Lewis – Page 3 – Sage Telling Your Story

December 3, 2015February 26, 2019

Exploring, by Lewis

Lately, I’ve been going
through my late husband’s copious writings–journals, love letters, poems, or,
simply, musings. For me, it feels much
like returning home after a long, long absence and walking through old neighborhoods. There are places and features of the
landscape that are fresh in my memory, some that were dusty but are now bright
with color, and others that I perhaps never noticed or had long-faded from
memory. There are faces and names that
have been obscured by time that his handwriting has brought to new life, as if
I were meeting them for the first time.

His love letters are
truly amazing—full of exultation for the joy of our early, fumbling trysts and
his excitement at our impending life together as a couple. He was Romeo, Don Quixote, and Don Knotts all
putting pen to paper on the same page.
When I read them, it is like looking down a tunnel of love from the
wrong end, a 14-year-long journey of discovery that ends, not upon emerging at
last into the light of day, but–as all enduring love stories do—when, at long
last, death does us part. It is not an
experience that thrills so much as sobers, more like lime sorbet than orange
sherbet. Yet, I spend every spare moment
in the doing of it. It is an exploration
that, unlike that for a lost gold mine, keeps yielding the bittersweet nuggets
of treasured memory.

© 29 April 2013

About
the Author

Soon after, I
retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13
blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to
fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE
Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

November 25, 2015February 26, 2019

For a Good Time, by Lewis

There are a thousand ways to have a “good time”. “Good” can mean “exciting” or “feel-good”–whether emotionally, physically, sexually, or by getting high. It can involve exercise, dancing, playing games, telling jokes, jumping out of an airplane, or simply driving to a destination that provides you with a sense of positive anticipation. It might even involve taking a Viagra, putting on something sexy, and waiting to see what cums, whether alone or accompanied.

However, the story I would like to share with you today is of quite a different nature. It does not require a car, a well-stocked bar, reefers, needles, electronics, or jewelry. It does not even require clothes, if one is discrete. What I consider to be about as fun as anything else that I do requires only a chair, a table, and pleasant surroundings. I have to put nothing in my ears or nose, although a little bit of a favorite beverage and a few chips or nuts seems to enhance the experience.

What I do for fun most days is to simply sit out on my terrace and eat a meal, do a crossword puzzle, read from Laurin’s journal or write in my own, or simply sit and watch the amazing beauty of a sunset or my terrace garden. To feel the breeze against my skin, to watch as it caresses the leaves and blooms, to observe the shadows on the furniture, walls and floor and the sunlight as it slowly traverses its path from east to west–this is my private little kingdom which I have created. It is a time to be alone with my thoughts, my memories, my dreams; to anticipate the coming hours and relish the past few.

It doesn’t matter that the cacophony of construction pierces the air from next door. It’s a minor annoyance, no more. I turn my eyes to the horizon, where I see Buckley Field, Fitzsimmons, DIA (on a clear day), East High School, The Pinnacle, the industrial South Platte River valley, downtown, Sports Authority Field, Cheesman Park , and a long expanse of foothills and mountains. I see blue and green everywhere–they are the colors of restfulness and relaxation. The clouds play out their drama before my enthralled eyes and a tear may form. I can hardly wait for the next few minutes until, at last, my favorite time comes, as the sun sets and twilight begins. Soon, it is time to go inside and begin to wind down into sleep, knowing that my “good times” will surely begin again when the morning comes.

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

November 16, 2015February 26, 2019

Extreme Sport, by Lewis

Let me begin by saying that my idea of “extreme sport” is playing tag football with the tag tucked into the front of one’s britches rather than the rear–it makes for more of a thrill for both the offense and defense. Beyond that, it seems to me that every sport requires a level of skill, coordination, and ruggedness that has always seemed extreme to me.

The sports that I enjoyed the most in my youth involved putting a pretty, round ball into a hole swathed in leather using a long, stiff, woody instrument with a little lubricant on the tip–namely, pool and snooker. I found the activity quite challenging while still allowing the competitors the opportunity to swill a little tomato beer, if so inclined.

The sport that I believe has taken this basic idea to its extreme is golf. With golf, the player must stand hundreds of yards away from the hole, drive a much smaller ball placed much further from his eyes, with an instrument that is much longer and less balanced, leaving him unable to either sight along it or steady it with his hand. Rather than a smooth, flat table, the golfer must navigate terrain that has been deliberately made treacherous with hills and valleys and even obstacles like sand traps and little bodies of water. It is a game invented by a sadist for masochists or, as Mark Twain so cryptically put it, “A good walk spoilt”. Thereby have I forever been discouraged from setting foot on a golf course despite how pretty they may look.

The only other sport in which I have taken a serious interest is motor racing. No doubt, it is an extreme sport, whether measured by expense, danger, difficulty, or destruction. My favorite form of motor racing was road racing, which is a rough simulation of cruising an overcrowded parking lot trying to beat the other person into that last open space. My son also had an interest in racing, gymkhana racing in particular, which is even more like parking lot competitions as they are held in empty parking lots using orange cones to mark the course.

It, therefore, seemed the perfect college graduation gift for him to send him to the Bob Bondurant School of High-Performance Driving near Phoenix, Arizona. The more I thought about the fun he was going to have there, the more tempted I became to enroll as well. So, I signed him up for the 5-day class, while I settled for the 3-day. When we arrived, the temperature most days was 107 degrees and the action on the asphalt was just as hot. After the first couple of days, I’m guessing that the instructors had to draw straws to see who would have to accompany me whilst I attempted to learn the secrets of high-performance driving. We were taught how to find a turn-in spot on the upcoming curves to have the right line coming out of the corner, how to control a skid, and lots of other stuff which I will never again use.

On day 3, we were being trained how to react quickly to dangerous developments ahead of us on the road, such as a spinning car. The course was laid out something like a drag strip with three lanes instead of two. Ahead of us about 75 yards was a structure that looked a little like a toll booth, also with three lanes. But the lanes were separated only by traffic cones. Beyond the booth was a series of lights, red or green, for each lane. The object of this exercise was for the driver of a car–in my case, a Mustang GT–to roar away from the starting line at full throttle up to 45 miles per hour and look for two of the green lights at the end of the track to turn red, at which point you had one second or so to steer the car into the one lane whose light was still green.

On my first and second attempts, I had only managed to alter the configuration of a few cones, never quite making the smooth lane-change that I so anxiously hoped for. On my third-and-final attempt, my nerves were as jangled as if I were making my first sky-dive. I roared away from the start line at full throttle, quickly glanced down at the speedometer to make sure I didn’t go over 45 mph, at which point I think I went glassy eyed, recognizing only that some of the lights had changed color and I had to do something right away. The Mustang ended up in a long sideways slide through the middle of two lanes until it came to a screeching stop in a cloud of tire smoke.

My instructor, trying to look serious, rushed up to me to see if I was OK, which I was, other than a severely bruised ego. Any trace of romanticism I had for auto racing had disappeared in a cloud of tire smoke and discombobulation.

Fortunately, my son made out much better than I. He even got to train in open-wheel race cars, similar to Indy racers but much smaller. One of his fellow students, a young man of about 17, had raced open-wheeled cars before, likely beginning with go-karts. His mother told me that he had won one race after scraping the bottom of his car on the pavement so much that it had worn through and soon began working on his driving suit. When he finished, his bottom was worn raw but it didn’t matter–he was a winner in one of the many extreme sports.

Find date by comparing Phillip’s

About the Author

November 2, 2015February 26, 2019

Exaggeration, by Lewis

The first definition given in Wiktionary for “exaggeration” is “the act of heaping or piling up”. When piled higher and deeper, it can be called “hyperbole”, which is condensed from the French word “hy-per-bol-excrement”, meaning “cut the crap before you look like an idiot”.

Some professionals don’t mind risking looking like an idiot. Therefore, they readily indulge in hyperbole–for example, mimes. Mimes move exaggeratedly across the stage in order to convey to the audience that they are actually doing something meaningful, such as cleaning a window or looking for a hidden doorway that would allow them to escape from an invisible box. Most people over the age of 24 months have grown tired of this charade, however, leaving former mimes to try to make a living as drum majors.

Another master of exaggeration is the stand-up comic. People do not laugh at stories of ordinary people doing ordinary things in an ordinary way. They tend to laugh at ordinary people doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way or extraordinary people doing extraordinary things in an ordinary way or some variation thereof.

Paradox is another form of exaggeration. Examples from comedy are the heart-broken clown of Red Skelton or Jackie Gleason’s indolent, effeminate son of wealth who also happens to be a lush.

In the end, the word “exaggeration” may simply be a fancy word for a lie, albeit in a context that is benign, rather than malevolent. If your lover asks, “Does this [whatever] make me look fat?” and your answer is “Darling, you have the perfect proportions,” then you have exaggerated, perhaps even indulged in hyperbole. However, if you reply, “Do pigs wallow in shit?” you have neither lied nor exaggerated. However, the chances of your scoring that evening are close to zero—and that’s no exaggeration.

About the Author

September 30, 2015February 26, 2019

Multi-Racial, by Lewis

I am actually ashamed to say that I have almost nothing worthwhile to say about the subject of racial diversity. I have heard the demographers’ predictions about the U.S. becoming a “majority minority” racial country within 30-40 years. The America I grew up with was so heterogeneously white that it was more common to see pastel linen sheets on the clothesline than it was to pass a person of color on the street. Hutchinson, Kansas, was bisected by two sets of railroad tracks. Anything south of the “lower” set of tracks might as well have been Mexico, as far as my family and friends were concerned.

One notable exception was the one black family that lived about two blocks away on the same street. Theirs was the old, white wood-sided farmhouse with the detached garage that was probably the oldest property on our long street. No doubt they were there before any of us white folk or else they wouldn’t have been at all welcome. Their kids were older and I never attended school with any of them. When I passed by, I usually paid them no mind, unless someone was in the yard and then I would stare to see what they looked like. Seemed nice enough. Had no horns that I could see.

When I was about 10, my parents paid the family’s teenage daughter to babysit me. Of all my babysitters, she is the only one I remember. I think I was feeling very uncertain of myself and stayed pretty much in my bedroom. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to her other than, “Hi”.

All through primary and secondary school, I didn’t have a single friend of color. My elementary and junior high schools were all-white. The junior high was so white, I almost made the 9th grade basketball team. The first time I ever looked out at a group of kids my age and saw a black face was when I gave the invocation at a junior high school exchange assembly. Sherman Junior High was south of the color line.

I’m almost positive I was in high school before I ever passed a student of a different race in the hall. Rarely did I ever share a classroom with one. As I type this, it seems so dehumanizing to refer to human beings of a different color as “ones”, as if I were talking about aliens or primates. Yet, I never gave it a thought. That’s just the way the world was. Whites ruled and that’s the way God intended it.

Even in junior college and college, nothing happened to change my views on race. I was either a pre-med major or in engineering. Those are not majors whereby one was likely to sit next to a person of color in those days.

I was shaken by the Detroit riots in 1967, not because I thought the “niggers were getting uppity” but because somewhere, deep inside, I understood. How was it that I felt that way? Why wasn’t I outraged like most of my friends and the folks quoted in the newspapers? After all, wasn’t I a person who enjoyed the perks of “white privilege” (though white folk would never acknowledge such a thing existed)? When Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated the following spring, I wished the white on my skin would wash off. I saw my own race as filled with hate and spite and a sense of entitlement.

You can imagine how uncomfortable, how awkward it was for me not to know anything about what being black was like and resenting the color that I was stuck with. It was kind of like—shit, it’s just hitting me now—it was like knowing that I wasn’t attracted to the gender that I was supposed to be attracted to but instead having feelings of deep attraction for members of the gender that was “verboten”. If my friends and family knew that I was “queer”, a “homo”, a “fag”, wouldn’t they treat me as badly or even worse than if I were black?

The experience of knowing how badly people of color had been treated for centuries colored forever my perceptions of American history and the differences among the races economically, socially, and politically. My politics became almost radicalized, though the demands of school and then finding employment kept my activity to a minimum for a few years. Although I grew up in a state that was purple and is now deep red, I still cannot understand how any human being who has felt what I felt—the deep sense of rejection for what I held to be most true in the deepest recesses of my heart—could possibly vote Republican. All of those who have been victimized by prejudice by the powerful should stand shoulder-to-shoulder until such time as justice for one means justice for all.
© 13 April 2015

About the Author

September 23, 2015February 26, 2019

Singing, by Lewis

Everybody, it seems, loves music. Now that technology has made it possible to take one’s music with them wherever they go, ear buds have become ubiquitous and conversation passé. Throw in a smart phone and Twitter or text messaging and we may be approaching the end of the era wherein no man (or woman) is an island unto themself.

I have a photo taken of me when I was five-years-old, dressed head-to-foot in cowboy gear, playing 7” records on my portable 78-rpm record player. Even though I wasn’t reading yet, I knew every record’s title by heart. As an adult, it was my wont to make cassette recordings of all types of music, from opera to jazz, from borrowed sources, meticulously transcribing the titles, artists, and recording data onto the tiny cardboard inserts. I still have them—close to 900 of them—and, contrary to expectations back in their day, they still sound fine after nearly 30 years.

All this was prologue in that small boy’s head to a career in music. To be a singer in the tradition of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Vic Damone, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, Vaughan Monroe, Marty Robbins, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis, and Perry Como was my fondest dream. Much later, I realized that it would be even cooler to be a songwriter who sang his own material. So, I turned my ears toward artists like Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, and Don McLean.

To my extreme disappointment, as my voice matured and the guitar lessons became more demanding, I realized that I had not the talent to ever hope to find myself among the hall-of-fame singers of any genre—although I would have liked to have been in a blind audition with Bob Dylan in his early days. Instead, I would have to content myself with playing my three-necked, Hawaiian steel guitar for my great aunt—the one who was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution–at Christmas and for grade school kids at music recitals. (It was at one such recital that the other music students with whom I was on stage lost their places or backbone and dropped out one-by-one leaving me to finish the piece as a solo.)

As both a child and an adult, I have sung in church choirs but that is the limit of my public exposure. Recently, a persistent post nasal drip has caused my vocal chords to completely shut down after a couple of stanzas, putting a premature end to any illusions I may still have about bringing a crowd to its feet in ecstasy. I don’t even sing in the shower any more. (The vinyl curtain just doesn’t have the same effect as a glass one.) However, I still take great pleasure in hearing a beautiful tune sung well. Nothing else in the art world has as much effect on me. Visual arts can be stunning and beautiful but often need some background to give them meaning. Prose and poetry illuminate and entertain. But for me, nothing can inspire so much as poetry set to music. You can frame and hang a painting or tapestry and I can look at it and appreciate the talent behind it. But it doesn’t grab me by the heartstrings and wrap them around my throat. To combine the talents of a vocal artist with a brilliant writer of songs is to give flight to both art and audience.

7 April 2013

About the Author

September 14, 2015February 26, 2019

The Facts, by Lewis

The late Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is famously quoted for saying, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts”.

Thomas Jefferson has written, ““Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”

It seems to me that there are two means by which people at various times arrive at an understanding of their world. One is to reason to a conclusion via the assimilation of all the facts that one can gather and so putting them together as to minimize dissonance. The other is to begin with the conclusion that one wishes to draw, whether in the service of faith or mere prejudice, and sifting and sorting through the facts, picking and choosing so as to not disturb the forgone conclusion.

If I were to paint with a broad enough brush, I could slather one political party with the hue of the former and the other party with the latter. I won’t tell you which is which because that would be to deny me the opportunity to put my theory of how people arrive at their understanding of the world to the test. But allow me, rather, to tell you why I feel that the fact-based means of rationalization is far the better one.

There are two kinds of truth. There is absolute truth and there is revealed truth. If we are to assume that truth matters, then it is important how one arrives at the truth. Our society is almost equally fond of both means. Congressional hearings, legal proceedings, the scientific method, and child-rearing are all based upon finding out what is true and workable and following that path. It requires setting aside preconceived notions of how things work in order to find the truth. If something is revealed which belies what I believed to be true yesterday, then I must reject my old conceptions and accept the new—at least, until it, too, is shown to be erroneous.

On the other hand, if I have been taught to believe that there are certain truths which are forever unchanging, eternal, unequivocal, then what do I do when presented with powerful evidence of their falsehood? I must either claim that the new evidence is a lie from someone who is not to be trusted; admit that I have been fooled for, lo, these many years, at the risk of losing face; or ignore the contrary evidence and hope that it goes away. This is, admittedly, a very uncomfortable position to be in. In part, I blame fundamentalist religion, in all its varied forms, for putting people in this predicament.

When you have been reared to believe that even to question “divine truth” is to risk eternal hellfire, it tends to put a damper on open-mindedness. The problem I have with these folk is when their mindset is brought to bear upon the political realm, which, at least in the United States, is constitutionally designed to be free from such influences.

All this said, I do not wish to give the impression that I am devoid of any tendency to eschew truths revealed through mystical events. Though I am a “non-believer”, in the traditional sense of that term, I have recently been starkly reminded that there are events in our lives that I have a great deal of trouble getting my mind around.

A few weeks after my husband, Laurin, died, the minister at my church, First Unitarian Society of Denver, gave a sermon on mysticism. It was about being open to the idea of things going on in the world around us that simply have no logical explanation and how that sensibility can make life easier to deal with, if not more interesting or joyful. That very night, I awoke around 2 AM, as I often did, needing to take relieve myself. Once back in bed, my mind, as it often did, began mulling over myriad things going on in my life. Still awake at 3:30, I realized that I needed to pee again. I got up, walked to the bathroom, and sat on the commode. From that vantage point, I can see my bed silhouetted against the east window. I noticed nothing peculiar. Upon returning to bed, I saw, lying on the bottom sheet where the covers had been thrown back, two facial tissues lying perfectly folded and flat, one slightly overlapping the other. They looked as if they had been carefully pressed, not as if I had lain on them during the night. I was certain that they were not there the previous morning when I made the bed. I had not been crying during the night nor had any other use for a tissue.

I spent the next two hours agonizing over how those tissues got there. I did not believe in life after death. I did not believe in ghosts or spirits. Yet, there was no “factual” explanation for what I had discovered. My sobs were so loud, I’m almost sure my neighbor must have heard them. It took Shari and Michelle from the SAGE Caregiver Support group to help me realize that what I witnessed might have been a sign from Laurin that, after so many years of my taking care of him, now it was his turn.

Even now, five months to the day after Laurin’s passing, I cannot write these words without breaking down. I now can admit, without flinching, that, yes, there are facts–and facts matter. But there are also phantoms and shadows that invite us to become their friends. Suddenly, the world has become a place of true wonder.

About the Author

September 4, 2015February 26, 2019

Scarves, by Lewis

It was a night much like any other for the watchman at Glasgow’s Dock Number Three, Lewis James MacScarvey, as he made his rounds. The only sounds were that of the water sloshing against the piles and an occasion distant fog horn or well-sotted human being noisily making his way home after closing time.

It was his habit to pace to-and-fro in front of a streetlamp and park bench where said humans were prone to sleep and dispose of their spent bottles in the nearby trash receptacle in hopes of averting a disturbance. When he turned to the north he could see about 100 meters away another bench with trash receptacle and lamplight nearly identical to his. Only there was no one patrolling that space so he liked to occasionally cast his eye in that direction to make sure there was no mischief-making going on.

On this particular night, at about 1:30 in the morning, he thought he saw a figure standing near the water. It appeared to be a woman, perhaps wearing a red full-length coat and something on her head. He had made several turnings on his well-worn loop and each time checked to see if the person was still there.

After about 15 minutes or so, he turned and noticed that the figure had vanished. Curious, he rushed down to see if there was a problem. When he arrived at the spot where the woman had been standing, he saw only a pair of earrings carefully placed on the seat of the bench and, when he looked into the water, a red scarf floating on the surface. Not even a ripple disturbed the water’s calm. Using his nightstick, he was able, with some effort, to retrieve the scarf. Embroidered on one corner were initials. He could barely make them out in the dim light–“LJM”. They were his initials. He backed away from the edge of the water until his legs collided with the bench, whereupon he sat down hard.

Although he never learned the identity of the mysterious lonely woman he saw that night–no body was ever found–he could not bring himself to reveal to the police even the existence of the scarf. He kept it for himself and every night before he went on-duty, he would tie the scarf around his neck, hoping against hope that the rightful owner would some night come looking for it.

About the Author

August 17, 2015February 26, 2019

Alas, Poor Homophobes by Lewis

An Open Letter to Universal Haters Everywhere

These are the times that try men’s souls–at the very least those souls, male or female, whose salvation depends upon making other souls miserable. It must seem to you that the very forces of human progress are aligned against you, that every cause toward which you have given the last full measure of your devotion has almost overnight become politically incorrect. You must long for the day when it was acceptable to denigrate kikes, wops, niggers, slopes and whatever minority whose presence in your consciousness caused you so much consternation in the past. Then along came Nazi Germany and Martin Luther King, Jr. and, before you could shake a faggot at it, tolerance began to creep into American society. (Strange that 300 years of Christian dogma wasn’t doing the trick.)

It must have been quite an adjustment, having to look for new subjects toward which to direct your righteous anger for all that’s unfair in this life. All the easy-to-spot suspects were becoming off limits–the odd-colored skin, the funny dress, the strange accent.

So, it must have seemed that Providence smiled on you once again when you realized that, if you looked closely enough, you could actually spot a queer by his or her manner of dress or lisp or limp wrists. Unlike your earlier victims who could barely conceal their differences, queers often were terrified of being “found out”. They thought they could mix with ordinary people and kind of blend in. That idea must have really pissed you off. I mean, if they could pass for straight, didn’t that mean that someone might mistake you for a queer? No, there was only one way that you could clearly demonstrate that you were a manly man–bash, ridicule and call out queers whenever and wherever you found them.

What a blessing it must have been for you when AIDS came along. Not only did the disease become a litmus test for being queer, it thinned their ranks so you didn’t have to bother so much. I’m sure that made you feel quite smug. I could almost hear you saying, “What goes around, comes around”.

It must have felt good to put yourself in the position of being a champion for the sacred institution of marriage against the attempts of perverts to infiltrate the institution, even as the divorce rate was skyrocketing. One of your most memorable victories was the nobly-named “Defense of Marriage Act”, which scolded those states that dared grant full legal recognition of same-sex unions.

But here it is nearly 20-years later and the U.S. Supreme Court is almost certain to rule by the end of the month that gay people are deserving of the same equal protection and due process under the Constitution as anybody else, including you. I’ll bet that really gets your goat. Who would have thought such a thing could happen so quickly?

You must have shuddered recently when Wal-Mart threatened economic reprisals against states that passed so-called Freedom of Religion laws that would sanction faith-based bigotry against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered folk. (I doubt that you can read that last sentence without gagging mentally but I thought the acronym, glbt, might be mistaken for a typo.)

“What happened to my country?” you might rightfully ask. Well, the answer is pretty simple, really. It’s the same thing that happens whenever two human beings have the inclination and the time to get to know one another before the labeling starts. It’s what happens when commonality overwhelms tribalism. It’s what happens when reality trumps preconception. The Jew, the gay, the black you know can’t always be the exception. In fact, they’re almost always never are the exception. Anne Frank may have said it best when she wrote in her remarkable diary–

“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death.”

Freedom and dignity cannot be hoarded, like money. They are the birthright of every person. At least that’s the way it is supposed to be here in America. You cannot make yourself more free by denying anyone else their freedom. It’s not theirs to give away and it’s not yours to take. It is not yours to say whom I shall I love any more than you can deny me the same air you breathe. It’s not a sacrifice at all. In fact, you won’t even notice the difference. Once you let this sink in, however, you may notice something else is different. You may find yourself walking with a bit lighter step. And that would be good not only for your feet but for your heart as well.

About the Author

August 7, 2015February 26, 2019

Aw, Shucks, by Lewis

The
summer of 1954 is now being set down in the history of my life as the worst
summer of my entire worldly existence.
Not only did I contract ringworm of the scalp on a family vacation to
the East Coast that summer, heretofore already recounted in this forum, but I
tried to crack a rock with my head, as well.

Here’s
how it went down–literally. Granddad
Homer had just presented me with my first bicycle, complete with training
wheels. I was eight years old and ready
for the next leap in mode of transportation beyond relying solely on the soles
of my feet. So, I joined a couple of older
boys who were riding their bikes in the street in front of my house. Not yet comfortable with the dynamics of bike
riding, I suddenly found my path cut off by one of the other boys and, rather
than collide with him, I steered into the curb.
Aw, shucks!

Upon
impact, I was thrown off my bike headfirst into a flood-control ditch four feet
below the street surface. Aw,
shucks! My forehead collided with a
piece of broken concrete. Aw,
shucks! I will never forget the odd
feeling I had after taking a blow to the head–not so much pain, as a feeling
of stupor or disconnectedness. I was
bleeding and my parents took me to a doctor.
I was expecting to get stitched but instead the doc used metal staples
to hold my wound shut. Aw, shucks! He also gave me a tetanus shot. This resulted in the second-worst “Aw,
shucks!” of that star-crossed
summer.

The
next day, my family embarked upon their annual vacation trek to the mountains
of Colorado. That first night in the
cabin, I started to feel really crappy.
I was nauseous and feverish and couldn’t sleep. Neither could my parents or grandfather. Turns out that I was having an allergic
reaction to the tetanus shot, which was derived from a serum made from
horses. Aw, shucks! Our vacation was cut short and we headed
home. Aw, shucks! To this day, I always think of this story
when I’m asked by a medical professional if I have any allergies to
medications, even though horses as the source of vaccine against tetanus has
long been abandoned. For which, I’m sure
horses everywhere are grateful.

About
the Author

Soon after,
I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after
13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to
fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE
Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.