Writing Reality

The Basketball Team Some people that know me. May have known that it took me four tryouts to make a basketball team as a child. Yep, it was seventh grade rec. I didn’t make it. I tried out for the eighth grade middle school team, didn’t make it. And it was quite a small town that I was residing in then.   My class in eighth grade was about sixty-two students in all. I gave it rest. Then I tried out again as a junior in high school. I didn’t make it. Finally, in my senior year of high school, in a class of two hundred and sixty-two.   It was a regional high school. I made the varsity basketball team. Barely. Before I did, I can say this. I liked the kids who were on the team before I’d even made a team. I wasn’t friends with anybody on any of the teams I’d tried out for. I was the kid who kept to themselves, for the most part. All the teams, the ones I didn’t make and the one I did make, I respected the results. I respected the individuals that made up all the teams....

Where’s the Brass Ring?      When you are used to touching death, you need to touch life. If you had asked me when I was eighteen would I have become a person that works with people in pain, some dying.    I would have said emphatically,  ‘No Way! ’ Not because I didn’t want to help people. Oh. I did. It was that my thought process of thinking of a way to helping people was saving them from abuse.    Saving them from war.    Saving them from crime.    Or fixing them after crime or war.    Basically, being there for them. Not in any medical format.    Yet, with a fist, a technique, a bayonet or a format of a firing arm or perhaps even a shovel.         Every night as a young child I went to bed and played a type of movie film in my head. I’d see the  bad guys . They would try to wreck me; I’d fight back.    They were always bigger, stronger and had the ...

In March of 1987, it was a Wednesday morning at about ten o’clock, I was off from work. My doctor said he’d meet me in a gym. I had a ten mile race on that Saturday, March 14 th , down in Atlantic City. I had been suffering with back pain that crippled me after a ten mile race a prep-race in Lynn, Massachusetts just about ten days before. I expected to race well then; but ran into some trouble as I slid on ice going down a hill. A man grabbed me as I was sliding headfirst into a tree. I ended up finishing a disappointing 4 th place female and the birth defect no one knew I had reared its ugly head, once again. I drove home in agony for nearly four hours. During the week, one of my bosses saw how crippled I looked as I walked by his office doorway. He inquired. He then suggested I see his doctor. So, I did. I explained to the doctor, ‘I was trying to run through this. I’ve hurt my back many times before. I was told never to run again 18 months ago. Just go have babies…’ I ex...

I am Here… As I watched the beautiful buds the past few weeks glow and grow... I pondered thoughts as I meandered my body outside, alone feeling March had been February through April. I heard a high amount of birds chirping and life in this winter. It seemed uncanny. Yet, with my nightmares and dreams that at times collage during sleep... They tell me intuitive truths. Will we ever listen to the sounds of the earth screaming for our attention? I ponder, nearly every day of my life, that question. I am a tree hugger, born and living in New Jersey...Not the most tree-hugger of states. But yet, that is where I reside, and have with few exception for most of my nearly six decades of life here on earth. I yearn for clean air. I see the despicable things us humans do with very little thought to this miraculous wondrous thing we call earth. We make excuses to pollute beyond what is necessary. We get offended when someone points this out to us. Some claim, there are other worries ...

A First Time...For Everything Every day I ask our kids about their day.   Their schoolwork. Their work. General daily things. They are teenagers, so I know only to ask once with one and twice with the other.   Everyone is different.   The one who doesn’t want to be asked more than twice, didn’t realize till today why I revel in her accomplishments.   I thought both our daughters knew how I felt about their school accomplishments. However, not completely. So today, I found out something interesting. As some may know me, I don’t post pictures of our children on social media, nor do I print their names on social media. Why?   Because my pages, my posts are not for me to expose them to a world that is my world. I will put up general groups of pictures of the children’s sports, concert group pics, perhaps. I will note something funny they stated, but not use their name. It is their privacy I am respecting and protecting. I asked our oldest if somethi...

About Vietnam ‘Food and shelter. Food and Shelter and someone is dying for me. Food and Shelter. Food and Shelter, and someone is dying for me’. That is what I awoke to at five after one this morning. The words that came out of my mouth, after I prayed, hoping all was well in my household. Of course, I arose and checked every person and every room in our homes. My natural action, of course. I knew what made me rise, even though I’d only had a little more than a three hour sleep. It was my creative mind that woke me up. I thought at first, that it was something more serious. Not to say my creative mind is not. After checking on everyone, I lay back in bed at eighteen minutes after one. There was comfort, yet a discomfort that sat in my mind. It was the question, ‘Am I thinking differently than others, right now? If so, why?’ I thought as I lay in bed. I prayed, figuring the answer would arrive. I wondered, ‘Was God wanting me to get up and write?   Was this my only time...

Hope  My Mother went into labor as her and my Dad were watching Bob Hope's monologue. They thought I would be a boy. They were to name me David. However, they named me after some little girl they met in Texas in 1957. Lost touch as they moved back to New Jersey. Many years later, my Mother then becoming ill. As I was age eleven trying to comfort her, she said, "We should have named you Hope. Because that's what you bring." Kind of a neat story. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P47XAQK/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i8