Tag: Family History
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My In-Between Day – June 16, 1983 (A Tempus Fugit Gig)
Afternoon, Monday, June 16, 2025, Miami, Florida “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between 42 summers ago… June 16 fell on a Thursday in Anno Domini 1983. I don’t, of course, remember what the weather was like that day, although I recall that earlier that week, on…
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Father’s Day Without a Father….
A Father’s Day Without a Father I don’t remember my father. At times, I think I glimpse a fleeting mental snapshot—a vision resembling an old photo slowly fading in a family album—of a dark-haired man holding the infant version of me in his strong, tanned, and hairy arms. The hopeful part of me likes to…
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Tempus Fugit: I Wish You’d Known My Mom (A Tribute)
Late Morning/Midday, Saturday, October 21, 2023, Lithia, Florida Hi, there, folks. If you’re a regular visitor to this space, you might recall that my late mother would have been 95 years old on Tuesday, October 17. As it is, she’s been gone for over eight years; she died less than three months before her 87th…
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Tempus Fugit: Yesterday Was My Mom’s 95th Birthday….
Yesterday was my mother’s 95th birthday. She, of course, is no longer here. She died in the early morning of Sunday, July 19, 2015, after a five-year struggle with dementia and the effects of a long and eventually failed recovery from an operation to repair her spine. I do my best not to dwell on…
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Tempus Fugit: Thinking About the Tyranny of Forced ‘Joint’ Birthday ‘Celebrations’
Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s Tuesday, March 7, 2023 – two days after my 60th birthday and three days before my older half-sister Vicky’s 73rd. In the last decade of my mother’s life (2005-2015), this would have been the “compromise” date on which we’d celebrate both occasions. I say “compromise” because Vicky, for reasons that…
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Tempus Fugit: On the Occasion of My 60th Birthday
“It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.” ― Andy Rooney So, today I turn 60 years old. On the day I was born: “I’m not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming…
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Old Photographs (A Haiku)
Ancient photographs Sepia, faded color, and duochrome; Oh, how time doth fly.
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Tempus Fugit: Hazy (But Happy!) Memories of Christmas 1972
Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas time. – Laura Ingalls Wilder I wish I had vivid memories of my first Christmas as a permanent resident of the state of Florida after our unexpected…
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Tempus Fugit – Hurricane Andrew + 30 Edition, or: Remembering the Day After Landfall, August 25, 2022
Andrew Plus 30 As I sit here in my dimly lit bedroom/writer’s room/mancave in Lithia, Florida, it is another stifling hot late August morning where the heat seeps through the walls and warms my stocking feet underneath my desk. And even though the temperature outside is “only” 85°F/30°C, the bright subtropical sun and the high…
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Tempus Fugit: Remembering the House at 1001 in Coral Estates Park
Half a century ago this week, in the Miami suburb of Westchester, my mother and I moved into the house we would call “home” for the next five years – a one-story, 1505 square foot, single-family house that sat on a 7,777 square foot lot: 1001 SW 102nd Avenue. Built in 1963, the house was…
A Certain Point of View, Too 