The Narthex

Wednesday, April 13, 2011, 11:10 AM, Albuquerque, NM As I deboard the train for exercise during our stopover, I notice an old man having great difficulty stepping down the coach stairs. There he stands wobbly on the platform, mustering the energy to walk hesitantly with a cane, struggling to pull…

In the 1960s I made a penniless pilgrimage cross country from Boston to California. In 2011 I went in the other direction, this time aboard an Amtrak train. Join me as my train leaves southern California into northern Arizona. I have selected a few poignant episodes to illustrate what occurred…

On my evening walk, I spied a silver-bearded fellow sitting up like a marmot-in-surveillance between the wall and bushes of the Senior Center. I gave him a brief sidelong glance. His steady glare seemed threatening, but I could have imagined that, for it was hard to judge from a distance.…

Decades ago, to avoid social isolation, I took up ballroom dancing and within a month met an attractive woman who was my age. She could dance well and had a compatible personality, so we hit it off. We entered dance contests and won prizes. We dined out every week and…

I met Bill, a 92-year-old retired Hewlett Packard technician, while he was standing outside a packed pool room waiting his turn at a senior-center billiards tournament. He was wearing a Starved Rock, Illinois T-shirt. Such an unusual name got the better of me, so I asked. “It’s a national park,…

Late on a Sunday morning I walked into the nursing home to visit Della. I peeked into her double-occupancy room. Her bed was closest to the hall door, and she lay there with her eyes closed. But she somehow knew when to open them and look at me. Though her…

Three houses over from mine, Wanda, a 72-year-old woman, lived with Marsha, her 47-year-old daughter, and Devan, her 17-year-old granddaughter. The teen got pregnant, and not long after baby Gary was born, the kid’s father was knifed to death in a gang fight. His lifeblood pooled in front of my…

On my regular walks each evening, I pass by a public building where meetings are held almost every night. Two ladies stood outside chatting at 8:25 PM, and I approached them. “What is this meeting about, and is it open to the public?” I asked. “Come and see,” the younger…

Two of my old friends are in the same nursing home, so visiting them each month is a two-for-one event for me. As I walked into the entryway, a middle-aged man in a wheelchair sat with his head hung low. My friends often complain of my coming and going like…

My sixth grade teacher picked me to sing a solo of “O Danny Boy,” his favorite Irish ditty. He must have liked my voice. Maybe he figured I had the Italian genes of soloists like Frank Sinatra or Perry Como. At eleven years old, my voice had not yet "broken."…

I handed out clothing and served food at a Boston Catholic Worker House during the 1960s. Homeless veterans in army jackets lined up for hot meals and warm clothing during the winter. Day after day, the same dour faces came, ate, and left. They slept in vacant buildings at night…

The city built a small neighborhood park around the corner from me. Half-a-dozen homeless people congregate there. I seem to be one of their kind with my close-cut beard, Goodwill clothing, and droopy shade hat. They’ve been waving and greeting me with “Como esta?” “Muy bien,” I respond with a…

“During a carnival, men put masks over their masks.” -- Xavier Forneret   Masks have been in use all over the world since before recorded history. In Central Africa, masks developed with a wide diversity and conveyed spiritual and religious meaning to ritual dances and ceremonies. In ancient Egypt, they…

A faithful member of my writing critique group was moving out of state, so we threw her a goodbye party. I sat at the end of a foldout table on a spacious patio, talking with a newer member, a man in his eighties writing a novel based on his experiences…

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki obviously resulted in widespread civil chaos from which there was no rapid recovery. Fast-forward to 1960, when scientists unleashed another kind of bomb, The Pill. Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood funded the research leading to its commercial development. One…