Falling In Love

Together

Falling In Love

I’m not sure how it happens or why it happens, but it happens.

Someone drifts into your life, sometimes like a soft summer breeze breathing fresh air into your thoughts, sometimes like an distant star exploding into dusty energy that finds its way into your heart.

Someone appears when you least expect it, and that person touches some part of you, not the part that is waiting for love, not the loneliness inside you, not the longing you have for another’s touch, but something ... something that causes a curious turn of the head, something that catches you looking twice, looking back, looking with different eyes at a world you thought you knew, understood, had pinned down. It can happen on a warm summer’s drive or walking down a cold city street, at the most expensive restaurant or across a creaky kitchen table, in the pale light of morning's waking or in the darkest passion of the night. In that single moment, you feel lost, found, awake, unconscious, frightened, confident, and above all else, transformed.

The world changes. The world you thought you knew melts down before your eyes like a lazy candle flickering by an open window, and what you thought you knew best about your life becomes what you no longer really know at all. At first, you fight it, question it, laugh at yourself, consider and reconsider the surge of simple joy that seems to rise from within you. You walk through your daily life, but it’s a different journey now. Someone else walks with you, inside you, and in any unexpected moment you remember the smile, the sound of a voice, the gentle look of special eyes. You glow, you say silly things, you find yourself smiling uncontrollably, you turn to music, you imagine poetry, you drift into moments of restlessness. You become more than what you were. You grow ... your thoughts expand, multiply or divide ... who can say what the right word is?

Some say love completes you. I say love breaks you apart, crashes and smashes you into a jigsaw of emotions that you will never understand, throws you in pieces across a rocky beach, creates a puzzle so complicated and so baffling that you feel helplessly confused in the knowing that you can no longer feel whole again away from that other hand that touches your hand, separate from the lips that brush your lips, apart from the heart that beats in steady harmony with your heart.

Love is never the dreamy pitter-patter of rain on a tin roof. Love comes like a hurricane sweeping through your thoughts with a fury and ruthless abandon so great that it destroys every memory of every romance that ever came before. Anything less is unacceptable. Anything less leaves traces of doubt, an unrelenting question that drops from somewhere in your thoughts and leaves you looking back, leaves you reconsidering distant echoes of your past. Love knows no past, only the present, and a glimpse at the future.

Love is never a compromise, never a surrender of who you are, never an acquiescence with the distant starlight of your highest expectations, never a settling of differences with a promise that suits you now but will infuriate you later. No, love is the unconditional commitment never to compromise again, never to settle for anything less than undefined rapture. It is a contract you make to explore the wilderness of the unknown. If you look for the fine print, then you've already lost your way. There is no certainty that you will survive the journey. There is no warranty on parts and labour, no guarantee that love will last beyond the next corner. Love is accepting every risk, every warning, every obvious failure around you, and then blindly signing your name on another person’s soul. Love may dissipate in a twinkling of a star or last forever. If you can't risk the uncertainty, step off the road.

Above all else, love is never anything less than discovering the wonder of life. Love is a ticket into the most spectacular show on earth. Through every thrill and every spill, love steadies a spotlight on what you never imagined was possible. It connects you to another and to another world. It carries you forward across the tightrope wire, where you step smoothly through every anticipation of disaster until, finally, you realise that the twists, the turns, the death spirals of emotion lead not to catastrophe, but to the safety net of another waiting, constant heart. The price of admission is great — everything that you are — but through every act, you will find yourself eager, breathless, hopelessly happy, and unable to know who you were or even who you are, because you are no longer one, alone and apart.

You have become one of two.

Falling in love . . . so unpredictable, so unsettling, so utterly frightening . . . and so wonderful.

 

the motive for metaphor

The Chair

the motive for metaphor

in the room
the lovers fold into one another
disappear and reappear from
under the worn white sheets
of the bed over there
across from where i sit
in the corner of the room
on a simple wooden chair
and i watch blankly
feeling slightly bemused
and somewhat out of place
not quite the poet laureate of love
more an embarrassed observer
with pen and paper
here to chronicle
the events of the evening
for you

they bend under the weight of sex
flexing taut muscles that fire
and then relax
and i jot down the cadence
of every whisper and groan
in the rise and fall
of this symphony of desire
carefully noting how
her hair flies in a perfect arc
over her softly lit shoulder
just before her lips pout and part
to caress and encircle his eagerness
and when his kiss
finds the heave of her hesitant hips
i grasp for the perfect mixture of words
feel it form and rush along the fingertips of thought
before it collapses completely
and is gone

i have known these lovers
for time passing over time
their elongated and supple bodies
so easily dancing and writhing here in the shadows
have turned into one another
since the days of the Roman gods
theirs is an enduring ritual
that races down a familiar path
from gentle caress
to the rehearsed chaos
that measures the crushing blows
of flesh and bone
in the murderous longing for ecstasy
until at last she is lost in him
and he is lost in her
and both cross the sacred divide
each helplessly obliterated
for the sweep of mere seconds
in the fusion that other poets
far better than me
have described as
the motive for metaphor

 

Playing Poker With God

Cosmic Poker

Playing Poker With God

This morning, I got to thinking what it would be like to be on television in one of those Poker Stars games with God.

Now, please don't misunderstand me. I know some of you are very religious, and I'm not trying to be blasphemous or anything like that. The idea of God gambling is not so weird. After all, He sort of rolled the dice when He built that luxury Garden of Eden development. From what I've heard, it was a fabulous gated community of two, but it crapped out on Him. He had to go into the reno/houseboat business and, more or less, start all over again.

So how hard is it to imagine me, Kennedy, and God sitting across from one another, with our poker chips stacked neatly on opposite sides of a green felt card table? I'd be sitting there with my best poker face on, and the Big Guy? Well, I'm not sure what God looks like. I know we're supposed to be created in His image, but that whole burning bush incident with Moses kind of makes that theory a little suspect. I guess it doesn't really matter in the big scheme of things, but I just know He would have the best poker face of anyone around, even if he resembled a cabbage. And I guess He would know all the percentages regarding when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em, like in that Kenny Rogers' song. After all, He's omniscient, omnipotent, omnivorous, and all those other omni's. Me? Yeah, I'm not even a demi. I know nothing about that poker stuff. I'd just be playing on a wing and a prayer ... so to speak.

Now, I realise my chances of winning against God would be slim to none. I mean, He could change two aces into twelve if that's what he wanted. All I could do is throw around a bunch of free will and act all cocky to try and psych him out with a bluff of some kind.

Win or lose, I find the idea of betting against God very intriguing. If God bet a demand for 10,000 good deeds from everyone on the planet, I could maybe counter with requirement that He provide a cure for cancer. If he raised me by insisting that a church be built on every second street corner, I could counter with a call for the end of poverty everywhere. He raises me morning and evening prayers for everyone? I could insist on the end of depression, learning disorders, and all forms of mental illness. Yep, he can roll out all the sacred demands he wants, and I'm sure to have another piece of the human puzzle that needs a solution.

I know, I know. God would probably be sitting on four aces, and I'd probably have a pair of fours. After all, the Big Guy is all-powerful, remember? But, maybe, just maybe, by throwing my bets out there on the table, He'd accept that we have an abundance of problems down here — real stuff that needs real fixing. I suppose he could go "all in" as they say, and bet the Apocalypse, but I'm ready for that. I'd counter with an offer that He keep the world going, but with a few changes. I'd demand that He ensure that our children wouldn't have to repeat the same-old, same-old scenario of living in a world of greed, prejudice, hatred, war, lust, politics, rape, eco-disasters, divorce laws — all the resident evils that have fallen into our laps ever since Eve threw snake-eyes on the other side of the casino.

Hey, you never know. He's been known to perform a miracle or two before, and I figure God might be a smarter player than any of us realise. He might have one of those epiphanies He invented, then simply look across the table, and with a wink or a nod, say, "OK, Kennedy, you win."

Now, that would change everything.

Of course, if that happened, I'd expect you to address me as Saint Kennedy.

That's a stretch, I know, but you'd get used to it.

 

Living In The In-Between

Waiting

Living In The In-Between

Have you ever noticed how we live our lives on some weird journey in between this and that?

Maybe it's just me, but I always have a sense that no single experience in my life completes the puzzle of living. I am always thrown into an anticipation of something else.

Take birthdays, for example. I just had a birthday last month, and that was a fairly nice celebratory day, and now I'm already thinking about my next birthday and what it will be like to be 64. You see, I sort of dread the idea of being 64 because of that Beatles's song, "When I'm Sixty-Four," you know the one that goes "Will you still need me/Will you still feed me/When I'm sixty-four?" Most of my life, I've kind of thought of that song as an anthem for some kind of borderline between independent living and being dependent on other people to do stuff for me.

I'm not sure what kind of stuff I'll need done for me when I hit the age of 64, but I'm pretty sure I'll still be able to feed myself, shower alone, dress myself, and do all the other essentials of my life. However, there will come a time, I guess, when I won't be able to do some of those things. When I think of the possibility of depending on someone else to get me through the day, I have to confess I get a little anxious. I'm not sure I could stand being nursed or fussed over by someone else. It seems a little creepy when I think that there might be day when someone else has to tug on my underwear and tuck my penis to the left or the right depending on its preference for that day.

And who will those other people be? Will my loved ones clean up my accidents and messes around the house? Will I have to live in one of those old folks homes, where some Nurse Ratched will tend to me like I was an elder-child? Quite honestly, I fear losing all my dignity somewhere down the road of time. It all sounds like a huge drag.

So I live somewhere in the in-between of being just old and being uselessly old, in between being OK with the way I live and not being OK with the way I may have to live.

Most of us have similar preoccupations with what lies ahead, with the next turn in the road, with the next chapter in the book of life. It's like we're in some cosmic waiting room — waiting for whatever is inevitably coming next.

Parents know all about living in the in-between. If you've ever had a two-year-old, you know about the "terrible twos." For some unknown reason, two-year-olds suddenly go berserk, and mothers and fathers everywhere can't wait for this little nuance of a nuisance to reach a end. Almost miraculously, at three-years-old, a child reverts to being the angel he or she once was. Then at the age of twelve or thirteen, puberty kicks in, and once again, all hell breaks loose.

The teenage years are a classic example of living in the in-between, for everyone involved. Thankfully, most kids leave home and go to college around the age of eighteen. There, they can be as nutty as a stale Christmas fruitcake, just as long as they don't come back before they're twenty-one. By the age of twenty-one, they'll have learned how to drink themselves into a state of oblivion, have experimented with some kind of non-medicinal hallucinogenic drug, and have lost their virginity.

After their college years, most young people are ready to settle into adulthood and thereby begin the longest stretch of the in-between highway. Year after year clicks off the odometer of their adult lives as they pass through the towns of thirty, forty, fifty, and sixty. Each stop on this road map of life always seems to be approached with dire apprehension, followed by conciliatory acceptance, and then more apprehension. It's a wonder anyone makes it to 64.

Most will get a job, and quickly learn what it means to live from pay cheque to pay cheque. For most of us, money flows out of bank accounts much faster than it flows in, so we struggle in the in-between world of paydays, as we try to balance bills, taxes, money for food, money for love, and so on.

Then, of course, many will get married. Marriage is possibly the most joyful and yet most direful form of living in the in-between. We marry with wonderful and hopeful expectations, with the notion that we have found a soulmate with whom we shall live forever, until one day, we wake up and hear a loud tick-tick-ticking of discontent. Suddenly, she looks like shit in the morning, and he looks like crap in the evening. She gets up and throws on the rattiest looking bathrobe and walks around with her hair looking like she had just climbed over an electric fence, and he sits around watching sports on the television in sweatpants and some tattered Bob Seeger T-shirt while drinking beer and farting. Romance wanes, sex disappears, and before long, eyes wander and wonder. Tick-tick-tick. The countdown to divorce has begun, and for those who will admit it, the hell of living in the in-between begins, as the married couple moves through the seemingly unending days of agony between giving up and getting out.

We're taught to "follow our dreams, and someday we'll find happiness." Someday? Someday? When does "someday" come? Far too many of us spend most of our lives waiting for that wondrous someday to arrive, while we twist and turn in the in-between.

Expectant mothers know the rolling aches and pains of the in-between.

Soldiers on a tour of duty know the dangers of the in-between.

Online lovers video-chat in the in-between.

Prisoners in the "big house" live a sentence in the in-between.

Addicts, hooked on drugs, alcohol, food, or even sex, try to escape the in-between.

People with terminal illnesses struggle through the diminishing days, months, or years of the in-between.

Wait, wait, wait. Life is such a perpetual chronology of waiting.

I know, I know. You'll say, "Live in the moment. Live for today. Tomorrow will take care of itself."

And you're right, of course. Being overly concerned with what the future might bring is nothing more than an irrational obsession. After all, so many learned philosophers say that it's the journey that matters, over and above the destination. And yet, there is no journey without a destination. It's a paradox, I guess, one of life's many riddles that keeps us forging ahead and grasping at what is next.

What is next? No one can say for certain, but whatever is coming will come and possibly answer all your questions. Then you'll wake up the next day with a new set of questions and expectations as you go back to living in the in-between.

 

Five Days Of Poetry — Day 5

Lost In Words

A House Of Words

i am lost in a house of words
the walls cracked with
accidental adjectives
the floor sticky
with leftover transitive verbs
and careless allusions
and i am careful not to trip
on a casual simile
stumble on a pile of
mixed metaphors
or hit my head
on a dangling participle
and fall into a comma

i am lost in a house of words
words of hope and words of despair
words of love and words of my darkest fears
words that form into phrases
and words that fall apart
crumbling into one another
almost by coincidence
words that build bridges
across chasms of uncertainty
and words i don't trust
for fear they will murder
some unsuspecting reader
leave the victim by the back door
decorate the corpse with flowery personifications
and by morning
recreate the living
in the dead

i am lost in a house of words
the burnt sienna or cadmium green
the yellow ochre or raw umber
of bright landscapes
or dark portraits
all the colours of my imagination's palette
mixed into images that spring to life
like summer wild flowers
swaying in the hot procreant breeze
of cross pollination
words washing together in strange sentiments
and cautious conjectures
across the empty page
to remind me of who i am
and who i am not

i am lost in a house of words
words intermingling with one another
and catching both light and shadow
in a perplexing reflection
shining outwards
from a transcendent mirror
words revealing
the bland and blank spaces
of my life
or of your life
words infusing the empty hollows
of every life drifting between birth and death
of every struggling soul
no matter how irreconcilably deluded
with the transforming truth
that opens the door
to discovering the fullest beauty of life
in so many simple words
words that create the art of
poetry

 

Five Days of Poetry — Day 4

Blowing In The Wind

The Valentine's Day Card

down the length
of a tattered postcard
he writes words
of love
not words he has
memorized and
not words he is
even used to writing
but words that flow
from his heart
and meet at some
synaptic station in his mind
where for a moment
they hesitate
like confused travellers
boarding the midnight train
and then in a flurry
of last minute excitement
the words rush through his veins
and out to his rough right hand
down through his fingertips
into the pen he holds
where his blood-red life
turns to the blue ink
forming fluid patterns
that swish and swirl
across the card
and leave just this
his Valentine's wish
a stuttering scribble of
i love you's
and uneven doodles
of almost boy-silly hearts and arrows
which immortalize the moment
until he wonders
if that is enough
then smiles the warmest smile
as he holds the card
up to the gusting west wind
and lets go

 

Five Days Of Poetry — Day 3

Goodbye

Impossible Dreams

Goodbye to all my impossible dreams
                            where every perfect wish is never really what it seems
                    Goodbye to all my impossible dreams

        Goodbye to the beauty of sweet romance
            always in the knowing look of some forbidden glance
         and hidden on the other side of a feverish sexual dance
    Goodbye to the beauty of sweet romance
                                 I guess I never really gave you all that much of a chance

Goodbye to all my impossible dreams
                            where every perfect wish is really never what it seems
                    Goodbye to all my impossible dreams

        Goodbye to all my ladies of the night
            to every promise you made and every offering of delight
         filling the deepest darkness with all your passionate light
    Goodbye to all my ladies of the night
                                 I'm only sorry I never really seemed to get it completely right

Goodbye to all my impossible dreams
                            where every perfect wish is really never what it seems
                    Goodbye to all my impossible dreams

        Goodbye to every hopeful start
            to words of love flowing like a river from my heart
         bubbling into frothy poems and walls of dreamy art
    Goodbye to every hopeful start
                                 I guess I never understood how easily things could fall apart

Goodbye to all my impossible dreams
                            where every perfect wish is really never what it seems
                    Goodbye to all my impossible dreams

        Goodbye to the ones I left behind
            thanks for never saying I was anything but kind
         when all the stars in the cold night's sky were clearly misaligned
    Goodbye to the ones I left behind
                                 I'm only sorry if I seemed so unreasonably hard to find

Goodbye to all my impossible dreams
                            where every perfect wish is really never what it seems
                    Goodbye to all my impossible dreams

        Goodbye to someone somewhere
            and to no one all alone and living neither here nor there
        just remember a broken heart is never completely beyond repair
    Goodbye to someone somewhere
                                 I hope you'll find another someone with a love for you to share

Five Days Of Poetry — Day 2

Desert Joe

i want to be a camel


i want to be a camel
    so you can jump on my hump
       jump on my hump
                    and bump
                               bump
                                        bump

                            across the prickly hot desert sand
  
    and when we reach
            an oasis somewhere over there
                with a cool teal pool
                        surrounded by pink palm trees
                      pink palm trees ever so lush
           then you'll close your floating turquoise eyes
              barrel roll your head
                         and with a hush
                                               hush
                                                     hush
                softly purr

    "Oh my ... oh my ... oh my, my, my ..."

            as you squirm
                                 squirm
                                            squirm
        over and above
            the sudden rush
                                 and unexpected gush  
                of a hot geyser getting head
                                    and bubbling up 
                                                           up
                                                                up                                                       
     so warm and wet
         so spanking dank
                and so-so-soaking

       soaking and seeping down
                                              down
                                                      down
            the furry crown
                        of my hump
                                         hump
                                                 hump

          until everything ends in a harmless but bashful blush


and at night we'll surely marvel
    at all the stars up above
        until by morning you will wonder
                if this is truly love

before you jump
                        jump
                                jump
back on my hump
                        hump
                                hump
and ride another mile east or west or north or south
    with the taste of sweet regret
                    in the back of your mouth
      

Five Days Of Poetry — Day 1

Missing Pieces

remember

when the world falls apart
remember
it falls into puzzle pieces
that over time
will find their way
back together
and remember most of all
you are still in my heart

when friends disappear
remember
the door that closes
need not be locked
from either outside or in
and remember most of all
you will always find me here

when love cools from flame to frost
remember
winter's winds
will soon be chased away
by warming breezes
and remember most of all
true love can never be lost

when days of gold begin to rust
remember
all the parcels of our past
were mostly glitter and unravelled bows
that opened to a more precious gift
and remember most of all
life continues beyond our passing into dust

 

Addicted

Raisin Cain

Addicted

I'm confused today. You see, I think that I must have an addictive personality.

No, it's not drugs to which I am addicted, not gambling, not the evil alcohol, not sex (I wish), not Jesus, no, none of the usual suspects.

The truth of the matter is that I am addicted to butter tarts.

Over the course of my life, I can't even imagine how many butter tarts have slipped through my lips, and now I fear they have become my obsession

I find myself spending my days drifting through the hours in a sea of sweet sultana surrender. Instead of making sense, I spend my time in a world of sticky nonsense, where I make up silly little poems like:

It was the butter tart
That broke my heart
And left me all alone.

I have to stop. I have to save myself from a life of bad poetry.

My urges sometimes get the best of me. Some days, I know that there are butter tarts aplenty out there for me to scoop up in my shopping cart and bring home. I could tumble into bed and gorge myself on that raisin and sticky sweet concoction so neatly whipped in its little pastry boat. And, sure, I would end up crashing from the sugar eventually and fall asleep amidst a wasteland of miniature tin pie plates and reruns of CSI. But I can't. I can't. You see, I'd just wake up to a crusty throat and a gooey raisin stuck in one of my back molars, and the first thing I would do is write yet another silly poem:

Love me with your shirt unbuttoned there
I want to run my lips across your body bare
I want to feel your hips rise up in a shudder
When you become my tart and I become your butter.

See????

Butter tarts are destroying my poetry, my imagination, my creative soul. Butter tarts are infecting my heart.

Such thoughts, such weird and crazy thoughts. All I want is my old life back, but instead, I find my personality splitting like the dead ends of a bad 80's hairstyle. It' so bad that I even remember sending different parts of me out to complete different tasks. One goes to the gym, one goes to the Library, and then the really bad one heads off to the grocery store. What for? Butter tarts, of course. Boxes and boxes of butter tarts. Uh-oh, here we go again ....

If you need me baby, just go to where the road starts,
You don't need no GPS, no fancy maps, no elaborate charts,
Just follow the trail of crumbs that have dripped from my butter tarts.

Arrghhh ... I'm drowning in glucose.

So if I'm not around for a day or maybe two,
Don't fret, there's nothing wrong and nothing you can do,
For as sure as the sky is green and apples are blue,
My life is stuck in a rut of butter tart goo.

 

A Day Of Wonder

Click to Enlarge
And Then There Were Three ...

A Day Of Wonder

Snow.

Stormy Monday

There was one heck of a lot of snow.

The school buses were cancelled, the weather reports were for dire and dangerous driving conditions, and people were cautioned to stay home.

When I came up from the gym, I looked out my windows and shook my head. "Looks like we're having a blizzard," I mumbled to the Ficus Benjemina drooping slightly in its draughty corner, "a typical Canadian blizzard of snow and ice."

After a hot shower, I dressed in my warmest pyjamas and made myself a bowl of piping hot oatmeal, which I ate while catching up on some reading that I had been meaning to do. It was a day to hibernate, read, make a phone call or two, and maybe watch a movie on television. It was certainly not a day to be venturing outside.

Then the phone rang.

The name of my son, who was working at a trade fair nearby, popped up on the call display, so I answered on the third ring.

"Josh?"

"Dad, I'm sjhggua."

"Josh, you're breaking up in the storm. Is everything OK?"

"No," I heard, as my son's hysterical voice soared into falsetto and banged in my ear like shots from a machine gun. "I'm stuck. I have to get to Oshawa. Linda is having the baby. I need a ride."

My eyes darted to the white rehearsal of the apocalypse outside.

"Are ... are you kidding?" I stuttered. "It's a blizzard out there."

"Dad, I need to get to Oshawa right away. I need a ride."

"OK," I conceded, "OK, I'll be right there. Meet me out front."

"Hurry."

Hurry? Hurry? The idea of hurrying along the icy streets folded into an image of me in my van wrapped neatly around a telephone pole, my nose broken from the impact of the air bag, my last gasps of breath uncertain at best.

Babies, it seems, have no sense of timing, no sense of propriety, and certainly no sense of consideration for the vagaries of time and place. When you least expect it, boom, they decide it's time to find their way into the world.

So I quickly fell into some warm clothes, grabbed several bottles of water, a protein bar, my cell phone, and in the next instant I was ploughing through snowy streets, trying my best to follow the indistinct tire tracks of others, who, I suspect, had no choice but to be on the roads that day.

As I approached a fortunately vacant intersection, my heart jumped into my throat. Stopping for the red light became something of a circus act, as my van completed a slightly imperfect 360º spin-o-rama. "This is not good," I mumbled to myself, "this is so not good."

Then, one of those voices that always seem to come from nowhere piped up from the deep recesses of my brain.

"Kennedy," it boomed in a deep monotone, "you're a Winnipeg boy. You grew up in conditions far worse than these, and you know how to drive in even the worst weather. Snow? Ice? Pfffft. Mere inconveniences. You have faced far worse. Drive like you were back on the prairies, and get this right."

And so, I did. I made it to where my son was waiting, picked him up, and headed for the freeway, which for all I knew, could have been closed because of the hazardous conditions.

Fortunately, the 401, the twenty lane expressway snaking across the north end of Toronto was open, and Oshawa was just 65 miles away.

To say that my son was wildly excited would be an understatement. As we zigzagged through the transport trucks that carved a path along the highway, he chattered about this and that. I'm not sure any of it made much sense, but I'm guessing it probably did. I was in a driving mode state of consciousness. I could hear him talking, could hear Bob Dylan's album, Tempest, playing on the CD player, but it all fused into one obsessive mission — to get to Oshawa safely, sooner rather than later.

After what seemed a never-ending drive, we made it to the hospital. I pulled into the driveway out front, and I wished my son all the best.

"Aren't you coming in?" the boy-in-a-man asked.

"No," I replied. "This is your gig. I'll come back tomorrow or the next day."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely."

As I watched my son sprint from the van and into the hospital, I was suddenly overcome with a sense of relief. I suppose it was the relief of knowing we had arrived on time, but it was something else as well. You see, we knew this was a baby boy about to shuffle into our lives, and for generations, no boy in my family genealogy has ever had a paternal grandfather, not me, not my father, and not his father.

"You've changed all that," I thought to myself. "You've mended a broken line."

I laughed at the thought. "Don't be so sure," I groaned to myself, "you're not home yet."

Back on the freeway, the snowfall had intensified, but the bad weather and the hazards of driving no longer seemed to matter. I drove slowly and cautiously, anticipating every danger and avoiding every potentially deadly situation one mile at a time.

At some point on the journey home, I looked over the guardrail and watched as blankets of snow settled in drifts across the countryside to the north. Time slowed to a stop and a eerie sense of awe came over me. My thoughts turned over how we live in pockets of experience, some good, some bad, moments of joy and sadness that flicker into being and then drift out of sight like the perilous twists and turns of the wintry road disappearing in my rear view mirror. Still, as long as we live, there is always a new experience ahead, and the birth of a grandson that evening has not only been one of my life's greatest joys, but also an affirmation that life continues beyond the span of a single lifetime.

To be honest, after living a life seemingly always on the brink of tragedy, I never truly believed that I would ever make it this far, and certainly never expected to arrive at this moment of grace. It's a blessing, I suppose, and a confirmation of something that I can't put into words.

All that I really know, and barely understand, is that some days are surely filled with great wonder.