Tag: love
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Memoir: Goodbye, old friend (1982-98)

Dear Mes, I wasn’t at your side in 1998 when you crossed the “rainbow bridge” to your afterlife, which I suppose holds endless green meadows teeming with flocks of pliant sheep that you direct and protect for eternity. You had your father’s shepherd heart, and you shepherded me and my growing family through my young…
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Memoir: My father’s gift and my son’s (1971/2025)

My son and his wife don’t exchange gifts. They think that love expressed in material forms merely creates more clutter in a surfeited world. They might also tell you that the day-to-day “gifts” of mutual respect, service, and sacrifice are the only true tokens of a loving partnership. Not I. I was programmed by post-war…
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Memoir: What I Wouldn’t Do

This ambassador-neighbor would do what I would, but cannot–study my dear offspring and act compassionately for them “on the spot,” not ineffectually hearing about their trials and opportunities weeks or months later, or at all.
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Memoir: A thought experiment concerning Dad (1973-80)

How would my father be doing if he were alive and well today, if he hadn’t died at 59 of bowel cancer? I think Dad might have adapted pretty well to the current culture. Several times, I saw him accommodate powerful changes in mores that happened around him in the 1970s. A professional adaptation occurred…
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Memoir: belief-based action (1986)
Belief is a powerful thing. It brings into being all manner of people and institutions. It asserts that certain things are, even when evidence for them is inconclusive. It’s another word for “conjecture.” But what a fruitful conjecture! When theories gain a critical mass of support, empires are built, paradigms shift, and people’s lives get…
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Memoir: Before I met you (pre 2012)
Before I met you, I didn’t know a dosa from a donut or a puja from a post office. Now I enjoy, admire, and even enact your Brahmin heritage with you, a privilege I never imagined possessing. Before I met you, I had grown accustomed and comfortable in my four walls. I’d sit indoors attenuated,…