I had the great honor of writing for and performing in the San Diego Memoir Writer’s Association’s 2021 San Diego Memoir Showcase at the Conrad Performing Arts Center.

Somewhere in the assembly process, God forgot my neck. Crew necks fit like turtle necks, and turtle necks come up to my chin. God failed to give me a button nose, too. It’s more like a proboscis. A perfect word, prrrrrrrrobosssssssscis. Long, unwieldy, and uncouth.

Once in a while, we dance through the woods
And swing from the swaying limbs
Of my broken family tree.

The idea of driving a station wagon horrified me. But there I was, behind the wheel of a four-door mom-mobile replete with two car seats carefully fastened in the passenger row.

Yesterday was your birthday.

I saw the calendar and reflexively panicked.

Forced to honor you for so many years

While that date meant nothing but grief.

Blanketed by sparkling skies
Cloaked in dreams romanticized
I felt a sound
A rumble in the distance
Grew louder with insistence
It threw me to the ground

Perhaps at a party or maybe during a walk in the park. “So what do you do?” And suddenly, I’m at a loss for words.

I lost my father when I was five.

He died last Friday.

He gave to many, withheld from some.

His musical talent flows through me.

But so does a melancholy born of a tender age.

I grieve—not for what was

But for what could never be.

I had the great honor of writing for and performing in the San Diego Memoir Writer’s Association’s 2021 San Diego Memoir Showcase at the Conrad Performing Arts Center.

I once traveled to Kenya’s Maasai Mara and journeyed through untamed backroads in a hatch-top jeep. In less than 48 hours, I’d traveled not only across the globe but back in time.

“I’m voting for God’s Kingdom to fix this mess,” she said and with that, Alice, 93, closed the door and left her groceries forlorn on the stoop of her Loma Portal home.

Last week, Project-19 took me to City Heights, an urban blend of African American, Asian, and Latino communities bustling with energy. My SUV loaded with grocery boxes, I meandered its gridded streets scanning from side to side in search of a coveted parking spot. Past experience taught me not to improvise parking in City Heights, lest I attract a menacing glance or boisterous admonition not fit for print.

In the northern hills of San Diego lies Rancho Bernardo, a master-planned community dating back to 1962. Signs bearing aspirationally-named subdivisions like Playmor and Fairway Vistas welcome its residents with subliminal possibility. As I drove my Project-19 route through this carefully manicured community, I wondered... whose dreams had faded enough to need a humble box of groceries laid upon their doorstep?

Pacific Beach is a seaside community in San Diego known for its young residents and raucous party scene. Yet dwarfed by the lively din are the barely-detected sounds of the Greatest Generation, nonagenarians born just a few years after the 1918 Flu Pandemic

My Project-19 route was a little different this week. Instead of driving from home to home, I spent most of my effort shuttling grocery boxes through the hallways of a Hillcrest low-income high rise for seniors. As I glanced at my recipient list, I read a dozen Soviet-era names that harken back to the October Revolution.

Not a “t” failed to be crossed nor an “i” dotted in the remarkable life of my mother, Carolyn Eleanor Taffel. No doubt this reflection is replete with grammatical inefficiencies and would have been far more concise and elegant were she here to write it.

Recent political events fuel my desire to understand the cultural divide that threatens to destabilize our country indelibly. And so I turned to Charles Murray’s prophetic 2012 book, Coming Apart, which suggests that our current political climate was ignited, in significant part, by a growing cultural disconnect between the “cognitive elite” and the rest of the country.

As college early action and early decision envelopes arrive, my hardworking and earnest seniors will meet one of three fates: acceptance, deferral or the dreaded denial. I find this incredibly painful to watch because often the results do not positively correlate with their effort, nor the mythos of the “perfect candidate”.

Tomorrow, Worldwide Headquarters opens for business. The eagle has landed. . It’s even better in person. This project is the culmination of 8 months of work and a heck of a lot of materials samples. 

In just a few short days, we’ll be moving into Worldwide Headquarters. For the most part, construction will be complete. There are a few fixes and additions here and there, but nothing major. Hallelujah!