Someone asked my father if he wanted anything to eat. “Ice cream,” he said with a raspy voice, his strength nearly exhausted. “I’ll go,” I said. “There’s a place down the street.  What flavor?”  I needed some fresh air. “Swirl,” Wally answered. Swirl? I never heard my father ask for a vanilla-chocolate swirl before, but … Continue reading Letters Unsent

Treeline by Glenn Sloves Copyright 2021 For Wally, July 9, 1933 to February 5, 2020. “I wish you a long life, Glenn. Not 96 years. I’ve lived too long - 86 is a good number,”  Enid Charen This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Routine. This … Continue reading “Treeline”

My parents shared a vision of what they wanted their lives to look like, and for 59 years of marriage they were fortunate to make that shared life a reality.  They shared a love of dancing, and were always the first and last couple on the dance floor.  Well into his eighties, young women would … Continue reading The Bull Woke Up and Was a Steer

Uncle Mel and Aunt Dee and my cousins Randi and Lori moved from their apartment in the Bronx to Spring Valley when we were in junior high school. Spring Valley is adjacent to Monsey, and we all went to Spring Valley High School. Risa graduated in 1982, Randi and I in ’84, Lori in ’87 … Continue reading McEnroe’s Nuts

My parents rented a condominium in Delray Beach from December 30 thru April 30.  On December 12th my father was admitted to the VA Hospital in West Haven, Connecticut and was diagnosed with a GI bleed and congestive heart failure. The physician cauterized the bleed, sent a tissue sample for biopsy, made adjustments to his … Continue reading Himself Until The End

"A lot of us have menorahs," he said.

We had a road atlas and a general sense that Billings, Montana was a long way away, somewhere very north and very west of Florida.

Biking in some of most beautiful places on earth turned to books and studying very quickly. My brain had difficulty down-shifting gears.

I had a pretty good head of steam going when I saw the police cars and ambulances, and I came to a screeching halt.

What could go wrong?

The doctor assessed my wounds, turned his head sideways like a confused dog, cleaned his glasses, and did just about anything he could do to let me know that there was a lot of work to be done.

Muscle Memory is the body's ability to remember a complex movement pattern over time. If the movement pattern is practiced and repeated with enough frequency, your body will remember.

Can you imagine your life changing because some idiot college housemate put a box of pizza down on the days' mail?

We weren't really trying to anger or upset anyone when we pedaled out of the Howard Johnson's parking lot in Albany, New York. That said, nearly 30 years later, there are probably at least two women who are still pissed off at us.

His spirit, his hunger for life was endless.

We were hoping to make it around the 2.5 mile track once and then throw our bikes over the fence again and get the hell out of there before getting arrested.

His bike was below him, and somehow on top of him at the same time.

Paul Rader was a man of his word. He had so many words, though, it was difficult to believe all of them.

That night, my roommate Roger shared some interesting statistics. Roger was from Phoenix, and he was the CEO of a company that was named by Fortune 500 Magazine that year as one of the fastest growing tech companies in the country. He was the rides' self-proclaimed statistician. “We've already logged over 260 miles in the … Continue reading Putting My Best Foot Forward

It was exactly what I needed. I was able to pedal with my right leg, and was able to keep my left knee immobile.

In 1992, I didn't know what the hell a meniscus was, but I knew it hurt like hell to tear one.

Sometimes you just have to put your head down and pedal.

I started riding my bike to work every day. It was 6 miles from Astoria, over the 59th Street Bridge, to West 44th Street. I know most people reading this now will think that I was crazy for riding my bike in Manhattan, and you may be right, but it is exhilarating. There is an … Continue reading Change of Plans

I returned to my office at 44th Street, grinning from ear to ear. I hadn't felt that light, that free of myself in 10 years.

nothing to see here, folks, except a pigeon shit-covered Glenn.

Juli has insisted that if I refer to any ex-girlfriends in these posts, I must refer to them all as Blondie.

There Katie and I would be, talking to one another through the filthy mehitzah, praying that the hasidim would all get back on the damn bus so we could get to work on time.

“We're not going to need the fire extinguisher,” I said, many years before anyone heard of Captain Obvious and Hotels.com.

If there were ever a warped version of the Olympics where, instead of steroids, all of the athletes were forced to drink beer, no doubt Chris would have been a gold medal winner in diving.

I am eternally grateful to my friend Chris for sharing his youthful spirit with me, at a time when I would have otherwise wallowed and drowned in my youthful insecurities.

At Oswego, leaving chicken on a wing bone was a sin, almost as bad as leaving beer in a bottle.

My creative writing as a Freshman was the first thing to make me feel confident in years, probably since the last BMX race that I had won as a 14 or 15 year old.

Time stood still. It felt like 1,000 eyes were on me. I was a bug under a magnifying glass. I was a guilty criminal in a line-up. I quickly prayed for a Soviet nuclear missile to rip through the cafeteria.

That night at the motel, waiting for Move-In Day, I holed up on the cement patio of our motel room, scratching out in my journal a 17 year olds' anger at the world, counting down the seconds until I could get away from my parents.

For the first time in 3 years I tried to look him right in the eyes. Eye contact, damn you! All I'm asking for is a little eye contact, a little show of high school humanity. But he completely ignored me.

That was the first time I had ever heard a child, a teenager, have an actual conversation with a parent.

I stepped off the bus each summer into that sleep-away camp air, and I was returned, mostly, to the fun-loving, light-hearted kid I should have been all twelve months of the year.

Lunchtime in school is that time of day that reminds social misfits that we don't belong, that we are outsiders, and that we are unwanted.

Growing up in Monsey, we enjoyed our 10 minute seder each year with the Bergers. Those were some of the best Jewish 10 minutes of my life.

When I was initially diagnosed with bladder cancer, I refused to use the Cancer Card. I refused to even admit that I might need one. I was confident that I would be able to maintain life as I knew it, with as little change as possible. The cancer I would manage on the side, like a hobby or a part-time job.

Often friends will come to the front of your life, sometimes fade into the background for a few years...