The road is clear and, pushing pedal toward the floor, I pull onto the winding road. As I accelerate into the turn, a hawk merges with me, flying a few yards both above and ahead of my vehicle.

For half a mile we keep pace with one another, flying along at a 35 mph clip. I shadow him, winding left and right as the road dictates. For a moment I am not driving, but rather flying.

The light ahead pulls my attention away from the beautiful bird. The light signals red, and my foot presses on the brake. The vehicle slows. The hawk does not.

As I come to a halt at the traffic light, the hawk suddenly changes course. It angles its outstretched body a few hours counterclockwise, deserting the road in favor of fields and forest.

Imprisoned in my vehicle, awaiting the go of green, I watch in envy as the hawk fades into the heavens.

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“Learning to live in a graveyard” in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

I grew up in a cemetery.

Apart from the house I grew up in, the cemetery just four doors down from that house is home to the fondest memories of my childhood, my adolescence, and the pseudo angst-ridden years of early adulthood. In an odd way, it was a second home.

Known to my friends and me simply as “the Cem,” Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill played the part of both neighborhood park and teenage hideout.

As a young boy, the cemetery was a place to explore life and what lay beyond it. Peering through the stained glass windows of huge stone mausoleums, straining to read the names and dates of the folks therein, I remember wondering if I would want to be put in a mausoleum when I died. The thought frightened and yet intrigued me, and the existence of ghosts suddenly seemed quite feasible.

But the cemetery wasn’t all headstones and haunting. Its deserted and hilly roads made it the perfect course for high speed bike rides and testing out newly constructed go-carts. Years later, and for the very same reasons, it was the perfect spot to learn how to drive. On summer nights, it was the ideal shortcut to Dairy Queen for a grape Mister Misty Float. And its stone wall offered the perfect spot to watch the passing fire engines and tanks during the Memorial Day parade.

Just beyond that stone wall, and directly down the street from my house, lay the cemetery’s most prized piece of land. The grassy field, bordered on one side by a line of spruce trees, had remained untouched by the dead, making it the ideal football field. The line of trees marked one sideline, a cedar tree marked the other, and giant yews and arborvitaes provided a natural backdrop to both end-zones. For years that field was our home. Just about every afternoon, we battled it out on the cemetery gridiron: teams divvied up, plays designed on a palm, and a Wilson Duke football in tow. There was beauty in the simplicity of the ritual. Amid tackles, touchdowns and the occasional torn shirt, friendships were formed.

Throughout those years, young boys became lifelong friends. Casually tossing a football back and forth or simply sitting on the curb with a Big Gulp, talk ensued. It was the sort of talk that is universal to the young American male. Simply stated, it was minimal. In the silence, though, and in the profanity-laden barbs, truth dwelled ever so quietly. Truth that spoke of growing up, of trying to fit in, of figuring out how to deal with the opposite sex. It was the quiet of boys struggling for truth – boys struggling together. In any man’s life, it is the friends who struggled alongside you in adolescence that become lifelong friends. Perhaps you drift apart. For the fortunate few, perhaps you never do. In either case, the friendship is eternal, and no amount of time or distance can break that bond.

Unknown to us at the time, we dealt with adolescence in the only way we knew how: we drank. This too the cemetery witnessed. The line of trees bordering the football field provided a perfect bunker wherein we could spot any patrolling police car long before they saw us. When the headlights or spotlights came our way, we simply ducked behind the nearest tombstone, bush, or tree. The cops didn’t have a chance. There we stood, friends and shadows, conversing by the moonlit night.

When we all became of bar age, I fought to hang onto the cemetery as our watering hole of choice, but without much luck. There was a life to be lived outside the cemetery walls, and we couldn’t hide behind the line of trees forever.

Today, however, I realize just how necessary it is to revisit the cemetery. With lives that are ever connected to the busyness of life, we never take time to reflect and dwell upon the business of life – that is, to just simply “be.” As ironic as it may seem, the cemetery allows us one of the few places where we can actually live in the moment. Too sacred a space from which to check-in on Facebook or send that next meeting request, it puts life (and our phones) in proper perspective.

With two of those childhood friends having passed on to another cemetery, and my own father resting in the ground a few feet from that football field, today I long for “the Cem.”

October’s spirits fill the air, calling us to revisit the cemeteries of our lives, so that we may remember what it is like to live.

Yeah, I grew up in a cemetery. I suppose I still am.

Click here to read an expanded, earlier version of this essay.

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A new collection of stort stories, Chester County Fiction, includes my short story “The River Runs Red.” Chester County Fiction, the brainchild of writer Jim Breslin, is a collection of short stories by – you guessed it – Chester County writers. You can get it on Amazon here. If you prefer to visit an actual bookstore, beginning next week you can pick up a copy at the Chester County Book & Music Company in West Chester.

For details about the official book launch, which takes place October 2 at Baldwin’s Book Barn, click here.

Thanks!

Peace,

Mike

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When the mood strikes and both the calendar and skies are clear, my children and I venture to the nearby Brandywine Valley Airport to catch a glimpse of the airplanes and helicopters in flight.

Watching these planes, my mind travels back to my own childhood, a time when a little boy could explore a major airport’s terminal and, with nose to window, gaze in wonder as the giant beasts ascended and descended more gracefully than seemed plausible. One moment it was here, a muffled roar later and it was gone, only to touch down in some far off place on the map taped to a child’s bedroom wall.

Peering through those glass walls overlooking the tarmac filled a child with awe. There, gazing eyes were close enough to read the plane’s numbers and admire each airline’s distinct detailing. Beautiful, slick beasts crawled along the tarmac, marionettes held captive by the air traffic controller above. “Which one was next?” the boy would wonder. Then, seemingly without warning, the tower gave word, setting a beast free. With engines blazing, it set off skyward.

Tarmac-gazing has long since disappeared, and along with it the spellbound eyes of countless young children longing for inspiration and adventure. Today, only those going off on the adventure itself get a glimpse of the tarmac’s beauty. Without a ticket, a child bids a relative farewell without ever seeing their plane lift off.

I imagine the ghosts of Wilbur and Orville Wright, having floated through security, standing in the terminal and peering out at the planes. Wonder must fill their hearts. Then, noticing no one else is doing the same, that wonder must turn to sadness. They look around, only to find themselves surrounded by hurried and harried white rabbits with eyes fixed on books, phones, and inventions beyond their comprehension.

All of which makes the quaint and quiet airport down the road all the more special. Here, a child can peer through and, yes, even sit atop the five-foot gate separating pilot from pupil. Sept. 11 hasn’t reached here yet, as this airport is more a playground for the weekend pilot (who once upon a time was a tarmac-gazer, I am sure) and a taxi depot for the anonymous wealthy and their equally anonymous chartered flights.

The scene goes like this: A car pulls into the quiet parking lot and, after exiting the vehicle, the driver proceeds to walk into the lonely airplane hangar. Within minutes an engine revs to life, controls and settings are checked, and the single-engine prop plane begins to meander out to the tarmac. I suppose there’s a quick radio conversation between the driver-turned-pilot and the controller inside. Something along the lines of:

“Hey, Charlie.”

“Morning, Johnny.”

“Good day for flying, eh?”

“Sure is. Anytime you’re ready, John.”

And with that the prop plane taxis down the tarmac, rounds the bend to the runway, and takes off.

Though not this morning. My 2-year-old boy and I wait patiently for any sign of life from the hangars, but hear none. The morning is deathly quiet, and perhaps the weekend pilots have taken the day off. After 30 minutes of inactivity, we return to the car.

It is then, having left the airport and waiting to turn out of the parking lot, that a single-engine plane soars into the air toward our right. We had missed the takeoff by seconds, and like that the plane was gone. Returning my gaze through the windshield, I find myself in wonder and awe at the sight before my eyes.

A bald eagle is perched atop the telephone pole across the road, looking larger than life in this suburban setting. Perhaps the beautiful beast was tarmac-gazing too.

I quickly pulled to the side of the road, parked, and together we crossed the street for a better look.

The scene brought me back to that September morning 10 years passed, when airports – and America – changed forever. I mourn the innocent lives lost that day, and the innocence our country lost in the process. The security theater of today’s airport, however necessary, has hijacked the awe and inspiration of humankind taking to the skies.

With my son in my arms, I gazed at our nation’s symbol and found myself grateful for its presence – and for this tiny airport not yet touched by 9/11.

It was at that moment three crows descended upon the eagle, cawing in unison and driving it from its roost. On silent wings, the eagle took flight and soared into battle.

I held my son closer. Once lost, innocence can never be reclaimed.

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How was your day?

GIRL

Good.

MAN

Now was it a good day or a great day?

GIRL

Great.

MAN

                    (MAN scoops GIRL up and holds her in his arms.)

When someone asks you how your day was – and it was a great day – tell them that. Okay?

GIRL

Okay.

MAN

All right, then. Let’s try it again. . .

So how was your day?

GIRL

AWESOME!

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“Identity Crisis” in Main Line Today (July, 2011)

I tried to tackle my to-do list today, but things haven’t worked out as planned.

1. Pay mortgage.

I went to pay my mortgage but couldn’t remember my password. After asking for help, I was told I first needed to answer the following:

“What is your favorite food?”

My first thought was pizza. Then again, I really like tacos. I took a guess:

“Cheeseburger, medium-well.”

Apparently not. Seems the computer knows my taste buds better than I do, and I’ll probably end up in foreclosure.

2. Buy a gift for Aunt Foo-Foo’s 90th birthday.

I searched high and low, hour after hour, looking for the perfect gift for my aunt. When I finally found it—a water-balloon slingshot—I passed along my credit card number and my address.

Seems that wasn’t good enough, though. I was told I must first establish an account. In order to do that, I had to disclose the color of my best friend’s sister’s eyes. Failure to do so, I was warned, would prevent me from easily purchasing water-balloon slingshots in the future.

I grappled over which best friend they were referring to, as there were several over the years. Finally, I had a hunch they were referring to Chris. He had five sisters, though, so I couldn’t be sure whose eye color they wanted. Too stressed to continue, I gave up. So much for water games at the nursing home.

3. Renew library books.

I wasn’t quite finished reading my loaned copy of Pride and Prejudice, so I went to renew it. They needed my library card number, which seemed reasonable enough. Then I needed to create a password that adhered to the following guidelines: 43 characters, including two numbers, one capital letter, an ampersand and an obscenity.

I spent an hour thinking up something I could remember. I was told to enter it again, at which point I forgot my password. Pride and Prejudice wasn’t all that interesting anyway, so I gave up on renewing it.

4. Order photos.

After spending a few hours whittling 537 photos down to 24, then removing the red-eye from each, I was ready to order some 4-by-6 prints for the first time in five years.

Before I could continue, I needed a user name. I tried the usual variations, but they were all taken.

I spent a good hour in deep reflection, trying to come up with something that captured my inner nature, my passions, my purpose in life.

Alas, it was already taken. I began to question who I really was.

5. Make an eye doctor appointment.

I was in dire need of new glasses. On a giant computer screen across the examining room was one of those reCAPTCHA windows you’re often confronted with when entering a password. Apparently, my doctor wanted to make sure I was still human.

“Read the first line,” he directed.

I fumbled to decipher the jumbled, wavy, crooked text, failing miserably. I explained that I was being held hostage by technology, all to protect whatever identity I had left.

“My life is password protected,” I pleaded.

He would hear none of it.

“No,” he replied. “You’re going blind.”

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Under cover of darkness, with the shades drawn and the neighborhood fast asleep – save for a red fox making its rounds in search of prey – I went in search of myself.

The Google home page stood starkly before me and, like an addict unable to resist the urge, I Googled myself. I was afraid of what I might find. But I was even more afraid of finding nothing. After all, my life was at stake. If Google couldn’t find me, then my soul, my memories – even my very existence – were in doubt.

Googlo ergo sum? I was about to find out. My right pinkie hit “Enter.”

And there it was: my curriculum vitae spelled out before me in a list of some seven million blue links. Move over, Ralph Edwards. We’ve swapped the sentimentality of This Is Your Life for the narcissism of the Web. This is the 21st century, after all, and our egos have advanced greatly in the last 50 years. So, too, has the platform for sustaining that insecure little beast inside us. Today, the Internet and reality television alike proclaim, “This is my life!”

According to Google, then, here was mine:

I sell high-end homes in beautiful Big Bear Lake, in Southern California, and apparently I know what it takes to sell in any market.

When I’m not selling homes, Google says, I’m busy auditioning for movies in Hollywood. I even had a part in Biloxi Blues alongside Matthew Broderick. Now here was some digital validation: Since Broderick had a cameo in She’s Having a Baby, starring Kevin Bacon, that puts me just two degrees away from Kevin Bacon (according to the well-known rules of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”). Being so closely connected to the Footloose star is enough to make anyone feel better about his existence, but I continued the search.

It seems I also make custom guitars in Sonoma, Calif. That sounds like a pretty hip gig, which probably explains the cool mustache Google shows me sporting while showing off a sweet-looking electric bass.

Perhaps most intriguing of all, I’m a University of Massachusetts research professor who specializes in the taxonomy of the hindguts of wood-feeding termites and cockroaches. Kevin Bacon may be able to dance, but can he dissect hindguts?

The list of my accomplishments, careers, hobbies, and interests went on and on. I’m an insurance agent, an optometrist, a surgeon, an illustrator, the director of the Ohio Lottery Commission, and a politician to boot! I’m a modern-day Renaissance man.

But Google searches return the bad with the good. Evidently, I’m also a sex offender, an identity thief, and a personal-injury lawyer.

I suppose there’s no such thing as a skeleton in one’s closet anymore. The Internet sure took care of that, and any dirty laundry is hanging out there for the world to see, too. But at least it’s proof of my existence.

Except that none of the above really described me. Rather, these were the lives and adventures of many other Michael Dolans throughout the world. Without my own digital presence, I was forced to play Walter Mitty, imagining lives spent walking in my namesakes’ shoes.

Google had failed me. Or perhaps I had failed Google. Either way, eGo (the act of googling oneself) had dealt a permanent blow to my ego, and my entire existence was in question. Perhaps I was in need of a search-engine optimizer to assuage my digital anonymity.

Then I heard a harrowing screech outside the window, pulling my attention away from the screen. It seemed the fox had found its sustenance for the night.

I was still searching for mine.

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As a young boy, I never could quite understand how my father could spend hours each evening in that room.

The routine went like this: After arriving home shortly before 6 p.m., our dad would join his seven sons – and our poor mother – at the dinner table. Prayers were said, stories exchanged, brothers heckled, rolls thrown (with seven of us, any excuse to have a catch was acted upon), and food shared.

As dinner wound down, we all went our separate ways. Some to do the dishes, others to watch TV or perhaps shoot hoops before dusk turned to dark. Our father? He ventured upstairs to the bathroom. It would be the last any of us would see of him for quite some time.

The evening news would come and go. Wheel of Fortune would follow, with still no sign of life from the bathroom. Jeopardy! came next, and it was a rare sight indeed if Dad ventured out before Final Jeopardy.

What could compel a man to sit hunched over on an ill-suited seat for hours at a time? Perhaps it was the fact that the radiator adjacent to the toilet rivaled the local library in its offering of reading materials. The periodical section included rumpled issues of Readers Digest and Time, along with that day’s edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Perhaps it was the news, or more often how it was covered, that prolonged the after-dinner indigestion and the duration of his stay.

Then again, the non-fiction section of the radiator library had any number of books: biographies of the Founding Fathers, motivational books (long before they came into vogue), and an entire section of Irish history.

Each book had its own bookmark peaking out at various stages. For our dad, reading was like playing a game of Parcheesi. You move all your pieces slowly toward the finish line at the same time, while occasionally getting sent back to the beginning in order to remember what the prior pages had to say.

Meanwhile, outside the bathroom walls, my brothers and I did what came naturally to a household of seven boys. The staircase became a bumpy ramp as we slid downstairs with pillows clutched to our backsides. Thumping against the house just outside the bathroom window signaled a game of wall ball was underway, leaving the house peppered with imprints from a dirty tennis ball. Water balloons dropped from third floor windows on unsuspecting victims below. The basement turned into the world’s noisiest skating rink as old metal roller skates clanked along the cement floor. The activities may have varied, but the end result was always the same: chaos.

Perhaps the chaos outside the bathroom is what kept our father inside. Long gone were the fairy tale ‘50s (if ever they existed as such) when a man could come home to a quiet dinner table and spend the rest of the evening with a newspaper and a glass of fine whiskey at his side. Instead, our father traded Ward Cleaver’s comfy living room couch for a less than cozy toilet seat. I can’t say I blame him.

In hindsight, that bathroom afforded our dad the only retreat he ever allowed himself. He spent his days at the office, and his time at home was anything but his own. Whether it was running to Little League games or the hardware store, volunteering at our church or making sure we got there, his life was spent in service to his family, his community, and his church. Given that, I suppose he could afford himself a little extra time on the pot.

As a father of three young children, I find myself appreciating even more the sacrifices our father and mother both made for us boys. Likewise, I now fully appreciate and understand our father’s daily retreats to the head.

For I find myself doing the very same thing.

Gotta go.

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Get the WALDEN eBook.

WALDEN is now available as a Google eBook!

Google eBooks are compatible with most digital devices, including the Nook, Sony Reader, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and web browsers.

Kindle version still to come…

Click here to get the eBook.

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I love practical jokes. Even before I could tie my shoes, I was tying unsuspecting family members’ laces together.

So began my career as a prankster – a profession that can sometimes prove hazardous to one’s health and one’s relationships, depending on the extent of the prank and the recipient’s supply of goodwill at the time of its execution.

Take, for example, the case of the kitchen-sink spray hose. Wrapping a rubber band tightly around its trigger causes water to shoot directly at any unsuspecting target who turns on the faucet.

When the target is your mother, who is fighting a migraine while preparing dinner for seven sons who just tramped mud through the house, said prank is not such a good idea. On the other hand, if the rigged spray hose happens to soak a sibling or a friend at a party, it can prove highly entertaining.

Pranksterism is all about timing, which is why it’s advisable to keep a handful of rubber bands in your pocket at all times. One never knows when the opportunity to rig a kitchen-sink hose will arise. Having a rubber band at the ready ensures that you never have to leave someone’s home without leaving a surprise soaking waiting for him.

Even more important than timing is knowing where to draw the line – or, better yet, where other people draw the line. I do my best to come as close to the line as possible without crossing it, but I must admit that I haven’t always succeeded. Sometimes I’ve even long-jumped over it, causing my conscience to play Monday-morning quarterback.

Whether or not I cross the line, I tend to get the same questions: Why do you do this? Where do you find the time? And: I’ll get you back!

Asking the first question is like asking a mountain climber why he risks his life on the rocky face of El Capitan. Why sneak away with a guest’s keys and move his car halfway down the street, changing all the radio presets while doing so? Because it’s there.

Like other vocations, pranksterism is part of one’s makeup. The prankster sees the fun in life and considers it his calling to remind others to do the same. When people take life or themselves too seriously, the prankster is there to put things in perspective.

Too often, we go through this world worrying about matters that are of little importance in the grand scheme of things. The prankster says: “If it won’t matter when you’re dead and gone, it shouldn’t matter to you now. Here’s a water balloon to lighten the mood!”

Where do we find the time? We make the time – and that’s the difference between those who suffer practical jokes and those who execute them. The former always threaten to retaliate after you set their alarm clock for the middle of the night, but they never do. Though they may have every intention of returning the disfavor, they just won’t make the time for it.

And even if they do prank the pranksters, we tend to appreciate the effort, because it means they’re playing our game now.

It’s April Fools’ Day, by the way. Why not join in?

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