ONCE UPON A LIFE

Did you ever think you were special, that your life was unusually different from most people? I believe things happen to people for a reason. I don’t know why I was chosen to share my life and family with you, but I was. It’s impossible for other people to understand what you’re thinking, why you feel one way or another about something important or not important. Well, I’ve always felt like that. I seemed to have a sense of what people are thinking, a respect for older people, and a love for the young. People never stop to listen to someone else’s opinion or an interesting story. A story is either true or fictional; it means that this event actually happened or someone imagined it happened and is able to tell it like it was fact. When you think about it, does it really matter if it really happened? After the event took place, it’s over, and the way you tell the story is what lives forever. Did you know I’ve learned more about life from my parents and grandparents than any book or documentary could have ever? I am going to attempt to tell my stories of events that have either happened to me personally, to a family member, or a friend. All of these stories are based on true events. I cannot confirm how many of them have been exaggerated over the years, but it wouldn’t be a story if there wasn’t some sort of exaggeration. The thing about most of these stories is that while I was hearing them firsthand, I can actually say I felt like I was right smack in the middle of it. It could be because I have traveled back in time on many occasions, sometimes not at the most convenient of times. To date, I have lived a remarkable life. I have traveled around the world in present and past times, I have met the most amazing people, and have witnessed memorable and not-so-memorable events. I have always had closeness to my family, especially my grandfather. I could feel the cold air of a 1922 winter, riding a milk truck over the Brooklyn Bridge, running through a forest barefoot to get a doctor for an ailing father, working deep in the coal mines in Scranton, Pennsylvania, watching baseball under the lights in a Negro League baseball exhibition game, seeing my parents meet for the first time in upstate New York, Catskill in 1950, or actually reliving a memorable event in my own life, the first time I hit a baseball. Baseball is a way of life; it’s amazing how a person who died twenty years before I was born has such a connection with me. I could swear I saw Babe Ruth in person. There are many moments in my life where I cannot account for lost time and past events; whether or not I actually went back in time, or I have such a strong connection to my family past and extraordinary events that it all blends into one life. There have been minutes of my present life where I have traveled to another point in time. Most of it is around the history of my family, but other events are unexplained. Growing up in Brooklyn has taught me so much about life’s expectations, joy, disappointment, people, and fear. I will attempt to explain them to you with the best of my recollection.

I am an ordinary person, who has experienced life from many perspectives. I have always been a lucky person, and many good things have happened to me. I have been very successful in business; my education is limited, and I have depended on hard work, good ethics, and always being extremely professional. I also learned in the business world that talking less is always better; let your client or competition do all the talking, while you take it all in. I’ve been blessed with a child, a daughter who has brought me so many memories, that it is impossible to think I can write them all down in a book. I have found love at the age of forty-five years, and I understand now what it is like to be in a relationship. There is a certain give and take that you need to work on, and the reason you work on it is because you want it to work, that you’re in love and life is better with that person. I’ve learned that you don’t need to please everybody, all the time; that sometimes, no matter how unpopular your choices are, you need to think of yourself. You need to have hope in your life, no matter how bleak the current situation is, you should always have hope. God should be in your life every day, because you need to be humbled and it’s good to believe there is a superior being that can guide you through difficult times. How else can you deal with the passing of your father, to get the strength to hold him while he takes his last breath?

My life has been all of this and more.