Reflections

Why, Bill?

My wife has asked me a fair question.

Why are you doing this?

Why put so much of yourself out there?

Why risk the snickers, the criticism, the people who misunderstand you?

Is it worth the backlash?

Why, Bill?

I have been thinking about that.

Recently, four of my books have been read all the way through:

The One Who Stayed

The Man Who Stayed

Advocate and Witness

Still Functioning

At first, I saw them as four very different books.

Then I realized they are not.

They are four different ways of...

I was thinking this morning about how much work we do in life that nobody ever sees.

Not work in the usual sense.

I mean the things you do and, if you do them well, nothing happens.

You make the phone call before the problem gets worse.

You remember the thing everybody else forgot.

You sit in a waiting room.

You drive somebody somewhere.

You get up early.

You stay a little later.

You answer the phone when you really don't want to.

Sometimes the accomplishment is simply that the wheels stayed on.

I know...

Every September 11, we see the buildings again.

The fire.

The smoke.

That impossible blue sky.

The collapse.

But the older I get, the less I think about the buildings.

I think about the people inside them.

Somebody woke up that morning and kissed a spouse goodbye.

Somebody left a coffee cup in the sink.

Somebody complained about traffic.

Somebody promised a child, “I’ll see you tonight.”

Somebody had just gotten married.

Somebody had a birthday coming.

Some mother was waiting for a call.

Some child went to...

I never really set out to become an author.

For years, I wrote things down because I needed somewhere to put them.

Thoughts about faith. Family. Law. Responsibility. Grief. Memory. My daughter. The people I have loved. The people I have lost. The strange little moments that somehow stay with you longer than the important ones are supposed to.

Some of it became poetry.

Some of it became fiction.

Some of it became books about carrying responsibility when you do not have the luxury of simply putting...