I wrote this story three years ago and, on request, republished it on Medium last week.

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Last night, my partner Rebecca turned on the big attic fan. It produced a deep humming, white noise, perfect for sleep. In the 1950s, my parents put a large fan in my bedroom before they bought the first air conditioner. It made the same sound. I still recall my father coming into the room early to turn the fan switch from high to low — a soft hum that eased us to morning.

So I woke this morning refreshed and thinking about beginnings — and A Beginning.

Beginnings

I’ve always loved beginnings.

Maybe it’s because I’m firstborn. I was there at the start of my parents’ family. I absorbed the specialness of it all. Everything was new, possible, waiting to be experienced.

Seventy-three years later, I arrive at basketball games early to watch warmups. Can I pick out the starters for the visiting teams? How do the coaches interact with their players? Does one group have more energy than the other?

An exciting part of the seven Bob Dylan concerts I’ve attended is watching the crew set up the stage after the warm-up act departs.

Every instrument is placed in a precise place. Because Dylan is famous for changing playlists, I delight in watching the same pony-tailed guy replace one piece of paper with another on whatever surface will be closest to Bob. When all seems ready, the crowd quiets. Waiting. Even the memories give me chills.

Rebecca and I attended a Marine Corps retirement ceremony two weeks ago at Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia. Rebecca’s son-in-law, Colonel Jason Schmidt, was retiring. I took this photo a minute before the ceremony commenced.

A setup crew of young soldiers had placed all 50 state flags on their bases. The tallest made sure the crescent tops were positioned correctly. One top kept sagging, and he kept tightening until it finally obeyed.

About 15 minutes before the start of the ceremony, a Marine quartet played eclectic music. Every musician acted with fidelity as if her task were the most important in the world. And the perfect beginning to Colonel Schmidt’s final salute as an active duty Marine.

I took the opening photo on the Sunday before this year’s Winneshiek County Fair. I love fair time. We live four blocks from the grounds. The streets are bursting with energy. Tattooed carnies walk by our house. Groups of teenagers stroll past in the early evening.

We are bikers, and the Decorah Trout Run Bike Trail borders the grounds. We watch the farm kids and their parents bring animals into the buildings the week before the fair.

However, I don’t visit the swine barn because what I most look forward to when seeing the fair is this:

A Beginning

As I’ve gone through life, I’ve learned that there are beginnings and then Beginnings.

I will co-teach a Lifelong Learning seminar on Death and Dying this fall. This will be my 51st year of teaching. I retired after 36 years on a college campus in 2018. But my first teaching job was with 44 sixth graders in 1972. I had extended my college deferment by one year to get a teaching certificate to avoid the Vietnam War draft. By then, the need for inductees had abated to put me out of harm’s way.

So I’ve always thought I became a teacher out of circumstance. Without a low draft number, I would have done something else. I never felt I was naturally born.

And then, last Sunday, my sister-in-law Linda showed me this photo at a family gathering.

That’s me on the left, with my little brother Peter. When Rebecca saw this photo, she said, “I’ve seen this teaching gesture by one of your hands many times.”

Here it is in a Lifelong Learning seminar I taught in the fall of 2022.

And again, one year earlier, from our apartment in Timișoara, Romania, when I was teaching an online course to Romanian students.

A New Beginning

There’s no date on that photo of Peter and me. I’m guessing 1955 when I’m six, and Peter is four. We grew up in an era when children were seen and not heard. Who knows what that gesture of mine meant? Or who it was directed at? Maybe my left thumb hurts.

But here’s the thing. I’ve always felt comfortable in front of a group of students. Something was there from the beginning. I didn’t see it.

A talent I thought I had created out of whole cloth was, instead, uncovered.

What difference does this make?

Confidence.

I was not a good student until I was 27 and in graduate school. Most of my colleague teachers were always among the best.

I felt like I didn’t quite belong for half a century.

I might have begun an alternative story if I had seen this photo 50 years ago and taken more chances throughout my career. Less tentative, more decisive.

I eventually became a confident teacher. But I felt I had to outwork everyone else. There’s nothing wrong with this.

Except it builds a habit of defensiveness.

I’m now trying to break with the help of that confident, youthful gesture.

Another Beginning.

“I wouldn’t go down these steps even when the tornado reaches Hazel’s house,” repeated Rebecca.

“Oh, come on. Besides, they were good enough for John Wayne Gacy,” continued me.

You’re sick, Paul

Seriously, this was the last time — ‘The last time ever I…’

Carly Simon?

No, it’s Roberta Flack’s The First Time. You always get that one wrong.

Oh yeah. Carly’s was You’re So Vain.

Warren Beatty, right?

She admitted it in a book. But this is about the salt, isn’t it? Finally, Paul! It’s too dangerous for someone almost 80. I’ve been telling you this for a decade.

I’ve aged out of pulling those 40-pound suckers down those stairs. What are you humming — give me a minute…Yesterday?

The Beatles or Roy Clark?

You gotta give me a hint, I’m worn out.

‘I’m not half the man I used to be.’

Very funny. I liked Roy’s better.

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Neither Rebecca nor I has slept well this week. The excitement of Santa, you think? Well, of course, that’s part of it. And, Mr. Claus, we liked the stocking caps and that you’ve joined the upcycling clothing movement. Your endorsement was the nudge needed.

But we won’t need them where we’re going. We’re migrating south to Mexico for January.

Some of our friends wonder why Mexico. Aren’t you going out on a limb? What about the cartels?

We asked ourselves the same question two years ago, before our first exposure to San Miguel. Why leave the comfort and routines of our little nest in northeast Iowa for the unknown?

This central Mexican community is now a little less mysterious, and what we’ve come to glimpse — the people, the climate, the landscape, the food, the culture, the language, even the cobblestone streets — we like.

We believe it’s a durable branch.

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Mike hosted our older men’s monthly book group. It was not his fault that the pizza was cold. It didn’t matter.

That’s retired physician David modeling how to use the torch he brought to carmelize the sugar on top of his crème brûlées. One of us dropped his ramekin. It also didn’t matter as David brought an extra.

Jim, our leader, said he’d had a request to add a 12th member, someone who’d just retired and was moving to be close to their daughter and grandchildren. “Twelve’s a good number,” offered John.

The book was Dennis Lehane’s Small Mercies, a terrific novel set in mid-1970s Boston that included murder, crime, power, racism, and the unforgettable Mary Pat, who, according to another character, was someone “who is irretrievably broken and wholly unbreakable.”

“That’s my favorite line in the book,” said Bob, “And I can’t quit thinking about it.”

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Before another Christmas departs, I wish goodness to carapace your life.

Perhaps you don’t celebrate Christ’s birth. Me neither. But I do admire his life and teachings, especially to love your neighbor as yourself.

Rick, a friend who is a practicing Buddhist and Catholic, waits until this day to raise the tree and to begin contemplating the meaning of this sacred moment, apart from the material trappings.

You know, it’s not easy to love yourself. That’s because, as one ages, it becomes harder to lie to oneself. Besides, Santa sees all, doesn’t he?

I think people who don’t love their neighbor don’t love themselves. So that’s where the work needs to be done, loving yourself.

And not your false self, the perfect one — that’s gotten me into trouble.

No, that schmuck in the mirror, the one with the misshapen nose, he’s precious.

And so are each of them, our neighbors!

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It’s a frigid Sunday morning in the middle of the USA. Later today, Rebecca and I will host Mike and Maggie, two close friends, around this dining room table.

When they come through the back door at the scheduled time, 5 pm, I’ll say, ‘What took you so long?’

One of them will offer a bottle of wine in an elegant, but slightly worn, gift bag that we will reuse when we return the favor in about a month.

Last month, Maggie prepared beef stroganoff, with a mushroom-free serving for me. Mike offered precisely measured Old Fashioneds with square, cubed ice.

Today, Rebecca has planned salmon, Brussels sprouts, squash, and rice. My task is to remember to take the ham bone out of the freezer for their dog, Shadow.

Their friendship and company, like the wine and reusable tote, are gifts made more precious by this Holiday season.

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Language matters and reveals character. If I were to refer to a MAGA supporter as dumb white trash, that would say something meaningful about my temperament. Even if you secretly agreed, you would question my judgment. Many rational people would find me unacceptable as a leader.

In 2015, Donald Trump introduced his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States with the words Mexico sends ‘rapists’ to the USA.

One year later, Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave an interview in which she said, “He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego,” thus making him a bad choice to lead a country of 330 million.

Many agreed. Mr. Trump, over the next decade, continued to offer daily examples of language most, including some supporters, consider unacceptable.

Now, here we are, with Trump’s despicable references to a man and a woman murdered by their son. This is not a different Trump. This is only the most recent version. Tomorrow, it will be, hard as this might be to believe, worse.

Am I, in this prediction, suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Justice Ginsburg was vilified for daring to focus on the close connection between what one says and who one is.

I’ll bet you did the same when little Tommy was 4, 8, and especially 16. That’s not derangement. It’s called decency. Something we want in our kids. And used to expect in our Presidents.

When someone is perpetually indecent, responding is a full-time job. Not to counter, not to be “deranged” would be crazy.

In 2025, if you don’t have Trump Derangement Syndrome, you’re not paying attention.

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Thank goodness for the red light, the Don’t Walk signal, and my stretch pants that made it easy to retrieve my phone from my left front pants pocket. And for my friend Steve, who last year introduced me to the Ventures’ Christmas Album.

That was playing on my car stereo system via Spotify on the corner of State and Water, two blocks from our house. To believe my story, you need to understand my windows were up

I will also admit to you that I know the lady poised on the pedestrian crosswalk. She’s the unknowing star of this story. But I hadn’t talked with her since last summer, when she told Rebecca and me in the grocery store that a dog had bitten her outside Ace Hardware, across the street.

I do indeed know her husband, although, at the moment, I can’t remember his name. It’ll come to me by the end of the day. He retired from teaching high school about twenty years ago—a nice guy who segued from teaching into counter work at our local public library. I’d go to him when I couldn’t get the printer to work.

You must believe me when I tell you he had nothing to do with the incident I am about to recount. Cross my heart and hope to die.

When I backed my Subaru Forester out of the garage on my way to the liquor store to pick up a bottle of our favorite gin, Plymouth, I was feeling a bit down for two reasons. Normally, I’d walk the five blocks, but not on this day because of a thin coating of ice on the sidewalks that hadn’t yet been cleared.

Plus, Plymouth puts a seal on its twist cap that, every week, reminds me of what my doctor said at my last Medicare check-up: ‘We lose 1% of our muscle strength every year after fifty.’ That’s 25% for me. It’s enough to drive me to drink.

The 1964 Beach Boys Christmas album was playing as I reversed my car onto Williams Street. Subaru makes me wait to change albums until I shift to drive. As you can tell from the album photo, the harmonious quintet and Christmas were an odd mix.

Not so with The Ventures, which I loaded once I regained control of my car’s entertainment system. By the time I got to the intersection where this story began, the twangy quartet was one minute into its first instrumental, Sleigh Ride.

As I looked to my right, the crosswalk lady was moving her wrists and knees, yes, not arms and legs, in perfect synch to the Mosrite guitar sound reverberating through my car’s interior. You can read about the Venture’s phenomenal sound here.

For a perfect instant, on a street corner in middle America, the universe aligned.

A joyful moment.

THIS STORY FOR MEDIUM WAS IN RESPONSE TO A PROMPT ABOUT HOW HAPPY, ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 10, YOU ARE.

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Four days ago, a Democrat won the mayoral race in Miami, the first time in 30 years. On Rodrigo S-C’s happiness scale of 1 to 10, that’s a 6 for this Blue party guy. The low turnout in this Red city tempered my positive feelings. Is it really a foreshadowing of doom for the Republicans and Donald Trump in 2026?

Three nights ago, the local men’s and women’s Luther College basketball teams won games, a 9 for this Luther Blue fan. The men broke a four-game losing streak, and the women beat a good team. Last week, both teams were bested by a long-time rival, which brought my mood down to a 2. Later that day, my favorite state school teams, the Iowa Hawkeye Women and Men, won their games, bumping my sports spirits up a few notches.

Last night, Rebecca gently suggested I’d been in a blue funk all day because the recent snowstorms made it impossible to take my daily 10,000-step walks. As I ruminated about my hiking path that won’t be cleared of snow and ice until next year, I bottomed out at a 3.

But then Rebecca fixed gin and tonics, and we went into the living room and listened to mellow Holiday music.

Soon, very soon, my happiness numbers crept upward until I checked my phone and read a text from my son, Ben. Bob Dylan will be performing a concert nearby on March 24, and am I interested?

Of course I am. This would be Bob — concert # 7 for Ben and me. Then I checked my calendar and saw that Rebecca and I are babysitting in St. Louis, March 15–26. Oh no!

Rebecca’s son, Jonathon, and family live in St. Louis, and they had asked us weeks ago whether we were free on those dates. We love visiting them and enjoy helping with two-year-old Alice and eight-year-old Irene.

And Ben will also be going to the concert with a friend, so he doesn’t really need me for company. But Bob is 82; even he can’t tour forever.

Well, Rebecca and I can take two cars so that I can come back early. However, it’s a six-hour drive, and so much easier and safer when we trade off at the wheel. And in mid-March, it will be warmer in St. Louis.

Oh, those Rodrigo numbers, up and down, like my blood pressure.

Early this morning, I awoke from a dream. I had died and gone to heaven. Oh oh, I thought. The nuns and priests were wrong. That’s Buddha up ahead.

Bummer.

But then I remembered what he said: Everything changes.

And smiled, topping out at a 10.

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Thanks to 

Rodrigo S-C. for this prompt on happiness. I feel so much better now than when I began this story.

Geese fly south when the weather turns cold. To guide them, they focus on physical landmarks, such as rivers. Apparently, their bodies are sensitive to the earth’s magnetic pull.

As far as we know, the ‘we’ being humans, like every other species except us, the goose does not understand why she does what she does or how she does it.

She lacks consciousness or awareness of her existence. Instead, it’s pure, simple, and sinless.

Can she love? Can she hate? Can she change?

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What a marvelous thing, awareness. It’s worth the pain of knowing that someday this I, this Me, won’t be.

Yesterday, I learned the son of a friend had turned his life around, 180 degrees.

North instead of south.

That’s not possible without knowing what went wrong—and thinking about how to make it right.

Right and wrong. It makes life so complicated.

And beautiful.

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