Category: aging-twilight

• Too Pretty for Him
  Why I Volunteer II In my volunteer job at Urban Ministries of Durham, that Thursday was a weird day; a tropical storm was headed our way, so a lot of people hadn’t come out.  On the other hand, and this happens periodically, street people who don’t qualify for the homeless shelter (perhaps because they drink or ...
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• The Gentle Giant
  Guys I’ve Done Time With: Creston Baumunk 1948-2013 What Is Friendship? I remember the first time I ever talked to the man, when we were standing in the lunch line at Shady Side Academy Middle School in eighth grade.  We’d acquired some new students that year, and several were giants, towering over the rest of us.  Creston ...
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• Making My Mother Cry
  How Could I I’ve been reading Hillbilly Elegy this week, about the Scots-Irish who settled in Appalachia and eventually became Hillbillies, are now struggling with widespread unemployment and opioid addiction, and it occurs to me how close my ancestors came to all that, brushing right by it, as it were.  My father was born in San ...
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• The Man Who Held the Records
  Bruno Sammartino 1935-2018 In the Pittsburgh neighborhood where I grew up there was a drugstore a block from my house where a kid could hang out.  There was a fountain at the front where the guy made great milkshakes, and some magazines and comics at the back that were off to one side, so the pharmacist ...
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• Stop Me Before I Eat More Cookies
  My Struggles with Food Addiction I came across my food addiction in the classic way, beginning to eat compulsively at the age of seven when my younger brother was born.  Apparently I took in food in to replace the affection I was losing.  That transaction took place at a deep emotional place where it apparently made ...
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• Why Volunteer
    I had finished my Thursday volunteering stint at Urban Ministries and was tidying up when Brittany came back.  “David, would you mind taking one more person?  She says she’s sick.” I said I’d be happy to.  I wasn’t in a hurry. “She’s a new client,” she said. The woman who came back didn’t look like a lot of ...
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• Can’t Face It Anymore
  When the Life Force Can’t Fight the Death Wish I was talking to a friend I meet every week for lunch and we were catching up before we ordered.  “I had to go to a funeral this weekend,” Tom said.  “I told you my neighbor died, didn’t I?” “I don’t think so,” I said.  “How did he ...
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• Overwhelmed
  The Happiness that Takes Some Time to Ripen We had sat down for the reception at my niece’s wedding—tables of eight arranged all around the room—when I realized how my brother had seated us.  It was the three living siblings from my generation—Bill, Rusty, and me, with our wives—along with our sister’s oldest child Tade and ...
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• My Father’s Gaze
  Is That Me or Is It Him? I look into the mirror sometimes these days and see—to my astonishment—my father’s face staring back at me.  The man died 52 years ago, and didn’t reach nearly the age I am now; he was 47, and I’m 68.  Life had been hard on him at the end, wasted ...
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• True Book Man
  Jay Dantry 1928-2016 When I look back on the influences on my life, I think readers have been more important than writers, and bookstores more important than teachers.  That isn’t to diminish the influence of men like Reynolds Price and Wallace Fowlie at Duke, or my high school teacher David Britton, who was a huge help. ...
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