Writing Reality

As I read the recent issue in “The Atlantic” in the Dispatches section “A Fine Country For Old Men” by Idrees Kahloon, I paused midway on its second page. What struck me was something I’d thought about nearly daily. A question of how my generation and a generation before mine received benefits for their aging out of the workforce. And it wasn’t just that that’d struck me. It was as well, the knowledge that our youngest child states every now and again of how the Boomers have screwed things up for her generation. I’d mostly held my disagreement, keeping it to myself. Yet I did not exactly agree or disagree with her, until I reckoned with all the facts. That’s out of respect for another human being. Yes, respect for a child who’d just become an adult of our modern era. That’s not what happened in my day, nor was it certainly in the family I grew up in. To me, my upbringing compared to today’s standards and mine were an aberration if not a catastrophe. On the outside I appear ‘okay’, some...

This day twenty-eight years ago. Tom Brunetto (he has since passed 2014) and I met at the Ridgewood Duck Pond at 4:15am. We made a pact a couple weeks leading up to this day. We both had topped off at 36 miles. So, we promised each other we would do a 40 miler together. Tom overdressed and forgot shorts, he was wearing long running pants. The temperatures soared passed eighty degrees. I think it hit a blistering eighty-eight degrees. The sky was clear blue. The last eight miles Tom was beside himself. He said he couldn't finish. Instead of my getting upset, I bribed him for the last eight miles to get us to forty. I had no energy left and still had work at 11am till 8:45pm that day. The only rest I'd get was a shower, and a drive at 3:45pm to a doctors office for four more pain patients to treat. So, Tom having other stress in life I decided, since I helped mangle his legs for perhaps a week's recovery I said, "I'll tell you what. You run eight more miles get...

 "Oh God! He was so innocent." I mumbled to myself as I'd gotten into the first chapter of "Born Survivors" by Wendy Holden. The ongoing debate He was unwilling to see my side as truth 42 years ago, then the last time I brought it up over 20 years ago. I wondered why, but then I gave up the one debate I knew was the truth, it was about how we in the United States needed to quash hatred and how to go about doing so. This morning I was forced to reflect back on one thing that he had no longer wanted to view with me, documentaries on the Holocaust.  Yes, my Jewish husband had to stop watching them about 20 years ago. I had to view them alone in our living room after he and kids had gone to bed. I can say I didn't wonder why, it was disturbing. Yet I forced myself to watch the known horrors unfold in the documentaries I'd watched.  My husband could watch certain scary movies with our oldest, like "Alien", "Poltergeist"; however, I couldn...

  “People die.” She said. That line was stated to me nearly seven years ago, by a childless woman, who’d just lost her husband who I’d been taking care of for a number of years. I was still in her life as a therapist taking care of her mother and once in a while herself when she’d moved too many boxes as she was having repairs and the like done around her home and her mother’s home a few miles away. She, being about a decade older than I and had been retired from teaching for some time now, was alone in a near empty house. A house much bigger than my home with my husband, two children and three pets. I took her thoughts in stride. She was sad, as she’d just lost her ailing husband. She was well aware that he’d pass; however, I knew the exact day he’d die ten weeks before. I remember coming home and being upset after the session at their home and stating, “I know someone will die before Memorial Day ends, and that they will not see June 1 st .” My husband looked at me dumbfounded,...

Photography by Sarah Q. Reicher  Every morning, I awake I thank my Maker. I say "Thank God." I don't do this for any particular religious reason. I do this for gratefulness to all of it. It’s not just because I've been close to death for any variety of reasons. Neither because I've witnessed death, though I have. It is because I know how fleeting life is. We truly never know when this physical journey in the vessel we're residing in will end. Or perhaps, it’s my wanting to be there, altogether healthy and alive till I know our children no longer need me. Truly, that is the main reason. And there's something personal I want to experience before this thing called 'me' dies. Our children have barely anything to do with this desired experience I have. I don't know if I'll experience it ever, but I want to. It’s a solo journey. And for once in my life, it’s not about science all that much; however, currently I’m in this science mode as usual thi...

  We purge truth to comfort a white man. We prostrate ourselves for him to break our backs. Cancelling love, compassion and truth in one fell-swoop. Cherishing nothing, we have nothingness. Our loss is his gain. His gain is unearned. He knows not our sorrow, for his sorrow is more. His appointees state their near-whiteness. Their fake eyes and fake haired glares of filth. It is without soul that diminishes their care. A defunct and failed man rules with fake wealth. He buys them rich then brings them poor. Our D-class status arises from Confederate ashes. Ignorance is embraced by the willful ignorant. Gutless men who’ve existed for centuries remain in power. Its about fear, fear that we may take care of the land. Fear that we may save the people they refuse to understand. Fear of peace through expression betrayed. The comfortable white man has become restless. The feral king realizes his death will arrive. He rouses up the racists, so he will...