Today is Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and it is a national holiday. Public employees have it off while many private employees do not.

This is a “floating” holiday for many, like Veterans Day has also become. I don’t know how you “float” celebration of MLK Jr. or Veterans or what he or they have done for this nation. A holiday is just that, to acknowledge on a national level some part of our history and what makes us who we are.

Is national pride and history a choice? It is if we allow it be swept under the rug.

President’s Day is a combination of what used to be two separate holidays: Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s – two obviously important leaders. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. Lincoln had to make a crucial decision about slavery that was tearing the nation apart and Washington fought against all odds, though the military was outgunned by the British and had little money. After winning and there being a power vacuum, several generals encouraged Washington to become king. He said no, this is to be a republic and he handed back the power after the war had ended. He fought for a new world. Washington put his life and career on the line as did many soldiers who fought barefoot and without pay.

We used to have both days off. We honored them. We celebrated them. Now no one gets President’s Day off(except for school kids), and no one pays it as much mind. All presidents, good and bad, should not be lumped into this day. These two days, their birthdays, were to honor these two great Americans.

And now today, a day of divisiveness, Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday. Many companies let you float the time as if it’s just some meaningless day to go to the DMV, and yet the DMV is closed. By making this a floating paid day off, or pto, we diminish the importance of this man and the absolute searing indignation endured during the civil rights period and the hundreds of years leading up to it. Now I can float it and go to the dentist on a later date, not caring or even noticing it has come at all.

How do African-Americans, how do we as a people, with our history of slavery, not stop and acknowledge with reflections upon our past? If we are working a full day, it is hard to. By reducing the meaning of these national holidays we reduce our heritage and integrity by brushing them under the rug.

The leaders who formed this nation were rebels themselves, challenging the old ways through bloodshed and sacrifice to forge new ones. All of these great men deserve their day of respect and acknowledgement.

And we damn well better pay attention soon. Not only public workers but ALL WORKERS!

We are Americans and it’s time we started acting like it again. We cannot move forward from the past by hiding and allowing big business to dictate what and who we honor, how and when.

I never wanted kids.

At least that’s what I thought. I was too busy writing and exploring this country, quitting jobs when I had enough cash, or even when I didn’t.

However, I never felt I was missing anything.  It never weighed on me. Never was I concerned with perpetuating my name and certainly I had no desire to perpetuate the human race.

It seemed as if my spark was to flare up then burn out, and that would be that.

In my early forties I was still not married. Rebellious, I never cared for institutions and legal documents governing my life.

Through those years women pressured me to marry them, yet I resisted, knowing they weren’t right.

Some thought I was selfish. Nope, just stubborn.

But when life presented the right woman to love passionately, I knew in an instant that I would marry her. She also happened to have three children. This was certainly not what I expected, yet I jumped on in knowing it was right.

Some friends didn’t understand. Those same ones judged and condemned me that it would never work. A few others thought I’d stay a single free-spirit roaming the roads and earth alone.

In some ways, I didn’t fully understand it myself. But love and one’s path isn’t always something you lay out on a table with facts and reason. The truth is I had always sought answers to life’s pockets of emptiness.

I’ve heard people say- By thirty I want kids and a house. I’ve done it myself with other things, but life doesn’t care about our time-frames, demands, and equations.

Before meeting Jen, one week earlier, I’d left my apartment and was staying with a friend. I had no job and little money. A long month later we were living together and a part of me finally found peace.

This past fall, late October, I was outside with Adam (my twelve year-old step-son) and Jessica (my five year-old step-daughter) throwing a Nerf football. There was a small breeze then a booming gust. About a hundred feet up at the top of the oak tree leaves began blowing and gently spread across the sky. One by one they floated in an ethereal wave together like starlings, thousands of them floating and drifting with the wind then dropping.

I ran inside to get my camera. When I came back out the leaves laid prostrate on the lawn and driveway.

“I missed them.” Disappointed, I said to Adam, with camera in my hand.

“No, you didn’t.” he said. “You got to see them.”

The kids began chasing each other and I looked up at the tree now standing silently after releasing its children.

“Adam, catch.” I threw him a bomb at the far-end of the lawn.

He missed it as the Nerf bounced off Jessica’s head still chasing him unaware of the descending ball. She dove on top. Adam tried to get the ball from under her, but she got up and ran with it over to me.

“Here you go, daddy.” Yes, she now calls me daddy. I swear sweeter words were never uttered. She bent and picked up a leaf studying it, then handed me the leaf.
“Now you have one.” She smiled her big smile standing close to me. The temptation to chase Adam again was too great. She zoomed away and I stood there.

After roaming the earth like a nomad seeking answers, I’ve finally found a few. Years have past with my family and certain answers have been found. However, I still roam the earth, though less frequently, seeking other ones.

We live out in the woods, not the sticks(sticks are small) of New York near the Catskills, and every winter I covet other people’s wood piles. Often I drive by homes with neatly stacked rows of beautifully cut hardwood. The land we have is not great for cut wood. It’s mostly pine, which is good for starting a fire, but burns too hot and because of the creosote gases inside, is often blamed for chimney fires.

For some time now I’ve had fantasies of other people’s wood piles.

Because we like to burn fires in the fireplace, I ordered my first cord of wood, ever. Cords of wood are hard to find right now. Last year’s winter was so bad many loggers sold out or are behind this year. I’m a city and suburb kid. So buying a cord of wood is quite foreign and exciting.

The cord is $225 but should last a few months. It took me a while to find this logger with split dry wood.

Update: My wife was on her way to the kid’s school when she called with urgency.

“Doug there is a sign with free wood. Free wood!” She shouted into the phone. “Beautiful big rounds stacked up. Free wood honey. You dreams are coming true.”

I sat dumbfounded as the words went around my cerebral cortex. “Free?” Better words were never uttered. “Free wood, honey?”

“I had to call or you would’ve killed me if I didn’t.” We hung up as I sat in my home office surrounded by work and piles of paper.

Twenty minutes earlier I’d gotten off the phone with my boss and knew he wouldn’t be reaching out to me again today or at least for a few hours. I contemplated the pile of work on my desk and imagined having to fight others off for the free pile of wood, fighting them off with a stick. To the death!

Hmm, free wood. I will no longer have to covet other’s piles. A whole tree had been cut down, cut up, and is waiting for an anonymous taker. That taker could be me.

Plus the cord, we will be burning as many fires this winter as we like.

I grabbed my work phone and grabbed the keys to our big truck, and burned rubber ten minutes to get over there.

The sign said in big bold letters FREE WOOD with an arrow pointing down a small grass hill to a large field. At the far end of this field sat the untouched pile towering like a small wood pyramid. No one was there to fight off. No Egyptian warriors were defending this sacred ground. Large wood rounds sat glistening, each one two feet long, waiting and inviting. Wood fuel. Wood fires in the large living-room fireplace will crackle and heat as the snow flies and cold chills.

I drove the truck fast across the grass field and loaded up the back quickly, while looking from side to side. I got almost all of it.

I brought the chunky rounds home, laid out a tarp, and stacked ‘em up. I stared proudly. I’ll let them dry a few weeks in the sun then split them using a log splitter. Others may now covet my wood pile. But sorry folks, it’s all mine. There will be no signs of free offerings.

Update: I just spoke with another wood guy, $180 a cord. Even better. This was a tip from a friend. Get in line people. But sorry, I can’t give you his phone number. I’m loading up this winter and selfish.

South I headed alone on my motorcycle. I needed to clear my head of this world and had enough cash for two weeks.

I was a left leaning non-practicing New York Jew. I was heading to Georgia where my father lived, then after, I’d be riding through other “southern” states like Alabama and Kentucky as I headed up through the Ohio River valley to my sister, then back home.

To be honest I was a little anxious about some of the areas I’d be riding through and sleeping in. “Man alone is easy prey.” Clint Eastwood said in one of his movies. And man alone on a motorcycle is even easier. Perhaps I would be indoctrinated into a clan or found dead in a farmer’s field or simply run off the road. These things have happened to others in the past. So I didn’t know what to expect.

After the visit with the old man in GA I headed northwest on state roads. It was raining in Kentucky and I parked under an overhang at a gas station to wait out the storm. I paid the forty-something skinny counter guy with the heavy southern accent. I nodded and didn’t want to give myself away.

I stood outside under the overhang sipping my hot coffee. He came out to smoke a cigarette and saw the license plate on the back of my loaded bike. I wanted to be anonymous riding through, but was no longer.

“You from New York?” I got tense at his inquiry and nodded slowly.

“No shit?” I guess they don’t get too many New Yorkers down there.

We started talking and the tension in my body eased.

I must’ve had four cups of coffee standing there talking to him.

“Git yurself some more.” He’d keep saying.

He told me about his family, gave me solid directions, about the upcoming town and some routes to avoid.

We weren’t northerner and southerner, just a couple of guys talking.

I learned on this trip that people generally just want to help, learn about others, and share about themselves.

Our conversation wasn’t political, or agenda based, and that is what I often find on the open road – people interested in each other. We are Americans, yes. But we are humans first. And humans are concerned with others, interested in who they are, where they came from, and well, where they’re going…

Softball and Zen are two ideas most would think are mutually exclusive – fat guys drinking beer and flowing meditation. Sure the waistlines aren’t what they once were, and reaching down to grab a grounder isn’t easy, but we still play with spirit. Running is definitely harder. There is no gliding down the base path gracefully. It’s more like, “Is that guy walking? He looks like he’s in pain.”

When I was a kid playing baseball, the game flowed for me with spirit and ease. I never thought about hitting to right field or left as I stood in the batter’s box. I just did it.

I now play softball in a forty and over league. I’m a little, a lot, slower, and I think, a lot more. Playing left field the other night I dove for one that though my mind thought I was moving fast enough to catch, my body knew I was not. I came up about two feet short with only grass in my glove. As the ball skipped by me to the fence, I wondered what happened. Age is what happened. Deteriorated skills. Ego. The center fielder close by laughed and enjoyed that we are all moving slower as he picked up the ball and threw it in.

Errors are a given in this league. Laughter a must.

My instincts used to dominate my fielding and hitting. I never judged what I was doing. I just did it and did it well, moving like a cat to my left or right in the field. At the plate I swung the bat like a Titan. Emotion and ego weren’t involved in the process.

Now the ball comes fast and I wear glasses and sometimes guess where the ball is going. Many I get. Some I don’t. I have to learn to let go and be in the moment. Because when I worry about missing the ball, I do. However, sometimes I miss it anyway.

My ego is demanding that I do better. It wants me to be as good as I was.

I try not to think too much about the pitch or what field I’m hitting to, not to be in the past or worry how I will look if I strike out or miss a catch. I have to get up to the plate, wait for the right pitch, and swing the bat hard. I shouldn’t play fearing mistakes, but play for the joy, camaraderie, and laughter. I will try playing for the Zen and flow of the moment, the way I always did.

Hi Mom, it’s me.

We haven’t spoken in a long time. But I got married. I know, I know, who would have thought, huh?

Yes, I even have kids now. Yes, they’re sweet kids. You’re very kind saying that they wouldn’t be anything else. You’d like Jessica. She’s the little one and is filled with love and laughter. She is pure light that kid.

And Jennifer, my wife, oh you’ve seen her. I think you would get a kick out of your daughter-in-law. Oh, you already do.

Well I wasn’t sure what you could see from over there. More than I realize. That figures. I know, I know, I never thought I wanted kids or a wife for that matter. But I guess things change. You’re glad I changed my mind? Thanks, Mom.

Oh by the way, happy birthday. I’m sorry I can’t be there with you to celebrate. Hopefully dad is with you and made you a cake. Though cooking was never his forte. I know, I know, he liked everything burnt.