That moment just as your mountain bike tires hit the dirt from a poorly performed surprise trail jump in which your feet flew from the pedals and your ass plomped onto the pointy part of the seat so hard the metal post snapped off and you’re still descending towards the bike’s crossbar and your grip on the handlebars is poor enough that have to choose between using your legs to save your balls or “steer” away from the tree.

I don’t remember Dave’s last name, but he was the captain of a men’s summer soccer club I played with for a couple years in college.  Jim’s high-school buddy and teammate Howard Kogan connected me with the team, but I don’t think he was playing the game I’m thinking of. Dave was a canny central defender/sweeper.  Dave was thirty, which seemed ancient, with a Tom Selleck mustache. He was an easy going guy before and during games. He played smart, which I liked, to make up for being a little bit older. I was in my usual spot as left defender/fullback. 

One night we were playing a team who’s center forward was a local star, nineteen like me, but built like a small truck. He’d just come off a season at a Division I school, maybe. He was fast, powerful, cocky with success. Dave had spent much of the game matching brain against brawn, keeping Tom (or whatever his name was) in check.  Late in the game, the striker and Dave chased a long pass heading towards our goal. They were racing side by side on the breakaway, Dave a head taller, and Todd (or whatever his name was) like a bull chasing him down a street of Pamplona cobblestone. Dave got his foot planted in front of the ball to stop the run. Tim, or whatever his name was, had a foot pushing behind the ball, and just leaned into him with his shoulder.  Not like a football tackle, more like this moment of pause-tension in a tug of war or arm-wrestling match. There was an instant of complete stillness, and then, Dave’s leg just…snapped. 

I was chasing them down the field anyway, and I’ll never forget the gunshot sound of his leg breaking, muffled and held in place by the padding of his shin guards. That wasn’t as disturbing as the low, sad-cow moan Dave let out as he fell and laid there. To his credit, Tig, or whatever his name was, was as gracious and concerned and helpful as anyone else was, while we waited for the ambulance to arrive and drive onto the field, to gurney Dave away.

There are few pleasures better than a forkful of blueberry pancake. The crisp brown pattern on the surface. The juicy-hot delight of a blueberry, large enough to show through both sides, as it pops on my tongue. The crush and crunch of brown sugar, dissolving in the butter; dissolving my teeth. The sweet freedom of a bowl of brown sugar in the center of the table. 

My godmother and her children are over for a summer day in our pool, suddenly cut short by an unpredicted thunderstorm. Not a rough, scary, blow, but a distant, steady flash and peel above the low, gray clouds, which will keep us indoors for the afternoon. Later there will be Monopoly, but now there are pancakes by the platter. My mother must have been planning to feed an army, as my godparents have an “old-timey Catholic” sized crew more suited for baseball than basketball. Most of them are younger than me, however, with shorter arms, and smaller bellies. My mother is a generous hostess, and it’s still the nineteen-seventies, and the blueberries are in season. She keeps cooking, and on this day, I will attempt to eat my body weight in blueberry pancakes. I make no claim to an exact memory of this day, but I am certain that I ate a double digit number of pancakes, and that first digit might not have been a one. 

I can not eat a blueberry pancake at a restaurant; I have been ruined by my mother’s and her mother’s work. I had a plate of mulberry pancakes outside of Glacier National Park that was delicious, but it was also after three days in the backcountry, and hunger is the best spice. Noone else ever came close, and I’ve stopped kicking at that football. I’ll feast upon the memory of pancakes, and eat my hunger. 

PS – People who put syrup on blueberry pancakes are monsters. 

PPS – This is not my most cherished fruit-based story.

In my childhood bedroom, at the foot of my bed, there was a low bookshelf. The top of the bookshelf was where I kept coin-can, my trophies, and my two round rocks.

Both rocks were about the size of a big orange, or a softball (are those the same size?). The one my grandfather found one day when I was six or seven, was almost perfectly round, and dark gray. It was kind of a lucky charm to me, although I don’t know why. I think it was just because it was so close to perfect. It was so smooth and symmetrical that it was probably a piece of natural clay that somebody shaped into a ball and then abandoned, only to be found days, months, decades later. The other one was light brown in color, rougher in texture, and more oblong. I found that one myself out on a walk with my mom, but I don’t recall where. The two were so well paired that that made a nice set of bookends for years. 

I’m not sure where the dark gray one ended up, but the light brown one I still sits on the shelf near my desk tonight.

I’m interested if any of you want to share childhood possessions that have made it this far with you in comments.

We were more than a day late getting home from our honeymoon, because of the joys of air travel, involving a dust storm in Phoenix, a temperature of 100 degrees at midnight, and the only time in my life flying first class. The travel was what we used to call “an ordeal” before the world descended into a COVID-fueled hellscape.

While we were away, friends Greg, Carolyn, Beth, Scott, and Jarrett came by and “decorated“ our apartment for when we got home. They did some wonderful things. They used the last of the helium and balloons. There were balloons everywhere. They even filled the washer and dryer with balloons, which was cool. They hid these lovely little fortune-cookie-sized notes in every drawer, nook, cranny and book in the place. I was still finding those little notes, 15 years later, saying “You may now kiss the bride”. I’m pretty sure the books still have some waiting to be found. It was lovely.

Unfortunately, they also put confetti all over the ceiling fan in our bedroom, which was not. Objectively, it was a pretty cool idea/prank. However, we got home near midnight after two exhausting days of travel, and I literally just wanted to fall into my bed. I turned on the ceiling fan and paper rained from the sky. I grumbled, slapped the fan control off, and we cleaned up the bedspread. After that mess, we folded down the bedcovers, undressed, and turned the ceiling fan back on, whereupon the rest of the confetti fell into my bed, and stuck to my sweaty body. I lost my shit. I went full-Hulk.I literally threw the queen mattress off it’s frame. I cursed my friends’ names, and only didn’t call them because it was so late. I was so furious with them, that even the next morning, at church, I was mad at Greg Hale’s joyous, congratulatory face. Poor guy. Such good friends caught so much wrath for such a lovely gift. 

Do you remember refrigerator magnet poetry kits? I think it was Jarrett who spent his time composing a message for when we returned. It has been a fixture in our kitchen for 21 years. It’s been moved from place to place and fridge to fridge and it’s on my refrigerator door now: 

 friend s leave

a thousand gift s

after you go away

they must love you still

1. I proposed the day AFTER Valentine’s Day – because that holiday is bullshit.
2. It was during a rerun of Friends. Michele was very confused at first.
3. The day before the wedding we tried to clean birds nests from the lights of the pavilion at Chinquapin – who graciously hosted the reception.
4. Sister Kitty gave instructions to my brother on how to march ceremoniously.
5. Our rehearsal dinner was fajitas at Ninfas.
6. We went to Dave & Busters for our “bachelor/ette party”, but Michele had to leave early because her sister got a flat tire coming into town. 
7. I had some butterflies in my stomach during breakfast with my parents on my wedding day.
8. The Rice/TMC Catholic Student Center chapel was adorned with flowers done by Jarrett.
9. Marsha and Jarrett composed a song for our wedding.
10. My family cried during the remembrance of my grandmother, who had died the previous year.
11. The moment I slid the ring onto Michele’s finger.
12. Everyone changed into casual clothes for the reception, since it was outdoors.
13. We served BBQ brisket.
14. We had a margarita machine.
15. We had spray-mister bottles as centerpieces. The one rule was don’t squirt water on Michele.
16. It was hot enough that one guest got heat exhaustion.
17. Marsha and Jarrett spent part of the night surgically removing gnats from the wedding cake frosting.
18. My best man, Bill Church, made the toast. We’ve lost touch, for no good reason.
19. Our first dance was to “Weightless” by Ellis Paul.
20. We had a dollar-dance with the bride.
21. My favorite picture in the world is of Michele with wedding flowers in her hair, a squirt bottle in her hand, and mischief in her eyes.

I’m not sure where on the internet I travelled in the mid-nineties, but I know the vehicle was my first laptop.The costly box was a dark-grey hunk of plastic that was effectively a generic Dell or Gateway, but I can’t remember it’s actual “brand”. It weighed seven pounds, and despite being roughly the same length and width as the computer being used to write this, it was two inches thick. It was ostensibly for “school” but other than the occasional biology lab report, I can’t imagine what educational use it was through when the internet had to squeeze through a 33K (not big) hole on the left side of my laptop.

There was an unsatisfying absence of a “click” when I plugged in the modem card. It was the height of internet communication technology of the 1990’s, folded into a thick credit card that gave me access around the world, and had cost me a considerable chunk of my student loan money. It seated into its slot with more of a flaccid “splupsh” feeling, which would be followed by the screechy bird of analog phone connection, and then all the poorly formatted text the world had to offer. 

Technically it was portable, but my laptop memories take place at the MDF and brown metal desk, which I had moved into the trailer that Chinquapin installed in the parking lot between the 7th & 8th grade dorms. My only job there, in exchange for room and board, was to be twice the age of the students. I could sit at the desk near the door, available if the kids needed supervising, and play video games instead of studying. I fought the Battle of Gettysburg instead of counting fruit flies. I colonized Alpha Centauri, when I should have been memorizing kingdom and phylum. In retrospect, I guess I was studying Sid Meier games. I can’t honestly say the time was wasted, because I’ve used my knowledge of the Civil War exactly as many times as I have drawn a Punnett square in my medical career. 
As with all computers, toy cowboys and velveteen rabbits, the day came when I no longer loved my laptop, and it was replaced with another, “better” computer, which I can not remember at all. The best, most meaningful, longest lasting thing that that laptop gave me was the ability to play Age of Empires. I understand how vapid that sounds, but showing off a cool new videogame on my fancy laptop was the first real bonding experience I had with the new guy on campus: Jarrett Kupcinski. Watching over the shoulder while someone forages for  digital berries is not the foundation of a life-altering twenty-plus year friendship, I know. I agree. To build a friendship like ours, you have to play it’s sequel, Age of Kings, which will get it’s own post.

Michele and my preferred anniversary weekend getaway involves a good hike/bike followed by a nice high-calorie meal. Canyon of the Eagles is a vacation resort/campground about ninety minutes outside of Austin, TX that Michele and I have been to a couple times. It’s probably someone’s old ranch land that got converted into an eco-nature-retreat-center, but that’s not what this story is about. It’s got good camping, and cabins simple enough to be cosy, but with AC and heat and good showers. For the record, the restaurant there served me the SECOND largest piece of carrot cake of my life, the biggest being Gibson’s Steak House in Chicago. 

The first time we went there for an anniversary we brought our bikes, with the intention of riding back out the “canyon” for a long ride, and the previous night we’d loved the twists and inclines of the road as we drove in. That morning we carbed and geared up for the ride and promptly pedaled into a long, sustained grade of hill that we were NOT going to overcome. Looking at the map today, I can not see what section it was that did us in, but on a bike, years ago, it seemed like a monster.  I remember knowing that even if we made it all the way up the biggest hill, the rest of the ride was going to be a punishing uphill climb out to any semblance of civilization. We pedaled our poor bikes uphill at walking pace for a while, and even push-walked them a bit before giving up and turning around in frustration.

As our anger-adrenaline levels cooled, on the very pleasant downhill coast back into the resort, we agreed that it was too nice a morning to give up completely, so we loaded our bikes back onto the rack on the back of her beloved (and now very recently traded) Ford Fiesta, and drove into Burnett, the nearest town. We had a lovely ride around town and  into the surrounding, much more cycle-friendly, hills. There was a period of light rain, that we were able to experience as a cooling mist on a sunny day, rather than a road slicking nightmare that it would have felt like had we been struggling up and down our original route. It ended, as all my favorite rides do, at a kolache (Czech-German pig in a blanket) shop. 

We have not yet made it back to Canyon of the Eagles with our bikes, but mostly because of the many other wonderful bike-a-versary locations we’ve explored over the years. This year we will stay-ca-a-versary, for obvious reasons, but I’d like to try that hill again. We are due for a trip back, and I’m in the mood for carrot cake.

When I started PA school in the summer of 1998, I got A’s all the classes that summer term. I distinctly remember telling Michele “I didn’t go to PA school to get C’s”. I don’t remember if it was the very next Fall semester, or I made it to Spring term when I told her “Huh, I guess I did go to PA school to get C’s”, before I started playing golf during the really boring class. I respect the work and the results of my most motivated version of myself, but some days he doesn’t show up. During PA school, on the hard days, I went downstairs some days and got myself a Snickers bar and Diet Coke. Today is that kind of day. So I’m going to go get myself a hot-fudge Sundae, and leave you with this image of me at my most half-assed: 

One day while teaching at Chinquapin, either Janet Johnson or I discovered a dead dog on the side of Wade Rd while driving home to the school. We both took our science classes out on a “field trip” to see it to waste a period of instruction. Hers at least was a Biology class. I had no excuse. That thing inflated like a balloon, though. It was really cool.

The first time I looked at Jupiter through a telescope was on a wintery night in the Adirondacks. Anticipating the (ultimately disappointing) return of Halley’s Comet, my grandfather had purchased a refracting telescope, or perhaps been given one for 

Christmas. The arm-long black and white tube was set up on the edge of the driveway of his house in Westport, NY, which gave pretty good night-sky. The pin-head sized white circle had three or four white pin-points aligned with its equator. The Galilean moons aren’t as visually arresting as they are conceptually bright. First seen more than four-hundred years ago, they helped convince Galileo that the earth was not the center of the universe. It had similar effects upon the psyche of my teenage self. 

Galileo’s initial telescope gave such a fuzzy image of Saturn that he recorded that the planet looked like it had “ears” instead of rings, a description for which I have always had a bit of a solipsistic soft spot. More than thirty years after viewing Jupiter, I got my first glimpse of Saturn through a telescope, at the  McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, TX, which gives amazing night-sky. The astronomy grad students manned the scopes for the guests and watched the cloud cover roll in. The view through the more expensive glass and thinner air let me see the rings as sharp ovals surrounding the dime-sized white circle. I could convince myself of seeing some variation in greys on the planet, but only because we all have such glorious pictures in our heads from Hubble and the fly-by satellites. 

Any photographer or astronomer can tell you, the view through a lens is a funny trade off. Gains in magnification are losses in field of view. The closer you concentrate upon a subject, the less you can see its surroundings. You lose the context. 

To focus on the pinpricks of Jupiter’s moons you must take your eyes from the uncles and cousins orbiting Gramps and the telescope, and the lights of the warm living room. And that face of earless Saturn, the old god who ate his children, pales in comparison with the wondrous smile of my wife as she looks up from the lens, having seen him. It is a cool night on an anniversary vacation, and we will drive home illuminated by the moon and the light from stars far more ancient than Galieo’s drawings, or Homer’s myths, or humanity’s memory.