Sometimes you’re shuffling back toward bed or the couch with a second cup of coffee in the stillness of early morning when you turn the corner and there it is: a confluence of light and object as the barely risen sun pierces a window and you behold a kind of brushless painting in progress, a still life built of the earth’s slow-but-inexorable orbit made all the more precious for how fleeting it is, impermanence (and beauty) its very essence, like a meticulously rendered sand castle doomed in mere moments by the incoming tide. Could be a chair and pillow, a…
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Like so many moms everywhere, mine loomed huge in my formative years, so much so that when I think back to my childhood it’s difficult to separate much of it, much of myself, from her presence. Which is not to imply that she was forceful or dominant—far from it. Mom, born on this day exactly one century ago in Budapest, Hungary as Zsuzsanna (Susan) Marie Lučić (pronounced “lou-cheech”), was the gentlest of souls. If I could encapsulate the feeling tone of that “presence” I refer to above, what most suggests itself to me is the currently fashionable phrase that she…
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It was as if I had just been rudely awakened from a dream, except there was no “if” about it—because that is exactly what had happened. Out there in the fast lane just outside Lansing, Illinois, on the way to meet up with friends in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and from there to explore Ontario and Québec on a long road trip. Ten days out from home, some eighteen still to go, on the road all morning, the eyelids having wanted to droop several times in the hour just past, discussion having commenced about pulling over soon for rest and refuel.…
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Is there anything more forlorn than a long unused passport, still brimming with hope of adventure for its bearer, though its pages remain unstamped, the whole of it the very epitome of unrealized potential and unfulfilled dreams? So it was for my passport, it having sat idly in a dark closet throughout the nearly seven years since I last renewed it. Mocking, no, make that pleading with me regarding its mint condition, it was languishing in danger of expiration without ever having come under the squinty gaze and worn thumb of an inquiring border agent asking about my intentions in…
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The photo above is of my father, standing before Mount Suribachi during World War II. If you don’t recognize the name of this mountain, then you may not fully grasp the weight of history—or the immense cost of freedom. Take note: there is no flag on the peak, yet. James Thill enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 20 when the United States entered World War II in 1941. He became one of the youngest first sergeants of his time before eventually retiring as a major in 1965. He never spoke to me about the horrors he endured. Later, I…