Ramblings of a Retired Mind

  Ramblings of a Retired Mind The Glance A Year of Change The year I turned twenty was a trying one. I was studying History with a Pre-Law minor at Roosevelt University in Chicago. My sister was on the verge of graduating from the University of Illinois. With both of us grown and busy, my parents decided it was time for one last family vacation . Two years earlier, they’d traveled through Italy and fallen in love with it. Now they were determined to share that love with us. And so, in May 1972, we embarked on a multi-city road trip that would stay with me for the rest of my life. I took the wheel; my father became navigator. Into Italy Our flight from Chicago took us through a chaotic layover in Paris—customs lines, hustling crowds, and a near-missed connection. But eventually we touched down in Milan in the gentle light of early morning. Within minutes of picking up our rental car, Italy offered its first challenge: a five-lane traffic circle with no clear escape route. Aft...

 We never really know when we’ll meet our closest friend. Many people drift in and out of our lives, but only a rare few become the ones we can trust completely—the ones who understand us without needing an explanation. Back in 1974 , I was working days in an institutional food factory and attending college at night. One morning, I showed up to find a new guy had joined the crew on the loading dock—the place where tons of sugar, flour, and other staples came in to be turned into food for schools, hospitals, and prisons. He was tall and lean, with a long shock of hair and a spark in his eye that told me he didn’t quite fit the mold. We hit it off almost immediately. Before long, we were inseparable during breaks. His sense of humor matched mine perfectly, and within a week, we’d developed our own nicknames for the rest of the crew—our little inside jokes that only we understood. Did I know then that this man would change my life? Not a chance. But through him, and later through ...

  Ramblings of a Retired Mind Warp Speed Stroke—formally known as a cerebrovascular accident—runs deep in my family. A Childhood Memory In 1965, my parents moved my sister and me from the only home we knew in Chicago’s Rogers Park to Stamford, Connecticut. We went from neighbors stacked on top of us to an acre of land with a pond out back. I was in heaven. We arrived in October, right after my Bar Mitzvah and my thirteenth birthday, beginning our new life out East. The following spring, my father’s parents came to visit. But at that age, treasure hunts through the vast three-hundred-acre forest beside our house with my best friend, Fang Ferguson, were far more appealing than slow afternoons with grandparents. One afternoon, Fang and I were watching a baseball game in the den with my grandfather when my grandmother headed toward the kitchen—and collapsed face-first to the floor. At first, we thought she’d tripped on the step. But no—Anna had suffered a stroke. An ambulance wa...