As you may know from reading this blog, I was born and raised in New York City – in the Bronx.
Although my family and oldest friends still live in “the” city, I’ve not lived there in decades. I am now decidedly a SoCal kind of guy.
But – I read The New York Times every day as some habits never die. One of my favorite sections is called “Tiny Love Stories.” It’s simply a column that invites readers to submit “tiny” stories of love in one-hundred words or less.
And now, those good folks at The Times have collected 175 of those stories into a book. Yes!!
As the book blurb reads:
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be swept away—in less time than it takes to read this paragraph. Told in voices that are honest, vulnerable, tender, and wise, here are 175 true stories that are each as moving as a lyric poem and convey a universally recognized feeling, all in fewer than one hundred words. There are stories of love found and love lost, and the sometimes rarest of loves, self-love. Stories of romantic love, brotherly love, platonic love. Stories of mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, strangers who dream of what might have been. And the oldest story of all—boy meets girl—their tale ends happily ever after, even though along the way the boy became a girl.
BUT. . .
The real treat for me is that one of my friends has her tiny love story published in this book! I am thrilled for Sarah and utterly delighted to share in this post her story about her husband, Buddy, who is one of my heroes.
Buddy and I entered the Jesuit seminary (novitiate) at the same time – at a time when we were both young and innocent and hell-bent on changing the world. Ah, youth!
Here’s Sarah’s tribute to Buddy. . .I am grateful to call them my friends. . .
“Tell Me, Honey”
I have worshiped my older brother my entire life. We are in our 50s now. Last summer he fell ill, gripped by mania, his extraordinary mind betraying him, fueling a paranoia that his wife and I were working against him. I wept constantly, wracked with worry. I was desperate to talk about it — once a day, or 27 times — for months. Before his difficult recovery, whenever I would begin a sentence, “My brother …” my husband of two decades would put down his phone, coffee, newspaper or briefcase and look into my eyes and say, “Tell me, honey.”
— Sarah Brazaitis
