It was on a Sunday.

While I don’t remember all the converging circumstances of the moment,  my entire paradigm shifted about five years ago while eating a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

If you’ve never really had nothing, it may be difficult to grasp the power of the instant  you realize it. Since, I’ve had countless recollections and dreams  of sitting at that table chewing on that sandwich until now when for some reason, the significance of that moment has become amazingly clear.

I’d been clean only a few months after eight years on a methamphetamine diet when eating a sandwich was something you did only because people said you were getting too skinny as meth often does.  I had been an unemployed and unemployable mess for so long, I’d stretched my last $300 down to just $6.72 and the shame of who I’d become after all those years had eaten through any remaining pride or self esteem as I walked to the store to spend it on the ingredients for what I believed was my last meal.

On the cusp of poverty and homelessness,  that bacon sandwich changed my life.

I had always considered myself a sympathetic man, thinking of the plight of others before myself.  The many epiphanies I’d experienced during my cold turkey withdrawal from the drug months before (see “My 9-1-1” story from September 2013 below) were just the beginning of a deeper, more profound purpose and direction for which my life was now headed.

I vividly remember each bite and swallow, the feel of the hard chair on my bony ass and the cup of warm tap water I used to wash down the agony of each bite.  I was flooded with emotions and realizations of what my life had come to.  I was a poor man. Once rich in spirit and life, I’d become a shambled, lonely, pitiful mess of an addict in recovery eating his last supper.

I was not at all unlike so many other newcomers to my recovery meetings who, having abandoned a life of drugs, theft, porn and sex, were clean but poor and yet without aim.  I now believe this is why so many return to the destructive lifestyle, lacking something bigger than themselves to grasp onto in exchange.

I say again, by the grace of God, I was saved by a bacon sandwich.

At that table, on that chair, at that last bite, I literally felt my head twist to the right a little and buried it in the crumbs on my plate, having realized what my life was meant to be.  It wasn’t going to be drugs, poverty or a mere bacon sandwich anymore.  I was being called to become an agent of change for the drugged, the abandoned, the homeless and the hungry.

I think I fell asleep at the table for a long while, waking with the crumbs of the past stuck to my face and experienced my first real glimpse of hope in many years.  I would like to say I remember the dream I had during that upright sleep but I don’t.  I can only recall the waking and the twisted change it had made in the way I have since viewed my single, celibate, drugless and solitary existence.

Several events occurred in the days following.  My house got cleaned, I reached out to friends and associates from long ago, I redrafted my resume, and I began writing again.  Soon after, I was very graciously hired as a janitor at my church and eventually worked into my current position with a charity that had been waiting  patiently for my occupation.  I again now count myself a rich man.

To this day, I am the highest  when with the lowest.

They say that finding your purpose in life is an alignment of what you’re good at, what you love to do, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.

For me, it was revealed in the most unlikely of places.

A divine moment on a Sunday afternoon between two slices of white bread.

Dear Addison,

I won the bet and you’re my little prize!

Happy birthday, Sweetheart.

Unlike the rest of the family, I didn’t have to guess when you’d be here, how much you’d weigh, how tall you would be or even who you would look like. I had a little help. And up here we don’t call it cheating. We call it “divine guidance” and everybody who uses it, wins. Every time.

Let me tell you a few things you’ll need to know.

First, your family is crazy and it’s mostly my fault. It’s sort of a male trait and your grandpa, your dad and your uncles are all equally afflicted. A couple of your aunties make pretty good nut jobs, too. The sooner you catch on, the more fun it will be. I had a wonderful life and want the same for you.

Second, while the world you were born into is the same one I exited only nine months ago when you were first conceived, things are going to change. I can’t go into much detail here, that’s the Boss’ job, but the years ahead of you will hold great things and you need to be ready for it all. Your mom will show you how to take care of your little lady self, your dad will show you how not to be afraid, and all your family will be in your business and around you at every turn to support you and show you the way through it. And, of course, me and the Boss will talk to your little heart every day as we have been all along these last nine months. Listen to all of us and enjoy this great ride called Life.

Third, be a fearless little girl, a fierce young lady and a feisty old woman. In every coming generation of your life, the world will need someone like you to stand up for what is right, good and noble. You are an instrumental part of God’s plan (i peeked), just like Mr. Bailey was. Your grandpa will thoroughly enjoy filling you in on the details of this every Christmastime and teach you how to never give up and to fight like a little angel for what you believe.

Finally, write everything down. Everything.

I used a paintbrush all my life. Pick your instrument and create a history of where you go, what you do, what you’ve learned and where your dreams have taken you, so when you’re an old great grandma (give her a kiss for me), you’ll have left a trail for your own little ones to follow.

Welcome to the world, you beautiful little girl.
You’ll always be my prize.

Love,

Great Grandpa Mike

She’d written “Plasma, 250.”

In my social services job, I see my share of parents who don’t get it right all the time.

And then there’s Monika.

All he wanted was a photograph.

I took his picture, but he may never get  the one he wants most of all.

I always leave my door open when I’m on site at the senior center twice a week.  I set up shop there to meet low income senior citizens and try to engage with them to show them the kinds of services I can offer  free of charge.  Ways to save on utility bills, plans for having food when the money runs out before the month does, budgeting help, how to escape from being prey to the payday loan companies and so many other services that can make a meager fixed income go much further and last much longer.

This generation of senior citizens are a unique breed.  They are the aging baby boomers and what I consider the last of the moral few. They grew up with the idea that you should always work hard, scrimp and save, pay your bills and be willing to sacrifice if you can’t.  They grew up without computers or computer education and today know very little about how to navigate most things younger people do from their phones in an instant.

And, sadly, they are a generation of lost people.  There are no large scale wars that unite them as a group. Their children were born in the “me” generation of self-centeredness and permissiveness and who, for the most part,  have found keeping generational ties unimportant.  As a result and more often than not, they abandon the older generation as if it is somehow the respectful thing to do.  Today’s seniors are also a generation first to experience the insufficiency of social security income to buy the retirement they had hoped. What are so errantly called the Golden Years are truly as thin and flimsy as aluminum foil.

I work the saddest shift at the charity I chose to join a year ago today and since voted the Top Non-Profit in Southern Nevada. Mostly for stories like these.

My  open door policy, however, seems to make it a little easier for these needy but ashamed old people to be willing to break the ice.  Like rescue dogs beaten down from years of abuse, they often are afraid to make the first contact. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at that and regularly seek out and engage many solo seniors who have had nobody to talk with for years.  Their lifetime friends are either six feet under or six hundred miles away and they don’t have money for milk much less travel in these Aluminum Years.

Again, I made the first move.

For three weeks, he’d passed by while I was in what they called the Library at the senior center. It’s not much of a library, really.  It has a cache of donated old books and magazines piled neatly as if they were new editions.  Nobody is fooled by the name of the room which doubles for bingo on Tuesday afternoons where winners receive rolls of toilet paper as prizes.

I never heard him coming down the hall and mostly only got a glimpse of his profile as he would  pass through the light streaming in the doorway so many times before. Each trip, he always turned his head and proceeded at a steady pace as if on a conveyor belt to nowhere.

It took some coaxing. I got up from the computer and stood by the door so that the chance meeting might be a little easier for him if it was to happen at all.  He was far down the corridor, head down and without direction.  But he must have heard me or seen my friendly gesture somehow, for as I sat back down, he was right there at the door, seemingly in reciprocation.

“Hey there!,” I spoke loudly as most of the people around here are hard of hearing or not used to being selected for a conversation.

He looked up and through the doorway. As he came closer, I could see great depth in the crevasses in his face and his long, black feeble shadow met me long before he did.

“How’s it going on this beautiful day?”

He looked around as if perhaps I was addressing another, more important passerby.  I introduced myself and my reason for being here and asked the same of him.

“I’m Al, and I just need a photograph.”

I invited him to sit awhile and tell me about this photograph he wanted.

At first, he wasn’t well spoken but when he did, his long grey beard moved in synchronicity with each syllable.  Obviously anxious at the thought of talking with a complete stranger and worse, having a need to present to one, he chose his words very carefully.

Al hadn’t seen his three kids in some time. It had been years for two, perhaps a decade more for the oldest.  He knows he must have grandchildren by now and wonders if one of them might be an Albert or Alan or Allison…named in his memory as if he were already dead and gone.  It’s not likely.  After his wife died in ’84, the kids moved him to this senior living community in the desert where he’d “have a really fun time with all the people his age and the games and the bingo” and all that list of lies he was told as he managed the last $700 of his savings as a deposit when he signed.

He was all of 81 now, and in addition to winning a roll of toilet paper  now and then, he spends holidays, birthdays and anniversaries alone except when he can get a ride to the library or the cemetery where his wife was laid to rest 30 years earlier. To make best use of the ride and the welcomed time away, he  goes grave to grave to pull weeds, straighten dirty plastic flowers and talks to all the horizontal people mostly his age and older. Except of course Sally, his wife, who only made it a half century before a drunk in a pickup truck ended their marriage and for some reason,  the only real connection to the children and family.

Today, he was missing them and wondering about their well-being. He had their addresses on some scraps of paper he pulled from his wallet as I offered him a cold bottle of water.  There were no phone numbers, just penciled addresses which had blurred illegible after so many years in his wallet next to what looked like high school pictures.

Al hadn’t had a picture taken of him since he could remember.

We talked of his history and my own in extended groups of topics from fishing to art to puppies. I’d come to discover he was quite a well-rounded man of experience who had evidently cared so much for his wife and children when he was a younger man that his kindness had been taken as weakness and his family had exhausted most of his time and assets before he was shipped out to the desert to wither and die with the hundreds more just like him.  As he became more comfortable, we even talked about death itself and speculated how each of us might eventually kick our respective buckets.

I didn’t share it with him but by the look of his frail, taut face and thin weathered body, he was sure to die of starvation if something wasn’t done soon.  I told him we have a food pantry I bring every Thursday morning and suggested he be first in line with a couple very large bags. It was the first smile he had given me all morning.

I  used that smile  as an opportunity to fill him in on some things I thought we could do to help his situation and stretch his $718 monthly social security income and $14 in food stamps.  That brought the second smile of the morning.  I was on a roll and thought I might go for three and asked him to sit back against the wall as I used my IPhone to do for him what he’d come for.

He obliged, licked his fingers and briefly ran them through the few hairs on his head, straightening his beard in what was obviously his own idiosyncratic method  for many, many years.  I laughed as he did his little routine and told him my beard would never be as long as his but surely as grey.  And the instant he laughed, I snapped the picture  and showed him how great he looked in it.

I’d have easily guessed he had not seen himself in a mirror for what might have been years the way he held my phone and gazed at his own image. His last picture was at the DMV four years prior.  He had aged quickly in four years. Very quickly.

“Wow, you look very different from your ID picture, Al.”

“I kinda guessed I might.   A lot has changed in four years.”

Al shared with me had been diagnosed with inoperable colon cancer 3 years prior and at the last visit to his doctor, was told he probably wouldn’t make it to Thanksgiving.

Al wanted a final picture of himself that could be displayed on his own grave wherever he might be buried like the many horizontal friends before him.  It wasn’t likely that his family would make the trip to see dad and grampa before he passed but if so, he wanted them to see the man he’d become just in case someday they became curious about what happened to old Al.

He said he could never figure out what he’d done wrong for them to not contact him again and hoped this picture of April 7^th, 2015 might be different enough from how they knew him years before and that even from the grave, he might get a second chance to show them how much he had thought about them over the years and hoped they’d made lots of babies,  perhaps one named Al.

I printed the picture and presented it to him for the fourth smile of the morning.  I don’t think he had had mustered four smiles in a morning for as many years.

With our work done…or perhaps just begun…he got up and shook my hand and thanked me for having stood in the doorway an hour ago.

And as he left through the sunlight of that same doorway, I extended an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner at my house with my own three kids.

The fifth smile.

I took another picture.

Excuse me, but your pants are on fire.

I think the statute of limitations has expired and I won’t use any names here, but perhaps the ugliest lie I have ever encountered was by my new 1pm client on a Tuesday afternoon many years ago when I was a psychotherapist.

He came in broken-hearted, tearful and forlorn having taken the day off of work for our counseling appointment. He told me how incredibly torn-up he was inside that his wife of 12 years had accused him of having an affair with a blonde woman half his age who, halfway through the session, I had coincidentally deduced was my next appointment.

At that very moment she was likely waiting in my lobby for her 2pm meeting.

He used most of the session to passionately persuade me of his innocence and fear of what his now crazed, irrational wife might do as a result of her misguided opinion about his late work nights and three hour shopping trips to buy nothing. It was about halfway through our session full of tearful punctuations when two and two equaled four for me. He never even mentioned her by name. He didn’t need to. After all, his story was that he’d never met nor slept with this woman.

I allowed him his time, and at least for the first half of our meeting, empathized with him, knowing that while our 50 minute session may had been his first, it would certainly not be as therapeutic as the ones to come if he was as courageous as he was deceitful.

The session concluded and we set a time for a follow up meeting. I collected my fee in my office versus in the lobby for obvious reasons and he said he felt relieved and glad that I understood him. I handed him a box of Kleenex to take with him along with a very sincere: “I think you’re gonna need this.”

He opened the door of my inner office and having taken a few steps to the exit he turned left to me as if to say something and stuttered as he began to speak, seeing my next appointment in the chair–a woman he’d never met nor slept with– yet now called by name.

I did the same, and invited her to wait in my counseling office where I’d be with her momentarily.

I’d have called 911 but thought it best that he spent a little time aghast, speechless and bleeding. After all, I’d been quite generous with that 89 cent box of Kleenex.

It takes one to know one.

It’s not so much that people lie. Everyone did, has, does and will. It’s the ugly side of human nature. For some, they’re little white ones and infrequent. For others, like my client, lying had become a giftedness—a crafted way of life–for purposes only future sessions might discover if he dared.

Myself, I have never lied…except for right now.

Fact is, I was once a phenomenal liar, if not only to myself. Some get away with it in this life. They hurt people and hurt themselves. Some walk away unscathed, and just hurt people. Why?

Lying to save face. Desire for acceptance is sometimes so strong to an ego so weakened by criticism, people will lie their way into the good graces of others.

Lying to avoid consequences. All behaviors have consequences. As the late Mr. Rogers once sang, “Sometimes people are good, and they do just what they should. But the very same people who are good sometimes, are the very same people who are bad sometimes. It’s funny. But it’s true.” They weigh the painful consequences of being truthful against the delayed consequences of deceit. Karma.

Lying to your ego. Some cannot accept the fact that they might be mistaken and therein, convince themselves of the veracity of their own lies building a house of cards they can never pay for.

Lying for attention. A family friend once created an elaborate lie that she had cancer. As our family does, we banded behind her and raised money to treat her, created support structures to help her and pampered her as a cherished friend facing her death. The hurt and disbelief of such a long-lived, well-played lie was devastating while all she wanted was someone to care.

Lying for power. Some lie to get a one up on others who are less articulate or subjugates, believing their lies will prevail over the truths of others. This is a particularly devious person, most often sociopathic.

The worst part of a lie is not the lie itself but the curiously dissatisfying satisfaction when you get away with it.

I contend that the worst liars and the least likely to are those of us who have lied and learned, the process of which has burned an indelible, intervening conscience into our psyche making the pleasure of getting away with a lie anathema to that which we’ve become. We get sick, can’t sleep, self loathe and are forced to throw up the ugly untruths either before they are even committed or immediately thereafter.

So, I finished the session with my pretty 2pm client, keeping my integrity about not disclosing topics nor purposes of my 1pm client and doing some pretty good work with her despite the afternoon tension.

I was doing paperwork at my desk during a long break before my 5pm client which would end my work day when I got his phone call apology.

Rock bottom is a beautiful place, and mercy is a beautiful thing.

He began a course of counseling with me not about his infidelities but about his much deeper problems. When I last saw him months later, it was at the grocery store with his wife.

He flashed a huge grin across the checkstand. I did the same. And this time, his pants were not on fire.

To say it’s because I was once a paperboy would be to have missed the forest for the trees. But what a forest it might have been!

I’d visited the theatre to see the roadshow performance of “Newsies,” probably my favorite musical of all time. Despite it being the thrill it was, the experience was more nostalgic in part as I wondered so much of what might have been. At times it was hard to focus on anything but the cold bare stage of my mind, the tears in my eyes and all my performances that never were, and never will be.

Had I gone with a story of the enthusiastic moment, this would just be a five star review of the show that I sat down to write after arriving home following a backstage tour compliments of paperboy actor, dancer and friend, Chaz Wolcott, whose shoes and life that night filled a vicarious silent void in my history. But I was tired and went to bed. I hadn’t been up til 1130pm in months.

I’m far from being a whiner, but what happens when a middle aged man looks back and wonders how things might have been versus how they are can induce some sad moments.

I do good things these days that make me happy with what I produce for the world. Needy and deserving people get a roof over their heads, food in their bellies and hope in their hearts that things will be better. I’ve no apologies. I’ll never be rich or famous doing what I do, but then I’ve never aspired to wealth and fame, just fulfillment.

But among the many epiphanies of the evening, most notably: We need to escape. Like some of us, young actor Chaz Wolcott has a vision for his life. Me? I now just dream dreams of what might have been and do that to which I’ve been called. The only differences between the two are talent and time and a lot of it.

Visions are dreams of what may come. Dreams are visions of what might have been.

For as long as I remember, I have yearned to act, sing, dance and move about a stage like all those Newsboys and so many other young men of youth and vision on that stage.

I’m 30 years their senior, terribly out of shape and, if I am honest, somewhat regretful I never mustered enough of that vision when I was a young man. Had I been more comfortable with myself, I might have parlayed the handful of parts I played in school theatre into a performing career. But I didn’t and I think I may die wondering why.

The escape into musical theatre or the stage itself is a magical thing. As much work as it is to memorize, rehearse, travel and perform, I always regarded the work as a small price to pay for what I imagine to be an incredible freedom to make people laugh, smile, cheer and savor perhaps just a single night of escape from a busy work week. The musical theatre experience leaves me refreshed, inspired and motivated…and still dreaming.

So here I am. 530am. Getting caffeinated at the keyboard, planning for the poor people who will walk through my door today and playing an occasional escape game of Trivia on my phone…and dreaming just a little more about what might have been.

Life is wonderful. Musical theatre reminds me of this and the importance of escaping into a dream from time to time..

And to think, I almost missed the forest for the trees, forgetting that all the world’s a stage, and I’ve already been cast.

Whether naked and afraid

In the most desolate of places

In the loneliest of moments

Or darkest of spaces.

Not a penny to your name

Nor shirt on your back

Not a crumb in your stomach

Nor morsel to snack.

Closest to death

And losing the fight

On your last breath

The end now in sight.

It matters not time

It matters not place

You can always find humor

And a smile on your face.

Mostly, it was the manner in which he parked his car that captured my attention.

Nearly sunrise, he pulled the BMW into space 219 with what was either delicate care or anxious precision.  Slowly and with style, the white lines framed the gold, still freshly polished body with perpendicular perfection as the engine silenced, both synchronized as if the entire action was one choreographed eight count of a slow dance.

The door cracked and he took pause inside. I decided at that hour he was either a very stylish drunk young man or very regretful one.  The comma of that moment was more like a series of long hyphenations with the several small deliberate steps it took to create such a classy exit from that beamer after such an obviously long night on the town.

It was almost light enough to see his handsome, tall, tired frame and the thin emergent lines around his eyes which had grown all night in their attempts to lure him home to rest.  He’d been to several venues from nightclubs to titty bars and a few incoherent places in between as he’d been for every Friday night that he could remember from recent years…and many he did not.

I watched him from my quiet Sunday morning perch on the patio where I’d been enjoying the pre-dawn breeze and my thoughts. He clicked the locks and lights on the car. His pace was slow, straight, pensive and, I think—this time—a bit regretful.  I smiled to myself and applauded him silently as I witnessed this private, game changing epiphany of a young man’s life who’d finally decided he’d had enough of youth. The entire scene was just so incredibly well done, as I imagined were most of his life’s best moments.

And  just then, I thought I’d heard a crescendo of cymbals as he closed his front door on the first thin horizontal ray of the sun.

Each of us has that moment when we finally grow up.

I’d seen none as poignant as his.

I don’t remember the day when I grew up.  I’m pretty sure I did, but it was much later in years than I’d expected if I was to ever expect one. It wasn’t the sighting of a grey hair or the fact it hurt getting back up this time.  Just as I’d spied of this man’s experience, growing up was mostly a moment in my head.

If it were predictable, it would be meaningless.  The convergence of experience, thought and time just one day unexpectedly align, sometimes at the break of dawn after a night out that used to be a lot of crazy fun but now just seems crazy. Some divine element sets in motion a completely different paradigm to the path we had, up til then, so painstakingly prepared for ourselves.

We’re a lot more sober.  We are less prone to experience and more prone to contemplate.  We wonder how much of these years we will regret and which few experiences we will remember with fondness, and if we will even call it that.

There are no boundaries to youth except those which our consciences inflict upon us. And it’s always at the right time.  Wild and Crazy are sent to the back seat on our nights out and Wiser and Smarter sit driver and shotgun and set the route for the evening.  I think this is all supposed to happen before the back seat drivers take you on a trip to jail or worse, to the morgue.

But inevitably, at least for most of us, it happens at the right time and place. And sometimes it happens right in front of an unsuspecting someone very early one morning who imagines that we have finally found truth and meaning in one rather large but painless epiphany.

The warm morning sun was now well over the horizon and my coffee cup was empty.  My four-legged best friend was whining for our routine, so I slipped on something comfy and with leash in hand, headed out the door for a brisk morning walk before church.  While I was certain he’d long since gone to bed, we walked past his place and Butch flew off the leash and ran up the walk as he opened his door.  His chocolate brown Chihuahua met mine and instantly, they were buddies.

“Hi. Hey, sorry about that,” I said pulling on the leash.

“No worries, I was headed out for a walk with him anyway. It’s good they’re getting along.  A lot of times Chihuahuas don’t,” he assured me as the dogs were still introducing themselves to one another.

We were on the same path on the same street in the same direction and our dogs, already marvelous old friends, were doing what dogs do and people don’t understand yet admire.  It was just small talk between us and he’d no idea I’d witnessed the beautiful experience of his earlier arrival home nor what I’d inferred and suspected  to be a rather significant moment in his life.

“I’m always up early and we go on a walk in the morning.” I struggled to continue the conversation.

“Yeah, as events would have it, so am I,” he replied.

We continued the conversation and I avoided getting too deep as we’d only just met, though our dogs were chatting about intimate things like the smell of butts, dead birds and how many bushes they could pee on in one outing.

“Well, we’re gonna head back home I think. Time to get ready for church,” I said as I let our friends finish their business together.

“Church?  Man, I haven’t been to back to church in a long time,” he almost stuttered with great curiosity and the next question.

“Yeah, it’s just up the street and I still need a shower.”

I finally introduced myself by name and apartment number at that point, and as I turned, I smiled the exact same smile I’d smiled alone on my porch watching him in in the early dawn of that morning.

I was enjoying the experience of watching what was obviously  his second glorious epiphany of that morning.

Nobody ever regrets growing up,

and nobody ever regrets going back to church

on a Sunday morning.

What if that last time you pulled out in traffic, the bus actually hit you broadside?

What if when you found the gas on the stove and turned it off, it exploded.

What if last night’s indigestion that made you restless was actually a massive heart attack?

What if last July 4th, that dud really wasn’t a dud when you went to check it?

What if that flu you thought you could kick with plenty of rest wasn’t the flu?

What if that really cool lightning storm last month was a lot closer than you thought?

What if you stood a little too close to that cliff for that vacation selfie?

What if you walked into that store just a minute earlier, before you heard the gunfire?

What if while you were reading this….

you ran out of chances?