Pieces of Me

                                                         

        

Pieces of me filter through. Slivers of memory, not whole yet clearer than common thoughts. Walk like an Indian, through the woods; dappled light, each coin of silver glowing in this verdant space ... portals.. I was once a boy of these woods, much like I am now, but before screens and incandescent bulbs; before machines and nuclear bombs. When nature was in us, not around us. We could think in that place. We could see the spaces in between mind and matter,  like photo negatives, myriad coins of dancing light.

Holy Spirit walking with me in my courageous boy heart.

Walk softly now, for soon the world will make you stomp and rage to ward off the grasping and cold,  fingers of trouble and strife;Until a sliver of light comes to remind you.

Walk softly through the in between spaces.

God is there.

 

                                                                    SANTA CLAUS

We lived in the brown-shingle house, on a small rise, in a working-class neighborhood.

I investigated the basement one day for a ball and found my toys floating in thigh-deep, dark water.

They were older toys. I am mostly curious about the water. How will it go away? Do we need to work to remove it, or will it drain?

I don’t much like Mike next door. He’s snooty like his Mom. I spy him angling over to see what I’m looking at.

“Santa will bring some toys," I say.

“You’re a baby. There’s no Santa Claus.”

“Yes, there is. Why would you say that?”

“Cuz, my Mom told me so.”

I can’t help but wonder why any Mom would say such a thing. I had my suspicions but wasn’t ready.

“Take it back or I’m going to punch you.”

“Big baby. BIG BABY!” he shouts, so I tackle him, get on top and punch him in the mouth. (these things were normal when I was a kid)

Suddenly, he’s gagging and wriggling to get up, crying loud.

“My tooth, my tooth?” You knocked out my tooth!”

“Mom … MOM, Scotty knocked out my tooth!” as he runs toward his tidy, white house, his Mom leans out the back-screen door, glaring at me.

Turns out, I’ve knocked a cap off one of his front teeth. I guess my parents had to pay for the tooth. I’ve always felt guilty for that.

What has stood out all these years though, is, “There IS no Santa Claus.”

Seems like my general disappointment began there.

Though Christmas was still a special time, there was always a foreboding undertow.

Would Mom be happy or sad?

Either way, I recall those Christmas mornings of dawn misty light, peeking into the living room at the silhouettes, trying to make out the gifts they had arranged there.

A bicycle, a set of pearl blue Slingerland drums …

We didn’t have a surplus of money so the fact they did this etched deep in my soul. I thought of them working day in and day out. I thought of Dad’s horrible wreck and Mom hurrying every morning in high heels to catch a bus to work downtown.

Maybe no jolly guy was coming down the chimney, but there was that whispering in the night. There were the cookies and milk we continued to leave out because my brother was still a little kid. Still,  every time I spied that half-drank glass of milk and cookie crumbs on my Grandma’s old white saucer, I felt him close, like a soft, red blanket of love.

When I was older we had twins and the fantasy began again. We told them in the early years,

“As long as you believe, there is a Santa Claus, he will come.  It’s those who stop believing that lose him.”

I’ve always felt bad about knocking out part of Mike’s tooth.

 The thing is …  I’ve always felt a lot
worse that his Mom told him there was no Santa Claus. 

THE ARC OF JUSTICE

  

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. My wife and I had gone to the Y the day before to work out. Things were slow. Some of the staff were gathered in the foyer. They were all people of color. Most were chatting. Posters and old newspaper clippings of Dr. King were taped all around.

When leaving I couldn’t help but share;

“Years ago, I sat with 42 others listening to a man give a lecture titled, “The Love of All Mankind.” It was about Dr. King's life and teachings. When he finished, 42 people sat drenched in tears. God bless Dr. King.”

“Praise God,” I heard one say.

The next day, at work, we were finishing a deal with a couple from Belarus. Their accents were heavy. I asked how things were at home.

“Well, you know our leader is good friends with Putin so things are not good,” the lady said.

“Did you come here to escape? “I asked.

“Not so much. My husband has a degree in engineering but there was no work. Here, we are needed.”

I am a used car dealer. Last Saturday we were near closing. A family of a Mom, Dad, and 19-year-old son came in at closing time.  They were people of color.  We managed to connect, and they bought the car. I had to run back into the office to get a different screwdriver to put the license plate on.  Jogging back, I saw them in a group hug. They were all crying.

“Darn, ya’ll gonna make ME cry.”I said. 

After the tag was on each one of them reached to give me a tearful hug. It was the young man’s first car. He was going to drive himself to work for the first time.

“Thank you for God’s presence,” I said.

I quote from Dr. King; “Love is the greatest force in the universe; it is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. He who loves is a participant in the being of God.”

I’m a salty old cuss. I grew up during Jim Crow. I saw signs above bathrooms at an amusement park, “Coloreds … Whites.” We used words that I won’t use now. We had race riots in high school. I didn’t know any people of color my age until I joined the Navy during Nam. There were problems there that we ironed out on our own. It got ugly. Then it got better.

I’d have told you things had gotten better and still believe they have for the most part, but I can’t help but read between the lines and feel like that old hate is rearing its head.  

That doesn’t mean we have to buy into it. I do business and associate with folks of all colors and backgrounds. Everyone wants food on the table, a roof over their head, a future for their children, and to be needed.

As it turns out, I think Dr King said it best when he paraphrased Theodore Parker … “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

It’s up to us how long it takes to get there. It is up to America to remain a beacon on a hill. It is up to us to live a life of love and honor, courage and truth.

 If not us,  then who?

BARN DOORS

 

                                 BARN DOORS

Old barn doors, gray boards creak open on groaning hinges.

Dust dances in rays of light.

 Smells  like leather and manure.

There’s a stirring, a portal.

 Wanting  to climb and hide from the world, but not today.

Today … once more I reach through a ray of dusty light for the worn shovel.

Work, for the night is coming yet hold on to  the dusty light. 

SIGNS

                                                   

                                                            

                                                                            

Gull tracks in the sand,

and on a sliver of white shell,

 as if etched by human hand,

Gull tracks again.

Tracks in the sand,

 It's as if I can hear the staccato, beating, gull heart.

 tracks on the shell,

Frozen in time.

How long ago,

On the history of tides,

were these tracks made?

Now, 

then,

Signs written in the sand, on the infinite grains of eternity.

hidden in plain sight.

Waiting to be seen.

Truth etched in the face of God.

 

I AM

 

                                                   

        

I am that grade school child under the house on a hot summer day. It’s cool under here, lying on the cold red clay where Mom told me not to go.

I am a child walking from Joyner’s Grocery. Struggling and sweating because they scolded as I was leaving,

” Don’t mash the bread.”

So, I lift it high, holding by the tie twisted tail of the plastic bag but my shoulders scream and fail, and I must keep stopping.

I am the skinny teenager with wire rim glasses and a spray of freckles confused by the girls that came back to school more like women while I blush my read haired way down the halls.

I’m the China Fleet sailor crossing the concrete bridge into sin city of neon and street vendors and Asian hookers in hot pants,

“Hey Joe … Come ‘ere, Joe”

I am a new father cradling his son, amazed that this purplish mass of flesh with huge dark eyes has survived the trauma of birth.

I am a son of God, resting each morning and each night in the divine light of meditation and prayer.

Breath, each breath coming home, home to the cool red clay under the house as they call from the car,

“Scotty, where are you? We are going to the circus and we can’t find you.”

Part of me yearns to go yet I do not move. I stay by myself regularly while Mom’s at work.

So I watch and listen as the car doors close and it chugs away full of laughter, 

 

                                           REFLECTIONS OF A USED CAR SALESMAN 

Sometimes I wonder where we have gone and where we might go. Living in a world where violence and hate are lifted in the name of Spirit, I know that at our core we are better than this.

When we let our fear of “the others” rule our actions and our beliefs we become victims of our own shortcomings.

Yet the same people who would elevate destruction also feed the poor, help the widow and orphan, build homes for those without.

What is prejudice but fear?

Long ago I was fortunate to discover that my anger was but fear evolved and in so doing I began to find the courage to at least try to live in communion with my fellows. I understand that we must defend and protect those we love and our country, yet I have come to believe that,” a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.”

When I stand in a voting booth or sharing what I believe to be truth, my prayer is that courage will overcome fear and I will know that each soul in this reality is a beating heart that yearns for salvation.

Would that I can act to protect each one of those beating hearts.

GOD ... Can You Hear Us?

 

 

Twice yesterday, I heard social commentary where one comedian then a renowned physicist spoke about an unfair God. Each stated they had cast off the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient power because they could not accept the suffering of life. Their perspective seemed to be that a benevolent, loving God would not create a world of such suffering as this.

I thought this way for many years. How could God allow abuse, addiction, cataclysmic events that kill thousands? Until I came to believe, “why not?” Did the scriptural authors  tell us that creation meant no pain? Sometimes I wonder if the Adam and Eve story is where the breakdown occurred. Were we created in His image to be without suffering until we ate from the “tree of knowledge”?

It came to me that this conundrum is much like marriage. Early we are saturated with desire and full of hope so we marry and have a honeymoon. There is usually a period of relative bliss until life begins to happen. We encounter problems and pain. “We” being the optimum word here. We move through it all together. At times we grow apart. Then at other times we grow closer. If we stick it out (for better or worse) we come to realize that all of it has taught us many lessons. We have grown stronger. We now “love” one another.

When he was 11 years old my son was diagnosed with bone cancer. It was horrifying. I can’t say there were no moments when I was angry with God. There were. Yet when all was said and done I came to a place of painful acceptance rather soon. “Bouncing molecules”, I heard myself say.

God didn’t attack my son or my family. It was literally cellular. Some cells that all of us carry dormant triggered and became active producing a tumor. The year of chemo threatened to kill him. My prayer was that his suffering ease, however that looked. My wife has shared that her prayer was that he survive.

He has survived yet with many challenges. We did too. As a result, I found that I was closer to God as I understood him beyond any place I had been before. Early morning on the greenway outside the hospital I would run into the rising sun communing with God and His creation. Life and death were near in each breath. One morning as I returned on the path I looked up to his floor … his window. The sun was bathing the side of the mostly glass children’s’ hospital. In golden  light there was a cross. I know our minds will play tricks. I kept looking as I struggled for air. The cross did not dim. It has not faded still.

My wife and I are still married. My son works alongside me now. He’s a bit cranky and hurts quite a bit yet full of spit and vinegar. Not long past he sat at my desk.

“I’d like to start going back to church, I think, Dad.”

He’s never uttered a negative word about God. If anybody has a right to be mad and or disillusioned, I’d say it was him.

Through it all my family persevered. I would say that overall, we are better for it. There are scars and cracks for sure. I think the Muslim poet Rumi spoke to it best:

“The wound is the place where the light enters you”

No doubt life is full of pain and sorrow. It is unfair and often devastating. Is God punishing us? Why would a benevolent God allow such things?

I suspect he created order from the chaos. We … this reality … are his thought and his love. There’s good and bad. I suspect what matters is how we deal with it.

I have often imagined a black American slave woman toiling in the boiling southern sun of a cotton field, singing gospel hymns in praise and wonder, smiling to the Father of her heart and salvation and I know:

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all the rest will be made unto you. “

Matthew 6:33

I feel sort of bad for those commentators and all who feel that God has abandoned us. I suspect that in truth, they have abandoned Him/Her in resentment over injustice and pain. I, too, once threw “the baby out with the bathwater,” thinking I had abandoned God as he had abandoned us.  I even despised what I perceived to be an unjust God who allowed such pain. 

Then my son got sick and I learned what suffering really was. 

In the midst of that pain and fog came the cross,  emblazoned upon a glass and concrete wall to remind me:

He has always been here.  

 

OCEAN OF TRANQUILITY

                                     

I was standing with my 5-year-old godson on the beach by water’s edge.

“The beach is my favorite place, Baba. It’s like God.”

“I feel the same way, Toby. We can share that now.”

Wind like the sound of AUM rumbles in my ear, caresses my skin, Divine Mother’s touch. I watch him there in his new oversized ball cap digging at surf’s edge. White foam tumbles out of the blue gray Atlantic, reaching for him, time and time again; myriad tendrils of foam yearning to touch this small boy playing under the universe.

Every now and then he pops up and runs back and forth with it like a sandpiper … laughing all the while.

I am older now. All the scars have weight. Each day I work through the pain of mistake after mistake, trying not to let remorse win, seeking the flow of divine witness. I have to just keep doing the next right thing.

An old, once upon a time, China Fleet sailor sitting here watching this child play at surf’s edge, indefatigable and I know … the cycle continues. Like the ebb and flow of the tide, my remorse fades as the sea calls me home, blessed home … into eternity.

As a youth I railed my plaintive cry; “I seek to find the eyes to see existence’ ocean of tranquility.”

Finally it is done.

For now.

LONG HAIR

 

                                     

 

Our hair grew, and our hearts wilted. 

We took beauty and filled it with drugs until emaciated,

We found ourselves lying broken in the dark.

All of it seemed a bit funny yet the laughter bled,

Into a hollow place.

Gray now and wondering, I work to pay penance,

Yet the end will not come.

Arrogant still, I refuse to forgive us … forgive myself.

I’ve seen purgatory and it does not want to let me go.

Jesus Freaks

 

It was my senior year in High School. We were the last class that was not going to be “bussed” as per the new federal law. Throughout the country there had been riots and marches. The borough of Watts in LA had been burned, Kent State, Selma, spitting on soldiers returning from Vietnam. It seemed as if the whole country was on fire.

Things had gotten tense at school until one day it all came to a head. Fights started on the commons area. Before it was over students had spilled out of classes to join the fray. Anger and hate were like a poisonous gas

Administration, school security and eventually local police managed to restore some order and get folks back to class after a couple of hours. That night word began to travel that the next day some were bringing weapons. That was before the propagation of firearms among young folks but knives, chains and all manner of objects were at hand. Word was to look out for girls hiding sharpened hair picks in their afros.

Lunch came with some scattered fights in the halls until everyone was again gathered on the concrete commons area; whites on one side, blacks the other. The only exception was the “Jesus Freaks” sitting on the grass where they always were. They were sort of our original hippies; soiled blue jeans, vests, long hair.

They were tolerated because they never bothered anybody. They’d just play guitars and sing folk songs, so we hardly noticed them anymore. It was a “peace and love” thing.

You could feel the tension rising. There was a lot of glaring and balled up fists. Some began to shout profanities and try to goad one another into an altercation.

I was on high alert, watching everything, tensed, ready. Then out of the corner of my eye a tall thin “Jesus Freak” named Pat, sat his guitar in the case lying open on the grass and strode toward the black crowd at the top of the steps across the common.

He gestured for someone there to come to him. A petite black girl in an Indian cotton blouse and bell bottom blue jeans walked down a couple of steps. Pat turned and stooped and the girl sort of shimmied up onto his shoulders. He walked back toward his buddies. They all stood. One picked up Pat’s guitar and began playing that old camping favorite, “Kumbaya.” No kidding … freakin’ “Kumbaya”. They started singing. You could hear the girl’s clear soprano above it all as Pat turned and faced the crowd. A couple of the hippies headed towards the black crowd and students there joined them to walk back onto the grass singing, back slapping, punching each other on the shoulder.

Across the concrete no man’s land, you could see confusion. One guy shouted, “to hell with this,” and stomped away. Gazes began to soften. Heads began to hang. Weapons were pushed back down into pockets. A white football player in his team jersey started walking toward the black crowd, toward a fellow football player. They both reached out their hands and shook.

At that point many started to walk into the void to shake hands and hug, laugh and sing so that before long there was a joyful noise, people on shoulders, some sitting on the steps together hugging …  crying.

Unlike the day before there was no intercom announcement to return to class. When the bell rang. The Jesus Freaks gathered their stuff and began to head that way. Most followed.

Other than a few isolated incidents there were no more riots at my school. All the assemblies and counseling, all the newsletters and announcements and newspaper articles … none of it, had made the slightest difference until Pat stood up and crossed that barrier.

That’s the day I learned about a different kind of courage. The kind that can change the world. Alone, striding across the grass that one thin guy changed OUR world just like another thin guy changed the ENTIRE world two thousand years ago.

We looked at Jesus Freaks different after that.

The irony that Pat looked like the Jesus of our Bibles, on our walls, did not escape me. Here now during this season of Advent as we wait for Christ’s coming, I remember. When Pat stood that day, we were all witness to the restoring birth of Christ in our hearts.

All the hate was dissolved into love. (Even though we didn’t want to call it that) That’s what this season means to me. We are renewed in the light that dwells in our hearts. We are reminded of that glowing baby swaddled in the manger come to save us … come to heal all that separates us from the Divine light that is our Creator

 Come to show us how to live.

 

In Christ’s name we pray,

BRAVERY

 

   

                                                                  

 My son rode the yellow school bus in grade school. He was 5^th or 6^th grade when we got a call to come to the school. There had been an altercation on the bus. A girl 10- 15 pounds heavier than him had gotten mad and attacked him.

 I’m rather old school. I figure if someone attacks you it’s game on so I’m thinking he’s at least been suspended.

“Where do we pick him up then?” I ask.

No Mr. Hicks, he’s in class. There’s no reason at all for us to reprimand or punish him,” the principal says. “that’s not why we called you here at all. The girl has been suspended for attacking him, but you see he refused to fight back.”

Stunned I mutter, “What the hell?”

“We asked him why not and he said his Mom told him to never hit a guwell.” Him and his twin brother pronounced girl this way. Must say I kind of hated it when it faded.

“We asked you to come in, so we could tell you in person what a fine young boy you have.”

I was born in the fifties. Bottom line, someone attacks you, especially someone bigger, you go to it. I was also taught not to hit girls though. I left confused.

His Mom admonished me for my rant about defending yourself.

When I got home from work, he was in his room. I went in. He was sprawled on the bed reading a schoolbook. I sat down beside him. He gazed up with those big chocolate eyes like his Mom’s. 

“Hey Dad! How’s it going?”

He’s got a scratch on his forehead and a budding bruise on his cheekbone. My blood rises as I tousle his hair.

“Understand you had a bit of a tough day, Sport.”

“Ah, it wasn’t so bad. She was probably mad at something else. We usually get along fine. Actually, I get along with her better than most.”

Seeing he’s ok, I go to take a shower. Looking in the mirror I see a guy that has spent a lifetime scrapping one way or another and for the first time ever I’m thinking maybe something’s off. I was in a few scrapes on the school bus back in the day. Granted it was never with a girl but 10-15 pounds is a lot.

Then it hits me. I always figured it took courage to fight. In that moment I thought of all those kids watching as she pummeled him. He’s no sissy and had his share of scuffles but he just took it in front of everybody.

Then I hear the guy in the mirror say, “I’m thinking that’s about as courageous as it gets.”

The Everly Brothers

 

I was resting and reading on a Sunday and there it was, “Don Everly of the Everly Brothers duo has died.”Most know Don was the black-haired brother. I was a grade school kid when I first heard them.My feet stood in the country music roots of my father but branched out with the times through and past Elvis into the new world of rock.

I always felt like the Everly Brothers bridged that transition with an almost ethereal presence of chromosomal harmonies.I first watched them on a tv show called “Shindig” standing there in the spotlight on a darkened stage.

 Their practically gaunt faces, slicked back hair, high cheek bones and flashing eyes,  voices like angels, singing “All I Have to Do “ felt to me like a running stream.Don seemed to harbor deep pain as his brother watched cautiously while holding the harmony.

When a song ended, I always wanted more.I realize as I reflect now I never talked about it much with anyone, but it seemed like Don Everly was wise with pain.

Maybe when you have a moment, google “The Everly Brothers”.  It’ll be best if it’s an early video and then we’ll know something together.Straddling two worlds is a heavy load for anybody.Add drugs and tumultuous, seismological shifts in youth culture and society an you’ve got a heady mix

.Goodbye, Don. Tell Phil we all said hello and thanks to you both for the courage of showing us your souls.

Mrs. C

 

I am a used car dealer. In the scope of that entrepreneurial endeavor there are many interactions with the public.

We named our business “Journey” in part.

“Life’s a journey” is the idea. On that journey, I have changed, I feel for the better. (on a good day, anyway.)

This story is about Mrs. C.

She’s a proud black lady with a penchant for asserting herself. She was helping her now compliant daughter buy a car.

They had many problems with a previous dealer purchase. Mrs. C. brought her to me having bought a car from Journey years past.

We made a deal and, in the process, as is so often the case, re-established our bond of mutual respect.

The next week I was out of town and during that time I received a report there had been an engine light after the sale that was resolved with a new gas cap.

After returning to work, I was told, “There’s a lady here. I tried to talk to her while you were gone, and she would not listen. All she did was yell and now she’s here saying she’s returning the car.”  

My first utterance was to remind her of our contractual agreement at which her volume elevated and she began once again to describe all the problems and inconvenience she and her daughter had experienced with a  previous purchase elsewhere and how she “Was not going to go through that again.”

I made a conscious decision to hear her out.

When she seemed to slow down I heard myself say, “Mrs. C, might we invite God into our conversation?”

“Yes,” Mrs. C said much softer.

“First Mrs. C,  I want you to know that the most important thing here in this moment is you and your daughter. “

I’m thinking, who the hell is this talking? I’ve been a Scots Irish scrapper all my life, but a teacher has entered said life and this other guy has come to dwell within.

From there I reviewed and empathized. I offered some mechanical and economic experience and as I was speaking her dark eyes filled until a tear broke free traveling her cheek into her surgical covid mask.

I was touched as we stood in the bright day, like in a capsule as the phones rang and people skirted all around us.

Since then we have had other exchanges. Some also testy yet in the end we met on common ground. I don’t expect smooth sailing through the term of contract.

I do expect a reasonable exchange of ideas and perspective grounded in spirit. Sometimes that’s not all warm and fuzzy. Sometimes its messy and folks get upset.

What matters is that in the end we are all working toward the same goal. What is that goal? I would contend that it is to live in positive relationship.

Not long ago I was reading and there it was, “God gives us family to teach us how to live in the world with others.”

I can disagree, but I cannot attack. I can argue but I need not yell. I can live but must let others live too.

Sometimes the best that can happen is we just agree to disagree. When I find myself with my guard up in ready position I know one thing. Until I alter my “posture” there’s only going to be a fight.

Relationship is not a gift. It’s something I must work on.

I suppose it’s just a matter of whether we care about relationship or not.

I had a thought and looked for scripture. This is what was there;

Philippians 2:5

“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,”

Funny … seems like I always find what I am looking for when I can search with an open heart. 

 

 

 

CUSSIN'

 

Henry was ten- or eleven-years old living in a working-class neighborhood with his Mother. His “old man" was supposedly working for a company out in Texas.

Life was better without his Fathers overbearing presence. He seemed to make Henry’s Mom alternately sad and angry.

Henry was “latch key” because she worked downtown. Somewhat bookish yet prone to mischief he did a bit of after school roaming before her daily check in phone call. There would be hell to pay if he missed that call or the ever-present list of chores was not done (mostly yelling and disappointment which was punishment a plenty) but she’d also threaten to send him to Jackson Training school if he didn’t straighten up. He suspected she didn’t REALLY mean it, but it alarmed him nonetheless.

Billy was a tall lanky 16-year-old who lived down the alley. Henry being a freckled  adolescent was fascinated by Billy’s tanned and remarkably hairy legs. Henry would sneak over the back fence to Billy’s bedroom window and tap on it. Billy was almost always lounging on his bed talking on the phone. He’d grin that lazy grin and waive Henry in.

It made him felt special. No other kids were allowed. For some reason Billy liked Henry and took it upon himself to teach him the ways of the world.

Billy would steal bicycles and mix up the parts and paint the frame to disguise them for sale. It confused Henry because of the do not steal commandment in the Bible but his curiosity and admiration for Billy got the best of him.  Billy's  Mom was around but seemed oblivious to Billy’s comings and goings. It’s like she was sweet nature dumb and blind with love for her dark and handsome son.

Billy liked girls and they liked him. That impressed a 11 (and ½ ) year-old. Billy spoke a soft drawl laced with colorful language that Henry had heard all his life from his Father and his uncles  but coming from Billy it took on a movie star quality. Henry began to test the waters.

Hanging around with guys his age he’d try it out. They seemed impressed with a good “Kiss my ass” or “Damn that’s cool”, so the colorful language thing became like an old pair of sneakers you wore all the time.

He had to be careful though. His Mom was straight laced. She’ d have one of those mouth foaming fits if she knew Henry was cussing. He was also trying to smokie cigarettes behind the garage with Gary Gunthenfaler who lived a couple houses closer to Henry than Billy. All Gary’s parents did was watch soap opera sitting  in two recliners, smoke cigarettes and drink beer. “They’re older” Gary said “but they’re cool.”

Gary cussed as good as Henry did, and he’d steal cigarettes from his Dad. They would smoke them behind a sagging garage that nobody ever parked in behind a neighbor’s house.

It was mostly coughing, and gagging interspersed with “Damn that’s strong” and “” That’s making me dizzy as hell.”

It was Sunday and Henry’s Mom insisted they go to church with his Aunt Mabel and Henry’s three cousins. They were walking out the front door on a cold and icy day. The front stoop was eight or nine brick steps configured sort of like a bay window.

She had on the ever-present high heels. Henry was concerned she’d fall and was paying more attention to her as he held her hand being a big man and protector. Next thing he knew he was looking up at his loafered feet and sky while wind milling his left arm as she tugged back on his right. When his tailbone hit the steps he hollered, “Damn!’ and skidded a couple more steps, his Mother gasping. No sooner than he hit she pulled him upright looked him in the eye and said, “WHAT did you say, young man?”

“DOWN Momma … I said DOWN, cuz that’s where I was headed.”

Who knows where kid stuff like that comes from, but it was there as convenient a lie as finding a lucky penny, even though he knew it was lame as hell.  He waited for the slap on the back of the head or his hand as she pursed her lips. Then like a miracle she smiled that big Mary Tyler Moore smile, bent over and started that sort of quiet, shoulder shake laughing she did. still holding on to his hand trapped against her dark wool coat.

After it passed she stood  looking him in the eye  and said, “Ok. But if I ever hear language like that from you again I promise you I will wash your mouth out with soap.”

He could tell she was struggling not to smile. It gave him a warm feeling behind all that fear of trouble he carried around behind his ever-present mischief.

Henry went on to live a "colorful life". Now he’s pretty much a family man. Some might say he's even a little religious so are a bit surprised sometimes because he can be a rather “salty” fellow.

He tries to watch it, especially around church folks and his now 86-year-old Mom but every now and then   something will slip. Henry will turn beet red and look down at the floor or his plate. Usually little will be said but it’s funny how it makes him feel … kind of like an eleven-year-old that needs his mouth washed out with soap.

The Attic

 Adolescence was painful enough for a skinny redhead with freckles. Charlie was 13. His kid bother was in kindergarten. Charlie didn’t know then, but his Dad had been abused as a child in rural South Carolina.

He had escaped into the army air corps at the age of 16 with forged papers and a little help from his Mother. He’d become a binge alcoholic, like his father before him. He would stay gone for weeks at a time. You could sense the storm brewing inside.

Sometimes it would reach gale force and devastate his family.

His place at the supper table would sit empty and they would know, the storm was coming. Charlie, his Mom and little brother would eat in nervous silence.

They would find refuge at times in the home of an in-law. She was a  diminutive, auburn haired widow. His Mom called her Gerlene. The children called her Mrs. Cobb. She lived alone in a small white house by the railroad tracks.

Mrs. Cobb was a hoarder. One of the many things she liked to hold on to were books. They were everywhere. volume upon volume of Funk and Wagnall encyclopedias, history books, biographies, travel, politics, science and nature.

Charlie was bored to death by all the ladies’ talk but this was a dusty, musty wonderland.

It was a sunny spring morning as he sat at the battered antique dining room table engrossed in a tome about U.S. presidents. The phone jangled and he could tell by the breathy change in their voices that the ever-looming storm had found them.

Panicking, they prepared to run out the back door until they heard a car door slam. Mrs. Cobb, frail hands quivering, peeked through the cheap plastic blinds. When she turned, the color had drained from her face.

“It’s him. Quick, HIDE!”

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM he banged on the front door roaring like some primeval beast.

“Gerlene, let me in dammit! I know they’re here! He slurred.

“They’re not here Clint. You’re drunk. Go away!”

That only made him madder. He began to attack the door with fury trying to kick it in. They could hear the casing begin to crack.  Mrs. Cobb ran on tiptoes and pulled down the attic steps and motioned for them to go up then lifted and shut the trap like door behind them.

They huddled together in the dark. Slivers of daylight seeped through the cracks enough they could barely make out their surroundings; more books, old trunks, magazines and musty furniture. Dust danced in thin shafts of light.

The commotion below was muffled but they could make out Mrs. Cobb trying to reason with him. He wasn’t buying it though until she threatened to call the cops. He seemed to drop it down a notch. The thing was if you locked him up he’d get drunk when he got out and things would be even worse when he found them.

Charlie could hear the click of the deadbolt and his Dad’s heavy shoes on the hardwood floors. He began to curse and threaten again. She had always had a way of calming him down, but this time  he was escalating.

“Tell me where they are or I’m gonna blow your brains out, you old bag!”

Charlie’s heart was racing. His Dad always carried a gun and the story was that when Charlie had been little his father had done a couple years in prison for manslaughter with a gun.

Charlie saw his Mom move toward the attic door. He grabbed her pale arm. It was pasty and cold. He knew that the sight of his Mom was like pouring gasoline on a fire to his Dad when he was raging.

Mrs. Cobb screamed,

“CLINT, I’ve had enough. I’ve always treated you with respect and I’ll not have you coming into my home and threatening me! You should be ashamed of yourself, threatening an old woman. I told you they are not here. Leave now or you WILL GO TO JAIL!

The knot in Charlie’s throat was so big he felt like he was choking. He was horrified that his little brother was going to sneeze in the dusty attic and give them away. His Mom had frozen in place, Charlie still holding on to her arm for dear life to keep her from revealing them. He could see his brother’s huge eyes even in the dark pleading for Charlie to save them.

Silence … there was only silence, like at the supper table. Charlie could hear their own breathing. It sounded so loud in his pounding ears he couldn’t believe his old man couldn’t hear it too.

Clint mumbled something. Then, like a miracle, the heavy shoes were stomping out the door. He heard the deadbolt click and realized he was holding his breath and soaked in sweat. It was running down his back and sides. He had wrapped his free arm around his brother, his head buried deep in Charlie’s bony chest.

It seemed an eternity before the attic door creaked open and the rickety steps telescoped downward into the light. Mrs. Cobb peered up at them.

“He’s gone. You can come down. I don’t think he’ll come back anytime soon. “

Charlie knew something had changed that day in that musty attic. When he crawled out, a fire had begun to smolder. He vowed that no one would ever make him feel that way again. He’d gone into the attic an idealistic, bookworm. He’d come out something else.

He’d moved into adult life seeming to seek a violent world with a chip on his shoulder. He’d survived by making those around him think that it was not worth the hassle to confront or attack him. He made them think that he was just crazy enough, just mean enough to make them pay. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. In the end the only thing that mattered was that they believed he could.

One day the pain and misery of living like that brought Charlie to the end of his rope. His life had become unmanageable and he came to believe that the only way he could survive was to surrender to God’s will as he understood him.

He could have come out of the attic abhorring violence. Intellectually he did feel that way but if threatened, the rage at his father would come over him.

Married and with kids, Charlie tried to work with adolescents and let them know as best he could that he cared for them. He had become a grizzled old cuss. Sometimes little babies would cry and he’d know they could feel the smoldering at his core but he learned that a hug or kiss or a reassuring hand on a shoulder might make the difference in a kid’s life.

If he could just listen … really listen … maybe, he could touch them somehow. Maybe he could pull them back from the secret fire of violence before it was too late.

 

On Violence

 

                                                                       On Violence

 

I suppose like many boys I first recognized violence in my father. He’d spank you every so often. He and his brothers boxed and played football. 

He left for a while. Our school yard was sort of dirt and rock. Guys would test you. I never really understood why. Seemed like it would be easier to leave folks alone but I had a scrappy Irish temper so if they wanted to test, I had an answer.

We called it “Junior High”. We moved up in neighborhood but not so much disposable income so I didn’t wear the exact right clothes. Tony down the street decided I’d be a good target. First contact, I was walking to the store to get some stuff for Mom.  A group of guys were being loud as I went to past Tony’s driveway.

I spotted the boxing gloves. No surprise … Tony starts hollering at “HEY,  NEW GUY!”

“Let’s see how tough New Guy is!”

I never understood bullies but I was taught to fight back and they’d leave you alone after. I knew it worked so I put on the gloves and squared off with Tony.

He had me by a few pounds and was an early bloomer to my late. Like a dummy I went toe to toe with him because of my temper but it worked out ok. I gave as good as I got so when it was over I got a couple of back slaps and grins and continued on my way. When I came back by they were gone.

It all stuck in Tony’s craw though. I suspect he took some razzing for not being able to finish the skinny new guy. So he called me out at school and we met behind the gym. I hated that … waiting.

The result was the same. I went toe to toe in anger so it was pretty much a draw. That was the end of it.  Guess I should thank Tony. I didn’t have much trouble with anybody after that.

Bars and clubs and the US Navy with two overseas deployments were riddled with violence of all kinds. There’s a picture of me coming home on leave getting my seabag out of Dad’s trunk.

The sweet, fun loving guy is gone.

Cigarette hanging from my mouth, mirror shades and a sly grin tell the story.

Mom said the Navy “ruined me.”

She’d lost her kind, conscientious peace maker and now in his place was a child of violence.

 

BLEED

 

There’s somethin I been tryn’ to say

All my life and again today.

Springsteen’s thunder road,

Neil young and the damage done.

 

All that spit when I wanted to quit,

But the vinegar made bile,

And the vomit made wild.

So I swallowed it back

And continued to hack away

At the misery.

 

There’s something I been tryin’

To say

That’s stuck in my craw

And so I just bleed

 for the lonely, bleed for the dead.

That old life

So full of dread

Til the headlights shined

And I could see home

At the end of the road.

Yearning to lie down

And pray …  for another day

Another way to bleed.

Our Children

 

Last Sunday my son’s SUV was parked behind my truck so I took it to go shoot some hoops at the local schoolyard.

He’d wanted “bubba tires” on it when he got it a couple years past. I’d met him half way knowing those tires are problematic and make a gob of noise. He was agreeable but clearly disappointed.

It was like riding in a darn buckboard wagon. RUM, RUM RUM RUM RUM … Christ it was loud and bumpy. I’ve always tried to do the most I can for them. They are old enough now where the whole thing is to get them off the payroll.

I got to thinking about him driving this thing back and forth to Boone and suddenly I misted up. Hell I’m misting up now and it causes me to wonder.

When I was 12 my Father took me to work and said, “Boy … I raised you this far. You’ll be earning your keep from here on out.”

He wasn’t nasty about it. He was just stating a fact of life as he knew it. The tale is he was plowing behind a mule at 12.  Tow headed and somewhat small, in the S.C heat he toiled from dawn to dusk. The story has been verified countless times. Having lifted a manual plow to feel its heft I can only wonder how he did it.

I didn’t want things to be that way for my children. So riding in that raggedy old SUV my heart traveled back to that sandy loam of sweat and tears and endless labor and I wanted to cry.

I want to cry for my little boy. Not long ago my wife had some 8 mm film put to jump drive. I watched a skinny version of my confused self wash them in a basinet. I watched them play and fall and look up at us in wonder.

So maybe it won’t be much longer until they are completely off the payroll. That’ll be a good thing because I’m no spring chicken and they’ll need to find their own way but I’ve learned something these past few days.

I don’t give a damn about the past. I could care less what I had to do or my father or his father before him. I will give to these boys until my last breath and thank God for every day I can.

I'd be willing to bet there's quite a few of you that feel the same.

 

Sins of the Father

When I was 16 years old I was angry. Frustrated, I had stepped onto a road of rage that would last some 20 or so years.

We used to cruise Shoney’s and McDonalds listening to loud rock, looking for a fight, excitement. “Burn down the mission,” was our mindset.

There was a Billy Graham revival at the coliseum. I despised religion. I had lived in violence and alcoholism all my young life while religious people wagged their condemning fingers and stood idly by on the premise that a man’s home was his castle and it was wrong to interfere.

Truth was (and I knew better) they were just afraid, just like I was. Just like we were.

I’d heard Billy Graham this and Billy Graham that until it popped the now bursting bubble of my resentment and I exploded under the bright light of that profane, circus colored Mc Donald’s.

“F—K BILLY GRAHAM. F—K Billy Graham," I screamed. He’s nothing but a bible thumping HYPOCRITE and you are ALL BLIND SHEEP running off a cliff,” until they snatched my skinny arms back between my shoulder blades, cuffed me and threw me into the back of a squad car.

I raged there, kicking and screaming until exhaustion set in. My voice began to break and crack and I lay down on my side still cuffed and wept in my sweat,  face against the filthy vinyl seat, the wet laboring breath of defeated youth roaring in my ears like a storm.

Many years later … another life and I went to a spiritual retreat in Montreat, NC. By then I had experienced real hypocrisy. Hell, I had been the biggest hypocrite of all.

Dr. Graham had spent many years just up the mountain. He was still living. Walking the shaded streets of the retreat center, I apologized to God and all his messengers and asked for forgiveness.

I still don’t agree with the finger wagging. I find traditional, Calvinist religion limited at best yet I have learned one fundamental thing.

There are many paths to the summit yet the goal is the same.

Whether it is Dr. Graham, Ghandi, Martin Luther, Mother Teresa, seven red headed aunts or a wounded but devout father …  God sends his messengers in many forms.

What matters is that we are on a path to the summit and are aware of it because you see,  we are all headed there.

Turns out, we just have to listen. Maybe if we hang on, rather than sobs of defeat, we will hear the voice of God.