I was talking to a nephew the other day. We were comparing notes about the first time we put on glasses and saw the world in it all its beauty. Both of us were about the same age — 8 years old. For me, that means a half-century of wearing spectacles. Without them, I am at the mercy of errant barbers who take off my glasses before the trim and then ask me what do I think about the results. How would I know? Children can make funny faces at me with aplomb. In fact, pretty much anything much beyond arm’s length is a blur without glasses.
Years ago, I read “The River of Doubt,” a nonfiction...
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The winter solstice approaches. The shortest day of the year arrives on Saturday, followed by the longest night. Forecasters predict severe thunderstorms and lots of rain that day as a cold front moves through, and winter returns after a slow warming trend. Last weekend we had a fire blazing nearly nonstop, our family gathered around it. This morning I worked up a slight sweat while walking Sam the Dog along the Boorman Trail.
The trail has taken a beating this fall, flooding leaving a layer of mud left splayed on the concrete during the autumn gullywashers. City workers do a good job getting...
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Grief is an inconstant companion. It shows up at inopportune times, trailing the event that precipitated its arrival. Other times it lurks in the background, allowing us to get on with our lives, or at least pretend to. I was talking the other day to a colleague I don’t know that well, about my father-in-law’s murder. Something she said in sympathy set me off. Suddenly I was enveloped in a cloud of sadness and had to get out of her office as quickly as I could.
(If you’re just now arriving at this story, please go to these two articles: (http://garyborders.com/pages/harris-teel-always-a-fighter-in-his-biggest-battle/...
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A surgical intensive care unit is a solemn site. It can be a place of despair or of hope, of lives lost or restored. My mother’s life was restored in Good Shepherd’s SICU in 1995 after she suffered a massive heart attack while I was visiting her in the emergency room. She had gone there complaining of chest pains and nausea. As we were talking she went into cardiac arrest. Soon they were slapping her chest with shock paddles and ushering me out of the room.
Minutes later, I signed papers allowing a surgeon to operate and perform a double-bypass surgery. She bounced back from the bypass relatively...
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