CLARIFICATION
As decades passed, why did I report events in my life in such copious detail? Articles published in boating and flying magazines owed their existence to this habit of recording experiences as they happened. Without these chronicles I would doubtless recall a boat sinking and two airplane accidents a week apart, but their details would have faded.
I learned that misadventures provided the most satisfactory source for hopefully entertaining letters to my mother and daughter. The more things turned sour, the more I felt challenged to make lemonade. With the painful exception of tragedies, like losing two of my four children when they were much too young and the devastating accident that left their sister Kathie in a wheelchair in 1965, most calamities came with a saving grace. After rallying from the latest shock, I'd reach for my therapeutic pencil and let it do its thing. Almost always, my distress would dissipate and a bad day would end on an upbeat note.
As decades passed, why did I report events in my life in such copious detail? Articles published in boating and flying magazines owed their existence to this habit of recording experiences as they happened. Without these chronicles I would doubtless recall a boat sinking and two airplane accidents a week apart, but their details would have faded.
I learned that misadventures provided the most satisfactory source for hopefully entertaining letters to my mother and daughter. The more things turned sour, the more I felt challenged to make lemonade. With the painful exception of tragedies, like losing two of my four children when they were much too young and the devastating accident that left their sister Kathie in a wheelchair in 1965, most calamities came with a saving grace. After rallying from the latest shock, I'd reach for my therapeutic pencil and let it do its thing. Almost always, my distress would dissipate and a bad day would end on an upbeat note.
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