My sister Margaret had a pretty amazing 16th birthday.
In addition to the usual cake and ice cream and gifts, her party included a giant leap for mankind.
I remember all of us gathered in the family room that evening, watching the broadcast. I don't remember which network we were watching, but it was probably CBS with Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra, because Channel 6 was the clearest station we could receive. It may have been NBC, though, because Margaret liked David Brinkley better. We were a news-watching and -reading family.
Margaret's 9-year-old brother Jim was sitting on the couch (or davenport, as we called it), craning his neck to get a better view of the upside-down image as Neil Armstrong took that momentous step. Even as a 9-year-old, I understood what a historic moment this was.
After Armstrong said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," I asked what that was supposed to mean. Weren't "man" and "mankind" the same thing? Even as a 9-year-old, I was a smart-alecky copy editor in the making.
A year or two later, my dad and I stood in line for four hours at the Capitol Complex in Lansing to get a glimpse of a moon rock. What an amazing time to be a little kid.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The wheel of life
On this, the 90th anniversary of my mother's birth, I present a newspaper guest column I wrote 20 years ago. I believe this was my first published work after college. It ran on the front of the Metro section of the Fort Wayne (Indiana) News-Sentinel, where I was a copy editor.
Wheel of life takes emotions on a wild ride
August 16, 1989
This summer has been a matter of life and death for my family.
The season has always consisted of languorous days spent staying out of the sun and muggy evenings spent sipping iced tea on the front porch. Baseball games on the radio and the smell of ribs on the neighbors’ grill.
Come to think of it, all that stuff has been going on as usual, but other events have marked this summer, and I’m not at all comfortable with the theme.
The cycle started, like summer, on Memorial Day weekend, when my wife and I were driving on U.S. 30 to visit her brother in Chicago. It was fairly early that beautiful Saturday morning, and there was very little traffic. We were sharing cinnamon rolls we had bought at T.J. Cinnamon’s on what was supposed to be its last day in business (it has since been resurrected), getting sticky fingers and having a good time.
We both were looking out the side window at a farm where the cattle were standing near the road. We were searching the herd for calves.
When I looked to the road again, I saw in front of us a wall of steel in the form of a stopped livestock truck. Instinctively, I swerved left onto the median, missing the huge truck by little more than a few inches. After I got my pickup back on the highway, still going about 50 mph, my wife put her hand on my arm. It felt like the hand of God.
Neither of us said a word for five minutes. Later we prayed and she cried.
Apparently even as that brush with death was happening, the pathetic stray cat we had taken in on Mother’s Day was giving birth back home to five kittens.
Kittens are wonderful. They can entertain without trying, delight without cloying. We’ve tried not to get too attached to them, because we know we have to give them all away, but they’re hard to resist.
It has been a joy to watch them grow, explore, learn and play. They make you feel wonderful about life.
Now we learn one of them has a heart murmur, and we have to decide whether to “put it to sleep” (to use the prevalent euphemism for killing something beloved), give it away to someone willing to take a chance, or keep it and hope for the best.
A few weeks ago, our next-door neighbors brought forth a beautiful baby girl. We were – and still are – thrilled for them.
But then another neighbor – four doors down – was stabbed to death, and a curtain of fear and sorrow hangs over the neighborhood.
The wheel of life keeps turning as it always has, but this summer it seems to be spinning so fast that the spokes have become invisible. I’ve been up and down on it so many times already that I don’t know how to take each new scene that flashes past my eyes.
For example, several weeks ago my 10 siblings and I threw a party for my mother on her 70th birthday. It was an event to celebrate this wonderful, funny woman’s long and worthwhile life and her full recovery from a heart attack four years ago.
Nine of her 11 children were there, along with a few other relatives and cherished friends and uncounted grandchildren. It was a beautiful day, full of laughter and love and a kind of closeness with some of my siblings that I cannot remember ever feeling before.
With the kind of summer it’s been, however, I couldn’t help but think about how many more birthdays my parents might have.
The macabre mood of this summer has even managed to take a turn toward the comic.
The aforementioned stray cat has made herself very much at home in our house, turning every inch of it into her personal hunting ground.
We used to have a pet zebra finch named Jenny. She was 6 years old – that’s 120 to you and me. I admired her for her longevity.
Rikki the cat admired her for her white meat.
We came home one day to find the bird cage shattered on the floor, a small pile of feathers in the kitchen and a satisfied look on Rikki’s face.
I guess everybody faces issues of life and death; it’s part of living. But having to do it nearly every day is a bit much. Take me out to the ballgame.
Wheel of life takes emotions on a wild ride
August 16, 1989
This summer has been a matter of life and death for my family.
The season has always consisted of languorous days spent staying out of the sun and muggy evenings spent sipping iced tea on the front porch. Baseball games on the radio and the smell of ribs on the neighbors’ grill.
Come to think of it, all that stuff has been going on as usual, but other events have marked this summer, and I’m not at all comfortable with the theme.
The cycle started, like summer, on Memorial Day weekend, when my wife and I were driving on U.S. 30 to visit her brother in Chicago. It was fairly early that beautiful Saturday morning, and there was very little traffic. We were sharing cinnamon rolls we had bought at T.J. Cinnamon’s on what was supposed to be its last day in business (it has since been resurrected), getting sticky fingers and having a good time.
We both were looking out the side window at a farm where the cattle were standing near the road. We were searching the herd for calves.
When I looked to the road again, I saw in front of us a wall of steel in the form of a stopped livestock truck. Instinctively, I swerved left onto the median, missing the huge truck by little more than a few inches. After I got my pickup back on the highway, still going about 50 mph, my wife put her hand on my arm. It felt like the hand of God.
Neither of us said a word for five minutes. Later we prayed and she cried.
Apparently even as that brush with death was happening, the pathetic stray cat we had taken in on Mother’s Day was giving birth back home to five kittens.
Kittens are wonderful. They can entertain without trying, delight without cloying. We’ve tried not to get too attached to them, because we know we have to give them all away, but they’re hard to resist.
It has been a joy to watch them grow, explore, learn and play. They make you feel wonderful about life.
Now we learn one of them has a heart murmur, and we have to decide whether to “put it to sleep” (to use the prevalent euphemism for killing something beloved), give it away to someone willing to take a chance, or keep it and hope for the best.
A few weeks ago, our next-door neighbors brought forth a beautiful baby girl. We were – and still are – thrilled for them.
But then another neighbor – four doors down – was stabbed to death, and a curtain of fear and sorrow hangs over the neighborhood.
The wheel of life keeps turning as it always has, but this summer it seems to be spinning so fast that the spokes have become invisible. I’ve been up and down on it so many times already that I don’t know how to take each new scene that flashes past my eyes.
For example, several weeks ago my 10 siblings and I threw a party for my mother on her 70th birthday. It was an event to celebrate this wonderful, funny woman’s long and worthwhile life and her full recovery from a heart attack four years ago.
Nine of her 11 children were there, along with a few other relatives and cherished friends and uncounted grandchildren. It was a beautiful day, full of laughter and love and a kind of closeness with some of my siblings that I cannot remember ever feeling before.
With the kind of summer it’s been, however, I couldn’t help but think about how many more birthdays my parents might have.
The macabre mood of this summer has even managed to take a turn toward the comic.
The aforementioned stray cat has made herself very much at home in our house, turning every inch of it into her personal hunting ground.
We used to have a pet zebra finch named Jenny. She was 6 years old – that’s 120 to you and me. I admired her for her longevity.
Rikki the cat admired her for her white meat.
We came home one day to find the bird cage shattered on the floor, a small pile of feathers in the kitchen and a satisfied look on Rikki’s face.
I guess everybody faces issues of life and death; it’s part of living. But having to do it nearly every day is a bit much. Take me out to the ballgame.
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