It was my graduation year from Farrington and I would spend the time immediately after school at my mom's workplace at Roosevelt High School where she ran the Health complex.  Outside the Health building was a very large tree that looked out on a field where the cheerleading squad practiced.  I would in the time between getting out ot school and ( Read more... )

I think that part of why I'm grieving so much over the loss of my military career is that it was as Andie put it, "my only rival for your affections."  She meant it.  It was the cause of our ten year estrangement and the cause of our reunion.  Like many career Soldiers I told Andie that the Army would be first for twenty years and after that the ( Read more... )

Reading aunt_barb 's journal entry today about ice skating brought back a fond memory.  I can't recall the year and I think Ben was all of 11 or 12 at the time we went to the ice skating rink in Aiea or Pearl City.  The outside of the building wasn't much a warehouse that was painted to look a little like a barn.   Inside the building was a circular rink ( Read more... )

( Extra long post by an old man )

I read today of the Bar Mitzvah of aunt_barb   's nephew.  My own family has a hodge-podge of faiths from animism to Islam to Southern Baptists.  My own faith is Judaism.  Andie and I were married in the Jewish tradition and while it was not quite the production of my aunt's wedding some seven years before, I found it both moving and literally meaningful.  ( Read more... )

It's Fairfax/Alexandria, it's been 20 years. I'm another year older and I keep wondering whatever happened to Cora? You see, right now, I've got an old Iggy Pop song from 16 years ago playing ( Read more... )

Fate, Karma or whatever have you plays and  weaves an interesting pattern into this tapestry we call life. Take for instance how Andie and I first met. The circumstances were most unlikely and curious at best.
To start with for the one and only time in my life, I'd been caught cutting class, surfing,  not by the school, not by my parents but ( Read more... )

There was a song by Firefall that Andie and I used to sing to each other because there were times it seemed so apropos.  I would inflict my "Perry Como" version on her when she was crying from the combination of surgical pain and the effects of the combination of radiation and chemo.  I would hold her in my arms and sing this to her then and when ( Read more... )

It was on a partly sunny day, I'd just gotten off work at Camp H. M. Smith and was at the Ft. Shafter PX which opened at 0730, ostensibly to pick up my dress blues and mess dress uniforms from the dry cleaners and alterations shop where they'd be dry cleaned after having the gold bullion braid, sleeve lace, and leg braid, removed and replaced ( ( Read more... )