Waiting patiently for my 80th birthday to pounce upon me in a little more than a year, I still miss my parents and siblings (David and Connie). I think of them daily through reminders in almost every room of my house.
In the sunroom I see the China cabinet that holds a complete set of Mom’s dishes and, across the room, Dad’s mahogany clock that chimes four times an hour on top of a bookcase beside which is an oval-back French chair that was Mom’s favorite because of the blue flowers on the silk upholstery.
Upon a desk in the living room are two photos of my parents at age twenty before they were married. Such things are triggers of recollection that remain parts of my life, like lifelines of comfortable connection.
The hardest part of aging for me is that feeling of nostalgia for all those whom I have loved who are no longer with us, except in old photos and warm memories of happy times we’ve shared. It’s not that my life isn’t about other people and things that are still here. It’s about emotional and spiritual connections that remain through love that can’t be put in a drawer and easily forgotten.
Love isn’t something that can be closed like a wonderful old book and put on a shelf to be forgotten. It’s something that becomes part of us, even after the physical remnants are long gone but stay in an emotional way to remind us that it was real as a kind of optimistic view that we will meet again someday. 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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I remember Connie fondly each time I hear Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 2. Happy times!