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<figure id="figure-lh905bl32mjehgej0"><img id="lh905bl32mjehgej0" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/1yrlhvCBb8A1IZoQu7qQQ1eAkwJ4RkEbPE1n8BCo5hjn8ZcuyGjzEEGHASuLXscT.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 " style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: 0% 5%;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionX="0%" data-positionY="5%" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>At seventy-three, some memories return with the simple clarity they had when they first happened. This one is from when I was eleven.Back then, I delivered The New York Post door-to-door. That meant a few singles and always a pocket full of quarters, nickels, and dimes. My wallet had a little coin compartment with a metal snap that never stayed closed, so most of my change lived loose in my pockets, clinking when I walked.My mother—who I adored—used to say she wished she had something from Saks Fifth Avenue. It was a dream store. We were a Gimbels, Korvette’s, and Alexander’s family.So for her birthday, with my paper-route money, I decided I would go to Saks and get her something. At eleven, I didn’t know enough to be afraid. I just knew she wanted it.I took the Q13 bus to the IRT and went into the city. Everyone in New York knew what that meant.When I reached Saks, I expected something like the big stores I knew. Instead, I found two big brass doors. Before I could figure out how to open one, a doorman stepped forward, pulled it open, and smiled. That was the first kindness of the day.Inside, it was quiet and bright. Not scary—just different enough that I slowed down, taking everything in.A woman behind a counter noticed me. Her red nail polish is the thing I remember most— that, and how she leaned a little closer when she spoke.“Can I help you?”“It’s my mother’s birthday,” I said. “She always wanted something from here.”She asked how much I wanted to spend. That’s when everything inside me tightened.I opened my wallet slowly, hoping the snap wouldn’t pop open. It did anyway, and a few coins slipped into my hand. Quarters, nickels, dimes. A five-dollar bill and a couple of ones.“I need enough for the train token home too,” I said.She didn’t laugh. She just nodded, like that made perfect sense.“Let’s see what we can find.”She walked with me to a glass case and used a tiny key to open it. Inside were handkerchiefs—soft, folded squares. She lifted them one by one and let me look.One had tiny purple flowers in the corner. “It’s pretty,” I said. “I think so too,” she replied.“How much is it?” “Six dollars.”I counted in my head—quietly. I had enough for the hankie and the token.“I’ll take it,” I said.Then she did something I’ve never forgotten.“Well, if this is your mother’s first gift from Saks Fifth Avenue,” she said, “we should make it special.”She wrapped it carefully—folded the hankie, placed it in a small box, added soft tissue paper. She tied pink and yellow ribbons, curling the ends with scissors. Then she peeled off a small gold Saks Fifth Avenue sticker and pressed it onto the corner.She gave me a tiny card. I wrote, “Happy Birthday Mommy. I love you.”I paid the six dollars—the most I had ever spent—and she put the box into a tiny Saks shopping bag. I held it the whole way home.When I gave it to my mother, the first thing she said was, “Where did you get a Saks Fifth Avenue bag?”“Open it,” I told her.She lifted the lid, saw the handkerchief— and she cried. A soft cry. The kind I didn’t understand then, but felt all the way through me.She kept that hankie in her purse—for the rest of her life. Never used it. Just carried it.When she died, it was still there. I kept it.Years later, when my daughter got married, I gave it to her as her “something borrowed.”And when my grandfather—the person who loved me simply and fully—died, I found one of his handkerchiefs with an embroidered H. He kept it in the pocket of his suit coat, folded so the H always showed. I can still picture it— that clean white square peeking out, always there. Steady and familiar, the way he was. When my grandson was born, and his name also began with H, I passed it on.Two small squares of cloth. Two generations. And a kindness that has never faded.At eleven, I didn’t have the words for what that woman at Saks gave me. At seventy-three, I do:A moment so gentle it stayed bright for the rest of my life.

1 x 1 x mark: Handkerchief

<figure id="figure-ziyidvny0dmis1ng2f"><img id="ziyidvny0dmis1ng2f" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/226jNmVO3qJt7LK7TLzTXzdAfsqwfL7hEwuyD3MISz02WGtyLfyb1rFqLiy22JB6.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 " style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: 20% 0%;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionX="20%" data-positionY="0%" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>When I was little, my father sometimes called me Shorty. Only he did. And it wasn’t distant—it was the one word where something warm slipped out, a doorway into emotion he didn’t otherwise know how to show. He was a World War II veteran who held more inside him than he ever said aloud. Present, but not emotional. A provider, but not a go-outside-and-throw-a-football-with-me kind of dad. I learned early that I wanted things from him he didn’t know how to give.So I watched him. Going to hardware stores. Coming home. Building, painting, fixing. Every time I asked, “Can I help?” he said, “No, you can watch.” And maybe that’s how I learned everything—by watching what he did, and even more by watching what he couldn’t show.There was one soft memory: horror movies on the pull-out couch in our Bronx apartment. I hated them, but he put his arm around me. One night he carried me to bed, and I pressed my face into his neck, pretending to stay asleep so he wouldn’t put me down. Seventy years later, I can still feel that hallway under us. And one of the few times I remember seeing your real smile was in the water—at the pool or the lake—when I clung to you because I was scared, and you held me without a word.But most of the time, when I asked what I should do, he’d say: “If you like it, I like it.” I didn’t want freedom. I wanted direction.Near the end of his life, he was scheduled for a stress test. My suitcase was in the rental car outside the hospital. I stood beside his bed and finally asked the question I had carried my whole life: “Dad… do you want me to stay with you?” He looked at me—really looked at me—but even the wrinkles in his face wouldn’t give me an answer. “I cannot tell you what to do,” he said.My throat tightened. I asked again, louder, choked up, almost pleading: “Do you want me to stay? Please tell me. I’ve wanted you to tell me what to do my whole life.” But again, he said softly, “I cannot tell you what to do.” I swallowed hard. “Okay then, I’m going to catch my flight. Good luck tomorrow.” That was the last face-to-face moment I had with him. He died two months later.Years later, I’m standing on the Northern California bluffs where I live now, wearing his old Seabees jacket—finally fitting me. The air is cold, the Pacific endless, and my dog, a few steps away, sniffing in the wind. But the presence I feel beside me is my dad’s. I’m not looking across an ocean. I’m speaking to the long shadow quietly at my left.“Dad… I’m sorry.” Sorry for expecting you to reach me in ways you didn’t know. Sorry for waiting for words you didn’t have—all those years waiting for you to say “I love you,” or “wait,” or “I’m sorry.” And as I stand here, speaking to you while looking out at the ocean, I realize: I could have said those words first. I could have opened the door I kept waiting for you to walk through.The wind hits my face. Your jacket warms my whole being. The truth arrives: I learned how to be a father by watching everything you couldn’t show me—by listening to what you never said, by growing in the spaces where love had no instructions. You taught me more in your silence than any sit-down talk ever could have.There’s one more thing. All through my childhood, you kept three books on the highest shelf. Weathered spines, carefully handled. I knew they were special because of how you touched them. After you died, I packed fast—because packing after a parent’s death is something you want to finish quickly. I grabbed the books without opening them. They traveled with me for decades, unopened. Only yours. Only your silence.During lockdown, searching for an old photo, I finally pulled one out. It was The Decameron. A book about a plague, isolation, and a hundred tales told to survive. Days later, The New York Times wrote about why Decameron suddenly matters again. I looked up and said: “Dad… you meant for me to find this now.” I read it with you on every page.Today is your birthday. So this is my little one-by-one for you. Thank you, Dad—for what you gave and for what you couldn’t. Thank you for the jacket, the books, the walk down the hallway, the ginger ale on the rocks, the quiet love hidden in your silence, and for teaching me how to be a dad without the sit-down instructions. I carry all of it. And with one deep breath, I let all of it carry me. I love you, Shorty.

1 x 1 x mark: Shorty

<figure id="figure-cctn8vwyzgmihzed0b" class=""><img id="cctn8vwyzgmihzed0b" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/bifRexTm111pmKTkzC2pTTmGCKZd0PYK58FV00IBoq4rPjwbcv3sCkFA0WIvUqXg.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 " style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: 55% 25%;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="55%" data-positiony="25%" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/bifRexTm111pmKTkzC2pTTmGCKZd0PYK58FV00IBoq4rPjwbcv3sCkFA0WIvUqXg.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: 55% 25%;"></figure> This towpath is a narrow, gravel, uneven but steady path once walked by horses and mules hauling barges along the river — water on one side, winter darkness on the other. I was pedaling through the freezing emptiness when, in a moment, a white deer brighter than my fading headlamp crossed it.Some places stay with us because they carried a meaning we couldn’t see at the time. Only today, writing this, did I understand the quiet metaphor of the C&amp;O towpath — a path made for bearing weight beside a river that keeps moving forward.In the winter of 1997, just before Thanksgiving, a biking friend and I set out from Cumberland, Maryland, biking the towpath in reverse — starting at the sign that reads End. I wanted the physical challenge: a barren winter trail with snow, wind, ice, and long stretches of darkness. Out there, in the saddle, every unsteady turn of the wheel sharpens the mind. Focus becomes something deeper than attention — it becomes intent.The sound I remember most is the ice cracking beneath my tires in the solitude of the dark. On nights like that, you hear every sound — sometimes not knowing where the outside ends and the inside begins. A steady reminder that the world was holding me up, even when the surface felt fragile.On the second day, in Hancock, where the towpath meets a small road crossing, we stopped for coffee. My shoes were soaked, the spare layers in my panniers were damp, and I sat on the curb in bright sunlight, still shivering. As I tried to warm my feet, something muted stirred to the surface — a tightening in my throat, the kind that comes when truth stirs. A recognition that change, in some form, was approaching — the kind that touches every life connected to your own.My bike partner checked his watch, pointed toward the 2 p.m. train back to D.C., and said, “We can make it.” A kind offer — a way out.But something steady lifted in me instead.“Let’s keep going,” I said. “Let’s finish.”And we did. Two days later, I was biking into Georgetown on a chain held together with duct tape, arriving at the sign that reads, Beginning. For the first time, the word felt personal.Twenty-eight years later, Thanksgiving time still brings a pause. I remember that moment on the curb — not for the difficulty, but for the honesty that surfaced there. The kind that doesn’t arrive all at once, but grows clearer over time. A reminder that moving forward often asks for openness, honesty, understanding, and respect — for ourselves and for everyone whose path intersects ours.A towpath carries the heavy loads beside the river, steady even when the current and weather are anything but. For me, that’s the lesson: focus is found on uneven ground, not on the rushing water beside it.Maybe that’s what a towpath teaches: we all carry weight, we all follow our own river, and somewhere along the way, we arrive at a beginning we didn’t know we were biking toward.

1 x 1 x mark: Towpath

<h3>&nbsp; &nbsp;</h3><figure id="figure-2q8ppjur3tmi47bdv2"><img id="2q8ppjur3tmi47bdv2" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/ezWc1p8uCtqZrlOZPXCfQo7T4QBSrcnLqeAnezzNt1o6ldG4BJzhsDZSqmJcTFae.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: 50% 0%;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="50%" data-positiony="0%" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/ezWc1p8uCtqZrlOZPXCfQo7T4QBSrcnLqeAnezzNt1o6ldG4BJzhsDZSqmJcTFae.png" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: 50% 0%;"></figure>Walking through the cypress patch this morning — ducking under twisted hanging limbs, a space between the path and the open sea — I have pauses where the mind clears just long enough for a thought to slip through. A liminal moment. The kind that doesn’t belong to before or after, but the thin, in-between place where something stirs.It happens on bluff walks, in the car, in my living room, looking out my window over the tops of redwood trees, or anytime I’m suddenly interrupted by my own thinking. A small voice rises — not loud, but certain — and asks to be noticed. I even say it aloud, the way you talk to your dogs, because they always seem to listen without needing the backstory.It wasn’t about the trees or the view. It was simply something I didn’t want to lose. A moment when something woke up again. And I’m not someone who records things in notes or reminders. It doesn’t work for me. The thought has to speak first, and I have to answer — I’ll have to remember that one — before the day starts buzzing and pulling me forward.Most of the time, I lose it anyway. We all do. Life interrupts.But some thoughts circle back. They return in that liminal space between what I carry and what I’m ready to see. They feel almost sacred — small pieces of meaning I don’t want to misplace. Sometimes I think they’re meant to be passed down — reminders or memories that may one day find it's way to those I am always thinking about.This is the beginning of 1×1×Mark. A small mark kept — in case it finds someone else, too.

mark sanford gross

1 x 1x mark

1 x 1 x mark: Handkerchief

1 x 1 x mark: Shorty

1 x 1 x mark: Towpath

1 x 1 x mark: Liminal