Finding Faith (A Work in Progress)

I originally wrote this when I was still clinging to God. Only recently I decided that my prayers were ascending into a void where no deity was present and that I was wasting time attempting to contact a supernatural being. My life has not changed for better or worse since making this very difficult decision to eschew God and Jesus; the only exception being that I am free to think for myself and be rid of Bronze Age rules and dictums. 

Finding Faith (A Work in Progress)

Some people are equipped with faith. I see a strong belief in God not as something that can be taught, but as a trait or an asset. For me, I simply lack the fundamental ingredients necessary to form any sort of bond with the All Mighty. When I was a kid, my parents took my siblings and me to church each Sunday. There was Catechism as well, but all I learned was to be fearful of God. Jesus was the nice son of the Father; but I learned that to not believe that he is the son of God, and that he died and was resurrected for our sins meant that I was going to roast in Hell for an eternity – just for that. For the simple doubt that enters anyone’s mind that maybe, just maybe this book of ancient text written by people who believed that the Earth was flat and that the sun revolved around our planet (and they’d burn you at the stake for saying otherwise) were absolutely correct when it came to my soul and the word of the Lord.

In my youth, I had a cartoonish view of Heaven. You died, hopefully went straight up through the clouds, encountered St. Peter who scrolled through some sort of giant tome for your name as you hoped a trap door wouldn’t open beneath your feet and send you falling into the flaming pit of Hell. With luck, he’d nod in approval and wave you through like a bouncer at an exclusive, Manhattan night club. You’d turn around and wave goodbye to any unfortunate friends or relatives who didn’t have enough check marks next to their names to make it through the Pearly Gates.

That may not be close to what I was taught during my religious education, but that is what I took away from it all. I was trained to be scared, feel guilty, and to repent, repent, repent. One could never do enough good to earn a free pass in Paradise, and the slightest misstep could damn you forever. In my teens, I rebelled against authority – and that meant against God and Jesus, too. I couldn’t stop thinking impure thoughts with the raging libido of a seventeen-year-old with access to Playboy Magazines. The only reason I started watching Monty Python was because it was on PBS and they (gasp) occasionally showed nudity. But there was God, looking down upon me and shaking his head in disapproval. I was sure Jesus didn’t condone my leering at centerfolds either, and the Holy Ghost, whoever he was, probably put his foot down as well. Wait a minute, I’d think to myself. I was made in His image, and he made women – beautiful women – and it was sinful for me to look at them? Talk about a crisis. It wasn’t just sneaking a peek at naked women that vexed me; it was the idea that just about anything could be a sin. Not listening to your mother and father, lying to others (yes Aunt Beckie, dinner was delicious—ugh), skipping church, talking about classmates, anything that one could do on a daily basis was a sin, and that was just plain frustrating to me.

How could anyone have the fortitude not to sin? What irked me even more was that the other members of the parish whom I sat next to were not better than little, old, hell-bound me, I thought. God, Jesus, Heaven, Mary, Peter, Paul, and all the angels and saints, were way too demanding of my time and efforts; and the world we lived in seemed ill-suited to meet their lofty demands. So, I teetered on the brink of agnosticism; a safety measure with one foot firmly in the God camp, just in case. Why? Because I held strongly to the idea that I could be faithful.

Finally, in my twenties, I became an atheist. And not one of those obnoxious, eye-rolling, “I don’t believe in those fairy tales” kind of atheists. I simply did not believe in God – or Jesus for that matter. This bothered me because I really wanted to believe. I know so many family and friends with a strong faith in God. They have immense knowledge of all that is holy and historical when it comes to religion and Christianity in particular. They seem so certain, assured, and ultimately content. I am sure they did not arrive at their faith easily. The people I am referring to in my life are intelligent and educated. They don’t wave the Bible in the air and quote scripture as if no other fact or idea can impugn such powerful words. They are reasoned, soft-spoken souls who have had some sort of epiphany; or maybe they simply have the propensity for deep, unwavering conviction.

When I had children, I wanted them to have religion in their lives. I figured that as a parent, God would come in handy as a supernatural authority figure who would sit on the sidelines and help me round out the kids’ upbringing as the ultimate disciplinarian. When my children were preparing for their first Holy Communion, they were forced to go to confession – which nowadays the Catholic Church calls Reconciliation (to make it sound like more inviting to the sinning masses). What are little kids confessing to? Not much, really. So, they sit in the confessional and tell the priest that they disobeyed their parents and fought with their brothers or sisters.

Cue the dramatic music: they disobeyed their parents. They sinned little boy and girl sins. I committed those by the truck-load in my early years, and I agonized over the consequences. I only hoped my son and daughter didn’t experience the same internal torment that I did when I was their age preparing for the sacraments. It made me feel guilty that I put them through this at all. Ultimately, it was my latent fear of God and His perpetual punishments, in spite of my stated atheism, and the fact that I did not want to disappoint my father, that I sent my kids to church and saddled them with the same guilt and fright that I carried with me for as long as I could remember.

In church, I’ve sat and watched these children emerge from their visit with the priest after their first confession while waiting for my own kid’s turn. They appear with a sullen expressions on their faces, walking with their heads bowed and their hands clasped, as they rattled off Hail Marys and Our Fathers in their heads. Seated in the pews near their friends, they are buoyed by a sense of relief that accompanies the knowledge that they are young and that death is a long way off. The time to worry about real sins and an actual accounting of all the wrongs they committed in their lives will happen when they are very, very old. That’s what I thought at that age.

After each of my children were confirmed, I stopped taking them to Sunday mass. There was a brief, overlapping, period of time when my father – a deeply religious man – was alive and my oldest was preparing for Confirmation when I still had to pretend that I was a man of God. It was right after my mother died that I would take my dad to the five o’clock mass every Saturday night. During those visits to the Parish of the Holy Cross with dad that I became both envious and resentful again.

In the rows of pews were hundreds of others from my community who gathered together to praise God. I was present, but not one of them. My father’s faith was unshakable and built on the solid foundation of a lifetime’s worth of hardship and surviving the battlefields of Italy in World War II. I admired my dad’s capacity to understand and worship God. His daily prayers and visits to church had a healing effect on him. No doubt he prayed for his family, and I felt a tinge of shame for not praying for him as well – at least not in the way the faithful do. I wished for him  to stay healthy and for good things for everyone else in my life, however, wishes do not constitute prayers.

My parents are both gone. It’s tough to see photos of them since I feel in my heart that as much as time that they spent praying to an angry, vengeful, anthropomorphic, Old Testament God and his progressive, more accepting son, they are by every definition no longer with us. For me to believe that there is a magical realm where one goes after death where we are reunited with our families and friends and all of our pets because we had conviction and performed charitable works takes a leap of faith I do not have the strength to jump. If I had a running start and I ran at full speed while in the best shape of my life, I could not cross the chasm of doubt that is within my heart that prevents me from believing in God. For this I am damned; but that is only if I believe the tenets which outline the circumstances for one to be banished to Hell to begin with. I do not, and I certainly wish I did.

I miss my parents very much and I’d like to see them again. There are some close friends of mine who died young and I often wonder what they'd be like if they were still alive. While I will never forget them, they sit as framed portraits in my memory, and what hurts more than anything is the notion that when I die, and when everyone else dies who knew and loved them, they they have died a second time. The same will happen to the rest of us; after our friends and family die, we die once more with them. There will be no one else to carry memories of us. That is the cold, hard reality of death that frightens me more that a Dante's Inferno. Your name will never be uttered by another's lips, your pictures will have no identity, your character is lost. Your soul becomes anonymous and evaporates forever. Your grave is deep, your body decomposed, or your ashes scattered and mixed with the soil. But you are no longer alive, in person, or in the pages of history. All that you have done is futile and insignificant. Life is meaningless, and there is no point to it all except to support yourself and your family and fulfill any selfish wishes you may be able to afford.

What if after we pass away we actually could reunite with friends and family? We do have something that could be a considered a soul. Our bodies contain energy. All of the science books I have read suggest that energy cannot be destroyed, so there is hope that when we pass away that our minds do go somewhere, even for a brief period of time, and we could perhaps mingle with the others we knew on Earth before our energy is absorbed into a star or a black hole. Maybe God isn’t who we say he is, and that everything written about Him is wrong; that what we must do is love one another and fight off the entropic forces that kill our bodies and prevent civilization from advancing. I’d like to meet a merciful God; one who shows us where we went wrong and sends us back to try again instead of flinging us into an unholy pit of torture for an eternity or rewarding us with a trip to Fantasy Land. If I pray, I’d like a solid answer, and not an eventual turn of events that someone can point to and assert that it was God’s will. I’d like to go to Church and believe that the institution I am loyal to be actually inspired by a creator and not the greed and wickedness of man. As of now, none of these things I ask for seem possible.

Tonight I’ll lay awake in bed for a short time before sleep overcomes me. I’ll think about everyone in my life, what I plan to do, and what I may have done wrong or what I could do differently. If there is a God, and He is listening, I hope my thoughts count as prayer.

Much Later, My Love

I heard a song the other day which reminded me of when I was a teenager. It’s important to know the title of this tune and the band that played it; and, what’s also interesting is that it made me recall a series of incidents which I find mystifying to this day.

As I sat in the driveway of my home listening to that song the car radio, I flashed back to my days as a sixteen year old working in the town library after school.

One of the librarians I worked with was a friendly woman with two children whom she talked about often. She lived in nearby town; but, not close enough where I’d know anyone from her neighborhood. I did meet her daughter, though, a pretty girl about my age, who often visited her mom at the library accompanied by her friends. I never said more than “hello” to the girl, and only once or twice I was in the same room with her as she would often enter the library and go directly to her mom’s office.

I left the job after I graduated high school and lost contact with the librarian and her daughter.

Years later, I met my wife and we began to date. While becoming acquainted, we talked about growing up and school and about our friends. It wasn’t long before we discovered that the woman I worked with at the library lived next door to her; and, that her daughter was my “new girlfriend’s” best friend. I also learned that their families were extremely close and often vacationed together. My wife considered her friend’s parents to be surrogate relatives, calling them “Aunt Millie” and “Uncle Joe.” When I was reintroduced to her friend, Diana, she remembered me from the library and our reunion was pleasant, if not amusing.

The one benefit of this coincidence was that my future mother in law was relieved to learn that her daughter’s new boyfriend, me, was considered to be a “nice young man” by her librarian friend, Mrs. Martens. My background investigation was completed with a stamp of approval coming from my former boss who just so happened to live next door to my girlfriend.

After four years of dating and engagement, we had a big, Italian wedding, and in due course, two wonderful children followed. During that span of time, I joined the police department and since retired, my wife advanced in her career, and we both reached middle age. Our family is doing well and I’d like to think that there is a lot more history to be made between my wife and me.

Every so often, we have some quiet time to chat as the day to day tasks of working and taking care of the kids means that we have few occasions to be alone and just talk. Sunday mornings, we rise early, at around six o’clock, and head downstairs while the kids are still sleeping to have coffee and read the Sunday paper. This is our opportunity to enjoy each other's company and to share a hushed laugh. Occasionally, we surprise ourselves.

On one particular weekend morning not too long ago, we talked about various jobs we had in high school. Of course, we reminisced about how I worked with Mrs. Martens all those years and eventually ended up marrying the woman whom she regarded her “niece.” I described how I remembered seeing Diana coming and going to the library with her friends all the time and my wife raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean she used to go to the library with all of her friends?” she asked.

I picked my head up from the sports section and looked at her. “Huh? That’s exactly what I mean. Diana always had a friend with her as she came to visit her mom.”

“She never took anyone to the library but me. I went there with her all the time.”

My mouth opened and I paused a moment. Finally I spoke.

“You mean to tell me that was you who I saw with Diana way back when I was sixteen years old?”

We both stared at each other. It was a moment when we both understood how eerie the circumstances actually were. More than just the coincidence of working with Mrs. Martens in the library, and then meeting her again nearly ten years later while dating her daughter’s best friend, was the fact that I used to regularly bump into the woman I would someday ask on a date, fall in love with, become engaged to, marry, and father two children with. All of this happened long before I would meet her one evening in a loud, smoky, night club and asked her to dance at one thirty in the morning.

“I have the chills.” I remember my wife saying.

“Wow. That was you the whole time? I can’t believe it. And we wouldn’t meet again for almost ten years as total strangers in a bar.” I pondered.

It took a few more seconds for that insight to sink in for both of us; yet, it required twenty years for us to finally discover this concurrence. We still chuckle about it. And, once in a while, something will make me ponder the mystery surrounding the memories I have of a young, teenaged girl following her friend around the library as I watched from between the book shelves.

Her image remains blank, as if shaded to obscure her identity. In my recollections of her at the library, she exists as an anthology of fleeting glimpses and passing glances. I’m unable to conjure a distinct likeness of her. The discovery of our previous encounters is like unearthing a treasure chest and finding nothing inside. It hurts because I can’t envision her walking next to Diana; and, I wish I was able to remember what she looked like when we came within precious inches of each other not knowing that one day we'd meet again and fulfill a new destiny.

Yesterday I sat in my car in the driveway of my home, and listened to a song I first heard as a sixteen year old teenager back in 1980 while driving to my job at the library. Inside that building was a woman who would remain an obscure outline in my mind for many years until the day I found her again and she became my wife.

That song made its own significance clear by its title: “Don’t Stand so Close to me,” by The Police. For me, it reminds me of a young man edged by providence away from the woman whom he was supposed to fall in love with later on in life, and not before. Perhaps if I stood closer to her, if our eyes met and we chatted like two awkward teenagers, things would have turned out differently. Who knows? What I do know for sure is that I am happy. We are happy, together.





family friend girlfriend library memory nightclub song The Police tune wife

You’re as Young as You Aren’t

In spite of all of the gleeful optimism about youth and feeling young, no one accounts for emotions changing with age. The way one thinks is often directly hard wired to the body whether we accept that or not. Now in my forties (gulp) I no longer hop out of bed and begin my day with a reasonable amount of energy. I find myself opting for a quiet evening alone with my family rather than a jubilant night out partying with my wife and our friends. My body aches the next day after doing a lot of yard work, and that is after taking huge steps over the last year to get healthy and thin again. My point? You can’t stop aging and time.

You’re never as young as you think you are. I sailed through my twenties like a person who never had to look at his watch. My thirties brought huge change in my life as I became a family man. One marriage and two children later, I am a guy who was at the pointed end of a remark made by a co-worker the other day who observed: “Wow, you’re going gray.” That’s it. I’m officially middle aged. Not that I am surprised; it was bound to happen if I lived long enough. But, I no longer believe that “you’re as young as you feel.” If a ninety year old man feels like a seventeen year old, does that make him a teenager? How long does that last when he has the heart of a young adult but the prostate of a man almost a century old? My new philosophy is you’re as old as you are. There’s nothing wrong with that; but it took me almost four years to stop panicking about it, yet I can’t say I am entirely comfortable either.

Some guys go off the deep end when they have their mid-life crisis. They have affairs, buy sports cars, go on safaris and take up sky diving. I never did any of that; but I did have a bit of a crisis of identity. What have I accomplished? Where did I fail in life that I am not wealthy and don’t have homes all over the country? Perhaps these questions were immature, or silly; but, there are rich people in the world with houses in exotic locales. I'm just not one of them. In the end, I know what I did or did not do to get where I am; or, from the other side of the spectrum, to where I am not. My focus has shifted now to my children as they mature and need guidance in their futures. It’s no longer about me, and I cannot feel selfish anymore and lament about getting old. Am I as young as I feel? Do I really need to be twenty five years old again? What I need to do is grow up, if I haven’t done so already.

A while back, my wife and I took the kids to a family restaurant near our home. This is a barbeque style place with big plates of food and a gimmick where everyone can choose to watch different, big screen televisions hanging on the walls. The scheme is aimed at entertaining the kids, and we decided to go along with the idea for the night because our children asked to go there. It was fun, and settling into my accepted daddy role, I enjoyed eating with the family and I had no urge to go mountain climbing or ride all-terrain vehicles cross country.

We finished dinner and then climbed into the family car to pick up ice cream and then go home. A brand new Ford Mustang pulled into the spot next to us and a couple the same age as my wife and I stepped out. The man had a full head of gray hair, was wearing a sporty leather jacket, and looked like he was sucking in his gut. Along for the ride were two teenagers struggling to emerge from the backseat of the two door vehicle. We both watched as I had to wait for the kids to be clear of my car before I could pull out.

“Somebody’s having a midlife crisis,” I said, with a discreet finger aimed at the husband. “Look at that car.”

“I would say so,” my wife replied. “You’d think he’d at least get something with four doors.”

We both laughed, and I was finally able to put our sedan in reverse and then out of the parking lot to the main road.

“Think of the money he spent on that Mustang, and it looks like his children will be going to college soon.” I said. Then I turned to my wife. “You know, I had a midlife crisis, and all I bought were some stereo speakers and a new DVD player for the den.”

She looked at me and smiled. “At those prices, you can have one once a month, honey.”

You know, I’ve felt fine since then. I haven’t had a midlife crisis once a month as she jokingly allowed me to that evening. But, it’d be a nice excuse as my laptop is getting a bit slow and I need a reason to blow a wad of cash on a new one. But, I’m older and more mature now, less impulsive, and I can’t afford a Mustang. Not with two kids who will go away to college soon.





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Tales from the Notebook: Hello Neighbor

Dear Readers,

It’s time for another Mr. Grudge classic dug from the pages of one of his old notebooks. This short story, “Hello Neighbor,” dates all the way back to 1992. I hope you all enjoy this one. Thanks for stopping by.

Hello Neighbor

This is a tale of woe.

It began after my wife and I moved into an apartment after we got married. We rented the top floor of a two-family house, with our landlords living downstairs. They were quiet folks who never bothered us. The street was a dead end and had very little traffic.

It seemed like the kind of place where we could lead our own lives in private and be left alone.

That was not to be the case.

Our neighbor across the street, a short, bald man in his sixties who lived with his mother and his ailing wife, gradually began to rattle our existence.

At least mine, anyway.

During my everyday comings and goings, he would stop whatever he was doing—raking, washing his car, painting, whatever—and stare at me whenever I was outside.

The ice finally broke one day, after weeks of this, when I was taking a sack of laundry from the trunk of my car.

He was standing in the street, dangerously close to me, beside his car.

I couldn’t help but glance over.

Our eyes met.

“Laundry?” he said.

Stunned, I hesitated.

“Laundry?” he said again.

“Oh yeah,” I answered. “I just picked it up.”

I walked over and stuck out my hand, waiting for him to shake it.

He smirked, climbed into his big yellow Caprice, and drove away.

This began a trend.

A few days later, I was trotting toward my car when I sensed “Mr. Eye Spy’s” laser beams burning through me.

I didn’t even look up.

My latest practice was to jog directly to my car without so much as a glance in his direction.

“Work?” he said.

I kept going as if I hadn’t heard him.

“Going to work?” he asked again.

I had to answer him. I was steeped in Catholic guilt, and my parents had taught me always to be respectful to my elders.

“Oh no, I’m off today.”

Once again, I started toward him to make conversation.

He turned and went inside his house.

Later, when my wife returned home from work, I brought this up to her.

I explained how every time I went outside, it was like dodging sniper fire with this guy.

He was everywhere.

Even at two o’clock in the morning, he’d be sitting on his lawn in a lounge chair making another one of his frivolous observations.

“Home from work?”

“Off to work?”

“Groceries?”

“Books?”

Ad nauseam.

“You’re paranoid,” she said.

“I’m telling you, the man watches everything I do and always asks me about it.”

“He never does that to me,” she said. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen him more than three or four times.”

“Well, I see the guy all the time. He’s all over the place. Hell, he might as well come live with us and study me more closely.”

“Now you sound crazy. Go over and talk to the man. He’s probably just lonely. The only people he has to talk to are his sick wife and senile mother.”

“Maybe he’s senile too?” I said. “Anyway, I’ve tried talking to him. He just walks away.”

“Then ignore him.”

“I tried that.”

“Really, honey, you’re making a big deal over nothing. And quite frankly, I’m sick of hearing about it.”

“But…” I stammered.

“No buts. If I hear another word about this, I’m going to have you checked out.”

I didn’t respond.

She was right.

Maybe I was blowing the whole thing out of proportion.

After some thought, I decided he was probably just a lonely old man who wanted to make friends but didn’t know how.

I shouldn’t let him get to me.

A few days later, I came home from the supermarket with some things for a special dinner my wife was going to cook for us that night.

I was at the door, my arms loaded with grocery bags, struggling with my keys.

Suddenly, the door opened.

“HE” appeared.

I learned later that he had been visiting my landlords.

Startled by his appearance, I tumbled backward and my bags spilled everywhere.

Luckily, I landed on the lawn.

The groceries didn’t fare as well.

Everything hit the walkway and either shattered or dented.

He walked toward me, careful not to step in the puddle of goo forming on the brick pathway, and looked down.

I raised my arm so he could help me up.

“Fell, huh?” he said.

Then he stepped over me and strolled across the street to his house.

That night, I told my wife the latest.

Even she was miffed by his callousness.

She speculated that even if he had been physically incapable of lifting me up, he should at least have acted concerned.

She did maintain, however, that with or without him there, I probably would have dropped something anyway, since she thought I was a total klutz.

After dinner, when my wife wasn’t looking, I pored over the real estate section of the newspaper looking for a new apartment.

My plan was to convince her that even though we were saving to buy a house, we should rent an apartment closer to where we worked and save money on gas.

But I was too chicken to bring it up.

Somehow, she’d make the connection that I wanted to move just to get away from the jerk across the street.

Plus, I was afraid she’d start ranting again about me being obsessed or crazy.

Also, I was afraid she was right.

About a week later, I was leaving for work on the night shift.

I made my usual sprint across the front lawn to jump into my car before “HE” appeared.

I made it to my Honda and was putting the key into the door when it dawned on me that he was nowhere around.

Then I heard a strange gurgling sound, like someone choking.

The noise came from his yard across the road.

I walked over, in complete defiance of every convention I had established for myself.

Near the bushes in his side yard, I could make out the figure of a man lying on the ground in the darkness.

It had to be him.

After going back to retrieve my flashlight from the trunk of my car, I entered his yard and ran over to help.

His face was so pale it seemed to glow in the dark.

Sweat poured off him.

He was clutching his chest.

For the first time, I looked into his eyes and saw vulnerability.

Stricken with panic, I stood there with my mind racing.

Should I call 911?

Start CPR?

I was confused.

Then total calm came over me.

I stepped closer, got down on one knee, looked him squarely in the eye, and said:

“Heart attack?”

Then I got up and went to work.

His wife, good woman, made some tasty sandwiches after the funeral.

The End

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Yesterday's Son

The other evening, when I returned home from work, I entered our kitchen to greet my wife and kids.

My son remained in the den, consumed by a video game. It’s a rare treat for him to use the GameCube because we severely limit his playing time. I peered at him through the open serve-through and joked, pretending that I was his grandfather and he was my grandson.

“Hey, where’s your dad? I’ve got a few things to say to him,” I said in a gravelly old man’s voice.

He barely twitched, still engrossed in Lego Star Wars.

“Um, Dad? You’re my dad,” he said with his characteristic aplomb.

He’s used to my teasing, pretending to be an alien, speaking in a made-up language, and just plain acting silly, all in an effort to make my kids laugh.

Not satisfied with his response, I goaded him some more.

“Hey, you in the den. You meet any cute girls lately?”

That was enough to make him lose his focus. For an eight-year-old boy still in the “girls are stupid” phase, merely talking about girls is enough to cause static in his brain, let alone asking him if they’re cute.

“Oh, Dad, you made me mess up.”

He stopped, set the game on pause, and came into the kitchen to say hello.

That little scene, that vignette of pretending to be a grandfather, gave me a chill.

I thought about it that night as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep.

With any luck, one day I would be a grandpa with a young boy or girl running around our home for a visit.

But that is only a wish, not a plan.

As much as we’d like to believe we can arrange the future, we really can’t.

My mind took me back to my own childhood, when I, much like everyone else with dreams of growing up and starting a family, would lie in bed at night and imagine what it would be like to be married and have children.

Well, it happened.

I’m as far away from myself as a boy as I could be, both physically and mentally, but the memory persists of the yearning I had to become a happy husband and father.

Somehow, I made it.

There were no clear-cut steps to becoming a family man. I sort of grew into the mold. The collective mass of scenes that shaped my life—from childhood, through my teenage years, and into young adulthood—somehow resulted in me meeting the woman of my dreams and falling in love.

That alone is worth celebrating.

Loving her was the easy part.

For her to love me back was the surprise.

As far as a plan is concerned, there isn’t one.

There is no destiny.

All of the life insurance policies, wills, and healthcare proxies in the world are based on performance expectations. We’re supposed to live a long time. We should make a living, put money aside, and prepare for our survivors’ upkeep after we’re gone.

The only eventuality is that we’re going to die.

In fact, in a sense, we’re dead already.

Look at the night sky and take in all of the stars, some of which burned out long before their light reached us. Each one is a record of the past, as is our own sun, which we see as it was roughly eight minutes ago.

There is never a moment when we know what is happening to our very own star at this exact instant.

We are always observing the world by the light of a star in the rearview mirror, with nothing to guide us but our memories.

In a sense, we are walking backward through life, our eyes focused on what we leave behind as we pray there is terrain where we place our feet next.

I’d like to cast a line to the child in my memories, myself as a young boy, reel him close, and tell him that he did well. He married a gorgeous woman, has two really great kids, and will mature into a happy man.

We are not in control of anything.

We merely carry ourselves as though we have a vision, or as though there is a destiny we are searching for.

The moment I finish typing this piece, I’m in store for nothing but the anticipation that I’ll draw another breath.

I’ll stand up, go downstairs, and eat dinner with the family I imagined more than thirty years ago and was fortunate enough to have.

Grandchildren?

Hopefully, one day, an old man will pull me aside when I’m not expecting it and whisper in my ear:

“You did well.”

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First Name, Last name, Shouldn't be a Pain

Martin Spratt, Jonathan “Jack” Chase, and Roger Price are three names you’ve never heard of; but, they are folks who are near and dear to me. These three men are each protagonists in my unpublished novels. For me they are as alive as my family members are. It is as if they always lived, and because they exist in my stories, they shall never perish even if nobody reads about them.

They were all born through my inspiration; each taking on a separate identity in spite of the fact that they all have some of my personality traits within them. Unlike my own children who already wonder aloud about where they will attend college, who they will marry, and what they will do when they grow up, I was sure of everything about my characters the moment they were born. For one of them in particular, I knew when he would die. The only troublesome detail in conceiving them was what to name them?

In real life, I had a partner in naming my children. My wife came into our relationship with unique thoughts on what to call our babies and she also had a family history which held some sway on how we would derive names for our kids. There were ideas which we drew from my wife’s ethnicity, and there were, of course, mothers, fathers, grandparents, and other ancestors from whom we could take names. Ultimately, as we decided on what to call our daughter, and then our son, they became their name.

It seems silly, but my son looks and acts like what we called him. Pardon me for not wanting to divulge too much about the identities of my little ones; but, look at your own kids and see if you know what I am talking about. A parent would know. In as much as writers give birth to their characters, that person living within the confines of the plot which you, the writer, originated acts like their name. "Milton" can be a bit of a softy and not very good at sports, if you will. "Rocco" might toss you out of a bar for hitting on the waitresses. "Jerry Cholmondeley" will most likely spend his days spelling his last name for everyone and explaining that it’s a French surname meaning “the place at the gorge or neck of the mountain.”

The same considerations must be given to your character’s names. If you notice, for some reason each of my protagonists has a one syllable surname. This was entirely by coincidence, not by design. Roger’s one-time significant other went from Claire Malachowski, to Claire Mundey after she married her high school sweet heart. Claire’s daughter remarks at one point about her father, a New York City police sergeant: “Sergeant Mundey sounds like the name they give the dumb cop on some stupid sitcom.”

Take your time naming your characters. Take from their families, their backgrounds, and how they will have to react to others learning their names into consideration. A name is an important thing and not to be taken lightly. It can be the difference between getting noticed and slipping through the cracks anonymously. I grew up with a kid in my neighborhood that was locked up by the local police because he gave them his real name, John Smith, and they thought he was lying to them. Be careful about being provocative because the character might have to fight off a negative perception or a sterotype. This is especially worrisome if your start to get a lot of readers. Mr. Grudge can tell you all about that.





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Kindness Has A Ring To It

In July of 1989, I was a raw recruit in the New York City Police Academy. It was then that I decided to propose to my girlfriend.

New officers in the police department did not make a lot of money, especially back in the late 1980s, so finding a decent engagement ring proved to be a bit of a challenge. The meager savings I had up to then went toward paying upwards of $250 a month in train fare to commute every day from Long Island to Manhattan, where the academy was located.

By chance, I had a conversation with my brother-in-law’s stepfather at my sister’s home. We were seated at the dining room table for dessert.

“So, you are getting engaged?” he asked in a heavy Polish accent.

Ziggy was in his early seventies and in ill health. I’d known him for many years by that point, and he was a gentle, affectionate man who enjoyed family. My parents and siblings all loved Ziggy, and we were close to my brother-in-law’s family, sharing our Catholic and Jewish heritages from one holiday season to the next.

“Yes, I’m excited. I’m shopping for a ring,” I said.

“Where did you go? You didn’t go to the mall, did you?”

I noticed a look of alarm on his face.

“Uh, I was going to?” I said, almost as a question.

I think I gulped.

“No, no, Michael. You go see my friend. He’ll show you what to do, how to buy a diamond. Don’t even buy it from him if you don’t want to. He’ll just make sure you don’t get taken advantage of.”

Ziggy took a piece of paper and produced a pen from his shirt pocket.

Within moments, I had a lead for a jeweler in Flushing, Queens, whom Ziggy described as “a man I play cards with every Tuesday.”

After thanking him, I put the paper in my pocket.

The meeting with the jeweler took place that Saturday. I couldn’t wait to see what my options were, and though I had a modest amount of money to work with, I was still cautious. I didn’t know how much of a favor this was going to be, and I didn’t want Ziggy to feel beholden to this man on my account.

“So, you know Ziggy? I better treat you right, then,” the man said as soon as I walked in.

“Ziggy told me to look for a cop, a strong young man with a crew cut. You must be Michael.”

He shook my hand vigorously and welcomed me into his store. We spoke for a minute or two about Ziggy, and it was apparent that the jeweler had immense respect for him and that the two of them did more than simply play cards together.

He repeated what Ziggy had told me about not having to buy from him. He only wanted to teach me about buying gems, diamonds in particular.

“You never buy a ring that’s already made. You buy the diamond first and then have the ring made from the stone.”

His voice was authoritative. I listened because Ziggy trusted this man.

I was given a lengthy tutorial on choosing the perfect stone, then told I didn’t have to decide that day. So I left his store grateful for the knowledge I’d picked up from his lesson and returned to what was left of my brief weekend before another grueling week at the academy.

The next Saturday, I arrived early at the jeweler, cash in hand, to buy a stone.

After at least two hours examining diamonds with a loupe and comparing them with the ones I had already picked out, I found the perfect one-carat white diamond, nearly flawless. Then I chose the setting and the smaller diamonds to go with it.

The ring, made within the week, was gorgeous.

To this day, my wife is complimented on the quality of the stone. Other jewelers have told me that I got *one hell of a deal* on that diamond.

I remember thanking Ziggy profusely, and he waved me off as if he had done nothing.

But I also remember one scene that played out at my sister’s home shortly before Ziggy passed away.

It was Thanksgiving.

The conversation was about family and what we should be thankful for, and I mentioned to Ziggy that I was grateful for the help he had given me in finding a reputable jeweler. His intervention was important in making the experience perfect. The ring, nearly flawless and worth far more than what I paid for it, had become a cornerstone of our marriage in both symbolism and value.

Ziggy listened and challenged my assertion that anything he contributed had been such a big deal.

After a few more protests on his part, I saw his composure soften. He rested his arms on the table.

“That’s why I explain to people that their actions have consequences for others.”

Then he turned to the rest of the family and began to speak.

“I need to tell all of you this, because it is important. I have seen horror, lost everything. And we all need to learn that just a little kindness…”

He paused to wipe his eyes.

You see, Ziggy survived the Holocaust.

His family lived in Poland before World War II, and he was a young man forced into hiding in the countryside with his family to escape the Nazis.

His sixteen-year-old sister found refuge with a Catholic family who hid her. Townspeople informed the local authorities that the family was harboring Ziggy’s sister.

When Ziggy learned of the betrayal, he watched helplessly from the woods as the family, his sister, and the family’s two-year-old daughter were executed in front of their home.

Later, Ziggy, his parents, and his brother were cornered and arrested after locals searched for Jews hiding in the forest. They were all deported to Auschwitz.

As Ziggy, his family, and others were forced off the train, a total stranger whispered into his ear:

“Tell them you bake bread.”

Immediately, Ziggy was separated from his family and put to work because he told them he was a baker. He was used as slave labor in the camps.

The rest of his family were murdered.

At Ziggy’s funeral many years later, a rabbi told us about the many acts of kindness and generosity Ziggy had performed throughout his life.

After immigrating to the United States following the war, he moved to the Bronx and worked for a baker, saving enough money to eventually open his own shop.

If, as the rabbi explained in his eulogy, Ziggy learned of someone who needed glasses and could not afford them, somehow that person found the money for glasses through Ziggy.

The same was true for people who could not afford heat, food, medicine, and even lifesaving surgery.

Ziggy was a man who lived through Hell and still had faith in mankind enough to help anyone in need.

We were told by the rabbi that in the camps, Ziggy risked his own life to smuggle crusts of bread to the dying for sustenance.

In the Bronx, with his own bakery, he continued to provide for those who needed help, giving from his own plate, if you will, to make sure others did not suffer or live in need.

The man was a model of kindness born not of misery, but despite it.

Ziggy insisted that the rabbi never tell anyone who received a gift from him who their benefactor was.

Only after Ziggy’s passing did the rabbi reveal his secret.

I learned something after Ziggy told us his story that Thanksgiving, and I had my faith in humanity reaffirmed when I heard the rabbi offer his tribute to such a wonderful man.

We all need to take a lesson from an unselfish man—a person who saw his small acts of kindness as inconsequential but understood that even a crust of bread can save a life.

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