For too long, I hovered in the past. Shadows and Echoes became that opportunity, by pushing my hippocampal button, to re-live past experiences and re-capture the people who influenced me the most. It was time for new insights; for finding answers to the over-arching question: Why I am what I am.
Looking at ones life when in his mid-fifties I believe, is not unusual, especially when there exists a moderate degree of dissatisfaction. Though for most, the past is probably only a segment of ones life, an interval with fairly well-defined parameters. It is what was and then left there. This was not the case with me, until I began to write.
At the age of fifty-five and in the grasp of the realization of more years behind than in front of me, I felt a need to stop and look at not just where I was but where I had been, where I came from.
Encapsulating aspects of my life and personal influences, Shadows and Echoes originated as a strict narrative, a composite journaling if you will, for the benefit of my daughters. A change in the setting-fictionalized between psychiatrist and patient- added interaction and subtle nuances associated with the psychotherapeutic arena. That change gives the reader a focused relatable appeal. Personally, I found this freeing and to a great extent, stabilizing. The readers, I believe, will share similar ends, whether their look-back is joyful, sad, and/or wistful, or some combination.
With religion as the fulcrum, earlier foundations and broader issues are stressed, i.e. childhood and family dynamics and the post-World War II confluence of identity, assimilation, and anti-Semitism. In my late adolescence, for a variety of reasons our family had to leave that safe, monolithic, supportive cocoon I had known and loved. It was this breach that seemed to change everything: my academic dismissal from college that eventually propelled me into a marriage prematurely; chronic career identity diffusion; a second failed marriage, and a series of relationships.
Given his centrality in my life, much content was devoted to my father. He was my best friend and mentor, a role model in dealing with others; a non-religious man who could combine the religious and secular more effectively than anyone I have yet to meet; the person who men respected and women found charming; and the one who taught me how to grow old gracefully.
In completing Shadows and Echoes, answers begot further questions with the cycle repeating itself a number of times. Some personal influences lost their veneer and became stick figures; many events were seen for what they were-fictionalized and ethereal. The composite gave me at once, a sorely lacking reconnection with my people and religion, along with a firm understanding of its teachings, history, as well as its own struggles.
