[August 2005 journal entry]
I do not recall having someone – in person or in print – as a guide, as an example, as a conversation partner in thinking/working through the significance of who/how I am in relation to those individuals from whom I am inclined to recoil or turn away. I would trace my experience/formation in this regard as follows – e.g., (1) my mother telling me as a child that she always could tell when I was not telling the truth (i.e., “I can read you like a book”), (2) my older cousin Albert’s speech impediment and limp, our bond, the reaction of my friends when he visited (i.e., “Will I be the same when Albert is absent as when he is present?”), (3) being with my first wife during her battle with multiple sclerosis (i.e., “Will I be the same when apart from her as when I am with her?”), (4) the increasing number of gatherings/conversations as I became a history/spirituality/ethics resource/prompter (e.g., graduate students, fellow faculty, medical faculty, medical students, et al), (5) . . . .
