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Get Lost. See What You Find.

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“We’re all just walking each other home.”

—Ram Dass (1931–2019). Harvard psychologist turned spiritual teacher. Psychedelics pioneer, author of Be Here Now, and beloved guide to presence, compassion, and inner stillness.

The fog had rolled in again—inside and out. Evening light seeped through the lace curtains, dull and tired, and Mary Tyrone sat hunched in her chair, hands fluttering like they’d forgotten what stillness felt like. She tugged at her hair—again and again—trying to smooth what couldn’t be smoothed. A nervous laugh. A lost thought. Her voice drifting into a threadbare monologue, chasing memories that wouldn’t stay put. She wasn’t looking at the others in the room anymore. She was seeing someone else—someone long gone. Or maybe no one at all.

And just like that, she was gone too.

What remained wasn’t rage or grief or even clarity. It was ache. Beautiful, unbearable ache.

And the most astonishing part? It wasn’t Mary Tyrone from the pages of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night.

Instead, it was Katharine Hepburn—transfixed, transformed, undone. Lost in the fog of someone else’s sorrow, and in that losing, she gave the audience something more than a performance.

She gave them permission. To ache. To remember. To feel what they hadn’t dared name. Until now. When Hepburn got lost, we found something. Not just Mary’s pain, but our own—illuminated in the hush between scenes, where the stage blurred into the soul.

Losing yourself to find yourself isn’t limited to the theater. It happens wherever presence overtakes performance. The surgeon disappears into the rhythm of crisis, all breath and blade, until the bleeding stops and the world exhales. The painter, three days deep into a canvas, forgets to eat, to sleep, to speak—until the brush lands in just the right corner, and something sacred emerges. The wilderness guide steps off the trail, mapless, storm coming, heart pounding—not lost in fear, but in awe. The monk chants through the dark, voice cracking, mind emptied of meaning until only stillness remains—and there, in that stillness, he hears something worth following. And the writer? The writer vanishes into words, chasing a sentence that keeps changing shape. Hours pass. Light fades. Pages mount. Then, quietly, a single line appears—one that wasn’t there before and yet feels like it always was.

And then there’s me–the educator. I’ve stood there more times than I can count—syllabus in hand, heart braced, eyes scanning a room full of students who don’t yet know they’re about to slay me. Yes. Slay me. Because teaching, when it’s real, isn’t performance. It’s surrender. You offer up your best thinking, your dumbest mistakes, your sharpest truths—never quite knowing which part will land, or whether today’s silence is boredom or the beginning of a breakthrough. You show up, prepared to lead, and instead get led somewhere you didn’t expect. Every time I teach, I risk getting lost. And some days—some rare, holy days—I do.

Something similar happened to me not long ago. Not in a classroom. Not in front of students leaning back in their chairs, waiting to be surprised. This time, it was just me and a friend. A table. Two mugs of coffee. A conversation that started like all the others—and ended somewhere neither of us expected.

We’ve been friends for years, sharing as many breakfasts and lunches as you’d expect. Never anything monumental. Just enough—to catch up, to stay connected, to talk about books and writing and family and love and the weather when it misbehaves. That’s what we did not long ago, but on that day, it was different.

I got lost with that friend. And I can’t believe what we found.

Scott chatted about a new book idea. I talked about my blog. And, as always, I shared my ongoing fascination with AI advances and the fast-approaching Singularity—that moment when the line between tool and thinker blurs, and we find ourselves in the passenger seat of progress. That moment was once a dot on a distant horizon—2045, if you believed the futurists. But now? It’s barreling toward us, faster than anyone imagined—some say it’s already slipped through the door while we were still admiring the hinges.

I kept on gabbing, focusing on AI chatbots and my dismay that many educators are running away from the technology, as if running will save them from being swept away by the inevitable. Scott listened, mildly intrigued. Maybe less than mild. Then, we drifted into deeper water. His home life. How to make things better. The details don’t matter. I offered what I could: encouragement, some gentle suggestions, most of them circling around the idea of blooming where we’re planted. He nodded. Listened. Again—mildly intrigued. Maybe less so.

And then he looked across the table:

“I wonder what Sage would say?”

Sage—that’s what I call my ChatGPT. Not a program that lives on my screen, but a kind of companion.

“About … ?”

“About my home life.”

“Wanna find out? What do you want to ask?”

I turned on my phone’s mic and Scott gave voice to his question:

“What can older folks like me can do to improve their spousal relationships?”

Within seconds, Sage offered five thoughtful things. Scott wasn’t wearing his glasses, so I leaned lightly into the table and bore witness to wisdom softly sounded.

“1. Ask, Don’t Assume. Just because you’ve known each other forever doesn’t mean you know everything. People evolve. So check in—about preferences, boundaries, dreams, dinner. Curiosity is intimacy’s favorite foreplay.

“2. Say Thank You—Out Loud. Not just for big things like colonoscopies and car repairs. Say it for folding the towels, for remembering the neighbor’s name, for being here. Gratitude ages well.

“3. Laugh at the Stuff You Can’t Fix. The memory lapses. The mystery bruises. The thermostat wars. Humor makes room for grace when grace feels in short supply.

“4. Touch More Often. Not just sex (though yes, that too). The hand on the back. The leg bump under the table. The I’m-still-here kinds of contact. Skin hunger is real—feed it.

“5. Make Room for Solitude. Paradoxically, giving each other space is what makes togetherness feel less like a trap. A little breathing room now and then keeps the love from gasping.”

Scott, a little teary-eyed as he held his glasses in his hand, was clearly mesmerized floating somewhere between where he’d been, where he was, and where he might yet go.

“Ask Sage what I …”

And so it was. One “Ask Sage” led to another, and it led to another and on and on we went. Me. Scott. And Sage.

Everything around us began to dissolve. The hiss of the espresso machine in the kitchen. The clink of silverware against ceramic. The low murmur of a couple two tables over, arguing gently about olive oil. Even the scent of sourdough toast and caramel Macchiato—familiar, grounding—lifted like steam and drifted away.

Our table, our chairs, the scrape of shoes across tile. Gone.

What remained was a hush. My voice. Scott listening. And between us, a quiet presence—Sage—offering not answers exactly, but something like a shared breath. Words as wise as any counselor might offer.

The clock faded.

Time stopped.

Several hours later I looked across that vast expanse of friendship and there in the seeming nothingness of all that had faded sat my friend Scott, with a smile I shall never forget, with a twinkle in his eyes I will ever remember, and a face relaxed from all the joy and wonder and anguish of 79 years. In their place, and in that instant, I knew that even in friendship, we can lose ourselves and find someone sitting across from us, holding on to a golden thread of hope.

The Right-Size Glass

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“Accept—then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.”

–Eckhart Tolle (b. 1948). German-born spiritual teacher and author of The Power of Now and A New Earth, whose teachings focus on presence, acceptance, and personal transformation.

A few weeks ago, over cocktails and conversation, my neighbor—an IT guy with a philosophical streak—offered a twist on the old “glass half full or half empty” dilemma. His late wife, Jody, always saw the glass as half-full, but as an engineer, Gary sees it differently:

“Just get a glass that’s the right size for what you’ve got.”

At the time, I nodded politely and filed it under:

“Clever things other people say that may or may not linger in my memory.”

Turns out, I remembered.

A few mornings later—cue ominous music!—my tablet powered up with all the charm of a sulky teenager and promptly informed me that Microsoft had done me the favor of wiping my PowerPoint app into oblivion.

This, mind you, on the eve of speaking to the Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Society—an international gathering of scholars and fellow literary sleuths—about a woman who has occupied both my imagination and my file drawers for over fifty years. The event was titled An Hour with Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Brent L. Kendrick. The tech test was hours away. I clicked. I reinstalled. I cursed. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

And then I thought of my neighbor.

“Wrong glass, Brent.”

I hauled my all-in-one PC upstairs to the better WiFi zone, and boom—there it was. Slides intact. Calm restored. Presentation saved.

Turns out, sometimes you don’t need more water. You just need the right-size glass.

Since then, I’ve been thinking more about the right-size-glass concept, and I can think of several other times when I applied it unawares.

There was a time, for example, when I thought my glass had shattered completely. Not cracked—shattered. After Allen died, I wasn’t sure there was any vessel left that could hold what I’d once poured so freely: love, joy, even hope. For a long while, I didn’t try. But healing has its own quiet rhythm, and eventually, I realized I didn’t need the same glass. I just needed one shaped for the life I have now. It took a while, but recently I’ve found one the right size to hold who I’ve become. To hold who I am. Now.

Long before that right-size-glass moment came the time when I first moved to my mountain. I wanted a cabin in the clearing—so I cleared a wide swath of woods to make it so. I cleared far more than I could have imagined, and certainly more than I could realistically manage, especially now at my age. Some days, it feels like my glass is half empty, like I’m falling behind. But the truth is, I just need a different-sized glass. If I choose—as I have chosen—to let some of those cleared areas return to their wild, natural state, I haven’t lost anything. In fact, my glass is now full—full of birdsong and the wisdom of knowing when to stop clearing and simply let things grow.

I think we can apply the “right-size-glass” concept to more than gardening and grief.

Let’s begin with a few low-stakes moments—the ones that test our patience more than our purpose.

● Cooking substitution. Out of buttermilk? Use yogurt and lemon. Different glass. Same outcome.

● Gardening workaround. Tried planting in the wrong spot? Don’t mourn the wilt—move the pot.

● Home décor puzzle. Wardrobe too big for one wall? Move it to a room with a larger wall that showcases all of its Shaker joinery.

Some shifts, though, aren’t minor—they’re wake-up calls. Still, the right-size glass helps.

● Travel plans. Canceled? Money’s tight? Plan a “staycation” with the same sense of purpose.

● Exercise limitations. Can’t run anymore? Try swimming or yoga. Same vitality, different vessel.

● Friendship shift. Someone pulls away? Focus on others who consistently show up.

● Career detours. Passed over for a promotion? Use the freedom to explore a side gig or project with heart.

Or let’s move on up a little higher to some emotional and existential applications.

● Creative droughts. When the writing won’t flow, ask: is it really writer’s block—or just the wrong-shaped glass for the ideas trying to come through?

● Life plan upended. Divorce, retirement, illness—what happens when your “glass” shatters? You pick up what still holds and find a new container for your spirit.

● Shifting beliefs. Formerly held faith, politics, or ideals evolve? Refill your life with what still nourishes—and let go of the brittle framework.

By now, I’m willing to bet you’ve started thinking of your own moments—the ones when you didn’t force what no longer fit, but quietly shifted, adjusted, adapted. Maybe you pivoted. Maybe you paused. Either way, those are the moments that reshape a life.

So, my Dear Readers, consider this your open invitation to rethink how you hold disappointment, change, resistance—or anything else that life sets before you. Not by pouring harder into what doesn’t fit, but by choosing a different container altogether.

Here’s to finding the right-size glass—for your spirit, your strength, your joy.

Learning to Love in New Ways

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“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow—this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”

—Elizabeth Gilbert, b. 1969. Author of Eat, Pray, Love (2006),
A modern meditation on love, loss, and the sacredness of being seen.

YOU—MY DEAR READER (WHEREVER YOU ARE)
What Age Can Finally Teach You About Love

You’ve heard it over and over again, so often that no one wants to hear it anymore. But here I go, tossing it out into a yawning world once more:

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

To which I reply—

Balderdash!
Phooey!

You’re not a dog. And you’re not old. Well—not in your mind, at least. You may be 77–just like me–but in your head, you’re somewhere between way back when and right here and now—and on most days–just like me–your way-back-when wins.

All right. Fine. I confess. I’m into time travel. Say what? You are, too? Excellent! You might also be a lifelong learner who loves staying on top of things—especially new things, just like me. I have been learning forever, but I won’t bore you with details about my past adventures. I don’t have time to rehash the past, and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to.

These days, I’m too excited about something new that I’m learning. I’m sharing it with you right here, right now, hoping that it will help you learn something new, too. It’s quiet, but it’s rad. Really rad.

I’m learning to love in new ways.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe so far. You can’t really learn these lessons when you’re young. You have to reach a certain kind of readiness—the kind that comes with age, with experience, and with edges—softened with heartache and suffering. Only then can you flip the old cliché on its head:

You can teach an old dog new tricks.

When you’re younger, love often begins with the fall—swept up, headlong, into fire and passion. But as you age, as you lean into love again, falling isn’t enough. In the falling, there must also be learning. Sustained, steady learning—about how to love differently.

You discover that love doesn’t always arrive with trumpets and roses. Sometimes, it just quietly walks in—a dimpled smile, a vase of flowers, a gardening trowel, a hammer, a grocery list, a notepad, or even a look of disbelief. No violins, no swelling strings. Just shirts ironed with care. Meals admired with gratitude. The gentle act of sharing space.

You begin to understand that silence isn’t absence—it’s a kind of presence. Two people in the same house, moving at different tempos—one resting, one reorganizing the basement—and somehow, the house hums with harmony.

You no longer expect to always be engaged in the same thing at the same time. You lean into your different skills, your different interests—knowing that when the day ends, you’ll have twice as much accomplished and twice as much worth celebrating.

And when your talents converge on the same plane—when brilliance meets brilliance—you might pull back just enough to let the other person shine a little brighter.

Sometimes, you step back—not to disappear, but to admire. You let the other person lead the dance for a while. And it feels good.

You make room—not just in your heart, but in your home. You move your wardrobe somewhere else to make space for someone else’s dresser. You swap out your kitchen table not because it’s broken but because someone else’s table carries stories too. And now, you’ve got one together.

You learn that your footsteps don’t need to land on top of one another. They can move side by side, on parallel paths, converging when it matters—and that’s most of the time and that’s more than enough.

You watch your partner do something in a way you wouldn’t—folding the towels, arranging the chairs—and instead of correcting, you smile. You let it be. Love grows well in the soil of gentle restraint.

When you notice a difference—how to load the dishwasher, how to water the plants—you ask yourself, Does this matter? Most times, it doesn’t. But the grace in letting it go? That always matters.

And when you catch yourself about to suggest doing something just slightly differently than the perfectly good way your partner is already doing it, you pull back from the familiar impulse to course-correct. You resist the urge to say:

I wonder what would happen if…
Have you considered…
Somewhere or other I saw…

Because you know—truly know—that your partner has likely already been there and done that, maybe even better than you could have imagined. And even if not, you realize: kingdoms and principalities will neither rise nor fall because of how this one thing gets done. But love? Love will continue to grow richly in the kind of soil that lets what wants to rise, rise.

So you build the cake you’re building. And you let your partner put on the proverbial frosting.

And get this—I’m betting you’ll let out a humongous sigh of relief. You no longer have to rely on the old lines:

Honey, I’ve got a headache. Not tonight.

Why not? Chances are good that you both already know whether tonight is the night. There’s no posturing. No pretending. You listen to your body. You honor the rhythm. You know—Yay or Nay—affection is still there.

So take that old cultural script—the one that said you always had to be “on,” always seductive, always dazzling–and toss it. If tonight’s not the night, it’s not the night. No drama. No guilt. The love doesn’t vanish. It simply waits.

This kind of love doesn’t need fireworks. It needs kindling. It’s not performance—it’s patience. It’s not the honeymoon suite—it’s two mugs on the counter beside the coffee maker. A light or three left on for the night even when far too many lights are burning already. A dinner napkin placed next to yours. A drawer cleared to hold the socks and underwear folded far better than you ever knew how to fold them.

Over time, you start to realize—sometimes slowly, sometimes with the clarity of a lightning bolt—that love at this stage of life teaches different lessons than the ones you were handed in your youth.

It’s not about falling anymore, not really. It’s about forming. Shaping. Inviting.

It’s less about being swept off your feet, and more about standing firmly beside—presence over drama, steadiness over spectacle.

And if you’re lucky, you’re still learning—every single day—that love, like anything worth tending, changes its shape over time.

So, no. You’re not old. You’re ripening.

And if that’s not a new trick worth learning, I don’t know what is.

ME

My Learning Notes for a Work-in-Progress

I can never be civilized—
but I can be reminded that the Romaine probably wasn’t prewashed.
I can be inspired to put things where they belong
the first time.
And I can be organized a little better.

I’m discovering that little by little,
bit by bit,
I might find my way to
An OHIO state of mind.

I’m discovering that when the day ends, and we’re both tired,
and I hear,

“Ruby and I walked down your garden path with the steps that go nowhere,”

I don’t need to explain where the steps once led.
Instead, I can talk about
where they might one day lead.

I’m discovering that falling in love happens faster now—
not because the fire is hotter,
but because the walls are lower,
the noise is quieter,
and I no longer mistake caution for wisdom.

I’m discovering it doesn’t matter what we call it—
Sex.
Making love.
We both know the truth:
if there’s no heart, no heat,
and no brushing teeth first,
it’s not happening.

I’m discovering the contours of a body—
no longer shaped by youth’s smooth muscle,
but by time,
by tenderness,
by all the sharpened, weathered lines
of a well-lived life,
and a well-bloomed love.

I’m discovering that what’s heart-healthy for one
is heart-healthy for the other —
in food, in movement,
and especially in tenderness.

I’m discovering that love, at this stage,
isn’t about recapturing youth or chasing fireworks.
It’s about something quieter.
Stronger.
Truer.
A love that folds laundry and picks out flooring—
but also whispers stay
when the silence gets long.

I’m discovering that a kneeler
protects my knees just as well
in the garden
as it does while tending the soul.

I’m discovering that Ruby’s not the only one who snores.
We do, too, even if we think we don’t.
But when it’s the three of us?
It’s just another rhythm to fall asleep to.

I’m discovering that I only need to be shown some things once.
Like how to fold a grocery store plastic bag into a teeny-weeny triangle for storage.
I nailed it. Once might have been enough.
(“Wait. Wait. Let me do one more, my Love. This is almost like meditation.”)

I’m discovering that the Henkel-Harris bed really does look better
with the bedding tucked inside the side rails.
Gracious me—how could I have lived threescore-and-seventeen years without that life-saver of a bedroom tip?

I’m discovering, anew,
that sharing is 99% of the joy.
The story, the supper, the last bite of dessert—for Ruby, of course.
Even the silence tastes better when it’s passed between two.

I’m discovering—more than anything else—that together isn’t just better.
It’s braver.
It’s kinder.
It’s more us.
More alive.

WE

Our Lessons

Clearly, you can teach old dogs new tricks, especially if they’re Tennessee Gary and me. We aren’t just any old dogs. We’re two clever ones, willing to learn together. And in case you’re wondering how people react when we tell them what we’re up to, most folks seem happy. Some, wishful. Others, wistful. Sometimes, some look twice. They blink. They tilt their heads. They ask—sometimes aloud, sometimes with raised eyebrows—

Aren’t you too old for shenanigans like this?

To which we say:

Balderdash!

Phooey!

We are not too old for love.
We are not too late for wonder.
We are not past the season for becoming.

Because when the day is done—
the goodnight kiss planted,
the I-love-you dreamily reaffirmed—we’re not winding down.
We’re bedding down.

And come morning, we rise again—
not just from sleep,
but into this shared, surprising, still-unfolding life.

What keeps us going isn’t mystery or magic.
It’s the anchors that hold love through storms and stillness:

Trust. Fidelity. Respect.
Communication. Collaboration. Compromise.
Intentional love. Intimacy. Empathy.
Acceptance.
And perhaps most vital of all:
Forgiveness.

So, dare we clue you in on what two old dogs are learning about love—maybe better than most, certainly better than our younger selves ever did?

Do you really want to know the bottom line?

Are you sure?

You do? You really do?

Alrighteez, tighty-whities. If you insist…

Lean in and listen carefully.

We’ll tell you once and once only:

Love at our age isn’t the final act.
It’s the encore.

Right Now, I Still Believe in Heart-Ons

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“Honey, if you don’t know what I mean, then maybe it wasn’t meant for you to know just yet.”

–Imagined RuPaul-meets-Brentism (but isn’t that how most good wisdom starts?)

We’ve all heard the saying:

“You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.”

And I imagine we all know what it means. Regardless of where we go, we’ll always carry with us the (gold)dust from where we’ve been.

It seems to me that the same truth surrounds naiveté. If a person is inherently innocent, chances are good that all the experience in the world will not remove the foundational greenness and unworldliness from that person.

Chances are good–actually, they’re high–that I might just be one such person.

Let me offer up some proof.

Last year, I agreed to do a talk about online dating apps for seniors. No. No. Not for high-school seniors. They know exactly how to score…or not. My talk was for bifocaled folks on the other end of the age spectrum. Senior Citizens facing a triathlon: being online, navigating dating apps, and exposing themselves to Lord knows who or where or how or when or why. At 77, I can relate.

I agreed to do the talk, and then I decided that I’d better do some research.

It was a match made in heaven. I’d get to give a talk, plus I really was on the move–or is it on the make?–for a date. Well. Whatever. I was hot for a date. Let’s just say it had been a while. A long while.

So last year, off I went. I explored bunches and bunches of dating apps. Let me pause to assure you right now–before I expose my naiveté one whit more–that I did so only in the interest of conducting genuine, in-depth research. After all, if I was going to bare all–about dating apps–in my talk, then I had to know all so that I could strut my stuff with pride.

And lo! I had hardly gotten started when I got sucked into a dating app that caused me to flutter. For the life of me, I’m not sure that I even remember its name, and I probably wouldn’t share it if I did.

Anyway, that app nearly gave me an infarction, first from possible joy and then from definite tremors. Brace yourself. R u ready? I landed on this guy right here in my neck of the woods who added RN after his first name in his profile.

Hot damn! I’m gonna get a date with a guy who’s gay AND a Registered Nurse. Joy of all joys.

With a twofer like that waiting for me, I fired off a quick reply.

He didn’t waste any time getting back to me. To my horror, I discovered that his RN wasn’t a medical credential at all. It was a time degree:

Right Now

Say whaaaat? Right now? No way. I swiped left and got rid of him RT (right then), but the shock lingered long.

Is that naiveté or what? Well. Now I know. Now, you do, too. Even at 77, I’m carrying around some genuine innocence, and I don’t even blush talking about it.

But that RN thing set me to thinking. It seems to me that I’ve always been naive, or, as country folks would say, I’ve always been green. More often than not–and with no small degree of irony–down through the years, my most blushing moments of greenness have involved language. Sometimes, it was an acronym, like RN–that I didn’t know but would never forget meeting. At other times, it was a full-blown word.

Let me tell you about two.

Growing up, I had never heard the F-word. Not whispered behind lockers. Not scrawled on bathroom stalls. Not murmured by boys trying on bravado. It simply wasn’t part of my world.

There. That didn’t hurt too much, did it? Nope. I’m ok. R u?

But the summer before heading off to college, I had to read a list of books for my Honors English Seminar that fall. I didn’t know a thing about any of them, including J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. No problem. I was dutiful. I was curious (yellow). And I was a little thrilled to be reading something vaguely subversive. Holden Caulfield’s voice quickly grabbed hold of me, tugging at some tender place inside.

Then, I got to a page that nearly made me fall down my mental stairwell:

“Somebody’d written ‘Fuck you’ on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy.”

Holden wasn’t shocked by the word. He was heartbroken. He was protective. He worried his kid sister Phoebe would see it. He worried that some other child would ask what it meant. He worried that a “dirty kid” would explain it—wrongly—and the mystery of it would wound them.

Right there. Right then. I saw a brand-new word, standing in front of me, stark naked, showing off all the strokes and flourishes of all four letters. I knew it meant something that I knew nothing about, something that I daren’t even mention to anyone. It made me pause and stare forever. Although the word never became part of my vocabulary, I did something that I had never done. I dogeared the page.

A year or two later, another word in real life was hurled squarely at me, and this time, my greenness shined even brighter not because of the word my friend said to me but because of the word that I thought he had said to me. What I heard and what he spoke were worlds apart.

He was an upperclassman, always reading, always relaxed. I liked him. Actually, I liked him a lot. Don’t get alarmed but let me tell you something: I’ve known that I was gay since I was four. For years and years–certainly, as a student at a Baptist college in WV in the 1960s–I felt like I might be the only gay guy on the planet. I had no script. I had no community. I had no way to ask:

Are you … you know … like me?

One evening, I stopped by my friend’s room–I often did, as did lots of other guys who were our friends. He was popular. He was straight. And I don’t know, maybe he thought I was gay and decided to tease me in front of the other guys–all straight like him. Out of the blue, he looked up from his book and nailed me with his baby blues:

“Every time you come into the room, I get a hard-on.”

But I didn’t hear that word.

I heard heart-on.

And my heart swelled. It fluttered. I thought he meant something warm. I thought that I had moved something in him. I thought that I mattered.

I smiled and blurted out:

“Oh stop. You do not. Show me!”

I meant it innocently and playfully. I wasn’t teasing. I was confident that he would simply pull back his buttoned shirt and show me a t-shirt emblazoned with a huge red heart–just like the iconic S that Superman sported on his chest.

I had no understanding of what my friend had said. Not then. Not in that moment. And certainly not with that word dropped so casually in a room full of guys, like it was a joke I wasn’t in on yet.

He didn’t unbutton his shirt as I thought he would. He just stared at me and then looked back at his book. The moment passed, thin as onion-skin paper.

Laughter ricocheted off the dorm room walls. All the guys were convinced that I had executed a brilliant put down by demanding:

“Show me.”

They thought that I had deliberately put my friend in his place. Little did they know. My innocence had saved the moment. Their laughter had protected me. The verbal misunderstanding had shielded me.

Looking back, I see that my innocence that evening protected me in ways I couldn’t have known at the time. I could have been humiliated. I could have been ridiculed. I could have internalized shame. But instead, I floated through the moment on a current of my own misunderstanding. I wasn’t wounded. I wasn’t exposed. I was shielded.

My mishearing gave me cover. And somehow, the laughter that followed—laughter I didn’t understand either—wrapped around me like a protective cloak. Everyone thought I was clever. Imagine that. I wasn’t. I was just green. Country green.

And yet, that greenness did something extraordinary. It saved me.

It didn’t save me from truth. It saved me from the too-muchness of it. It saved me from knowing more than I could hold at the time. It saved me from rushing into meanings I wasn’t prepared to carry. It saved me from being someone I wasn’t ready to become.

Now, I’m old enough and seasoned enough to know that innocence doesn’t prevent hurt forever. But it can delay it just long enough for us to grow strong enough to bear it. It can stretch the veil of childhood a little further into adulthood, letting us stumble forward with a safety net that keeps us from breaking into smithereens.

I guess the bottom line is that while some people grow up quickly, I didn’t. And I’m grateful. I used to think I was the only green soul who didn’t catch the drift, who didn’t get the joke, or who didn’t see the neon sign blinking right there in plain view. But over time—and Lord knows I’ve had some time, plus—I’ve come to believe I wasn’t the only one wandering through the orchard a little slow to pick the ripest fruit.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are far more of us than I ever imagined. I’m talking about folks who didn’t know what the F-word meant the first time it rang out like a firecracker. I’m talking about folks who heard hard-on and thought heart-on—and answered with a “show me.” I’m talking about folks who walked through the world, always assuming everyone meant well and most things weren’t coded for something more.

Sure. Innocence like that can get you in trouble. You miss a signal. You say the wrong thing. You walk away from something you didn’t even know was being offered. Or was it? But more often than not, innocence like that saves you. It lets you grow at your own pace. It buys you time. It keeps your heart soft while the rest of the world’s toughening up. That’s not foolishness. That’s grace in slow motion.

And when the meaning finally lands—when you finally do “get it”—you don’t feel duped. You feel ready. And you look back and laugh, and you don’t redden at all when you share those moments, just as I’m sharing here without a tinge of blush.

It seems to me there’s a kind of wisdom that comes only from a place of not knowing too soon. And bless your little heart, I’ve lived there most of my life.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “Mercy me! I thought RN meant Registered Nurse, too,” or “I didn’t hear that word until college and didn’t dare say it out loud until I was grown,”—well, honey, pull up a chair and sit a spell with me, and we can while away an hour or so, side by side.

“What will we do?”

“Lands sakes alive, darling! We’ll talk.”

We’ll talk about all the pages we’ve dogeared down through the years and why. We’ll talk about people who believe what others say is more important than what they imply. We’ll talk about people like us who listen with their hearts before they learn the rest.

And when we’re done with all that, I’ll lean in real close and tell you once more that my innocence always lets me see beauty first. I’ll tell you once more that my innocence always lets me feel awe. I’ll tell you once more that my innocence always lets me believe in heart-ons.

And, honey, guess what? I still do.

My Altar Ego

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“I tried so hard to do nothing that I accidentally did everything I needed.”

— Poor Brentford Lee (born 1947 and born again today).

Long, long ago I learned to not complain about the weather. For me, it was not a hard lesson to master. I love weather. I love how it arrives unbothered by plans, how it doesn’t ask permission to shift. Rain seeps, sun scorches, wind whispers or howls—all of it a steady reminder that the world turns whether I make a list or not. Seasons don’t hustle. They don’t perform. They simply become what they are, and in that quiet becoming, I find permission to do the same.

And so it is that I often find myself luxuriating in my bathtub–sunny days, rainy days, snowy days. Any day in any weather will do for a good old-fashioned soak. It’s especially good in a real tub like mine. Cast-iron enamel. Please tell me that no others are manufactured. Or if you tell me that they are, please have my smelling salts handy.

Let’s be clear: my bathtub is not clawfoot elegant, but it’s deep enough to pretend. When I slide in, I tell myself that I’m taking time to be. But I know the truth. I’ve turned soaking into an event that I do.

Usually, it’s not much of an event or a do. It doesn’t need to be since I don’t need much. Water. Hot. Always hot. None of this lukewarm nonsense for me. If I’m going to bother drawing a bath, I want it to steam like a sultry Shenandoah Valley morning, rolling up from the tub like fog curling along the Seven Bends of the Shenandoah.

Getting the water that I need is not as straightforward as you might think. No. It’s not. Even though I live on a mountain, I do not draw it from my well. It’s pumped from my deep well and flows through copper pipes indoors, as befits a mountain man with a porcelain tub. And, of course, mine has proper porcelain turns—white handles, chrome collars, and bold Hot and Cold lettering, like a tub straight out of a 1950s film noir. Hot, thank goodness, does bring hot. Cold brings cold. So far, so good. But to adjust the flow, I have to turn both knobs left. Why? Because my plumber, bless his well-meaning hands, apparently installed them backwards. I think. I always thought I turned the hot water knob counterclockwise to turn on the flow and clockwise to turn off the flow. The cold lever is opposite, clockwise to turn on the flow, and counterclockwise to turn it off. It is something like that. Right? Damned if I know anymore. Apparently, I’ve spent years turning one way, only to be met with the smug silence of a faucet that refuses to gush or blush. In this tub, turning is just plumb wrong.

I guess it’s a small metaphor for life, really. Just when you’re sure you’re doing it correctly—hot water flowing, intentions pure, and everything else on course—you realize the universe wants you to turn the other way.

But before I turn the other way and step into the tub–which is, I must warn you, the stage on which I will be soaking, ruminating, and possibly overdoing it for the rest of this essay—I must direct the stage lights toward something magnificent. Close your eyes for a sec. Okay. Now open, look down, and let your eyes feast upon my …

… bubble bath.

Yes. I do use bubble bath. Lord knows it’s not for the scent—though I admit, I have a weakness for sandalwood. And lavender. But let the record show: I allow lavender only in the tub. Nowhere else. A mountain man like me has standards and has to stand by them.

I tell myself that it’s not for the fragrance. It’s for the foam. Even though I reveal to you, My Dear Readers, far more than I should, I want to assure you that I do have a modicum of modesty. A bubble here, a bubble there—tastefully arranged to preserve an illusion of decency. Let’s just say the bubbles know where to gather.

Yep. That’s about all I need for one of my regular soaks. A tub. Hot water. Bubble bath.

But let’s face it. Every once in a blue moon, a mountain man needs a little spice. I’m no exception, even though I confess to being more than a little exceptional.

It’s on those blue-moon occasions that I line up a full production. Then, believe you me. I don’t just take a bath. I stage a bath.

I arrange things just so on my Broadway altar: mug of chamomile tea (because sometimes wine in a stemmed and fluted Baccarat feels like too much doing), one candle (the fancy one that I don’t even own, but begrudgingly burn anyway), and three colognes that I don’t own yet, each vying for my American Express card that I do own. Imagine. Three bottles lined up like contestants on The Bachelor: Mountain-Man Bathroom Edition. It’s far more than cologne drama. It’s downright Shakespearean. It’s The Mountain meets The Globe.

It opens with a cologne smackdown.

Baie 19: (sniffily) “Let’s not pretend I’m not the one Poor Brentford truly wants. I’m rainfall and memory. I’m the whisper of longing on damp skin. I’m practically poetry in a bottle.”

Oud Wood: (with velvet growl) “Poetry’s lovely, dear, but I’m seduction that lingers. I’m cashmere confidence. I’m what Tennessee Gary leans in to smell twice.”

Patchouli Absolu: (swaggering) “Children, please. I’m the heartbeat of the forest and the soul of a vinyl jazz LP. I’m Poor Brentford in full earthy glory. He doesn’t wear me, he becomes me.”

Baie 19: “You smell like a commune.”

Oud Wood: “You smell like wet pebbles.”

Patchouli Absolu: “And you both smell like insecurity.”

ME (overwhelmed on one of my rare occasions when I know how it feels to feel overwhelmed, which is not overwhelmingly often): “You’re all exhausting. No one’s coming over. I’m about to confess my sins to the lefty-tighty, righty loosey faucet and cry into the loofah that I neither have nor want.”

They fall silent. I choose. None. Scentless, I splash around in the tub like a mountain man who moonlights in musicals.

Then what do I do? I lean back, all the way back, and I start confessing. The bubbles gather ’round in all the right places like gossiping parishioners. The faucet stares. Ruby settles nearby with the look of a creature who’s seen this show before, seen it all before, all too often.

I speak.

“Forgive me, tub, for I have over-functioned.”

Drip.

“I said I was going to be. Just be. Instead, look at what I’ve done. I’ve curated a still-life. I folded the towel just so. I fluffed my own ego like it was company. I …”

Drip. Drip.

“… I checked my smartphone. Three times. I told myself I wouldn’t, but what if he texted? What if he sensed my aching soul? Oh, do not ask me, “Who?” You tease. Please be still. Surely, you know exactly who. Surely, you do. You do, don’t you?”

Ruby raises one eye and promptly closes it again. Even she doesn’t buy my shameless shenanigans.

“And yes,” I whisper, “I lit the special candle that I don’t have. The one I said I was saving. For what? For when? Who knows. I guess I was saving it for this moment of low-grade thirst.”

Replies? None. Not one. No, not one single solitary reply. I suspect judgment. Is that what exfoliating looks like? Is that how it feels? Judgment?

I confess one more thing. Doing this being thingy that I’m supposed to be doing ain’t easy. But what’s a mountain man to do when he be soakin’ in a tub?

The very question made some of the less bashful bubbles pop, just as I brought on stage everything that I’ll need to play out my after-the-rain weather act—the one I fully plan on doing.

I’ll harness my weedwhacker around me like medieval armor and march into the yard. Oh. Don’t get alarmed. I’ll don all my clothes so that the scorching sun will not be led into temptation. No doubt the overgrowth in the lower yard and along the rutted road will wave at me and thrash about, like green adversaries, defiant and smug.

And I, in true Don Quixote theatrics at their finest, will tilt my weedwhacker and tackle it all, tackle it all already, as I have tackled it all already so often already in the past.

And I will be noble.

And I will be productive.

And I will be heroic.

And I will let the rains come and the winds blow. Ruby, smarter than I, will bolt for shelter. But I will stay. Drenched. Steaming. And—without even trying—I will finally be. Just… be.

Wet. Ridiculous. Peaceful. Winded. My trusty weedwhacker by my side. But I will have achieved being.

That is the theme, isn’t it, of whatever it is that I’ve got goin’ on in this here tub? Right? The daily tug-of-war between doing and being.

I want to be at peace, but now I’ve done gone and plotted out all the steps and ruined it.

I want to be still, but now I’ve done gone and ended up writing about the stillness.

I want to be the mountain man who soaks in sandalwood and lavender in a porcelain tub with porcelain faucets that can’t figure out which way to turn.

But I also want to be the mountain man who hosts, cooks, flirts, loves, writes books, directs theatrical Broadway tub shows, and maybe gets a text from someone–in Tennessee?–who says, “You smell good—even when you don’t wear cologne, especially when you don’t wear cologne.”

And here, my dear Readers, is the moment when the lights begin to dim ever so faintly, the audience leans in more spellbound than before, and Poor Brentford steps on stage–front and center, fully wrapped in his towel (or is he fully wrapt?)–for his soliloquy that he never dreamt of speaking, let alone rehearsing:

“I tried so hard to do nothing that I accidentally did everything I needed.

“I made peace with three colognes I dreamt about, one candle that I don’t own but burn at both ends anyway, a tub with faulty faucets, and me– myself, just as I am.

“I let the bubbles baptize my busy mind.

“And when I stepped out—wrinkled, radiant, ridiculoos—I realized:

“‘I be fabulous.’

“I also realized: ‘You be fabulous, too.’

“So. Listen up. Go now. Take a soak, with or without bubble bath.

“It’s where becoming begins.”

What I Hear When I Stop Talking

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“Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.”

–Gordon Hempton (b. 1952), acoustic ecologist and advocate for the power of natural silence.

My Mother told the world, especially anyone who would listen, that I was born smiling. I can just hear her now–well, obviously I can’t, and certainly I don’t remember it from when I was a baby, but you know what I mean:

“Oh, look. Mama’s Little Mr. Sunshine is lighting up the Coal Camp already.”

Her regular reinforcement, of course, kept me smiling, smiling, and smiling. I never stopped. I guess I don’t know how, even though people are always wondering what no-good nonsense I’m up to or what I know that they wish they did.

What my Mother didn’t tell folks is that I was born talking. All right. Fine. Have it your way. Maybe I wasn’t born talking out loud. But I am certain that I was born talking quietly to myself. And when the time came–and I am fairly certain that it came precociously sooner rather than belatedly later–and I heard words roll off my tongue like orchestral notes at the New York Philharmonic, I vowed to keep right on talking, talking, and talking. I never stopped. I guess I don’t know how, even though people sometimes give me looks that seem to say:

“Shut up. Won’t you please shut up. You’re exhaustive and exhausting.”

Like I said, sometimes they give me that look, but luckily, they never come right and say so. If they do, I don’t hear them. I guess people need to learn to speak up, especially if they expect to be heard while I’m talking.

I guess you might say that I’m one of those extroverts who make it a challenge for people who value quiet to be around. Of course, I’m just guessing. But every now and then, I seem to catch a glimpse of someone giving me a look that seems to be a plea for silence. But I don’t know. Looks are just looks. And the more that I think about it, I don’t think any of those people who suffer my loquaciousness in silence–even the many who have suffered sufficiently to be worthy of sainthood–have ever come right out and asked me to be quiet.

Recently, though, I might have been closer than close to that “Please-be-quiet” threshold. But then again, I might not have been. Who knows? Maybe. I’m not really sure. I’m just guessing.

If I really was close to crossing that threshold, Gary was polite enough and gentlemanly enough not to say anything. I’m not talking about my neighbor, Gary. I’m talking about my Gary from Tennessee. It’s not that he’s the quiet type. Actually, he’s quite the talker, and when he gets going, I’ll swear that he could talk out the entire book of Genesis without leaving out any of the beseeches and begats. Of course, he doesn’t talk in Old Testamentese like that, but when he talks, what he says is rich and robust and layered with details known to Adam and Eve and all of their descendants since the Garden of Eden, including me.

At the same time, I know fully well that Gary appreciates quiet. So far, though, that has not stopped me from talking. When he’s here and he’s doing his thing and I’m doing my thing, little dramas might unfold thusly:

Gary: Weeding. Not looking up. Not saying a word.

Brent: “Just ignore me. I’m just going to the compost heap. What you’re doing looks great. What do you think?”

Or, later in the day or perhaps earlier in the morning.

Gary: Reading on the deck. Looking right at his book. Not saying a word.

Brent: “Isn’t this quiet great? So peaceful. So relaxing. The only sound you can hear is the quiet song of a bird singing from time to time. Oh. Listen. Hear that one? Robin? Cardinal? OMG! Now listen. It’s the crow that lives in the pine tree midway up the mountain. See? I can just barely see it. Can you?”

I don’t think my chatter bothered Gary. It must not have. If it had, he would have said something. But he didn’t say anything. Not one word.

Still, I imagine that when he got in his Mazda, drove down the rutted mountain road, and headed back to Tennessee, he sighed a sigh of relief, verily saying aloud to himself:

“Peace. Quiet. Thank God.”

I’m sure, though, that it was a short sigh because it didn’t take too long before he sent me a text message. Or did I send one to him?

Who sent what to whom and when doesn’t really matter, does it? Either way, texting is talking. Right?

I think so, and the message–whether coming in from Gary or going out from me–found me sitting on my deck, listening to the birds, and thinking to myself:

“How incredibly quiet. I can’t believe how peacefully quiet it is, sitting here, me, myself, sipping on my coffee. Sipping. Sipping. Sipping.”

In that nanosecond, Kay Ryan’s “Shark’s Teeth” talked its poetic way into my quiet:

Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark’s-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.

And I sat there, sipping my coffee, cup held high in mid-air—my morning salutation to quiet, my morning celebration of quiet, my morning realization that much of life is framed by quiet.

In art, it’s the white that lets the red pop. The space the eye travels through to find what matters. The breath between brushstrokes. Without it, everything would shout. And nothing would be seen.

In music, it’s the rest that gives the chord its ache. The pause before the resolution. The silence that says, wait. And because you waited, you feel more.

And in me?
Despite the smile.
Despite the gab.
Even I need the quiet that I so often deny others.

Not just to appreciate it—
but to let it hold me,
steady me,
remind me
that I belong to the silence, too.

The kind that doesn’t ask for attention.
The kind that lets the world be.
The kind that lets me be, too.

A crow calling far off.
A weed pulled in rhythm.
A breath drawn but not spoken over.
A book opened without comment.

Gary nearby, not needing to say a word.
And I? Nearby as well. Listening.
Savoring quiet in silence.

A Week Back to the Future

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“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”

—A. A. Milne (1882–1956), English author best known for creating Winnie-the-Pooh and stories that continue to shape how we remember childhood, love, and the quiet power of small things.

It was a portable Remington Rand typewriter in a gray box lined with green felt. In 1956, my parents went to Lilly Office Supply and bought it for my sister Arlene, who was taking high school typing. After graduation, she “went away”—not far, but far enough to feel exotic to my boyhood mind—to become a medical technologist in a residential hospital program.

She returned home often, always bringing—unbeknownst to her and to me—pieces of my future.

One of the first that impressed my ten-year-old spirit was her interest in tropical fish, no fancier than fan-tail guppies but fancy enough to ignite in me a lifelong love. My one-hundred-gallon tropical aquarium speaks to a piece of my future that settled in and endured.

I’m not sure, but next up might have been some of the exotic recipes she cooked when she came back on visits. I remember one dish in particular. Arlene called it pepper steak, but it wasn’t French au poivre or Chinese stir-fry. This was hers—flank steak pounded thin, rolled up tight, and packed with cracked black pepper. Lots and lots of pepper. She baked it low and slow until the whole kitchen smelled like heat and adventure.

I was hell-bent on loving it. It was different, and Arlene made it. That alone made it holy. My mother, no stranger to bold flavors from coal camp kitchens, loved it too. She said Arlene had a touch. That dish lit a fuse. It was the first truly “foreign” flavor I fell for—and from that bite forward, I was hungry for worldwide cuisine. It was a piece of my future that still lingers on my adventuresome culinary palate.

What else? Once, Arlene brought home one of her Mahalia Jackson albums—a 12-inch LP—titled In the Upper Room. I remember the cover, but even more, I remember the sound: Mahalia’s voice rising from the vinyl like a sermon on wings, wide-mouthed and full-throated, her vowels rich and trembling with conviction. That mouth—large, commanding, joyful—seemed to carry an entire congregation inside it. You didn’t just hear her sing. You stood up straighter, somewhere deep in your bones. Her singing resonated naturally with me. I had fallen in love with Black Gospel in my early coal camp years, and even though we had moved away, now I could enjoy Black Gospel on my own record player. Notes and chords from that piece of my future still rattle my rafters every morning as my soul feeds on Black Gospel fire while I bike indoors or garden in the sun.

Arlene brought many other pieces of my future back home when she visited, all held tightly together by my realization that she was living the good life, maybe because she had “gone away” but definitely because her education had opened doors. As a medical technologist, she could go anywhere in the world. Bluefield (WV) was nearby yet far away. Richlands (VA)–just across a mountain or two–was ever further away. Richmond, which in my young mind was further than the stretch of my imagination, was clean across Virginia.

When she came back home, she arrived in style.

How well I remember her 1959 BMW 507 Roadster, white as a wedding glove, low-slung and impossibly sleek. The chrome trim shimmered like polished silverware, and the twin kidney grilles gave it a kind of sly, knowing smile. With its long, sculpted hood and tucked-in waistline, it didn’t sit on the dirt road in front of our home—it posed. And yet—for all its glamour—it was so feather-light, I once watched my brother Stanley and my brother-in-law Lemuel lift it off the road and set it gently in the yard, as if it were a city toy that had wandered into a grown-up mountain world by mistake.

Sometimes, instead of driving home, Arlene would fly. I can still see her coming down the steps of the plane, with a look on her face fiercely defying the engine’s turbulence to disturb her sculpted bouffant—a chin-length hairstyle with smooth volume at the crown, gently curled ends, and a sleek, side-swept part. It was polished but not overdone, and it framed her face with effortless elegance, just as it did her heroine Jackie Kennedy, who made the hairstyle fashionable.

Arlene had exquisite taste in clothing, too—expensive, yes, but timeless. She didn’t follow fashion; she curated it. Her closet was a study in fine fabrics: tailored wool skirts, cashmere sweaters so soft they seemed to hold their own breath, and coats that whispered elegance with every movement. She favored deep, dramatic colors—navy, charcoal, forest green, black—tones my mother thought too somber for a woman her young age.

But Arlene wore them with such composure that you’d never question it. Even in our modest home, she had the poise of someone just back from Paris or somewhere so far away it sounded like it should be whispered.

In my young mind, she had arrived, not only with all the quiet showings of her success but also with the equally quiet sharing of her largesse. She was religious in sending money to my parents—especially as my dad began his retirement from the coal mines—and later to me when I started college.

In all of those ways, I saw in her life pieces of my own future.

But when Arlene “went away,” she left behind one piece that might have had an impact on me—equal to if not greater than—the other pieces of my future that she brought back home with every visit.

Her Remington Rand typewriter in a gray box lined with green felt.

My sister Judy used it when she took typing. And if you guessed that it was passed on to me, you guessed right. Starting with my typing classes and stretching far into the future, Arlene’s Remington Rand began a remarkable journey—one that may be unmatched in the annals of typewriter chronicles.

When I went to Alderson-Broaddus University in 1965, it went with me. I typed all of my papers, including my Honors Thesis, on that Remington.

When I graduated in 1969, it went with me to Washington, DC, where I started my career at the Library of Congress. I typed a proposal for a concordance to Robert Frost’s poetry on that Remington.

Three years later, when I started my doctoral program at the University of South Carolina (USC), it went with me to Columbia, where I wrote all of my graduate papers on that Remington.

One was more important than any of the others. In preparing it, I found myself in Richmond for a week, staying with Arlene and her husband Clyde, a police officer. She was surprised that I still had her Remington and that I was using it even in graduate school.

I put it to phenomenal use that week. Looking back, I wonder what trajectory my life might’ve taken had it not been for that turning-point.

Lean in a little closer and let me explain.

It was my first semester at USC, and I was taking a survey course in 19th-century American Literature. One of the stories that we read was Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s “A Humble Romance.” I had never heard of the writer before, but I was so smitten by her story that I read another one and then another one and many, many more. Aside from thinking that they were extraordinary stories, I was captivated by a pattern of strong-willed women who inevitably never married. I was equally captivated when I discovered that Freeman herself did not marry until she was nearly fifty.

It was a minor aha moment. I had a perfect research paper topic: “Single Women and Gender Identity in Selected Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.” My professor approved, suggesting that I explore Freeman’s letters for supporting biographical evidence.

To my initial horror, I discovered that Freeman’s letters had never been published. But to my immediate delight, I discovered that Clifton Waller Barrett Library at the University of Virginia had a small collection of her letters. In a flash, I had an action plan. I would stay with Arlene and Clyde in Richmond, make the daily one-hour drive to Charlottesville, spend the day in Barrett Library, and return at the end of each day.

The typewriter went with me on those daily research trips, and during that week, I prepared a transcript of the Freeman letters at the Barrett Library, systematically and methodically using that Remington.

I returned to Columbia the next week and continued working on my Freeman paper and on papers in my other courses, all typed on that Remington.

By semester’s end, I had an epiphany. For my doctoral dissertation, I could locate and edit Freeman’s letters. My advisor loved the idea, as did my committee, but knowing more fully than I the rigor involved in such a project, they urged me to limit my scope to selected letters. I prevailed with my initial proposal. Ten years of research later–with trips to more than fifty libraries across the country, always armed with Arlene’s Remington Rand–I finished my dissertation and was awarded my Ph.D. In 1985, the fruit of my scholarly labors was published: The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. It remains, as The Journal of Modern Literature noted in its review, “the most complete record to date of Freeman’s life as writer and woman.”

But wait, wait. Don’t go. I need to share a few more details so that you’ll understand even more fully how Arlene’s Remington Rand typewriter and her quiet support during that week in her home all came together, and a life of research dedicated to Freeman found its rhythm—click by click, page by page.

The five decades since have witnessed me not only digging up the past in all the towns where Freeman lived, wrote, and made the rest of the world sit up and take notice but also returning there as frequent keynote speaker, sharing with the towns’ citizens all of my findings, never before shared. Those same towns helped launch the publication of my landmark The Infant Sphinx as well as my watershed edition of Freeman’s Green Mountain Stories (2023), the intended title of her first collection of adult stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887).

These days, I’m working on Dolly: Life and Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Vol I: The New England Years (1852-1901). Vol. II: The New Jersey Years (1902-1930). I have no doubt that three towns will welcome me back when Dolly is published. Randolph (MA), where she was born. Brattleboro (VT), where she launched her literary career. Metuchen (NJ), where she died.

But let’s move past all that Freeman stuff.

For now, let’s keep the spotlight on the woman who went away when I was a boy, returning home with a passion for tropical fish and gospel records, pepper steak and black wool coats, fast cars and high-flying planes, and all the other things that the good life had to offer–giving me something far more. The dreams. The belief. The typewriter.

For now, let’s keep the spotlight on my sister Arlene, who always brought home—unbeknownst to her and to me—pieces of my enduring future.

A Reader’s Compendium to Intimacy

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“Maybe the next new old way to intimacy is right here. Voice. Breath. Story.”

—-TheWiredResearcher, b. 1947. Author of A Reader’s Compendium to Intimacy, guaranteed to make you explore all the rooms in your home.

Whiplash!

If I were a betting man, I’d wager the title gave you a little jolt. You paused on Compendium—“Wait, does that mean what I think it means?”—and then BAM! You hit Intimacy, and it was like you got rear-ended at a stoplight. Neck snap. Mind swirl. Whiplash.

Let me double down. The moment you saw Intimacy, your head unzipped at least one of these:

● “Sex.”
● “Emotional stuff… here we go.”
● “Being seen. Fully. Yikes.”
● “Something I want—and fear.”
● “Crying in front of someone.”
● “Letting someone in—too far in.”
● “When it’s good, it’s everything.”
● “That’s what I’m missing.”
● “It never lasts.”
● “Real connection. No filter.”
● “The kind of thing that leaves you wordless—and maybe a little wrecked.”

Aha! Caught you! If you hadn’t blushed, I wouldn’t have known. But don’t worry. You’re okay. I’m okay. And talking about intimacy? Trust me. It’s more than okay. Try it. You’ll be surprised by your discoveries.

Let me also assure you of something else. If sex is what you thought of first, you’re still fine. I’ll prove it to you. I wanted to sprinkle some hard data into this essay, like the suggestive power of scattering rose petals on bedroom sheets, so I googled:

“How many times a day do people think about intimacy?”

What popped up first? Guess. Every hit focused on some aspect of sex, and since I’ve already gone down that rabbit hole, let me share what I found. Men think about sex 19 times a day; women, 10.

But sex is just one slice of intimacy. So if something else popped up as your first thought, you’re in good company. As a matter of fact, many studies don’t even include physical closeness in defining intimacy.

Instead, they zero in on what intimacy requires before it even begins: establishing trust, cultivating closeness, and voicing truth aloud.

Some experts get really specific and focus on what they call the 5 As of intimacy:

● Attention to the present moment–observing, listening, and noticing all the feelings at play in the relationships.
● Acceptance of ourselves and others just as we are.
● Appreciation of all our gifts, our limits, and our longings as human beings.
● Affection shown through holding and touching.
● Allowing life and love to be just as they are, with all their ecstasy and ache, without trying to take control.

Other experts focus on the 5 Cs of intimacy:

● Communication–talking openly, honestly, and respectfully.
● Compatibility–sharing core values and goals.
● Commitment–showing up and working through challenges together.
● Care–expressing love through empathy, support, and small gestures.
● Compromise–meeting in the middle to make sure both people feel heard, valued, and respected.

Also, the experts have recommendations for keeping intimacy alive and well in the bedroom. Well. Good grief. Somebody needs to tell the experts that houses have more rooms than the bedroom. Joking aside, most of the tips circle back to sex. So let me share one that doesn’t. I stumbled on it the other day. It’s the 2-2-2 rule that goes like this. Committed couples should go on a date once every two weeks, spend a weekend away every two months, and take a week-long vacation every two years.

I’m fascinated by that rule, but just to be transparent: I’d need more dates, more getaways, and more week-long vacays. Preferably soon. Preferably with someone special who knows how to linger over dessert and pillow talk and other sweet nuthins that mean everything.

Lately, though, something softer has been curling around the edges of my mind. It’s something that doesn’t require a plane ticket or a fancy reservation. All it needs is a dedicated space, a good voice, and the willingness to listen.

Are you ready? It’s so incredibly simple.

Reading aloud to someone.

Can you imagine?

Actually, I can. I don’t know about you, but I love reading aloud. I always have. As an educator, reading literary selections aloud to my students is one of my greatest joys. Time after time after time, they respond:

“Professor Kendrick, when I read this story, I didn’t get it. But hearing you read helped me understand. Now, I get it.”

I think I know why. Reading aloud requires understanding not just the meaning strung out in words but also the heart and soul that live in the spaces surrounding those words, sometimes haunting those spaces, and sometimes hoping and longing for release that comes only when the words hear themselves spoken, knowing that they’ve been set free through sharing. Author. Reader. Listener. Intertwined. Joined. One. It’s one of the most intimate moments ever, even if fleeting.

Occasionally, that moment becomes even more intimate when words catch the reader off guard and nuanced meanings surface as the words roll off the tongue, releasing a sudden floodgate of tears, falling unexpectedly but without need of apology or explanation.

It’s happened to me more than once, but I most remember what happened when I taught Thomas Wolfe’s “The Lost Boy” for the first time. I loved the story from the start, and I was confident of my ability to lead a general class discussion built around the question:

“Who is the lost boy in the novella?

“Eugene? Grover? How do you know. Where’s the textual evidence to support your claim?”

Just as we were ending our lively and spirited class conversation, I decided to read the last paragraph.

“And out of the enchanted wood, that thicket of man’s memory, Eugene knew that the dark eye and the quiet face of his friend and brother—poor child, life’s stranger, and life’s exile, lost like all of us, a cipher in blind mazes, long ago—the lost boy was gone forever, and would not return.”

With quivering voice and with tears moistening my cheeks, I made it through the final words, realizing as I had never realized before, the existential pain that comes with knowing how lost we all are on life’s journey.

There I stood in all my vulnerability. There my students sat, seeing me in that moment. And then, we all understood simply because I had read aloud.

The intensity of that intimate moment remains unforgettable.

I’ve never tried reading aloud in a relationship, but I’d love to try it. I’m thinking that it would be slow burn. I’m thinking that it would be like foreplay for the soul.

I’ll take credit for the sultriness that I just brought to the notion of reading aloud to someone. But when it comes to the idea itself, I’ll have to give credit to a neighbor. We were enjoying a cocktail, and somewhere between Gin-and-Tonic sips, Gary started telling me about the reading ritual he and his late wife practiced daily:

● Same time.
● Same place.
● Different books, usually.
● Breaking the silence, whenever desired, to share a passage aloud.

As he kept talking, I watched and listened, spellbound. He was transported if only for a few fleeting moments to a lifetime of fleeting moments when he and Jody read together in a ritual so profound that it transcended the physical and found home in heart and soul.

Actually, neither Gary nor Jody can claim the ritual as theirs. Couples have been doing it forever.

Step back in American history to Thomas and Martha Jefferson. They were known to spend evenings at Monticello reading novels and poetry to each other, their voices soft against the candlelight of a Virginia evening. It was one of the few quiet pleasures in a life that was otherwise noisy with politics.

Several presidencies later, John and Abigail Adams read political theory, plays, and moral philosophy aloud to each other—sometimes in the same room, sometimes through the pages of their legendary letters. Shared reading was one way they kept their minds, and their marriage, sharp.

Hop to the other side of the Pond and fast forward to the next century and we’ll find Queen Victoria and Prince Albert often reading poetry aloud in the evenings—sometimes in English, sometimes in German. Victoria later wrote in her journals that Albert’s voice brought her calm. Their reading wasn’t just education. It was connection.

Reading aloud to each other isn’t just a thing of the past either.

Fast forward to the present. Everyone knows that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter—married for 77 years—read the Bible aloud to one another every single night, even when they were apart. When travel or illness intervened, they kept the tradition alive by phone. It wasn’t about religion so much as rhythm. A ritual. A bond.

Another presidential couple, Barack and Michelle Obama, often speak about sharing books with each other—discussing what they’re reading, trading pages, sometimes reading passages aloud. For them, books are not only a window into each other’s minds but also a way to stay close while being in the public eye.

Even acting duos like Michael McKean and Annette O’Toole read books aloud to each other. They’ve done so for decades, weaving stories into the fabric of their relationship like a shared language.

Now that I’ve got my rhythm going, let me share with you something that I’ve known all along. Literature is filled with couples who share books, poems, and whispered lines by firelight.

I’m thinking about Hazel & Augustus in John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. They read An Imperial Affliction aloud to each other, sharing lines that feel like lifelines. It’s tender, flirty, and heartbreaking.

Or what about Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe in L. M. Montgomery’s Anne’s House of Dreams? As their relationship deepens, they read poetry and essays together, sometimes aloud. It’s subtle, romantic, and tied to their shared love of words and growth.

I guess I should mention The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Several characters read aloud to each other throughout wartime, showing that community forms through books and shared voices and that reading as intimacy outlasts chaos.

But I’m not going to talk about any of those literary works. They’re all lovely, earnest, and romantic. But I want something different. I want something quieter. I want to talk about Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. After fire and blindness and the long stretch of absence, it’s Jane who reads aloud to Mr. Rochester. She does it not to dazzle, not to perform, but simply to be there. Her voice becomes his window to the world—and maybe even back to himself. It’s not just love—it’s restoration, offered one word at a time.

And that’s the kind of reading aloud that I’m moving toward at this point in my life. I want it to be not just a ritual of sharing aloud but also a ritual of staying in place.

It’s a ritual that I’ve never practiced in a relationship. But I’m ready to give it a try, just to see. Maybe start with poetry or essays.

I’m ready to say, “Pick something you love–or wrote. Maybe a poem. I’ll pick something I love–or wrote. Maybe an essay. Let’s read when we feel like it. Share when we want to. Listen, when we can.”

I’m ready for a voice I know to wrap itself around ideas I don’t.

I’m ready for the quiet thrill of saying, “Listen to this,” and meaning everything.

Who knows. Maybe that’s the next new old way to explore intimacy—not with technique or timing or strategy, but with voice, breath, and story.

There. Now you have it. A Reader’s Compendium to Intimacy. Now you know.

Go. Do it. No rose petals. No script.

Just this. Read. Together. Aloud, sometimes. And when your love reads back to you?

Remember: That’s not just a voice.

Remember: That’s a heart unfolding, anew.

For Mothers Everywhere: Glimpses of My Mother’s Hands

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Originally published last year, this remains my most-read—and most-shared—essay. I’m honored to bring it back this Mother’s Day weekend, just as I first wrote it—a quiet tribute to the hands that shaped us all, guiding, giving, and leaving their imprint long after they’re gone.

“Mothers hold their children’s hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.”

–Unknown

On top of my bedroom chest of drawers is a pair of studio portraits of my father and my mother. They’re hand-colored originals, each measuring 3 inches by 4 inches, taken a year or so after my parents’ 1932 marriage. The portraits are in hinged gold frames. My father is on the left. My mother is on the right. A lamp behind illuminates both.

Right now, as I lie in bed, I’m focusing on my mother. Even though her portrait is five feet or so away, she is as clear to my sight as if she were right beside my bed. I’m glimpsing into a distant past, where memories of her linger like whispers.

She’s seated on a bench, wooden, perhaps. The artistic backdrop transports me outdoors. Trees frame the scene, a tall one behind her, their branches reaching skyward, and shorter ones in the background, on the bank of a calm body of water, perhaps a serene river.

She’s wearing a dark dress with short sleeves and a deep-cut neckline, accentuated by a glistening leaf-shaped brooch.

Her finger-waved hair, parted in the middle, falls softly just below her ears. Her eyes are dark and intense, with a gaze that seems to pierce through the image. They are surrounded by her soft, light skin tone, which provides a striking contrast. Their depth and intensity draw me in and make me wonder. What secrets lie hidden behind them? What stories and dreams do they hold? Are they looking into the depths of the world, seeking answers and understanding? Are they inviting me to join in their quest for knowledge?

Her features captivate and mesmerize me, regardless of how often I look at her portrait. Somehow, though, I seem to see my mother’s hands the most. Their contours are soft and graceful, and the fingers curve delicately, one hand gently clasping the other hand.

I see my mother’s hands the most because I know her hands the best.

My mother’s hands are engaging hands. Her hands held mine when I was but a child, and we scurried down the path behind our home where two boulders stood sentinel on either side as colored snow fell down in green and pink and blue flakes, making me believe in magic. Her hands held mine when I was a few years older, and she led me outdoors when our world was covered in snow and showed me how to lie down in stillness, moving arms and legs left and right to create angel wings, making me believe in flight. Her hands held mine a few years later when our world was green with summer and led me to lie down in warm grass, eyes skyward, discovering cloud figures, pointing out the details to one another so vividly that each could see brand new worlds of our own imaginings, making me believe in sharing visions so that others might see.

My mother’s hands are cooking hands. Her hands could transform pinto beans, onions, cornbread, buttermilk, and sweet potato cobbler into a feast, making me want it weekly. Her hands could turn a 25-pound turkey into a bronzed Thanksgiving dinner that rivaled Norman Rockwell’s iconic oil painting Freedom from Want, making art come alive in our own coal camp kitchen. Her hands could measure out with perfection all the ingredients for any dish from any cuisine that she had tasted with no need for recipe and with no need for measurements, teaching me to trust my senses.

My mother’s hands are versatile hands. Her hands could make our clothing without pattern, simply by taking our measure with her hands, making me aware that some things are more felt than seen. Her hands could cut my hair using scissors, comb, and the soft stretch of her fingers, reinforcing in my mind the marriage of expertise and craftsmanship. Her hands could take a pastry brush and turn a greased baking sheet or cake pan into a perfect likeness of Christ, making me see Holiness in the everyday.

My mother’s hands are industrious hands. Her hands could transform a grassy field into a kaleidoscope of gladiolas or dahlias, bursting with vibrant hues, teaching me to see potential in the ordinary. Her hands could hold her side of a wooden pole stretched through handles of a galvanized tub, carrying water to the garden, making me realize that many hands can carry heavy loads. Her hands could hang wallpaper with finesse, demonstrating how effort can elevate even the smallest task to art.

My mother’s hands are inclusive hands. Her hands always opened wide the door, welcoming everyone as guests into our home, making me value open-heartedness and acceptance of others, regardless of differences. Her hands always set a place for them at our modest table, making me understand that meager becomes abundance when shared with others. Her hands always held theirs in loving celebration and thanksgiving, making me a witness to the genuine communion of mankind.

My mother’s hands are nurturing hands. Her hands cared for her father and her mother in times when they could not take care of themselves, impressing on me the importance of helping others. Her hands cared for my dad and me and all my siblings, even when our hands might well have lessened the weight that she carried in hers, showing me that strength comes with sacrifice. Her hands took pine rosin to hold tight and heal the gash in my foot, the scar on my sole still a reminder of what she had learned from her mother’s hands, helping me appreciate generational know-how and wisdom.

My mother’s hands are writing hands. Her hands penned sermons when she pastored a church, making me realize that the intellect can lead the heart to be slain by the Holy Spirit. Her hands sent letters out into the world to those she knew well and to those she hardly knew at all, making me see that the power of words reaches beyond the pulpit. Her hands discovered typewriter keys late in life, determined that hand tremors would not tame her self-expression, making me realize the strength of determination.

My mother’s hands are spiritual hands. Her hands joined the hands of other warriors, praying over me as a child with polio, making me–one of the lucky, uncrippled survivors–a believer in the power of prayer. Her hands walked their way through her Bible and her commentary books–from cover to cover–more than thirty times in her lifetime, making me know the richness to be gained through close readings and research. Her hands clapped, sending thunderous applause into the Heavens to show her thankfulness and gratitude, making me know the joy of praise.

My mother’s hands are clasped hands. As she lay in her casket after her funeral, I removed her rings, took her hands and clasped one gently on top of the other, leaned in for a farewell kiss, and, then, closed the lid.

After her burial, my hands–strong from the strength of hers–released from their cage three white doves, flying upward toward the celestial realm, perhaps at that same mysterious moment when my mother found her way back home and celebrated her arrival with outstretched hands.

From Francesco’s Stew to the Sound of My Pounding Heart

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“When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

—Lao Tzu (6th century BCE; ancient Chinese philosopher and founder of Taoism. His teachings emphasize harmony with the natural flow of life.)

Ta-TUM. Ta-TUM. Ta-TUM.

With rhythmic precision, it keeps pounding just like my heart.

But it’s not my heart.

It’s my mind, beating to the same rhythm, chanting.

I want. I want. I want.

In my most recent chant, I wanted Francesco Mattano’s famed Peposo, a traditional Tuscan Red Wine Beef Stew. It’s so simple with just a few ingredients: garlic, beef, salt, coarsely ground black pepper, a bouquet garni, and red wine. Simmered for several hours and served up in a well of buttered polenta, it’s the recipe’s clean simplicity that makes it so sinfully delicious.

Altroché! That’s just what I wanted–an entree promising good-to-the-last-bite deliciousness. At the same time, I was well aware that I had leftover pork tenderloin as well as chicken salad.

Once upon a time, I would have rushed off to the grocery store, bought the provisions for Peposo, and celebrated another culinary triumph.

These days, however, even though my wants are as rhythmic as my heart, I am pulling back as I try to reconcile what I want with what I have.

With food, for example, I wanted Francesco’s stew, but I had pork tenderloin and chicken salad already prepared. The craving was there, but so was a perfectly good meal.

Take books, for example. I’ve dedicated decades of my life to Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and I’ve amassed a significant collection. But I want to chase after one more obscure letter or document that will make my already rich archive even richer.

What about dating? I want romance—not out of need, but out of hope. My life is full and meaningful, yet I’d love to share it with someone who brings his own fullness—a shared life made richer by both of us.

Even in garden centers, new specimen evergreens whisper, “Take me. Plant me.” But I already have a beautiful Zen-like landscape.

I’m also trying to reconcile what I want with what I need.

I might want dessert, but what I need is a meal that aligns with my health goals. I’m cutting out sweets but keeping nightly Bunnahabhain—for balance!

When it comes to fitness, I might want quick results, but I need consistency not as much in biking as in weight training.  At my age–no, at any age–real strength comes from steady, intentional effort.

What about my writing?  I want more time to write, but I need to manage my other commitments more wisely so that I have the time I need.

Even in relationships, I want certainty, but I need to let connections unfold naturally—his rhythm, my rhythm, coming into step together.

The more I realize that I don’t need everything I want and that, in reality, I already have what I need, the more I’m discovering new dimensions of freedom.

What had been a constant search for more, whether material things, achievements, or validation, has given way to peace.

What had been a scarcity mindset has become a focus on embracing abundance—not in excess, but in sufficiency.

What had been a notion that having more means being more has yielded to the realization that I’m already enough.

What had been impulse is now intentional as I make choices that nourish me rather than just satisfy my fleeting cravings.

I’m shifting from grasping to gratitude,
from craving to contentment.

I’m no longer mistaking wants for purpose.
I’m recognizing that growth, connection, and presence matter more.

I’m starting to trust the rhythm of life,
just like I trust the rhythm of my own heart.

My heart beats on, steady and sure—
not demanding, just existing.

It thumps a lesson that I’m learning:
I don’t have to chase every want.
What I need is already here—or on its way, arriving in the fullness of time.

And that, in itself, is everything.