Diary of an Aging Writer

Maybe it was the medication the doctor prescribed to correct Dad’s irregular heart beats. Or maybe he added a bit too much pepper to the kale and carrot salad I prepared to neutralize the rich sauces of the leg of lamb I roasted for our Christmas Eve dinner. Or maybe he was telling us another tale from his overly active 80-year-old imagination.   “It’s the same dream. Every night.” Dad started off after swallowing a forkful of lamb.   “Was it in color, Grand Dad?” Melissa, my teenaged daughter asked. With the precision of a surgeon, she was cutting the fat away from her serving of lamb.   Dad thought for a moment. “Color? No, not Technicolor. More like a film noir movie. Murky and dark.” “What’s film noir?” my pre-teen son Adam asked. He was shaking salt vigorously over his salad. “Let Grand Dad get on with his story,” my husband Stacey said. He refilled Dad’s wine glass with Pinot Noir. Dad took a sip of wine and then continued.   The dream starts out soon after I f...

Evelyn Singleton was slightly winded after climbing up the 120 steps to platform 1 of the Ishikawacho Japan Railway Station in Yokohama. She prided herself for her physical endurance. Before her husband Seth agreed to accept the position of professor of Linguistics at  the prominent women's university in Yokohama, she took part in the Full Marathon Race in San Francisco. But she was winded this morning. Jimmy their four-year-old son chose to be contrary. She was forced to carry Jimmy and his teddy bear up the steps if she wanted to catch the train on time. Fortunately, after setting Jimmy and his teddy bear down on the platform, she found empty seats. “Sit here, Jimmy. Play with Teddy.” “When’s the train coming, Mommy?” “Soon, Jimmy. And soon you’ll be playing with your friend Gary.” She took out her smartphone to check for messages she might have missed on the way to the station. Nine emails and 12 chats. She opened the first of the emails, the one from the credit card company inf...

  My older sister Annette sat before her computer monitor. "See that, Harry?" she said, pointing to the monitor image of a YouTube video of the San Andreas fault in California.  "It's in a critical state. We're doomed." "Annette, you're letting the Sauvignon Blanc go to your head. That earthquake will take place long after we're dead and gone." "Maybe. But what about this?"  She flipped to another YouTube video about meteors speeding toward Earth. "See what NASA has recorded? One of those meteors is bound to smash into us destroying every living creature on the planet." "I give up, Annette. Go ahead. Lock yourself in the apartment. Me? I'm going out and have a few beers. I'll take my chances walking across the street." I spent an alcohol-infused 2 hours at a British pub in Annette’s neighborhood. The pints I consumed at the pub emptied my wallet of paper currency. With little money left for transportati...