I sometimes like to believe that when the point of my pen touches a piece of paper, some kind of magic occurs in that inexplicable moment when an idea or perception comes into focus out of yearning, recollection, rage or simple curiosity.
Mother Nature is always a worthy topic for thought and writing, but human nature is what always provides surprises based upon memories, envy, sympathy, hope, love, disappointment, failure or an emotional wandering that can take us to our own pasts or to imagined places that may yet prove to be real in some physical or emotional way.
The feeling of loss that comes from the increasing number of goodbyes to those we love becomes an ever-present reality, but it also spurs us on to appreciating the present and that frail awareness that life is probably too short for us all and is more worthy of being cherished than any of us can ever realize.
All of our minds wander, especially as we glide through our later years with long roads behind us and those whom we have lost in the turmoil of lives we can never appreciate enough until the goodbyes accumulate more and more frequently.
The remedy for coping, at least for me, is to appreciate all the loving recollections of family and friends whose earthly journeys have ended, but whose lives were gifts, not only for them but also to me in my knowing and loving their presence over many years.
The best thing we can do about the wonderful friendships we have is not to take them for granted and to appreciate them as being among life’s greatest gifts, even after the goodbyes. JB
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
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