For much of my life, I thought families came with black sheep and white sheep. The white sheep were the ones who fit in. They followed the rules, made the family proud and somehow understood what was expected of them. Then there was the black sheep. The difficult one. The disappointment. The one who didn’t quite fit the family picture…

My father was a big man in just about every sense of the word. He was a big, redheaded Irishman who weighed well over 200 pounds and had played professional football for the Pittsburgh Steelers back in the leather-helmet days. Then he had me. I topped out at about five-foo-nine…

There comes a time in life when you have to stop walking down a one-way street. It took me a long time to understand that. I’m in my 80s now, and I’ve outlived every close friend I ever had. I’m not talking about acquaintances or people I knew casually. I’m talking about the friends you could call at two in the morning. The people you laughed with, worked with…

When I was a younger man, I thought I had the rest of my life planned. I wanted to write songs, travel, buy a motorhome, and eventually settle somewhere on the beach in Todos Santos, Baja California. After decades of working, I believed I had earned the chance to slow down and enjoy life at my own pace. Life had other plans…

I heard a simple line in a movie the other night: “What doesn’t bend, breaks.” It wasn’t meant to be profound. It was just a passing remark before the story moved on. But it stayed with me. As I was getting ready for bed that night, another image appeared in my mind. I could see an entire riverbank covered with smooth river rocks…

I have a question for you. How many poems have you written that no one has ever read? How many stories, letters, journal entries, or treasured memories are tucked away in a drawer or saved on your computer? Perhaps you’ve written about your childhood, your parents, your husband or wife, your children…

The other morning, I found myself listening to a song I hadn’t heard in quite a while. It was “Monsters” by James Blunt. The first time I heard that song years ago, it hit me like a freight train. Something about the sadness in the lyrics, the emotion in his voice…

Recently, I took a trip to Idaho to visit my son. He’ll be 56 this July. I adopted him when he was six weeks old, and from the moment he came into my life, he brought me more joy than I could ever explain in a sentence or two. We’ve had a good life together. Not perfect. No life is. But real. As parents, I think we sometimes freeze our children in time without realizing it…

Lately, I’ve been looking at getting older a little differently. I don’t see it as something slipping away anymore. I’ve started to think of it more like a 1943 Ford – still standing, still running, but with a few parts that have needed attention along the way. If I take inventory, I’ve had my share of work done. There’s a screw in my knee from a skiing accident back in…

There’s something I’ve come to notice as I’ve gotten older, and once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. It is this basic truth: We don’t give ourselves much credit. When I look back on my life, the facts are there. I built and ran businesses. I bought, remodeled, and sold twenty-six homes. I earned a pilot’s license. I played in bands…