It is a perfect October afternoon: high, blue sky, warm, but with a hint of chill to come. I’m 12 years old, unexpectedly sprung from Mrs. Swango’s sixth grade classroom and by unreasonable good fortune, I’m sitting in the front row, next to the first base dugout in Forbes Field, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. It’s the seventh game of the 1960 World Series.

By any measure, the New York Yankees are the clear favorites to win it all. Despite losing the first game of fall classic 6-4, in six games, the Bronx Bombers have outscored the Bucs by an astoundingly wide margin: 46-17. But baseball is not stroke play; it’s match play and so on the afternoon of October 13, the Series stands tied at 3 games apiece. Whichever team wins today will be World Champions.

Momentum is sitting in the Yankee dugout. Game 6 had been a 12-0 shellacking suffered by the Pirates. Whitey Ford had pitched a superb shoutout and Bobby Richardson had banged out two triples to add to his already record-setting offensive performance. (Richardson would go on to win the Series’ Most Valuable Player award.) In all, the Yankees had 17 hits that day—Johnny Blanchard, Roger Maris, and Yogi Berra rang up three hits each.

But today is Game 7: it’s winner-take-all. To everyone’s surprise, the Pirates jump out to a 4-0 lead, but the Yankees, behind Bill “Moose” Skowron, Mickey Mantle, and Berra claw their way back to take a 5-4 lead going into the 8th. The Yanks score two more runs in the top of the inning so when the Bucs come up to bat in the bottom of the 8th, they are down 7-4.

Fate can be cruel and fate can be kind. Gino Cimoli leads off In the bottom of the 8th with a single. The next batter, Bill Virdon, hits a sharp grounder to short, a sure-fire double play ball. But the ball hits a tiny pebble in the infield and takes a bad hop, catching Yankee shortstop Tony Kubek in the throat. Kubek goes down and the Pirates suddenly have runners on first and second, nobody out. Pirate captain Dick Groat singles to score Cimoli and a young outfielder by the name of Roberto Clemente keeps the rally going with an infield singe that scores Virdon. Now the Bucs trail by a single run.

Hal Smith, the Pirates backup catcher, had entered the game in the top of the inning. With one swing of his bat, Smith shocks the world by blasting a home run over the left-center wall, scoring three more runs. The Pirates now lead 9-7.

In the top of the ninth, the Yankees scratch out two runs against pitchers Bob Friend and Harvey Haddix—both starters pressed into service as relievers—to tie the game. The tying run comes home when “The Mick” avoids Rocky Nelson’s tag at first base, allowing Gil McDougald, pinch-running for Dale Long, to score from third.

Ralph Terry had come on in relief in the bottom of the 8th and he was the Yankee pitcher who finally shut down the Pirate rally. The Bucs first batter is Bill Mazeroski, “Maz,” better known for his prowess at second base than for his pop at the plate. Terry’s first pitch sails high and wide: Ball One!

The Longines clock atop the left field scoreboard stands at 3:35 when Terry’s next pitch comes speeding in. Maz swings. There is a moment, no more than a second or two, when the ball is in flight and the world is holding its breath. Yogi Berra, oddly stationed in left field, turns and moves back toward the ivy-covered wall. He is the first one to know the incredible truth: Maz has homered in the bottom of the ninth in the seventh game of the World Series, and the Pirates are World Champions.

Yankee fans slump in stunned silence; Pirate fans explode in joyous disbelief. I am delirious; every dream I ever had has just come true.

In another three weeks, John F. Kennedy would become our 35th President. Just two years later, almost to the day, the world would stand on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. A little more than a year after that, we would hear gunshots in Dallas.

Like the trajectory of a launched baseball, the arc of history is exceeding fast.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

 

 

Think of this as a postcard from Fire Island Pines, one link in the chain of narrow barrier islands that separate Long Island Sound from the Atlantic Ocean. My wife and I are here to visit her brother Matt and his husband Rolando. Their home here sits atop an engineered dune overlooking the ocean. We spend our days taking long walks, eating one delicious meal while discussing what to make for the next, or just sitting on the deck chatting while we watch for dolphins or even the play of light on the water. When it’s time to retire for the night, we’re lulled to sleep by the music of the waves breaking against the shore.

Idyllic as it sounds, Matt and Rolando’s island home is a weekend (or sometimes slightly longer) retreat from their busy lives on the Upper West Side of New York City. To get to the Pines, they have to ride a crowded subway downtown, take a Long Island Railroad train from Penn Station to Sayville on the island’s south shore (a trip of about an hour and a half), then hop on a van for a quick trip to the ferry dock where they board a boat for the twenty minute ride across Long Island Sound. There are no cars on Fire Island so from the Pines’ ferry dock, it’s another ten minute hike along the raised boardwalks that wind through the dunes before they reach their front door. It’s not an easy commute but once they’re here, it’s clearly been worth the trek.

And therein lies the rub. Because the clock never stops its relentless ticking, sooner or later, the day inevitably arrives when it’s time to make the journey in reverse and return to the reality of life in the big city. That moment always seems to hang in the air like a brooding cloud that comes out of nowhere to block out the sun. So, on any given Sunday, when the last passenger has boarded the ferry and the mate calls up to the captain “Ropes off!” for the return trip back across the Great Bay, the bubble bursts and reality rolls in like ocean fog. Why can’t good times last forever?

They don’t because life is full of yins and yangs, all those contrary forces that rule our unruly universe. Departure and arrival; up and down; hot and cold; north and south; right and wrong. It’s impossible for most of us to know one state of being without also knowing its mirror opposite. But it seems to me that most of the time, the line that separates yin from yang is subtle, almost imperceptible, like a new day that gradually emerges out of the previous night. Rarely is the line of demarcation as clear as it is here on Fire Island when the mate yells out “Ropes off!” and the ferry pulls away from the dock. To my two brothers-in-law, that shout with its big exclamation point sounds a lot like a gun shot.

Fortunately, the story doesn’t end here, on the day of Matt’s and Rolando’s departure. In a few days or next week or in the spring, the wheel will turn again and Matt and Ro will come back to their home in the Pines on Fire Island. And on that fine day, when they hear the mate confirm that the ropes are indeed off, the words will have a very different ring, one that’s full of the promise of fun and friends and a spectacular ocean view.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I must have a little Walter Mitty—James Thurber’s meek, mild daydreamer—in me. A couple of days ago, I was sitting on the porch and watched a squirrel scamper up a tree with a large nut in his mouth, then run along the telephone wire across the street, oblivious to all the pitfalls below. “How cool is that!” I said to myself. Well, that got me going…

I looked up into a cloudless October sky. How cool would it be to be a bird? To effortlessly soar ever higher in the gyre and see all there is to see with a view named just for me?

Then I thought about the ocean. How cool would it be to be an octopus? They’re such shy, intelligent, graceful creatures. I could change my color or move fluidly along the ocean floor or hide under a rock, compressing myself to almost nothing. When the time came, I would tend my eggs, knowing my life’s purpose was complete, fulfilled. Or maybe I could be a humpback whale cruising the seven seas, breaching whenever I felt like it, just to show off.

I kept going. How cool would it be to be a marine archeologist and discover a long-lost sunken Spanish galleon with thousands of gold doubloons spilled across the ocean floor? Or maybe I would find a pirate’s treasure or Amelia Earhart’s plane or solve the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle? How cool would that be!

The images kept coming, non-stop. How cool would it be to be an airline pilot on a CAVU day, flying over great cities and small towns, fields and farms, broad rivers and snow-capped mountains, even continents and oceans? I would touch down right on time half way ‘round the world! Or maybe I would be a nurse holding a grateful patient’s hand, or a teacher watching a student finally master a difficult concept, or even an astronaut floating weightlessly in space as I stared down at the big blue marble that is Earth? How cool would that be!

Then things really began to get weird. How cool would it be to be a Stradivarius, tucked under the chin of a world-renowned violinist, say Anne Sophie Mutter or Nicky Benedetti or Itzhak Perlman. True, I would be 400 years old, but I’d be babied, coddled in velvet, flying first class, and insured for millions of dollars. Audiences would hush to hear me, then explode in thunderous applause when I finally fell silent.

A new thought came into focus: how cool would it be to be any one of us, living in a country that despite all its prejudice and pain is still trying to form a more perfect Union, still striving to hear the whispered voices of our better angels, still daring to believe that great dreams really can come true?

Then this: how cool would it be to simply be a man who is happy, healthy, content; trusted and trusting; respected and respectful, loved and loving. Someone secure in the knowledge that his time on this planet was meaningful, productive, and a blessing to others?

Just then, my wife came out on the porch. I guess I must have had that look in my eyes because she said, “Are you ok?” “Fine,” I said. “Just daydreaming.” She looked at me as she often does and asked, “What do you want for dinner?”

“Wouldn’t it be cool,” I said, “if we were living in Paris and there was a three-star Michelin restaurant right around the corner and we could go tonight? You could have snails and I’d have sweetbreads!”

“How about lasagna?” she said.

I might have sighed. “Sounds great!”

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s begin with William Wordsworth, specifically his familiar sonnet The World is Too Much With Us:

The world is too much with us; late and soon
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Composed in 1802, the poem is Wordsworth’s rifle shot in iambic pentameter at the Industrial Revolution and mankind’s obsession with decadent materialism and its total disregard for Nature, always spelled with a capital “N.” It’s a fatalistic assessment that despairs our inability to get in touch with nature in order to make spiritual progress. Now hold that thought…

…And add to it, Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane’s classic rock anthem from the late 1960s, White Rabbit. It’s one long crescendo that includes these lines:

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall…

This, of course, brings us, to our old friend the March Hare, Lewis Carroll’s slightly dotty rabbit who is always consulting his watch because he is perpetually late for Wonderland’s on-going tea party. In the classic Disney telling of the tale, he’s the one who’s goes rushing by, worrying:

“I’m late! I’m late!
For a very important date.
No time to say, Hello! Goodbye!
I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!”

Still with me? Is this going somewhere?

Here’s my point: I think we all might be feeling a little like the March Hare these days or maybe like my friend’s dog Sabre who loves to chase his tail. We’re desperately trying to make sense of a world gone haywire. A global pandemic, climate chaos, political schisms—these days, everything just seems out of sync. We’re caught up in Wordsworth’s rued world, one that’s far “too much with us,” one in which we’re perpetually late to the tea party and the end just seems inevitable: we know we’re going to fall. Is there any way out of this?

I think so. We need to take better care of ourselves. As busy as we are, we need to make time to breathe. Last week, after the chores were done, my wife looked at me and said, “Let’s take our books and go to our little beach.” So we threw two folding chairs, our towels, and a couple of tumblers of ice tea in the car, and headed off to a Bay-side spot we know about twenty-five minutes away. The place was deserted. It was a bright sunny day with just a baby’s breath of breeze. For a few hours we sat quietly together. Maybe we dozed or maybe we just watched the September sun sparkling on the water. In the distance, a little sailboat made gentle headway, not really going anywhere, just at one with the blue water. An eagle flew by. I walked the shoreline. But for the lapping of the tiny waves against the shore, there was complete and utter stillness. For a moment, time ground to a halt: we had no tea party to attend, no rabbits to chase.

When we returned home, my wife said to me, “I feel like I’ve been on a two-week vacation. We should do that more often.” And she was right.

Self care is important; even a little can go a long way. There’s a lot going on out there; it’s all-too-easy to lose sight of what’s really important. Like Wordsworth, we need to “glimpse something to make (us) less forlorn.” We spend far too much time worrying about what is and not enough time thinking about what could be. We can do better.

I started with William Wordsworth but I want to end with Mary Ann Evans, aka George Eliot, a magnificent novelist of the Victorian era. Here’s her advice:

It’s never too late to become the person you might have been.

Think about that.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

 

 

My wife and I have always taken Covid-19 and its variants seriously. All through last year, we wore masks, practiced social distancing, and observed all the recommended CDC protocols. This year, when vaccines became available, we took the first available appointments to receive two injections. We continued to wear our masks and to avoid indoor gatherings. Even though we felt protected by our vaccinations, we remained vigilant. Covid was still hovering nearby, but it was an abstract phenomenon. We were safe.

Over the last few weeks, we watched as the virus surged anew. We continued to wear our masks and to practice social distancing. We were willing to get booster shots as soon as they became available. In short, we wanted to do everything we could to make sure we were safe and to ensure the safety of others. We were still abstractly safe, or so we thought.

But a week ago, our world changed. We were notified that someone in our “pod” had tested positive for Covid. We were encouraged to get a test. The next day we made arrangements to be tested at a clinic in Easton. We breathed a sigh of relief when the immediate results came back negative, but according to protocols, our samples were sent to LabCorp for more sensitive testing. Two days later, those results came back to us: for me, the results indicated the virus was not detected. For my wife, it was.

She had some symptoms: a headache, watery eyes, a dry cough, nasal stuffiness, and a prickly throat, all of which she attributed to seasonal allergies. I felt fine. But that soon began to change. The following day, I too began to experience the same symptoms. Within twenty-four hours, my wife rallied while I went downhill fast. I took to my bed with a racking cough, fever and chills, aches and pains. We knew I needed to be retested. Within another twenty-four hours, the report came back, but I already knew the results. Positive. I had Covid. What was once an abstraction had quickly become painfully real.

The next three days were awful. I was useless. We quarantined at home. My wife took my temperature, administered Advil and Tylenol according to her chart, and made sure I stayed well hydrated. I slept for hours on end, waking only to read for a few minutes before going back to sleep. I lost my senses of smell and taste. It was a dismal time for both of us: she worried about me while I remained mired in an illness that seemingly had struck out of nowhere. Neither she nor I understood how this had happened. We had been so careful.

We took some small comfort in the knowledge that our vaccinations were preventing us from experiencing Covid’s most virulent rage. I felt like a had a mild case of the flu, but I never came close to feeling I needed to be hospitalized. I would ride this out on a wave of good home care, plenty of fluids, and hours of rest.

On the morning of the third day after the onset of my symptoms, I awoke feeling I had rounded the curve. I had a modicum of energy. Even though I still had no sense of smell or taste, I was hungry. I could begin to resume my fair of the household chores—at least those my wife was willing to give me. When I was able to unload the dishwasher, I felt I had conquered Mount Everest.

Each day since has shown marked improvement. I’m almost back to my former self. If the science of disease is true, maybe now my wife and I are triple protected from a future case of Covid because of the antibodies produced by our immune systems. But that’s a footnote to this story. What remains most true is that we will remain vigilant because Covid is no longer an abstraction; it is a real and powerful enemy and we all must do our part to finally slay the beast.

One final thought: Broadway plays, large sporting events, crowded museums; everything is reopening to great fanfare. But are we really ready for large crowds in close quarters? Like everyone else, I’m all for a return to our pre-pandemic “normal,” but my recent experience is a cautionary tale. We’re into our fourth Covid surge. Last week, 10,000 more people died from Covid, the highest toll in the last 6 months. I believe we need to pump the brakes on America’s great reopening; there will be time enough to enjoy life when it’s truly safe to be together.

Praise to all the caregivers who helped my wife and me. Thanks to all of you who wished us well. Special thanks and much love to my wonderful private-duty nurse. I’m eternally grateful you were there for me when I needed you most. I’m positive about that!

I’m very happy to report that I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

Good news winds its way home; bad news comes at you hard and fast. I learned this a few days ago when my phone dinged. It was a text message: “I just heard that X passed away. I know you were close. Sorry.”

Right away, I knew what had happened. X was only forty years old. I first knew him as a high school student but over the years, X and his family became close personal friends. I knew X had struggled with depression for many years. He had gone off to college, but then came home after only a few months and never went back. He became a personal trainer and a seriously good chef; he loved to cook for his family and friends and always took good care of his body. But despite his appetite for physical fitness and eating nutritious food, he seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the black mire of depression. He ultimately became almost agoraphobic, rarely leaving his parents’ house.

I have learned a lot about depression over the last ten years. I have learned that it is a mental illness, a disease every bit as insidious as cancer or heart disease. But because it is stigmatized, mental illness, and the depression and suicide that can derive from it, is viewed differently. Suicide, as devastating as it is, is often seen as a cruel or selfish act, one that crushes the loved ones left behind who somehow have to pick up the pieces and move on.

I confess that not all that long ago, I was not very sympathetic to those who suffered from mental illness and the extreme pain that might cause someone like X to take his own life. Like Cher’s character in “Moonstruck,” I thought “Snap out of it!” But that has changed recently. In the past few months, my wife and I know of eight young men—eight!—who have taken their lives either by their own hand or because of an overdose of opioids or some other drug—willful or accidental, it hardly matters. All were under the age of forty and all were from upper middle-class families.

Many of my contemporaries have had elective surgery to repair a hip or shoulder or knee. At first, their aches and pains were relatively minor but inevitably the joint in question would deteriorate and the pain would become more and more severe. When the pain became so unbearable—when it was bone on bone—they each did what needed to be done and had the joint in question replaced. Most found immediate relief. Those kind of procedures were never an option for X. Although he had undergone years of therapy and was likely taking a lot of prescribed medications, those remedies weren’t successful because when X’s pain became unbearable—when his mind was bone on bone—he believed his only recourse was to take his own life.

Since that text message flashed on my phone, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about X. I speculate about what must have been going through his mind as he neared the black hole of suicide, but the truth is I have no idea. I guess he came to believe that only the eternal sleep of death would bring a measure of relieve and end his suffering. I only hope he glimpsed how much he was loved and how he will be missed.

There is terrible pain and anguish left in the wake of suicide. I feel both now. I wonder if I could have somehow helped prevent this tragedy by being a better friend. Maybe, but it’s too late for recrimination. We just have to keep caring for each other. It may also be true that mental illness and the severe depression that often accompanies it are part of the collateral damage inflicted on us by Covid-19, every bit as deadly as the virus itself. The first step in beating that disease lies in understanding the true nature of mental illness and of treating it like any other virulent disease.

I grieve for X and for all of us he left behind. I hope he’s finally resting in peace.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

 

 

I’m a year older this week but surely no wiser. Isn’t it strange that the older we get, the more reluctant we are to acknowledge the passing years? A few days ago, a little friend of mine proudly told me that he was four-and-a-half. Not four, mind you; four-and-a-half! “Just wait,” I thought. “In a few years that ‘half’ won’t matter so much. Soon enough, you’ll be like me, counting in decades.”

Slow down time. Younger folk don’t seem to hear the drumbeat of the clock; we older ones not only hear it, but we also slap our hands over our ears in the hope that that ticking sound will recede to become a just a faint rumble like far-off thunder. It’s an honest deception. Despite all the sturm und drang of this weary world, it’s still a miracle we’ve come this far. I should know; I spent my birthday with our two youngest grandkids.

It was, to say the least, a different kind of birthday. No cake, but the kids’ bedtime was far, far better than any Smith Island fantasy. The ensuing peace and quiet were gifts that didn’t need wrapping paper or even opening. There were, however, several renditions of “Happy Birthday” with “to Geep” (my grandfather name) inserted into the “to you” spot. I have to admit that I like those lyrics better—they’re more personal, more earned.

Now don’t feel sorry for me. Plenty of friends wished me a happy day; that’s one of the more redeeming qualities of FaceBook. Nearby friends stopped by to share some time on the porch and watch the never-ending circus. My son, daughter-in-law, and two more beloved grandkids who live in Colorado popped up on FaceTime to wish me well. Looking back, I think the tempered celebration was all-the-more sweet because of the juxtaposition of youth and (dare I say?) old age. I was their age once and someday—God willing—they will be where I am, sharing a laugh with good friends, fondly remembering the departed ones, and watching their own grandkids run amok. Nothing is certain anymore, but we can hope for the best.

On the following day, we multiplied: two more grandkids arrived, along with their parents, all a little glassy-eyed from some celebrations of their own the previous day. No matter. We strolled the town, then sat down for a midday feast of ribs, baked beans, corn, cole slaw, and cucumber salad. I waited for a slice of birthday cake but in an excess of common sense, the adults in the room decided that the last thing the little clowns needed was more sugar before the long drive back home. In the ensuing calm that followed their lift-off, our little house seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, but I think I detected a tinge of regret, too. I went upstairs and took a nap.

Today, it’s b-day plus two and I smell something cooking in the kitchen. There’s a little sprucing-up going on, some whispering, and a celebratory stir in the air. I have a feeling that maybe there will be some cake after all.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

We’ve been through a sweltering week or two and now it appears that the remnants of Hurricane Ida are going to pay us a brief but very wet visit. These days, there’s rarely a dull weather moment in this climate-changing world.

Some folk prefer images of a lovely sunrise or sunset; others are drawn to the arc of a rainbow or a moody, threatening sky. But when I look to the heavens, it’s cloud forms that always seem to mesmerize me. It’s not the science of clouds that captures my imagination: after all, a cloud is nothing more than an aerosol spray, a visible mix of minute water droplets, frozen crystals, and maybe a few dust particles suspended in the atmosphere. But even that explanation falls short because it doesn’t begin to account for the play of light within a cloud, or the variety of its hues, or the fantastic shapes that gather above us from time-to-time. I prefer a more imaginative, more artistic point of view—clouds as stereograms: pictures hidden within pictures.

I imagine it’s a universal childhood experience: lying in the grass, looking up at the sky, looking for some hidden image—a witch or a camel—within a bank of clouds. Not only did I love to find those hidden images, but I would also spend the next ten minutes drifting with them, watching them transform into something new and different: the bunny rabbit that became a marshmallow man, or the sailboat that suddenly turned into an octopus. A child’s imagination is like a cloud: it knows no bounds, that is until it’s cut short by some dull-witted adult who says, “Uh-oh; looks like it’s going to rain.” That’s a sure buzz kill!

There’s another element to the life of clouds: they provide dimension in an otherwise flat world. Baseball players know how difficult it is to track a fly ball in a cloudless “high sky.” There’s no ceiling, no point of comparison, no contrast. It’s easy to lose a baseball in the ether, just like it’s easy to become lost when there are no road signs to point the way.

On a steamy night last week, a few good friends gathered on a riverside dock to catch the evening breeze and share a cool drink. (There’s hasn’t been enough of either these days.) On the far side of the river, the setting sun used a towering cumulus cloud as a canvas, working an explosion of colors into the gossamer fabric of its shifting shapes. Out on the water, a graceful little sailboat—a Watch Hill-15—swung peacefully on its mooring. Then, out of nowhere, perhaps to add some perspective or to enhance the overall effect, a crop-duster came swooping low across the river, its fragile silhouette outlined in black against the massive cloud hovering in the evening sky. I reached for my camera in a lame attempt to freeze the scene. The result is the image that accompanies this Musing but it doesn’t really do justice to the magic of the moment.

No matter; I’m not disappointed. Maybe it’s just not possible to capture every fleeting moment in the life of a cloud.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

Sometimes, there is no graceful way to make an exit. No goodbyes, no tears, no long, last, lingering looks. You just pack up, close the door, and leave.

These past few days, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about America’s tragic departure from Afghanistan. Many years ago, I spent a few weeks in that country and quickly came to the conclusion that Afghan culture and politics were way above my pay grade. I admired the harsh beauty of the Hindu Kush in winter and marveled at the proud independence of the Afghan people. I laughed at the baker who baked pebbles into his bread so it weighed more on his scales. I tried to learn bargaining skills but it was readily apparent to everyone that I was novice and fair game for more skilled practitioners of that ancient Afghan art. But one day, there came a moment when I felt so far away from everything familiar that I knew I had reached the known limits of my own universe and that any step in any direction might well take me over the edge. It was time to come home.

As heartbreaking as the images of the current chaos in Kabul on the nightly news are, I’m persuaded it was time for our troops to come home. It was time to leave. All that treasure and all that blood, and yet, twenty years in, we were no closer to solving the riddle of Afghanistan. Like the British and Soviet empires who wrestled with “the Afghan problem” before us, we simply did not understand what we were up against. We believed we could fix a problem we couldn’t even begin to identify. We thought we could count on our military might and our good intentions, but neither of those wrenches fit the nuts and bolts of the machine we wanted to repair. We never had a fighting chance in Afghanistan and I grieve for all those men and women, soldiers and civilians, who paid the ultimate price in a war that couldn’t be won.

It’s certainly possible that our exit could have been more thoughtful or orderly, although “orderly” is not a word that is often used when describing either combat or Afghanistan. The best I can hope for is that this tragedy will teach us a lesson we won’t ever forget. Apparently, the ache of Vietnam has faded. Now, we have joined the list of nations that have tried and failed to fix the problem of Afghanistan. I pray we won’t be drawn into the next conflict that confronts us down the road.

I do know this: isolation is not the answer. The world we’re living in is far too complex and interconnected to allow us the luxury of withdrawing from our global commitments and responsibilities. But we have to find a smarter way of surviving in the jungle. Thinking that we can simply impose our political will or our democratic values on other people is a cultural arrogance we can no longer afford.

In 1890, Rudyard Kipling published his poem “The Young British Soldier.” He knew all-too-well the tragedy that is Afghanistan and he tried to convince the British public and leadership of the folly of engaging in a far-away war that could never be won. It ends with this sad verse:

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest role to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Sigh.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

 

 

 

Dépaysé (pronounced day-pay-e-zay) is a French word that literally means outside of one’s own country. But its contextual meaning isn’t so much geographic as it is emotional or psychological. To be dépaysé is to be removed from familiar surroundings; disoriented; adrift. And that’s where I was a few nights ago.

So, in the wee hours of the next morning, the first question I asked myself was “Why? Why am I feeling so dépaysé” “Maybe,” I said to myself, “it’s because you’re away on vacation—a week at the beach with the family, followed by a week visiting good friends up in New England—so you’re removed from the rhymes and rhythms of your routine.” OK; fair enough. There’s more than enough angst to go around on a vacation: a heavy table fell on my toe; my wife’s shoulder is bothering her; there’s pink eye afoot in the house; and driving up and down I-95 makes fire-walking look like a cakewalk. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

But I think there may be another explanation for the way I was feeling: I’m approaching yet another birthday and the beating of my heart is beginning to sound a lot more like the ticking of an old grandfather clock these days. As we age, we become more gelled in our routines, or, as Paul Simon so eloquently once sang, we “like to lean on old, familiar ways.” But Paul came to another conclusion; he was happy enough to be “still crazy after all these years.” I’m not sure that’s the outcome I’m looking for.

If the feeling of dépaysé were a disease, what would be the cure? Better yet, is there an antidote or a vaccine? Travel may be an expansive experience, but returning to a more familiar landscape has a certain comfort to it. Home. At some point in the aging process, the familiar becomes the comfortable, the known trumps the unknown. I guess I’m getting close to that border.

I remember that as my mother passed the age of 90, she downsized. All she needed was a comfortable chair, soft light, and a good book. An inveterate reader, she did all her traveling by turning pages and never again left the comfort of her smaller rooms. Her body may have been shrinking but her mind kept expanding, spreading across oceans and continents to the very limits of the universe. At the time, I may have scoffed at her retreat, but now I understand it. Someday soon, I may even embrace it.

So, as dépaysé as I might have felt, I know there are still worlds to explore, borders to cross. The wee wife and I were thinking about going to Italy this fall, but that pesky Delta virus has deterred us. Maybe we’ll go next year, unless some nasty new viral strain raises its ugly little head to lock us down yet again.

In the meantime, I’ve shaken off this feeling of dépaysé and am enjoying these happy vacation days with family and friends. I can always come home later.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com