Christopher Donahue

The morning rush hour was typically heavy. I was driving my wife to work in the medical district. We were stuck at a red light. Traffic was so congested, it was taking several cycles for the cars to get through the intersection each time the light changed. It was late summer, the windows were down and we were enjoying the otherwise lovely morning.

As we waited, we noticed a young couple in the car in front of us . They must have been newly in love because they’d embrace and passionately kiss while waiting for the light. When the light turned green, the young guy would move the car ahead a bit, the light would turn red, and the couple would start making out again.

When their car got to the corner, the pretty young woman got out and straightened her clothes. Waiting for the light to change one last time, the couple kept up the lovey-dovey exchange with the young woman leaning in the car window. Finally, the light turned green and she blew her boyfriend a kiss good-bye.

“Why don’t I get kisses like that?” I asked.

“Because she doesn’t know you,” my wife replied.

copyright 2017 Christopher Donahue

There’s a little neighborhood I walk through on the way to the train each day that reminds me of Venice.  The classic New England clapboard houses are set close to the street behind picket fences and well kept yards. The streets are so narrow I imagine I’m in a black, lacquered gondola gliding between palazzos on the way to work.

One morning, a large, shiny-black hearse was inching around the tight corner on the way to the nearby local funeral home. The only thing missing was a gondolier to shout “Oy!” as he made the turn.

Instead, the driver shouts: “You’re going to be late!”

It’s my retired friend Don who drives part-time for the funeral home.

My reply: “I certainly hope so!”

copyright 2017 Christopher M. Donahue

It was a beautiful, late summer morning. A few leaves had changed color here and there as the first harbingers of Autumn. The weekend was so much fun it was like a mini-vacation and he felt refreshed and ready for the upcoming week. There were several matters that needed his attention at work but nothing pressing. He and his wife might even go to a red Sox game that evening.

Striding forth from his home to catch the train, he only made it a few houses up the street before trouble. The sock on his right foot was a Quitter. With each step, it was somehow working it’s way down and off his foot. “Damn,” he thought. There was no time to go back and get another pair of socks. He had to make that train.

At the red-light, he waited to cross and took the time to readjust his shoe. Loosening the laces, pulling up the sock and retying, he was good-to-go when the light turned for him to cross. Unfortunately, the Quitter was at it again, and by the time he took a seat on the train the sock had worked it’s way off his heel and was bunched up near his toes. A fellow commuter watched him take his bare foot out of his shoe and start fumbling with the uncooperative sock.

“Quitter, “ he said sheepishly to the woman and focused on fixing the sock and putting his shoe back on.

She nodded in knowing agreement.

The Quitter was not a problem as he rode on the train but it was right back to its mischief as he walked to the office. By the time he got on the elevator at work,  the Quitter was off his heel and bunched up around his toes again. He stood uncomfortably in the back of the elevator as his co-workers chatted it up. Obviously,  none of them were dealing with a Quitter.

Thanks to the Quitter, the Monday seemed longer than usual. The constant readjusting, the preoccupation with his uncomfortable foot, the vain hope that the latest fix would be permannent, all of these were a distraction. He thought about throwing the sock out but he didn’t want to get blisters going sock-less with shoes. He regretted not having a spare pair of socks at work. Worse, he didn’t have time to go out and buy a new pair. There was no other choice than to endure the Quitter.

That evening he walked home from the train with the sock worked down over his heel and bunched up in the front of his shoe, again. He didn’t care anymore. He got home, opened the front door and took his shoes off. Then he took his socks off and threw them in the trash.

No one likes a Quitter.

Copyright 2017 Christopher Donahue

Watching meteor showers on summer evenings is one of  my fondest memories of childhood.  My favorite meteor shower of the year was the Perseid in August.  Whether we were at the beach or the mountains,  we would search out a dark  spot with  a broad view of the sky,  and wait in great anticipation for the first shooting star.  Reclining lawn chairs were essential but laying on the ground with a blanket was the best. A personal rule of mine is once  you commence meteor watching, you can’t go in until you see at least shooting star. And that holds for any summer evening. Not just nights with a yearly scheduled meteor shower.

A favorite memory  is from my teens. I would go up alone, except for our two trustys dogs, to an athletic field that bordered a large woods. With the field lights off , there was a broad expanse of sky that was perfect for viewing. Laying down on the grass and looing up, I ‘d focus my eyes on nothing so I could take in the whole expanse of the sky-ready to detect  shooting star from anywhere. The dogs loved it. Meagan, a border collie, and Molly a Labrador mix would lay down on each side of me and keep watch. No bad guys, bears or coyotes would be sneaking up on us.

Watching meteor shower requires several  basic things.  Patience,  laying on your back , not being in a rush, and most importantly clear skies. The last requirement is of course the most important. The past few nights I’ve gone out and it has been overcast which isn’t surprising to me. If there’s anything I know from years of summer star gazing is August has many cloudy nights.

Perhaps it’s the first sign of the coming of Fall, but August weather patterns make observing the Perseid shower a  chancy endeavor.

As if seeing a shooting star weren’t chancy enough!

copyright 2017 Christopher Donahue

A friend of mine says she would take a bullet for a caterpillar. I didn’t think I was that softhearted, but we had to cut a beautiful old tree down last week and it made me sad. The arborist found numerous hollowed out boles that were a threat to bring the tree down in a storm so we had to have it removed. It didn’t help the tree was otherwise lush and leafy and gloriously full of life. It was unfortunate to cut it down but it was, as they say, all for the best.

Still, it was hard to destroy such a big beautiful tree. It was even harder to believe not only was the tree being cut down, but it would be immediately blasted into oblivion by a wood-chipper. From majestic maple to nothing. A loss and a waste. On the scale of things, it obviously wasn’t as bad as shutting off life support for a loved one, or euthanizing your dog or cat, but it just plain sucked. Warning! When you are told things are all for the best it really means they suck and there’s no alternative.

The night before the beautiful maple was cut down, I snuck out in the dark and performed last rights on the mighty tree. I felt there should be some kind of gesture, or good bye, for this living thing. I said a prayer to ease it’s suffering, or if I couldn’t ease it’s suffering, at least acknowledge, well… something.

Now that I think of it. Maybe I would take a bullet for a caterpillar.

Copyright 2017 Christopher Donahue

In a year and place he never imagined, he woke up in a cottage  in Sweden. Jet lag will do that to you. It was the day after Midsummer, and the weather was beautiful. His wife was still asleep as he poured a cup of coffee, tried to clear his head, and walked out onto the adjoining dock to survey his  new surroundings.

The cottage was on the shores of the Baltic. The water was calm and smooth and reminded him of a lake in New Hampshire where he had spent summers with his family.  There was  little island a hundred meters across a channel from the cottage. Birch trees covered the island and marsh grass skirted its edges. As he sipped his coffee and looked around, he heard a runner huffing and puffing and realized there was a jogging path over there obscured by the tall grass.

And then he saw something he literally couldn’t believe.  His mother was walking on the island path.  She was wearing her familiar blue raincoat and sweatpants like she did so many times before in New Hampshire. She was ambling along happily, her white hair flowing out from under some kind of cap.

But what made the sight so incredible was that his mother had died seven years earlier.

So there he stood, stunned, in the brilliant summer morning sunlight watching this apparition but not knowing what to believe. The old woman looked exactly like his mother as she strolled along. The body shape, the way she walked, the clothes, the image looked like his mother to a T. Only the face was uncertain, obscured just so slightly by the distance. Just as it would be that far off, along a lake in New Hampshire, USA.

He was astonished. It was unsettling. Was someone playing a joke on him? But, who could orchestrate a joke like that? he stood there alone.  It can’t be a ghost, it’s broad daylight, he thought (as if that were rational).

It became even more amazing when an elderly man, who looked like  his father came hurrying along and caught up to his “mother”. His actual father was still alive back in Massachusetts.

He couldn’t understand it, but dismissed the supernatural. Still, it was uncanny.

All he could do was sip his coffee, and watch his mother and father stroll along until the were out of sight,  amidst the birch trees, on the shores of the Baltic.

copyright 2017  Christopher Donahue

In the sweltering darkness of a July evening, he sat on his back porch eating ice cream. The heat and humidity were oppressive and expected for high summer. In the heavy stillness, a massive thunderstorm was bearing down, threatening to break the swelter that lay over the region for the past week. The presence of the storm was visceral- he could sense it. Barely discernible in the starless black sky, were the towering dark clouds of the looming storm. Even the bugs were silent.

The approaching deluge reminded him of the many summer evenings he spent on the front porch of an old farmhouse in Vermont, watching thunderstorms roll in. The farmhouse had been sold the year before and he missed it. There had been nothing he could do keep it. He finished his ice cream, and reflected on the fact no doe and fawn would be walking warily out of the darkness onto his suburban lawn. A back door slammed somewhere.

Suddenly, there was a small breeze, a rustling in the trees, and the storm broke. In the flashes of lightning he could see the trees bending and twisting wildly in the gusts of rain and wind. He was getting soaked and the ice cream was finished.

He went inside to see how the Red Sox were doing on the West Coast.

Copyright 2017 Christopher Donahue

Two week ago, I settled into my seat on our connecting flight at Heathrow for Stockholm only to realize I left my personal Journal back on the Boston-London flight we just flew in on. The journal had a year’s worth of writing in it.  It felt like a punch in the stomach. And then there was the helpless hoping that someone would turn it in because it had my name and address in it. That has yet to happen.

Upon arrival, I immediately  monitored the Heathrow/British Air “lost and found” website with the fading hope my journal would turn up. To add insult to injury, besides valuable items, an astonishing amount of crap was turned in (packs of cigarettes and paper back novels) – but not my journal.  It was incredible to think all this crap was found on the plane and turned in and my journal got tossed? But who knows? Maybe it was never found and is presently flying around the would on a 777 until it turns up someday.

Losing a journal is a weird thing. It only has value to me. Most people can’t relate to having one let alone losing one.  I don’t worry about it revealing any secrets because I haven’t committed any major felonies during the period of time the journal! Still, I regret the thought and incidents I documented that I won’t be able to remember even if I had time to reconstruct the year.

Back in Boston, my friend was distraught because her beloved cat “Freddie” got out of the house and was missing. On the news, a five year old girl lost her life falling out an apartment window on a hot summer night. Those two things helped keep in perspective the loss of my journal. It doesn’t get much more wrapped up with oneself than keeping a journal.

And then I heard Freddie came back!

copyright 2017 Christopher Donahue

He woke up, and out of a dream.  As always, the dream was so real he was surprised to be back in the conscious world. Most dreams he quickly forgot between the distractions of the alarm going off and his two hungry cats demanding breakfast. But, this dream was remarkable.

He was on a brilliant green, freshly mowed lawn that ran right up to a beach. The sky was brilliant blue and waves rolled gently in to crash on the sand.  His cousin,  The Doctor, sat in a  wicker chair. He, the Dreamer, glanced at his smart phone and watched planes landing in Sydney with a flight-app.

With dream-certainty he realized he was in Australia. With no transition he was  suddenly in a car, at night, speeding toward a city. The loneliness of being far from home swept over him. He thought how he made a new life in Sydney, which in the real world he hadn’t. And he thought of his far off father as the car raced  over a high, massive, dark bridge. The sparkling city was before and below him.

It gets dark quick in Australia, he thought as somehow his hand reached down, out of the car, hundreds of feet to dip his fingers in the black harbor water. He looked to his left as the car reached the peak of the arching bridge. He was passing the nearby superstructure of a giant, ocean-going freighter, painted red and white with catwalks and radar dish on the mast. He thought of all the people on the freighter he’d never met and of the far off Pacific places the ship visited. Suddenly, somehow,  in overwhelming darkness, he saw the anchor chain with it’s massive links and the anchor going down in the black depths of the sea. At some point the acoustic version of a Men at Work song was playing with the lyrics Ghosts appear and fade-away repeating over and over.

His wife woke him because he slept past the alarm. He was amused by the dream and  related the whole thing to her.

And so the dream became memory.

copyright 2017 Christopher Donahue

It’s the Friday morning before Memorial Day Weekend. A light rain is falling. Bombadill hopes it will alleviate the pollen-driven allergies that have been plaguing him the past few weeks. He walks to the train thinking of his latest up coming trial. Bombadill wishes he didn’t schedule the trial a few days after the long weekend but he had no choice: His client is being held in jail so the trial had to scheduled as soon as possible. He thinks about Davis, his old-school mentor, who told him more than once: Never forget your job is to get people out of jail.

The platform is sparsely populated with fellow commuters and he attributes that to it being the eve of a long weekend. Bombadill is partly correct. It is also the 9 AM train. He is taking the late train because he slept poorly the night before. 

In a watery-eye, clogged-nose frame of mind, he becomes aware of the passing of time.  He looks at his watch. For that moment, in the rain, on the train platform, standing next to a young woman with a rubber duck themed umbrella, he is acutely aware he lives in the moment.   He looks at his smart phone and the date says May 26^th.  May is such a beautiful month. He wishes he could hold onto May. For that matter, he wishes he could hold onto 2017;  a year  that seemed so  strange and novel and now is approaching the half way mark. 

He resists calling his current state of  in-the-moment mindfulness. He hates pop-science catch phrases like that. What he realizes is that he is actually getting better at living.  No longer preoccupied with regrets, nor concerns for the future, he is proficient now at living each day, simply for each day.

His cat and dog are proud of him!

copyright 2017 Christopher Donahue