Three brothers; one war

 

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My mind drifts back to a time that almost seems like another life. I lived with my parents and older siblings on a farm in North Carolina, John F. Kennedy was president, and the Vietnam War wrote the headlines in daily newspapers. The military draft had been invoked, and young men from all walks of life were leaving their families and heading off into the unknown to perform patriotic deeds.

    Knowing that Uncle Sam would soon come knocking on his door, my oldest brother Charles signed some papers on his twenty-third birthday and enlisted in the Air Force. A skinny kid with blond hair and blue eyes, he soon boarded a jet that would land at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Up until then, he probably had not been much farther away from home than the tobacco fields and cow pastures.

Parting is such sweet sorrow

 

A mushroom comes to life

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The warm autumn sun pulled me to the porch on a Sunday afternoon, to sit with the lizards and ladybugs and finish reading David Copperfield (a week ahead of schedule). Two short chapters remained. Usually, with only a few pages left, I rush to finish a book, but that was not the case this time. I held back, knowing I would soon leave David Copperfield, a book I hugged for sixty-four chapters; nine hundred and sixty-one pages.

    I started reading and continued on, uninterrupted. When I read the last paragraph, my eyes teared up, partly from sentimentality; partly because goodbyes make me sad. I resisted leaving Dickens' world, but I left anyway, after spending a few more little whiles last week rereading some pages and reviewing the highlights on my Kindle, of passages such as the ones below, which are a mixture of heartfelt, humorous, clever, brilliant, and wise: