In Plain Engel-ish

Sleep has been confusing to me since I was a kid. I remember the pleasure I derived from learning how to wink, which gave me the superpower of sending a silent visual code to someone when we had a joke or secret that we shared. But shortly after that, my dad announced (after a big Sunday lunch) that he was going to “take forty winks” and headed for the bedroom. Did he have forty friends there, eager to share jokes?  Even all these years later, now that I understand that the expression almost exclusively refers to naps, I remain confused...

I miss Joe, the yard man who came once a week to do our lawn work when I was growing up. He was not all that reliable, nor did he much like interacting with our famiy, so it was not a smiling face that I missed. It was his whistling. I had been enamored by whistling ever since my ninth birthday party, when we all went to see the Walt Disney cartoon classic Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. Yes, I loved the dwarfs singing “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go!” as they marched to their...

I was ten when I experienced the childhood trauma of losing my oldest friend. Oh, I never lost my Best Pal, Harvey. We were buddies within weeks of meeting in Mrs. Spenser’s first grade class at Delaware Trails Elementary (the builders found a Delaware Indian arrowhead when they were excavating to build our school). In fact, Harvey and I are still so close these seventy years later that I know he is reading this essay — aren’t you, Pal? But even though we met when I was only seven, Harvey is my second oldest friend. My oldest friend met me...

I appreciate that so many of you have written to say that you especially enjoy those essays where I delve into my childhood and the nostalgia it evokes for your own early years.  I firmly believe that our pasts beat within us like a second heart.  But I am hesitant to write about one particular childhood memory because it is so common to all of us that it seems more of a cliche than a vivid reminiscence. But why not, since who of us does not enjoy that shared memory of the ultimate childhood comfort lunch: tomato soup and a...

Humankind has been celebrating New Year’s Day for at least 4,000 years, the first one being recorded in today’s Iraq. As you’d expect, most ancient civilizations connected it to the first day of spring. It was the perfect symbol of a fresh beginning. The ancient Romans originally followed this plan and even had recognition of wintertime banished, assigning it to a period outside their calendar. But when later Romans decided to add that nearly three-month period of winter back into the calendar year, that made the year eleven weeks longer. New Year’s Day had to be pushed back those eleven...