20 years ago this week I woke up to a nightmare. Amidst the whirlwind of chaotic memories from those early days and weeks after the snow skiing accident that left me paralyzed from the neck down, I can vividly recall the terrible sense that all of my lifelong dreams were disappearing as quickly as I…
Road Mode Deluxe
Maybe it’s the pandemic or all the jet setting we’d been doing in the half decade it became our new “normal,” but I’d forgotten how much I love the open road until we pointed the nose of the White Whale southbound toward California on the interstate Saturday morning. The 33-foot, fully accessible 2008 Winnebago Vista…
An Embarrassment of Riches
The 11th of February marked the 17th anniversary of the snow skiing accident that flipped my world upside down and set my life on a completely new trajectory. I’ve spent much of the month reflecting on the morphine-fogged memories of my first few weeks in the ICU at Harborview Medical Center; waking up each morning…
The Next Chapter Begins…
If my first four decades on this spinning rock have taught me anything, it is that my life rarely goes according to plan. From calamitous road trips to disastrous air travel fiascoes, we’ve long since established that the hard-earned lessons learned on life’s detours are just as important as our intended destinations. After all, that’s…
“I’m watching you fight…”
Today marks 10 years since I flatlined in the emergency room at Auburn Regional Medical Center after a bladder infection made it up to my kidneys and into my bloodstream. My parents and Kristen watched five minutes of CPR as an incredible team of doctors, nurses, and medics fought to bring me back online. In…
Word to Your Mother, Part 2.
I don’t know how or when it happened, but one of my favorite blog posts got lost in the migration of the website to a WordPress blog after the original host, MSN Spaces, shut down. I wrote it on Mother’s Day of 2009, a few short months after my youngest niece was born via natural…
We have a secret…
It’d been almost 5 years since four little words of Claire’s stopped me in my tracks. This time it only took two: “I’m pregnant.” Though it wasn’t exactly a surprise, hearing those words out loud still made the room spin. We’d been on a 16-month emotional roller coaster with multiple surgeries for both of us…
Yet Another Birthday Girl!
I’ve said not once, but twice now – I have the coolest nieces an uncle could ask for. While I’ve got a special bond with each of them, this fiery fellow Aries and I almost got to share a birthday but was too excited to join the party and showed up a couple days early….
Retracing Our Steps
Three years? How is that possible? I’m finding it hard to wrap my head around the fact that it was exactly three years ago tonight that Claire, the Bobbsey’s, and I were laid up in the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan, collectively shell-shocked after my first legitimate attempt at post-injury air travel went so sideways…
I Hope You Dance
From the minute I decided I wanted to propose to Claire, I knew we were going to have the conversation. My diehard Dancing with the Stars fan-future wife was going to want to dance with me at our wedding, and I knew I was going to break her heart with my refusal. Anyone I’ve known…
Kenny Salvini 