Category: Memoir

TIME MACHINE (STAGE IX)

FEBRUARY 24, 2025  – (Cont.) The fourth letter from February 1981 in the packet that Russ sent me exactly 44 years later was from (now) Dr. Pavel Šebesta, the inimitable Czech, to whom I introduced the readers in “Stage IV” (2/19/25 post) of this series. Pavel’s letter came in a large light brown envelope bearing …

TIME MACHINE (STAGE VIII)

FEBRUARY 23, 2025 – (Cont.) The datometer aboard the time machine was restless—again. It began spinning, slowly at first, then faster, faster into a blur before slowing again and coming to rest at February 19, 1981, the date of (my sister) Jenny’s letter. I stepped from the machine and sat down in the garden paradise …

TIME MACHINE (STAGE VII)

FEBRUARY 22, 2025 – (Cont.) The day before [January 12, 2025], while my sister Jenny was visiting our cousin Russ and his wife Kerri in California, they came across a letter that my grandfather had written to the Winthers back in June 1933. Russ emailed a scanned version to my other two sisters and me. …

TIME MACHINE (STAGE VI)

FEBRUARY 21, 2025 – (Cont.) “I saw a stupid accident in Champlin on my return from the airport,” Dad wrote. A teenager on a bike tried to dart between the cars waiting for the stop light and got hit by cars in the third lane, which he didn’t notice were moving. He hit (or got …

TIME MACHINE (STAGE IV)

FEBRUARY 19, 2025 – (Cont.) “Monica” was a Swedish woman, about the same age as I (25 at the time), whom I’d met on my first trip to Europe. She and two of her friends, all from Lund, were on a Greek holiday, and our initial encounter was aboard an overnight ferry from Brindisi to …

TIME MACHINE (STAGE III)

FEBRUARY 18, 2025 – (Cont.) If Dad had shared any of Mother’s misgivings about my decision to gallivant around the world until the money ran out, he hadn’t let on. I think his acquiescence in my plans stemmed from a combination of his knowing I was determined to follow through on my ambitions and his …

TIME MACHINE (STAGE II)

FEBRUARY 17, 2025 – (Cont.) The first letter was from my dad, who died 15 years ago this coming May. As I unfolded the single sheet of lined paper and exposed his familiar handwriting to the present light, the slight disturbance of air sent the time machine “datometer” into a dizzying blur. Dad’s distinctive cursive, …

AWE AND GRATITUDE

SEPTEMBER 5, 2024 – (Cont.) When Susan and her husband Bob pulled into the yard, I had no idea what to expect. She was such a young kid when we’d last met on the deck of her family’s swimming pool in New Jersey, she’d made no lasting impression. We’d had no contact since. Jenny, who’d …

DISUNION, REUNION, AND RESILIENCE

SEPTEMBER 4, 2024 – (Cont,) Many families experience splits, rifts, friction, upheavals, estrangement. The fractures in our own—cousin vs. cousin (Carol’s father vs. my uncle) and, it seemed, brother vs. brother (Carol’s grandfather vs. mine)—were not unusual as families go. Only a specialisit in abnormal psychology, however, could categorize the discord that ebbed and flowed …

PARALLEL AND PARALLAX

SEPTEMBER 3, 2024 – (Cont.) In anticipation of our mini-reunion with Carol and her husband Barry, Jenny and I talked about things we could do and places where we could dine out. On our list were “Anna’s house” two doors down, where Anna and her husband Mickey lived. They were shirt-tail relatives of ours, though …

ON THE WATER . . . IN 1614

JUNE 20, 2024 – This afternoon we spent 90 minutes aboard a time machine, and though we never left the present, we experienced the past—over 410 years in the past, to be precise. The excitement was aboard the Onrust, a replica of the old Dutch sailing vessel built in 1613-14 by Adrien Block, a lawyer-turned-merchant-fortune …

TWENTY YEARS AGO (PART I OF II)

MAY 24, 2024 – The other day while in conversation with our eight-year-old granddaughter about writing, she asked me how many diaries I had. “Lots,” I said. “Ten?” she asked, seeking greater precision from me. “More than that. If I had to guess, probably several dozen.” “You should count ’em,” she said. We then went …