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.

Mom, Thanks

Mother’s Day, 2011

Mom,

Thanks for having a resolve tougher than a two dollar steak at a clearance sale when I wanted to test you and for not backing down when I tried you because you knew what was right for me.

Thanks for having shoulders softer than summer slumber by the seaside when life sometimes beat me into a pulp of worthless goo.

Thanks for making me tuck my shirt into my pants, for making me say “Sir” and “Ma’m”, for making me get my hair out of my eyes and for making me go get my own hickory switch when I needed it.

Thanks for worrying about me through the bumps and bruises, breaks and pains, stings and dings, bike wrecks and car wrecks, ups and downs, mountains and valleys.

Thanks for having a ready box of band-aids and a tiny bottle of merthiolate that burned like fire but seemed to heal like a miracle direct from the King James Bible when applied to those cuts and scratches.

Thanks for seasoning your words of constructive honesty with sensible sobriety the times you had to tell me what I needed to hear and not what I wanted to hear.

Thanks for having eyes in the back of your head because I imagine they kept me out of trouble on more than one occasion.

Thanks for understanding how a well-timed and well-placed moment of silence sometimes said more to me than an ‘I told you so’ ever would.

Thanks for praying for me when I was face-down in the pits of despair and then for praying for me when I sat perched on top of the world.

Thanks for your forgiveness then your forgetfulness when I spoke to you without thinking, when I judged you without reason or when I caused you to ever be hurt, ashamed or disappointed in me.

Thanks for taking me to the county fair and the Smoky Mountains and the school carnivals but also thanks for taking me to the funeral home so that I would know how brief and full of value life really is and how the people you meet along the way and who go to their reward before you deserve a bit more than just a passing thought.

Thanks for leaving that lamp on at the end of the couch when I came home late and for going on to bed but staying awake until you heard my key unlock the front door and then heard my footsteps in the living room.

Thanks for naming me what you did and not naming me after a constellation, a car part, an exotic food, a foreign country, a shoe insole, a pain reliever, a soap opera star or some off the wall combination of names from two relatives no one else in the family remembers.

Thanks for giving life to me but also thanks for giving life to my brother and sister because, well, they’ve become pretty special to me, too.

Thanks for trusting your faith and your common sense to instill your values in us kids and for not being lazy or unconcerned enough to leave that task to a TV show or a TV star.

Thanks for loving Dad and for the moment when you knew with all certainty you would ride out life’s storms with him together and not ever settle for just putting up with him or walking away from him when you felt you had had enough.

Thanks for making me take my cap off in the house, for making me brush my teeth in the morning, for making me wash my hands before supper, for making me say my prayers before going to sleep and, from time to time, for telling me to act like somebody with some sense.

Thanks for caring more about us than you ever cared about yourself.

Thanks for teaching me to share and play fair and take turns.

Thanks for making me visit your parents and Dad’s parents and all those aunts and uncles and cousins when I was younger especially after there came a time when I thought my Sunday afternoons could be better spent doing almost anything else because I now miss those times, those places and those precious people.

Thanks for recognizing my wife for the good woman she is and for always making her feel welcomed and loved.

Thanks for your kindness, your courage, your patience, your good humor, your sacrifices, your talents, your dreams and the countless other things that make up who you are.

Thanks for being my mom and not my friend because I needed you to be my mom more than I needed you to be my friend.

Happy Mother's Day.

Love,

Tim

Riding the Brakes Again

Hiatus.

It sure is a funny looking word. It sounds funny, too.

Mashing together various sources on that deep and wide and seemingly know-it-all search-and-reveal engine Google finds that “hiatus” means “a break or gap in time or continuity”.

That funny looking and sounding word, hiatus, pretty much covers the status of this blog for the past ten months or so. Without really planning any kind of break, it, hiatus, just happened one day. I suppose there could be all sorts of things which could cause a hiatus. In the case of this blog, it unknowingly started with a simple blog entry. One day in 2010, I wrote a blog entry. It came together rather easily. It weighed in at just under five hundred words sliding comfortably into around a half dozen paragraphs. And so, like a few dozen times before there I was at the checkout counter just a few clicks away from adding that entry to this space.

I then reread the piece. To me, there didn’t seem to be anything glaringly bad about it. Then again, I am not the best critic of what I write. And because of that blind spot I sometimes linger a bit at something I have put into words, remaining behind trying and hoping to find that extra string of words, that clever phrase turn that will make things a bit clearer, a bit more descriptive and a bit more memorable. With this particular entry, something just didn’t jibe. Something about the entry tugged at me enough to take another glance at it. After looking at the piece another time I came to the realization that I had written a blog entry with the almost exact same theme a few months earlier.

To me, this is a pitfall of any kind of effort to write. Let me attempt to explain. When I first really began to love to write I wanted to learn more about this mysterious art of writing. I read that in order to find success as a writer then a body needs to write about what he knows. So, in the case of that blog entry months ago, I was following that simple yet challenging, that tried but true, that ragged but right doctrine proved from the pens of those who had bled ink on paper before and who had come to grasp at least some understanding of the secret. However, after another reread of that blog entry my own gnawing mystery emerged in my head. How do I, in written words, say the same thing again without saying it the same way I said it the last time I wrote about it?

That answer never did come quickly or easily to me and hasn’t yet. Maybe the answer lies shrouded in the fog and the haze somewhere outside the outskirts of my imagination. So, that blog entry, the old hiatus-starter, stayed saved on a flash drive waiting to emerge from that murky and shadowy place.

Apparently I was on a roll though. I then inadvertently ignored another well-worn axiom those who write are advised to follow: write, write and rewrite…then rewrite again. It’s ‘practice makes perfect’ put into practice. Keep writing because something good will eventually come out the other side. Sharpen and focus. Spit and shine. Or in the case of this particular blog entry, rewrite and rewrite and find a way to say something unique about something which has been said before.

But I didn’t go back and work on that blog entry. I did write a few other things. I dabbled some with some other things I had written including some fiction I had started and stopped a few years back. Now and then I would look at the blog and think how I needed to try again. But then, life and work and all sorts of other things came along and then without warning months had passed by with no new blog entries.

And there you have another consequence to this whole blog experience. It takes time and dedication to keep it all going. In some strange way, a blog is like that pet you begged your parents for when you were a kid. You just had to have it, so your parents fell to your persuasive powers but told you in no uncertain terms that you would have to take care of that pet. Not long after getting that pet, reality weighed in like the cold, wet nose of that same pet making you understand that the pet had to be fed constantly and that could be quite the constant chore. Back then your parents might bail you out and take care of the pet. Now though it’s hard to ignore the fact that this beast has to be fed, cold, wet nose and all.

And so, ten months now after that last blog entry, here I am again, hands on a keyboard, fingers lightly tracing the pattern of the keys, eyes gazing onto a blank white screen, thoughts racing through my head that need some capturing then pulling apart and pushing together and placed in an order that might make sense. This is where the puzzle pieces of so many things get poured onto the table to be put together. This is the fun part.

So, where did we leave off? Oh, yeah, hiatus. Avoiding another one, well, that will be the challenging part. Hiatus? That sure is a funny word, isn't it?