October 25th, 2026

 

   When I had my first apartment in Oak Park, I did my laundry at a laundromat up the block.

   Back then, I stuffed my dirty clothes into an old duffle bag I bought at the Army/Navy surplus store in Forest Park.

    I am chalking today's Morning Chalkboard from a laundromat up the street from where I live today.

     Thirty-six years separate these two laundromats.

     Thirty-six years packed with a career, bachelorhood, marriage, fatherhood, family, divorce, and back to bachelorhood.

          And apparently, back to the laundromat.

   When I was doing my laundry in 1990, I was embarrassed that I couldn't wash my clothes in the comfort of my own home.

    When you are twenty-four and working at a place where everyone seems to be making a shit ton of money, you don't exactly feel like you are setting the world on fire schlepping an old duffle bag of dirty laundry into a coin-operated laundromat on Oak Park Avenue.

     One of the older guys at work told me he took his laundry to the cleaners. They washed it, folded it, and had it ready for him after the closing bell.

    I tried that a couple of times.

    It was lush.

  Unfortunately, it was also a little beyond the budget of an arb clerk working in the ten-year pit.

   So, back to the duffle bag and the quarters.

   Here I am at sixty, schlepping two big bags of laundry into another laundromat.

   I'm not sure why a twenty-four-year-old needed one bag and a sixty-year-old needs two. I do know they seem a hell of a lot heavier these days.

      But something else has changed.

  The laundromat no longer carries that little badge of failure I pinned on it when I was young.

    I'm not embarrassed to be doing my laundry at six o’clock on a Sunday morning.

     In fact, it has become a peaceful little ritual.

  There is something satisfying about the hum of washing machines, the smell of clean clothes, and having absolutely nowhere else you need to be.

    The technology has made it a helluva lot easier.

      In 1990, I needed five bucks in quarters and a box of detergent.

   Today, an app takes my money, starts the machine, and dispenses the detergent and softener.

   Thirty-six years of progress, and I am still watching my underwear go around in circles.

    Which brings me to the words on today's chalkboard.

      "Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild…"

  Those words belong to William Butler Yeats, who wrote of escaping the troubles of the human world.

   At twenty-four, I was desperate to escape the laundromat. I wanted the house, the washer and dryer, the money, and all the things I thought would prove I had finally arrived.

   Somewhere along those thirty-six years, I got many of those things.

      I also lost a few.

    That's life, that’s what all the people say.

 At sixty, I realize that the things I once thought were signs of success weren't necessarily the things that made life successful.

   The young man with the duffle bag was so busy worrying about where he wasn't that he couldn't appreciate where he was.

    The old man with two bags knows better. Maybe Yeats was onto something.

  Sometimes we need to come away from the noise, the expectations, and the endless comparisons that clutter our lives.

  Sometimes the waters and the wild aren't some magical place far away.

  Sometimes they are at a laundromat on a quiet Sunday morning.

  Sometimes it takes thirty-six years to discover that being back where you started doesn't mean you haven't gotten anywhere.

   Especially when you've got all your laundry finished before seven in the morning.

    A special shout-out to JoJo on National Mother-in-Law Day!

 I might not be married anymore, but that doesn't mean I don't still have a mother-in-law to keep an eye on!

   More importantly, I want to make sure JoJo continues spending time with the Shepkids. Divorce might change the family arrangement, but it doesn't erase the family connections.

      And those connections are worth keeping. Happy Mother-in-Law Day, JoJo!

      Finally, Chalkheads…

      …enjoy this last Sunday before we turn the clocks back next weekend.

 Next Sunday, November 1st, we get that extra hour of sleep, but we also start surrendering our late-afternoon sunshine.

    So get outside today, soak up a little autumn, and enjoy the daylight while we've got it.

    There is still plenty of living to do before the sun goes down.

Have a fanfuckingtastic Sunday.

Go at life with gusto and astonishment and don't forget to put a smile on the sun!

October 24th, 2026

 

         It depends on how you look at it…

What an incredible philosophy to find in a friend’s father’s obituary. A few words that say a shit ton about how someone chose to live.

            It reminds me of how Joni looked at both sides.

     Think about it. Two people can look at the same situation and see entirely different things. One sees an obstacle while the other sees an opportunity. One sees a rainy Saturday as a ruined weekend. The other sees an excuse to stay home, make soup, and read a good book.

    Neither is wrong, they are simply looking at the same world through different windows.

    An obituary is an odd place to discover a lesson about perspective. After all, the person whose life is being remembered has run out of tomorrows, while the rest of us are still busy worrying about ours.

        At twenty, sixty seemed ancient. At sixty, twenty seems like yesterday.

  When we are young, we measure life by what lies ahead. As we grow older, we begin measuring it by what we have experienced. The disappointments that once seemed catastrophic become stories we tell at Thanksgiving dinner. The ordinary afternoons we barely noticed become the memories we would give anything to revisit.

    That is the great gift of growing older. We begin to understand that happiness is not always about changing what is in front of us. Sometimes it is about changing how we see it.

    I wouldn't suggest that everything in life can be simplified by looking at it in a different light.

    Death is death, grief is grief, and a broken heart still hurts, regardless of the angle from which you examine it.

        …But perspective can change what we carry away from all of those negative experiences.

    We can look at the death of someone we love and see only the years we will not have together anymore. Or we can look at that same life and feel gratitude for the years we did have together.

      Both feelings are legitimate and both can exist in the same heart. Maybe that is what makes those eight words so powerful. We spend the first half of our lives trying to change the world around us and the second half discovering that sometimes all we needed to change was the way we looked at it.

     This morning, I found eight words in an obituary that made me reconsider the day ahead.

                 It depends on how you look at it….

  The sun rises in the east whether we are happy or miserable. The clock keeps ticking whether we are grateful or complaining. Another perfectly good Saturday is sitting outside our front door, waiting to be lived.

            It depends on how you look at it.

    And the beautiful thing is, we get to choose.

       I choose gusto and astonishment. I choose to love rather than hate. I choose to see the blessings before the burdens. Because Sunday October 25^th isn’t promised, but Saturday October 24^th is sitting right in front of my big ass.

October 23rd, 2026

 
    I think I may be losing my curiosity.
     Not all at once and nothing dramatic. I just stopped being curious somewhere along the way. Apparently, I decided to quit asking questions before curiosity had a chance to kill the cat.
     I don't have the same urge to wander into unfamiliar neighborhoods. Trying a new restaurant requires more thought than it should. A new recipe seems unnecessary when I already know how to make something I like.
   I have always said that one of life's great pleasures is meeting strangers. Yet somewhere along the line, I have become rather good at turning strangers into acquaintances and leaving it at that.
     Is this what happens when we get older? Does curiosity slowly surrender to comfort?
     Even the great mysteries of my Catholic faith don't occupy my imagination the way they once did. I have decided that sooner rather than later, I will have all of eternity to figure that crap out.
      There is a certain arrogance in assuming we already know enough. I am, after all, a creature of habit. Same taverns, same routes, same restaurants, same mass time,  same conversations, same bottle of beer, and same wake up time. There is comfort in knowing what comes next, but there isn't much adventure in it.
      …and comfort, when we are not paying attention, can become a prison.
   My Oldman spent years reminding me that there is no such thing as a stupid question. The older we get, the more questions we ought to be asking.
     This morning's Chalkboard reminded me of that.
   Most of us remember the scene in Ted Lasso when Ted stands in an English pub throwing darts and recalling the words from Walt Whitman: "Be curious, not judgmental."
    It is a powerful scene, but what stays with me isn't the darts or Ted's victory over the snobby prick. It is the reminder that curiosity requires us to look beyond what we think we already know.
        Especially when it comes to us.
    I ought to be curious about the man I have become and where he is heading. About the people I love and the people I haven't met. About my children, my friends, my relationships, my faith, my mistakes, and whatever growth I can still squeeze out of these remaining years.
    I should be curious enough to take a different road home, sit at an unfamiliar tavern, try something I cannot pronounce, or ask somebody a question and actually listen to their answer.
     Curiosity doesn't require a passport, a reservation, or a grand adventure. Sometimes it only requires the willingness to interrupt an ordinary Tuesday.
    Next week, the lights will begin coming on before dinner. The sun will surrender another hour of our afternoons, and soon we will push the clocks back into the long darkness of winter, but shorter days don't have to mean smaller lives.
    Maybe that is the challenge for this last full weekend before daylight saving time ends.
Go somewhere different.
Ask another question.
Start a conversation.
Learn something new.
Challenge yourself.
   At sixty, I don't need to have everything figured out, I hope I never do.
      Because the day I stop wondering what else life has to offer is the day I start growing old instead of getting older.
       Be curious, you beautiful Chalkheads.
          Go put a little gusto and astonishment into your weekend.

October 22nd, 2026

 
    I was halfway through a Hail Mary on my drive to work this morning when some jagoff coming the other way had on his high beams.
     "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee... This fucking guy with his brights on!"
   That is how my conversations with the Blessed Mother went this morning.
I pray a shit ton, I swear a shit ton, and sometimes I manage to do both in the same sentence.
   I am sure the Virgin Mary has gotten used to me by now. She nudges my ma and says, "Here comes your son again. Let's see how far he gets through this one before he calls somebody an asshole."
     Anyway, enough religion. Let's talk pizza.
          Today is Tavern Style Pizza Day.
   I celebrated a little early last night with the Shepley Brothers. We had ourselves a beautiful thin-crust pizza. Crispy as a cracker, just the right amount of sauce, and enough cheese to cover the top. Sausage on one side for Fritz and pepperoni on the other for George.
          A perfect Chicago pizza on a Wednesday night.
    Now, let's talk about this "tavern style" business.
  The ultra-thin, cracker-like crust we Chicagoans grew up eating has its roots in the neighborhood taverns. Around the time of World War II, tavern owners figured out that putting a little pizza in front of their customers was a pretty good way to keep them drinking.
    A salty piece of pizza makes a man thirsty. A thirsty man orders another beer, and another beer makes him hungry.
      That is not a business model, that's perpetual motion.
   The pizzas were cut into little squares, or what we called party cuts, so a guy could grab a piece, put it on a cocktail napkin, and keep one hand free for his beer.
     For generations, Chicago had two kinds of pizza. Thin crust and deep dish, and despite what the Food Network and every tourist who ever visited Navy Pier might tell you, most Chicagoans grew up eating thin crust.
    Deep dish was something you ordered when your cousins from Iowa came to town and wanted the authentic Chicago experience.
    The rest of us were eating thin crust on Friday nights, drinking RC Cola, and watching television.
     Nobody called it tavern style, Nobody.
    Somewhere around 2005, a food writer from Pittsburgh started using the term, and before long, everybody was acting like Chicago had invented an entirely new species of pizza.
    Vito & Nick's has been making its famous thin crust for generations. Home Run Inn on 31st Street wasn't asking anybody if they wanted tavern style either. They made pizza, Chicago pizza.
    My old man never walked into the kitchen and announced, "Hey, kids, who wants some tavern style pizza tonight?"
    He would pick up the telephone and order a large sausage and onion with a two-liter bottle of RC.
       End of discussion.
    But there was one thing my dad always said when he ordered pizza, and it is a piece of wisdom I have carried with me my entire life.
      "NO CUT."
         Two simple words.
     My dad always ordered his pizza uncut. His reasoning was brilliant.
  When you cut a pizza into twenty-six little squares and throw it in a cardboard box, those little bastards can slide all over the place on the ride home. Cheese ends up on the lid. Sausage ends up in the corner. By the time you get home, the pizza looks like it survived a rollover accident on the Eisenhower.
Leave the damn thing uncut, and it travels as one beautiful, intact pizza. It also stays hotter because you are not creating a bunch of little openings for the heat to escape. Then you get home, grab the pizza cutter, and slice it up yourself.
      My old man wasn't a scientist, but he understood pizza transportation better than most engineers understand bridge construction.
      Here is a little advice from the Morning Chalkboard. Always order your pizza NO CUT. You will thank me later.
      I don't get all bent out of shape over the term tavern style. Some Chicagoans react to those words the same way they react to somebody putting ketchup on a hot dog.
     Personally, I give two shits what you call it. Thin crust, tavern style, Chicago style or just pizza.
    Just make it crispy, cut it into squares, and don't screw up the sauce.
     There is one term I absolutely cannot tolerate.
                          "Za."
      Who the hell started calling pizza "za"?
Another thing that I never heard my father say, "Hey, I'm gonna order a za from Joseph's Pizza for dinner."
    We have been saying it correctly for a hundred years, leave it alone.
 We have got another gorgeous October day lined up here in Chicago. Sunshine, warmth, and one more afternoon to enjoy before Mother Nature remembers we are supposed to be heading toward winter.
So, grab yourself a thin-crust pizza, a two-liter bottle of pop, or a cold six-pack of Old Style.
     Find a comfortable chair, sit outside, and enjoy the sunshine Chalkheads.

October 21st, 2026

 
    Today is the last day the sun will set after 6:00 PM until next March. That is a depressing little fact to start a Wednesday morning, but we will Gloria Gaynor for another day.
   This is my favorite time of year. The morning alarm goes off with the temperature hovering around 49 degrees, and by the time the afternoon rolls around, we are flirting with 70. The kind of weather that makes you want to sit outside with an Old Style and watch the world go by.
    Unfortunately, Mother Nature is about to pull the shades down before dinner.
     Today also happens to be Back to the Future Day. On October 21, 2015, Marty McFly arrived from 1985 in his flying DeLorean, expecting hoverboards, flying cars, and a world that looked nothing like the one he left behind.
    Eleven years later, we are still sitting in traffic, arguing with our phones, and waiting for Elon to invent a decent flying car.
   I have often wondered what I would do if Doc Brown pulled up in front of my house and offered me a ride back through time.
   There are definitely a few dates I'd like to revisit. A handful of conversations I would manage differently. Some decisions I would reconsider, and a couple of people I would tell to go pound sand.
           …And maybe a few people I'd hold onto a little longer.
     But here is the problem with rearranging yesterday. You never know what you are going to erase from tomorrow.
     Change one decision, take one different turn, walk through one different door, and the three Shepkids never come into my life.
      That is a price I am not willing to pay.
     Besides, knowing my luck, I would end up tending bar in the French Quarter, drinking my profits, telling the same stories to tourists, and spending forty years promising myself I would finish that first book.
     Come to think of it, that doesn't sound entirely terrible, but I would miss the Shepkids.
       …And that brings me to today's Chalkboard.
             "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."
   We spend an awful lot of time thinking about the big decisions that shape our lives. The marriages, the jobs, the mistakes, the roads we took and the ones we didn't, but it is the little things that matter just as much.
     Holding a door for someone who looks like our ma. Buying the tired dad behind you in line a cup of coffee. Calling an old friend who has a loved one in the hospital. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt when they are having a horse shit day.
     I hammer this one constantly. You never know what somebody else is carrying around, and you just never know when an act of kindness might change the direction of somebody's afternoon.
    We cannot climb into a DeLorean and fix yesterday, and we sure as hell don't know what tomorrow has planned, but we can do something about today.
Be kind.
Do good stuff.
Don't be a jagoff.
       It isn’t hard to do...
          …And unlike time travel, it doesn't require 1.21 gigawatts.
   The sun has a smile until six o’clock. Grab a friend, grab a cocktail, point your lounge chair west, feel the astonishment, and share the gusto.

October 20th, 2026

 

    I have a friend whom I have never actually met. Her name is Kramer, and yesterday she posted a video about a woman who was disappointed that nobody called her on her birthday.

      She received plenty of text messages, but not a single phone call.

   The point of Kramer's video was simple. Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten the difference between sending somebody a message and actually talking to them on the telephone or as Kramer put it, the banana.

    Not everything deserves a text. Some things deserve a phone call. A birthday is one of them.

       Just before I watched Kramer's video, my phone rang.

          It was Mo.

   I met Mo on Bumble about six months after my separation. I was wandering through the emotional wreckage of a broken marriage, trying to figure out what the hell I am going to do with the rest of my life. Bumble seemed as good a place as any to start looking for answers.

          That was nine years ago.

   Mo and I never became a couple, but we became something that has turned out to be way better, we became friends.

     Through the divorce, the uncertainty, the disappointments, and all those days when life seemed determined to kick me squarely in the nuts, Mo was there.

      She has been one of my biggest supporters. Bigger, in some ways, than people I had known for decades.

       There is something worth thinking about in that.

  We spend our lives collecting friendships, believing that the longer we have known somebody, the stronger the bond must be, but life does not work that way. Sometimes somebody walks into your life through a door you never expected to open and ends up occupying a place you never imagined they would.

    Sometimes the people who show up for you aren't the people you expected, and sometimes the people you expected don't show up at all.

       Yesterday, on a beautiful autumn afternoon, Mo picked up the phone and called me.

      No special occasion, no emergency, no elaborate reason.

       She just wanted to talk, and it meant a hell of a lot.

    I suppose that is what Kramer was getting at. A text tells somebody you are thinking about them. A phone call gives them a little piece of your day. Your voice, your laughter, your undivided attention. Things that can't get squeezed between a pile of crap emoji and an LOL.

There is a difference between being remembered and being made to feel important.

        Today's quote reads…

       "They did not know it was impossible, so they did it."

   It is a line commonly attributed to Mark Twain, although nobody seems entirely certain he actually said it.

      At the bottom of today's Chalkboard, I wrote the word INCONCEIVABLE!

    Any member of Gen X should immediately hear Wallace Shawn's voice from The Princess Bride. Vizzini spends half the movie declaring things inconceivable, only to discover that the world has very little interest in what he considers possible.

    Nine years ago, the idea that a woman I met on a dating app would become one of the most dependable friends of my adult life would have seemed inconceivable.

           Yet here we are.

   Maybe that is the beauty of life. We don't always know what is possible because we haven't lived long enough to see it happen.

      Friendship isn't measured by how many years somebody has known you, but by how often they remind you that you fucking matter.

    My imperfect sun has a shit-eating grin this morning. It is supposed to reach 69 degrees today, but I chalked 68 instead. The number 69 either makes people uncomfortable or gets them horny, and it is far too early in the morning to be dealing with either group.

       Besides, 68 is a perfectly respectable number.

   Somewhere between an unexpected phone call, an old friendship that began in an unlikely place, and a sunny October afternoon, I was reminded of something.

    The inconceivable isn't always something extraordinary that changes the world. Sometimes it's something ordinary that changes your day.

       Pick up the phone.

    You never know how much it might mean to the person on the other end.

 Okay you Chalkheads… it is Tuesday and I’m already in, in a daydream.

October 19th, 2026

 
   There is a difference between being a traveler and being a tourist, and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with how many stamps you have in your passport.
    A tourist goes through the motions. A traveler uses his senses.
    A tourist looks at the scenery. A traveler becomes part of it.
    A tourist takes a bus to see something worth photographing. A traveler gets off the bus, wanders down the street, follows the smell of something cooking, hears laughter coming from a tavern, and walks inside to find out what the hell is so funny.
         One takes pictures of the world. The other experiences it.
     You don't have to go to Paris, Rome, or some little village in Tuscany to be a traveler. You can do it on a Tuesday afternoon in your own hometown. You just have to be willing to participate in the life happening around you.
     I have mentioned before that I do a lot of things alone. I will go to a concert, a restaurant, a festival, or a ballgame without giving a second thought to whether somebody is coming along.
        I may be alone, but I am never lonely.
         There is a big difference.
   Being alone means you showed up without somebody. Being lonely means you haven't figured out how to enjoy the company of the world around you.
    I have discovered that the world is full of interesting people if you are willing to put down your phone, look somebody in the eye, and say hello.
    The other day, I wandered into the York for a burger and to watch the Indiana football game. That was the entire itinerary. A cheeseburger, a cold beer, and a few hours of football.
     I ended up meeting a couple from Oklahoma who were in town for a funeral.
       Think about that for a moment.
  Two people had traveled hundreds of miles under unfortunate circumstances. I had traveled a few miles because I was hungry and wanted to watch football.
       Somehow, our paths crossed in a neighborhood bar.
We talked, we laughed and we shared a little piece of our lives that none of us had planned on sharing that afternoon.
    I went looking for a hamburger and a football game and came home with a story about two people from Oklahoma.
       That is traveling.
    A couple of weeks ago, I went to an Oktoberfest celebration. I ended up spending the afternoon with a group of visitors from Canada and England. Complete strangers when the day began. Before it was over, I was taking them to a German restaurant on Chicago's North Side, a place they never would have discovered on their own.
    They came to Chicago as tourists. For a few hours, we were all travelers and that is the beauty of it.
  Nobody planned the afternoon. Nobody made reservations for a friendship. There wasn't a tour guide holding up a little flag or a bus waiting at the curb.
Just a handful of people who happened to be in the same place at the same time and decided to enjoy each other's company.
    I suspect that is how some of the best moments in life happen.
  We spend an awful lot of time planning our lives. We make schedules, set appointments, establish routines, and convince ourselves that a successful day is one in which everything goes according to plan.
Wake up.
Go to work.
Come home.
Eat dinner.
Watch television.
Go to bed.
Rinse and repeat.
    There is nothing wrong with a routine. Sometimes we become tourists in our own lives.
   We ride the same train every day, stare out the same window, and never bother to get off and see what is happening on the other side of the street. While we are busy checking things off our daily list, life is putting on one hell of a show.
    There is an old man sitting at the end of the bar with eighty years of stories nobody has bothered to ask him about. There is a musician playing his heart out in a little neighborhood joint for twelve people. There is a trail along a river on the other side of Riverside that is just as interesting as the Seine or Thames.
    There is a stranger sitting next to you who might have something to say that changes the way you look at the world or maybe he just tells a dirty joke that makes you laugh.
       Either way, you have gained something.
    I think one of the great mistakes we make is believing that we have to go somewhere extraordinary to experience something extraordinary.
   We save our curiosity for vacations. We save our sense of adventure for long weekends. We save our willingness to meet new people for places where nobody knows our name.
    Then we come home, unpack the suitcase, and put our curiosity back in the closet until the next trip. What a shitty waste of a perfectly good life.
    The world doesn't stop being interesting just because you have returned to your own ZIP code.
     In fact, I would argue that the older we get, the more important it becomes to keep traveling through the ordinary days of our lives. Not necessarily farther, just deeper.
   Pay attention to the smells coming from a bakery on a chilly morning. Listen to the conversation at the next table. Feel the autumn leaves crunch beneath your loafers. Walk into a place you have never been. Order something you have never tried. Strike up a conversation with somebody who doesn't look, think, or live like you.
     Get your hands dirty and use your senses. Be curious enough to ask a question and patient enough to listen to the answer, and don't be afraid to do something by yourself. You might discover that being alone is sometimes the best way to meet somebody new.
    I have collected a shit ton of things over the years, most of which I should have thrown away a long time ago, but the things I treasure most are not sitting on a shelf collecting dust.
   They are the conversations, the laughter, the unexpected friendships, and the stories that began when I walked out the door with absolutely no idea what the day had in store for me.
    The best souvenirs in life aren't things we bring home. They are the people who become part of our story.
         So, travel through your life, Chalkheads.
Touch it.
Smell it.
 Hear it.
Taste it.
Feel it.
     Do not spend your days sitting behind the glass of a tour bus, watching your own life pass by while somebody else tells you what you are looking at.
            Get off the fucking tour bus.
   Take the unfamiliar path. Walk along that river. Sit down next to a stranger. Buy somebody a beer. Ask a question. Listen to a story.
You don't need a passport, a suitcase, or a plane ticket.
     You just need to open your eyes, open your mind, and occasionally open your mouth.
    Because someday, when the journey is over, nobody is going to care how many pictures you took along the way, but there might be a couple from Oklahoma who remember the guy they met while watching a football game in Chicago. Somewhere in Canada or England, there might be somebody telling a story about a Chicago guy named Jumbo who took them to a German restaurant after an Oktoberfest celebration.
     That is a pretty good way to leave your footprints on the world.
   Do not just pass through your life. Get your hands dirty, make new friends, raise a little hell, and be astonished by the gusto you find along the way…

October 18th, 2026

 
   I ended up in a cemetery on a beautiful autumn afternoon because I was tired of watching a stressful football game.
   It didn't help that the weather outside was more enjoyable than sitting in a tavern full of televisions showing college football. The sun was shining, the leaves were turning, and I decided that spending a little time with the dead might be more relaxing than watching the living beat the shit out of each other over a football.
        So I went to visit my father-in-law.
   Ed Bergmann has been resting at Bronswood Cemetery since late 2023. We called him PopPop. He was a brilliant man, and someone whose wisdom I still find myself reaching for long after he stopped handing it out.
     I placed my rosary on his headstone, pulled a cigar out of my pocket, and settled in for a visit.
    It wasn't my usual cigar. A friend had given it to me for my birthday, and I figured an afternoon with PopPop was as good an occasion as any to light it.
    When I visit the cemetery and find myself the only living person in the neighborhood, I talk out loud.
     I pray out loud.
     I swear out loud.
     I ask questions out loud.
           …And occasionally, I get answers.
   Yes, you read that correctly.
         I have conversations with people who reside in heaven.
   Before you start looking for a psychiatrist's phone number, understand that I know perfectly well PopPop isn't sitting behind that headstone smoking a cigar, but sometimes the people who knew us best leave enough of themselves behind that we can still hear what they would have said.
         …And Ed Bergmann always had something to say.
   My biggest question that afternoon was a simple one.
                   "When the hell can I stop worrying?"
    His answer came almost immediately.
              "I worried right up until my last breath."
      Well, that wasn't the fucking answer I was looking for.
   I had driven over there hoping for a little peace of mind, and the old man had just informed me that worrying was apparently a lifetime subscription.
              Then he asked me a question.
      "Do you have a roadmap in your glovebox?"
                         A roadmap?
     I haven't carried a roadmap in my car since the Clinton administration. Somewhere along the way, Rand McNally lost its place to a voice working inside my dashboard. A stoic voice that tells me where to turn and always reminds me that I missed my exit.
       PopPop wasn't talking about getting from Riverside to Bronswood. He wanted to know if I had a roadmap for my life.
      Yesterday's Chalkboard was about my uncle, another one of the smartest men I have ever known. My father-in-law belongs on that same short list. Another brilliant man who had spent a lifetime accumulating knowledge. Now he is informing me that I would worry until I died and then asking me to retrieve an atlas that doesn't exist.
     I am fairly certain Rand McNally never published The Life and Times of Jumbo Shepley.
     If they had, it probably would have come with several pages missing, a few wrong turns, and a warning not to follow the driver's instincts after dark. But the more I thought about his question, the more sense it made. There isn't a roadmap for our lives.
    We spend an enormous amount of time worrying about where we are going, whether we are headed in the right direction, and what will be waiting around the next bend. We want to know how the story ends before we have finished living the middle.
       We want guarantees.
   We want a clearly marked highway with rest stops, gas stations, and a big red arrow telling us we are going to be all right.
     Unfortunately our personal map isn’t stuffed beneath a pile of old napkins from Parkey's and a flashlight with dead batteries.
        Good luck finding your destination with a map that doesn’t exist.
   Rand McNally does not print our roadmap. It is imprinted on our hearts and written into our souls. Every person we have loved, every mistake we have made, every loss we have suffered, and every unexpected kindness we have received has left a mark on it.
             The roads appear as we travel them, and sometimes the roads we never wanted to take turn out to be the ones that teach us the most.
     I was thinking about all of this between puffs of my cigar and Hail Mary’s on my rosary.
    As the afternoon passed, my cigar grew shorter. I looked down at the unfamiliar band wrapped around what remained of it.
         Printed in small letters were five words.
             GOLD IS TESTED BY FIRE.
                  Well, I will be damned.
 There is an old proverb behind those words, and its meaning reaches back thousands of years into the Bible.
   In the Book of Sirach, we read that gold is tested in fire and those acceptable to God are tested in the furnace of adversity.
   The First Letter of Peter uses a similar image, comparing the testing of faith to gold being refined by fire.
    The ancient idea is simple. Gold is placed in a furnace because intense heat separates the precious metal from its impurities. What survives the fire is revealed to be valuable.
            Human beings are not all that different.
   We are tested by disappointment, heartbreak, illness, financial troubles, broken relationships, and the deaths of people who we thought would always be there.
    We are tested by raising children, watching them grow, worrying about their futures, and discovering that being a parent doesn't come with an expiration date on anxiety.
    We are tested by loving people we cannot protect from everything life has waiting for them, and sometimes we are tested simply by getting out of bed and facing another day.
     The fire doesn't always make us stronger. Sometimes it leaves scars. Sometimes it takes things from us that we will never get back, but it can also reveal something about us that we didn't know was there.
     Patience, compassion, Faith, forgiveness, and the ability to keep loving after loss.
      Maybe that is the gold.
    I looked at PopPop's headstone and thought about the answer he had given me.
        He worried until his last breath.
                    Of course he did.
   He was a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a man who cared deeply about the people in his life. Why would I expect someone who spent a lifetime loving his family to suddenly stop worrying about them?
       Maybe worrying isn't always a sign that something is wrong. Sometimes it is simply the price we pay for giving a damn.
     But there has to be a difference between caring about tomorrow and allowing tomorrow to steal the joy from today. That is probably what the old man was trying to tell me.
        I can't eliminate every worry. I can't predict every turn, and I sure as hell can't unfold a map that shows me exactly where this life is taking me.
        What I can do is enjoy the stretch of road I am traveling right now. I can sit in the sunshine. I can smoke a good cigar. I can say a few prayers. I can remember a man I loved and laugh at the advice I imagine him giving me, and I can accept that some of the finest things in life are temporary.
         A cigar is a perfect example.
   You light it knowing that eventually it will disappear. Every puff brings it closer to becoming a little pile of ash, but nobody lights a cigar hoping to preserve it forever.
     The pleasure is in the smoking. The conversation, the company, and the moment.
   A cigar eventually becomes ash, but the conversation you had while smoking it can last a lifetime.
    As I finished mine, I looked again at the words on the band.
                        Gold is tested by fire.
  The cigar needed fire to become what it was meant to be. Without the flame, it would have remained nothing more than rolled tobacco.
     And without the fires we have walked through, perhaps we wouldn't recognize the precious things that remain in our lives.
    I had arrived at Bronswood trying to escape the anxiety of a football game. I left thinking about the much bigger worries that follow me through life. PopPop didn't give me a roadmap or the answer I wanted to hear. He didn't promise me that the road ahead would be easy, and he definitely didn’t tell me that I will stop worrying.
       Instead, I came away with something better.
A reminder that I don't need to know every turn in the road to appreciate the journey, and that the things worth loving will sometimes be the very things that keep me awake at night.
     I said goodbye to Ed, packed up my rosary, and headed back to the car.
The cigar was gone. The afternoon was slipping away, and the shadows were bending across the gravestones.
     I don't know what the hell tomorrow will bring, but I know that I enjoyed a beautiful autumn afternoon with my father-in-law…
            …And for a little while, that was enough.
        Okay you Chalkheads! Go find the gusto and astonishment that October 18^th brings.