Notes from the Red Bird House

A new Keurig was delivered to my mom's apartment the day she died. The day before, it was Emeril Lagasse steaks and a Christmas centerpiece for her dining room table (because she wanted to smell a little of the season). The next day, a box with three bottles of wine arrived. There were Christmas cards on her desk for the her handyman and the young woman who cleaned her apartment. Even though she had Stage 4 breast cancer and an abdominal aortic aneurysm, my mom insisted upon living until the day she died. She could have pulled up stakes and packed it in months, even years, ago, but she didn't. She chose life. Until death left her with no choice.  The last "conversation" I had with my mom was about a woman. I put "conversation" in quotation marks because she was in no condition to listen much less talk. A ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm is painful and Mom chose to slide out of life as pain-free as possible. By the time I arrived last Thursday night, she...

It comes for all of us. If we're lucky. Right now, I'm not sure I feel lucky, but I know in the days, weeks, months, and years to come, I will come to realize that I am. Or I was. My parents are elderly, eighty-four and ninety-two. From where I'm sitting at the moment - my mother's hospital room - it's doubtful that my mom will reach tomorrow, much less eighty-five, So here I sit. And write...while  my biggest fan lays a few feet away snoring like a freight train. Her snores mean she's still alive so rather than drowning them out with music, I listen, Intently. Because each one could be her last. It's the drugs - her pain was pretty severe - making her sleep so soundly. These same drugs, the ones that keep the pain at bay, may also hasten her death. Her decision. She's been kicking cancer's a** for the past seven years. My mom's no sissy; she can endure. But this isn't the cancer, the known quantity. This is an aneurysm, a ticking time bomb...

I have a favorite spoon. And a bowl and a cooking utensil and a coffee cup. After speaking to a friend, I'm now on the lookout for a favorite fork. Why are they my favorites? I dunno really. They bring me comfort. For me, there's something about sameness; using the same thing, doing the same thing, eating the same thing over and over again. If I do something once/use something once, there's a good chance I'll do it again. And again. And it'll become habit. It's not that I have an addictive personality, even though some may see it that way. One taste of something and I'm hooked. But it's not like that. I'm not like that. I'm a control freak. There's no more concise way to say it. It's that control - the control I exercise over 99% of my life - that keeps me sane. Odd, right? Not really. Control equals sanity. I'm here to tell you that it sure didn't in the psychology textbooks I read in college. Control meant a "disease...

The purple-yellow horizon fades to black, my favorite time of day. Night. A thin breeze, unexpectedly cool. I shiver; my hands find my pockets. They will be safe there. I look up. Infinity will arrive soon. Stars and more stars, defying the city lights. There wouldn't be a moon. All the better. Fewer shadows, more truth. This is why I prefer the night. The glare of the sun lies, creates hiding places, disguises, obscures. But in the darkness...everything is known, secrets are revealed. My head tipped back, gaze steadfastly on the sky above. My neck hurts. A picnic table, a front row seat. I lay down, one arm behind my head, knees bent, ready. One by one, they appear; the smallest specs of light. Wind through the pines; a unique sound, the beating of my heart. Darkness closes in, touches me. I close my eyes; I breathe in, exhale; open my eyes. Infinity unveiled before me. Day will return. Light will shoo away the darkness; night will scurry into the shadows. I will struggle in the...

Back when I was a Believer (as in a believer in God), I wanted to have my own church. It wasn't going to be typically Jesus-focused at least not in the "stock" Jesus traditional Christians are so fond of. Nope. There'd be none of the hocus-pocus literal Jesus, i.e. no water turning into wine, resurrections, or ever-lasting life b.s. Instead we would focus on Jesus, the kick-ass man who truly gave a f*** about the people around him. I'm about to digress, but I could never understand why the Son of God thing and all the supposedly prophetic mumbo-jumbo was so important. Taken at face value, Jesus, the man, was The Man. Because, look, he got it, like really  got it . And he wasn't afraid to say it, walk it,  live it . So, yeah, back in the day I truly thought Jesus was pretty much the original rock star. And I'll tell you, my lack of a belief in God has done little to diminish my respect for the man. In a nutshell, that's what my church was going to focu...

I don't know where to start. It's common when writing. No one knows where to start. I usually tell prospective and confused writers to start with the word "The." It's a great word. One can veritably springboard to absolutely anything...well, after a noun, of course. The dog. The lion. The closet. The coffee shop. The broken heart. Check that out. Another good place to start is with "I," especially when attempting a story from the first person perspective. Or a blog. Like this one. Notice what I started with. I. But I digress... Ugh...Ok. Let me try again. Something in me changed last week. Or maybe it was earlier this week. The days seriously blur when you do largely the same thing every day. Ok, I'm pretty sure part of it happened last week. It's Friday today and I know for sure it wasn't this week. The rest... That had to be this week....at least I think. I suppose I could surf back through some text messages and figure it out but I reall...

"You steal my heart And you take my breath away... ...How can I stand here with you And not be moved by you?" ~  from "Everything" by Lifehouse I live on the flight path for McCarran International Airport. Planes fly over the courtyard outside my apartment every few minutes. I've gotten pretty good at identifying the various airlines as they rise overhead. Purple and orange - Southwest. White with U-N-I-T-E-D written on the underbelly - United. Blue and red tail fin - Delta. Bright yellow and blue - Spirit. I watch them fly and I am always envious. Always. The people on those planes...They're going somewhere. Vacation, work, family, friends, home. They might be sad, happy or a mix of both. They might be with the love of their life or going to see them. They might be newly married, newly rich, or new poor (I live in Vegas, after all). For each plane and each passenger, there is a different reason and a different emotion. As I watch them soar overhead,...

It's a given. I'm goal directed. Well, I guess I am. Sort of. When I put my mind to it. Like when I was a freshman in college, I decided that one day I would be introduced as the #1 player on my home courts. I worked hard and I made it happen. I got into grad school three times (I went twice and graduated once). I got a highly coveted Intelligence Officer billet with the United States Navy (I turned it down because I didn't want to go back in the closet). I wrote and published a novel. I bought a Nissan Juke, my dream car. I wanted to run a sub 1:40 half marathon before I turned fifty and I did (1:37:08 at 49 years, 9 months, and 16 days old ). I traveled. I moved away from Austin.  Oh, the list of things I haven't accomplished is long and illustrious (The word "Legion" comes to mind), but I refuse to see them as "failures;" they are merely steps in the process. They are what will lead to my fourth novel, a running tour business in Las Vegas, Neva...

“Right now, if things were different, I’d be trying not to text you or call you too soon. But I’d be dying to see you again. I am dying to see you. And you’re sitting right next to me.”  ~ Stella to Maggie, in The Match I mentioned to a co-worked yesterday - after he'd asked me how "the writing" was going - that I hadn't been writing any fiction but I'd really been missing Stella and Maggie, the protagonists in my novels. I'm not sure why I confided something so - I don't know - weird to him. He's a young guy, an aspiring barber and musician, but he's seemed to get me and like me from Day 1 so I guess I figured the risk was minimal. What was the worst that would happen? He'd think I was odd? Let's be honest. He probably already thinks that. And he likes me anyway. So, yeah... I said what I said. Then Julian said something so profound I could hardly believe it - "Maybe your readers are missing them, too." Whoa. What? And...