Remember no man is a failure who has friends.
I gave blood today!
Actually, I gave blood yesterday, June 10, but today’s timely article on the continued ban on donations from men who have EVER had sex with another man caught my attention. I’m not gay (not that there’s anything wrong with it) but this ban does seem a bit extreme.
It was one month ago that Susan and I spoke, for the first time in a very long time. So, what’s been going on since? Well, we’ve been in touch, emailing back and forth over the past few weeks, and things are going OK. Things are good.
Honestly, it is a bit surreal – it’s been just so long that I’m often pinching myself to make sure I’m not caught in a dream. There are a bunch of questions I want to ask, to find out more about where Susan has been, and maybe discuss whatever it was that caused such a split between us for so long, and why I even bothered to find her and wanted to be in touch with her; she might even have a question or two for me…
Maybe I’m just now officially old. A catalog from JC Penney arrived in the mail on Saturday, with a swimsit model on the cover.
Didn’t this kind of stuff used to get delivered in a brown paper wrapper?
So that roll of film that I’d been holding on to for 31 years; the roll that had been in a film container inside of a Tri-X pan box, which contained photos taken at the BCHS Baccalaureate on June 6, 1979, actually does NOT contain any such pictures! Additionally, despite my having written on the outside on the Tri-X box that it contained color film, the roll of negatives are clearly black and white film.
I picked up the processed roll of negatives on Friday afternoon (there was nothing of any quality worth printing) and took them home to view on my PC’s scanner, only to find what appears to be photos taken in someone’s home, perhaps posing for prom or graduation photos(?) Now I am totally confused. Maybe the camera I borrowed that night from Warren was already loaded, which was the roll of film that broke? If so, then where is the roll of photos that I took during the Mass?
I went back to the box where the Tri-X pan box was stored, and discovered 4 more containers of unprocessed film (2 color, 2 Plus-X pan) that I will need to have developed next week. Could one of the color rolls be the missing photos? This is puzzling…
As we continue to trip down memory lane, today is the 30th anniversary of my Bishop Egan High School graduation… it was on a Friday evening, at St. Michael the Archangel Church, when my fellow graduates and I assembled for the last time as the Class of 1980. We wore our caps, our gowns, and our blue and gray hoods, and waited throughout the ceremony and Baccalaureate Mass until finally each of our names was called, and we rose in recognition of our newly earned alumni status. What began on a rainy morning in September 1976 drew to a close, never to open again. All of the structure and daily rituals with which we’d become so familiar, for many of us was now to be replaced with the much more loosely defined activities of college; some would seek immediate opportunities in the workplace, others would struggle to find their purpose and place in the world, while for some of us those distinctions were not so clear.
I’d carried a lot of baggage along the way; some of it had been useful stuff which offered me a source of inspiration and wisdom, while much of it had been dead weight, dragging me down and keeping me from moving forward. Sometimes, I am a slow learner; it took a long time for me to recognize when it was time to take action and cut loose the excess baggage, put my learnings and experiences to good use, and move on: to finally graduate.
There is no way that I ever imagined, as I write this now, the various directions my life has taken since that Friday evening; living in New Jersey for nearly 20 years, raising two great kids with a wonderful woman I met nearly 19 years ago, whom I never thought upon our initial meeting that I would marry, now nearly 12 years ago.
On a separate note, today also marks the 31st anniversary of the Bishop Conwell High School Class of 1979 Baccalaureate. I attended the Mass as a photographer for the yearbook, using Warren Stewart’s 35mm camera, and when I was finished taking pictures I had a hard time re-winding the film onto the spool, as I did not know that there was a button on the camera bottom to release the film. I ended up winding the film too tightly until it snapped inside the shutterbox; I tried to be careful and not expose the film by opening the camera and removing the film in a darkened closet when I got home, and I put the film back inside the plastic barrel and then inside the film box and taped it shut. The pictures I took that night have never seen the light of day, as that film has never been developed and still sits inside the container. I really should take it out for development, but after this much time I’d be very much surprised if any images were still on the film. I do remember taking a picture of a daisy that Susan had given me at Joe’s party on the night of June 2nd…
This Sunday, June 9th, will mark the BCHS Class of 1979 graduation; I was out on the front lawn cutting the grass on that Saturday morning when a car sped up my house, parked, and out jumped Susan to run over and give me an enormous hug of excitement. Later that night, her family hosted a graduation party at her house on Fairview Avenue; I wore my rainbow suspenders, and briefly met her Mom before heading to the backyard to hang out with Joe and some others whom I no longer remember. I vaguely recall Zsoka being there, and I think quite possibly I might have gotten a ride home with her; Jimi Hendrix was singing Hey Joe as Zsoka and I were leaving.
I rode my bike over to Susan’s house one or two times during the course of the summer, but by August, Susan and I were hardly speaking; she left for school at Davis and Elkins in West Virginia, and her house was sold out of her parents’ divorce. When I finally saw Susan again in December of 1979, she was living at the Village of Pennbrook apartments and there was no going back to Fairview Avenue again.
Lastly, today is also the 23rd wedding anniversary of my dear friends Tom and Nicole. They’re living in suburban Atlanta now for I think 14 years, and I don’t see them nearly as often as I’d like, i.e. maybe once/year if we’re lucky. We used to spend quite a bit of time together in the late 80’s and in the early 90’s when I first moved to New Jersey (they were living in Somerset back then) back before we were all married with kids. Their oldest now is preparing for her own graduation and college…
A recent comment has given me pause; apparently, there is some sort of recurring theme to this site, and aside from the obvious, i.e., ME, the comment made me stop and think.
Yes, obviously first and foremost the site is about me, or at least what I’m currently thinking or what it going on in my life. I write about my wife and kids, about being a Dad, living in NJ, but then there is this OTHER stuff: the constant looking in the rear-view mirror to write about events from 20 to 30 or more years ago. Some would believe that this site is not forward-looking enough, the it celebrates the past at the sake of the present. I’ve heard that criticism before, and the recent comment makes me consider it again.
Am I living in the past? I don’t think so; again, there are plenty of posts about the current goings-on of my daily life. No, I think what’s happening here is I write about the past as my way of preserving it; the people and places of those posts are mostly gone from my day-to-day, and I miss them, terribly. Not the events, but the people. I’ve been living now for close to 20 years in the metro-NYC area, over an hour from the friends with whom I shared so many memories, those people who, along with my own family, form the nucleus of the person I am, and I don’t want to let go of them. I write to remember those people, and to maybe try to explain their importance to me in my life. I’m not trying to recapture, repeat or re-live the past, but rather to remember it for what it was, and maybe find new meaning in it now.
For example, I am an erstwhile artist; I used to draw and sketch but I lost my muse many years ago. However, I’d been writing in my spiral bound notebook journals for the most part since 1976, except for a couple of years taken off in the mid-80’s, another few years in the early 90’s, and then essentially 10 years off until I started writing this site in 2004. My journals were much more personal and intimate, as I was truly only writing for myself with no real intention that I would ever share that content with anyone. I did not care too much about sentence structure, or elements of style, but I’ve been very much aware that my blog content is different, and I write with a different perspective. I’ve been writing for a long time now, and my writing has matured. I care about writing for an audience (even if no one ever actually registers to read what I write anyway) that cares about good writing, and I’ve focused my creative energies on becoming a better writer rather than on drawing. Sure, from time to time I am tempted to pick up a sketch pad and my old pencils and draw again, but it just never happens., not out of lack of interest but more out of lack of time and inspiration. I do feel that one day, I will get the chance to sit with my kids and draw something, again, and perhaps inspire something in them to take forward and find their own muses, but will that then mean that I would be living in the past, doing something that I used to do 30 years ago? There is no doubt that I have lived and learned, grown and matured, since those days; should I deny my self, my talents, my interests, from my children and my friends, old and new, out of some perceived notion that I have not grown or moved on? Of course not!
Does that make sense?
Literally. I finally took that 30+ year old roll of undeveloped film from the June 6, 1979 BCHS Baccalaureate to a local photo shop in Princeton for processing. I have no certainty that any of the photos taken that night will produce quality negatives and prints, but we’ll see when I pick up the order on this coming Friday afternoon.
W. running the 200 meter for SVdP track and field team. Sorry for the crappy picture qualilty, but it was taken with Edith’s 5 year old Motorola cell phone. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
OK, so we’ve got a Pack meeting tonight, and I’m not too entusiastic about the planned activity: cup stacking. I don’t know much about it, other than it is supposedly an up and coming pseudo-sport that helps to enhance eye-hand coordination. I’m just not too sure the Scouts are going to be too excited.
I was therefore trying to come up with another activity, one that would be simple enough to plan with such short notice, but also something the 6 to 10 year old boys would think is “awesome” and “cool!”
That’s when I found this:
No, the same spelling is not coincidence.
Yes, it is my daughter’s namesake.
This issuance in the Legends of Hollywood series honors Katharine Hepburn, one of America’s most fascinating and enduring film stars. The stamp portrait is a publicity still from the film “Woman of the Year” (MGM, 1942). The photographer was Clarence S. Bull. The selvage image shows Hepburn as she appeared in the play “West Side Waltz” (photo by Steve Schapiro).
Another memorable date, another Friday night, another week later… May 11, 1979. I had been granted permission to go out on the Friday night following the prior Friday night’s drunken debacle, and this time Roxy, Joe, and Susan stopped by my house to pick me up to head over to the Morrisville Drive-In to view George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead sequel, Dawn of the Dead. On the way there, we picked up Ed Wagner (this is where I believe I saw the rhododendrons in purple bloom somewhere along Pennsylvania Avenue.) To be honest, I don’t remember a lot about the night; I think it was a triple feature, and I do recall riding shotgun on the way there as well as during the movies. I vaguely remember visiting the snack bar, and probably the men’s room, and at one point I know I was sitting in the driver’s seat (I only have two words: tootsie pop) and before I knew it the movies were all done, it was nearly 2:00 AM, and I was in a whole new world of trouble. Not for being drunk or high, but rather just because it was so late. I ended up being grounded for the following Friday, and very nearly the Friday after that, but we’ll get to those dates soon enough.
Today is the 30th anniversary of Fr. Richard Davis’, T.O.R. ordination. Tom and I drove out to St. Francis College in Loretto on the evening of May 9th, slept overnight in the seminary, and the next morning attended the ordination Mass and ceremony for our BEHS teacher and friend. When I look back on various life decisions I’ve made, attending Fr. Richard’s ordination is one of the better ones, and each year on this date I pause to remember him and that very special day.
A few weeks later, Fr. Richard gave me a small present to celebrate my own special day, my graduation from BEHS. It is a Paula’s Impressions photograph, upon which is written the following:
I shall pass through this world but once
Any good therefore that I can do
Or any kindness that I can show
To any human being, let me do it now.
Let me not defer or neglect it.
For I shall not pass this way again.
I’ve managed to hold onto this gift for now nearly 30 years, still displayed on a shelf near my desk; I admit I often overlook this photograph in my daily activity, but every now and then it draws my attention, and I pause to think about those words and whether or not I have been true to them. It never fails to inspire me to be more aware of my actions, and the want to try harder.
I was thinking about my reading material, and the choices that I usually make between fiction and non-fiction, classics vs. contemporary, etc. Although I have not performed any type of analysis on my collection over at LibraryThing, my guess would be that I generally prefer historical non-fiction… although more recently I’ve been reading fiction, so go figure.
This past week I finished a book that I had bought 10 years ago, after reading a review in the Sunday New York Times: Lying Awake, by Mark Salzman. It is the story of a cloistered Carmelite nun, who experiences painful headaches which proceed into ecstasies of the Lord Jesus Christ; due to the severity of the headaches, she seeks out medical attention, which reveals a small tumor located behind her ear which may be the cause of the headaches. She is presented with the difficult choice of surgery to have the tumor removed, and potentially ending the intense closeness she obtains with her Saviour, or leaving the tumor, experiencing a state of grace that may actually be delusional, as well as risking her own health. Although I’ve recommended this book to my wife and to others, I’d never actually read the book myself, until two weeks ago when I finally pulled the hardcover off the shelf. It was a relatively quick read, but I found it to be thought provoking and worthy of all of the recommendations I’d made over the years.
Somehow thereafter, I started to think about my casual reading interests, in the form of magazines and periodicals, and started to put together a list of some of the various magazines to which I’ve subscribed over the years (current subscriptions marked with *):
In addition to these, I usually pick up from the newstand Mojo, National Review, Utne Reader. I’m not sure if this all means something, but it’s just kind of interesting, I think.
Edith came home from the hospital today; her surgery went well, without issue, and now she’s home to rest for the next 8 weeks. I’ll also be working from home for a couple of weeks, to help her out.
For the first time in over 25 years, I called Susan this morning. I left a message, she returned my call c. 11:30, and we spoke for about 45 minutes or so before I had to take care of some issues Kate was having, although I felt that we could have gone on longer… it was almost surreal, in a way.
My heart was beating rapidly, and I was quite literally shaking when I decided to pick up the phone and call her (some things never change) and it took 3 attempts before I took a deep breath and hit the TALK button on the phone to send the call. I listened to her voicemail recording, and left my message, somewhat disappointed but satisfied that I had done what I emailed Susan I would do, and called her.
I was carrying laundry upstairs when the phone rang, and I answered it in our bedroom, and then wandered throughout the house, totally in the zone of this conversation that I’d waited for so long to have. Susan’s voice initially seemed different than I remembered, but eventually I recognized her distinctive lisp. We talked about our lives, our families, our gardens… it was good, pleasant conversation. Susan did thank me for being patient with her, and said that it had taken her a long time to see me as a friend and not a threat; I told her that was all I ever was, and that I have no expectations from her, which I believe is true, but it does make me wonder… I guess I do have an expectation in that Susan will actually help to build this rekindled friendship and really stop hiding from me… we’ll see… patience.
Lastly, Happy Birthday today to Nicole T!
“How rich and rewarding our friendship might have been all these years if we hadn’t disconnected when we were younger.”
Well, here it is, another May 4th… another year after the year I was a junior in high school, finding myself another year further down the road, now 31 years on.
I pause each year at this time, to remember a particular evening in 1979, for what I consider to be a watershed moment in my life, the critical point in my life when I started along the path to become the person I am today. To that point, my existence had been sufficient to simply float along, still tied to the apron strings of my childhood. To be certain, I had started to explore beyond the familiar surroundings of my life sometime in the middle of the prior year, but to that date I had never dared myself to peck at the shell and crack open the egg, until that night.
So, what exactly happened? Interestingly enough, I’m not sure I remember; not necessarily because of the amount of time and brain cells lost between then and now, but rather because I was flat out drunk on the night in question and I can only remember bits and pieces. I do remember receiving my parents’ permission to go out on that Friday night, and Roxy driving her big ass car up to my house, with Joe and Susan along for the ride. We picked up Kenny, and then I rode shotgun as we headed over to Trenton. I recall the purple flowers of rhododendrons in bloom somewhere along Pennsylvania Avenue in Morrisville (or was that the following week, when we saw Dawn of The Dead at the Morrisville Drive-In?) It started to rain. We picked up some beer, somewhere; I sat in the car while side one of Born To Run played on the radio – it was all cool, we were in New Jersey. Susan told me she was from New Jersey… after a while we stopped for a bathroom break, Joe, Kenny and I pissing near the front of the car, and in my naiveté I wandered to the back of the car to ask the two squatting women if they had dropped something.
From there, things get murky. I recall kissing Roxy; I vaguely remember something about scraping a guardrail; eventually I exchanged places with Kenny and ended up in the back seat, drinking Tuborg Gold with Susan and Joe. I moved in and out of consciousness, and heard in the distance Joe repeatedly telling me to stop grabbing his crotch. We made it to somewhere, maybe Burlington, where we stopped in the parking lot while Roxy helped Susan deal with some bad medicine; the Rolling Stones You Can’t Always Get What You Want played on the radio; the most memorable part of the evening was when we ended up in Lahaska at Peddler’s Village, to use the facilities. I found Roxy in the men’s room, just as she had proceeded to leave lipstick covered lip prints all over the mirror. We walked back to her car, and I pulled up a clump of yellow flowers, roots and all, from one of the beds and presented them to her.
Somewhere between Lahaska and Levittown, I went down for the count. We arrived back at my parents’ house after what seemed like an eternity, but I believe it was only c. 11:30 PM. Joe walked me to the door and practically poured me across the threshold. I went to my room and passed out, only to be awakened by my concerned parents minutes later, worried that I was permanently brain damaged from the alcohol and whatever other chemicals were coursing through my bloodstream (maybe I was.)
So, what’s the big deal? I went out with some friends and got a bit plastered – maybe it was the first time, but it was certainly not the last. No, the big deal was that somehow, during the course of the night’s events, I came to identify something that sparked inside me to question the status quo, to embrace the new, to explore, to examine, to feel, to care, to love, and find out once and for all exactly who I am, what do I believe, and what is important to me.
Maybe it was all just coincidence, but I don’t think that it was; the friends I was with that evening were friends who encouraged me, who saw in me the potential, and believed in me. Out of the energy we shared, on that night and others, came the writer, artist, designer, reader, gardener, hiker, lover, husband and father that I am today.
© 2025 This is walto.com
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
You must be logged in to post a comment.