“Sometimes the greatest tests of our strength are situations that don’t seem so obviously dangerous. Sometimes surviving is the hardest thing of all.” ~ Richelle Mead
It is my annual day of introspection. A day rife with questions but devoid of answers.
What did I accomplish in 2024? What do I want to accomplish in 2025…. It is the end of one year and the beginning of a new one. It is a jumbled chalkboard waiting to be erased, a fresh one waiting to be written on.
While I am desperate to erase the old chalkboard, I’m too invested in 2024 to even think about 2025. Loss will do that and 2024 was full of loss. Viewed through the wrong end of a telescope, 2025 seems to be filled with the reckonings caused by those losses.
Often, losses won’t allow you to turn loose or maybe you just don’t want to turn loose. I am a fly caught in a spider’s web of my own making and am battling the urge to remain there.
Sometimes all you can do is survive. When thinking about 2024 the best I can muster is that I survived. I accomplished nothing but survival.
What will 2025 bring? On a personal level, it will bring whatever I allow it to bring. I visualize a closed door, and I am fearful to what spiders are hiding behind it.
I can only control my personal space and the challenges the world poses to it. I also know beyond a shadow of a doubt external forces will throw curveballs causing me to frail awkwardly. The metaphorical “swing and a miss” followed by a graceless pirouette and faceplant.
As I struggle against my web, I wonder, “What do I want to do in 2025?” My first thought tells me a lot about where I am mentally. “I want to sit in the dark and be left alone.” I want to lay on my web and wait for the spider to wrap me in insulating silk. I am in a dark place.
But I am a survivor. I am going to move forward into 2025. I’m not going to sit in my dark place. I will not allow the spider to devour me. Easy words to say, not so easy to carry out.
One lesson I learned from my losses is that I am loved. Deserved or not, family and friends have proven this, and if nothing else, I’ll not let them down. I will not let me down. I will continue to struggle against the spider’s silken trap and my own self-destructive tendencies.
I have a hole in my heart the size of the Grand Canyon, that will never be filled. I realize the crater will always be there. I also realize that there is nothing wrong with trying to fill it. Happiness cannot find me sitting in the dark. Somehow, the sunlight must prevail. Buckle up spider, the battle is on.
“Okay, this was kissing. Serious kissing. Not just a kiss before moving out, not a good-bye, this was hello, sexy, and wow….” ― Rachel Caine, Glass Houses
I’ve got Betty Everett’s “Shoop, Shoop” song playing in my head. If you don’t remember it, there is a Cher version that is slightly younger. The reframe, “It’s in his kiss, that’s where it is” is on auto repeat in my head. I am changing the pronouns from his to her.
Today would have been thirty-eight years…our anniversary. Unfortunately, it is exactly three months to the day since you left me. It is exactly three months not using the “d” word. Saying you “left” implies there is a possibility of reunion. Using the “d” word implies finality and I can’t use it. The truth hurts too badly.
This past weekend I decided to take a drive. I needed to get out of the house and a walk in 95-degree weather didn’t seem prudent. I decided to retravel some of the old pig trails we once traveled together in the comfort of our air-conditioned Jeep. It was a mistake. The pig trails mean nothing without you.
My drive did trigger memories of a time now past. The good old days…late 1984. Pig trails meant something then.
I danced around you for a year or more while you dated Jim, my roommate. We became great friends that year. We grew close but there was no dancing together. You tried to “fix” me up with all your friends, but all your efforts failed. The joke was that you failed so badly you took mercy on me. Thank you for that mercy.
I think my subconscious knew you were the one. I recognized there was a spark, a tingle whenever our fingers might touch but you belonged to another. That’s not true, you never belonged to any one person, not even me. The problem was that I was loyal to a fault even to a person who didn’t deserve it or you.
Later that year, there was the inflatable pumpkin on your head in the fall and a major reaction when I came home and found you helping Jim wash his boat that spring. That two-piece… ala Jimmy Carter I sinned in my mind. In between there was the ice storm power outage and Jim’s stupidity putting a puppy dog under the house to keep warm with a five gallon can of kerosene. I don’t know when we laughed so hard, and Jim didn’t appreciate it or deserve the puppy…or you.
With summer came the road trip from hell. I was a tag along…a third wheel as I had been all that year. If a film or fifties TV show had been made of the year, I would have been Pat Brady to Roy Rogers or Jingles in Wild Bill Hickock…funny but safe.
Jim was forced to move to Charleston because of his job but your relationship with him was already unraveling…had been unraveling for a while and that trip to Charleston brought it into focus. I had nothing to do with the fraying even though Jim believed otherwise.
I don’t remember what threw us together without Jim that Saturday afternoon in Charleston, but I took you to the market. What an afternoon. That is when it dawned on me that you might be special. Confirmation would have to wait until Jim’s final straw broke your back.
After your breakup, I continued to dance around until you took the initiative. We found ourselves dancing together for the first time at Bennigans. Serendipity put us together, and like the stray animals you love to adopt, I followed you home. The pretense was to get you safely home but there was the goodnight kiss…and I knew. There might have been several kisses at your doorway, but I knew after the first one. You were the best kisser…the best friend…the best lover…the best everything. I think heaven will be like that first kiss.
Dusty Springfield has replaced Betty Everett, “That ever since we met you’ve had a hold on me, it happens to be true, I only want to be with you!” And now I can’t. I can only remember your kisses…and the way your body fit perfectly with mine when I held you close. You took spooning to a grand level.
I think about all the mistakes I made before we found each other. You made a few mistakes too. Our mistakes were fate’s way of preparing us for kismet. We talked about it often, sometimes karma isn’t a bitch.
The night I followed you home I wanted to protect you. I have wanted to protect you for thirty-eight years. When it came down to it, I couldn’t protect you from what I couldn’t see or touch. It isn’t logical but I still feel guilty.
Happy Anniversary my love. I miss you terribly. Truely, the guilt is real. So is my love.
“My daddy says that when you do somethin’ to distract you from your worstest fears, it’s like whistlin’ past the graveyard. You know, making a racket to keep the scaredness and the ghosts away. He says that’s how we get by sometimes. But it’s not weak, like hidin’…it’s strong. It means you’re able to go on.” ― Susan Crandall, Whistling Past the Graveyard
I am doing a lot of whistling past graveyards… to act or talk as if one is relaxed and not afraid when one is afraid or nervous. I’m not sure I’m afraid or nervous, but I am aware…too aware…of the passage of time. Aware that the sands left in the hourglass are dwindling…so maybe there is a little fear and nervousness.
I’ve lost three childhood idols in the past week. Bill Russell, Nichole Nichols, and Vin Scully. I knew none of them personally, but their passing brought pain and a sense of loss, and worse, introspection. Introspection…something I try to avoid.
I’m at an age when I cannot deny my own mortality, but I don’t like thinking about it.
Many of us think we are going to somehow outrun the Grim Reaper but as my best friend says too often, “We ain’t getting out of here alive.” The image of the Grim Reaper in my rear-view mirror has grown closer as I have grown slower. Still, attempting to outrun the Grim Reaper seems to be an effective way to live my life no matter my age and beats waiting around for the scythe to reap me.
Age…I’m at an age that I cannot deny I’ve lost a step or five. First thing in the morning I’m a bit unsteady. I no longer hop out of the bed anticipating the day, I ease out and try and sneak up on it.
When I meet up with old farts, I compare the way they look or move. Compared to many of my contemporaries I’m in fairly decent shape and I could beat them all in a five-yard sprint. With that and a nickel I can buy a piece of bubble gum. I remember when I could buy five pieces of Bazooka for a penny. Why does everyone my age look so old and who is that guy in the mirror?
Life is good but there are the pains that go with a lifetime of normal abuse, and I think mine might lean toward abnormal. Too many repetitive athletic endeavors have ruined my joints, too much fried food has clogged my arteries, too many cigars and brown liquor has addled my mind. I should have taken Billy Noonan’s quote more to heart, “If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”
When someone dies, known or unknown, I tend to compare ages. Well, old Bill was eighty-nine, he was seventeen years older than me. Seventeen years…that’s a long time. I still have time. Then I look back and I realize the past seventeen years have passed in the blink of an eye. I also realize, I’m not guaranteed any time other than what I have with this breath. No amount of whistling past the graveyard will change that.
I’m not afraid of dying. I admit I’m afraid of dying badly, I hope I don’t long for death to come. Dying in the arms of a passionate woman might be the best way to go.
I believe there is “something” after death. Science says energy and mass can be neither created nor destroyed, they can only be changed. I believe conservation of energy will transcend death…or is that more whistling past the graveyard? Is that in a closed system?
Whistling or not, I’ve made plans. My will has been made and I ‘ve requested a gathering of friends, a gathering I intend to attend…even if it is as a small pile of ash. A bottle of Gentleman Jack will be cracked open, toasts made to the dearly departed and funny stories told at my expense. When the bottle is empty, I have instructed my bride to transfer my ashes to the bottle and place them in a cool location. I fear I may need a cool place as I ride through eternity.
More Whistling past the graveyard with Jimmy Buffett.
“How many slams in an old screen door? Depends how loud you shut it. How many slices in a [loaf of] bread? Depends how thin you cut it. How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live ’em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give ’em.” ― Shel Silverstein
Shel’s words put me to thinking of old screen doors, flapping in the breeze. I like quotes…other people’s quotes because I’m not bright enough to create my own. I’m a lot like an old screen door. How many slams do I have left?
The old door’s paint is an silver gray that was once white. In places bare wood shows, the paint worn away from the many hands pressing against it. I remember the slam it makes as it shuts behind you. A shout from one of the grownups, “Quit slammin’ the door!!!!”
A portion of the screen shows rust, ready to crumble if touched. The spring that pulls the door shut is sprung, not doing its job as well as it did when it was first hung.
My hinges are still intact but operate with a rusty squeak. Like the old door, with a little help, I’m able to do the job of filling the space I was first hung to fill. Just push the door closed gently and don’t make me move too quickly.
I don’t know how many slices of bread I have left in my loaf. I’m sure those that I have are dry like toast, and a bit moldy. Looking in a mirror, I’m thinkin’ moldy hardtack. Is it an age thing to contemplate your future as you look back on your past?
As the size of the loaf decreases, I wonder, “Is it better to slice them thin or cut the slices thick?” I do love my carbohydrates but to carry the metaphor further, “Isn’t it what is on the inside of the sandwich that makes the sandwich?” A fresh tomato sandwich is just a mayonnaise sandwich if you hold the tomato. Isn’t the bread there to soak up the sweet juices of the tomato and the tartness of the Dukes Mayonnaise? There may be a metaphor there too. Doesn’t our outward glow come from the juices within?
The rest of Shel’s quote deals with what is on the inside and I’m not sure about that either. “How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live ’em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give ’em.”
I’m not doing a tremendous job of “living” my days well. If living them good requires productivity, I’m empty. I have plenty to do…I’m just not doing it. I choose instead to frolic with my new puppy or author essays that you people don’t read. Well, I must do some grass mowing and weed eating…tomorrow.
I have two close friends, my bride, and the legend Hawk. I’m lucky to know two people I can count on…outside of my family…maybe. Granted, they may grumble a bit…especially my bride. I feel inadequate when I compare their friendship to my friendship toward them. Is it enough to just be there? I feel I should do more. Are they investing more than I?
I need to be less contemplative. I feel inadequate when it comes to my family too.
Elbert Hubbard is quoted, saying, “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” I do agree. It’s good to have someone to talk to who won’t judge you and holds on to my secrets like a miser pinching a penny. Thoughts I would never tell my wife I tell Hawk, and vice versa.
Friends are comfortable with each other. Comfortable to sit and listen and reframe from commenting. No opinion, no commentary, no judgement. Just a simple nod of the head. Comfortable to tell the truth when asked without fear of someone getting their nose out of joint.
Comfortable like your favorite jeans…or a worn-out screen door. They don’t even seem to mind when it slams behind you. Okay, maybe I’m a better friend than I supposed. I listen and nod my head a lot.
Now if I can answer the question, “Cut the bread thin or thick?” I think thick…go for the gusto and make sure the tomato is thick too…add a grilled hamburger with lettuce and onions. You get from life what you put into it. My grandmother would have said, “You reap what you sow.” I would say, “If you don’t take the time to plant them, there won’t be a tomato slice in your sandwich.”
“Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.” ― Orson Scott Card, Alvin Journeyman
I have a memory of speeding us home from MYF to claim my front row seat. The seat was in our living room, in front of a black and white RCA TV. Ed Sullivan was coming on and could not be missed. Every Sunday evening at eight we expected, “A really big shew!” The night of my remembrance was The Beatles, but I remember many other acts with dimming clarity. Some more than others and some that have become metaphors in my dimming brain.
Ed Sullivan
My memory was triggered by another memory, which was triggered by a conversation. A simple comment I made about the complexities of life. A comparison to an incomplete story, incomplete because the story had too many moving parts. Too many spinning plates wobbling as I try to bring my story to its conclusion.
From the conversation a rabbit hole opened, beckoning me to fall in and I obliged it. Slide on over Alice, I’ve come to join you. Set a place for me at your tea party preferably next to the Mad Hatter. We have much in common, especially our insanity.
The memory of Ed Sullivan led me to the memory of a tuxedo clad man with a bad haircut running hither and yon attempting to keep bowls spinning on dowls and plates spinning on the table the dowls sat on. As their spin began to slow, the plates or bowls would begin to wobble. The tuxedo clad man would run first to one and then to another while carrying a tray with glasses, eggs, and cutlery that he would perform ‘amazing’ tricks with while keeping the bowls from crashing to the floor.
The tuxedo clad man was Erich Brenn. His act was pure circus, but it reminded me of the circus that life has become for so many. Spinning plates have become a metaphor for life.
I’m retired. Life doesn’t get much simpler. Life is so simple my biggest struggle is to remember what day of the week it is or what time of day it might be. As simple as it is, I still remember and long for simpler times. What about those who now find themselves spinning plates in the Twenty-First Century?
Both my parents worked in the Twentieth Century. Shift work in a cotton mill weave room. Sometimes my dad would ‘work over’. An extra four hours here and there. Even working over he was always home in time for supper, the evening meal in the South. They owned their home, made payments on a new car every four or five years, and there was always food on the table. I never wanted for anything that was needed. Admittedly there were disagreements over what was ‘needed’.
They had time to have a life outside of the heat, humidity, and lint of a weave room. The job ended with the closing of the huge, sliding doors that separated ‘in there’ from the ‘out there’. They didn’t carry the job home with them…at least in their heads. They might have been bone weary, but they weren’t mind numbed. They didn’t have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. They had money to put away for a ‘rainy’ day.
They had time, an irreplaceable commodity, to smell the roses. Time to do chores, work a crossword puzzle, paint by numbers, go to choir practice, or host the Canasta Club or just watch TV. Time to be parents. Time to do nothing if they wanted. What happened?
The modern world happened. Life morphed into something that would not be recognized in the Fifties, Sixties, or Seventies. Life has reverted to the early days of the Industrial Revolution…to the Great Depression, long hours as pay hasn’t kept up with cost. The Greatest Generation should be shaking their heads in disbelief. Life now resembles Erich Brenn’s spinning plate novelty act.
Today, many families of four can’t survive on one salary, are stretched to survive on two, can’t own a home, are forced to keep a ten-year-old vehicle running for five more years. In many cases, they are working multiple jobs and still making decisions on which bills to pay, which meds to take, living from paycheck to paycheck, one calamity away from being thrown to the curb. One disaster from living in their car or a cardboard box. Spinning plates.
This was before Covid, before runaway inflation, before soaring gas prices, before more rumors of war in the Ukraine turned out not to be rumors. Life is hard for this newest generation and looks worse for the next. Forget saving for a better life, saving for a house or college for their kids. It’s hard to save when catsup soup is the soup de jure.
I wonder how many more plates are being spun…or shattering as they fall to the floor.
I worry about my daughter, son-in-law, and grandbabies. They are lucky and I hope they realize it. I’m sure some days they wonder too. I’m sure they must make tough decisions. They both work, have good jobs, and both are home for supper. Sometimes my electrician son-in-law works side jobs but most days he’s doing taxi service to one practice or another. They sound much like my parents.
They are great parents. They amaze me. They put their children first…sometimes to their own detriment. I worry they are wearing themselves out sprinting in the rat race of life. No chance to slow down and smell the roses. Spinning those plates. They can call on family members when the schedule spins out of control, or when life adds a plate to the table. So far, no plates or bowls have come crashing down. Still, I worry.
Many young parents don’t have the support to soften the blow of falling bowls and I am sorrowful. Many grandparents who were once the support system still must work, still spinning plates themselves.
Spinning plates shouldn’t be a metaphor for life…yet it is. It is a metaphor for the fear many experience. One broken plate from going bust.
My parents had a dream their ‘baby boys’ would have a better life than they did. A better life was the same dream their parents had and a dream I had for mine. For some that dream was realized. For others, the deck was stacked against them from the beginning and has become dog-eared over time.
We keep being told that the American Dream is still alive. All you must do is work hard. I think that is a lie and for the coming generations that dream may be a nightmare.
***
As madly as we spin plates, I can’t help but point out that at least I’m not having to manufacture and use Molatov cocktails, and my grandchildren are not having their blood type sewn onto their clothing by their parents. I’m not living in a makeshift bomb shelter with a pet in my lap. To my Ukrainian friends, known and unknown, Любов і удача. Love and good luck.
Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes refers to the way my mind works…a curse or a blessing? Alice’s rabbit hole worked out well, right? Think of all the friends she met. A white rabbit, the Mad Hatter, a hookah-smoking caterpillar, a Cheshire cat, and the one I most emulate the March hare…as in, as crazy as a March hare…or a Mad Hatter…which is it?
I write in a world that is slightly out of focus or as a Southerner might say, cattywampus, waiting for something to occur that will send me on an unplanned metaphorical trek, twisting and turning like a wild pig trail or mountain switchback, until I find my rabbit hole. My motivation may be a spoken or written word, a song, a taste, or a smell…food maybe. I seem preoccupied with food.
Once the pig trail leads me to my rabbit hole I will pursue my rabbit to whatever lengths necessary to satisfy myself. It is maddening to live in my head sometimes. See, I’m already wondering why you have a rabbit and a hare in the same story about Alice’s great adventure. They are the same, right? No, they are not. I did not know that. Shame on you biology teacher!
Several years ago, I decided to attempt to bring my maddening thoughts under control by writing and created the blog Ravings of a Mad Southerner. It was a failure …but I’ve enjoyed the trip along the pig trails even though my thoughts are under no better control than they were seven years ago when I embarked on the storm-tossed sea of blogging.
Symbolically, the title of my blog, Ravings of a Mad Southerner has nothing to do with anger but is related to the madness experienced by Alice’s Mad Hatter or March hare…and the madness experienced by the author of the blog.
In all fairness, my madness has nothing with the production of felt hats or crazy hares at the beginning of their mating season. I get my madness honestly, I was born this way it seems.
Most of the rabbits I pursue resemble Elmer Fudd’s “wascally wabbit”, Bugs, or Gary K. Wolfe’s bumbling, Roger Rabbit. I admit sometimes I encounter monster rabbits resembling the fanged demon Kevin McCarthy pulled out of his hat in Twilight Zone: The Movie, but it is rare.
While I search for my rabbit holes, I tend to get lost. Mostly I like it that way. To quote Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”
The warm and freshening breeze blowing across the lake brought memories flowing as swiftly as the breeze itself. Most were as warm as the wind driving them. The ones that weren’t were forced away by the bright sunshine.
According to the sign the trail we walk is 1.25 miles. I don’t believe the distance is accurate, but the lake it surrounds is much too small for me to be thinking about sailing. Yet I was.
Ordinarily my bride would have had me talking or listening to her prattles, pointing out strangely shaped mushrooms or having me wait impatiently as she took pictures of the waterfall she has taken pictures of for the past three hundred and sixty-five days. Instead, she was quiet, as deeply into her own thoughts as I was in mine. I did not know her thoughts, scary I’ll admit, but I knew mine.
As I watched the wind driven ripples race across the lake, I thought of a twenty-two-foot sloop with a Bermuda rig from a time far, far distant. Mostly I thought of the people who crewed the boat…some gone but not forgotten.
The warm for November breeze stiffened in my face as I thought, “This would be a great day to be sailing,” or for partying with friends while sailing.
In my mind’s eye I saw the white sailboat on a close haul, mainsail and jib pulled in tight, the sails singing as the wind’s pressure heeled the boat, the gunnels dipping perilously toward the water. I see us scurrying to the high side to keep from being capsized. The high side of life?
Battling the tiller for control of the rudder as the speed and water pressure builds. Could this be a metaphor for life…my life? Where did my runaway thoughts come from and why did I quit sailing?
The little boat, narrow of beam with a swing keel, was quick and nimble with her racing rigged main and jib. I’m surprised I remember any nautical terms; it has been nearly forty years since I gripped the tiller with an unsteady hand.
“Sailing takes me away to where I’ve always heard it could be. Just a dream and the wind to carry me, and soon I will be free.” Damn, Christopher Cross is playing in my head…can “Southern Cross” by Crosby, Stills, and Nash without Young be far behind. “So we cheated and we lied and we tested, and we never failed to fail it was the easiest thing to do. You will survive being bested, somebody fine will come along make me forget about loving you… And the southern cross.”
It was in the late Seventies when I was invited to my first of many sailing weekends. “Bring a date, spend the weekend. You’ll love it.” I did. Bill, Koon, Bobbi, Sybil, myself and a date. There were a few others who sailed in and out on occasion.
Six of us on a small sailboat on a large inland lake in South Carolina. Coolers filled with adult beverages or the mixers for a liquor drink. The alcohol loosened our tongues and greased our laughter. Bill, our captain, always managed to sail us back to our home port, sometimes in the dead of night.
Too much liquor, well grilled steaks, great friends sitting around a wood fire, and a plus one…whomever she might have been at the time, there were not that many. ..or there were too many. Laughter was abundant. Good times.
Any good time you survive should qualify as a great time. Great times. Somehow, we survived our youthful foolishness. I remember nothing but clear, bright sunshine and fair winds…am I dreaming? No, I don’t think so.
Taking the tiller for the first time, I might well have been at the wheel of the Queen Anne’s Revenge awaiting Blackbeard’s next order. “Arrr, let them eat steel maties”…or have another mixed drink.
Manning the tiller may be a metaphor for my life. Sometimes it is hard to stay on course. Life, like tacking against the wind, tends to be made in zigs and zags. Some zigs are short, some zags exceptionally long…or seem that way. Coming about into the wind can have painful outcomes if you aren’t paying attention.
For some reason my sailing days came to an end. The storms of depression left me dead in the water. It was my actions I’m sure. There were bad times, dark times. Depressed times.
Times improved with understanding and a little wisp of a girl who calmed the winds and seas…except when our own hurricanes blew up. Our foundation must have been built upon the rock of understanding…we are still here and still together. Our breezes are mostly warm and caressing like today but for some reason I never got back to sailing.
I purged those ill winds from my mind to keep from being driven crazy upon the rocks of life. I keep them locked tightly away until a fresh, warm breeze hits me in the face allowing only the good memories to flow.
In my depression I cut myself off from people who didn’t deserve to be cut off. That was a failure on my part…I demasted myself and lost my rudder to boot. Like a solitary sailor, I battled my storm tossed seas alone…until my North Star became my guide.
I choose to remember the fair winds. A bow cleaving the water. Great sailing in bright sunshine. Sybil sitting on the bow, her legs straddling the bowsprit mocking a figurehead on an ancient sailing ship. Koon’s big laugh and smile with a liquor drink in her hand. “Now let me tell you one thing….” Blowing off steam in the sun and the wind on a small sailboat. Sharing the joy and laughter with friends.
Sybil and Koon are silent now as is one of my plus ones. Silent in the physical world. Quite alive in the memories on a close haul through my mind.
I couldn’t help but smile as the warm breeze caressed the lake’s shoreline and my face. I miss them but see them sailing across the firmament at dusk. A small sailboat sailing close to the solar winds, white sails glowing red in the sunset.
Fair winds and following seas my friends. May warm breezes caress you. You are missed.
Before social distancing became the in thing, I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in thirty years…jeez…more like forty. I was excited to see her…considering our history excited is not the best descriptor. Thrilled is a better word. I was thrilled to see her.
We had a short-term tryst back in the day…just scratching certain itches. Nothing heavy, a “friends with benefits” kind of thing before “friends with benefits” was a thing…it was the “free love” Seventies after all. As I think back, I realize there was nothing free about love or even its unreasonable facsimile, lust.
She didn’t recognize me, even when I tried to explain who I was. Despite the empty feeling in my stomach, I didn’t push it. She seemed anxious in a bad way. I think she’s had a stroke or is self-medicating…am I being narcissistic? Maybe it was my beard, the balding head? No, I believe there was something wrong.
She seemed frail and infirm. A woman who once strode through the world confidently was reduced to little shuffles reminiscent of a Chinese woman who had had her feet bound. The strong alto voice lacked volume and power. The tall, long-legged, pleasing body seemed to be collapsing in on itself. Always slender in a good way, she was much too thin. Maybe it was me looking back on memories through my rose-colored reading glasses.
We remained friends after we both moved on to other places and people…at least I thought we had. At some point, she seemed to disappear…but, not from memory. I’ve thought of her often over the years wondering what happened to her. Wondering if she was happy. Remembering how foolish I had been.
I wondered if she had moved to a distant part of the world. Whenever I asked friends, “Have you heard from….”, the answer was always in the negative.
In the mid-80s she decided she was gay and fell under the influence of a “stereotypical” lesbian woman. You may substitute whatever “stereotype” you wish. This woman is much more than a stereotype and stereotypes are such oversimplifications.
Still, the time was the Eighties and I was shocked and full of questions. I’ve often wondered if she crossed over because she was truly lesbian or was it because she had been wounded so many times by people of my gender…or was it I was such a bad lover and friend I drove her to it. Insecure much? Ah…yes!
She stumbled and fell over several relationships during those late Seventies and early Eighties. I wonder if I helped to trip her up as she attempted to recover. An unwanted splinter under the fingernail of life. You can tell she is an enigma, she always was.
Are my concerns more about me and my own guilt? Is it about my own narcissism? Is it my over-inflated self-importance? Questions I can’t answer. Maybe questions I fear to answer. My greatest question, “Are you happy?” I hope the answer is yes.
There are questions I can’t even ask. My friend has dropped off the face of the earth even though she lives exactly where she has always lived.
I think about the crowd we ran with during those thrilling days of yesteryear. Those days we were lucky to survive. Those of us still alive have remained in touch. More so as we have gotten older. It is as if she has cut all ties with those days and the people who inhabited them with her. Maybe she wanted to move forward while the rest of us are pulled toward the past. I know I once did the same thing when my own mistakes became too much of a burden. Memories too painful to remember…except you do.
I share quotes on my social media accounts. Quotes I can’t create because I’m not bright enough or because someone said what I wanted to say first…and said it better. I wish I could be profound but instead, I rely on the words of others to enlighten, humor or sometimes, provoke.
I call these quotes, Don’s Daily Dose because a former student suggested the moniker after reading a few day’s worths. I’m thankful to her for suggesting the title and helping me to realize someone was actually reading them.
I share these quotes along with some form of artwork to emphasize the point…or just because I liked the snake wrapped around an arm attached to a hand holding an apple… the quote was about temptation after all. The apple different shades of red, the snake a bright kaleidoscope of color…I find the painting tempting.
Usually, the art I choose is psychedelic, me embracing my inner hippie. Vibrant and wild colors from the LSD trip I never took; peace signs, VW microbuses, Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix…. Sometimes I use the book covers from the authors I quote from. I lean toward bold colors with purple and pink being favorites.
Then I quoted Ansel Adams and looked for art to go with my quote. I was awed by his landscapes in black and white. The quote was about the environment, something Adams photographed in black and white, his mode of artistic expression. Mother Nature stark and sharply in focus…maybe auster. Nature laid bare, no makeup to soften its features.
The picture I chose of a two-lane blacktop took me back to those thrilling days of yesteryear when “filmed in Technicolor” was the exception, not the norm. Stark blacks and whites along with muted grays were the standards, life laid bare in living black and white.
Ansel Adams Road, Nevada Desert, 1960
Movies, television, stills from Life magazine, most were in black and white in those days. If I wanted color I thumbed through my grandmother’s National Geographic. Wild animals and bare-breasted native girls filmed better in color. In this modern-day, life is replicated exactly as it is on large screened TVs, tablets and I Phones. I still find black and white to be more poignant, more shocking, more potent.
Doretha Lange’s depression-era Migrant Mother does not reflect her pain in its colorized form. Color is too soft. Her turned down mouth with fingers stroking the side of her chin…pondering her lot in life it would seem. Her furrowed brow, two of her seven children hiding their faces from the camera. There are no soft colors, just sharp black, and white pain.
Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski pleading for “Stella”, wearing a torn and dirty T-shirt, his hands clasped against his head…Same in Technicolor? Only if his head explodes. Stanley Kowalski was not a nice person, black and white suits him.
I watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, Freedom Rider buses burn, and Walter Cronkite tell the nation a war was unwinnable after Tet, all and more on a black and white TV. Those depressing moments were befitting of black and white. No color necessary, no sugarcoating with pastels, no bold makeup. Just stark black and white.
Most of my childhood memories are in black and white. Friends and family posing, smiling on three, frozen as a Kodak catches their likenesses. My parents so young in their courting pictures, people long dead, their faces faded in the old albums I liberated after my father’s death.
I sigh, exhaling heavily as I think about them. My winter depression may be sneaking up, edging closer. It is a bit early yet but it always catches me by surprise like those “backshooters” in the black and white “oaters” I watched as a child. Bad men willing to do their worst to the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Willing but not able as they live on in the reruns of life.
It is still pre-dawn as I edit this and there are no colors other than black and gray of night. Not even a hint of the sunrise to come. The almost full moon nearing the western horizon doesn’t give enough light for colors to reflect. I seem to do my best writing in the dark, surrounded by blacks and whites. My best writing is relative and it is not the way I want to spend the rest of my life.
Life in black and white seems harsh and I’ve had my black and white moments. Life needs a few black and white moments to give depth and meaning to the warm colors in between. Profound. Maybe I am capable of a good quote after all. Time to greet the sun.
My induction into a former high school’s athletic hall of fame has me flitting hither and yon over memories from forty-plus years of teaching and coaching. For some reason, I don’t feel very worthy of the accolades.
It was great to see former players now conquering their own lives and being successful by any standard applied. Former students, coaching peers, and parents stopping by and pumping my hand or hugging my neck. It wasn’t great, it was wonderful.
Still, I wonder in the back of my head, “Why?” “How?” “Am I a fraud?” Sometimes things were too easy…except when they weren’t.
Dozens have extended congratulations and well wishes on social media and email. Despite my pride and delight…I don’t feel worthy.
The festivities were poignant, my plaque sitting alongside Tim Bright’s, a player who passed too soon due to colon cancer. A player who was, along with hundreds of others, responsible for my success. I wonder what he might have accomplished had he not left us. His family is so dedicated to his memory. His charity is still doing great things for those who suffered as he did.
My wife…a former coach herself and far superior in my estimation. As always, standing by my side. Always supportive, always ready with a meaningful critique of the last game’s outcome. Greatest supporter and greatest critic. “Just let them play and quit bunting so much.” “Why did you do….” I do miss her voice distinguishable from anywhere in a stadium no matter how large or loud the crowd was. “Come on Coach, run your other play!” I am so lucky and so unworthy.
As I look back, it seemed too easy. I know I’m looking through the sands of time and the time is becoming a sandstorm. Still, great assistant coaches, great players, and great parents made my successes. I just walked around being me.
I’ve heard so many horror stories that I never experienced. There were just a few bad apples, just a few obstacles…maybe they weren’t bad apples…maybe I just did find the key to unlock their potential. I do feel like the king of frauds.
There were laughs and tears but the tears were minimal. When we gather and exclaim, “Do you remember…?”, the question is always about the laughs. It is easy to remember the good times.
Through the magnifying glass of retrospection, even the bad seasons were good. Seasons we knew we were bad but managed to get better. Sometimes a seven-win season could be as rewarding as a state championship season. Seasons you really didn’t know how good or bad you were. Seasons you just put in the work that didn’t seem like work and hoped for the best. I believe I always received the best they had. I hope they received mine.
When I first began my coaching journey, I was terrible. Some might say, “Nothing ever changed.” It is a fact I’m comfortable with because I believe I grew despite feeling apologetic to those early teams.
I grew and turned a corner of sorts after a bitter loss. I lamented to the offending coach. “I don’t know what to do.” His answer was, “You love them. Remember, you’re not coaching football, you’re coaching kids. Win or lose you love them.” I tried to apply his nugget through the rest of my career.
Names and faces blur over time but I can honestly and unapologetically say, “I loved them.” I didn’t coach football, soccer or baseball, I coached kids. Maybe I’m not as big a fraud as I believe.
It has been three years since I last stalked a sideline or a dugout. I honestly haven’t missed the practices or the games. Every time I think I might return to a grassy field my body does something to remind me of the beating it has taken over the years and those feelings pass.
What I miss is the comradery. I miss the interactions with my players, the coaches and the opponents staring back at me from the opposing dugout or sideline. Those were good times and I miss them.
I still feel like a fraud. It was too much fun, it was too easy. Great players make for good coaches. I had a cornucopia of great players. Thanks for the memories guys, thanks for the effort, thanks for my successes. Thanks for letting me be me and letting me be a part of your lives.
Ravings of a Mad Southerner 