My Failed Sabbatical

 Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. -- Albert Einstein

My favorite sculpture in the world is the one pictured above. It is Albert Einstein at his most accessible. Situated in an elm and holly grove on the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., it is a warm, inviting portrait of a complex man in a simple pose. Einstein is wearing sandals and seated casually, his arm resting on the steps, a paper with mathematical equations resting on his knee as he ponders great thoughts or, perhaps, merely glances at a child who has caught his whimsical eye. It is Einstein as I imagine him later in life, wrinkled, disheveled, kind and contemplative. The artwork invites interaction; children feel compelled to climb onto Einstein’s lap as family photographs are taken. The statue seems to express Einstein’s notion, voiced in his later years, that “the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”

I could have used Einstein’s wisdom this past year, when I was in need of inspiration. A year ago, as 2012 came to a close, I announced that I was taking a sabbatical from Ehlers on Everything. A year of contemplation, I hoped, would provide welcome relief from the demands of self-imposed deadlines, which had become more difficult to satisfy with the increasing demands of work and life.  Freed from the constraints of non-fiction, I anticipated an opportunity to write more creatively; a short story a month seemed like a reasonable and achievable goal. Writing fiction would free my imagination to expand into areas of untouched artistry, to explore the human experience on a deeper, more fundamental and psychological level. By year’s end, I would be refreshed, my writing renewed and energized. It was not to be.

I have plenty of excuses for having failed to write productively this past year. Andrea and I were married in October, followed by eight wonderful days in Italy. We attended a wedding in California in September; the Cardinals had an eventful year, reaching the World Series for the second time in three years. Work has kept me quite busy, and during the summer I published in book form my essays from the previous two years in Life Goes On: More Essays on Life, Baseball, and Things that Matter (Bookstand Publishing, 2013). I could invent other reasons and excuses for not authoring a single short story in 2013. But what I have concluded is that I am simply more comfortable writing essays of a personal, political, or religious nature. It is perhaps why I have yet to pen the great American novel.

Einstein said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” In this one small manner I am like Einstein (now that’s not something you can say every day). I, too, am passionately curious. About humankind’s quest for understanding; about people who have exemplified a life of courage and principle in the pursuit of justice and a better world; about life in its infinite variety and beauty, suffering and loss, striving and hope.

When I started this blog in the summer of 2009, self-imposed deadlines forced me to put my thoughts on paper and to stay engaged with the world of ideas, to search for answers to difficult questions, and to stay in the arena. To write about issues of political and social import, my love of baseball, reflective pieces on my life and children, questions about faith and our everlasting quest for understanding and meaning. It is the sort of writing I most like to do and the genre with which I am most at home. “Life is like riding a bicycle,” Einstein said.  “To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” So, I am returning to this small space of the universe where I can ponder, think, and write. I cannot promise an ever steady stream of brilliant essays and reflections, but I will try my best to remain relevant and fresh.

I will explore issues and ideas that move me and write about people who inspire me. I will struggle out-loud with faith and religion and continue to question my own beliefs, explore the beliefs of others, and dispute the certainty with which many believers and non-believers alike express themselves. I will write about personal and family issues and reflect on the mystery of life. I will write about baseball, about the memories and disappointments of youth and unfulfilled dreams; about my hopes and passions as a lifelong lover of the game, its sights and sounds; and about my admittedly zany and irrational loyalty to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes. -- Walt Whitman

I have come to recognize that writing, like reading, is how I pursue my continued education, my Ph.D. in life. This blog, along with my two books, Eat Bananas and Follow Your Heart and Life Goes On, is my collective dissertation, a means to learn and grow, to challenge myself and my readers, to think, question, and when needed, advocate. Einstein said, "Wisdom is not the product of schooling, but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it." Nelson Mandela, who died this past month after 95 years of a life filled with purpose and meaning, said that "education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." I may not change the world, but I will use this space to continue my education; and to think and write about things that matter with a measure of idealism and hope.

The Renaissance of the Essay

Life Goes On: More Essays on Life, 

Baseball, and Things that Matter 

by Mark J. Ehlers 

From the author of Eat Bananas and Follow Your Heart comes a new collection of personal essays on life, baseball, and things that matter. Part memoir and part reflection, Ehlers addresses life in all its dimensions; the passage of time and of unmet dreams, the conflicts of faith in a secular age, the redeeming quality of the human spirit, and a lifelong bond with baseball. It is for anyone who believes that life is too precious to cease thinking and learning, and recognizes that, in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, "There is no human being who does not carry a treasure in his soul: a moment of insight, a memory of love, a dream of excellence..." 

I believe human interaction is at its best when people are not afraid to reveal themselves, when we are open to civil discourse and healthy give-and-take on matters of substance. Besides, the weather has never been all that interesting to me.  --from Life Goes On

In Life Goes On, Ehlers breathes new life into a neglected form through masterfully crafted, universally relatable, and deeply personal essays. 

To purchase a copy of this thought-provoking, highly readable book, visit the author's website at:

www.authormarkehlers.com 

or order the book on: 

Amazon or BarnesandNoble.com. 

LISTEN TO MARK'S INTERVIEWS BY STU TAYLOR

  *   *   *   *   *

Also available:  

Eat Bananas and Follow Your Heart: Essays on Life, Politics, Baseball and Religion by Mark J. Ehlers.  

An inspirational and thought-provoking  collection of essays on life, politics, baseball, and religion. Eat Bananas and Follow Your Heart is a book for anyone who believes that life is too short to remain uninvolved, time too precious to cease learning, thinking, caring, and laughing.

It was not until I turned 50 earlier this year . . . that I sensed for the first time that certain of my dreams may forever be deferred, that time is a gift, its limits felt with the passing of each year. Though it seems as if I need constant reminding that I am no longer a young man, fresh from law school, determined to accomplish high-minded things, I remain confident and sure of myself about certain matters, full of doubts and insecurities about others. But I now recognize  and feel, gradually and incrementally, the burdens of aging . . . I know that life is not forever. Mortality awaits me and, for the first time in my life, I am truly aware of its dimensions. This is not necessarily a bad thing, for it forces one to recognize the truly important things in life -- family, relationships, closeness with God, and the true meaning of success. As Albert Huffstickler wrote, "Knowing there's only so much time, I don't rejoice less but more."

Visit the author's website at:

www.authormarkehlers.com 

or order the book on: 

Amazon or BarnesandNoble.com. 

LISTEN TO MARK'S INTERVIEWS BY STU TAYLOR

The Last Word . . . For Now

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works. – Virginia Woolf

In the spring of 1987, Faye Moscowitz, a soft-spoken instructor and author, introduced me to the personal essay in a night class on creative writing at the Edmund Burke School in Washington, D.C. Two years earlier, Moscowitz had published A Leak in the Heart: Tales from a Woman’s Life, a collection of short, autobiographical essays on growing up in a small Michigan town, in an unassimilated Orthodox Jewish family, during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Her writing is elegant and simple. In A Leak in the Heart, her words paint a picture, frozen in time, of the insular world of her youth, days of struggle and conflict, when she was torn between the comfort of tradition and the seduction of modernity. She describes feeling the blues at Christmas while in third grade, when it seemed everyone around her was celebrating the birth of Christ and she was an outsider, unable to fit in; of marrying at the age of eighteen and settling for a life of child rearing and housekeeping, because that is what was expected of young Orthodox Jewish women in those days. She writes of when, in her thirties, she developed the self-confidence to attend college while raising four children, and of how she eventually became a political activist and feminist, a writer and a teacher.

Her writing class consisted of ten students, men and women of all ages and stages in life who sought an outlet for their more creative selves. Seekers all of us, we listened to Moscowitz discuss the process of writing creatively about personal memories and experiences. She assigned us writing exercises to get us started, and each week in class we read aloud our work and offered each other constructive criticism. It was Moscowitz who taught me the most important lesson of all: simply write and the words will form. My writing was undisciplined and uneven back then, but I learned that if I did not put pen to paper, I would never write at all.

Although I would take another writing class in the summer of 2001, taught by a lawyer turned writer who encouraged me to pursue more seriously the craft of writing, these brief diversions into creativity failed to induce in me a commitment to write for pleasure, to devote the time and attention required to pursue writing even for the simple love of writing. Through the years, I contemplated often a life of writing, but did little to follow through. Without a reason to write, or a class-imposed deadline, there was always an excuse – work, parental responsibilities, and lack of time – some reason or obstacle that stood in the way.

But that finally changed in August 2009, when I began writing the collection of essays found on these pages. A small but committed readership and imaginary, self-imposed deadlines encouraged me to write with some regularity, to create what is now Ehlers on Everything. For the past three-and-a-half years I have made time to think, write, and engage with the world. Publishing the essays and stories on this site has been a labor of love and has allowed me to express my thoughts, opinions, and insights on aspects of my life and the lives of others; to explore my passions – baseball, politics, and religion; to ask questions, about life, faith, and the things that matter. It has allowed me to write about universal themes that affect everyone, but which many of us often overlook or ignore; to write about the enduring condition of the human spirit, the beauty of redemption and second chances, the power of compassion and my hopes for humankind.

Over what are now 120 essays, I have reflected on the passage of time and unmet dreams; the conflicts of faith in a secular age and the quest for eternal truth; my bond with baseball, in which I see life in all its dimensions and which allows me to recapture, in words, the essence of lost youth. I have examined issues of war and peace, law and economics, social justice and civic obligation. I have attempted to provide a perspective on the key social and political issues of our time without, I hope, being overly judgmental or disrespectful of opposing views. I have promoted civility in our political discourse. I have suggested that Americans have much for which to be proud, but that we should not be smug, for we alone do not have all the answers to the world’s problems. I have written about the people I admire and from whom I find inspiration, and about historical events for which I find parallels and guidance for confronting today’s challenges.

As another year comes to a close, as violent conflict continues to rage in Afghanistan and the Middle East, as gun violence continues to cut short the lives of our children here at home, as our politics continues to be fragmented and our nation divided, I am taking a temporary sabbatical from Ehlers on Everything. I do not intend to stop writing, only to change venue, to modify the location of my canvas. The recent tragedy in Newtown proves that, while I could continue to write about many of the same issues over again, I risk repeating myself while offering little in the way of fresh insight and perspective. Although I will happily trade my day job should The New York Times come calling, I am not a columnist that needs to submit 1,000 words of material on current events every third day. It is time to pursue more creative avenues for my writing, to explore fiction and the short story as an art form, to confront humanity in all its dimensions. A year-long foray into fiction will, I hope, allow me to further examine in-depth the themes of redemption and forgiveness, the disappointment of dreams unfulfilled, our aspirations for the human spirit, the ever present search for God in the messiness that is life on Earth, and other issues and themes more flexibly explored in the context of fiction.

“We write to taste life twice,” wrote Anais Nin, “in the moment and in retrospect.” I do not write for money or fame; if those were my goals, I have failed miserably. I love to write – not because it is easy, it is not – for it allows me to better understand the world in all its complexity. Writing forces clarity of thought and a deeper sense of self-awareness. Words matter, and a well-crafted essay or story has the power to move people, to change hearts and minds, if only for a moment. “The difference between the right word and the almost right word,” wrote Mark Twain, “is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

“If you want to be a writer,” teaches Stephen King, “you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” It is for this reason I must devote more time to reading, studying, and reflecting, to further refine my writing and develop and encourage my creative instincts; to explore in a less restrictive platform my quest for the human spirit; and to write about experiences that have influenced my outlook on life, the people that move and inspire me, and the issues that continue to confound all of us.

Thomas Mann once said, “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” That is certainly true for me. But while I must continue to write, think, and read, I must also allow myself the opportunity to fail. Only if I push myself beyond my limits; only if I demand perfection where such is impossible, can I ever seek to be a writer.

Some of the essays on these pages, including those published in Eat Bananas and Follow Your Heart (Bookstand Publishing, 2011) and others I hope to publish in an upcoming collection, have started conversations and allowed us to talk about matters of importance. The essays have on occasion allowed us to reflect on life, faith, mortality, and the human condition, to examine questions and issues often neglected and overlooked in the noise of life. Some of my writing is self-directed, for how could it otherwise be? It is what I know, and about the only thing upon which I can speak with some authority. But I never intended these essays to be self-centered; to the extent I have failed in this, I offer my sincerest regrets.

Last Spring, I attended two commencement ceremonies, Jennifer’s graduation from American University in May and Hannah’s graduation from Upper Dublin High School in June. Commencements are happy and sad affairs all at once. We are happy and proud of our children’s’ accomplishments, but sad that they are moving on to a new journey. The commencement ceremony is a stark reminder that life moves quickly and that we must savor precious moments while we can. But in our sadness we should not forget that a commencement is not the end of something, but the start of something new, for the word itself means “the beginning”. So, this is my commencement of sorts, my graduation from Ehlers on Everything, the start of a new journey in fiction and short stories, and an attempt to more deeply reflect on life and the adventures, conflicts, and passions that come with it.

Henry David Thoreau admonished, “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” I do not know if I have met Thoreau’s standards, if I have “stood up to live.” But in some small way, from the pleasure writing gives me to the soulful insights of the written word, I have come to grasp a deeper involvement with life and the world. I abhor small talk. My notion of success differs from that of mainstream culture. I take comfort in the words of author Erica Kennedy, who died this year at the youthful age of 42 and once asked what “having it all” actually means. “Does it mean having some fancy title, executive perks, making a lot of money, having your book on The New York Times’s best-seller list? Or does it mean waking up and looking forward to your day, whatever you make of it?”

In our remaining time on Earth, may we all wake up and look forward to the days and make something of them. To all of my faithful readers, and to anyone else who has ever ventured to these pages and spent even a little time here, you have my deepest thanks and gratitude. May peace come to you this New Year and may the world be filled with love and compassion for all.

Marty and Gertrude: An American Story

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. - Henry David Thoreau

Some people believe in destiny and fate, others in free will. For most of us, life is but a roll of the dice, a complex mixture of chance and circumstance that affects the course of our lives. We do not choose the country of our birth and have no say in the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not choose our ethnicity, our race, or the major events of history that coincide with our own personal histories. Some people are born rich and privileged, while others are born poor and unloved. But all of us must learn to live with the cards we are dealt and, ultimately, choose how we live.

Through my relationship with Andrea, I have been blessed these past ten years to have come to know two extraordinary human beings, Marty and Gertrude Gelman. They are Andrea’s parents, but more importantly, they are models of decency and how to live one’s life; two people who together have confronted life’s many challenges and built lives of rich fulfillment.

Born in the roaring twenties and raised in the Great Depression, survivors of the Great War, the story of Martin and Gertrude Gelman is an American story. They first met in 1938, when the photograph above was taken. I am not certain who took the picture, but at that very moment Gert Golden, a sassy 15 year-old girl from West Oak Lane, was introduced to Marty Gelman of the Logan section of Philadelphia. The young man making the introduction was Marty’s best friend, Seymour Frank. Gertrude and Seymour were dating at the time and, not surprisingly, Seymour had taken a liking to her. But this was the Great Depression, times were tough, and Seymour had landed a job for the summer as a busboy in New Jersey. As he would not have the means or a car to return to Philadelphia during the summer, he hoped Marty could keep an eye on Gert while Seymour was away.

Marty, whose back is to the camera in the above photograph, was nothing if not a young man of his word, so he was most happy to oblige. And keep an eye on her he did. By the time Seymour returned at summer’s end, Marty confessed that he and Gertrude had fallen in love. Six years later, they were married; it is a bond that has lasted sixty-eight years and counting.

When Seymour told this story a few weeks ago at Gertrude’s 90th birthday celebration, he acknowledged his disappointment at the course of events. “But,” he said, “If someone was going to steal away my girl, at least it should be my best friend.” As Seymour quipped, “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for Marty, and nothing Marty wouldn’t do for me. And we’ve spent our whole lives doing nothing for each other.” Seymour proudly noted that, seven decades later, he, Marty, and Gertrude remain the best of friends. But as for Marty, Seymour added with a twinkle, “I never did trust the son-of-a-bitch.”

* * * *

“Life is like a blanket too short,” wrote Marion Howard. “You pull it up and your toes rebel, you yank it down and shivers meander about your shoulder; but cheerful folks manage to draw their knees up and pass a very comfortable night.” The most amazing thing about Gertrude is her upbeat and positive manner. It is a cheeriness that defies logic once you know something of her young life. Born in 1922 to a tailor’s family in Philadelphia, Gertrude was five years old when her mother was hospitalized. It was a tragic story, one that Gertrude would only piece together in later years, with the benefit of time and distance; a story of conflict and disharmony. But for a young child in need of a mother’s love, it could only have been confusing and frightening.

A year later, Gertrude’s father, a lifelong smoker, developed lung cancer, became very ill and was hospitalized. Gertrude, now six and essentially parentless, was sent to live with relatives, a family of modest means with many mouths to feed. It would be only a temporary home. The last time Gertrude saw her father was towards the end of 1929, close to her seventh birthday. She remembers the year because only a few months earlier the stock market crashed, plunging the country into the Great Depression. Her father, who remained sick in bed, died not long after.

Parentless at the age of seven, Gertrude was eventually placed in foster care, cared for by the Association of Jewish Children of Philadelphia. She moved from home-to-home, five in all, some better and more caring than others. She remained a foster child until the age of 16, when she moved in with her oldest brother, Jack, and his wife, Fritzie. Although she saw her mother once at the age of 13 and sporadically thereafter, the visits were often difficult and unsatisfying. It was not a sheltered, pampered, or privileged life. Life was hard. But through it all, Gertrude never lost her sense of optimism. She has said that once, around the age of ten and feeling sorry for herself, she came to the realization that her destiny was in her hands. “And then I stopped crying and got on with my life.”

In 1940, two years after she met Marty, Gertrude graduated from Olney High School. But most girls in those days didn’t attend college, so she went to work, earning ten dollars a week at J. Schwartz & Company, a furniture store on Germantown Avenue. She and Marty would later become engaged, but when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Marty went off to war. Gertrude landed a job at the Frankford Arsenal, delivering mail and doing administrative tasks for the Small Arms Department, Mail and Records. Perhaps it was there that Gertrude developed the philosophy that has served her well all these years. “Smile at people and they will smile back.” “Laugh a lot – at how ridiculous life is. It helps you get through a lot of the hurt.” “Above all else, do no harm.”

A weaker person may have lost hope and become bitter at life’s offerings, but Gertrude never lost her positive outlook and always treated people with friendliness and kindness. Although she is not a deeply religious person, deep down, I believe, she has a faith, in God or the human spirit, which helps her get through difficult times. She could not have helped but wonder every day whether a telegram would arrive informing her that Marty had been killed in action, news that would afflict hundreds of thousands of wives and girlfriends, mothers and fathers, throughout that deadly war. But Gertrude never lost hope and, by the summer of 1944, Marty had completed his 50 missions and returned home. They were married three days later.

Over the next several years, Gertrude gave birth to three children and took care of the household while Marty worked days and attended graduate school at night. An intelligent and intellectually engaged woman, in later years Gertrude would go back to school, first at Montgomery County Community College, and later, Beaver College (now Arcadia University) in Glenside, Pennsylvania, receiving her bachelor’s degree in 1982 at the youthful age of 59. She even found time to take care of stray animals, including an injured baby squirrel that had fallen from its nest. Whenever her children complained, she would have none of it. All of them recognized, as adults, just how right she was. They knew that their mother was the foundation of her family, a rock of stability, and the strength of the Gelman clan.

[T]he powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. ~Walt Whitman, "O Me! O Life!", Leaves of Grass

I know less of Marty’s childhood years, except that they were happier and more stable, the perfect antidote to Gertrude’s young life. Marty was the son of Jacob Gelman, a printer who owned a shop on Cherry Street in Philadelphia, next door to Kelly for Brickwork, owned by the father of Grace Kelly. Gelman’s Sign and Printing was a family affair, co-founded by Jacob and his two brothers, with family members performing all of the tasks needed to run and operate the business.

Marty was a smart, street-wise kid with an intellectual bent. As an eleven year-old boy in 1932, when the Japanese invaded Manchuria, he sensed that another world war was on the horizon. His parents did not discuss current affairs, but Marty paid close attention. By the time he met Gertrude in the late 1930’s, he was very aware of world events and followed the political rise and growing power of Hitler with great trepidation. Then, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the whole world changed. Marty was 20 years old. Like many young men at the time, my uncle Ted (my Dad’s oldest brother) included, he enlisted. Life would never be the same again.

Years later, Marty would describe the heavy cloud that hovered above as he left for training camp, a burden he now recognizes as “sadness, numbness”. He worried that he would not measure up as a man and wondered how, as a Jewish kid from Philadelphia, he would be perceived and accepted by the gentiles, particularly in a war that he knew would have a profound impact on Jews. Like most of the young men he was about to meet, he was “frightened, distraught, filled with despair.” Soon he would realize that, from the vantage point of a scared soldier, religion and ethnicity and differences mattered not at all. All were Americans fighting for freedom and peace.

He was stationed in Italy and served as lead navigator in the 15th Air Force, 450th Bombardment Group, which flew B-24 Liberators. Now considered a member of the Greatest Generation, he scoffs at such a notion. “Each day I awoke with terror of not wondering if I would die, but how I would die,” he said during an interview in the fall of 2007. “Each day that passed was just a postponement of tomorrow’s execution.” He loved receiving mail but found it difficult to write home. “What was there to say when you know that tomorrow you will have to die. To this day, I don’t understand how it turned out otherwise.”

Through the grace of God and the fortunes of fate, Marty made it through the war, surviving 50 missions over enemy occupied Europe, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and countless medals and honors. His crew survived three forced landings in the mountains of Corsica, but in the end, he was the only one that made it back unscathed. His last mission, the 50th, was aborted three times before his crew was granted a three-day reprieve for some R&R in Bari, off the coast of the Adriatic Sea. But Marty was impatient and ready to go home. He could not tolerate the delay, so he volunteered for another mission, with another crew. An angel must have watched over him that day. “I caught a break,” he recalled years later. “It was a milk run. There was no flak, there were no fighters.” With 50 missions completed, he could now go home. His return was bittersweet; perhaps it was fate, or just plain dumb luck, but on the very next mission flown by Marty’s assigned crew, the plane was shot down. The crew members who survived became prisoners of war. As Gertrude later recalled, “Marty’s bewilderment at the bizarre manipulation of fate . . . left him numb.”

“The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time,” wrote Eudora Welty, “but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order ... the continuous thread of revelation.” It took fourteen long days for Marty to get back to the shores of the United States (by ship) and, as no one in his family knew precisely when he was to arrive, when Marty reached his parents’ house in Philadelphia, no one was home. He got on the phone and called Gertrude, who came over right away. His family had gone to Atlantic City for the day, but when they learned of Marty’s arrival, they rushed home. That night, Marty and Gertrude made plans to marry and, three days later, they were husband and wife. The rest is history. Three wonderful, accomplished children, four beautiful grandchildren, and a life of love and fulfillment.

While working at the family print shop, Marty attended Temple University at night and eventually earned two Ph.D.’s (Anthropology and Psychology). He began a successful clinical practice and taught for 45 years at Montgomery County Community College, where he was one of its first professors in 1964, and where he molded and impressed the minds of thousands of grateful students. Never having forgotten the unheralded protection that the Tuskegee Airmen had provided his B-24 crew during the war, and sensitive to the slights caused by discrimination and prejudice, Marty, as head of the Social Sciences Department, was instrumental in hiring the college's first African American professor. He also mentored and supported the African American Student League, for which he was given special recognition at a 2008 Martin Luther King Day celebration, the only white professor in the college’s history so recognized.

In looking back on his time at war, on the death and destruction that was a part of everyday life for young men in their late teens and early twenties, Marty has recalled that it took more than 30 years before he could resurrect the pain and heartache he experienced in combat. It is a pain that “has made it difficult for me to cry about loss or to fully face life head on.” He dismisses the notion that war makes a man out of you. “War makes a man out of no one,” he insists. “The best it does is rip away the filter of illusion and scald you with the reality of the baseness of human existence. It’s a waste. The military isn’t cruel, it just doesn’t give a damn.”

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light. – Albert Schweitzer

I have only known Martin and Gertrude Gelman for ten years or so, but my life has been greatly enriched because of it. As with my own parents, it is hard to imagine two people better suited for each other. They are generous to a fault, love their children unconditionally, and continue to look at the world and the human race with a healthy dose of humor. “We are a rotten species,” Marty often jokes. But their love of America is unrivaled and their appreciation for a good book, a good lecture, sage advice, and a young child’s smile is readily apparent. Good conversationalists, you can always anticipate a lively debate, or a story or two, when eating dinner with the Gelmans. Gertrude remains the optimistic, upbeat one; perhaps from a deep-seated recognition of the deprivations of the human spirit and weakness of human character, Marty remains the realist.

“God asks no man whether he will accept life,” wrote Henry Ward Beecher. “That is not the choice. You must take it. The only question is how.” Martin and Gertrude Gelman are the rare breed of human beings who have accepted life’s many challenges and risen above them without complaint. We choose our own destiny in life and must make the most of it. Erma Bombeck once said, “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’” Here is to Marty and Gertrude, an extraordinary couple who gave life everything they had. The world needs more people like them.

Gather Ye Rosebuds

I was a few weeks shy of my fifteenth birthday when this photograph was taken in the spring of 1974. A first baseman/pitcher for the Hightstown Rams Freshman Baseball team, I am the first person on the left, kneeling in the front row, the serious looking one with the black batting gloves and blue-and-white wristbands – pretty cool, huh? As a motley bunch of adolescent males adorned in faded and used, mismatched uniforms, we were a low budget operation from an undistinguished school district. We were not the Greatest Generation or the most talented group of ballplayers that ever existed, but we were young, full of energy, and serious about our craft. At that moment in time, we did not yet realize that our dreams were unrealistic, that our lives in baseball would essentially end a few years hence. But for a few hours every day in the spring of ‘74, we were a team.

“I see great things in baseball,” said Walt Whitman. “It's our game - the American game.” Baseball is a part of the American landscape, an essential component of our history. Whenever I fly to another city, I try for a window seat so I can look down on the vast countryside below as the plane begins its descent. It helps me appreciate the beauty and majesty that is America, the diversity of our geography and the expanse of our physical environment. But the one common denominator in every city and town I visit, the one thing that links us as a culture and a people, are the many baseball fields and ballparks that blend into the earth’s surface. Not all ball fields are equal, to be sure. A few have perfectly manicured grass fields and well-defined fences, fancy dugouts and lights; many others show signs of neglect, a blotchy mixture of dirt and brown grass and paint-chipped benches. But the dimensions remain constant, the bases ninety feet apart, the pitcher’s mound sixty feet six inches from home plate. The sights and sounds, the smell of grass and dirt and some guy named Frank smoking a cigar on the sidelines can be found at almost every park. It is a game for romantics; the dreams imagined and experienced on these fields are the same that young boys across America (and Latin America) have experienced for more than a century.

I grew up in central New Jersey, the cultural wasteland which influenced the early music of Bruce Springsteen, who grew up fifteen minutes away in Freehold. Hightstown was but an exit on the New Jersey Turnpike (Exit 8), a way station for commuters, a mere afterthought that lingered in the shadows of the great cities to our north and south. My brother Steve and I developed our fielding skills by hitting ground balls to each other, over and over again, in our backyard, a quarter-of-an-acre of converted farmland that had been turned into the housing developments you find in middle-class communities all across the United States. Every third house looks just like the other, distinguished only by the color of the shingles, a hint of brickwork, or the placement of trees and bushes in the front yard. On warm days could be heard the hum of a lawnmower or the rhythm of children riding bicycles. There was little to do in Hightstown, no art museums or great universities, no historical landmarks. It was an all-American town of pizza parlors and hoagie shops, gas stations and convenience stores.

But I never felt at a loss for something to do. My life was sports, my love was baseball. My friends and I played touch football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball all spring and summer. Unless I was sick or a severe Nor’easter was underway, not a day went by that I didn’t have a ball of some kind in my hand. Whether tossing a football at the neighborhood park, shooting hoops in my driveway (the backboard and net at regulation height above our garage), playing groundball games or sock ball with my brother, or throwing a baseball against pitch back netting in my backyard, thoughts of big league glory filled my head, the imaginary crowds erupting upon my every display of choreographed heroics.

There comes a time in life when you must outgrow childhood dreams, when your ambitions must shift to more practical, important, and socially useful endeavors. When, finally, in the words of John Thorn, “the dream of playing big-time baseball is relinquished so we can get on with grown-up things.”

Nearly four decades has passed since that freshman season, but I still remember the final game of the spring. In four trips to the plate, I had hit the ball hard every time with only one double to show for it. In my last two at bats I laced long, arcing fly balls into deep left field. Unfortunately, the leftfielder was standing somewhere in Pennsylvania (we had no fences) and he tracked both fly balls, catching each of them just after I had rounded first base and headed to second. Our coach, Charlie Pesce (standing at the far right in the back row, next to the statistician), a stern but fair man who expected much and demanded more, an authority figure I respected and admired, came up to me after that game as I stood by my locker. He was much shorter than I, but it did not detract from his authoritative air. He reached out his hand and said, “Congratulations on a good season. You have a future, son.” He could not have known how much those words meant to me at the time, or how much they would hurt a few years later when I abandoned my dream of playing professional baseball.

"Time is a very misleading thing,” said George Harrison. “We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it.” I would play only three more seasons of organized baseball, some Senior Babe Ruth League, varsity high school and American Legion ball, until I accepted, finally, that baseball was not a career option. My eyesight betrayed me and I had yet to discover contact lenses; I began to swing late on pitches and possibly lacked the mental toughness to reach a higher level. I became distracted by the noise of life, or maybe I didn’t need baseball as much as I thought I did. I have few regrets about where life has led me. But when, as I occasionally do, I wander over to a high school ballgame and take in an inning or two under the twilight sun, I cannot help but think back and relive those moments, now frozen in time, when I was a young man with a glove on my knee, legs slightly bent, shouting encouragement to the pitcher in anticipation of the next pitch and the batter's reaction. It is at those moments, even today, when I wonder if I could have done better, achieved more, and turned the hopes and dreams of that wrist-band wearing teenager into reality.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” I have tried to live my life with this in mind. But there is a part of me that never left the scrappy, bumpy, low budget ball fields of my youth. To this day, there is something soothing and certain about baseball, which is partly why I cannot escape its absorbing pull. Baseball is one of the few constants in a disorderly world. “If you get three strikes,” said Bill Veeck, “even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off.” There is a comfort to such order, to knowing that, at the end of each season, the outcome is fair, the results a close approximation of individual and team accomplishment.

I do not know where most of my freshman teammates are today. Many of them played with me at more senior levels, but the year I left for college, my family moved to New England. I don’t know how many of my teammates attended college, got married, divorced, or had families of their own. I cannot tell you today where most of them live or even how many are still alive (though sadly, Bobby Spearman, the lone African American on that team, and one of the nicest guys you would ever want to meet, died a few years ago, just past his 50th birthday). I was not friends with all of the young men in that freshman baseball picture. Hell, I didn’t even like all of them. But when I look back on this picture, I am filled with a sense of compassion and admiration for every one of them.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still a-flying:

And this same flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he's a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And while ye may, go marry:

For having lost but once your prime

You may for ever tarry.

--Robert Herrick

Interfaith Reflections: A Note to My Daughters

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit.

There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord.

There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all people.

--1 Corinthians 12:4

Dear Jennifer and Hannah,

It seems like only yesterday that you were two young girls finding your way in the world, wishing to be entertained by the theatrical escapades of Charlie Horse and Kermit the Frog (Executive Producer: Dad), while discovering the beauty, wonder, and dangers of the world around you. Through the years, I have watched you grow and develop into kind, caring, compassionate, and well-adjusted young women. While your lives remain in their early stages, your accomplishments many and futures bright, you will almost certainly confront many challenges and dilemmas along the way. I will climb mountains and jump through fire whenever you need me, though I know that time, distance and mortality may make it impossible for me to always be there for you. So, as we give thanks for another year of life’s blessings, I wanted to express my hope that, as you wade through the many obstacles and decisions of life, you seek God’s presence and take seriously your individual faith journeys.

I am a preacher’s kid, so it is no surprise that religion was a major force in my life, personally and intellectually, for as long as I can remember. I attended church and Sunday school every week, was baptized and confirmed, memorized the Christian creeds, actively participated in Lutheran youth groups, and took comfort in the expressions of love and acceptance I found in the church community. Your grandfather’s professional standing in the Lutheran church, including eight years as Bishop of the New Jersey Lutheran Synod in the 1970’s, and your grandmother’s devout Christian faith, has naturally affected my worldview. My ethical and moral values, my politics, and my interest in other faith traditions have been influenced in some way by the centrality of religion in my family’s life during those formative years.

It was not until my early twenties, when I attended law school, that I began to seriously consider and challenge my own beliefs and assumptions about matters of faith, religion, God, and the cosmos. When I married your Mom at the age of 28, I was content with the notion of two equally valid faith traditions peacefully coexisting in a state of mutual respect. Not until the two of you came into this world was I forced to confront the importance of faith in my life and the lives of my children.

By then, my feelings toward Christianity had grown complicated. I remained connected to my Lutheran heritage, proud of my involvement with the Lutheran Volunteer Corps in Washington, D.C., and of the extensive advocacy and worldwide relief efforts of the Lutheran church on behalf of developing nations and the world’s poorest citizens. I was proud also of the example set by your grandfather as a socially conscience and politically aware Lutheran minister, one who practiced his faith in the world and all its messiness, providing counsel and comfort to pastors and parishioners, young and old alike. And I have always been amazed by your grandmother’s lifelong devotion and commitment to the church and to helping others. And yet, despite these positive experiences and influences, I personally struggled over the literal meaning of the traditional Christian creeds and doctrines. I began to question many of Christianity’s fundamental tenets and could no longer reconcile my head with my heart. And I refused to accept the belief of some Christians that the saving grace of God was denied to people of other faith traditions whom I loved and respected.

Theologically, I felt very much at home with liberal Judaism and its emphasis on living an ethical life, doing good deeds, and working for justice, principles shared by the mainline Protestant experience of my past, particularly the progressive Christianity as practiced by Luther Place when we lived in Washington. I also was fond of Judaism’s emphasis on education and intellectual inquiry, its openness to questions in a non-judgmental way. I continued to have a great affinity for the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and because Christianity is rooted in Judaism – Jesus was born a Jew, lived his life as a Jew, and died a Jew – I felt it did not compromise my integrity to participate actively in your Jewish education and upbringing, something that would not be true of your mom had she been asked to raise you as Christians.

For me, it was not particularly important to which faith tradition you were exposed. What was most important to me was that you be allowed to develop a rich heritage and a religious identity, to have a rock upon which to stand when life’s waters sometimes overflow. Any ambivalence I had about raising you as Jews stemmed mostly from a concern that non-orthodox American Judaism encompasses such a wide spectrum of religious and non-religious elements, and includes not only the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements, but many secular, humanist, and New Age philosophies that have little connection or relevance to Judaism or religion. I have encountered many American Jews with little sense of spirituality and much skepticism about God and faith. That one could be theologically agnostic, or even an atheist, and yet maintain a strong Jewish identity is a notion at odds with my Christian experience, where one’s belief system is the defining element of one’s religion; in the Christian tradition, without God and faith, religion lacks purpose and meaning. I have spoken with many rabbis who share my concern, and I have been pleased to see a renewed sense of spirituality in American Judaism over the past few decades. Because while I always want you to have a strong sense of who you are, including a Jewish identity and pride in Jewish culture and history, I also desire that you maintain faith in God, a higher force that you can turn to in times of distress. Achieving an internal peace with God is something I wish for everyone, but something I desperately desire for you.

“The supreme issue is today not the halacha for the Jew or the Church for the Christian,” writes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “but the premise underlying both religions, namely, whether there is a pathos, a divine reality concerned with the destiny of man which mysteriously impinges upon history; the supreme issue is whether we are alive or dead to the challenge and the expectation of the living God.” It is, in many ways, what binds us together as human beings. I hope you someday take the time to study and read some of Heschel’s writings, as he offers gentle wisdom and a deep understanding of the essence of faith. “The crisis engulfs all of us,” he writes. “The misery and fear of alienation from God make Jew and Christian cry together.”

Although I cannot tell you what to believe or how to find God in your life, I can at least share with you what I believe. It seems we rarely discuss such things any more, but I think it important from time to time to consider and contemplate the mystery that is faith and creation, and to strive for deeper knowledge and understanding of God’s relationship to humankind.

For as long as I can remember, I have believed that God exists and is very much a part of our world. Although my concept of God has evolved over time, I understand now that God is a mystery, impossible to comprehend. But if you look carefully at the world around you and listen to the whispering silence of a gentle autumn breeze, if you watch a flock of geese fly in formation as they migrate south for winter; if you examine the stars on a clear night and consider the vastness of the universe, you will discover that God is everywhere. That there exists a little bit of God in everyone, waiting to be recognized, and that God provides guidance to those who sincerely seek God’s wisdom, seems more apparent now than ever. God is our conscience and our soul; God is nature. And though God may not actively intervene in our lives – God cannot do good things for us or prevent harm to us – God suffers with us when we are in pain and communicates with us through the people who inspire us and the people who need our time and attention, from a child in need of a parent’s love to the homeless beggar on the streets of our cities. When we ignore the suffering of others, we ignore God.

I believe that God listens to our prayers and attempts to provide answers, but we must look, listen, and search for those answers in the world around us. I believe in a compassionate and understanding God, a God of love who expects us (commands us in the Jewish tradition) to live an ethical and just life, to treat others with kindness and concern, to treat all of God’s creations – the grass, the trees, our lakes and rivers, the animal world, and most especially each other – with respect and love. “What is faith,” asked Mohandas Gandhi, “if it is not translated into action?”

Bishop Desmond Tutu, who helped guide South Africa in the 1980’s away from the racially-oppressive system of apartheid and through a process of racial reconciliation, reminded us that our humanity is bound up in each other, “for we can only be human together.” It is a simple, but important principle that applies to our everyday lives, our politics, our religious practices, and our respect for those from whom we differ. “All things are bound together,” said Chief Oren Lyons of the Onandaga Nation. “[A]ll things connect. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls also the children of the earth."

Life is beautiful and wonderful, full of joy and laughter, love and kindness. But it also involves no shortage of heartache. Sadly, you already have experienced tragedy and pain in life through the loss of your friends Hannah and Natan at such young ages. And you will face more loss as life goes on. This is a certainty. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.” In Strength to Love, Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” As you confront life’s challenges, I hope you find inspiration in the words of Dr. King and never lose your sense of idealism, justice, and compassion for others. And when you feel overwhelmed by life’s controversies, when your spirit is challenged, think of Anne Frank, a young girl of great courage and character who maintained her ideals during a time that for most of us would have been the depth of darkness. In her diary, shortly before her death, Anne Frank wrote:

It’s really a wonder that I haven’s dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. . . . I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.

Although today’s world is not as immediately perilous as the world in which Anne Frank lived, our world nevertheless presents sad news and insecurity every day. If you remain true to yourselves, live your lives with integrity, and remain caring and loving persons, you will always have the respect of others and the love of many. Believe in yourselves, believe in God, feel God’s presence and see it in each other and in all of humanity, and you will find meaning and purpose in your lives. “The real and the spiritual are one,” wrote Heschel, “like body and soul in a living [person]. It is for the law to clear the path; it is for the soul to sense the spirit.” Be open to a sense of spirit in your lives; open your heart to God and trust that you can do anything to which you commit your heart and mind. Then, your only limitations will be of your own making.

With love always,

Dad

The End of Summer

You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it. – Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer

Hurricane Sandy has come and gone, leaving in its wake downed trees and power lines, flooded shores and destruction. Our home in Jenkintown survived with minimal disruption, though others nearby, and many colleagues and friends, were less fortunate. The squirrels in our back yard are particularly anxious, frantically jumping and running in circles as if to say the world has gone mad. They may be on to something. Branches from the large trees lining our property are scattered across the yard, but at least the rain has stopped as a cold front settles in. As I look from the window of my second floor study, I observe the colors of autumn, orange and red leaves falling to the ground, preparing to lay dormant for the winter as the rest of nature quietly anticipates October’s end. Baseball season is over. It is time to put life back into its proper perspective and to rake the leaves once again.

* * * *

Roger Kahn’s romantic sentiment notwithstanding, it is easier to fall in love with a winning team than a losing one. For Giants fans, the gift of a championship will take the edge off of winter’s chill. The next few months will allow the faithful to dwell in the shared joy of a memorable season and look forward to the day when their grandchildren ask about life back when. “I can still remember 2012,” they will say, “when Pablo Sandoval hit three home runs in one World Series game against, who were we playing? Oh, yes, the Tigers. What a glorious year that was.” For the rest of us, it is a winter of painful reflection and thoughts of what might have been. If only Lynn hadn’t thrown the ball away in the fourth inning of Game 5. If only Kozma had fielded the ball cleanly in Game 6. If only . . .

During the early glow of October, one sensed that the miracle run of 2011 might, for Cardinals fans, be replicated. That the Cardinals even made the post-season this year, winning 88 games after losing Albert Pujols to free agency, Tony LaRussa and Dave Duncan to retirement, and Chris Carpenter to injury, was no small feat. They are a likeable bunch, too young and too old at the same time, with just enough talent and heart to always make things interesting.

After securing the second wild card berth on the last day of the regular season, the Cards upset the Braves in a one-game playoff before the hostile, can-throwing, tomahawk-chopping fans in Atlanta. Then, down 6-0 in Game 5 of the NLDS, playing before a loudly enthusiastic crowd in Washington, D.C., they mounted a spectacular, stunning comeback, sparked by a four-run rally with two outs in the top of the ninth that was led by the heroic efforts of a light-hitting utility infielder named Daniel Descalso, and Pete Kozma, a little known minor league shortstop who lingered without distinction until an injury befell Rafael Furcal at the end of August. I took the inspired play as a sign that, just maybe, the baseball gods continued to look with favor upon the Miracle Redbirds.

The good feelings and momentum flowed into the start of the National League Championship Series. The Cardinals quickly took a three-games-to-one lead against the San Francisco Giants and needed only one more victory to advance to the World Series for the second straight season. And yet, I was unable to relax. Perhaps it was the ghosts of postseasons past, but I experienced an eerie sensation, a brooding anxiety that things were not as they appeared. “True baseball fans do not cheer for their teams to win,” wrote Will Leitch, “they cheer for them not to lose. Victory does not come with joy, it comes with relief. Losing causes only pain.” I took little comfort in the historical fact that few major league teams have ever blown a three-games-to-one lead in postseason play. I am, after all, a Cardinals fan. I have committed to memory the years of darkness – 1968, 1985, 1996, and now . . . 2012.

For me, watching the last three games of the NLCS, as the Giants outscored the Cardinals 20-1, was like experiencing a temporary tumor with symptoms of blurred vision, migraines, and acute depression. Chinese water torture may possibly have been an only slightly less pleasurable alternative. Jay, Craig, Beltran, and Holliday all seemed to have lost the feel of the strike zone. Fastballs sailed over the middle of the plate without challenge. Pitches in the dirt resulted in awkward swings and misses. I tried to tell myself that these things happen, that the players are only human. In between prophecies of doom and Armageddon, I remained somewhat hopeful, even after losses in Games Five and Six, that despite these momentary setbacks, one more win could erase all the angst; I would then transfer my anxieties to the World Series, where we could chance a repeat of 2006, the magical year when an underachieving Cardinals team upset the powerful Tigers. It was not to be. Perhaps learning to live with defeat builds character and makes one emotionally stronger. Whatever the truth of such sentiments, I was relieved when the final out came this year, for it put an end to my misery.

* * * *

Within a few days of season’s end, when the players pack up for the winter and return home, I start, even now, to think of next year. For the Cardinals faithful, the future looks hopeful. Rosenthal, Kelly, and Miller, young pitchers with power arms and great stuff that hint at the promise of a more dominant bullpen and rotation; Taveras and Wong, standout minor leaguers ready to compete in the spring for a place in the Show; and another year of Yadier Molina behind the plate, the best catcher in my lifetime. But although I look ahead, I know that baseball and history remain forever linked. It is “the deep Eros of memory that separates baseball from other sports,” writes Dom DeLillo. The memories of childhood and of seasons past, the youthful dreams of one day making it to the major leagues, become the cherished remnants of days gone by. It is easy to forget as a fan that the players we watch perform on the field with such apparent ease were once young boys like us, longing to play before sellout crowds in big league parks. For the select few that actually make it, the pressures of competition and media scrutiny, where every mistake is repeated in high-definition and super-slow motion, diminishes the game’s tranquility and can only make it less fun. As for those of us who some time ago abandoned the dreams of youth, we look longingly at the first baseman who between innings casually flips grounders to the other infielders as music blasts from the loudspeakers. We study the shadow of the center fielder as he plays long toss with the right fielder while waiting for the pitcher to complete his warm-up throws. We absorb and digest the game’s intricate details, recognizing that we once did those same things in the prime of our youth, still believing that, with a simple twist of fate, we could have been there too. How I would love to have had that chance. . . .

“Baseball skill relates inversely to age,” wrote Roger Kahn in The Boys of Summer. “The older a man gets, the better a ball player he was when young, according to the watery eye of memory.” There remain times when I think back to high school, when baseball seemed easy and effortless, when reality and dreams had not yet been reconciled. Only later did I realize that the combination of skill, dedication and luck needed to advance was out of reach, if unknowable. Life would go on, but in a different direction.

There was a time we laughed at the old guys up on the hill. The ones who graduated a couple of years before us, and who would hang around the school and the ballpark still, and would sit on the hoods of their cars and tell us how when they were seniors they did it better, faster, and further. We laughed, because we were still doing it, and all they could do was talk. If our goals were not met, there was next year, but it never occurred to us that one day there would not be a next year, and that the guys sitting on the hoods of their cars at the top of the hill, wishing they could have one more year, willing to settle for one last game, could one day be us. – Tucker Elliott

I have been that guy for some time now, the one seated on the hood of his car, staring into the distance. I often wish I had played a few more years. At twilight on summer nights, I dream thoughts of what might have been had I the bat speed of Beltran or the balance of Pujols, the quick hands of Molina or the scrappiness of Scutaro. It is, in part, why I remain connected to the game. Living vicariously through the Cardinals, I pay heed to the ups-and-downs of a team I know only collectively, and mostly through the lens of a camera. I will, of course, do it all again next year; rejoice when the Cardinals win, silently suffer when they lose, all the while failing to understand why I care so much for the fate of a single team beyond my reach. “Addiction or obsession, love or need,” said Doris Kearns Goodwin, “I was born a baseball fan and a baseball fan I [am] fated to remain.” So, indeed, am I. Until next year then . . . and the first sign of spring.