Category: Memories

Posted on

So many of John’s thoughts mirror my own. I’ve highlghted those that especially resonate with me.

a couple of tall buildings sitting next to each other
Photo by In Memory of Yan Ji on Unsplash

Horrible days don’t usually start out as horrible days.

As we woke up, made breakfast, walked the dog, got the kids off to school, went to work, or did whatever we did most Thursday mornings here in America, September 11th, 2001, was just another ordinary Tuesday to us… until it wasn’t.

Soon, all hell would break loose, and we would face one of the most catastrophic days in our history.

For those who didn’t live through it, there’s no way to accurately describe the immediate existential free fall: the urgency, the chaos, and the abject terror of those first moments and the hours that followed.

Nothing felt secure.
No place felt safe.
No one was immune to the shaking.
No one was insulated from the grieving.
Everyone was shaken to their core.

So many memories are burned into my brain about those first days: unthinkable images of carnage I’ll never get out of my head, paralyzing waves of fear I’d never experienced, a leaden heaviness that I have rarely felt since.

But I remember more about that time too: I remember America being its best self.

I remember the fierce flood of goodness that arrived almost instantaneously.
I remember people’s staggering courage.
I remember their incomprehensible selflessness.
I remember a unity that transcended politics.
I remember a kindness that bridged religious traditions.
I remember a defiant, expansive love standing stridently in the face of the hatred of a few.
I remember humanity showing itself in breathtaking ways.

A mantra soon rose in those days: “Never forget.”

I suppose that meant different things to different people:
For some it was a declaration to remember the people who died and the lives that were squandered and the legacy they had left.
For some it was a prayer to the heavens, a commitment to live fully from a place of benevolence.
For some it was a condemnation of any hatred born out of bigotry.
For some it was a patriotic pledge of love of country.
For some it was a promise not to lose sight of all they had seen and experienced, about how beautiful people can be.

As I look at this version of America twenty-five years later, it seems as though we’ve all broken our promises, whether to God or country or the fallen or survivors or ourselves.

We’ve forgotten all that we learned on that horrible day in September.

We’ve forgotten how dependent we are on one another, how connected we all are, how tethered to each other’s lives we are, despite the surface differences or the myth of our separation.

We’ve forgotten that in the end, a life in front of us in peril is a life that deserves our attention, a life we’re charged with saving.

We’ve forgotten how difficult and painful a path every person is walking, and how pointless it is to try and make that path more difficult and painful for them.

We’ve forgotten how fragile and fleeting and priceless this life is, and how wasteful it is to spend a moment of it with contempt for strangers.

This is why the grief feels amplified on this September 11th: because of all the promises we’ve broken and all the forgetting we’ve done.

And, worse, today it feels as though for far too many Americans, the words “Never Forget” are now simply thinly veiled expressions of blind hatred of entire people groups, based on a violence they had nothing to do with and gave no approval of. It has simply become a rallying cry for those who seek an excuse to dehumanize their neighbors, for people harboring the same senseless ugliness that authored the nightmare to begin with.

That’s why our forgetting is such a tragedy: we squandered the lessons we could have learned.

September 11th, 2001 was a nightmare for us as a nation, but we woke up that day too.
We saw ourselves clearly.
We saw through the walls and the barriers of created divisions, past the chasms and gaps of surface difference.
We stopped the petty bullshit of partisanism, tribalism, and territorialism, and we realized our oneness.
We caught a glimpse of what America can be when it finds unity in diversity.

That’s what I wish we would have never forgotten in the years since that horrible day in September.

That day we learned to cherish life; to love people fully, to live with open-handed gratitude, to recognize the value of every human being, to move quickly toward someone in pain, to not withhold compassion, to see the best in people, to care for one another as our own.

May we not need another horrible day to remember that again, America.

Never forget who and what we could still be.

0 comments

Posted on

I Will Never Forgive Him (Just Kidding)

My grandfather sold his beloved ’55 Thunderbird a few months before I started driving—ostensibly because he was having too much trouble getting in and out of the car (he was 72 at the time). I’d wanted to be able to drive it since I was small enough to lay out on the parcel shelf between the seats and rear window.

0 comments

Posted on

Suburbia, 1973

Lit up like the Poltergeist House

That caption isn’t too far off the mark. We swear—even though it was brand new construction on a former onion field and we were the first owners—the place was haunted.

We’d all be downstairs in the family room (or me in my bedroom which was also on the same level) and doors would slam up in the bedrooms upstairs, even though there were no windows openand noting else to cause a breeze.

Once, on the verge of sleep, I found walking up the stairs that went from the lower level to the ground floor. I looked over my shoulder and saw myself asleep in bed. I turned around and was greeted by what I can only call a shadow figure (gives me chills now jsut remembering it). I knew he wanted into my body. He lunged at me. We wrestled, tumbling down the stairs. I got up the literally dove back into my sleeping body.

After I’d gone off to college, Mom took to sleeping in my bed downstairs because Dad’s snoring had gotten too insufferable. That was, until one night when she was violently shaken out of the bed. “Never again,” was all she said of the incident.

I mean look at all those smiling faces. What kind of entity would bear that family any ill will? (Taken at the grandparents’ place in Sun City later that year (probably Thanksgiving or Christmas).

0 comments

Posted on

50 Years Ago

Navajo Hall dorm room. One month after starting at the University of Arizona.

Oh the places you’ll go. The things you’ll see. The men you’ll love…all of which will ultimately transform you into who you are now.

1 comments

Posted on

hexandshadowchronicles: Tim Curry never needed to be the hero to become unforgettable.

He gave darkness a voice, mischief a smile and the strange among us permission to take centre stage. From Dr Frank-N-Furter and the Lord of Darkness to Pennywise, Wadsworth and Long John Silver, every character became larger, stranger and more alive the moment he appeared.

For generations of outsiders, horror lovers and midnight cinema souls, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was more than a film. It was a doorway into a world where being different was not something to conceal. It was something to celebrate loudly, fearlessly and in magnificent clothing.

Tim Curry did not merely perform cult classics.

He helped create the reason we call them cult classics.

Rest peacefully to the man who made villains irresistible, darkness theatrical and strangeness feel like home.

Tonight, we do the Time Warp in your honour.

Tim Curry
1946–2026

0 comments

Posted on

90skidthrowbacks: For generations, Curry was so much more than an actor. He gave us characters we could never forget like Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pennywise in It, Darkness in Legend, Rooster Hannigan in Annie, Wadsworth in Clue, Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, and unforgettable voices like Sir Nigel Thornberry and Hexxus.

He terrified us, made us laugh, and left a mark on pop culture that will never fade. Thank you for the memories.

0 comments

Posted on

And On The Subject Of Strong Women

I woke this morning from a rather strange dream. In this dream I had been out running errands with one of the partners of the small architectural firm I worked at for the majority of my tenure in San Francisco. I remember asking how he’d been doing—knowing somewhere in my subconscious that he’d been in a skilled nursing facility for years—and he replied that he was on a new medication that seemed to be helping. Helping with what specifically I have no idea, but he handed me a box of whatever it was and I noted suspiciously that it was unopened. We continued chatting and we realized we’d known each other 40 years, and thinking about it now in the light of day I realize how quickly time has passed. I’m now older than he was when I first went to work for the partners and I soberly realized that Jack—who was a year younger than my Dad—has probably long since shuffled off the planet onto his next adventure.

In the dream, when I realized how long we’d known each other, Jack laid down, convulsed a couple times, and was gone. It was then I woke up.

I lost touch with the family a few years after Ben and I moved to Denver. His wife and I were good friends and used to correspond at least yearly, but my letters finally went unanswered, and I realize that Lei too, is no doubt passed onto bigger and better rthings.

This got me thinking about all the strong women who have played such a big part in my life. I don’t have an older sisters but each of these women has in their own way stepped into that role whether or not they acknowledged it.

Lei was the second to fill the role. She was confidant, counselor, and pal-around buddy I loved spending time with. Our views on life, the universe, and everything (not to mention politics) were perfectly in sync. When I left San Francisco for the first time to return to Tucson, our correspondence was weekly, if not more often. She loved working with fonts, and whenever I ran across one I thought she’d like, I’d remotely help her install it into Windows and then the next letter I received would of course, be printed in that font.

The first woman to fill the role was my friend Kekku. We met back in ’85 when we were working for two different architectural firms that shared an office space. I call her my Finnish Firebrand, but she was—and still is—one of my closest and dearest friends who will not hesitate to call out my bullshit. When my second partner had to go to San Francisco for a weekend on business (well in advance of our actual relocation there about 18 months later) and she learned I’d never been there an couldn’t go with him due to financial constraints she said, “You’ve never been to San Francisco?! I’ll buy you a ticket.” And she did. Talk about setting my life course!

The woman who’s been occupying this role in my life most strongly since before I met Ben is Cindy, the “nurse friend” I often refer to. We met when I was working at Phoenix Baptist Hospital in the 00’s and apparently had a bit of a reputation for being, um…”challenging” for everyone in I.T.

I had no such issues and found her delightful.

We bonded almost immediately, and we’ve been there for each other through thick and thin for the last twenty years. Again, it’s odd to think that I’m now older than she was when we first met…

So yeah, I’m all for strong women in our lives. They’re needed more than we realize.

0 comments

Posted on

And Suddenly…

…it’s 1979 and I’m 21 again! 🥲 It’s Friday night and I’m getting ready to go out and meet my buddy Kent at Moon’s Truck for a night of dance, drink, and hopefully to catch the eye of a handsome stranger to round it all out with some unbridled debauchery. More often than not however, it would just be dance, drink, and slinking off to Denny’s on 7th Street for food at 3 am with the rest of the boys before heading home to finally get some sleep.

0 comments