I can remember Dad helping me get dressed for church as a little boy. Making sure I had the right shoe for the right foot, helping me buckle my belt, pulling up my socks, buttoning my shirt, brushing my hair—what little I had of it with my buzz cut. “All right skeesix,” he said, “you’re all ready.”

There’s a photo of summer pinned to the bulletin board in the kitchen that I stare at all year long. The beach chairs, the big tent we set out in front of the beach rental, the endless expanse of sand, a sliver of water and our noses in a book.

By the end of the week I’ll be there!

What do you wear to a vinegar festival? “A sour expression,” a friend of ours suggested.

The festival was hosted by Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourette at Our Lady of The Resurrection Monastery in LaGrangeville, New York. Sounds like quite a mouthful, but the place looked a lot more down-home than that and the Benedictine Brother Victor was engaging and approachable, wearing a dungaree apron over his gray cassock. 

Why does it always rain after you do the watering?

Why does it never rain when you remember your umbrella?

This is really going to be about prayer—I promise—but let me start with the weather. It was really hot last week. And it hadn’t rained in a long while. The grass in the park is looking pretty parched and the crabapple tree outside our kitchen window is losing its leaves. In July. And yet on Saturday, there was supposed to be this tremendous downpour.

In the past week my son Timothy has cooked dinner for me twice. Both nights Carol had meetings and it was just going to be the two of us boys and I figured, coming home at 8:30, that we’d send out for Chinese or maybe try the new Thai place that has opened up on the corner.

On the contrary, I came home to find Tim chopping scallions on the cutting board—good knife skills, Tim—heating up oil in the big skillet and consulting an opened cookbook. “We’re going to have fried rice tonight, Dad,” he said to me.

Interruptions in my prayer time. It’s so hard to see them as part of my prayer life, until I get bonked over the head or shaken by the shoulders.

Today I dashed down the stairs to the subway train, gym bag in hand, ready to settle down for my usual contemplation time.

The other day at the gym, first thing in the morning, I tried to remember the name of the vice president of the United States.  

My mind went blank. I thumbed through mental Manila files, drawers of them filled up with useless knowledge, like the names of my grammar school teachers, but no, I couldn’t find the name of the vice president.

Last week, before the Tony Awards, I was at a performance of August Wilson’s play Fences starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis. 

Denzel plays one of those larger-than-life characters, Troy Maxson, a garbage collector and cracker-barrel philosopher with long monologues meant to rivet an audience. Sometimes when you see screen actors on stage, stars like Washington, they can disappoint because they’re used to making an impression for a camera, not a big house with hundreds of rapt theatergoers. 

I came home to find the old green towel hanging in the bathroom. “What’s this out for?” I asked. Carol used to use it for cutting the boys’ hair.

“I cut Eve’s hair.”

The boys were home this weekend and they asked if I wanted to go on a run with them. “I don’t go as fast you,” I warned, “and I don’t go as far.”

I was giving them the opportunity to go off on their own. “You can set the pace,” they kindly said.

We headed out and I was all set to turn left, up to the park, my usual route, but Tim said, “Let’s go some place different. How ‘bout down by the river?” 

“Okay,” I said, “but it’s a long hill coming back up.”