A Way...

Excerpt#2

There exists a moment in everyone’s life when they realize what they have is simple and pure, and good enough. I know this to be the truth, even as I dismiss the complexity of my mysterious adoration for Dylan Mandarini. Mysterious, I reckon, only in the sense his heart lingers, firmly stamped to the hidden throne of my own.  Yet, here is where I am now, awake inside this thought: the pure and the simple truth of knowing life is good enough with the memory of a single day.

Little Luke enters a world today full of mystery and adoration. He opens his eyes, flutters his eyelashes and cries to his father. Both faces, father and son, are captivated with a wonder previously unknown.

“You did it Jeanne!”  A chant of enthusiasm shoots from the corner of the small room. The baby continues to wail helplessly, despite producing a sense of infinite satisfaction from his onlookers. My smile is delayed and happiness disguised, but that overwhelming sensation of being in love erupts inside. I have been in love before, but it has never transpired with such ease. Was it a change in my forlorn self or a change in my circumstances?

The patience of a man is his most revered quality. I can venerate this quality only because time has provided a redeeming effect on the plaintive anthem of my past. To love is to paradoxically feel joy and pain, numbness and intensity of emotion. Dylan is a summer song of yesterday.

To backtrack is to retract from this moment. I shall not do so, for Luke’s sake, and for my own.

Today is a day Luke will not remember, but its memory will remind him of the world’s pure, simple truths. My son Luke begins his life in the hands of my heart’s friend.

My Father's Style

To dad, who through everything is the man I believe in the most.

The back of his head, with his black hair softly blowing in the September wind, pops out of his red sedan. The shadow from his dress shoes appears lengthy, dispersed among the gravel parking lot. He opens the trunk and lifts a chair out into the sun. The chair remains, leaning against the bumper of the car. Dad shows up at the tennis court in his work suit and tie. His eyes search the court for the little girl he tucks in to bed each night. She is there between the fence holes, swiftly decking a ball across the net into her opponent’s ribs. He hesitates before smiling.  Dad claps his right hand against his thigh to celebrate the point. He rubs his eyes and peeks around the walkway to the school. There aren’t any other fathers watching their daughters play. There isn’t a spectator on the rusted wooden bleacher seats. The girl takes a tennis ball and bounces it twice. She spots her father on the hill outside the courts and breathes a deep sigh. Her serve is wide to the left of the service box. Dad advances to the bottom of the hill, showering her with a reassuring grin as he descends the muddy grass. He is there for her, although it’s not in style among her peers. She is his reason for smiling. He is her purpose for believing.

Subtlety

“A spirit that won’t let me go”

There is subtlety to the way strings connect with a tennis ball and create a game. We take for granted the subtle movements and physics at work in each shot we make. How is it we are able to return a ball out of the air and deposit it in exactly the right spot with a subtle tap of the racquet? It’s quite extraordinary, even with all the advances in technology, how tennis players are able to divide, conquer and exchange this moving ball with a set of strings arranged in an oval frame. I think of the drop shot as the most subtle of tennis maneuvers. It’s a subtle move of the wrist that does the trick. It’s barely noticeable, really.

What are the subtle exchanges in your life? Which words are the subtle unspoken ones that stay on your ears the longest? What about when a friend subtlety says your name, followed by a friendly hello. I remember the final time I saw a dying friend. I leaned over her hospital bed. Her smile broke me down inside. She touched my wrist with such subtlety I will remember that gentleness the most. Where do you experience life’s subtleties? Mine are in the subtle touches of a friend, the soft kiss given by a lover,  the smile from a stranger, the unceasing ocean splashing softly in the distance, the forgiving Lord’s promise carried in my heart, the sureness and the peacefulness of a tennis court, the silent breaks of a song. I’m led to believe there is more to every part of our lives than meets the eye. In every breath, there is a subtle miracle somehow revealed. All of us have similar experiences, but each of us sees differently. The subtlest part of life I’ve come to know lies not in my sight but in my spirit. It is there I happen across the most recognizable of subtleties.

“The light of your eyes still shines”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwyWNanGkjE

Cherish

“Just can’t turn and walk away”

Tomorrow marks my last twenty days in New York. Here are twenty of my most memorable “firsts” from living in New York.

1.      My first bicycle. It had training wheels and a bell.

2.      My first shopping trip to buy a baseball glove. It was a gold and black Wilson.

3.      My first time having a sleepover at my house. It was a blast.

4.      My first time saying goodbye to my sister as she left for college. It made me cry.

5.      My first time leaving home and my parents. It was bittersweet.

6.      My first trip to New Paltz as a kid. It was to go swimming at the community pool.

7.      My first ride to Fredonia as an undergraduate student. It was long.

8.      My first time attending a funeral. It was my grandmother’s.

9.      My first baseball game. It was a Shea Stadium with my dad and sister.

10.  My first trip to the Bronx Zoo. It involved underground groundhog holes

11.  My first time driving a car. It was a ’93 Nissan Altima.

12.  My first slow dance. It was in a church.

13.  My first kiss. It was at a desk.

14.  My first love. It was a sunny day.

15.  My first heartbreak. It was a holiday.

16.  My first sports heartbreak. It was the Dallas Cowboys

17.  My first taste of Mom’s no bake cookies. It was scrumptious.

18.  My first softball shutout. It was surreal.

19.  My first tennis sections championship. It was overdue.

20.  My first concert. It was 98 degrees.

“And I thought I’d seen it all because it’s been a long, long time”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkiZSTIGpIY

A New

The things I think when away from you

Keep me close to feeling new

The steady sun rising in July

In perfect cadence with the light of your eye

The wild deer who hears the hum

Between our voices and the summer drum

The holy hand of He who loves

Completes the sweet sound of doves

The whispering wind that speaks of home

Rides the waves as we do roam

I wash my tears in memory

Of those suns, and you near me

To think your arms in mine again

Bring me to that place of when

Where newness sings a subtle rhyme


And our two hearts refresh the chime



Will I ever again be held by you



In tender kisses, as if a new