missed it all. I grabbed my left rea...

Ending an hiatus should be a happy time. A return to normalcy marked by being refreshed and invigorated. The stress of the move has subsided and we are unabashedly happy about being able to get on with our plans. But in the time since this hiatus was declared... So much happened. So little has changed. Three months have ticked away. Another mass shooting where regular folks doing their daily work perished - this time in the nation’s capitol and on a Naval installation. The callouses of repetition have rendered such events so close to commonplace that this one could barely sustain commentary through two news cycles. In that same city, Congress exudes wanton disregard for the people it serves - appearing to be motivated by dogmatic voices that divide and demean rather than listening to Lincoln who said to bind up wounds with malice toward none and charity for all.  The usual August is a time when breezes blow like jet exhaust. This August threw off her normal demeanor and gav...

Sometimes lives get busy.  The web we weave of wants that point to whatever is next makes us busy, busier, busiest.  It is so – even with bloggers – just as it is with normal people.  At last count, this cigar box holds about seventy-five stories, musings, ponderings or essays.  Life has become busy for us – so there will be a hiatus in new posts.  Look for them to return in the fall when life mirrors that mellow season.  At summer's end being busy will give way to building new webs of plans to make some future month or year busier again.  I, too, have made plans.  Among the most important is to re-open the cigar box before all the leaves of autumn have fallen and the branches have become bare. Take care. --td

South of Paseo De Peralta on the corner of Buena Vista and Old Santa Fe Trail stands the Inn of the Turquoise Bear where history casts a shroud of mystery comparable to any worthy haunted house. This old estate turned B&B has been the scene of extraordinary parties, a place where political influence was peddled and a redoubt for famous writers to find their muse or perhaps to privately imbibe. For a few hours after arrival we thought our shuttle driver had taken an erroneous turn and dropped us at the The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel .  In fact, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench may have drawn their character studies from guests at the Inn.  The general state of repair at the Inn was certainly better than The Marigold, but stories about purled sheets, rough towels, dim lighting, bottled water that costs a buck, a smallish shower, and unexpected rules were a bit inconsistent with the images created by the Inn's website.  It was later on our walk back from dinner that we n...

Some stories take time.  Some require you to close your eyes in order to see the scenes passing by.  This is that kind of story.   We boarded the Southwest Chief in Kansas City at about 10:30 pm on Friday night, two weeks ago.  Sixteen hours and eleven stops between Kansas City’s Union Station and Lamy, New Mexico where we would catch the shuttle up to Santa Fe for a few nights at a B & B in an historic Santa Fe estate.  Ralph and Robert, innkeepers and owners of the Inn of the Turquoise Bear, had showered us with guide books and local lore in the weeks before our arrival. Since the sun had set an hour or more ago, the walk to Amtrak car 331 traversed an elevated ramp, down a steep flight of steps and came to trackside amid an evening fog mixing its mist with the vapors emanating from under the locomotive.  The scene could have been penned by Agatha Christie to set the foreboding mood for Murder on the Orient Express .  Roomette 12 was up...

One Friday evening, years ago, when the hands on the clock were rising, a wedding was about to begin.   The weather of early June had already become humid.  The light streaming through the church windows was softer than the bright forenoon light during Sunday morning worship.  Hurricane lamps and candelabras sprinkled light on the petals of the yellow roses adding a golden glow to the sanctuary. My brothers stood with me.  Standing required great will for they were nervous and sweating profusely.  My task was to tease them and to tie their ties.  Blood brothers, soon-to-be brother-in-law, foreign exchange student brother – brothers all, then and after.  They were all there smiling and glistening – mostly from moist foreheads with an occasional droplet cascading to the carpet – my hope was than none would faint. The music started as, in the narthex, the bride’s entourage gathered for the procession setting the stage for the bride.  Al...

There are no words.  No words can further consecrate nor add adornment to the honor of a freely given sacrifice.  Without words, though, the rest of us might not remember, might not appreciate, might not grasp the enormity of what so many have done, have given, have sacrificed. On this fourth Monday in May the morning sky remained dark.  A steady rain buffeted by breezes is as solemn as it is a simile for the stillness that forever follows sacrifice.  We are here; we are free; we have bounty; we have time.  They gave us these things through courage conquering fear and commitment overcoming doubt.  They acted in reliance on an acute belief in rightness, on the nobility of duty.  The morning paper brought the story of six men whose plane went missing on Christmas Eve forty years ago in the Laotian jungles bordering the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  The story wasn’t about their mission or their heroism but about a cupful of thoroughly charred bone fr...

Never later than the third inning is when Alex Gordon’s uniform will have its ochre-green lightning bolt emblazoned from shoulder to knee.  Sometimes the streak is accompanied by patches of dirt made mud from the sweat on his back as he slides spikes-up into second.  In some way, everyone who every wore a baseball glove or a uniform, even if it was only a t-shirt and cap, wants to leave the game with his jersey & pants streaked with the soil and grass stains from the field of play. Of course, roaming the outfield grasses of major league ball parks is the epitome.  Alex can slide through the grass and onto the warning track as he dives to steal a certain double from an overly optimistic opponent.  Or he might leap high against the padded wall to let the webbing in his mitt make a home run go into the books as a simple out.  The stains from those plays are a testament to prowess but there really isn’t anything like the taste of the dirt that surrounds ho...

Eva and I were were out on the back porch talking about it - the day.  Of course, her vocalizations were limited to an occasional yip, bark or sympathetic whine.  Perhaps that’s what mine sound like to her.  I’ve learned that she is a terrific listener.  Not wanting to dominate the conversation though, I listen as she moves her head, looks me in the eye and cocks her head in the exact tilt to let me know that she is considering the point I just made. Tonight the talk covered lots of subjects but mostly it was an off loading of my odd frustrations that weighed heavier than their substance should allow.  At one particularly salient point a small flock of geese flew low over the pond and then rose quickly in their perfect vee formation out of sight over the bluff to the northeast.  She turned and looked at me as though she wanted to comment on how silly all of the geese behind the point of the vee were.  If that lead goose flew into a brick wall, th...

May arrived incognito.  Tulips, pink ones that commemorate a friend’s passing and yellow ones to reflect springtime sunshine, were stooped over like and old man leaning on his cane as they carried inches of heavy, sleet laden snow.  Widespread clouds reached their arms as high as thunderheads while dragging knuckles on grassy ground, budding flowers and greening leaves.  Hanging baskets had to be taken from their shepherds’ hooks and decorative chains to wait inside while winter exhaled through half of spring. Drizzling rain that arrived on Thursday looks like it will now take the Monday clipper bound for parts east of here to deliver more shivers. The same cold rain visited Churchill Downs until moments before the call of “Riders Up!”.  In that race several pounds of mud from the storied track, where Seabiscuit and Secretariat ran to fame, would be deposited on jockeys’ goggles, owners’ silks and horses’ nostrils, ears and powerful piston legs.  Orb ran t...

In a few days the blue light will be extinguished until next April.  Autism will still be with us but more people will be aware of the challenges this disease lays upon families who love someone with autism.  This week has been delivering a dose of autism's ways to Wee and me as we look after Mason and Tom while their folks are away for R & R and an anniversary celebration. The rhythms of life are driven by circumstance and fate.  There are folks in Boston and West who had fate rearrange their lives in the length of time it takes an explosion to dissipate its energy.  Each conflagration visits destruction or injury on everyone and everything within the blast radius.   Autism is not akin to an explosive device.  Instead, autism drips its effects like a slow leaking spigot with the spout positioned right over the bridge of your nose.  Each droplet blurs your vision for a second or two, you blink, clear your eyes and move forward with one m...

Where is the darkest of dark places?  Spelunking through a deep cave with the only sound the scurry of furry creatures or the drip, drip, drip of unseen seepage from a stream that never knows sunlight doesn’t come close.   Swimming through undersea caverns where the water is cold and clear and the main sensation is when a Ray is startled and stirs the deep laid sand is not the place where darkness rests as comfortably as if in a corduroy reclining chair.  Walking in the small hours of a moonless, starless, slightly foggy night on a street where shuttered, abandoned buildings stand adjacent to cracked pavement where weeds have taken root and every street lamp forgot how to glow is not as chilling as the truly dark place. After months, really years, of training to test their minds and bodies against one of the highest standards of endurance, thousands came to Boston to run in the first among equals of marathon races.  Born in the lore of the ancient Greek so...

Three mornings in the past week have been filled with snippets of memories from a half century ago.  Memories are triggered by sights or sounds; sometimes one rises up to consciousness on the escalator of smells.  Last week all three were in play as the coincidence of timing tugged open a memory box from teenage times.   Approaching the stoplight on my normal route to the office, the morning was unfolding just like hundreds of others have done before.  I drive a Mini Cooper – like “jumbo shrimp” my Mini is a bit of an oxymoron because it is the Countryman, the largest of the Mini Cooper breed.  There at the stoplight sitting at idle was a vintage MG Midget – British racing green with a demountable hard top that had probably been installed for the winter.  It was half the size of my Mini. The driver’s window was down and he rested his arm on the door exactly the way I used to do in my first MG.  I pulled to a stop directly behind the Midget a...

An icy cold wind carried April fools’ greetings this morning.  With temperatures just over freezing, the brisk breeze relegates the mind to winter rather than providing the nudge into the renewal portended by April, Easter and the onset of spring.  While some draw parallels to the holy trinity when Passover, Easter and baseball’s opening day occur In close proximity, for us April is the annual reminder and time to heighten awareness about autism.  It is time to relight the blue bulbs, speak about progress made and pray for more breakthroughs from research. Mason has made strides during these last twelve months.  He connected with Coco, the mare at Midnight Farm, whose walk and trot brought smiles, laughter and genuine joy.  Mason House was brought into its full mission of providing therapies and safe experiences for kids and families along the autism spectrum.  But Mason, himself, graduated.  He left Mason House and moved to the public school s...