You will take over 200 million steps in your lifetime. Imagine if your feet could narrate a travelogue, reporting miles and destinations, while they are at rest, and injuries they may have sustained. They dance and run, burrow in sand, hold you in mountain pose. Your feet have tracked memories, recording the spot beneath them together with the merging of [...]
My decision to leave my hometown of Chicago came without lengthy contemplation. After three unemployments in six years during my budding advertising career post college and eighteen months working in corporate banking, the city turned its back by not bestowing its wealth. My weary footsteps had marked every city corner, intersection, advertising and employment agency during my interviews and [...]
On a Saturday morning a few years ago, I responded to a hankering. I needed to free a hall closet in my house of clutter. I understood what faced me – the messiest offender found in three files buckets – as soon as I opened the door. I spied a particular grey one packed askew with folders and paper and [...]
I believe in a lot of things. I believe the sun will rise from the horizon and awaken all that was dormant in darkness. I believe the sparkle in the night skies are stars in the universe. I believe in Christmas. I believe in Santa Claus. I also believe in my memoir and my strength in writing it. I believe [...]
THE BIRCH TREES I’ll always remember the birches for as long as I live. It’s the silver bark of the birch, the lenticels, and the height they grow to whilst remaining slim . . . but they always remind me of home. James Roy Blair "My tree attraction wasn’t for just any tree. I noticed this one’s ashen white [...]
My memoir, “Under the Birch Tree” has been a work in progress for over ten years but it has been only the last year where I have been intent on completing it. It’s time for me to turn the last page and close it up. I have received critiques from two trusted editors/writers. Their feedback really came to the same [...]
“The Deerfield Commons, it used to be over there, that whole block, with Waukegan and Deerfield roads fencing it in,” I muttered with a heavy sigh looking west as I drove north on Waukegan Road. I say it every time I drive into Deerfield, where I grew up, and pass that intersection. I am flooded with memories and pictures of [...]
What is home? Is home necessarily a physical place? Is home a state of being? Does it have emotions? Is it linear or does it witness change? Does home move like a river, characterized by its ebb and flow? Is it ever elusive? When we think of the answer to a commonly asked question, “So, where’s home?” we automatically spout [...]
The Carlisle house. The upstairs bathroom, the kid’s bathroom, was at the top of the stairs and in the middle of the hall. A bathtub with showering capabilities and a toilet were provided on the opposite side of the double sinks and counter. I experienced life’s measurements in the bathroom. The muddy blue double sinks were separated by a light [...]
I heard the call. It wasn’t a whisper or a delicate voice or loud words urging me to transcribe thoughts to paper where I hoped to see ideas born into stories. The call went off like an alarm, telling me it was time to awaken my spirit. I received my calling when I was fifteen, accompanied by a pink hardcover [...]