This is the last morning my son will wake up in our home for a very long time. He is moving to Australia, a continent with a completely different set of constellations. We will no longer share the same sky. Since man first stared out at horizons, since we learned to build boats and muster armies, to conquer lands or scratch an adventuresome itch, ...
Who remembers the Shell Answer Man? Shell Answer Man 1978 When I was growing up, the Shell Corporation ran a series of TV commercials that lasted for almost three decades. In each one, the immaculately dressed Shell Answer Man offered handy dandy tips about cars and driving. Boy, back in the day, that man was an automotive authority, an icon on par ...
I’ve been telling some version of my story for almost eleven years. Give or take, that’s about a fifth of my life. It’s been a profession, a part-time career really, speaking to groups of varying size, charities, associations, investment banks, lecture series, insurance companies, hospitals and medical professionals, ladies lunches, country clubs, ...
Early summer morning, low clouds spitting rain. My girls are running late for work again. They’ve been lolly-gagging in the bathroom and we need to be on the road to the local market, where they’re getting their first taste of earning an honest wage. I wear my “annoyed face” as they scurry to the car, but secretly, I’m proud of them. They’ve been ...
Long ago, I determined that if my house ever caught fire, the one thing I would grab would be my photo albums. Everything else, I reasoned, was replaceable. But life’s memories? Impossible. Tragic. Re-organizing the basement this summer, I opened a Tupperware container of mementos and immediately smelled danger. Not smoke or fire, thank goodness, ...