Connecting the dots. Looking backward to look forward. Personal discovery. Acceptance. Rejection. Change. Love. Family. These are the themes of essays, poems and short stories by Bill Mathis who writes of the people he meets along the path while walking his dog, the lessons in life those interactions bring to mind. A poem about a young soldier who died in Viet Nam, another about God being a baseball or a sixteen-inch softball. Fiction about missed opportunities between a father and his gay son, their guilt and reconciliation. A humorous trip to Romania ends in awe at how his traveling companion escaped a totalitarian life.

With humor and thought, Bill explores his surroundings, contemplates his past, and looks to the future. Whatever the future may be, it will be the way things are...