Tag: Relationships

I Never Dreamed

.Reading time 7 minutes.

I used to be a vivid dreamer. I don’t know what a psychoanalyst would say about this, but I had a constant companion in my nighttime capers – a penguin named Pingy. He wore his hat backwards and always had on sunglasses hiding bloodshot eyes. He was a bad seed, that Pingy. One of those affable, fun-loving friends who always seems to get you into trouble. Half of my dream life was spent rescuing him… often from the law. It has been a long time since he has visited me. Life has a way of clouding out frivolous dreams with its deadlines and demands.

When I was a boy, I dreamed of being a third baseman for the Cincinnati Reds. Somehow, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Joe Morgan and Dave Concepcion, although in their forties, would still be All-Stars and welcome this rookie into the fold. Together we would form a dynamic team – The Big Red Machine, Part II. Fame, riches, women… they would all be mine. At that age, I likely had no idea what the women were for, but I understood better as I got older.

For the record, a vivid dreamer who is also a sleep-talker can be a dangerous combination for a newlywed. Yes, we are still married despite this.

In all my dreams, I never dreamed it would be like this. Read More

The Empty Chair

.Reading time 8 minutes.

We spent last week at the beach – a familiar condo we’ve visited several times. When the summer schedule was being formed, there was no question whether we would go. At issue was how hard it would be without Kylie. She is an ever-present mist coating our lives, so almost everything is hard. But not everything holds an opportunity of mingling the hard with fun. This place offers that.

In fact, I’m sitting here now typing this in a room of bright yellow. I never noticed the vibrant color of the common room before. Yellow has a new meaning for me these days. It is early morning and any previous summer she would soon walk out of her room rubbing her eyes and push my laptop aside to sit with me. She would ask me what I was writing and I would usually tell her a Virgil Creech story while she mooched my coffee. Sometimes, if she was still tired she would ditch me to go snuggle her sleeping mommy. But most of the time, I got some precious alone time with her. I had no way of knowing just how precious it was. Read More