The Sweetest Chaos

Mom and Dad’s house has stood for probably over 70 years. It’s been in our family for almost 63 years. Dad once told me they moved there three days after their wedding. On that long ago March day, roots were planted.

The house is really nothing spectacular. It’s been painted yellow or white or light green through the years. White awnings, trimmed at various times in either red or green, hung over some of the windows. As the family grew, Dad would just build another room or make an existing room just a little bit larger. Now it’s a three bedroom, one bath house with a half-basement, laundry room, dining room, kitchen and two space carport. It’s surrounded by a large yard on three sides and a wooded area on the remaining side.

The house has seen the best and worst of times for our family. Births and deaths. Good news and bad news. Reaffirmation and heartbreak. Laughs and tears. We’ve gathered around the old dining room table and shared meals. We’ve come here when we felt there was no other place to go. We’ve walked the floors here trying to walk out solutions to problems. We’ve relaxed here and drifted off to a place where the worries of the world no longer seemed to exist. Birthday candles were lit here to celebrate the certain passing of time. Thanksgiving and Christmas were celebrated here with enough food to feed a small army and enough gifts to warrant more than one tree.

Something happened over time though. It seemed that we grew too big for this house. The kids got married. The kids had kids. At some point the grandkids had kids. Soon, the number that would gather here doubled in size. At one time everybody could squeeze into one room and then we had to squeeze into two rooms and now it is all we can do to fit everyone into three rooms when we are all together. It seemed to become clear that things just wouldn’t be the same if we couldn’t all be together. Dad’s carpenter skills, learned and honed from necessity, just could not keep up with the burgeoning family.

Another thing happened along the way. Some of us moved away. This meant it was longer in between times when we saw each other. Sad to say, it also means, we only see each other mostly during the holiday season anymore. When it was time to gather together, we sometimes decided to meet elsewhere to a place with more room in order to accommodate as many as could come.

This year it was decided that our family would gather sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year though we wouldn’t meet at a restaurant somewhere and take up twelve tables. It was determined we would gather at Mom and Dad’s house just like we had so many times before.

This decision came with some fretting. Mom is older now and can’t clean the house like she once did. Would there be enough room for everyone? We wouldn’t all be able to sit around the table at the same time.

Still, the day came. Folks began to trickle in a few at a time. Before it was said and done, nineteen of us crammed into the house. Two babies, born less than two weeks apart four months earlier, made their initial holiday family appearances along with three others under the age of six, adding a little life and noise to the old pine paneled walls. We couldn’t all gather around the table at the same time but a funny thing happened, someone would sit down at the table and eat for a time and then someone else would work through the line and enter the dining room where someone would get up and let them sit at the table. So, if you wanted, you could have sat at the table because we rotated seats as needed.

Before long, it was time to open presents. We all crammed into the living room and sprawled ourselves over any open space. The three older kids were really fired up for the gifts and ripped through shimmery wrapping paper to get to a taped box only to tear it open to see what gifts they received this year. After this, our family plays an auction game, taking turns picking gifts and “stealing” gifts from each other. Then later, some of us crash while others gather around the dining room table and play cards or spoons or some other game someone has brought along all the while munching on party mix or sugar cookies or homemade fudge. All this would meld into the late afternoon and into the evening. Some would leave but most would stay.

The routine is pretty much always the same no matter where we get together. That’s good. This year though I tried to take it all in from time to time. I looked around and saw two cousins, five and three, try to pick each other up off the ground as kids often inexplicably do before wrestling around with each other on the hardwood floor, laughing with each tumble. I saw the almost four year old proudly and gracefully show off her new dress, which was pretty but not as beautiful as her smile. I listened to the easy natured joking between family members. I saw the two babies look eye to eye with each other as family members snapped photos of the two newest family members. I listened to my Dad relay a story about the three year old great grandson and my Mom that my Dad could hardly tell without laughing so hard that tears came to his eyes.

And it was all loud and crazy and a bit chaotic for awhile. Some chaos is sweet though. Amidst the chaos I kept thinking how this is the way it should be, that this is where we all should be on this day. We should be here together.

Maybe the five year old and the almost four year old and the three year old will remember the gifts they received this Christmas many years from now. I sort of doubt that though. I remember a lot of Christmases but just can’t seem to recall a lot of the gifts I received wrapped in shimmery paper covering a box with tape closing every gap. Maybe they will look back and recall with a smile how we all packed into a house Pappaw built onto and Mammaw looked after. Maybe they’ll remember how the floor filled with wrapping paper when the presents began to be uncovered. Maybe they’ll look back like I do now and see other gifts received that never sat wrapped under a tree…a place called home, family and friends, laughter, memories, roots and a bit of sweet chaos.

Merry Christmas. May your holiday season be filled with the good things in life especially those you love and the warmth of knowing they love you in return.

This One Goes Out

It’s the end of R.E.M. as we know it and I feel okay. Well, okay, maybe, not okay, maybe, I feel a bit nostalgic at the news. I have been an R.E.M. fan for many years so the news this week that they are, in their words, “calling it a day” and ending their run as a band on their own terms stings a little, even fourteen years after drummer Bill Berry left the original line-up.

Granted, R.E.M. is not everyone’s cup of tea. Their lyrics can sometimes be hard to understand and sometimes those same lyrics can be hard to comprehend after you string all the words together. It’s not often been the lyrics that made me buy-in on R.E.M. though. R.E.M. has always been solid musically, whether it’s been songs driven by a piano, a mandolin or a smash crash splattering bash collision of drums and guitars. Sometimes, their songs sounded stark and foreboding while other times their songs jumped out from the speakers like an out-of-control party next door. From a vocal standpoint their often complicated dream-like harmonies, especially in selections from their early days, contrast yet still blend together enough to fit seamlessly like unsuspecting puzzle pieces. Michael Stipe, who sings lead on most of their songs, also has a very unique style, delivering one song mumbling like a slow-talking Southerner, another like a venom-spitting cobra and others like a slightly restrained lounge singer. The early gems “Radio Free Europe”, “Talk About the Passion”, “Fall On Me”, “Superman”, “Driver 8”, “Finest Worksong,” “Can’t Get There From Here” and “Green Grow the Rushes” are all songs I never grow tired of hearing.

Over time, R.E.M. became the next big thing and they released hit after hit. Soon “Losing My Religion” (the title is a great Southern phrase that had almost fallen away with my grandmother’s generation until this song revived it), “Everybody Hurts”, “Drive”, “Man On the Moon” (the lyric “Newton got beaned by the apple good” always cracks me up), “Nightswimming”, “Stand”, “The One I Love” (“a simple prop to occupy my mind” is such a great turn of a phrase), among other hits, all became pop songs of the finest order.

I have to admit though after the Automatic for the People album, R.E.M. kind of fell by the wayside for me. I don’t think I bought any of their music after the Monster album which featured the songs “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” and “Bang and Blame”. While Monster had some stuff I liked, it wasn’t compelling enough to make me want to buy the next album when it was available.

Maybe they changed. Maybe I changed. Maybe we all changed.

With the news of R.E.M. ending their run, I’ve spent parts of the last few days listening to a lot of R.E.M., old stuff and new stuff, reacquainting myself with an old friend and discovering some of what I missed or forgot while we were apart. While I mostly gravitate to the older stuff, I have realized there’s some newer stuff that I really enjoy. And maybe that is why R.E.M.’s breakup causes me to pause for a moment and wonder what might still lie ahead for them, if they only saw it through a little longer. It makes me wonder what I might like from them if they only continued because they can still produce music I like, and frankly, I can’t say that about a whole lot of new music these days.

Maybe there would be another ”At My Most Beautiful”. Here the lyrics and Stipe’s delivery are almost embarrassingly intimate: “You always say your name, like I wouldn’t know it’s you, at your most beautiful” and “I’ve found a way, a way to make you smile.” Then there’s other stuff I find myself playing again and again, songs like “The Great Beyond”, “Love Is All Around”, “Everyday is Yours To Win”, “Leaving New York,” “Animal,” “Walk It Back” and the delicate, aching “Oh My Heart”, written about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, but with lyrics sentimental enough to make a person miss any place and any people once known and left behind.

It’s sad in another way to me, as R.E.M. is associated specifically with Athens, GA and more generally to Georgia at large. Being from Georgia yet no longer living there, whenever I hear an R.E.M. song, I always think of Georgia and most often think of the northeastern and north central parts of the state where R.E.M. is most often identified. While the music R.E.M. played was unique to them, the harmonies they belted out always felt like a part of the state to me. The songs they were performing weren’t songs brought over from the old country but those harmonies were just similar enough to be something, style-wise, that might have been heard years before through those same hills and valleys. So, to me R.E.M.’s music was just an electrified and updated extension of the family-style harmonies passed down through the years from the area’s early settlers to the front porches and backyards of my people all the way down to the bluegrass groups I heard on the radio and the Southern gospel quartets I watched Sunday mornings on TV’s Gospel Singing Jubilee. R.E.M.’s music just felt, or maybe more correctly, just sounded like it belonged from where it emanated.

R.E.M.'s music also belonged to our generation, more specifically, the college kids of the 1980s, at least initially. You remember us…Polo cologne, Levis’s denim jackets, skinny ties, big poofy hair, neon colored clothes, Raybans. In my opinion, no other musical group, with the exception of U2, really consistently defined the college experience of those in the 1980s as much as R.E.M.

Maybe that is another reason why R.E.M. calling it quits hurts a bit. It’s just another sign of growing older, growing further away from that time and those songs, those people, those moments.

My all time favorite R.E.M. song is “Don’t Go Back to Rockville”. I can’t exactly tell you why it is my favorite. Sometimes you just can’t locate the words for why something is the way it is. It just is. To me, “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” is like sweet iced tea, I just like it. While it’s my favorite R.E.M. song, I have avoided listening to that song since hearing about R.E.M. deciding to finish up on their own terms. I have listened to the old favorites and the newer ones I somehow let slip by as I grew older. Still, soon enough I will crank up “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” and when I do I know I will stumble across a set of lyrics that will make me pause and wax more nostalgic wondering if there will still come some day when R.E.M. will be back…”I know it might sound strange, but I believe you’ll be coming back before too long.”

And when I hear that and think that and wish that, I feel fine.

Milepost

Here I am right beside another milepost along my highway.

Looking back I never thought about what would happen when I reached this age. It's not that I thought I wouldn't live this long. It's just I never imagined all those days between then and now would ever really dissipate in such a hasty manner. But there are a lot of yesterdays behind me and they continue to pass by at an alarming speed.

Looking ahead I look out onto the horizon. It rests there just far enough in the distance to seem like some hazy mirage. I see things just ahead but can’t make them come into focus clearly enough to determine what those things are. The winds whip by urging time to keep up it's steady pace.

And here I am, right here, right now. I look at things now with older eyes than I did before. Here I am at this place where growing older seems much more likely that growing up any more. And here I am hoping the passing time makes me wiser instead of smarter.

Still, I find myself riding the brakes, trying hard to not rush too far into the future so that I can’t still look back where I’ve been and so I can still enjoy the scenery along the ride

First Impressions, Second Guesses, Easy Answers, part two

I then realized that the little girl was hearing impaired. She spoke to her loved one with a swirl of finger and hand movements and her loved one spoke back to her with finger and hand movements.

Now it made sense why the other woman was so loud, or at least I could understand why she would feel the need to be so loud.

I turned my eyes away. Again, I tried to look ahead but not anywhere in particular. I definitely tried to not look inward at that moment. If I looked inward I was afraid I might see the feelings of shame and disappointment of judging someone before really knowing them that I felt I now wore on my face.

After getting off the plane and getting our group together, we began the walk past the other gates in the general direction of home that would first lead us to a shuttle and then to a parking lot. Now we were free from the confines of the big jet, the tiny seats and the restrictive seat belts. Now we could walk as fast or as slow as we wanted. We visited the restrooms, a prerequisite to a car ride back home that would last longer than the flight and cover only a fifth of the distance we just traveled. As we grouped back together and steadied ourselves for one last escalator ride for the day, I noticed the loud woman and her family were just ahead of us. As we all reached the lower level, my group went in a different direction than the loud woman and her group. As I tend to do, I took one last look back. I saw the dad speaking to his family with his fingers. Before I turned back to my group their silent conversation ended and the three little kids ran off eager to move onto the next leg of their journey.

Soon, we were in a car headed south toward home pushing open the night as darkness seeped in with every turn of the wheels. I tapped away some notes into a computer from my back seat post as traffic whizzed past on both sides of the car. Amidst the jumble and rumble of things spinning through my mind I tried to make some sense out of the trip and my observations.

I recalled hearing that woman’s loud voice. I revisited the feeling the whole group left me with initially. I could still hear the little boy begging to go to the bathroom. Lastly, I remembered the little girl standing in the airplane aisle with a baby doll with unmovable fingers strapped to her back using her own fluid fingers to talk to her grandmother.

They say you only have one chance to make a first impression. I have lived enough of life to know how true that can be. I also know how quickly any of us can jump to conclusions without knowing really anything about what, or who, we are judging.

On the other hand, I recall other times when a first impression proved correct. I also know other times when very little information turned out to be right on the money.

We drove deeper into the dark. Weary from the week away and tired from the travel of the day I stared out the car window into the passing silhouetted scenery of June’s first night. I was unsure what to make of the day, unsure how to untangle my observations to come to some satisfactory conclusion.

Finally, we were home.

Weeks have passed since that plane ride. Time has smoothed over those few hours. Even now though, I sometimes think of that experience. As I did that night on the ride back home, I find myself looking for answers to situations like this. I struggle to know when a first impression can be trusted enough to not lead to having second thoughts. And each time I contemplate all these things I conclude that sometimes there are no easy answers.

First Impressions, Second Guesses, Easy Answers

On a flight from Dallas to Nashville

I spotted the group of six or seven in the line to board. They were loud and seemed to be the not-so-typical travel-by-air passengers. They seemed out of place on a plane that would fill with mostly business people making late afternoon connections between two places during the middle of the week. The most noticeable thing about this group was that one of the women in the group was very vocal. She was so vocal that her voice needed no amplification. It seemed obvious to me that if for some reason we all had to actually get on the runway and board the plane with the engines running that we would hear this woman’s voice clearly above all else.

Then there were several kids. If you have flown you know one of the things that will inject dread into any potential time in a giant tin can on wheels with wings as it hurtles through the air is just the mere thought that you may have to share the ride with screaming kids. In this case, if Momma was loud, and she had already proven to be, then odds seemed likely that one of the kids would be as well.

There were three kids in the group. First, a little girl, probably about six or seven years old, wore a backpack and strapped to it was a baby doll. It was this baby doll that caught my attention. The doll didn't appear to be anything fancy. It really seemed to be a doll out of it’s time. It appeared to be like the dolls the girls played with back when I was a child, very plasticy with matted hair and fingers that forever remained in one position. Surely you know the type, the kind where now and then someone would pick up the doll and one of the arms would pop off. Remembering those kinds of baby dolls, I imagined it now only resided in some low rent neighborhood where care and concern for winning any neighborhood-yard-of-the-week award had left a long time before. I went further into that neighborhood and imagined there in that yard would be bits and pieces of a lived life of a family that would live in such a place...a once-shiny silver Juicy Fruit chewing gum wrapper, a faded yellow tennis ball, some strange partially broken twirly yard ornament sticking up from the ground lonely and forgotten. Then there in the mucky, red earth where strange weeds grow in place of grass would be a plastic baby doll arm, broken off or fallen off, with immovable fingers, left behind to document how neglect had come to reside here.

The little girl had a younger brother. He seemed quiet enough upon first view. He also seemed young enough to be a bit louder if given the opportunity and circumstance. There were others in the group as well including another child. Looking the others over from casual glances, I imagined they were the dad and a set of grandparents.

Because you get to know people you stand in line with sometimes, whether or not you really want to do so, I learned this group was coming from Albuquerque. That was good enough. I then heard them tell someone though that after landing in Nashville they were headed to Chattanooga. And for a moment I imagined, they might not have enough room in the vehicle that would transport them the two hours down I-24 and since my group was headed in that direction I could see some fate intervening that would see our group providing one or two of their group a ride. I winced at the mere thought that this long day could even remotely be prolonged by such a longshot.

After boarding the plane I located my seat first with my eyes. Those ahead of me stood in a line and heaved, shoved and pushed their carry-ons into the overhead bins. Standing there waiting, I looked to the left side of the plane and noticed that the family I spotted in line would be seated in the rows behind me on the opposite side. I then determined this flight might need more than just a book to read but also might require some music and headphones to make the hour and a half flight more tolerable than what I feared at that moment.

At some point while the last few passengers made their way onto the plane, I pulled out my phone and sent a text message to my wife. On that little screen’s tiny keyboard I typed out what I was feeling in my gut and what had burned there since I had first heard the loud woman’s voice. I relayed in my message to her how I just might be on a flight with the Griswold cousins from the Vacation movies. I certainly felt the potential was there.

Soon we were in the air. I then determined to use my time to read. I poured myself into a collection of short stories reading one after another. I would look up from time to time just for a change of pace before returning to my book. The beverage cart came along for another break. I kept reading though. Before I realized it we were nearly at our destination and my fears for a loud, painful trip were unfounded.

As we approached Nashville though, the little boy who was with the loud woman’s group determined it was time to go to the bathroom. Of course by this time, the seatbelt light was on and the flight attendants were patrolling the aisles. Still, the little boy pleaded for a visit to the bathroom not even comprehending the importance of staying seated and locked to a seat while flying through the air as this giant mass of metal and rubber would attempt to land on a skinny strip of pavement at a high rate of speed. This is still something he will have to grasp in the future but at that moment his full bladder was overriding any concern about the plane landing safely. With each passing second, the boy grew more impatient and louder, a family trait, no doubt, I noted. By the time the plane landed, the loud woman was asking someone else in her group to take the little boy to the bathroom. Of course, once the plane actually stopped, half of those on board automatically stood up, as if it is some unwritten rule to do so. Getting the little boy to the back of the plane now would be like swimming upstream. The loud woman continued to proclaim how the boy needed to be taken to a bathroom which allowed all those around this group to look into the eyes of each other as if to ask one another without actual words…’Can you believe this?’

I was with the half of the plane who decided to stand when it was first permitted. Being in a confined space for any length of time really gets to me and that moment of freedom, that moment of release, is like a breath of fresh air. At this point, I almost always somehow think I may be able to grab my carry-on baggage and somehow dash past all those ahead of me. I have been foiled every time I have thought I could do this, including this time. As I stood there waiting for the multitude of tiny serpentine rows to exit before me, the little girl had managed to work her way up the aisle enough to be standing beside my seat. This meant I would have to stand here until my turn to exit but not before allowing the loud woman and her group to exit before me.

I stood there though, head bowed beneath the overhead bin, hands wrapped around my carry-ons, trying to look ahead but also trying not to look anywhere in particular. I then noticed the little girl turn around to the woman behind her, the woman I supposed earlier was her grandmother. Out of the corner of my eye, it became apparent to me why the other woman in this group was so loud.

to be continued...

Average

Average

-adjective

• typical, common, ordinary

Today’s world seems to be teetering on the very brink of craziness. It just seems to get stranger with each passing day. With twenty four hour news cycles driven by a news media that can’t wait to tell you had bad things are, it’s easy to begin wondering if the whole wide world has gone mad. If you feel that way maybe songwriter Dennis Linde’s words can make you stop and smile…

 

"The people in the city call me country

Because of how I walk and talk and smile

I don't mind them laughin' in the city

But the country folks all say I'm citified

The fightin' men they say that I'm a coward

Because I never pushed no one around

 

Gentle people call me troublemaker

‘Cause I'll always fight and stand my ground

Funny I don't fit

Where have all the average people gone?

Some pious people point and call me sinner

Because to them I've never seen the light

 

Other folks think of me as a preacher

I'm just doin' what I think is right

The wealthy people think that I am a hobo

Lean and hungry, writin' mournful songs

And the poor, poor people think I am a rich man

But really I'm just tryin' to get along

Yes, it's funny I don't fit

Tell me, where have all the average people gone?

And the government has given me a number

To simplify my birth and life and death

And still my woman thinks I'm awful important

Like the moon and the sun and the sea and the sky and breath

Yes, it's funny I don't fit

Where have all the average people gone?

Funny I don't fit

Where have all the average people gone?"

So, the next time you feel the world getting off it’s axis…don’t add to the drama, stop, smile and thank God you’re average.

 

“Where Have All The Average People Gone?” written by Dennis Linde, performed by Roger Miller and also by the Avett Brothers.

Questions To Ask A Tuesday Morning If A Tuesday Morning Could Answer Questions

Fingers slowly pry open two of the razor-thin shades and vision slips through the open gap and then through a window pane. Visible is the disappearing dark black of the night sky being uncovered into a softer purple and then easing into an endless blue and a brilliant gold. Blink and it’s gone.

On the green grass, dew loiters, magnetized momentarily and heavily clinging to the blades shooting from the ground sharing space with the cobwebs outlined now in thin white lines by the same dew, all destined to soon disappear in an evaporating trick of the eye.

This is Tuesday morning.

Later today, Tuesday morning will give way to the midday and then, on this one particular day, unseen and without ceremony, one season, spring, will yield to another season, summer, as has happened without fail forever. Seasons swap as the sun and the moon align in a certain way for a certain time. Summer follows spring. This year Tuesday is the day for that transition. This year, some will say that transition happened weeks before as if summer were impatient for it’s own arrival or as if spring had somewhere better to go and left going there early.

Later today, what Tuesday morning started and let move to midday will drift into afternoon. The sun will warm everything outside. In times past, we would measure the warmth by documenting the mercury stretching upward, growing taller in some blood red streak on a rusty old Dr. Pepper thermometer nailed to the side of a house for so long that the paint underneath still looks new and unfaded. Now, though when we are curious how many degrees the heat can be measured in, we look to a bank building sign, garish, neon, tacky, spelling out in large numbers, between finance rates and the current time, how hot the now is. Time changes, time stays the same. Was it really that hot then as it is now, we wonder. A hot Tuesday then is hot Tuesday now. But maybe it is hotter now, we conclude.

Morning’s dew returns in the form of late afternoon humidity which stands upright but invisibly in the atmosphere like some warm barrier separating the afternoon from the evening. Like the certain alignment of the sun and the moon escorts spring into summer, if all conditions mix, a season of thunderstorms may transition in during this time. More likely, though, the afternoon will dissolve into the evening easily hurtling that barrier without much effort and without the aid of thousands of raindrops and gusty winds. The shadows of the trees grow a bit longer now shading selected places like they do on any other day, nothing remarkable about that no matter the day of the week even though it is the same, but different, every day.

The kaleidoscope of colors Tuesday morning ushered in is gone. It will be replaced though by a new palette as night gently, politely knocks on the door before easing that door open, creaky, squeaky noises and all, and saunters in, slowly, without waiting for an invitation to enter. The colors in the sky may be the same as the morning and may appear in reverse order from then but the textures of each will be different now, the gold will be faded as if tempered by the heat, the blue melting and wilting into purple or pink or orange before the soft black crawls in, then deepens with each ticking second before outlining all that can be seen highlighted by sparkling stars.

And just like that Tuesday is gone. With it, the potential, the possibilities, the hopes, all gone.

If I could, I would like to go back and ask Tuesday morning some questions.

I would start with, so, Tuesday morning, how does all this feel? I mean all this started today with you.

How does it feel to be the bleeding edge of potential when you showed up today? Does it disappoint you to know some of us woke up and looked past the here and now you brought and wished you were Friday afternoon or Saturday morning or sometime other than now? When we pushed sleep around in our eyes and groaned how we only needed a few more minutes of slumber grousing because here you arrived like you were some surprise, even though every week here you are, habitually, Tuesday morning, direct on the heels of Monday night, did that surprise you? Do you find some humor when someone tosses around a statement like, ‘Well, it’s Tuesday morning; at least it ain’t Monday morning’? Did you feel any added pressure with the season changing thing happening on your watch?

Do you ever grow weary of hearing us complain about how sometimes you are not what we really want? Would you tell us, if you could, that a life consists of as many Tuesday mornings as it does Friday nights or whatever other time seems better than right now? Would you remind us that wishing time away wishes life away? And would that remind us how valuable life really is? Would it make us understand how time is a deep reservoir we continually use that grows shallower with every new day? Blink and it’s gone.

Tuesday morning, it all started with you, so how does it feel?

Of course, there is no direct reply to that question. This particular Tuesday morning spoke without words. It spoke with the morning breaking early. It spoke in the sizzle of the midday heat. It spoke in the skin-soaking sweat of the afternoon. It spoke in the humid wall guarding the evening. It spoke in the encroaching gathering darkness of the night.

Maybe though within those things lies how Tuesday morning would answer if words were possible. Maybe if asked Tuesday morning would say to each of us, “Really, it all starts with you.”

The Seemingly Disappearing Art of Conversating

I looked up from the safe little world I was momentarily ensconced in long enough to take a count. I counted each person present in my group, my eyes moving around the small space as I silently spoke numbers to myself. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. There were five of us. We gathered in this place to wait for a few others to join us before we moved on to the next place on our list. As we sat and stood there I noticed how quiet it was between the five of us and noted how it had been this quiet for several minutes. Before looking back down at my phone, I took a more deliberate inventory. Again, my eyes moved from one person to another and I observed that all five of us, me included, held some electronic device in a hand, attention diverted, eyes gazing down onto some screen absorbed, captivated, lost, in a sea of pixels.

I had just sent a text message. Unsure exactly what the others were doing, I imagined one in our group was posting something on Facebook, another looking up directions, another playing a game and still another reading a book.

Five of us. Not one word.

Maybe it had been a long day. Maybe we were all tired of one another. Maybe we were all bored and looking for something to do. Maybe all of us had have rather been somewhere else with anyone else at that very moment. Maybe all of the above.

There was though no maybe about the quiet. Five of us. No words. Yet we were all occupied with something but none of it with anyone else in our group.

For a moment, it crossed my mind that maybe, in this day of instant and global communication, we are losing the skill of actually talking with one another; even if that lost talk is the basic conversation that fills in the less significant spaces between the moments in life that really do matter.

Then again, I turned back to the gadget in my hand and thought about how it opens up so many things that are really incredible. Now I can communicate with so many people at any time from almost anywhere. If I want to look up a newspaper article from two weeks ago or two decades ago, I can do that from the palm of my hand. I can entertain myself with some game I first played on an Atari in 1981 while in the waiting room in my doctor’s office avoiding the same October 2004 issue of Golf Magazine that has been there for years. I can connect with friends from long ago over the web and hang on the details of their day-to-day lives like a previous generation did with The Edge of Night. I mean when you have all this, who really needs conversation?

And while all these things are great, they still miss that something special. Through today’s technological magic, I am able to peak in on the lives of my friends anytime from anywhere. But sometimes I find that being able to do that tricks me into believing I don’t really need to connect with them more than checking out their Facebook page or Twitter feed every other day. Doing that means I miss out on those conversations that sparkle with personality or that convey wry, dry, sidesplitting humor or that pack unhindered emotion, all unique things that just come across flat and lacking in a digital world. It’s hard to believe those things can be replicated in some app.

Finally, after waiting and waiting, the rest of our group appears. Of course, each of them is holding some sort of electronic device. After a moment, one of them speaks the first words our group has heard in minutes, “Let’s go.”

We all look up, acknowledging the command, and then follow each other out the door, staggering and slowed as each one of us continues to be immersed disappearing into our own little worlds we hold in each of our own little hands.

A Thousand Miles Away

Austin, Texas on a Saturday night

The heat of the day melts into the velvet black of nighttime easing the temperature down a handful of degrees. It is here where Texas music past, in the form of steel guitars and twin fiddles is sampled with the more modern rat-a-tat-tat rhythm that drifts out from the dives, hide-a-way holes and remodeled and remade buildings lined up in a neon row down Sixth Street intersecting at Congress Avenue. Those looking for a good time find their way here and stay long into the night, the loner wanting to get away from it all in the midst of a crowded somewhat controlled chaos, the stoner waiting for the next round, the frat brothers and the sorority sisters spending their youth like a reckless rich man spends money, the good ole gal from a bit further out in the hill country, the poser with the expensive Italian shoes and designer jeans ripped at the knees and the tourist struggling to process everything that is going on all around.

Work takes me away from home and brings me here, a thousand miles away, for a few days. And now it brings me back to my hotel room for the night.

In the distance, the party roars. Next door, the fighting, between a man and a woman, begins.

First came the pounding on a nearby door. That was followed by raised voices. Then came the demand, drenched and dripping in anger and hurt, for an apology. Doors were slammed. Denials offered. Through the walls, words were spoken, unintelligible on my side but clearly with enough attitude from the other side to sound accusatory.

Then it grew quiet. Then more of the same with the volume turned down a notch.

I cannot tell you anymore about what went on next door other than what I just described. I’m not so sure I really want to know more. And I’m not so sure what I would have done in case things escalated past the point where they seemed to end.

As the fighting quieted, I was left with its echoes. I wondered if the fighting couple loved one another or claimed to love one another. I wondered what made them get that crazy, that seemingly out of rational thought to set into motion slamming doors and yelling at one another revealing details which are probably best left unshared with total strangers sharing a floor of a hotel for a short time. I wondered if constant crisis and drama were the norm for this couple. I wondered if rattling cages and stirring up stuff is the way they "get along" with one another. I wondered if either one of them at some point thought they deserved better than what they were receiving or were really above what they were dishing out.

Away from all the wondering, my mind goes to what I do know. Here, I hear other echoes, echoes from a thousand miles away in Tennessee. These echoes come from a certain place where the velvet black of the nighttime grows deep and dark and where the only noise from the outside is an occasional car radio played too loud, a howling dog or the whistle of a passing train a few miles away. It’s the place where I share life with my wife, the woman I love, the woman I miss not just now, not just tonight, but whenever we’re away from one another. It's there where life sometimes feels humdrum but where the everyday world we live in feels comfortable. So comfortable in fact that I know without any doubt, it’s where I belong and where we belong together.

For the next few days though I am here until the work I have to do is completed. I close my eyes and search for slumber trying to balance all these things in the back of my mind.

Next door, the fighting seems to have stopped. In the distance though, the neon burns bright enough to light the edges of the window frame and the music propels itself across the way enough to form a low rumbling backbeat that lulls me into a night’s sleep where I dream of how life is a thousand miles away.

Remembering to Not Forget

It’s been a month since the big winds blew through here. And as I write this it’s been days, even hours since other big winds blew through other parts of the country and some near here again.

The scenes left behind are overwhelming.

It is some sheet of twisted metal contorted then hurled through space before landing straddling an electrical line dangling a hundred feet off the ground. It is pieces of wood splintered apart then left in a heap as if someone with a bulldozer had been on a mission of destruction and this mound was the conclusion of that plan. It is a whole roof lifted from a house as easy as a twist-off bottle cap and then set down just as easy as a tossed Frisbee so as to lose not one shingle. It is a house foundation now standing vacant, wiped clean and left behind between two houses that went unscathed from the swath of ruin. It is the giant live oak tree, older than the memory of the neighborhood’s oldest residents, with roots mightily anchored in the earth suddenly unplugged from the ground and then left laying there, roots, trunk, body and limbs all, as lightly as if it were a pencil.

It is a full grown man whose shaky voice simmers with raw emotion after doing all he could to best protect all he has; especially what he values the most, his loved ones. It is a church that mobilizes at such a time to offer just a cold cup of water in His name although that water also comes with a prayer and the hope of better things. It is the wide-eyed children describing sounds and sights beyond any description they ever read in any book before now. It is the neighbors who have lived next door to each other for more years than they care to recall but who stand in the only clothes they now have left embracing each other unsure how they made it through but thankful that they did, somehow, someway. It is the wearied yet wise woman who knows without consideration that moving forward means thinking about what all this means will have to come at sometime other than the present because working toward getting things back to near what they were begins with this moment because anything else would just be wasting time.

I spend a lot of time in this space writing down remembrances. Sometimes I rhapsodize and write about the glory days. Sometimes I romanticize and write about the good ole days. And now and then, I resuscitate and write about things which weren’t necessarily the brightest shining moments of my life. But occasionally I remember and write about something just so I won’t forget it. Writing a thing down encases it somewhere outside memory and allows a revisit at some point.

Many ravaged by the big winds of spring 2011 will have no problem remembering the day life was altered for them. They will have no trouble recalling the date, maybe the exact time on the clock, maybe even the taste in their mouth or the feeling deep in the pit of their stomach. They may also remember odd, weird details that for some unknown reason sticks in consciousness then stays stuck there like gum to the bottom of a shoe on a hot summer day. While I know I won’t remember those big winds from the spring of 2011 the way those directly affected by those winds will I have no doubt though I will recall that time in some way.

I was reminded of this this morning. The wind blew strong and hard enough to break off fragile limbs from treetops then scatter them across the yard and the driveway. The rain fell on the roof in loud splatters and also splashed against the side of the house. Thunder rumbled from the earth’s gut while lightning popped in quick blinding bursts like a flashcube attached to some old camera.

For that moment it was like it once was before. I felt like I had been here at some earlier time.

Then, just as quickly, it wasn’t that way anymore.

That brush with familiarity though opened up young memories already stored away after those big winds had blown by, after time had moved on, after life went on, after normalcy had returned for most of us.

And because memory is a fleeting thing, I wrote down what I could remember before it slipped away.

I remembered how I rode one of the storms out in a bathtub with a towel over my head while pleading with our pet cat to come into the room and away from the bottom of the stairs. I remembered how we rode other storms out after opening windows and stepping away from the glass and into the hall silently praying that this simple act would somehow cause the whipping winds to pass around us. I was reminded how we read books by candlelight and flashlight while the blue-black night sky exploded with lightning like fireworks on Independence Day. I remembered the feeling of inconvenience when the electricity didn’t come back on right away and how suddenly disconnected we felt because we were separated from instant entertainment and instant communication and then realizing how spoiled and selfish we are after learning how deadly these storms really were and then how the little bit of inconvenience we felt was nothing compared to the destruction others experienced. I recalled looking at a small strand of insulation in our backyard the day after the storms and a few days later in another part of the yard discovering a piece of a shingle and both times wondering how far each had traveled to land where they landed. I remembered opening the weekend newspapers and reading page after page of names, ages and hometowns of those who lost their lives in the storms and the feeling of sorrow that washed over me as I realized I was reading in black ink on white paper life stories condensed to 250 words or less.

It all makes me understand what a gift memory is but also makes me realize how memory is sometimes a fleeting thing and how at times we have to work to remember things just so we do not forget them.

Doesn't Take Much

It doesn’t take much to bring a body down.

It can be the bold, stark headlines designed to demand attention to how anxious, how uneasy, how worrisome everyday life grows day by day.

It can be the shrieking, cynical voice emanating from a set of speakers reporting how things are worse now than before and how they will probably get even worse before they get better, if they ever will get better at all.

It can be the words read from a teleprompter sewn together in an attempt to convince viewers that their common sense should be separated from the never-ending hype being peddled.

It can be any of these things that when ingested and digested can make you feel like the whole world has run off it’s rails.

So, disappointed, you look away from the mess things are.

And there you discover that a bit of simple observation can change how you see things.

It can be the child stretching arms skyward to a grandparent willing to reach down and lift the young life toward the heavens causing the child to gasp then giggle.

It can be the older man who sometimes carries his wife’s purse and who always walks ahead of her just so that he stop then open and hold a door ajar for her to walk through.

It can be the friends sharing laughter so infectious that it makes those around them smile and shake their heads not comprehending what this laughter is all about but knowing, down deep, how good that kind of laughter feels.

It can be any of these things that when ingested and digested can make you feel like the whole world is how it should be, how it can be, how it really is at it’s most basic, most true, most genuine level.

Really, it doesn’t take much.

Just look around.