Writing Reality

       When it’s the early 1960s and your parents are two different religions, one being Catholic. The priest is usually none too happy. Especially, if he wasn’t the one who married the mixed couple. Then they had the audacity to bring him their second living child for a baptism. One would think the priest would’ve been happy to have a chance to increase his parish size. Perhaps having a chance to indoctrinate another paying soul into his realm. But no, he didn’t like my name. Yes, the priest kept denying that my first name represented Joseph. He asked why they hadn’t named me Josephine. It was clear why. My dad’s family were of WASP origin, so we were told. Much later, nearly forty years later we would find out that Dad’s paternal side were originally Vikings who conquered the English Isle of Mann. Pagans—Oh dear God!     Then the Godparents.—both were church goers, but again one was Catholic and my Dad’s sister who was married to a full-bred No...

      It was 1981 and I was stationed at Camp LeJeune. I was working in the Motor Pool that afternoon. Amazingly I was not passing out from the unshaded hot pavement as I had the day before with heat stroke. The motor pool lieutenant was standing by a bunch of guys who’d moved what appeared to be part of a telephone pole into a clear area of the motor pool. The space was enough for thirty Marines to be just standing around, kibbitzing.    Somehow, I was commandeered away from dead-lining a five-ton truck that afternoon. The Sergeant and Lance I was near also had been called over to where the partial telephone pole was. As we meandered over, one guy said, “We’re going to do coordination drills.” They all looked at me. Yeah, I hadn’t got my first stripe yet. I knew what it was. I’d play along. Yet, not knowing how far they’d go. I’ll tolerate just so much fun when I’m exhausted from heat stroke, and I know there’s batteries to clean and other jobs that had ...

  ...And it would be the second time serendipitously I’d met Bill Rodgers, who was the four-time New York City Marathon winner and four-time Boston Marathon winner. [1] Only this time, it wasn’t just a “Hey. How you doin’?” Like in Pittsburgh on May 5 th of that year—as my husband and I walked by the Marathon Running god. It was, “I can’t find my car in this underground parking garage”. And my reply was, “Oh you’ve lost your car. I’ll help you find it.”         Earlier that morning I did a slow thirty-minute warmup before the race. Again, the race was chockful of world class runners. It was a rainy, nearly eighty degree day. I came across the finish line as fourth woman and 110 th overall finisher with a 1:17:31 for 20K. After the awards ceremony I walked around and spoke with some of the runners who’d finished around my time. Then I got my bag and went to find my car in the underground parking garage that we runners had been offered to park in before ...

  I arrived home to our apartment and Norman said he was going over to his parents’ home; his father might not make it through the night. The man who’d been like the father I’d never had was on his way out. Norman said, “Dad has been tanking since Wednesday.” My heart sunk ever more so. Norman’s father had been the only related adult I knew aside from my husband that cheered on my commitment to long distance running. I could talk to his Dad/Herbie about the military, business, exercise and running.     Soon we were off to Norman’s parents’ home. It’d reached nearly 90 degrees that sunny afternoon. We entered the dimly lit room where Dad lay in a hospital bed, one room off the main entrance’s foyer. Mom called us over. She had just extracted fluid from Dad’s lungs. We followed Mom up to the kitchen. She gave us an update—she realized he might not make it through the night. Yet wanted me to try and get some of his medicine into him with applesauce as she and Norman s...

 It was 1985... Before getting to the office, I’d planned to run fifteen miles with strength advanced fartlek like so: first two miles was the warmup on the road which would be mostly uphill from three tenths of a mile to about a mile and four fifths, then flat to the first two miles—and that would be when I’d start the stopwatch on my wristwatch and run hard for five minutes, then I’d run easy for two minutes—next a hard three minute pick up, followed by a minute run rest easy and finally a hard one minute pick up followed by a thirty second run rest easy stint. I proceeded to do five sets of this drill on the road covering 62 minutes and 30 seconds and then an easy two-mile jog back to the Haledon High School cinder track a half mile away from our Woodside apartment. I was motivated when I got to the track. So, instead of an easy four laps to get an even fifteen miles in before work—I ran four quarter mile intervals, like so: 87, 85, 88, 91. I did a little jog of a minute in betw...

As I finished my second exercise set this afternoon... I was ready to pass by a neighbor that lives 420 meters from our home. He is age 99. He will be 100 in December. He was cleaning up his yard and clipping his shrubs for tomorrow's town yard pick up. I stopped by to chat with him. He said, "The kids don't want me to do this, like its going to make me die. I think at this point I could die in (pointing to his home) there sitting down or outside doing this." I responded, "You're correct. You gotta live. Do what feels good for you. "  He, at this point can hear me with hearing aids. Though his sight has diminished to two feet within his range, then he can see me. He remembered when my husband passed. We talked about marriage and protecting our children and their future. He remembered who our children were and asked about them. Then we talked about birthdays. I found out that he and I had a ton of birthdays in our families in July and October.  We laug...