Awkward

It’s the person looking at a new born baby, the apple in the eyes of others, and realizing that at this moment this child isn’t all that beautiful yet just as someone asks this person which parent he thinks the child looks like. 

It’s the pre-schooler, dimples and curls, who plays alone on the playground for a few minutes before realizing she is all alone then wonders how to fit in to one of the groups laughing and jumping and playing nearby.

It’s the teenage girl, self-conscious and not as confident as she lets others know, whose eyes meet that boy’s eyes briefly then dart away just as quick leaving behind a smile aimed somewhere in his direction. She thought all the drama with other girls her age was tough last year but here and now just wondering if he thinks she is pretty seems to the toughest thing she has ever faced.

It’s the teenage boy, peach fuzz and brimming with bravado that deserts him quickly, who looks at that girl’s eyes until they meet forcing a smile on his face until he looks down at the ground only to peek back up hoping he finds her smiling back. He fumbles with the simplest words like “Hey” while wondering if he has to rely on his words to make her notice him if he will ever get past this point with her.

It’s the person who steps onto a slick floor and loses his balance and falls rump first to the ground and as he begins to get up finds himself hoping no one saw him take this tumble.

It’s the acquaintance who recognizes someone from their past across a crowded room and who readies to meet them and then just as they are about to come face-to-face realizes that the other person has no idea who they are, so they just quietly and quickly duck out of the way.

It’s the person who happens upon a former supervisor and while the two update one another about their lives this person struggles with wishing the other person well because of how they were treated when the work relationship ended.

It’s the person who realizes a split second too late how they should have said something to lift up somebody who really needed it but that the moment is lost forever.

Awkward: when it happens to you, it never really goes away does it?

Chicken Fingers For The Soul Or Something To Nibble On While Life Goes By, Dipping Sauce Optional

Is it a good sign when you are in the dentist’s chair with the dentist elbow deep in your

mouth and he starts singing along with the music piped into the room when the song is “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”? Just asking. Dude could sing, I give him that.

Recently my wife and I were on vacation. As we prepared to go to dinner one evening, I straightened my shirt a bit and walked to the other side of the bedroom where I looked up at the wall expecting a mirror. Instead, a large screen TV was on the wall. I looked all around the room and discovered there was no mirror at all in the room. Makes me wonder do we really love that box and the stuff that emanates from it so much that it has become a more true reflection of who we are than something we can actually see in a mirror?

It’s October. Great. Pumpkin-spice scented toilet paper.

I know people use the phrase “falling off the wagon” and that is usually meant as a bad thing. But, what if that wagon is a little red wagon? Wouldn’t falling off that wagon be a good thing since some folks like to come along and “fix” little red wagons?

I have been around enough to understand to cringe when I hear someone nearby say "Hey watch this." Should I be worried though when I hear my three year old daughter say the same thing?

I don't often visit Arby's. I think I now understand why. I recently went there and found myself somewhat embarrassed being an adult and asking for horsey sauce.

One of life’s greatest pleasures is taking a Sunday afternoon nap on your couch. When though did the pillows that come now with modern day couches become so uncomfortable?

Speaking of naps, why is it when we are young we never want to take a nap and when we become older all we want to do is take a nap?

You would think that of all the words in the world that phonetic would be spelled the way it sounds.

I recently read that the longest recorded flight of a chicken was thirteen seconds. Really, whose job is this? Do chicken owners have their chickens practice for this?

One of my favorite writers of all time, Lewis Grizzard, has been dead now for twenty years. This is one of my favorite quotes from him: “The world around me is a tuxedo, and I'm a pair of brown shoes.” I wonder how the ol’ boy would feel in today’s world?

Autumn. Even the name is pretty isn’t it?

The Second of October

I have scheduled this blog post to appear on Thursday, October 2nd. When I recently looked at the calendar it dawned on me that October 2nd this year fell on a Thursday.

Thursday, October 2nd, 1975 was like every other day I knew then. Get up, get ready for school, go to Epworth Elementary and live the world of a sixth grader in Mrs. Goss’s room. Later, get on the school bus, ride home and live the world of an eleven year old boy growing up in a rural north Georgia mountain town. It was just like any other day except Thursday, October 2nd, 1975 was the day my Pappaw died. I wrote some about his death in an older blog post that you can locate here.

When I looked at this year’s calendar and noted October 2nd was a Thursday I could not help but think back to that day in 1975. I have written before how I believe this day impacted me because my Pappaw was the first person I really, really, really knew who died. I think about that from time to time. I ponder how things we enjoy and grow accustomed to change and how a certain realization seeps in telling us that the life we knew won’t ever be the same again. Other times I try to think about the pool of memories I have from those eleven years I knew Pappaw. Either way, I find I still miss him after all these years.

Andrew Jackson Rogers was a copper miner. He made his living by going into the belly of the earth and digging out copper for the area’s main employer at that time, a place the locals still call "the copper company". He never drove a car that I recall or he never held anything written in paper in his pocket that would fulfill the driving requirements the state of Georgia would appreciate. Sometimes if he needed to go somewhere, he just started walking there. I recall one time he showed up unannounced on our doorstep after his retirement just to show me and my Mom a one hundred dollar bill that he had. I had never seen one of those before. Sometimes now I wonder if he had ever seen one before then either. He loved dogs and it seemed he always had at least one following him around. Once, a stray dog had taken residence in the garage just above the house where he lived with Mammaw. He took me there to show me that dog and her puppies. Then there was Boss, his prized German Sheppard. Pappaw and Boss had been walking one day when Boss was hit by a car. Pappaw picked up Boss and carried that dog home to care for him as long as he could. You can’t help but love an old man who loves dogs.

The summer prior to his passing, I spent a good deal of time at Mammaw and Pappaw’s house. Looking back, I suppose his health was declining. I am sure I did not fully understand that then. My Mom and I would go there to spend the day looking after Mammaw and Pappaw. I recall going with them on trips to the doctor’s office where the antiseptic smell held down the smell of sickness. I remember sitting on their sprawling porch shaded by giant oak trees in the sizzling summer heat as neighbors drove up and down the dusty dirt road in front of their house. I am pretty sure Pappaw understood we were there to help Mammaw look after him and I am fairly certain he wasn’t thrilled about that. My Mom and I still laugh sometimes at the verbal war she had with him one day that summer when she tried to get him to eat some Vienna sausages and he was as bound and determined that he didn’t want them as she was that he should try them. My mother can be pretty persuasive when it comes to food, even Vienna sausages, but on that day I think he won that battle. He could be grumpy and grouchy at times and I like to think I inherited my similar moments from him but I also recall he balanced it out with a wry sense of humor and a mischievous smile when he was joking and I like to think those things were his to give to me as well.

After his passing I recall years later how we were in my Mom and Dad’s basement searching for something. Mom came across some things and began to remove them from their packaging. One of those things was my Pappaw’s hat. He wore a hat all the time, as did so many men of his generation. Mom pulled the hat out of the heavy plastic it was encased in and opened it and when she did the smell of Pappaw's tobacco, which had soaked into that hat, filled the air. It was almost like he was standing right there. It was almost like it was the summer before he died again.

As I grew older I sometimes found myself taking a detour to my destination. I would drive into Sugar Creek and park at the foot of the graveyard where he is buried. I would walk up the hill to his gravesite to just stand there quietly reflecting on him or on my family or on whatever was going on in my life at that time. I am not sure what that really did for me then. Now I know by that time, distanced from that 1975 October, a certain peace resided there. It was a place that became a soft place to fall and a quiet place to recharge.

Now and then I stumble across a few photos I have of him. One is of him with my grandmother and together they are holding a cake. I am too young to remember the event when it happened but family members recall the photo was taken at their anniversary. Their nine kids and countless grandchildren had gathered in that big yard at that old house on Damascus Road to celebrate this grand event. Someone was able to coax the two into holding the cake and smiling for the camera. It is one of the few photos any of us have of the two of them together.

Here is the other picture. This is me with my Pappaw. It is probably the only picture of me with him. There he is kneeling down, hat on head, dog nearby and mischief sits on his face in the form of a grin. I look at this picture and focus on him and my memories of him rush over me. It makes me consider how he left us too soon. It makes me wish I had gotten to know him better. It makes me long to remember more about him. You think those things about those you love and who are no longer here, don’t you?  For Pappaw, there were grandchildren he did not ever meet. There would have been dogs to pet. There would have been Vienna sausages to argue about. There would have been more memories to have been made.

Admittedly, I don’t think about him as much these days. I haven't been to Sugar Creek to the foot of that graveyard and made that walk up that hill to his resting place in several years. The distance between 1975 and now has some subtle way of softening the edges of memories simply because life has to be lived. Still, October 2nd comes every year and Thursday, October 2nd comes every few years.

And, here it is today, Thursday, October 2nd, 2014. 

And, Pappaw, I still miss you.