Book 2 -- MAYBE THIS TIME

In every life, there are times when hopes for the future run headlong into the realities of today. It was that way for Carl Postell, a sixty four year old accountant-turned-novelist, who had given up everything for the freedom to tell his stories.

So too for Maria Ruiz, who grieved the loss of her son, while looking for the daughter she had never seen. Even Jack Benz, nearing retirement and still looking for the one who was his particular obsession in the sixth grade, was left to wonder if his aging dreams could come true, or was it is too late? Like the others, he pursued the hopeful possibility that MAYBE THIS TIME.

  Selected Excerpts from MAYBE THIS TIME

The Old Man’s healthcare aide answered the doorbell and ushered me inside. It was late morning and already warm, the way late-August mornings can be in the Willamette Valley. After cussing the Saturday morning traffic all the way across town, I was ready for something to eat. I had slept in and skipped breakfast. Hopefully I was in time for lunch. My own cupboard was nearly bare, and I was sick of Top Ramen. Maria’s soup and sandwich would be a welcome change. 

George Postell, my dad, was seated in his big cloth-covered recliner, the motorized kind that raised to help him stand up. He was a small man, gray haired and stooped, who once on his feet shuffled around his apartment with the help of a four legged cane. Sitting there with a light sweater draped over his shoulders, he looked to be all of his eighty-six years. A hard life, especially one that includes serious disappointment, will do that.

Most people in Dad’s condition would have been in a nursing home, or at least an assisted-living place, like the one across the road from his independent living apartment. "Independent Living". It was the label that had sold him. I remember that morning, walking through the sprawling grounds of the Tanner East Living Center, listening as he repeated the names to himself, comparing one to the other: first "Independent Living", then "Assisted Living". One sounded so descriptive of the person he believed himself to be. The other reeked of weakness he could not accept as his.

 ~~~

As Jack and I got to know each other better, we naturally cultivated a curiosity about each other’s work. Over time he had developed an ongoing interest in my writing. One of our earliest conversations about a story of mine had taken place on a Saturday afternoon nearly three years before. Jack had just read the final draft of my first novel-length story and was prepared to register his opinion. As I remember it was a three beer lunch, which may have accounted for his socially incorrect bluntness.

“I’ve read about people who thought they were called to write,” he told me. “So I guess it happens. That might even be what happened to you. But what you’re doing with your ‘calling’ doesn’t make any sense at all. Of all the things there are to write about, why do these ‘relationship stories’? Especially ones about old folks. Why not something more.....more.......”

“More masculine?” I interjected, completing his thought. “More macho. Something with lots of action, and some bad guys, maybe a homicide or two. Stuff like that, eh?”