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Chris Knight's avatar

It’s been a little over three weeks since my first book Keeping the Tryst was published.  It’s been selling fairly well, considering that I’m a first-time author who’s been pretty under the radar for awhile.  I’m happy with it and I’m hoping still more people will come to discover it.

Since it’s now “out in the wild” some people have had a number of questions about it.  I’m going to be answering those as they are asked.  Who knows, but I may add a “frequently asked questions” to a future edition of the book.

Here’s the latest question about my book:

“How is Uncle Frank in 2014 after he died in Florida fourteen years earlier?”

I really should have clarified this in the book.  In my life there have been two Uncle Franks.  One was Mom’s half-brother.  He’s the one who moved to Florida and had a family there. ...

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Today is Father’s Day.  And more than usual I’m feeling melancholy.  This is the eleventh Father’s Day without Dad.  There’s not a day that comes and goes, that I don’t think about him.  He always had great advice.  What he liked to tell me often was “Always think positive!”  He told me that even though he knew I was struggling with a mind turned against itself.  He may not have understood what it meant to have that but he still abounded in empathy.

Thought I’d share some photos of him.  This first one dates to November 2006.  It’s of Dad in his favorite place: his beloved knife shop.  It was really rainy and cold that day and I went by the shop to ask him something.  This is how I found him: reclined back in a chair with his pipe, thinking up new projects.  It’s classic Dad.  Click to enlarge:...

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It was about this time, ten years ago today, that I held your hand.  That rough calloused hand that could never be still enough to heal.  You were always doing for others, especially in your shop whenever you decided someone deserved to own one of your handmade knives.

We held your hands as you slipped away from the body that had become a prison.  I knew it was the right thing to have done, to sign the paper that would let you go when it was time.  But it made it no easier.

I would have given anything to have you back, healthy in body and mind.

I’ve needed you.  I hope I’ve been able to make you proud.

I miss you, Dad.

...

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The realization hit me this morning that today is the twelfth anniversary of Mom’s passing.
 
I’ve written about her before, here.  Maybe too much.   Sometimes all the hurt and anguish builds up and demands, even needs a
vent.  Some people do that with art.  Or going out for a drive.  I
learned a long time ago that I can’t paint and I’m a threat to everyone
on the road if I’m not in the right state of mind for driving.

 
I guess, I’m writing this to note how much my attitude toward Mom has changed in the past year or so.
 
There is no forgetting the things she did.  I can still hear her screaming “You’re retarded!” at me.  The beatings.  The humiliations, often in front of friends (mine or hers).  Her telling me I wouldn’t count for anything, and how much I believed her and
...
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Have had some scary time lately with Tammy, my miniature dachshund.  Two weeks ago she hurt her back around her hind quarters area.  I took her to the vet and sure enough, she probably injured herself jumping onto and off from the sofa and bed all this time.  The vet gave her three medications and I’ve been sleeping in the living room since then, close to where she’s made a nest of her blankets on the floor.  Just making her take it easy.

Fourteen days later and Tammy is much better!  She’s still not allowed to try to jump onto furniture, so I’ve been carefully picking her up and putting her on the sofa so she can be near me while I work.  She seems to be satisfied with the arrangement.  Here she is from this afternoon:

A very dear friend is in the process of making Tammy a ...

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For some time I was posting new pics of my miniature dachshund Tammy every Tuesday.  It’s been a fair bit since I’ve done that.  But it just so happened that I caught a really good snapshot of her this afternoon while I was working at the desk in my living room.  I was eating some crackers and she insisted that I pay her the “cracker tax” (there’s also the “chicken tax”, the “cheese tax”, the “barbecue ribs tax”, etc.)…

I know: Tammy is not as red as she used to be.  Well, she is over eleven years old.  There’s no not facing that.  But she’s still in excellent health, and if you saw how playful she is you would think she’s much younger than her age.  She always accompanies me when I turn in for the night and she makes sure that she takes a toy to bed, just like ...

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 Dad used to tell me that he didn’t want to study our family tree too much.  “There’s going to be someone there who wore a rope for a necktie”, he would say.  In most part Dad was content with knowing his grandfather, Samuel Knight – born in 1887 – and not much further.

(Samuel’s wife, Maggie Warren, was born in 1880 and died in 1979.  I’m old enough to remember her in her final years… and that’s a pretty neat thing, to have known someone who knew Civil War veterans and was a young lady when the Wright Brothers flew their plane.)

With not much else to do with my own time these past several months, I thought it would be intriguing if I started to research our family history.  Quietly praying that there wasn’t some scoundrel of ill repute back there anywhere.  And now I can say that ours ...

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You couldn’t resist, could you?  You were duly warned.  You were told that there was nothing that I could do.  And yet some of you couldn’t keep yourselves from asking me about her.  SOME of you even went so far as to offer money for her Facebook page.  And I can’t do that either.

But never let it be said that this blog doesn’t try to deliver.

So it is that today, I bring to you the first ever…

The Knight Shift
SWIMSUIT EDITION

Featuring my beautiful cousin Rachael as she models a variety of cutting-edge swim attire.  As well as more about her, in her own words.

“I’m local in Miami but plan to travel internationally this summer. I’m happily single and plan on that for awhile lol”

  
“I eat honey every day. And I love God and life!”

“I hope to stay in the light and ...

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This past day was a bittersweet one.

My sister and Dad’s sister and her husband and I set to work on cleaning out the basement of my parents’ house.  Just something that has to be done, sooner than later.  The entire house is being cleaned out, top to bottom.  Because in a few months the house that my family has called home for all these decades will be ours no more.

On a more personal note, I will be looking for an apartment soon, depending on where the Lord leads me.  Which, could be literally anywhere.  For the first time in my life I am truly on my own.  I did everything that I could for Mom and Dad.  Now is time at last to see what’s out there.  I can go anywhere, do anything.  It’s a very thrilling time in my life… and I’m feeling younger than I have ...

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