Sidetracked Charley

My brother always told me I was dumb. Not daily but often enough I got that he considered it his mission in life to make me believe it. He was clearly in league with my mother, or she with him, who would say, "Men don't like smart women so being dumb is good." Those may not have been her exact words but there was a whole lexicon of of them she marched out. Her top priorities for me were dates, marriage and kids. I was a huge disappointment because in my first year of college I did not get my MRS degree. I constantly got lectures about not studying at the law library, majoring in Fine Arts because I wanted to curate a museum and not decorate the nursery, and not going to church to catch a man. I might have gotten her to drop that last one if I had not constantly broken into lectures about religion being the opiate of the masses and Zen was the way. It was my father who revealed to me the results of my IQ scores from routine school tests to talk me out of attempting...

Memories can come tiptoeing in the early dawn or at dusk and totally knock me off my seemingly safe perch in these troubled times. It can be something as simple as pouring coffee and noticing the clock on the stove. It is around the time he would call when he couldn't sleep and he knew I was up. I loved our morning talks. And it is in the morning I miss him most. I miss his mind. And the wonderful hodgepodge of esoteric subjects we would discuss. Dawn and coffee and talk of politics and history and philosophy. A dear friend of ours, who visited our home frequently, once said we were the only couple she knew that considered debate foreplay. Intelligence has always been a turn on for me. And men that are willing to consider I am their intellectual equal I find very attractive. Mother used to tell me I would regret being intelligent. I really haven't, Mom, wherever you are. But I definitely miss those individuals where there has been a wonderful synergistic meeting of minds. I...