A guy who seems always to be at Country Fair didn’t look himself. He had lost a lot of weight and kept hiking up his drooping sweatpants. On this chilly morning, a red fleece blanket tied around his neck in cape fashion and a Pittsburgh Steelers stocking cap were his only warmth. Continue reading
I’m alone here, but seldom lonely. The space heater’s sigh, the weather’s endless improvisations and the train horn now groaning in the distance are felt presences, companions, especially when efforts—finding words in my head, searching for sentences from others to supply what I lack—fail and all that remains is the essential human enterprise: Being. Continue reading
My drink finished, I notice the cool air on my arms and the silence, which is congested with circumstance, with the way things are, with roundabouts, blossoms and souls getting by on what they’ve got. That’s what we all do, I suppose. Continue reading
So it’s like this, toots. You’re slowing down, and neither one of us will live forever. While you are still of sound mind and top side of the sod, receive this message from your son-in-law. Continue reading
Oniontown Pastoral: Going Visiting My career in visitation began over 50 years ago with Mrs. Gillespie, who lived across the backyard. Johnny’s perch was a red metal step stool beside the kitchen counter. His usual was strawberry Nesquik. Who knows, … Continue reading
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Oniontown Pastoral The Orphan’s Question: Where Is Love? Kathy’s breaths of sleep come and go. Awake at dawn, I’m in a high school choir concert 45 years ago, a musical’s lyrics forming behind my closed lips: Where is love? Does … Continue reading
Oniontown Pastoral: When Kathy Walks Away Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come. (William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116) Out of an abundance of caution, that was the reason, I suppose. The Colemans of … Continue reading
What I do believe is an adage that has grown trite with wear: Everybody has a story. Manners were expected in my childhood, but not so much the patient peeling back of other people’s layers to understand behavior and find compassion. Continue reading
What Time Feels Like in Its Passing
Nothing has changed. Not much anyway. So why did a recent email from my brother throw me off stride?
“We finally decided to sell our condo,” Ed writes. “Now that Delta [Airlines] has pulled out of Erie, the convenience is outweighed by the cost. We have to fly into Buffalo anyways, and that just happens to be where Andrea and the boys are.”
Ed and wife Debby have retired to Las Vegas. No use paying taxes and condominium fees for a perch in our hometown when Buffalo, 90 minutes away, is where they want to be.
But Ed’s real estate transaction means that I’m the last Coleman left in Erie. My sisters both live in North Carolina. Mom died in 1998, Dad in 2012. Wife Kathy and I have two adult children and three grandsons in Erie, so our calendars overfloweth with blessings. Still, now that nobody from my birth family lives within an easy drive, one ventricle of my heart is pumping sighs.
This season’s emotional valley has been a long time coming. The Coleman family’s migration into glory and geographical retreat from Pennsylvania is of a piece with my past slipping away.
In the old neighborhood, Twin Kiss is a vacant lot. Joe Ettwein no longer survives to repair my cars. Gary’s Variety is a parking lot. I learned to make change there from the best boss ever. Russ’ Diner recently died of COVID-19, as did my beloved Jack Frost Donuts. Armand’s Pizzeria was actually the first to go, leveled for a convenience store. “OK, bout 10-12 minutes,” the muscular, mustachioed proprietor said in staccato when I ordered a large with cheese and pepperoni. The crust was thin, the sauce sweet.
Passing the dusty ghost of my alma mater, Erie East High, I can see German teacher Miss McMahon’s high ceiling and hardwood floor protected by layers of lacquer against the soles of spirited, randy teenagers. What apartments those classrooms would have made.
OK, uncle, the razing of East and Armand’s and the rest must be tolerated, but I’ll let myself wallow over Wagner Avenue, where I was raised.
The closer I get to 60—11 days away now, but who’s counting—the more often I turn right at the intersection I crossed for a 25-cent chocolate and vanilla “twin kiss” cone. Three blocks to the south stands home, surrounded by Farnsworths, Clarks, Newcamps and Snells.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews lived next door. The wiry mister, a foundry worker, came home filthy, his cheeks whiskery, his lip bulging with Copenhagen. The missus’ frizzy hair gave her the countenance of a startled cartoon woman. But their house and garden were just so.
On my last Wagner run I was floored to see that fire had blown through the Andrews’ windows. The edifice remains. The picture I pulled over to take doesn’t capture my sensation in the moment that Mickey and Marcella went up in smoke with their home. In fact, they died two days apart in 2005 and shared an obituary.
My home was untouched, but with the two shade maples out on the tree lawn chopped down, the place was damaged in the eyes of the boy who came and went with a slam of the screen door.
I couldn’t help myself. Starting at our driveway, I paced off the yards to the corner. Almost 50 years ago, a handsome kid used the hollow of his mother’s hairspray cap as a tee. He sent the football over the telephone wire, jogged after it and kicked again. Again. And another as dusk turned to night.
But just how long was his furthest kick? I faced the wire, guessed 20-25 yards, and breathed. My treeless house looked like a man who had shaved off a beard he’d worn forever.
Presiding over the avenue of my personal best, this grandfather realized he could never match that 14-year-old who was so painfully awkward with the girls. I cracked open. Wind swirled in the hollow of my chest. I’ll never taste another Armand’s pizza. My brother has a buyer. One Coleman is left standing in Erie.
I’m as happy now as ever, honest, but what I wouldn’t give to kick that football one more time, to fetch it for another try. Let a chilly rain sting my face. Let the ball disappear into the darkness. I don’t need light to know that it’s good.
The kid inches toward the horizon. Being called “Pop” is perfect, but I miss Johnny. So I wave to him. He really puts his leg into one, watches it soar, then turns toward me. What a sweet boy. If only I could put my arm around his shoulder and pull him in close, as if father to son.
This is what time feels like in its passing.
Letter to My Grandson, for the Future
July 7, 2021
Dear Killian:
My five-year-old pal, you are having one rough time. In 10 years or more, you might find some value in your Pop’s thoughts about what your heart, mind and body are going through these days. I’m asking your mom and dad to hold onto this letter until you’re confused, stuck, maybe miserable, trying to figure yourself out—why you feel like you feel and tick like you tick.
I’m almost 60 now, and for the whole stretch I’ve over-thought and over-felt nearly everything. I’m a genius at crippling myself with worry and concocting troubles that don’t exist. Just before your mother was born, I started to have panic attacks that raided my sense of self for a good five years. “Anxiety disorder,” that’s the box my therapist checked on my bill after each session.
Now at this point, listen closely. I’m not saying that someday you’ll go through what I went through. No, no, no. It’s just that the struggles you’re enduring tell me that you have a sensitive soul, like your Pop’s. If this is true, you’re in for a ride. Joy will take your breath away hour by hour. On the other hand, the wrongs you witness will bring on tears or—as my mother used to say—“make you so mad you could spit.”
The older you get, the less you’ll remember the preschool-aged Killian. I’m a reliable source, though, and you could do far worse than consider whether the boy you’ll now read about has turned out like his grandfather.
First, a caveat. Keep in mind that the last two years have been bat crazy. The Coronavirus, which has claimed over 600,000 lives in the United States alone, still has us frightened and confused. The social and political climate—to say nothing of our changing planetary climate—is brutish and wicked. In short, to be an American of any age in 2021 is to be hemmed in by exhausting absurdities.
Be assured, your mom and dad and both sets of grandparents are tender and mindful, doing everything possible to give you a safe, lively and fulfilling childhood. You and your brothers are lucky beyond measure. But I wonder if, despite much wise protection, you still manage to absorb how nasty and bonkers the world around you is without having the cognitive development to process it all.
Although your life with family and friends is charmed, you take deep breaths constantly. You’ve got a fiery, nameless burden in your chest that returns even as you blow it out through puffed lips.
For months now you’ve had a cranky stomach. You chew food, then chipmunk it in your cheeks, afraid to send it down for digestion.
Sometimes in the middle of the night you wake up with cramps in your foot. For a while your eyes were always itchy, and I thought you might rub them right off your fair face. Oh, and for another while you got sharp headaches while riding in the car. All of these concerns are improved, thanks to your mom and dad’s persistent efforts to find causes and treatments.
You’re now reading about your younger self and maybe saying, “Man, I was a mess.” Well, to tell the truth, kind of, yes. I would call you delicate. Your mom said, “Some kids are dandelions, some are orchids.”
So far, your older brother appears to be a dandelion, while it’s too early to predict what flower your younger brother will be. But you, sir, are a delicate orchid. Accept no blame on that account. Feel no shame. This is a comrade addressing you. If honorary doctorates were awarded for fragility, your Pop would have a wall full.
My list of your ailments isn’t offered to depress you, but to open you up to self-awareness and ultimately a growing sense of ease with the person you are. This moment’s cleansing breaths and bellyaches may well be outward signs of turmoil trapped inside you. Nobody knows for sure.
But since your folks have handed you this letter, what you went through so long ago is possibly paying you a return visit—in a new form, spurred by new circumstances, wearing a new mask. Then again, maybe nothing is wrong. Mysteriously you’re rubbing your eyes again for no good reason. Riding in the backseat hurts your head.
Mystery is the perfect word. Microscopes and test tubes teach us what truths they can divine, but human beings pretend to know more than we really do. In many ways, the person you are and the person I am are mysteries. We are tiny mysteries caught up in a loving, but ferocious, embrace of the Great Mystery.
Why is Killian Thompson the way he is? No matter how you answer that question, in dark valleys you might long to turn into a different person altogether—somebody stronger, braver than you are, some carefree guy whose troubles lift from his mind like morning mist.
If you are ever granted such a wish, you will find what’s left of me inconsolable in my writing hut. You will little remember how many times I sidled up to the troubled five-year-old you, pulled you toward me and kissed the sandy shock of hair behind your right ear. Nor will your hurting feet recall the heat your grandmother applied to them at 5:00 a.m. And how could you know that your mom and dad breathed in your every sigh to be sure you never worried alone?
I ask you now, Killian, to trust that your parents and grandparents have always had but one fervent intention: To help you give birth to yourself and to love you so fiercely and unconditionally that you will dare to love yourself—exactly as you are and much the same as you were in 2021, when you gave your Pop more gladness than you’ll ever know just by sitting in his lap.
With abiding love,
Pop
A Napper's Companion 