Yesterday, I reached a significant milestone in my life—I turned fifty. While I enjoyed spending time with family and friends, there was one person noticeably absent from this momentous occasion: my mother. And so begin the firsts of the firsts. Yesterday actually...

Arlene Carlon was born on August 30, 1933, in Brooklyn, NY, to Nicolas and Maria Fuccillo. She attended Notre Dame Academy on Staten Island and earned a degree from Marymount College in New York City. On October 12, 1957, she married the love of her life, Don Carlon,...

Have you ever experienced a song in such a timely manner that it sends shivers down your spine? Perhaps it's a familiar tune you've listened to countless times, yet in a specific moment, it suddenly resonates with you on a deeper level, offering a newfound...

On Saturday March 2nd, I will be participating in Cycle for Survival to raise money for rare cancer research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). Why am I riding? I’m glad you asked! And I will answer that question, I promise. But I’m a writer and we...

Do you know how, in your own mind, you consider yourself younger than you actually are? I do anyway. In my head, I’m still in my early twenties. Well, today I was hit in the face with the reality that I’m no spring chicken anymore.  Most Sunday mornings I join my...

Warning, this post was inspired by a pumpkin. More on that later. As another Thanksgiving weekend wraps up, I’m filled with a wide range of emotions. I was happy to have had the kids home for an extended period of time and now sad that they have all started to head...

Today we were given the gift of an extra hour in our day. If today were yesterday, I’d be writing this at 1:05 in the afternoon. Instead, my fingers are touching the keyboard at 12:05. Last night I jokingly said to my kids, “We gain an extra hour tonight, but we...

So I got me a pen and a paper And I made up my own little sign I said, "Thank you, Lord, for thinkin' 'bout me I'm alive and doin' fine" The lyrics above are from a song called Signs, written by Les Emmerson of The Five Man Electrical Band. It was repopularized by the...

We just passed the three month anniversary of my brother’s passing and, to quote the late Jerry Garcia (one of my brother Gregory’s favorites), “I want to know, where does the time go?” How could it have been three months? It’s still so surreal that my brother, my...

On Sunday, I was getting ready to go for a run through Waveny park here in New Canaan when my mother asked me, “Michael, are your shoes tied?” I thought, that is a funny question to ask a 48 year old man, and it stayed in my head as I was starting my run. As I ran...

As many of you know, I’m an avid runner which is ironic because, when I was a kid, I hated running. I was slow, it just wasn’t fun, and I avoided it like the plague. Something happened in high school, though. My twin brother Jimmy joined the cross-country team, which...

I’ve known this day was coming for a very long time—it’s quite rare that golden retrievers live to almost sixteen years of age, though our Reilly has. We adopted her from a rescue service after she had just turned two and she was in every first day of school picture...

Ever since I was in high school, I’ve loved running. When my grandmother was dying during my senior year, I used to go on long runs to deal with the grief I was experiencing. I wouldn’t listen to music, I’d just concentrate on my breathing and lose myself in the run....