Writing Reality

  Regardless, Love is Kind The least likely person to hurt you, I’ve found is not a hurt person. We’ve heard in various circles, the converse. I taught our youngest recently that hurt people usually won’t hurt someone else. Let that sink in, to you the reader. There’s a difference between a nice person and a kind person. My now deceased husband pointed this out to me about a decade or so ago. I agreed. Anyone can be nice. But not everyone can be kind. You have to choose to be kind. It takes some, more effort to be kind than to be nice. It was August 2005 as I drove my dad back to my home from my Goddaughter’s christening. The drive was long and arduous. It was a Sunday afternoon, and a hot one at that. The traffic on Route 80 was quite often at a standstill that day. So, the usual near six-hour drive took an extra ninety minutes or so. The good thing was I was the driver and I have a long fuse. If it were my dad then, he would have went through a half pack of cigarettes and...

  Hatred aimed at you is most likely not about you. It is about the person aiming hatred at you. Usually that’s what it’s about when it comes to any sort of bias. My older daughter had called me on Mother’s Day which also was the timing for her once a week call together on the phone as she was now on the west coast. We discussed her exams that have passed, others coming up, her work environment and friends. In that conversation she’d brought up something about a man we’d both known—yet had few interactions with. Her one experience was when she was age eight and her sister aged six. The man’s daughter was younger than both our daughters and was being friendly and showing her dog to them. The man yelled at his daughter as if to scold her for showing the dog to our daughters. My oldest said she felt that was odd. And that the few times she saw him, it was an odd stare in her direction that he gave. I expressed to her I’d had similar experiences concerning that man. After our oldes...

  “Kids are just not running as fast they used.” I heard a coach say over the past six weeks of recent spring track and field competitions. When I attend my youngest’s track and field meets, I pay attention to just about everything. I talk to parents from other teams, who I’ve never met before. I converse with coaches from other teams or officials, usually standing by awaiting some announcement. Sometimes kids from other teams will comment about something that seems awry. If I’m in earshot, I will converse with them about whatever it is that was their wonderment on the field or on the track.  And in that first line of this piece, that coach is correct. I’m seeing it only from a Bergen County, New Jersey standpoint. We are way down across the county in high school track and field performances, in the past decade or more. Why? I could guess. One is that the competition in academics could interfere in the latter years of high school. Yet, that is a must to survive in the ‘rea...

  In the late 1960’s to early 1970’s it was happening. I was becoming a woman. Or at least that’s when I was told I could no longer run around on a hot summer’s day bare chested in our backyard with the boys—ever again. Nope girls didn’t have that privilege. I cannot emphasize the disappointment of inequality that befell me deep to my soul, as that privilege was taken away. Like a good Catholic and Lutheran daughter, I obeyed. I always did. I was ‘the goodie-two shoes’. To the point, before the age of nine my dad had begun to call me “The Prude”.   Yes, my dad called me “The Prude”. It was added to the list of nicknames people already pegged me with. On this particular Saturday, as my dad had finished lawn care he had his music playing. He’d been drinking beer, smoking weed, and now he’d held an unfiltered Lucky Strike in his hand—all while he danced and sang to Janis Joplin in our barn house living room. As I’d arrived upstairs to go to my room to play alone with my set...

  It was a Saturday afternoon in Atlantic City when I met Tuesday. So, she said that was her name. This young twenty-something year old approached me in a prep room for fighters of the blue corner. I was helping my coach Phil Dunlap as he was getting our fighters ready.   He was wrapping the guy’s hands. And some of us were helping do pad work and the like for the MMA fighters in the room. This unabashed young woman, all dolled up—appeared looking for love in all the wrong places . As this lady of the night chummily approached me. She batted her lashes,   gave me a toothy sexy smile—as she slid into my nearby personal space. I’d just gotten a second to breathe from running errands for the team. My fight had been cancelled three days before. Two other fighters had bailed on my fight and two more couldn’t get their medicals in on time to fight me. To top it off, two days later I’d just gotten injured which was the day before I now stood in front of Tuesday. I’d gone hard ...

So, we give mom a day. No matter the age of her children, she gets a day. No wait. Kind of like ten hours of… No wait. Okay six hours. Uh. No wait. Okay, four hours? Not happening. There’s going to be an argument—or not. Or the dishes and mess in the kitchen will be promised to be cleaned by some imaginary cleaning persons. Probably not. Take mom out for pancakes. Wait she’s on a gluten-free diet. Maybe she’d like to sleep-in. Maybe she’ll want to get a twenty-mile run in. But then remember, you just must cater to the older mothers in the family. If you don’t do that then—the party’s over. Someone may give you the cold shoulder. Perhaps hold the petty grudge for a week or a lifetime—whichever comes first. Oh, trust me. Women in general have these jealous feelings and within their family schematic they don’t usually hold back. And if you’re not the mother of the other mothers or dads and you, ehhh hmmm ‘call-in’ sick for Mother’s Day. You will be called, gossiped about, condemned, o...

          My second writing wave were ages eleven to thirteen. It was at a time in my life that I so wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, “STOOOPPPPPPP!” It was aimed at the cruelty of the world. Or rather I should say the dismissiveness of the lesser, the poor, the helpless. Yes, that was and is me. I’m still that same being. So the other night as I prayed for people, for my family, for self, for our household. These thoughts arose over and over again, in between my prayers and meditations. At those ages I referred to, I was in my middle school years. I kept diaries those years somewhat regularly.     One of those years, I was tremendously blessed with this language arts teacher, Ms. Beltrami. She was frail, and kind. She appeared sickly. But inside all of that, I saw reserve and gentleness in her.   I only wanted her to be happy.   I saw inside her soul. Sometimes, people let me do that.    And other times I’m gifted that view...