Thoughts of a Common Man

I-Pod listening on a long drive home. I have some Billy Joel on the dial and love the song This is the Time. This is the time to remember because it will not last forever. These are the days to hold onto because we won't although we'll want to. So the wheels started turning. When was that perfect moment? Did you take the moment into your hands? I thought of the moment when I saw Jake born. What I saw of him first were his feet - he came out the right way, but for some reason or another it was his feet I saw first, and it was crazy to me that he had these perfect little feet. It caught me by surprise and made me gasp for a breath as though I'd just had the wind knocked out of me. I've held that moment. There was also the time when I saw Pam Anderson in a string bikini on a Miami beach. When I close my eyes that moment is right there. But there are so, so many more. And isn't it funny that when we are caught in a moment, we sort of tell ourselves to hang onto that mom...

Spent hour after hour in the car today. Drove all the way through Adirondack Park in beautiful New York State and man, I felt small. Believe it or not I've been relaxed over the last few days. It makes no sense. In three weeks time I've spent 6 days in the funeral home in my hometown. Our family has been devastated again, and I find myself shrugging my shoulders. It's not that I'm not sad. I am. It's not that I don't feel there is an unfillable void. It's just that I feel tiny. The universe has certainly humbled me, and never more so than it did today. As I drove through the mountains, looking at the streams, and the river and the huge rocks, I felt miniscule. The sun was riding high in a crystal blue sky. Birds were darting in and out of my line of vision, and I kept thinking about God's hand in the beauty before me. How can it be ignored? And when you see the perfection it's almost impossible to consider that the plans you're trying to make are...

Technically speaking I'm a mess. Mechanically speaking, of course, I'm much worse. But, we may have a problem. You see, beyond all odds, I've learned how to order music from I-Tunes, click a button, buy it and download it to my I-pod. For those of you doing it for years and years, and despite the fact that there are 3-year olds that can accomplish this, I may have discovered something that may put me into financial ruin. I remember thinking, as a teenager, that I would love to go into a record store with a pile of money and just buy as much stuff as the cart could hold. Now I can do that and its scary. So, how did I arrive there? The Mellencamp CD was out. I needed it, of course, as I've purchased everything he's ever done. Problem being, there aren't many record stores anymore and the Mall wasn't attractive to me. So, I tried I-Tunes. Kathy and the boys offered to help me out, but it was something I'd have to learn on my own. I was able to download Mell...

Okay, so the people who know me really well...Kathy, Carrie, Johnny C., Pat, Yvonne, Corinne, Cindy and everyone else at Sterlinghouse... are sort of feeling smug right now, but it wasn't that it was always going to happen. I'm buying a black notebook to write something new. There, I said it. Three weeks ago I was adamant...it wasn't going to happen. I was enjoying life without having self-imposed deadlines. I didn't have anything to say anyway, and no one wanted to listen. And then I got an idea. I can't say that the idea hit me out of nowhere. It was developed as I struggled to try and say goodbye to my father. It was further enhanced by another tragedy, and of course, that was compounded by trying to battle through the writing of my last book which was also inspired by an earth-shattering tragedy. Doesn't sound like I'm writing a comedy, huh? Well...maybe. It's just starting to take shape in my head, and truth be told, when you are waking up in the mo...

Before each pitch Yankee player Nick Swisher glances skyward in a tribute to his grandmother. I remember thinking that to be odd because he's standing up there with a hundred and one things to do before the 95 MPH pitch comes at him. He's a good hitter anyway. Swisher also never misses. It doesn't matter if he's there for ten pitches, he looks up each time. I often think about a conversation I had with my brother Jeff one night. We were celebrating Carrie returning home from her first year of law school, and we had a few adult beverages and wandered out to the backyard to get rid of the beer. The summer sky was filled with stars and on a clear night the black void didn't seem to be so far away. "Look up," Jeff said. "People don't look up enough. "It's an amazing universe." This morning I was out doing my thing and the morning sky was sort of expressive, don't you think? I was trying to think back in time to when life didn't s...

So, I decided to read the paper as a distraction this morning and of course the front page news is the arrest of the man that is believed to be the guy who gunned down 8 people in a Buffalo Nightclub. (Then you wonder why I read the Ladies Home Journal ). And there were a number of references to the fact that the police had a difficult time collecting evidence because people just don't want to rat out others. The neighborhood code being that snitches get stitches , or end up in a body bag. And what is even more disconcerting is that there have been demonstrations burning the Buffalo News because there was a story about the victims having criminal records. Evidently, that should not have been a part of the story. I do agree that having a crime on your record is not cause to be gunned down, but The News didn't do it - they were just reporting. Reporting the negative, sure, but I read the article and it wasn't slanted to say that the victims deserved their fate. It was a fair ...

We aren't supposed to be thinking of death so much. As a child I can only remember my father crying one time due to a loss of a friend. I remember how bad that tore me up to see him so sad. And the wheels of life turn. Children lose grandparents and then parents. We are all working on being replaced. My kids are my replacement, right? Simple procedure. Down the line - we all get our 80 + years - and then its on to the next to make their time. But it doesn't work like that. Death has no age. A young girl, a brother, a child, a newborn baby. And we push it to the back of our minds and try to avoid the subject as best we can. I can't shield my children from it these days. They've lost their uncle, their grandfather, and now the brother of my closest friend. All too young, all against the odds that are supposed to be there. Another couple of dear friends had the "anniversary" yesterday of the loss of their beautiful child. Around every corner. As a Dad I'm sup...