30513 Memories: The What-Ifs

Every few weeks for over a year in this space I have looked back at my hometown. I have recalled times, places and people who have impacted my life in varied ways. Some of what I have written has brought smiles, some elicited laughter, some things left behind a sense of the bittersweet.

Then there is this other feeling I find hard to whittle down to just the right word.

The feeling isn’t one of regret. After all, I am overwhelmingly blessed with the life I have experienced and now live. I would not ever change it.

The feeling is more one of wonder. No, it isn’t really the amazement aspect of wonder. It’s really more of the what-if type. You see every now and then, I feel this gentle voice whispering ‘what if?’.

“What if you never left there?”

“What if you left then came back to stay?”

I don’t know the answers to those questions. They’ll just have to dangle out there unanswered. I’d like to think I’d be okay. After all, despite all the hashtags and wokeness of our modern world, life is often still whatever you make of it, and I think I would have been able to make the most of what I would have been given.

Still that what-if place is out there on the fringes with other places that can pull people away from the here and now. Most of us like to think back on past times so we can relive good times. Deep down we understand that is not a place to live. Sure, it might be a nice neighborhood but it is not the reality of the here and now. The same could be said in a sense about regret. It can be a much different type of neighborhood than good memories but it can also be a place a person chooses to reside. That mysterious what-if territory is also out there. Like it’s neighbors, it isn’t a good place to stay for very long.

That doesn’t mean now and then I ponder what could have been. It also doesn’t mean that there is a part of me that has just a bit of envy for those who never left there or those who left and came back. I respect those who made a go of it in those hills I once called home.

Ultimately, it isn’t the same place I recall from my youth. Wishing and hoping won’t somehow change it back magically to some idyllic wide spot in the road known only by out-of-towners from one county away. 

Still, I can look back. At some point though, I also have to move forward.

As most people these days do, I carry a phone with me almost everywhere I go. On that phone’s screen is a photo I placed on there several years ago. The photo is of a place in my home county. When I saw it initially I knew exactly

where it was taken. It is one of my favorite vistas of that place. It was taken from a highway that tops a hill headed south. The road stretches out before my eyes then, like a winding river, turns to the left out of sight. If you look above the cars and trucks on the highway into the horizon, all you see are layers on layers of the mountains that surround the area. I haven’t changed that photo in years partly because of my own laziness but partly because when I see that photo, it reminds me where I came from, and the importance that place and it’s people will always have in my heart.

30513: The What Ifs playlist:

John Mellencamp: "Small Town"

Chris Isaak "I Wonder"

The Byrds "My Back Pages"

Steely Dan "Reelin' In The Years"

Drivin' N' Cryin' "Honeysuckle Blue"

Better Than Ezra "A Lifetime"

Fleetwood Mac "Seven Wonders"

10,000 Maniacs "These Are Days"

Susan Enan "Bring On The Wonder"

Jars of Clay "Flood"

Gin Blossoms "Found Out About You"

Mac Wiseman "I Wonder How The Old Folks Are At Home"

The Allman Brothers Band "Seven Turns"

The Rolling Stones "Time Waits For No One"

The Black Crowes "Jealous Again"

Love "I Still Wonder"

Rosanne Cash "I Wonder"

The Outsiders "Time Won't Let Me"

Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band "Against The Wind"

Toad the Wet Sprocket "Good Intentions"

R.E.M. "Nightswimming"

The Everly Brothers "I Wonder If I Care As Much"

The Smithereens "House We Used To Live In"

John Anderson "Small Town"

Best

Daylight crouched outside our house. Jennifer backed her car out of the garage into our driveway. I pressed a button so that my garage door could provide my vehicle an escape for the day ahead.

As the garage door rolled to a stop, I stood next to my car as a window to Jennifer’s car rolled down. Hannah’s face emerged along with her voice, “Bye, Daddy, I love you. You’re the best daddy ever. I’ll see you later.”

I waved back, “Bye, Hannah, I love you, too.” Jennifer pulled away headed to Hannah’s school then on to her work. I placed my lunch bag and oversized mug into my car ready to spend the next few minutes on a bumper-to-bumper ride to my job.

On my way, the radio played in the background. I’m not sure what was on, maybe some music, maybe a few talking heads, maybe the inane chitter-chatter of a formulaic morning show. I navigated the red lights and the stops-and-starts all the while reliving those last couple of minutes at home. Through it all, I could not help but think about the phrase Hannah used just before they pulled away…“best daddy ever”. That is a lot to live up to, and is something I know I will never be.

The truth is I can’t compete with the fathers of others her age. At my age, I could be their father. I realize as she grows older, her friends will scrutinize, maybe even compare their parents against each other’s parents, and that will include me. In that light, I am not athletic. I am not wealthy. My connections to important people are pretty much non-existent. I don’t process my thoughts like a doctor or engineer and I cannot communicate like a TV anchorman or chief executive officer of a major corporation. I don’t wear $100 tailored shirts or pointy brown Italian dress shoes. I don’t golf. I don’t eat organic food. I don’t always recycle.

While one day may come where Hannah compares me with the fathers of her friends, I only hope she sees through any stellar qualifications others may have in order to see that all I ever wanted to be was not the “best daddy ever” but the “best daddy Hannah needed.” Even with no competition, this is still a tall order, one where some days I knock it out of the park then find myself struggling to keep my head above water the next day. It is also one I know is made much easier because Hannah’s mom keeps both of us focused when we need it most. It's also one task I never plan to give up on getting better at doing.

Someday she may see such a distinction between the way she says she sees it now and the way I always wish it to be. That, though, may come after the mornings like the one I described earlier give way to the mornings when it will be tough to get any acknowledgement of my existence from her at all. It may come after a lifetime of ups-and-downs, good times and bad times, stuff worth remembering, stuff worth forgetting and a lot of life in between. Until that time comes, I’ll take what I can get along the way then pull it close to every beat of my heart now.

Hearing More Than Words

It was one of those in-between moments. I had just finished one thing. Another thing was coming up close. My timing though was off, so I had to stop and wait. As I sat there quietly, I honed in on a nearby conversation. The participants were a mother and a son. When I heard the son’s voice I understood I had known them both a number of years.

I could not quite make out what the mother was saying, her voice lost in the physical distance between me and the two of them. Still, she asked her son something. Her son’s voice was strong and clear. It put that same distance that quieted her words to shame. He replied to her question indicating that the incident she asked about had been three years earlier. Again, in a voice that was only a whisper to me, she asked her son another question. He then told her an age several years above ninety. He then added “the two of you were the same age.” He topped this off by telling his mother her age now.

A few seconds of quiet filled in the space. She asked her son another question, again, one I could not understand through the distance. The son then listed a number of ailments his father had suffered through. When he finished, he circled around to point out a couple of ailments in particular that seemed to have been troublesome to his father, his mother’s husband.

Then, my wait was over. The next thing on my agenda was ready.

I have thought a lot about those couple of minutes since then. In today’s world, I could see some, and I fear the number is growing larger, who would make fun of this conversation with some concluding how someone who could not remember her own husband of many years was no longer useful to have around. I can’t comprehend how anyone could feel that way but I understand the gods of media and politics influence some people to embrace some very strange things that beyond the surface are much more complicated than they are convenient.

While I only heard one side of the conversation, I heard more than words. I heard a mother, worn out from the hard-work-never-a-day-off-of-family life, reaching out to remember some of those days. She likely thinks of them as the best days, the I’d-go-back-if-I-could days. I heard a son, patient, yet honest, give the answers he knows as only part of the story of his life with these two people. Now one of these two people is gone and the other holds tightly to memories fading into a hazy maze of age. Meanwhile, he must feel a certain resignation that for all the good times stored in memory that the fact of the matter these days is that this is the best it gets now.

I heard more though. What I really heard was the sound of love. Easy but hard. Ragged but right. Tender but tough. Ongoing, never-ending. In today’s world, I would think we could benefit from hearing more about that kind of love than most of the other stuff that drowns it out through distance and time. Then again, that might mean we take the time and make the effort to shut our own mouths so we can listen to voices other than our own.