I often tell them, “Thank you Oliver/Nicholas for being my son. You could have been born to someone else, but I’m so glad you chose me to be your father.” I relate this in the event someone can apply this to their own life.

I met Darlene at the United States Psychotronics Association Annual Convention in 1990 (I think). I always remember her graceful way of moving, and the orange blouse she wore which went so well with her skin tone. Her chestnut brown hair waved side to side when she walked and she had a way of turning her head sharply, as though not to miss something. And Darlene had these very large deep brown dreamy eyes and long, dark eyelashes. She is easily one of the oldest souls I’ve ever met. I really wondered why she was here still? I have been told that her spirit amongst her friends was wise and giving and many people who would only casually meet her would be struck as I was.

And it is for a very selfish reason, really, that I can never forget Darlene. You see, I have a way of understanding people that I come about naturally, and it takes me comparatively little time to develop a metaphor for a person as they experience themselves. Perhaps Darlene was the same. We were in a group at the USPA after lectures were concluded and the conversation was charged and flowing like high rapids on a river. I found myself speaking to the group… relating a story I think. Darlene blurted something out to me, that I’ll never forget. It was validating something I knew of myself but had never had anyone perceive of me, and yet it would be something I could perceive of someone else. I won’t repeat it here; it isn’t really important now. But, I wondered why was she both able and so quick to perceive this? I can say that Darlene is the only person to have ever understand me, the way I understand other people. She made me a birthday card later that year; she colored it with pastels and it was obvious she was deliberate in its creation. I always looked forward to seeing her at the conference. We tried to get her to go dancing with a group of us a couple of times, both in Milwaukee and in Dayton. I remember her being shy and saying something about being “too old” to go dancing. I thought that odd; she wasn’t too old.

So the Internet hit in 1994, and that was the last year I saw her before going off to Germany. And in 1995, while in Germany, I found her email address at the University. She had no idea her email address was searchable on the ‘net, and she seemed bothered that just anyone could find it. Nevertheless, it was good to “talk” to her when I was so very far away from home.

I became so busy after that year, with 2 babies soon to be born to myself and Ela, that I kept putting-off calling her when I returned from Germany. And I did not go to any more conferences. And then I finally did call… and now I have experienced why it is so important to treat every encounter with someone special as though it could be the last chance you get to create a memory with them. Thank you Darlene, and I hope that the Universe is so constructed that the memories I have of you are not the only ones I will ever have of you.

– Chad

I might as well have been looking at the sky from a different planet.

The clouds were low, and it was cool and clammy outside. And it smelled altogether different. But the sky’s color; it was a different shade and mix of white, gray, and pale blue. I heard the line “… we aren’t in Kansas anymore” go through my head. Why couldn’t I have felt welcomed by it, like the way the tall, puffy clouds in Florida make you feel like you are someplace warm and easy? The sky had a caste to it similar to how the skys in Wisconsin are… but still different enough to strike me as totally foreign.

My reaction to seeing the sky was but an ominous, homeopathic dose of what was waiting for me… had I known, I would never have left Nashville. Thank God for un-knowing.

The parking lot was not asphalt. It was something I have only seen in Europe, unfortunately. A smart construction of a concrete honeycomb with grass growing in the empty spaces. It creates a grassy but firm surface. And this paragraph is probably the most boring thing I’ve written in my blog here-to-fore.

I remember seeing a Police van, with a woman in the back of it… and she was crying. I wondered why, and I think Grit said that she might have had her car stolen, and was filing a report. I don’t know if that was a guess or fact. But I can still vaguely see her face. Little did I know, that I had just witnessed a very rare sight: A German crying in public. I only saw it happen one other time, when a young cashier was fired from the supermarket I frequented. I have seen many people every year in Nashville crying in public, or in their car, and our population is nowhere near as dense. After a couple of years of being in Chemnitz, I began to notice small but significant differences between there and my home.

And after Dietmar, Grit’s father, had heaved and stuffed my box into the back of his mercedes, we were off… and in turning out of the parking lot of the airport, we passed by a large concrete condominium. And I saw this woman.

I saw a woman, whose face still is slightly haunting. Firstly, I was amazed at how tightly packed all the roads and structures were to one another… and as she was opening the door to her car, my gaze caught hers. She was an attractive young woman, of muscular build, and in her work-out leotards. But it was the look on her face that struck me. She looked so serious. So stoned-faced, but intense. And she looked at me for what seemed like a long time, but it couldn’t have been more than a second. And I guess that was the first time I really saw the face of Germany; but it would become my everyday reality. I make it sound dreadful, and awful. Well, it isn’t so bad as that… but there was a void of spirit there that many tried to explain, or to compensate for, but couldn’t because it was so impalpable in nature.

I would choose to relive one day in the summer when my boys were 3 and 4 years old. We would walk through the cemetary behind our house in Berry Hill… and I would get to listen to their sweet little voices. I can’t begin to express the bittersweet, fleeting precious time it was.
Writing about my boys is absolutely the hardest thing to write about. It is like walking naked and skinless down a busy city street.

I remember Hope having a similar sentiment about her 2 boys.

I wonder how many people have this feeling, too.

– Chad

“The only strength or power, that matters in the end, is
the STRENGTH
to BE

vulnerable .

I thought this today, after having thought about it since last June, when a woman I only spoke with over the phone (from Match.com) said something like, “I feel your pain, and I don’t like it, because you are hurting me”. That started me thinking… I mean, how dare we rain upon someone else’s sunny day with our stuff, right? Especially in the land of “I’m addicted to Sunshine” – California.