In The Cigar Box

It's Christmas time.  That means it's time for me to post our Christmas card on this Cigar Box Blog.  Well, here it is - featuring our four grandsons who give us more than ample reason to feel joyous and hopeful.  By sharing this Christmas greeting, we hope all of our friends, the ones we've met and those who we have yet to know, experience a wondrous and joyful season of celebration in the traditions and faith that each of you holds dear.     Winnie and I wish you a season encircled by joy and enraptured by possibility!                                                              Do You See What I See?                                       What are you looking at, what do you see?   ...

This is the final chapter in the story "Lab Results."  I hope that serializing the story has made it more consistent with the traditional style of this blog.  There will be some of both types of posts in the future because sometimes there is simply more to say than can easily be captured in one post.  Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the stories.  Now for the conclusion: Lab Results - Chapter 3 Puppet, good friend, guru. Days later, after the funeral, I finally returned home.   Puppet had spent all of those days beside the door.     She leaned into my leg.   Stood when I stood, walked when I walked.   She stayed closer to me than my noonday shadow.   She wouldn’t chase the Frisbee.   Instead, she would make four or five concentric circles right in front of my chair and settle her head on my feet.   I began to worry because she wouldn’t finish her food if I left the room.   Instead of doing the Labrador inha...

As a reminder, this post is the second part of a three part series.  The first part, Chapter 1, was posted on October 20, 2016. Lab Results - Chapter 2 I may have rescued her from life in a cage but soon realized that Puppet had adopted me.   She couldn’t talk but her teaching never suffered for the absence of words. Dad.   Atlas may have shrugged but Dad never did. I’m going home.   Those were the words my Dad said every time I walked into his hospital room.   He said them every time – every time until that day in early January, 2005.   This time, we could skip past the ritual of me having to tell him that he could go home when the doctors said he was well enough.   To which, he would grimace, then smile.   The grimace was the only wrinkle ever visible in his unflagging good nature.   On this eighth day of January, unseasonably warm and sunny, his bed was cranked all the way up into a sitting position.   He held a newsp...

It has been a while since I've made a post.  Sometimes inspiration fails or writer's block intercedes.  However, I've written a couple of essays that are longer than my typical blog posts.  So, I'm going to try something new.  This post will be the first part or first chapter of a three part serialized story.  I hope this won't be too jarring for those of you who have been regular readers and I welcome your reactions and comments.  Chapters 2 and 3 of this story will be posted soon - probably about three days between chapters.  As always, I'm grateful for the thousands of times this blog is read - I hope this new wrinkle will be to your liking.  td Lab Results - Chapter 1 Each fork in the path, each turning point in life gets condensed to a single moment when a decision must be made. Yes or no, left or right, up or down, life or death. Such moments arrive whether you are ready or not.  Some hit as hard as tornadic winds while others sho...

The blanket of overcast dawn has been rumpled into the corner of the northeast sky.  A clear blue-sky inaugurates April as Nature has joined in the conspiracy to Light It Up Blue for awareness and acceptance of autism.  For nine years now, Mason has led us on this journey of discovery, awakening, worry, therapy, and understanding.  When the sky is blue, blue is the color of serenity.  When a blue light glows during an indigo night, blue is peaceful.  Blue is a new beacon shining through awareness to illuminate acceptance. The work of spreading awareness is never finished.  There will always be people who only notice when someone close faces the daily challenges dealt by autism.  Others will choose to ignore the evidence and believe the skillfully spun myths.  Some will be aware but in the blurred images they can see through a foggy, crackled window pane.  But huge numbers of people are aware.  When a new diagnosis is rendered, there...

“Okay if we share the bench?”   He started asking while he was still behind us as he reached the end of the access path and entered the unobstructed expanse of beach as it merged into the ocean and sky beyond.   He sat down and looked to the horizon. “They come for the sunsets.   Tourists do.   We live here with the tides.   The high tides and the low ones.”   He said these things while staring out over the rolling waves.    I wasn’t sure if he was meditating or greeting us as another new pair of visitors to his beach.     Sunrise, not sunset, was much closer to the time when our paths intersected on that bench by the south-most public access to the beach.    According to my wife’s Vivofit, we walked about three and a half miles up the beach and back.   The bench offered us a spot to rest before returning to the condo and a late breakfast – strictly a vacation routine for us.     “Where are you ...