Day: August 14, 2019

Change comes hard for me. It’s the Scottish blood I think. At least that’s what I’ll blame anyway.

My Grandpa was a Stewart. About as Scottish as it gets. He loved his old home place at the end of Snake nation road. I can only remember him being talked into riding the 100 mile trip to Trion just a few times during our time together on Earth. Fewer than you could count on one hand. Most weeks while he was living at the “old” place you were lucky to get him to go to town on Saturday and to church on Sunday. Actually going to church was voluntary on his part, while going to town was something Grandma had to fuss at him in order to get him to do it.

I’m sure he would have gladly drawn his last breath in that old house…but the tornado of ’73 blew it off it’s foundation, and in the end Grandpa got sick and lost his memory, and ended up in the nursing home. I still think of him and Grandma quite often, as anyone who reads what I write can tell.

We had a lot of good memories in the old house. Almost all our Christmases were spent there. I gave Eli the last physical thing I had left from those Christmases the other day. It was a tin box which candy canes had come in that had a lion on it. I still have most all my memories from there and then though. Sometimes it takes a little digging to uncover them. I’ll keep doing that now and then as I can.

As Paula and I move from this old house in which we have lived for most of the past 29 years (with a two year hiatus on 7th street) I’m taking many of the familiar things which surround me that trigger memories. Some little physical things which will inhabit our new space with us.

But most of all I’m taking my memories. Raising three kids here…all the joys, and a few sorrows. The get togethers and the holiday festivities. The “long” hallway. The kids and grandkids coming and going. It’s been a pretty good run, and I’m hoping the coming years will be full of new memories…good memories! The only thing changing is just my abode. My love is not changing. My caring is not changing. My heart is not changing. These things will always remain the same…constant…towards those I love.

As Paula Neurauter Bowers says, soon the things which are changing will just become the new normal. We will remain Mom and Dad, Papa and Nana…for as long as we live.

This is simply my little soliloquy for this epoch of my life.

Now…I gotta quit cause my eyes are leaking.

Peace and Love…

Has anyone ever thought to themselves….I’d love to be young again? I’ve had that thought before, but I’ve qualified that statement: I’d only want to be young again if it could be “in my own time”.

I would not want to be young again now. Not in this day and age.

I’ve thought myself depressed over the past few years. I cry quite often over various things. A lot of times it’s thinking about the way the world is now. I’m sure that’s probably not unusual for people my age.

I’m often angry over my generation not being able to make a difference for the better in our world. We baby boomers…so numerous, but apparently too self absorbed and shallow to have enough vision to prevent being where we are today. It’s not the loving world the flower children were singing about at Woodstock. It’s the world where “the love of many has grown cold”.

Just tonight in the tiny limited time I saw the “news” I heard of police in a nearby city tasing an elderly woman who was cutting dandelions from the property of a Boys and Girls club with a paring knife. The owners called the police, who ordered the old lady to “drop the knife” and then tased her when she didn’t. Turns out she didn’t speak English and had dementia. There’s a lot of room for some compassion at several points in that story.

I saw a video also of an adult teacher taking down a male student onto a table in a classroom and choking him. How does that happen??

You don’t have to even look very closely anymore to ask yourself what in the world is this world coming to? Oh, I understand it’s always been a pretty rough world…I do understand that, and I understand we see a lot more things a lot more often, and more quickly then they did back in the Wild West, or during the Middle Ages. It just seems so wrong somehow to have a world right now where we could be so much better….yet we won’t. Not can’t, but won’t.

Greed pervades us, and insensitivity and plain old bald faced rudeness populates our “social media”. Hatred towards people who are different, for whatever reason…than what some groups consider “the norm” ignites viral conversations coming from positions of power, and positions of popularity, that I never in my wildest dreams as a young man would have considered possible.

The love of many has definitely grown cold, and continues to do so every day.

I can’t do much about it. What am I…who am I to even know what to do? All that I can do is to try and take care of those people who I love. Try to encourage and educate them to be caring and loving, by giving them all the loving and caring that I can. The little ones anyhow. The grown ones I can only offer advice if it’s sought, and try to be a decent example of someone who genuinely cares. Many days I still just turn out being a crabby old man. I’m sorry…

Where was it I started this? Would I like to be young again? No, no….indeed no. I pray every night as I’m preparing to do now, that the future holds answers which I do not see which will make this world a lovely and wonderful place for my dear ones, just as wonderful as it has been for me. Somehow, someway dear God…let it be so.