Snow Angel Blessing

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 36 seconds

Love Warmed Our Heart on a Cold Lincoln’s Birthday in 1975

During the winter of 1975, just six months before our wedding, I went for a walk with Jan, my beloved partner, in the tranquil surroundings of Ft. Greene Park, across the street from her apartment. The air was frigid, and the ground was covered with a thick blanket of snow. The sudden winter storm had brought the heaviest snowfall of the year, with a whopping 7.8 inches of snow. Jan, a drug counselor at Brooklyn Automotive, had taken the day off for the holiday. Walking on the un-shoveled snow, it felt like we had stepped into a scene from the timeless classic novel and popular movie, “Dr. Zhivago.” The only sound we could hear was the crisp crunch of our boots on the icy terrain, which added to the serene and peaceful atmosphere.

Snow Angels

Jan lay on the ground and insisted, “Let’s make snow angels.” I joined her, and we made paired angels. I tried to help her stand up, but our feet kept slipping. Eventually, we succeeded, but as soon as I let go of her hand, she grabbed some snow and threw it at my face. I retaliated with a handful of snow, but we both laughed. We continued walking across the park, pretending to be Lara and Yuri and trying to maintain our balance on the snowy ground.

Six weeks earlier, Jan had excitedly told her parents we were getting married, but their response was far from positive. We traveled to New Jersey by bus to celebrate her mother’s birthday, but instead of congratulating her, we received a disappointed reaction: “You ruined my birthday.” Despite the opposition from her family, we both remained committed to getting married. However, my wife tended to be more pragmatic, while I was more inclined towards romance.

While walking in the snow, I couldn’t help but wonder about her decision regarding our future together. I was uncertain whether she would ultimately choose to marry me or accept her parent’s opposition. We discussed various things on our way, shared our thoughts, and enjoyed each other’s company. The sun was shining, and the breeze was cool, perfecting the atmosphere around us.

Love is a Powerful and Transformative Force.

Once we decided to leave the park, we walked up the four flights of stairs to her apartment. As we removed our coats, she turned to me, kissed me, and said, “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Her words filled my heart with joy, and I couldn’t help but hug her tightly and kiss her back. The moment was perfect, and I felt I was on top of the world.

After that, we spent the evening talking and laughing, enjoying each other’s company. Looking back, I realize it was a turning point in our almost half-century relationship. The rest, as they say, is history.


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4 comments add your comment

    • Thanks for your comment, Hugo. I appreciate your confidence in me being a nice guy. However, the truth is that being nice doesn’t always lead to success. In my case, Jan’s parents were not happy with me due to my appearance and religious differences. Despite Jan’s practical nature, we still got married, and I documented the experience in a post, “We Are Getting Married!“. The inspiration for the story you are referring to came from the light snowfall this week, which reminded me of the tension that can arise between a practical partner and a romantic one in a relationship. Being a romantic is a part of my DNA, and I will always embrace it as an inspiration.

    • Danny, thanks for your comment. In this modern era, the word love is often used casually and loses its true meaning. But to me, it is unlike any other word with four letters. It is the most potent force in the universe, capable of bringing about personal and collective salvation.

      Recently, I was blessed with the opportunity to experience love again, and it felt like a dream come true. However, I soon realized that love requires reciprocity. If it is not mutual, it is not the true love that I seek. I am unwilling to settle for anything less than what I once had.

      In a world where love can be fleeting and elusive, we must hold on to it with all our might. All we need is love, and with it, we can conquer any challenge that comes our way.

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The Hidden Habits of Genius

Read: September 2019

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The Hidden Habits of Genius

by Craig Wright

The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit―Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness by Craig Wright, Ph.D., I got through my membership in One Day University.

Dr. Wright raises many important questions as he analyses fourteen (14) critical traits of genius. Professor Craig Wright, creator of Yale University’s famous “Genius Course,” explores what we can learn from brilliant minds that have changed the world.

What we often presume about a genius does not match reality. Among other interesting observations, Dr. Wright reminds the reader that Picasso could not pass a fourth-grade math test, and Steve Jobs’s high school GPA was 2.65. He questions why to teach children to behave and play by the rules when transformative geniuses do not.

Examining the lives of transformative individuals ranging from Charles Darwin and Marie Curie to Leonardo Da Vinci and Andy Warhol to Toni Morrison and Elon Musk, Wright identifies more than a dozen drivers of genius, characteristics and patterns of behavior common to great minds throughout history. He argues that genius is about more than intellect and work ethic and that the famed “eureka” moment is a Hollywood fiction. Brilliant insights that change the world are never sudden, but rather, they are the result of unique modes of thinking and lengthy gestation.

I found the book to be a fascinating read and raised more questions for future thought and reading. Professor Wright argues that the habits of mind that produce great thinking and discovery can be actively learned and cultivated. In the book, he explains how. He notes that reading the book will not make you a genius but can “make you more strategic, creative, and successful, and, ultimately, happier.

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Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories

Read: December 2022

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Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories

by Meng Jin

Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories by Meng Jin was written during the turbulent years of the Trump administration and the first year of the pandemic, these stories explore intimacy and isolation, coming of age, and coming to terms with the repercussions of past mistakes, fraying relationships, and surprising moments of connection. I highly recommend Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories!

Each story speaks so clearly to the loneliness epidemic that confronts our world. I would read one short story and promise to stop and wait until another day to read the next one. Instead

One phrase that will always remain with me is: “The hallucinatory quality of grief.” As a widow, the phrase struck a chord that will forever resonate in my soul.

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The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Meng Jin’s critically acclaimed debut novel, Little Gods, was praised as “spectacular and emotionally polyphonic (Omar El-Akkad, BookPage), “powerful” (Washington Post), and “meticulously observed, daringly imagined” (Claire Messud). Jin turns her considerable talents into short fiction in ten thematically linked stories.

Moving between San Francisco and China, and from unsparing realism to genre-bending delight, Self-Portrait with Ghost considers what it means to live in an age of heightened self-consciousness, seemingly unlimited access to knowledge, and little actual power.

Page-turning, thought-provoking, and wholly unique, Self-Portrait with Ghost further establishes Meng Jin as a writer who “reminds us that possible explanations in our universe are as varied as the beings who populate it” (Paris Review).


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Revolutionary Mothers

Read: February 2019

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Revolutionary Mothers

by Carol Berkin

Revolutionary Mothers by Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor of American Colonial and Revolutionary History; Women’s History Professor at Baruch College, is one of four books I purchased after my first One Day University Class on February 9, 2019. It should be required reading!

The book explains how women of the Revolution were most active at home, organizing boycotts of British goods, raising funds for the fledgling nation, and managing the family business while struggling to maintain a modicum of normalcy as husbands, brothers, and fathers died.

It was not just the men who fought on the front lines, as in the story of Margaret Corbin, who was crippled for life when she took her husband’s place beside a cannon at Fort Monmouth. She explains the mystery of Molly Pitcher (she was not a person but a group of women), camp followers, women who spied for their country, Loyalist women, and the impact on African American and Native women.

This intelligent and comprehensive history brings these forgotten stories to their rightful place in the struggle for American independence. Dr. Birkin also highlights how their efforts set the stage for the continuing campaign for gender equality.

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Trouble the Saints

Read: January 2022

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Trouble the Saints

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson is one of NPR’s Books We Love from 2020. The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in this timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City at the dawn of WWII. Amidst the whir of city life, a girl from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear amongst its most dangerous denizens.

The book is written in three sections with different protagonists and voices. Phyllis, or Pea as her friends call her, is a black assassin for a white mob boss narrates the first section of the book. Her saint’s hands are the ability to use knives to commit murder. She can also pass as white as Phyllis, but she is a black woman from Harlem as Pea. The section she narrates is difficult at first to follow as she attempts to deal with the consequences of her actions. Can the past ever be the past?

Dev, Indian and Phyllis’s lover, narrates the second section. He is an undercover cop who protects her and helps her free herself from the mob boss. This section is located in the Hudson Valley and highlights the tensions before the war between whites and non-whites.

The third protagonist, Tamara, narrates this section. The war separates Phyllis and Dev. Phyllis is pregnant, and Dev and Tamara’s love interest are serving in the military. This section brings together the threads and reminds us that the past is never the past.

As Goodreads summarizes the book,

But the ghosts from her past are always by her side—and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she loves most.

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Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel—a magical love story, a compelling chronicle of interracial tension, and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

I recommend this book and encourage all readers to read it to the end.

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Luky Us

Read: March 2022

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Lucky Us: A Novel

by Amy Bloom

Having surpassed my Goodreads 2022 reading goal, I wanted a lite, historical fiction book and found this one in the e-libraryLucky Us by Amy Bloom is a book that hooked me on the opening line – “My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.” I enjoyed reading it and highly recommend it.

The first section in Hollywood was the one I found less appealing. Partly that is because I identified with Eva, and she does not fulfill her leading role until the last two sections. Its depiction of how people survived the way years by sometimes is a reminder of our inner resilience.

Goodreads provides the following summary.

So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “a literary triumph” (The New York Times). Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck.

Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.

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Worry: A Novel

Read: May 2024

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Worry: A Novel

by Alexandra Tanner

Today, I began reading Alexandra Tanner‘s debut novel, Worry: A Novel. The New Yorker praised it as “dryly witty,” The New York Times Book Review called it “fabulously revealing.” The story follows two siblings-turned-roommates who try to navigate an absurd world on the verge of calamity. It explores existentialism and sisterhood in a Seinfeldian style.

In March 2019, Jules Gold, a 28-year-old woman, felt anxious, frustrated with her art, and addicted to the internet. She lives alone in the apartment she used to share with her ex-fiancé. Her younger sister Poppy unexpectedly comes to stay with her indefinitely. Poppy, who attempted suicide a year and a half ago, is looking for work and purpose in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, Jules spends her days scrolling through the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for something to happen in her life.

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Worry is a darkly funny and deadpan portrayal of two sisters struggling through anxiety and uncertainty in America. A bold new voice in contemporary fiction writes it.

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