It Just Clicks. Or, It Doesn't
I don't know why some things are funny to me or how my mind puts things together. I have told Cilla before when she has asked, "How did you get from here all the way to there?" And it is amazing how that works and connects so quickly. And then there are other times when I am telling a story and there is a word I need to finish the story and I cannot think of that word to save my life. I will stand there with Cilla and just wait. And wait. And wait for the right word to show up. With others, I have to just find the best word that will do and stammer it out. But I am still disappointed that the best version of that thought or sentence didn't get out there.
Southeast Asian Poultry
Was watching a cooking show that was featuring chicken wings. The host then had a college professor come out with a few varieties of live chickens. The professor pointed out that all varieties of chicken originated in the jungles of Southeast Asia. That was fascinating to me. When you think of wild jungle creatures, is chicken the first thing that comes to mind?
And then I started laughing. Cilla looked at me and knew better than to ask the question. So I answered it anyway. "I was just thinking - dude is holding a Vietnamese Jungle Chicken. Doesn't that sound like a racial epithet? Like, if you called someone at work a 'Vietnamese Jungle Chicken,' you could get fired."
For the rest of the day when either of us did something stupid or frustrating we called each other a Vietnamese Jungle Chicken.
Lost 60 Pounds in 2013
Lost 60 pounds in 2013 and was sporadically good at running. The goal this year is to lose around 60 more. I wanted to lose 100 pounds in 2013 and was making pretty good progress for most of the year when I changed jobs and moved across the country. Lost another 15 pounds once we got here and then flattened out with the stress of the new job.
I only HAD to work 3 days a week. But I came in on a couple of my days off just because... just because. There are so many things that happen during the day of a work week that are unplanned, that I have always felt that you needed a day or so with no responsibilities to focus on admin and anything else you could do ahead of time or after the fact.
Work just dominated every piece of energy we had. I went from running 6 days a week for an hour each day, to doing almost nothing. And it was much more the emotional drain than a physical one really. It was very much a case of "I only have so much CONCERN to go around. I have my God, my wife, my work, and then the Braves got that last little bit."
I needed something mindless and effortless and sports are perfect for that and baseball is the best because it ALWAYS on. Having to go out and work out and plan my workouts - it just wasn't mindless enough. My plan is to get a baseline workout routine set up that is just that - routine. I can always add things to keep my interest up, but also have this healthy thing that is no mental stress at all either.
Things are better for me at work now. I can not only see a light at the end of the tunnel, I am growing more and more confident that it is not an oncoming train. That, in the words of convicted felon Martha Stewart, is a good thing.
I Can Name Every County in Delaware
Sussex, Kent, and New Castle.
That's it. All THREE of them. Uno, Dos, Tres, ain't no Cuatro.
I Need a Church
I need a church. I need believers singing hymns in honor of Christ's sacrifice and teachers teaching me things about the love of God that I don't know or that I need reminding about. I need fellow believers who serve one another and MORE IMPORTANTLY serve others. Serving others, being the mild, soft spoken ones that provide food to the hungry, clothes to the cold, and shelter to the homeless - those are the people that win people to Christ.
I am not mild. I am not soft spoken. Loving is not the first word that comes to mind when one thinks of me. I am selfish and bombastic and loud. But I love you. To the extent that Christ has changed me from the sinner I was to the saved sinner I am, I love you. I look at you sometimes and I forget how unlovable I am and how He loved me anyway. That is why I need a Church. To remind me that I must serve. I must serve because I am blessed.
But I also need a church to allow me to humble myself before God and Christ. If you are able to keep in mind how perfect God is and that the God of the whole universe is just fascinated with you as an individual, it becomes hard to get too down on yourself. If you are reminded of all the pain and brutality that Christ faced on our behalf, it gets harder to be overwhelmed with the trivial inconveniences of our modern lives. If you understand that someone without blame at all sacrificed himself to spare you, it gets harder to hold a grudge against those folks who wrong you.
I need that in my life.
No Domino's or Pizza Hut or Papa John's
One tidbit that might be interesting to some of you is that while my weight loss program kind of stalled a month or so after getting up here to Delaware, it did not do so because of franchised pizza places. Pizza has been my guilty pleasure for ages now. It is the perfect FAT SLOB RAY food. You don't even have to leave the house to get it! They will bring it to you. The internet even allows you to order without dealing with live humans. The only shame you have to deal with is when your 30 hot wings and extra large Dominator or Pepperoni Lover Deep Dish pizza gets to the house is the delivery guy. And there is no judgement in his eyes at all - unless you stiff him on the tip.
But I have not had pizza from a national franchise since we got up here. It has been too easy and too tasty to pick up, dine in, or have delivered pizza made by people that have an inordinate number of vowels in their last names. Since I have gotten to Delaware, I have had more pizzas prepared by guys named Vinnie that they had guys named Vinnie on the Sopranos.
And pizzas with the best ingredient almost always being the crust. A crust that has an audible "crack" as you first bite into it but then has an incredible chewy quality that follows. I had never ordered a plain cheese pizza before I got here. And even though that is what I have ordered a few times now, I have never gotten a plain cheese pizza. I have had that magical crust with tomato sauce that has never seen the inside of can married to cheese that in some cases had been made earlier that day - cheese made all the richer by bubbling for just a few moments in a wood fired, brick or stone oven.
It is so good that it is almost unfair when we release the cook to add fresh basil or pepperoni or roasted broccoli with bacon or ... Well, you get the idea. The two places we go have family working behind the counter, in the kitchen, or in the garden growing a lot of what we find on the pizzas. I should have stuck to the seafood places. Might have made it to a hundred pounds lost this past year if I had.
An Evil Man Was Nice
Many years ago when I was at my worst the city of Houston provided me a place to stay for the night. Part of me wants to list all the ways I was worse. But a young woman in the church I attended a year or so after Houston's hospitality department catered to my excess taught me different. She was giving her testimony and refrained from listing all the depraved things she had done before Christ found her wandering and wondering on that road to Damascus.
You could tell it was not shame that kept her from sharing - at least I could. I knew she spoke the truth when she said she did not want to "honor the wrong things." I knew it was true because I have sat with others talking of our sins and the hazards from those sins and I have felt that perverse pride when my depravity was greater than theirs. So, I won't be listing all the ways I was worse. Just understand that as bad as I am now, with the benefit of Jesus Himself sanding away the rougher, coarser edges, at one time, I was worse.
But the night that Houston kept me as a guest... I had been drinking. I had spent hours drinking. I had gone from club to club with an extremely seductive young woman and her friends who really, really LOVED... my money. At the last club she and her friends had gotten thrown out. I had not.
I had found an even more attractive woman who also LOVED my money but not only laughed at my jokes, but seemed to actually GET the jokes. That told me she was smarter than the other one. Maybe she was not smart enough to get the jokes, to actually think they were funny - I will never know. But she was smart enough to make me think that she did in the moment. That was far smarter than the other one. If I am going to be played, I at least want to be played well.
At some point a friend of her boyfriend showed up and started asking loud questions. He had had so much alcohol that he could not get my hearing to understand him properly. Or I was so drunk I could not get him to speak clearly. Or something like that. Time to go.
I will skip over some really good parts to save them for another time. But I wound up in a large concrete room with concrete benches and exposed toilets and a solid steel door with a shuttered window that only opened from the outside. And I was not alone. I was with drug addicts - some blissfully within the grasp of their chosen oblivion of self and others horrified to find themselves confined once again to their own minds, their own selves with no means of leaving behind the one person they hated the most. I was with other drunks - most dressed as lower middle class laborers who had not yet made it home from just a few beers with the guys and a few of us dressed rather nicely from an evening with the girls and one obnoxious fellow in a tuxedo who had lost his bow tie the same as all of us had lost our shoe laces and belts. I was with drug dealers - some of whom appeared to have been smart enough to not actually use their own product and others whom I would have put with the drug addicts until I heard their charges read later that night. Of course the homeless and the mentally disturbed were there - arguably the most comfortable of the lot with the wind and the rain incapable of finding them in this grey on gray purgatory.
They fed us that night. Two pieces of bologna, two pieces of bread, a piece of cheese, a granola bar with blueberries all in a plastic bag. There was nothing to drink served with it. I did not complain. I was working diligently to perfect my impersonation of concrete. As my hangover started to progress throughout the night, it actually helped by graying my complexion. I watched the elders of this urban tribe of the concrete room empty the contents of the plastic bag and then fill that with water from the water fountains that were mounted above each toilet. I went to the fountain and drank and drank in an effort to hold off the worst effects of the hangover that I knew was coming.
A couple of hours later an ancient black man, skinny to the point that I could have identified specific bones if I had paid enough attention in biology, woke up and was hungry. He had missed the meal. He asked several around him when they were going to feed us and most of them did not answer him - conversation was not a popular pass time. Finally someone told him that they had served the food and gone.
"I am hungry," was all he said before he started crying. Not loud sobs or wails or anything so dramatic. Just a hungry man with no hope in the world crying at the latest example of how the world was beyond his ability. He cried. I turned my head away while noticing that others were turning just as I was. He cried softly and barely audibly. He cried.
A young black man, shorter than me by a couple of inches but in shape, sleek looking, like a runner, put his arm around the much taller, much older man. "C'mon, let's find you some food Pops."
The younger man was a drug dealer. I knew this because we had already been before the judge and had our charges read. He was a drug dealer who had been arrested selling to an undercover cop. He was a drug dealer who was arrested in possession of an unregistered firearm. He was a drug dealer who had not looked away from a crying, helpless, hungry old man.
They walked together among the rest of us, slowly as the old man shuffled his feet, and the younger man would ask, "Yo, man, you gonna eat that bread?" "Hey, pahtnuh, you gonna eat that granola shit?"
They walked among us until the young man had put together a meal for the older man from the things that others had not wanted. He then took his own old plastic bag and filled it full of water for the older man. He even asked,"You don't mind drinking after me, do ya, Pops?" And of course the old man didn't.
It is hard to look like concrete with tears in your eyes. I don't know that young man's name. I have no idea if he was convicted or how his life turned out. I know based on the charges read that he sold crack and meth, that he traded in misery. I know he carried a gun. He might have rationalized that he needed the gun to protect his drugs and money, but that is just another way of saying that he was willing to kill someone over crack and meth. Those actions are evil.
But on that night, in that place, he was nice to an old man who was hungry and hopeless and helpless. On that night when I looked away, he put his arm around a hurting human being and offered comfort. He saw misery and hopelessness and he took action. On that night, in that moment, he was the better man.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Not a Ron Howard Production
Before the movie was ever made, he told me this. I hate the fact that the movie was made. Or at least I hate that the movie was given the title that it was given. It cheapens the impact of the statement. It renders it derivative when it was original at its time of being spoken. Perhaps not original. Perhaps that is memory playing tricks or lack of knowledge coloring recollections. But it was not common.
My father was on a hospital bed very much like the one he died on. He was in a hospital room very much like the one he died in. He was in the hospital that he eventually died in. My mother was there. Sitting on the bed with him. Her left hand, or rather the nails of the fingers of her left hand, traced what must have been, by then, a decades long rotation through the hairline that almost reached the back of his neck.
A decision had been made to touch him like that, in that spot, at that speed, with that force, with that repetition. It was a decision reached perhaps verbally or perhaps not. It was a decision made by two friends and two partners and two lovers and two parents and two enemies and two spouses - all those things that apply to an old married couple of 27 years. It was a decision. Two consciousnesses focused on this and agreed - this offered comfort and pleasure in the binary. This was something they both enjoyed and they both decided that this was something that would be done.
The beauty, as I saw then and as I might be the only to see, was that the decision was not made that day or the days leading to that day. This comfort, this pleasure, this absent minded mingling of one to one was decided upon years and years ago - perhaps, probably, before the existence of its sole independent witness - me - on this day so long ago. My mother's hand played with the short hairs on the nape of my father's neck.
The window was open and cool air was blowing in softly. It would have been fall, was probably fall - spring time in south Georgia could be unbearably hot. But it could have been spring I suppose. My dad was leaned up in his hospital bed with my mother sitting beside him and me sitting at the foot of his bed. The air from outside smelled of pine trees. My mother was noticeable happy - obviously happy - for a moment obliviously happy. I smiled.
Years ago my father had told his doctor that he had to be left hope. An interesting request. To be left with hope. Knowing, at some point, that request devolves to "lie to me".
My mother told me once over burgers at Wendy's - Wendy's was close to the hospital - she told me, "Your daddy told me the other day, 'Mama, they are gonna start keeping things from me soon. You are gonna have to go out and ask them if you want to know more.'"
I shifted the last bite of my burger to my cheek and asked with the taste of mustard and ketchup and beef and onion cascading through the cavities of my skull, "What did you say?"
"I smiled," she said, "and I said, 'I'll listen to what they tell you.'" I saw her eyes grow wetter and recognized the trick I did to tighten the cords of my throat to bite down, to back down, tears and crying.
"They have been keeping things from him for months now."
I bit my burger. I chewed my burger. I swallowed my burger. I counted on the act of eating to mask the tightening of the cords in my neck.
I knew they had. I knew he was dying. I think (I almost typed, "I like to think...", but ) I think that he knew he was dying. But that conversation kinda disproves that. Think on that - the medical professionals were dancing around the truth. For us. For him.
Mrs. Page at church, when she eulogized him at the end of the year, the way she eulogized all members who died during the course of the year, described him as charming. He must have been. I found him so but that is not evidence. No. That is found in the nurses who told my mother before and after his passing (death) that they hoped / prayed / were thankful that they were not working when they called CODE on his room.
My sister-in-law acted through her sister to get us to address a living will. But she acted through me. I was the oldest. That was why. That had to by why. Right? It wasn't because I was the coldest. It was because I was the STRONGEST - ha! Sorry. Self deception only goes so far. But I was the one that took the form and listened through not - quite - Charlie Brown teacher - jazz horn - instructions. I was the one that led my family through the form. I wonder if they heard me as something just less or just more than a jazz horn trying to find syllables.
We completed the form. We signed the form. We were SERIOUS. There was DECORUM. There was also butterflies dripping with acid circling through stomachs.
The doctor came in and went over the form and the whole family nodded absently at the notions that we had just initialed and then signed and then dated. He walked us through each line by final final final
line.
They would not do CPR. They would not put him on an artificial heart. And we nodded. They would not do CPR. They would not put him on a respirator. And we nodded. They would not do CPR. They would not seek to sustain his life through artificial means. And we nodded. They would not do CPR. They would not do CPR. They would not do CPR. They would not do CPR. THEY WOULD NOT DO CPR! THEY WOULD NOT DO CPR! THEY WOULD NOT DO CPR! THEY WOULD NOT DO CPR!
"Um."
As the start of one of those sentences that you have to say, as the start of THE sentence you have to say (and at that time, it was THE sentence that had to be said) it was an admittedly poor start.
But that is the way I started it. "Um,"
I paused. It was not to gather my thoughts. It was a stalling tactic. I knew someone else would say what I wanted to say. I just needed to drop the "um" to stall the inevitable, morbid momentum to give them the breathing space to say the obvious. But the silence it did not echo. It, the silence, turned on me. Nobody said a word as doctor, nurses, sisters-in law, brothers, mother, and
father
turned
to look
at me.
"No CPR?"
The LOOK continued. I knew what had to be said. Didn't they know what had to be said? If ALL knew what HAD to be said, then just asking the question and pausing.
But no. They don't see it. I had to say what had to be said. I had to say it in front of him. A continuously shrinking part of me hates them all for their blank stares and their simplicity.
"I agree. No tubes or machines. No postponing the inevitable. But no CPR? To have the en...
To have," LOOK AT HIM, "to have you in pain and fear and to have them come to this room and do nothing? To have them watch? To have them safe behind this piece of paper with my name on it to watch with no responsibility to help? To leave you there frightened and alone? NO. Just no. They have to help. They have to come to you. They have to do what hands can do. They have to be here for you."
It made everyone just as uncomfortable as you think it did. I took my eyes off of his only long enough to find my mother's - she was watching him - she would hate me for this only to the extent that this caused him pain - she does not hate me - that brings a comfort.
I looked at my two brothers and neither met my gaze. If they had met my gaze that day, I might have found the courage to ask later what they were thinking, but, alas...
The typed up orders have a line drawn through them. The doctor's barely legible scribble is written above the orders with all of our signatures at the bottom of the page. It states that CPR shall be administered but that not other efforts shall be expended. These were the written rules of my father's passing from this world to the next.
But the air smelled of pine. My mother's nailed traced an all too familiar tattoo through the hairline of my father's neck. I sat at his feet and ran my finger down the scar that traced across most of his foot from when a chain saw had almost given him the nickname "Stumpie".
"Why are you ashamed of me?" I asked. The question was an evil, evil lie. I knew my father was dying. I knew the days were short. I knew that we had all taken steps to be sure he never knew how close the finish line was.
I watched his eyes grow large. Felt shame as they moistened. Watched as his jaw tightened and the cords in his throat tightened. I saw my mother freeze. No expression. Barely breathing. Her hand settled gently at the base of his neck. No one had yet held mine from that position in that way yet - I had no idea how comforting that was.
"I love you," he said.
I was ready for this. I knew this. I counted on this the same way I counted on oxygen to be in the next breath I inhaled - only I was more thankful for it.
"Love ain't pride. Why are you ashamed of me?"
"I love you. You have the whole future open to you. You have A BEAUTIFUL MIND. There is nothing that is beyond you if you will apply yourself. Don't be petty. Don't be small. Don't limit yourself to my horizons. Be bigger than that. You have a beautiful mind - don't be afraid of where it leads you. Be greater than what came before you. Don't be afraid. Don't be small."
"But if you don't do a damn thing else in life - I am proud of you."
I hugged him. He hugged me.
My mother smelled something rotten in Denmark.
"Why did you think we were ashamed of you?"
"Besides the obvious?" I deflected.
"Besides
The
Obvious."
She met my eyes without anger. There was not understanding there either. Legitimate confusion.
"I know you were never ashamed. I just wanted you to say you were proud of me. I wanted to hear it."
My parents were flabbergasted in the most honest attribution of the word.
I was satisfied and disgusted with myself at the same time.
As I grow older, as I find more and more things that I wonder how my father would have judged, I grow more satisfied and less and less disgusted.
A beautiful mind. A fantastic compliment. A daunting challenge. A horrible movie title.
Well. Maybe not horrible. Probably not a terribly manipulative title. That is a positive.
My father was on a hospital bed very much like the one he died on. He was in a hospital room very much like the one he died in. He was in the hospital that he eventually died in. My mother was there. Sitting on the bed with him. Her left hand, or rather the nails of the fingers of her left hand, traced what must have been, by then, a decades long rotation through the hairline that almost reached the back of his neck.
A decision had been made to touch him like that, in that spot, at that speed, with that force, with that repetition. It was a decision reached perhaps verbally or perhaps not. It was a decision made by two friends and two partners and two lovers and two parents and two enemies and two spouses - all those things that apply to an old married couple of 27 years. It was a decision. Two consciousnesses focused on this and agreed - this offered comfort and pleasure in the binary. This was something they both enjoyed and they both decided that this was something that would be done.
The beauty, as I saw then and as I might be the only to see, was that the decision was not made that day or the days leading to that day. This comfort, this pleasure, this absent minded mingling of one to one was decided upon years and years ago - perhaps, probably, before the existence of its sole independent witness - me - on this day so long ago. My mother's hand played with the short hairs on the nape of my father's neck.
The window was open and cool air was blowing in softly. It would have been fall, was probably fall - spring time in south Georgia could be unbearably hot. But it could have been spring I suppose. My dad was leaned up in his hospital bed with my mother sitting beside him and me sitting at the foot of his bed. The air from outside smelled of pine trees. My mother was noticeable happy - obviously happy - for a moment obliviously happy. I smiled.
Years ago my father had told his doctor that he had to be left hope. An interesting request. To be left with hope. Knowing, at some point, that request devolves to "lie to me".
My mother told me once over burgers at Wendy's - Wendy's was close to the hospital - she told me, "Your daddy told me the other day, 'Mama, they are gonna start keeping things from me soon. You are gonna have to go out and ask them if you want to know more.'"
I shifted the last bite of my burger to my cheek and asked with the taste of mustard and ketchup and beef and onion cascading through the cavities of my skull, "What did you say?"
"I smiled," she said, "and I said, 'I'll listen to what they tell you.'" I saw her eyes grow wetter and recognized the trick I did to tighten the cords of my throat to bite down, to back down, tears and crying.
"They have been keeping things from him for months now."
I bit my burger. I chewed my burger. I swallowed my burger. I counted on the act of eating to mask the tightening of the cords in my neck.
I knew they had. I knew he was dying. I think (I almost typed, "I like to think...", but ) I think that he knew he was dying. But that conversation kinda disproves that. Think on that - the medical professionals were dancing around the truth. For us. For him.
Mrs. Page at church, when she eulogized him at the end of the year, the way she eulogized all members who died during the course of the year, described him as charming. He must have been. I found him so but that is not evidence. No. That is found in the nurses who told my mother before and after his passing (death) that they hoped / prayed / were thankful that they were not working when they called CODE on his room.
My sister-in-law acted through her sister to get us to address a living will. But she acted through me. I was the oldest. That was why. That had to by why. Right? It wasn't because I was the coldest. It was because I was the STRONGEST - ha! Sorry. Self deception only goes so far. But I was the one that took the form and listened through not - quite - Charlie Brown teacher - jazz horn - instructions. I was the one that led my family through the form. I wonder if they heard me as something just less or just more than a jazz horn trying to find syllables.
We completed the form. We signed the form. We were SERIOUS. There was DECORUM. There was also butterflies dripping with acid circling through stomachs.
The doctor came in and went over the form and the whole family nodded absently at the notions that we had just initialed and then signed and then dated. He walked us through each line by final final final
line.
They would not do CPR. They would not put him on an artificial heart. And we nodded. They would not do CPR. They would not put him on a respirator. And we nodded. They would not do CPR. They would not seek to sustain his life through artificial means. And we nodded. They would not do CPR. They would not do CPR. They would not do CPR. They would not do CPR. THEY WOULD NOT DO CPR! THEY WOULD NOT DO CPR! THEY WOULD NOT DO CPR! THEY WOULD NOT DO CPR!
"Um."
As the start of one of those sentences that you have to say, as the start of THE sentence you have to say (and at that time, it was THE sentence that had to be said) it was an admittedly poor start.
But that is the way I started it. "Um,"
I paused. It was not to gather my thoughts. It was a stalling tactic. I knew someone else would say what I wanted to say. I just needed to drop the "um" to stall the inevitable, morbid momentum to give them the breathing space to say the obvious. But the silence it did not echo. It, the silence, turned on me. Nobody said a word as doctor, nurses, sisters-in law, brothers, mother, and
father
turned
to look
at me.
"No CPR?"
The LOOK continued. I knew what had to be said. Didn't they know what had to be said? If ALL knew what HAD to be said, then just asking the question and pausing.
But no. They don't see it. I had to say what had to be said. I had to say it in front of him. A continuously shrinking part of me hates them all for their blank stares and their simplicity.
"I agree. No tubes or machines. No postponing the inevitable. But no CPR? To have the en...
To have," LOOK AT HIM, "to have you in pain and fear and to have them come to this room and do nothing? To have them watch? To have them safe behind this piece of paper with my name on it to watch with no responsibility to help? To leave you there frightened and alone? NO. Just no. They have to help. They have to come to you. They have to do what hands can do. They have to be here for you."
It made everyone just as uncomfortable as you think it did. I took my eyes off of his only long enough to find my mother's - she was watching him - she would hate me for this only to the extent that this caused him pain - she does not hate me - that brings a comfort.
I looked at my two brothers and neither met my gaze. If they had met my gaze that day, I might have found the courage to ask later what they were thinking, but, alas...
The typed up orders have a line drawn through them. The doctor's barely legible scribble is written above the orders with all of our signatures at the bottom of the page. It states that CPR shall be administered but that not other efforts shall be expended. These were the written rules of my father's passing from this world to the next.
But the air smelled of pine. My mother's nailed traced an all too familiar tattoo through the hairline of my father's neck. I sat at his feet and ran my finger down the scar that traced across most of his foot from when a chain saw had almost given him the nickname "Stumpie".
"Why are you ashamed of me?" I asked. The question was an evil, evil lie. I knew my father was dying. I knew the days were short. I knew that we had all taken steps to be sure he never knew how close the finish line was.
I watched his eyes grow large. Felt shame as they moistened. Watched as his jaw tightened and the cords in his throat tightened. I saw my mother freeze. No expression. Barely breathing. Her hand settled gently at the base of his neck. No one had yet held mine from that position in that way yet - I had no idea how comforting that was.
"I love you," he said.
I was ready for this. I knew this. I counted on this the same way I counted on oxygen to be in the next breath I inhaled - only I was more thankful for it.
"Love ain't pride. Why are you ashamed of me?"
"I love you. You have the whole future open to you. You have A BEAUTIFUL MIND. There is nothing that is beyond you if you will apply yourself. Don't be petty. Don't be small. Don't limit yourself to my horizons. Be bigger than that. You have a beautiful mind - don't be afraid of where it leads you. Be greater than what came before you. Don't be afraid. Don't be small."
"But if you don't do a damn thing else in life - I am proud of you."
I hugged him. He hugged me.
My mother smelled something rotten in Denmark.
"Why did you think we were ashamed of you?"
"Besides the obvious?" I deflected.
"Besides
The
Obvious."
She met my eyes without anger. There was not understanding there either. Legitimate confusion.
"I know you were never ashamed. I just wanted you to say you were proud of me. I wanted to hear it."
My parents were flabbergasted in the most honest attribution of the word.
I was satisfied and disgusted with myself at the same time.
As I grow older, as I find more and more things that I wonder how my father would have judged, I grow more satisfied and less and less disgusted.
A beautiful mind. A fantastic compliment. A daunting challenge. A horrible movie title.
Well. Maybe not horrible. Probably not a terribly manipulative title. That is a positive.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Whispers
She hears the whispers and does her best to ignore them. But they tell her so many things. Pretty little poems and stories that fascinate and arouse. She loves that part of it. That part is all roses and rhymes. That part is special and while not quite innocent, at least harmless. She remembers everything during these softer times of the whispers. She has even become adept at listening to these silky aspects of the whispers while never letting on to anyone around her that anything was amiss.
But then the whispers are not always harmless. They know things. They share small pieces... slivers of knowledge. The whispers know... They just know. People lie. They tell you what you want to hear when they are friendly and they will say the most God awful things when they want to be cruel. But the whispers know the truth some how. They know and they share. They share even when she does not want to know. They don't care about her happiness. Indeed, she would be happier if she did not know the secrets of those around her.
The whispers tell stories of cowards parading as men and the venal pretending to virginity. The whispers know. They know and they have to tell and they can't be silenced.
But then the whispers are not always harmless. They know things. They share small pieces... slivers of knowledge. The whispers know... They just know. People lie. They tell you what you want to hear when they are friendly and they will say the most God awful things when they want to be cruel. But the whispers know the truth some how. They know and they share. They share even when she does not want to know. They don't care about her happiness. Indeed, she would be happier if she did not know the secrets of those around her.
The whispers tell stories of cowards parading as men and the venal pretending to virginity. The whispers know. They know and they have to tell and they can't be silenced.
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