A lot happens in 30 years.
I was awake last night, asking myself about the things I have done and the places I’ve been to since this day back in 1989. I was only a kid then. I thought about the people and the places I’ve seen and how I swore that I would never see them again, but yet, fate does what fate does. Suffice to say that life has its own rhythm. Suffice to say that so do I and so do you. Life is funny down here on Project Earth.

Hello, my name is Ben and I a member of Christmas Anonymous, which means that at one point, I had a problem with the Christmas season. This is not to say that Christmas Anonymous is a real thing but for the moment it is.
The following is my qualification for membership, which, I have learned to overcome. And so, with hopes to reach those who’ve been through their struggling similarity; I offer this message of hope because although heartfelt, the truth is we can all overcome anything, should we so choose to.

There is nothing more beautiful than a smile. And I swear this has to be true. It just has to be. There is nothing more warm or inviting than a genuine, wholesome smile.

I have a record of smiles in my memory. I think of them sometimes, like say, when a friend of mine offered me a pair of new blue jeans. He smiled at me in a brotherly way. I had never seen anything like this before. As a matter of fact, I had never truly seen what it means to be charitable until him.

There was a time when I was on a basketball team. Perhaps you might remember this. I know I’ve told you about this before so I will spare some of the details and stick to the point.

I was the little skinny kid that could hardly reach the basket when I took a shot remember? I was smaller than everyone. I was uncoordinated and uncomfortable at my best. I was also different in ways that made this team difficult for me. I was a stranger to the other kids on the team. Or, maybe the other kids were strangers to me. Either way, they all knew each other but they didn’t know me. They were all friends and me, I was this little skinny kid that rode the bench and went to a different school.

My Mom would wait to the very minute after an acceptable hour because she didn’t want to call too early. She would tell me “Happy Birthday.” Then Mom would tell me how she remembers the day I was born.

Wintertime 2011

The tide moved in early to show the face of an old memory. I feel the sands surrounding my footsteps, and moving closer to the edge of an ocean, I am me between the land and sea, hopeful as ever, dreaming, thinking of the time I was a small boy and placed my footsteps in the path of my Old Man.

I believe in all fairness, I should follow up with my previous thought about my Mother and tell you a little more about my Father.
Before I begin, those that have followed along and those who’ve know be from before and know me up until now will also know that each time I refer to my Father, I refer to him as The Old Man.

1)

I think of you now and I am young. I am a boy again, like I was on the piers in Shinecock canal in November, cold as ever, and bundled up in a big blue coat with mittens and a pull-over hat that was knitted by my Grandmother.  The sky was gray and the docks were quiet. I sat there shivering from the cold but I did not complain. I watched the end of my fishing rod, (just like you told me to) and hoped a fish would swim along and take my bait.
I could have sat that way for hours and not caught a thing and the day would still be perfect. I could have lived there in fact, exactly as it was, cold and gray and quiet, shivering.

It is morning, earlier than usual, but yet, I am awake (like always) and looking at today’s date. I realize that four years have passed since my last trip down to Ft. Lauderdale in good old Sunny Florida. I know this because the date has been tattooed into the top of my wrist and commemorated for a special reason.