Good News…and a Preview

As many of you know, I recently published my ninth collection of stories and poems, something I’m very pleased about.

Titled Write On! Tales of a Serial Scribbler, it holds a trove of more than forty pieces I’ve written for the Pelican Pens, a group of enthusiastic writers here in southwest Florida. Each week, we meet to read our work to each other, to offer friendly encouragement, and to devise prompts to guide our creative juices for the following week.

After sending out my announcement the other day, it occurred to me that readers of this blog might like to read one of the short tales included in the book.  Titled And Off We Go, it’s founded on the prompt—embarking on a fateful journey.

I’ve entered this tale in the Gulf Coast Writers Association 2024 writing contest, a competition where I was fortunate enough to take home first-place a year ago with a piece titled But He Didn’t!

I hope you’ll enjoy this preview of what lies in store for you in Write On! Tales of a Serial Scribbler. You can see more of the book, and my other published books, at this safe link—https://lulu.com/spotlight/precept

And Off We Go

“Shall we go?”  The sepulchral voice is solemn, portentous, and it reverberates ominously in my ears.

Not yet…not yet!  I’m not ready…

I hear other voices, too, softer voices…my daughters, named for our favourite flowers so many years ago.  They’re talking quietly over me as I lie in a bed I cannot feel in a hospital room I cannot see, unable to speak or move.

“He can’t open his eyes,” Veronica says, “but I can see them moving behind his eyelids.”

“Yeah, I see that,” Jasmine agrees.  “I think he can hear us.”

“Can you, Dad?” Veronica asks softly.  “Can you hear us?”

Yes, yes, yes!  I’m right here…

“He can’t answer you, Vee,” Jasmine says sorrowfully.

She’s right, I can’t.  Everything was fine until…until…whatever day it was, I can’t remember…and that red wave washed over me, collapsing me on the floor for I don’t know how long.  And now here I am, wherever this is.

“Shall we go?” the voice resounds in my ears again, a honeyed basso-profundo, not at all impatient, yet determined nonetheless.

No, not yet!  It’s too soon…

“Keep stroking his hair, Jazz,” Veronica says.  “He always liked that.”

I did always like it, but I can’t feel a thing now.  I can only imagine how it feels, and the thought warms my heart.  I laugh inwardly, knowing my hair must be all askew.

“I love you, Daddy,” Jasmine whispers.  “I hope you know that.”

“He knows we love him, he knows,” Veronica says, and I imagine she is holding my arthritic hands in hers, gently massaging them, terribly weakened now when once they were so strong.  But I can feel nothing.

I lifted you high in these hands, Vee, high up over my head.  And Jazz, too!  And now…and now…

“Shall we go?”  The voice asks again, persistent though not offensive.

Not yet!  No!

“You don’t have to worry about us, Dad,” Veronica whispers.  “We’ll be fine.”

“She’s right, Daddy,” Jasmine adds.  “You and Mummy were the best, and we’ll be just fine.”

I know, I know…but I don’t want to go…

They’re right, of course, they will be fine, both with their own wee families now.  The little ones were here earlier with their daddies…at least I think they were…maybe not…but I’m sure I heard those four tiny voices telling me they love me.  I wanted to say it back to them, to wrap my arms around them, but…

“And don’t forget, Dad,” Veronica continues, “Mum said she’d be waiting for you to find her, remember?  She’ll be watching for you.”

Ah, their mother, my wife, my lifelong love…how I’ve missed her.  Despite a valiant struggle against the disease that wasted her, she left us a few years ago.  And yet, she never truly left us, you know?  I wonder if Vee is right, if she really will be waiting there, wherever there is…my darling Clementine…

“Shall we go?”  The voice is insistent, though not unkind.

No, please!  Not yet…

“I’m sure Mummy’s been missing you, Daddy,” Jasmine murmurs, and I can hear the sob catching in her throat.  “You were meant to be together for all time.”

“Exactly!” Veronica says, trying to lighten the mood.  “Like apple pie and cheese!  Like mustard and relish!”  She laughs softly as she gropes for more examples.

Jasmine joins in her sister’s laughter, and my heart dances to the sounds of their lilting voices.  “Yeah, or like Abbott and Costello!” she says.  “Like Jack and Jill!”

“Lady and the Tramp!” Veronica offers, and the laughter grows louder.  “Romeo and Juliet!”

“Omigod!” Jasmine gasps, their laughter rolling freely now.  “Tweedledum and Tweedledee!  Lancelot and Guinevere!  Sweet and sour!”

“Yin and yang,” Veronica says, and they stop on that one, as if it’s the perfect one to describe me and Clemmie.

“Shall we go?” a voice asks again…but it’s a different voice this time.  Frozen inside my immobile body, I cannot move, but I feel as if I’m turning around and there is Clemmie…as young and as fair as the first rose of summer.  She’s standing in the midway at the State Fair, pointing at the Tunnel of Love attraction, the one where we had our first, tentative kiss, where the sense we’d found something special first dawned on us.

“Shall we go?” she asks again, and her eyes are sparkling, her smile warm and welcoming.

“It’s okay, Dad,” Veronica whispers, “it’s okay to go.”

“Goodbye, Daddy,” Jasmine breathes.  “We love you.”

Goodbye, goodbye…I love you both…

And I reach for Clemmie’s hand, and off we go.

Showing Up

Spring training is underway, the start of another magical baseball season.  The boys of summer are assembling once again to ply their athletic gifts, and to amaze us with their exploits on the diamond.

And every spring, their gathering reminds me of those happy days—more than just a couple of years ago—when the annual softball season opened in our Florida retirement community.  A mob of aging, erstwhile ballplayers would converge on the local park for the opening games of the season.

Most of us had spent a good part of our lives playing ball.  Others, newly retired, had taken it up only recently.  But we all shared the same enthusiasm for the game.

We enjoyed swinging the bat with wistfully-remembered power in the on-deck circle; we relished the anticipation of our turn at bat while waiting in the batter’s box; and we cherished the elusive base hits we sometimes might stroke.  There was always an exhilarating feeling of freedom in running ‘round the bases at top speed, or in chasing full-tilt after a long fly ball in the outfield—the wind rushing in our ears, visions of grace and glory flickering in our mind’s eye.  At such moments, nothing else mattered in the world but the game.

The game was the thing, and we wished it could last forever.

But it couldn’t, of course.  Even back then, we could see the end approaching—still hazy on the far horizon, perhaps, but in sight, nonetheless.

The signs were small at first, but the start of each successive season brought more of them.  The bats seemed heavier, the balls smaller, the bases farther apart.  There appeared to be more holes in the infield for opponents’ ground balls to skip through.  The throws in from the outfield lacked some of the crispness that was seen in other years.

In fact, I discovered to my chagrin that I’d become a centre-fielder with a second-baseman’s arm!

The most significant sign of all was the constant aching in our legs, our arms, our backs—lasting just a little longer than it ever used to.  We feared for the day when it would linger all the way into next week’s game.

I suppose that’s why we eventually switched to a tamer version of the game, limited to those sixty years of age or older.  Gone were the young, aggressive Turks who had overtaken us on the base paths.  Gone, too, were the strong-armed pitchers who could overpower us in the batter’s box.

And gone with them, unlamented, was the notion that winning was the only satisfactory outcome.

Our game morphed into slo-pitch.  The ball would float in from the mound to the waiting batter, crouching, bat-cocked, in gleeful eagerness.  When he hit it, more often than not it was to one of the waiting fielders—of whom there were ten (in deference to our declining ability to cover the whole field).

Many of the old softball rules were changed, or at least modified for our game. For example, a team’s turn at bat still ended when three players were tagged Out!, but no team could go through its batting lineup more than once, even if everyone batted safely.

The best part, though, was that no one seemed to worry too much about winning. At the end of every game, the players would file past each other across the middle of the infield, laughing, slapping high-fives, and complimenting each other on a game well-played.  When asked later (perhaps after a brew or two) about the outcome of the game, we often had trouble remembering the final score.

Most of us always loved playing ball, and were awfully glad there was still a game for us to play. Because playing, far more than winning or losing, was the elusive reward for our efforts.

My playing days, alas, are far behind me now, but I remember them fondly.  And I’m glad that, by the time I was through, it wasn’t who won the game that counted—it was who showed up to play!

I wish I still could.

‘Til It’s Gone

Since the turn of the century, my wife and I have been blessed to spend six months a year in Florida.  During that period, we’ve lived under four American presidents—George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.

In that same timeframe in Canada, we’ve lived under four prime ministers—Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, Stephen Harper, and Justin Trudeau.

In Florida, we’ve made dozens of friends over that period, both fellow-Canadians and Americans, most of them snowbirds like us.  Given the constraints of time and distance, and the vicissitudes of age, we no longer see many of them as often as once we did, alas; but we have never stopped considering them friends.

The majority, not all, are similar to us in the ideas we espouse, the values we cherish.  My wife and I consider ourselves socially progressive, left-leaning, but close to the centre—more Liberal than PC in Canadian political terms, more Democrat than GOP in the American context.  We instinctively distrust the fringe elements at both ends of the spectrum.

Some of our friends, though, are not so like-minded, being decidedly more right-of-centre than we.  With them we generally avoid politically-fraught conversations, preferring amity and camaraderie to confrontation and unpleasantness.  And it is indisputably true that all of them, regardless of viewpoint, are generous and kind in their dealings with us.

In the wider context, however—especially in the USA, but also in Canada to a lesser extent—we are currently witnessing an increasing divergence of opinion across social and political lines, accompanied by mistrust and hostility on both sides.  Socially, the divergence is epitomized by the divide between the privileged few at the top of the socio-economic ladder and the huddled masses near the bottom.  Politically, it is portrayed as the struggle between radical leftists (vilified by their foes as socialists) and ultra-right zealots (pilloried by their foes as fascists).

I must confess, my own political leanings are more socialist than fascist, more democratic than autocratic.

The struggle plays out across a large number of issues, a small sample of which includes: racism; LGBTQ2S+trans rights; reproductive rights; healthcare; voting rights; climate change; role and size of government; and religion.  It is the first and last on this list that I deem most problematic in both countries.

Racism is a persistent concern.  For many people in the USA, slavery is the unforgivable sin, the ineradicable stain on the national fabric, a transgression for which amends and restitution must be made.  For some, it is a part of history best left forgotten, as if all is right with the world—see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.  With good will on both sides, however, these two groups could likely find common ground at some point. 

But for others, a minority but a vocal one in both countries, racism remains a part of their ethos to this day—a deliberate allegiance to the notion of white supremacy.  There is a great fear among such folk that they are being dispossessed of their rightful place, that their privilege is being taken from them.  And they decry immigration policies that, in their opinion, indiscriminately admit people of colour.

Many of these people—perhaps too many—turn to demagogues to promote their cause, and those demagogues shamelessly court them to advance their own objectives.

Religion is another major problem.  The separation of church and state, the partition between religious and civil authority, is a fundamental tenet in the governance of both the USA and Canada.  Whether founded as democratic republic or parliamentary democracy, neither nation was envisaged by its founders to be a theocracy, ruled (or unduly influenced) by religious leaders.

Iran is a theocracy, as are Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, even Vatican City.  But neither the USA nor Canada was intended to be one.

Yet today, in both countries, an ugly, religious fundamentalism has reared its head—a fundamentalism of a warped Christian persuasion, a fundamentalism, it must be said, distant from the teachings of the Christ regarding love, tolerance, repentance, forgiveness, and peace—all of which, mind you, are universal tenets found in the gospels of other major religions.   

This fundamentalism preaches adherence to a narrow interpretation of biblical scripture, and seems (at least to this man) unduly restrictive of the rights of women.  It is as if a pseudo-godly Godzilla has arisen to guide us to the Gilead foreseen by Margaret Atwood.  I see the movement as an obscene fundamentalism that, in the words of the poet William Butler Yeats, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.

I do not, of course, deny the freedom enjoyed by citizens of either country to freely practice their religions of choice, whether Christian or otherwise; I do, however, strongly decry all attempts by any group to foist their beliefs upon others for whom those beliefs do not apply.

And I do not for one moment believe that such religious fundamentalism should have any role at all in the governance of either of the countries in which I reside.  But whether or not that will come to pass depends upon us.

In 2016, in the American presidential election, a large number of voters declined to cast a ballot.  Whether that was through ignorance, through a belief their one vote would not make a difference, or because of a visceral, irrational hatred of Hillary Clinton, I do not know.  Perhaps all of the above.  But I do know what resulted from that election.  And I do fear what might happen again in 2024 if ignorance, apathy, and hatred govern people’s actions.

Likewise in Canada, I fear ignorance, a belief one vote will not make a difference, or a visceral, irrational hatred of our current PM will yield a similar, catastrophic result in 2025.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said in one of his speeches, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.  It is up to each of us, I suppose, to determine what constitutes justice and where it might best be found, both socially and politically.  But whatever it is, and wherever it is, I believe it is forward, not backward; upward, not downward; toward the light, not into the darkness.

As Joni Mitchell famously sang, …don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone!