Writing Reality

One may wonder what would inspire someone to work hard labor voluntarily. For me it’s the love of many things. It’s the passion that won’t be broken. Because there are so many aspects to such service for me, that it may seem beyond comprehension. I’d compare it to my youthful desire to enter the military as a young child. Then for a multitude of reasons only to follow through thirteen years later at age eighteen entering the Marines. There were things that followed me throughout my life. Sometimes they were questions of how I ever gave up my over decade’s life dream to become a New Jersey State Trooper. My childhood desire to never wed—to never have any serious relationships with another human being. I desired only service in military and law enforcement nearly my whole childhood. Too the extent that even one of my Marine Corps superiors expressed to me last July, “I never thought you’d ever get married. It just wasn’t who you were. You were always a loner.” I replied, “Yeah. I know....

  This afternoon as I watched a documentary about a tragedy. I whispered an expletive followed by, “And you can go to hell. For real.” It was after William Lucas a former director of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center stated many years later in a documentary of 2020, “I would have made the same decision to launch as I had back then….” Lucas continued, “I did what I thought was right in light of the information I had, and if I were going over it with the same information I had. I’d make the same decision.” Yet it was clear that he had knowledge that the launch could be compromised if the outside temperatures were below 53 degrees Fahrenheit. It was 38 degrees at the time of the launch of the shuttle Challenger on January 28 th , 1986. Lucas repeated in the documentary that they needed to stay on schedule. I then whispered to myself, “Who were we still racing? The Russians?” I knew that they weren’t fairing well in general in January 1986. I sat back and watched as William Lucas who...

Two years ago after our oldest's Senior Awards Dinner had ended. I drove us home, feeling a sense of satisfaction, as she held her awards on her lap. She had achieved Valedictorian as my husband and I felt was a possibility. Yet, unfortunately he'd passed eleven months prior to the dinner and her graduation from high school.  When we began the drive home it was dark out. We were traveling through a wooded area when a fawn leaped out in front of our car. Fortunately, I was driving under tte speed limit, wary that such an event could likely occur.  I stopped in time and the fawn had to not only cross in front of us. It then had to leap over a challenging guardrail for its youth and size. It stutter-stepped. It tried twice to leap over the obstacle. And finally made it over the guardrail to join its mother. Two years later, the other evening, our youngest daughter and I were on our way to her Senior Awards High School Dinner. About 200 meters from the entrance to the event'...