Breathe and Smile!

As I get used to my “New Normal,” I cannot help but realize how much I have taken for granted in my life. The hug from a friend, dinner with my best friends and their families, walking next to a stranger in the grocery store while mindlessly looking at items on the shelves, toilet paper.

Kind

 

You are so kind, she said and I am not.
I am rude and crude, rough at times and too outspoken.
Sarcastic and cynical, brutal sometimes if only with words.

The Boredom in Retirement

About 5 am you can hear John shoveling his driveway. He has been waiting for the first decent snowfall, this is his favorite time of the year. He is a two-time veteran -army and navy- and if he could have done it, he would have enlisted a third time but he was too old to do so.

Happy New Near

“I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return.

The Man Who Doesn’t Vote

He is a nice, older gentleman. He comes from a small town in the midwest, where he and his siblings were raised by a single mom. He knows poverty, has lived it and doesn’t like how it made him feel.

The Cruelty of Life and the Kindness of Death

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The older we get, the more we get used to death walking right beside us. Perhaps it was always like that, we just didn’t dare to acknowledge it. When we are young, we demand the right to live our lives -and nothing is wrong with that and so for many years, the thought of dying is a disturbance.

Suicide – Parts Unknown

I remember Paul so well. He was such a fun guy, a goofball, who made others laugh. He was a kind soul, but had some temper problems, especially after the loss of a tight tennis match. We were in the same tennis club. I danced at his wedding, celebrated his daughter’s birth with him, just like all his other friends.

A Different Wedding Reception

I waited for the weather forecast when I heard the story about a young lady I would like to share.

It might lift you up!

I woke up cranky yesterday; every bone in my body hurt. I quickly diagnosed myself and decided I wasn’t sick enough to stay in bed, got up and dragged myself through the day.

The Ladies of the Redlight District

Years ago, when I was 18 years old, at a time when cell phones and GPS systems weren’t existing, I drove all by myself from Austria down to the South of Italy. It was just me, my little car and our old farm dog -a security measure my Grandmother had insisted on.