Note: no one in their right mind should take nutrition advice from me. However, I do know what really works well for some people. Sometimes.
If you’re going to eat tuna, I recommend that you ditch the mayo entirely. Lite sour cream, if such a thing is needed, works admirably in place of mayo. Two tablespoons of lite sour cream equal 40 calories, whereas light mayo is about twice that. Regular mayo is 100 calories per tablespoon. If you are craving the lovely sheen of fat when you eat, this won’t help you. You might as well take a bite of Crisco and get it over with. Growing up, several of my family members did just that.
Ditching the creamy additives saves you time, calories, money, and fridge space. It also lessens the amount of dairy you consume.
While I don’t count calories, I’m unavoidably aware of the benchmarks for many foods. When you’re trying to eat healthy, unless you are treating yourself, it is weird for me to justify eating something that is so much higher in calories. For that reason, I stopped using anything creamy in my tuna. Unlike most people, I much prefer to eat my tuna as dry as I can get it. If I add anything, it might be the miracle of lemon juice.
As for tuna, one of the best fillers you can use is dill relish. It’s one of the few things that is inexpensive yet adds bulk and texture. Dill relish is zero calories, too. Combined with shredded lettuce and the spice(s) of your choice, tuna can be made to be filling and savory. It’s hard to beat lemon pepper on tuna – although I enjoy at least a dozen different seasonings and spices on mine in varying degrees.
For the record, green olives are, in fact, delicious in tuna. They are only about eight calories each. My problem is that I need at least forty to be satisfied, especially compared to dill relish or something similar. A lot of people think the idea of green olives with tuna isn’t appealing. Most of those people have never tried it.
Another sore spot for me is the delicious taste of a well-made olive tapenade! If you want to fight, I’ll argue that green olives are indescribably delicious as a pizza topping – and more so than the dreaded counterpart of black olives.
If you are in tune with your body at all, it is easy to hold yourself to 1,000 calories a day if you need to. I know that isn’t sustainable, so don’t preach at me.
But if you eat two cans of tuna, add half a jar of dill pickle relish, a mound of shredded lettuce (mixed with lemon pepper), and two flavored bags of Pop Chips instead of crackers or bread, you’ve only eaten around 400-500 calories. It’s hard to complain about being hungry by that quantity of food.
P.S. If you are a Sriracha fan, you’re going to think I’m crazy. But. Sugar-free whipped cream drizzled with Sriracha is a surprising treat for the taste buds, much in the way jellied jalapeños are on vanilla ice cream. I’m not a huge fan of overly hot foods. But Sriracha came out of the left field for me a couple of years ago and took a place in my heart for flavor.
Millicent was a pretty and quite precocious young girl. By age 5, she had developed a startling trait of listening to adults a little too closely. While her contemporaries squabbled over dolls and crayons, she dedicated herself to watching the strange adults around her. Instinctively, she also learned to spread her questions around among a variety of adults. After a certain number of questions, most adults became defensive or, worse, annoyed. Much of the time, their answers made little sense. Though she was young, it didn’t take her long to decide that most adults were winging it in life. Because she figured out that it was true for almost everyone, it didn’t upset her or make her sad.
Grandma Tuggins, her mother’s mom, noticed Millicent’s vocabulary had exceeded her own by age 6. Millie often sat on the floor while the older women watched “As The World Turns.” In the mid-70s, it was the show that defined daytime soap operas for women in Georgia. During one of the biggest melodramatic moments of the season, Millie stood up and announced, “Well, the plot is a bit preposterous if I’m expected to swallow the fact that she’s in love with both of those gentlemen!” She stomped away to get herself a bottle of Coke from the fridge. Tugs and the other women laughed.
Tugs, as her friends called her, knew the dangers of a girl being too smart. Alabama was still behind the times in 1975. Tugs made it her mission to bend Millie’s inquisitive nature before things got out of hand. Tugs was the organist at the Methodist church in town. She played the organ on Sundays and did the books for Reverend Hawkins. Within weeks of watching her grandmother as she counted the money and paid the bills for the church, Millie could do the math in her head.
Everyone knew that Millicent had announced that she could read on her fourth birthday. For a year, she would stare at the books on the floor or in her lap as she sat in the rocking chair with her mom. Her lips didn’t move, but her eyes seemed to read the words on the pages. She started with her collection of Curious George Books. Soon enough and her mom found her with a Nancy Drew series boxed up in the cellar. Millie’s other grandmother, Ellie, bought Millie a set of Encyclopedia Brown books for her birthday. “Just like a real set of encyclopedias,” she proudly (and wrongly) proclaimed. No one told her they weren’t the same thing. After eating the cake with no frosting, Uncle Pete asked Millie to read a bit of Encyclopedia Brown to him, knowing she wouldn’t be able to. A full chapter later, as Millie recited the words perfectly, Uncle Pete kept saying, “Lord, where did she get all them brains from? Ain’t none of us got that much smarts.” Grandma Tugs knew better. Millie’s dead father Andrew was the guilty party to passing along so much brains. Andrew also liked to take shortcuts for everything.
What concerned Tugs the most was the Wednesday evening when Millie turned from her chair and said, “The Reverend makes a lot of money for selling promises, doesn’t he?” Tugs burst out laughing at the question. “Yes, but his message makes a lot of people happy, Millicent!” Millie looked a little troubled. “Mr. Harley doesn’t seem happy about the message. I think his drinking has him thinking he might not go upstairs when he dies.” Grandma Tugs laughed again, but she was surprised that Millicent knew that Mr. Harley had a drinking problem – or that she had a grasp of the difference between Heaven and the brimstone place.
As the years passed, Millicent’s grades suffered. She was more interested in learning from books on her own and doing things with her hands dirty up to her elbows. She learned the piano by watching Grandma Tugs. Her Grandma spent one afternoon showing her what all the squiggles were on the music book and how they corresponded to the keys on a piano. Grandma Tugs spent years to get decently good. Millie needed less than a few weeks before her fingers learned the keyboard and improvised on the fly. “Grandma, can we jazz it up a little next Sunday? Give Reverend Hawkins a shock?” Grandma Tugs hugged Millie close to her on the piano bench. “That would be a hoot, wouldn’t it?” Tugs decided she needed to keep an even closer eye on Millie.
In fifth grade, Reverend Hawkins visited Heritage Elementary School, where Millie attended. Despite all the arguing about it, her school still offered a Bible Study class. Millie hated all the discussion. “People say it means stuff that isn’t written in there! At least with Encyclopedia Brown, the answer is the answer.” Grandma Tugs would shake her head and tell her to focus on not blurting out what was going on inside her head. Reverend Hawkins had no idea that he was about to face his most formidable adversary.
“Boys and girls, I hope you’ve been reading your Bibles. It’s just as important as math and reading comic books,” he said, as Millie’s focus wandered. She started at the open dictionary on her desk instead.
Millie looked up, surprised. The Reverend had asked her to tell her what her favorite Bible verse was. “Proverbs 31:6,” Millie said immediately. The Reverend looked startled as he hastily searched for the verse in his Bible. Millie told him, “Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish.” Several of her classmates laughed. “Proverbs 20:1 says, ‘Wine is a mocker and beer is a brawler, whoever is led astray by them is not wise.'” Ms. Atkins politely applauded Reverend Hawkins.
Reverend Hawkins began to speak again. Millie cut him off, saying, “1 Timothy 5:23: Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.” Both the Reverend and Ms. Atkins stared at one another in consternation.
“Can I speak to you in the hallway, Ms. Atkins?” The Reverend didn’t wait for an answer and almost ran outside into the hallway. After a minute of whispered discussion away from the eyes of the class, they both returned.
Ms. Atkins folded her hands in front of her. “Class, let’s all give Millicent a round of applause for studying her Bible so diligently!” Her face was flushed. Her classmates nervously applauded. They knew something wasn’t right but didn’t know quite what had happened. “Let’s all make our way single file to the cafeteria where we’ll all enjoy a milk and chocolate pudding with the Reverend.” At that, everyone began to talk animatedly and to lose their interest in what had happened. When Millicent stood, Reverend Hawkins asked her to wait a moment.
“Millie, how did you know those verses? Alcohol is a subject a little advanced for you.” The Reverend had underestimated Millie. He wouldn’t be the last.
“I learned the Bible, Reverend. And everyone has alcohol in their houses. Even you.” Millie smiled at him.
“You learned it? How much?” He seemed concerned. He filed away the idea that Millicent somehow knew he liked to drink a bit of whiskey. Oddly, he suddenly wanted a sip right then, too.
“All of it. It’s already broken into indexed pieces by book, chapter, and verse.” Millie wasn’t bragging.
Revered Hawkins opened and closed his mouth several times. Finally, almost croaking, he said, “Let’s go get some pudding.” Millicent ran out of the classroom, smiling.
My day started with bursts of restless sleep, punctuated by a cat insistent that I get up. Truthfully, I lay there writing stories in my head and attempting to gather the threads of my own life together. After giving the cat his beloved morsels of treats, I made a staggeringly strong pot of coffee. My first cup was black as tar. The bitterness, as always, renewed me.
Writing these words, I fully realize that the pandemic has changed everything. It’s the new baseline. Whether it has emboldened you to waste no further energy on things which don’t bring you joy, or robbed you of the pieces of yourself that make your life meaningful, I hope you can find refuge in this day. Gratitude is a daily affirmation more than an occasion.
For years, I tried to get the tribe to accompany me to Clarion Inn, try a new tradition, and trust me enough to experience something that I once loved. They resisted until one day, the Clarion closed. I’m not bitter about it; disappointed, yes. (It was their loss more than mine. New experiences aren’t as common as we’d like to think.) Likewise, I hinted and asked if we might try another type of food, with anything on the literal table for options. Those who needed turkey and the fixings could still have those. I offered to ensure that they would if they would join me in something unexpected and non-traditional. It’s not the food that makes the day. The people around the table, the spirit of the day as originally intended – these combine to make the moments worth doing. With each hard pass, they’d futurize and point to a vague moment in our shared future in which we could be creative and spontaneous. Moments delayed often never materialize. The players find new games, and lives scatter. It’s the way life is.
If you are counting the wrinkles on participant’s faces to determine who might not be with us in the years to come, you are foolish. From experience, I can tell you that youth is no shield from loss. I call this tendency, “The Clarion Misconception.”
One of my favorite people in the world hates Thanksgiving. For her, the day was her mother embodied. She’s faced more loss since, and the holiday has yet to recover any joy for her. It’s hard to enjoy some of the day when someone you love is hurting. Ache and loneliness are holes that seldom fill. As for my loved one, she is at least opting to have an extraordinarily simple meal of her choice to celebrate the day. In that way, she is lucky beyond compare. It’s ironic that our simple choices are envied by others. Those with a full table often envy a small personally chosen meal, while those with simplicity often find themselves wondering what a full table might bring.
While I’m no fan of the holiday, I am a genuine fan of the opportunity that the day can bring. At its heart, it is a day of companionship and love. It is a gong being rung in our hearts to remind us that this day, like all others, is not a given. I wish people could stop looking toward the pomp and ceremony of the preparations and instead take the chance to use the day to sit and laugh. And eat, too, yes. Whatever suits them, no matter how ridiculous or unexpected. Even the first Thanksgiving, the one we supposedly observe, resulted from what was available rather than what people wanted. Traditions are meaningless to me if they cannot be bent or broken when people want them to be something else.
Things? I need none.
Food? I’m more full now than I ever was while eating unhealthily. By focusing on less, I have more and enjoy it more.
Love? No gauge can ever read full in this regard.
Whatever number of days you have, you now have one fewer to sit and laugh. Take the small moments and hold them close to your heart. As you do, the larger moments will take care of themselves. You can’t have an empty life if you fully appreciate who and what you love in the small moments. Most of your life is lived in the intervals.
After all, the day is about having a hungry heart. Mine is ravenous.
X
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P.S. A couple of links below, if you’re interested…
Pinche decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. He drank three or four cups of bitter coffee and felt restless, especially for an overcast fall day. After reading several hundred pages of one of his favorite books, even those beloved words grew stale for him. Grabbing a jacket on the way out, he put it on as he crossed the old, narrow cement walkway to the street.
As Pinche passed his next-door neighbor’s house, Sam waved to him and laughed. Though it was just 4:45 in the afternoon, Sam already had a glass of ice and another small glass for his whiskey. “Hey, Pinche neighbor!” Ever since Pinche bought the old house on Elm Street, his neighbors took delight in saying his name, mainly because “Pinche” meant “damn” in Spanish. Pinche didn’t have the heart to tell them it often meant much worse. Them not knowing as they yelled his name always resulted in him laughing back. He hoped that dozens of white people were still saying his name without realizing it could be shocking to many people. Pinche’s grandfather got the blame for naming him; he cursed at least a thousand times the first month he discovered that Pinche’s mother became accidentally pregnant when she was only seventeen. When he found out that a priest was the father, he cursed even more and didn’t stop until Pinche was five years old. Pinche’s Mom decided to memorialize the cursing by choosing a potentially mild one as a name.
Pinche also always whistled as he walked. He didn’t know he was doing it unless a neighbor or passerby commented on it. From show tunes to rap to blues and rock, Pinche’s grasp of music was incredible. He studied piano for several years and could sing like an angel. One of his favorite things to do while walking was to whistle three-octave scales. His Mom told him to whistle as much as he wanted because God sent him to teach the birds how to sing.
Pinche turned at the next block and walked down Maple street, an older street with massive oak trees in many yards. As he neared the house directly behind his a street over, he noted that The Wilkerson’s house front door was open. A panel truck sat at the curb out front. Their light blue piano sat on a mover’s platform at the base of the porch steps. Almost no one knew that the piano once belonged to Liberace. Pinche was in on the secret because of his perfect pitch and skill with a piano. He knew that the Wilkersons were in Ohio visiting their son. Usually, Pinche jumped the back fence to check in on their cat Purrincess, which it turns out was probably the ugliest cat in North America. Its meow sounded like a loose cello string being dragged across an electric fence.
Pinche slowed as a man wearing a blue uniform exited the front door. He pulled the door closed behind him as he did. The man seemed surprised to see Pinche near the oak tree by the street. The uniformed man nodded and stopped at the piano.
“I can’t believe that the Wilkersons are selling that piano. They turned down a huge offer last year. They don’t play, of course. Such a waste for such a famous piano. An unplayed piano is like an empty heart.” Pinche chatted casually with everyone who would listen. It sometimes resulted in great conversation and sometimes with hurried looks of annoyance.
The piano mover sighed. “Yes, they got an offer they couldn’t ignore. Hey, could you help me shift this over the edge of the sidewalk?”
Pinche walked over and pushed the piano to the left while the piano man pushed toward the street. Surprisingly, the piano smoothly rolled. “The right equipment makes the job easier,” the piano mover said as if reading Pinche’s mind. They continued moving to the sidewalk. While they slowed, the piano man continued to push evenly. The base fluidly lowered to street level. The piano mover then drove it onto the waiting platform that was already lowered to street level.
“Thanks, you made this a lot easier if the piano had shifted.” While he spoke, he threw a protective blanket across the piano and threw soft straps across it. As he powered the lift up, Pinche asked him, “Who is the buyer? This is a fairly famous piano.”
“A buyer in New York. He’s wanted this piano for at least 20 years.” The piano mover continued to tighten and adjust the straps as he moved the piano inside the confines of the panel truck.
Pinche remained standing by the truck, watching the piano mover.
After a couple of minutes, the piano mover came back down to street level and then raised the platform and locked it vertically against the back of the truck.
“Listen, am I in trouble here?” The piano mover asked Pinche, suddenly revealing his nervousness.
“It depends,” Pinche said. “Is the piano going to someone who will play it? And did you lock the Wilkerson’s front door to prevent anyone else from paying a visit?”
“Yes to the door, and yes, indeed, he will. And the family here can take the $30,000 cashier’s check I left on the counter. Or they can file insurance for theft. Or both, if you know what I mean.” The piano mover took a moment to look Pinche in the eyes.
Pinche extended his right hand as the piano mover reluctantly shook it.
“It’s a deal.” Pinche nodded goodbye and turned to walk away.
The piano mover shook his head in a bit of surprise and confusion as Pinche walked away.
By the time Pinche reached the other end of Maple Street, and the piano mover opened the driver’s door of the truck, he could Pinche happily whistling “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” as his pace quickened.
Pinche felt a sudden case of forgetfulness overcoming him as Liberace filled the air.
At the end of my 9th-grade year, I started running. I’ve written about it before. Despite all the obstacles and ridiculousness of it, I stepped out on the road and just did it. No one believed it or saw it coming. I lost a lot of weight and transformed myself. During the first few months, I started brushing my teeth a couple of times a day more than usual. Though we were poor, I had Aim Cinnamon toothpaste. At the time, that was like candy to me.
In the movie “No Country For Old Men,” Deputy Wendell said, “This is turnin’ into a hell of a mess, ain’t it, Sheriff?” Sheriff Ed Tom Bell: “If it isn’t, it’ll do until the mess gets here.”
Though the modern version of Aim is a pale imitation, it’ll do.
If I were at my cousin Jimmy’s, I did the same thing. Brushing my teeth, especially with that flavor, killed my appetite. I can’t explain why. The why of it used to perplex me.
A few weeks ago, without conscious thought, I found myself searching for Aim Cinnamon toothpaste. I bought a tube at Dollar General. A week later, while buying groceries at Walmart, I picked another. Over the next few weeks, I brushed my teeth when I came home from work or after supper. It didn’t occur to me that I was brushing my teeth more often. Truthfully, because of my horrid mask breath at work, I probably associated it with that.
The day I dropped below 200 lbs, I realized that I had recreated another groove in my life, one that began when I was finishing junior high and losing all the weight the first time.
Somehow, Aim cinnamon toothpaste echoed hard enough in my memories to give me another means to achieve my goal.
I wanted to write this post to try to explain that brushing my teeth works as a trick into suppressing my appetite. I don’t know why it works.
But I also wanted to tell the backstory as another means to explain it is also why I know that I’m going to beat the weight thing this time around. Not because I’ve done well so far. But because something primordial in me reached back almost 40 years to draw a behavior that helped save me then.
All those years ago, had I not started running, I fear I might not have made it through. I’ve said that before. That achievement is also what allowed me to trick myself into making All-State band in my first year of high school.
Then, as now, I’m excited to know what things I might unlock in myself. It’s a selfish crusade – such things must be.
The time change and my recent life have aligned to place me in the gauzy betweenworld of sleep and reality.
Yesterday, I watched the last episode of Bill Maher. One of the guests was Michael Eric Dyson, a preacher, professor, and activist. Another was Jon Meacham, a historian, and writer. Both were exceptional. Jon’s intelligence and ability to explain his ideas impressed me. Michael had the same gift, amplified with a poignant and natural turn of phrase. If I’ve learned nothing else about myself, I treasure these gifts.
Though I didn’t know I was dreaming, a writer invited me to attend an unfamiliar church on a Friday evening. As happens in dreams, I entered the church without any connecting events.
After a round of introduction and applause, a man approached the podium placed in front of the altar at the front of the church. He cleared his throat and began to speak:
“If you want to be a good person in life, the most important thing you own might be your ears. Your eyes are forever full of appetite and illusion. If you’re receptive to what you hear, you learn a lot of knowledge. But you also learn a lot of subtext and context that your eyes convert to confusion. If you educate yourself, your mouth allows you to share what you learn with others who hopefully have their ears open to different voices. But no matter how much you learn in life or what you achieve, if your heart isn’t open, you’ve wasted your life. Your heart shouldn’t be open only for what you see as God in your life. It should be open to people as they struggle. Because you have a lot of life experience, it would be easy to use the conduit between your ears and mouth to forget that whatever someone else is going through, they need your ears and heart to open long before they need your mouth. A welcome ear and a warm hand on one’s shoulder can cure more disorders than any amount of preaching. Present company excluded. If you have God in your heart, I believe you’re ahead of the game. But more importantly, just open your heart at every opportunity and figure out what’s keeping you from doing it all the time. Wide open. My message today is this: Ears. Heart. Mouth. Your achievements are meaningless otherwise. And all the knowledge? Dusty information doesn’t help anyone. Flex your fingers and arms for an embrace.”
The preacher took the papers from the podium and threw them into the air, and laughed.
“See? You weren’t expecting that! Sermons and life must contain unexpected moves – and laughter. Love one another as much as you can and listen. Amen.”
I went outside to walk. The rain battered me, and I went back inside.
Today would be the day, then. I had promised myself I would benchmark myself on the treadmill – no matter the consequences, no matter my foot, my shoulder, my back. No matter. Enough with the excuses.
A couple of days ago, I hit 200 lbs. I tell everyone it took six weeks, but that’s not true. Whatever control mechanism rules me broke open several weeks ago. It wasn’t a choice. I lost 25 lbs by the sheer force of the certainty I was able to glimpse. Doing this sort of thing requires a selfish focus. In my case, the overlap of my ambition lies within the hearts and minds of others.
Foolish as I am for being optimistic, I’m looking to the horizon without worrying about who I’ll be. I can’t take credit for something that was handed to me. If I squander this opportunity to be who I should have been all along, I won’t recover.
For the first time in my adult life, I went a month without biting my nails. I’ve never made it a week until now. I didn’t think about the fact that I hadn’t really eaten sugar in weeks.
I walked on the treadmill for 10 minutes and then put the incline to the maximum. I felt my heart rate escalate. I ignored it. At minute 39, I broke through the clouds and felt weightless. My heart still beat like a hummingbird’s. I walked 10 more minutes until I felt the weight return, which is a warning sign for me. When I was a runner, I was lucky enough to experience runner’s high.
Today, I saw that 175 lbs is not only an option for me but an unavoidable consequence of the change in my heart. It’s selfish – I know. It’s not that I’m reaching a goal but reaching the life I should have had.
There’s hope for me yet. Not because I took a risk on the treadmill, but because the foolishness that led me to it reeks of optimism. After these decades on Earth, there is hope for me. In me. I don’t need a day of thanks to feel like I’ve been seen and given a gift.
If you don’t know the phrase, “better and bitter angels,” you should add it to your vocabulary. Most of us talk about the devils on each of our shoulders. The truth is that it is our intentions, motivations, and convictions that run us afoul more often than the whispering devils. In our public life, we judge others. In our private secrets moments, we judge ourselves most harshly. A little grace for all of us is much needed.
P.S. And a bit for you if you’re looking backward with an unkind eye for yourself.
Often, the only way forward is to give yourself a laughing pass for the things you have most definitely said and done. And twice that for the things you imagined you are guilty of.
A friend posted a version of the “what is your name backward?” quiz. My name is not only the shortest possible palindrome, but it is still my name no matter how you turn the letter. Also, no matter where I go, maps have an “X” on them, and state, “You are here.” It’s like they KNOW. X is not only the antepenultimate letter of the alphabet, but it is also the third-least used, which explains why dates were so hard for me to come by when I was younger. In math, X is an independent and unknown variable. (Which also explains my dating issues when I was younger.) On the plus side, I rarely had to do math, because the teachers instructed my classmates to “solve for X.” X has also become a non-binary gender identifier, indicates buried or hidden treasure, used to indicate a signature and/or illiteracy, can be used as a multiplier, indicates Voiceless velar fricative (that’s a literal mouthful), an axis in the Cartesian coordinate system, is a stand-in name for people undergoing spiritual conversion, the number 10, and also indicates that a work is the result of a collaboration between two artists. Though it inexplicably angers some, the X in Xmas stands for Christ from its Greek roots. When I picked the simplest possible name, I missed the boat!
After I wrote my Rip-Shirt story, someone messaged me to tell me she knew who the person was I taught to stitch. And then she gave me the gift of sharing a few anecdotes about the time she spent with him. My memory didn’t keep any recollections of them being close. But I take pride in knowing that my little story, the one about a sliver of my life, took her back to another time. I did that. And she felt comfortable enough to share bits of herself with me – someone who is a hack but loves personal stories.
I think we all crave personal stories if we can stop worrying about language or our words being misconstrued. Who are we kidding? We don’t understand ourselves, not really, so the expectation that others conform to an idea of our self-image that we don’t even possess is a bit preposterous.
I love to think that every once in a while that I write something that triggers a memory and hopefully a fond one. While we should not get anchored in the past, there are few greater pleasures than using our nostalgic eyes to wander in time. As we age, we change around the static memories. It’s our gift. For anyone lucky enough, our memories soften and gauze our eyes to the harshness that pervades people.
As for the man I taught to stitch in my story, I have a couple of stories that are simply hard to believe. One of them is either incurably romantic – or breathtakingly odd. The overlap of both possibilities is what makes me remember it. I don’t remember all the details, but I’ll try to write the story in a future post in such a way so that no one gets in the crosshairs about it. Other than the man in question, only one other person knew it happened. I used to think I understood his motives clearly. Age taught me that I was mistaken. I wish I had known then that piece of his heart. Though you don’t know of which story I’m writing, I laugh and admit that the day I’ll write about would definitely have ended differently.
For now, I just wanted to share that I feel like my rip-shirt story pushed several people back in time to consider people they loved. People wrote to me on my blog, too. Sewing is an activity that most people predominantly feel echoes from their childhood.
Each time I share such stories, many of them seem to take on a life of their own. Others see them and realize that they too are connected to me in intangible ways. Whether it is a plane crash on a clear blue day, an untimely death, that some of our family are not who we think, the closets of secrets so many of us carry in our front pockets as we live our lives, we each are capable of surprising ourselves and others.
The coincidences and unlikely overlap of our lives should no longer surprise me.
But it does. And whatever regard for other’s people stories I have, they envelop me.*
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 