A Gift?
Posted on: March 08, 2008?> Copyright © 2008 Sticky Pen
He was there every Thursday evening. I was going around to meetings like this one—a regular support group meeting on depression in men, held at a local church hall—for the whole semester as part of my practicum assignment. When he had first arrested my attention, he was sitting four pews in front of me and across the aisle. I saw him in three-quarters profile, as he was concentrating hard on the speaker of the day. I remember thinking how handsome he was - handsome and sad-looking. He could have been anything between forty and fifty, I suppose. The pepper-gray, neatly trimmed hair on his head and in his beard and mustache leaned me toward fifty, but his sharp features and the fact that he seemed to have been depressed for some time indicated that he might be considerably younger and just was slowly giving up on life. Not that he had given up on himself. He looked in good trim and always wore well-pressed sports shirts and khaki pants. I don't know what made my attention always return to him on those evenings. Maybe it was that he was always paying such close attention but never asked a question or made a comment of his own. Or maybe it was that little gold earring he wore in his left ear, catching the light off the chandeliers high overhead whenever he turned his head, catching my attention at the periphery of my vision. He seemed apart from the others around us, and ...
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