Month: July 2023

IT’S ALL in your MIND…..(or…What’s on your mind, as this blank space always asks when I come to it.)

What is the first thing that you can remember? That’s my question for now. What’s your first memory? Our mind is a funny thing and they say we only use about 10% of what we have. But just humor me and try and frame a mental picture of your first memory. If you can do it that will eventually lead me to my other question.

See, the reason it interests me is that I often wonder if everyone else’s brain functions about the same as mine. Most of my childhood memories are rather fuzzy around the edges. Do you know what I mean? It’s sort of like trying to look at something right after you have just woke up, and you still have a ton of “sleep” in your eyes. Either that, or maybe it’s like trying to remember a dream which you had the night before. The dream is really clear when you first wake up, but if you EVER want to remember it, you should take the advice of dream specialists and write it down right then. If not, it’s going to be fuzzy in the morning. Fuzzy around the edges, just like those really early childhood memories. Sometimes I wonder if some of my “memories’ are not really dreams. Is that possible? I think it might be. As we go through life, and we live through so many different things, it may just be that some of our more vivid dreams get mixed up in our brain with reality. That would be a hoot wouldn’t it? I really think this is a good exercise though, because the more I have consciously thought about the past, the more memories starting bubbling to the surface like bubbles on a pound full of snapping turtles. The more I try and separate reality from fantasy, the more sure I am that it’s not always possible to do so.

Well for starters, the very first thing I remember is having to go potty really, really bad. We lived in a house back in 1953, when I was three years old that was originally a duplex that had been turned into a regular house. I remember that it confused me, because both sides of the house seemed to be the same, except the living room furniture was in one side and the bedroom furniture in the other. I remember thinking that the rooms were the same and that when I blinked my eyes, or went to sleep (especially if I got carried from one side to the other during that time) that the furniture was rearranging itself! Strange, right? But, back to pottying. I had to go really, really bad, and nobody was around to “direct” me to the correct place, so down went the pants and…..well..you can guess the rest. The part I remember the most, was getting my rear end tanned by my Pop! I never, ever did that again!

I also remember having a pair of Easter bunnies that same year. Dad brought them home in a box, and we took them out back to eat grass and they got away from us and ran up under the car. It took Daddy forever to catch them, and I didn’t know what some of the words he was using meant, but I used one of them later on when I rode my tricycle down the front steps. My Dad was secretly tickled I said it to the Dr. who was sewing up my head, but he still blamed it on my Mom. I can’t remember what happened to those damn rabbits though. I think Dad probably got tired of them making a mess and got rid of them one night while the furniture was changing itself around.

Another vivid thing during that same year I believe was during the summer we would catch “lightning bugs” (fireflies to a lot of you) We would put them in a jar and I would take them to a dark place and try to use them like a flashlight! Usually, we would let them go before going in for the night, but once we forgot and I came out the next morning, and couldn’t figure out why the bugs wouldn’t light up. I didn’t realize that after being in a closed jar with no hole all night long, they were NEVER going to light up again! My Dad told me that they were not sleeping, that they were dead forever. That was my first realization that things sometimes really cease to live.

I know that I lived the first two years of my life at my Grandparent’s house. My Dad didn’t get out of the Navy until 1952, so my Mom and I stayed with them. I have seen pictures of myself at that age, but try as I might, try so very hard, I cannot bring up any memories of any of those times before 1953 when we moved back to Trion, where I still live today. I wish I could remember those times. What would really be neat would be to be able to remember anything and everything that ever happened to you. To just be able to sit down and say, “Now I am going to remember December of 1956 when I was six years old, and what happened at Christmas that year!” That would be a miracle wouldst it? Scientists say that everything is stored right up there in that little 3 pounds of gray jelly we call our brain. That wonderful, misunderstood and not fully understood organ that runs us. I have tried everything from meditation, to “commanding” my brain to remember, to closing my eyes and straining and squinting but I still can’t make it happen! Are all of you folks like that, or is it just me!!! I would like to know, so I can claim a deficiency if I am the only one.

Memory and the brain. They really are a strange thing. I remember one time when my Grandfather was in his last year of life. He didn’t know anybody, or anything much. He was afflicted with some type of memory loss which was permanent and very severe…as a result of a stroke perhaps, or of hardening of the arteries. When we went to visit him, he would just sit around and kind of “babble” like a tape recorder randomly playing back snippets of conversation recorded over years and years of time. Nothing made much sense. He always seemed like he was glad to see us, and sad to see us go…but…things were just not perking right. My Grandma was sitting there one day and talking about one of their relatives, and Grandpa spoke up all of the sudden and said: “Cleve’s dead” (I think it was Cleve….it might have been Pierce…my memories not so good….) My Grandma answered him back telling him how crazy he was, because she had just talked to Uncle Cleve that morning. That afternoon when we took Grandma back home, she found out that Cleve had died right around the time we were all at the Nursing home. So, the brain’s funny isn’t it. I would have bet you a million dollars that Grandpa couldn’t count to ten anymore, but somehow, someway he knew his old hunting buddy had died.

Maybe not being able to recall everything that has ever happened to us is a blessing. We might NOT be able to be selective and just remember the good things. We might also HAVE to remember the bad things too. There are a LOT of those things that I would rather keep shoved back into the tiny recesses and crevasses of my mind. Yes, my mind. When all is said and done, our mind IS what we are isn’t it? Even when Grandpa’s was taken mostly away, he was given a gift of sorts to replace what had been taken from him. I guess our spirit sort of resides there. I suppose the part of us which is our personality and which makes us us resides there. It’s about the only part of us they can’t replace with a transplant still! Shoot, you can have a ticker transplant and go right on being yourself, but a diving accident can turn you into something you would rather not think about! It makes you wonder about all those people who do have that kind of damage. Have their souls, what made them who they were, already fled the premises and just left the empty shell behind? I suppose there are many who doubt there is a soul…but I still believe in it. I still believe that “spark” of creation is still there.

Well, there’s the challenge for those of you who want to think about it. Can you remember everything? What was your first memory? Would you like to be able to have total recall? When our old brain is gone, like Grandpa’s was, are we still us? I think so….what do you think? Most of all I would like to know…how are your memories…are they as clear as a wonderfully taken photograph, or as gray around the edges as an out of focus picture?

Oh by the way. Does anybody remember a Science Fiction thriller from the 50’s named “Donavan’s Brain?” It was about this guy whose brain was taken out of him while he was still alive, and put into this thing that looked all the world like a ten gallon fish aquarium! They had all kind of wires hooked up to it, and had it connected to a computer looking thing. Ol’ Donovan’s Brain could still “communicate” and eventually took over some folks, if I remember right, making ‘em do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. It was a hoot! I hope to heck they NEVER learn to do that. I personally hope they never learn to “store” our minds on computers either. Never able to “download” the electrical impulses from our brains onto some kind of infernal storage unit, to be put into a program so we can still communicate with the living. I don’t wanna’ be a machine.

I know for sure a lot of really rich people are planning on something happening. Walt Disney is on “ice” as is Ted Williams and quite a few other folks with the dollars who thing there’s a chance for a human resurrection one of these days.

When it’s time for me to go, I want to go. I wonder, what will my LAST thought will be? Whatever it is, I won’t be able to share it with any of you guys that are left behind, so I guess I better concentrate on sharing what I want to now, while I still can!! Love and Peace to you all.

Grandfather and the Honey Bees

The last time I ever saw and spoke with my Grandfather in 1992, he was 98 years old. His mind was ravaged by Dementia and his kidneys were failing. Yet, all he could talk about that day were his bees. He wasn’t making much sense about anything else, but for some reason that day he had the bees on his mind. You see, he had been a beekeeper almost all of his life, and he was worried about them. Very worried.

As far back as I can remember there were always bee hives surrounding his old two storied clapboard house. They were not out in some distant field somewhere. They were within feet of the front porch, resting on large flat rocks that Grandpa had brought down behind a mule from near the top of “Johnny” Mountain which loomed tall just across Uncle Lark’s corn field straight out in front of the home place.

They were neat little white painted wooden boxes, with another one of the flat rocks on top. Simplicity in design beyond today’s comprehension, but workable nonetheless. I used to be mesmerized as a child watching these tireless workers fly in and out, and in and out of the little hole cut in the bottom of the wooden box, which served as their one entrance and exit from the hive. I could watch them for hours on end and never tire of the wonderment of their movements and the soliloquy of their buzzing symphony.

They would zip around my head as I sat on the front porch swing, and I once made the mistake of swatting one of them when he got too close. Not only did I get a sting from the bee, but a lecture from Grandpa. “They won’t hurt you, if you don’t hurt them first” he said. “They’re out helpers, and you gotta let ‘em be” I had to take this advice literally, coming from a man who more often than not would rob a hive of bees wearing no extra clothing besides a heavy pair of leather gloves. He talked to them as he took out the honey, telling them he was leaving enough for them to survive the winter. Talked and hummed all the while.

But late that afternoon in 1992 he was worried about them.

“Will you take care of the bees this year?” he asked “I just don’t think I will be up to it”

“And mind you, don’t swat none of them, we need them every one”

“Sure Grandpa” I answered. “I’ll take care of them”

Now we are looking at the very real prospect that something is very wrong with our Honey bees. The populations are disappearing, and with them the possibility of apple and peach trees that don’t get pollinated, corn fields and soy bean crops that may be lost, perennials that may not bloom again. How important these creatures, who we hardly ever notice, unless they sting us, really are to our society. If they were all to disappear today, would humanity survive? We may find out unless the energies of our government and scientist hone in on what it is exactly that is making them disappear.

I remember nothing so well as the sweet taste of the fresh harvested honeycomb, and how the honey would drip from the edges of my mouth when I bit into it. I would hate for my grandchildren and their grandchildren to never have that chance. I personally feel like I have let my Grandpa down because when I spoke with him that day in 1992, I thought it was just the ramblings of an errant mind, and I didn’t think anymore about it.

But Grandpa knew how important these insects were. “They’re our helpers, we need them everyone” he had said.

We certainly do, and all of us had better realize it before it’s too late.

From a comment I made in a post a year ago today:

I’m a work in progress. My thoughts, my beliefs and my dreams for my children and grandchildren are vastly different than those of a large percentage of our section of the country…and a lot of the rest of the country.

I used to like to think that my differences with a lot of people were just on a few issues, and that we had common beliefs in many other issues. I am not so sure of that anymore. I believe now that a vast segment of our country believes in a whole different set of morals for themselves and people “like them” which they don’t relegate to those “who are not like them”. They believe that their leaders can be immoral and cruel, but still be a “good leader” as long as their leaders stick to certain beliefs that they agree with.

I don’t think that good can come from bad.

“I don’t believe any prosperity which comes from evil can be permanent.”

These are my beliefs and my opinions, which I have pulled from deep inside of me. I try to keep myself isolated from people with those other beliefs, even though I like….even love many of them. I do this for my peace of mind and stability….not theirs. I believe that they believe they are right. Perhaps they are, but I don’t have to be a part of it, and it makes me uncomfortable and feel hypocritical to associate myself with those folks in a social situation, when our beliefs are obviously so different.

Politics used to be about differences in political stances. Now it’s moved to being about much more than that. It’s about life itself, and how people are supposed to live it. I believe in tolerance, diversity, empathy and open mindedness. That’s the opposite of many people.

Much of what I write is written to me.

When I write of love and being positive and hopeful, I am speaking to myself, because most days it is hard to be that type of person. So, I talk to myself about the things I need to do and how I need to interact with other human beings.

But, it is so hard. It’s becoming harder every day. It’s difficult to care. But the sun will come up tomorrow and the sun will set.

We have all seen them. Those beautiful Sunrises. If you’ve been a friend of mine on social media for any amount of time you’ve seen plenty of pictures of sunrises which I thought were beautiful.

Those mornings when the light turns dozens of colors behind a scant screen of clouds. Everything from muted purples to magenta, to bright blood red. How does a beautiful Sunrise make you feel?

For me the beginning of the day, which is signified by that marvelous sunrise, symbolizes a daily rebirth. A new beginning, a time when everything is new again and all options for doing things wonderful, useful, loving, and kind are open. It renews my soul. It tells me in no uncertain terms that I am alive, and that I have been treated to the sight of some of the most beautiful colors in nature. I so appreciate life and the chance to live it. To experience other people, people who I love and who love me. To touch another person, even to simply shake hands, or to brush back the hair of my daughter or sons, my grandchildren, or my wife from their foreheads is an experience that I will only get to enjoy once in that instance. Just once in that instance, and I will remember. Those moments….will never happen again, just like the moments in the pictures I take. Those photos are a frozen moment in time which will never happen again. There may be other instances, other chances…but there may not.

I can taste food for another day and hear music. I don’t really even care what kind most of the time…I generally like it all. I get the privilege of talking and interacting with other people, most of the time in a positive manner. All of this starts with the beautiful Sunrise that I saw when I walked around the ordinary neighborhood today.

Then there are the stupendous Sunsets. I look out my back door at them often, and take photos that don’t do justice towards how beautiful they really look.

How does a gentle sunset make you feel?

The colors are a similar palette as was the Sunrise, but the feelings are different. Day is leaving. I feel peaceful. I feel content. My tasks for the day are done and I am “heading towards the house” to rest, like a horse to the barn. I hear the word to “taps” playing gently in my head frequently:

“Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.”

Many times in the past I was headed towards my home from work, to my familiar place, my territory. I had accomplished all I could during the day and I was satisfied. Maybe I should have tried to do more, I feel that way practically every day. But in the awesome light of the Sunset I felt happy…. tired but happy. I knew I would be glad to get home, and see the ones that I love. My tasks that others would have me do were over. I would eventually lay down that night, and rest my weary body, happy to have seen another day on this Earth. Happy to dream whatever dreams that arose.

Life and Death are like the sunrise and sunset. Both are beautiful in their own way, similar, yet vastly different. It’s what happens in between, what we….make happen in between, that forms the legacy of our lives. It’s the appreciation mixed with sorrow, of getting to see the sunrises and sunsets of other peoples lives that hopefully will make us appreciate our own and be less afraid of the final sunset that we all must come to one day. Not melancholy, but happy to have shined and to have enjoyed being in the light. I know I am. I’m glad I have cared.

We all fear the unknown, and not knowing what’s on the other side of that last Sunset is scary. Even to those who are secure in their beliefs and solid in their convictions. I experience that fear, we all probably do when we think about it. But I believe the spark within us that makes us what we are goes on and on, and we are meant to all be together again. I’m not exactly sure how. I’ll never know exactly how until it’s too late to write it down on a page, or take a photo of it.

So, here I have again, added to those many soliloquies I have written to myself but shared with others.

I hope you don’t mind.

Rambling about time and memory.

What is life? Time…..Memory. That’s pretty much it.

I’ve thought about it so much. We live in the moment and then the moment is gone. All that’s left if we are lucky, is a pleasant memory. If we are lucky…. If it’s an unpleasant memory, it’s still part of our time, part of our life. We have to have some of both. That’s just the way things work.

If I make it exactly 89 more days, I will be 72 years old. When I was a kid, I used to worry about dying young. Now, I don’t have to worry about that anymore. My youngest granddaughter is fascinated by my oldness and asks me all the time: “Papa, are you old”? Yes, I am I tell her, yes, I am.

I only hope that in these 72 years that some of the memories I will be leaving behind will be good ones. I know they all can’t be, because I have definitely made some mistakes in my life, but I hope at least I’m past 50%! I also hope I have some more of that “time” in order to build some more of those “memories” to leave behind. Who knows? In this day and age…who knows. If my life follows the pattern of my parents, then maybe I can eke out ten or eleven more years.

I have a lot of memories in my hard drive. I can remember my grandmother’s soft touch when I was a little kid, brushing back my hair and telling me a story. I remember my Daddy’s voice so well, whether he was encouraging me or getting on my case for doing something I shouldn’t be doing. I dream of my dad pretty often, but for some reason he never talks in my dreams. I don’t know why. Maybe, it’s because he’s still mad at me for not being there at the end. Maybe it’s just the way my dreams are fabricated.

I remember my mom’s emotional eyes looking at me, always conveying an apology for not always being there. I remember my first daughter behind a glassed-in window where I would never get to touch her. I remember the moment I first saw each of my other three children. It’s imprinted on my brain. I have tons of wonderful memories with my grandchildren. Because of the way my life has gone, I have been able to spend a lot of time with my youngest grandchildren. I think sometimes I am more of a kid than I am an old man, but the mirror tells me differently. Rue and Eli, Evie and Ellie, and no Damon. All I have to do if I want to be entertained and delighted is to pull up the videos I have on my phone from the last 11 years and watch them for an afternoon. There’s a lot of laughter and some tears when I do that. I laugh at their antics and cry because the time has gone by so fast.

I hope I never lose my memories. A lot of people do when they get old. My Grandpa Stewart couldn’t remember who he was for the last few years of his life. My Daddy had a form of dementia which caused him to have hallucinations and tremors and other bad things. If I do manage to eke out those next 10-12 years, then I hope I can be more like my Grandma Stewart, who’s memory stayed pretty good up until she died at 100 years old. I don’t know how many of her longevity genes I inherited, but I hope it was more than I think!

For all of you my friends, I wish pleasant times. I hope you all make wonderful memories with your families and friends and leave them some in return. We have very little time here really, and we need to use it wisely. Wish I’d have thought more about that sooner, but it is what it is. You live, you work, you play, you love, and then you make your way into the “incomprehensible” ( I didn’t come up with that on my own, I borrowed it from a kiddy show we watched yesterday)

“How many Angels on the Head of a pin”

I saw an advertisement today on the Dr. Oz show, concerning one of their upcoming shows. It was about what happens in the last 7 seconds before you die. It piqued my interest a little. What does happen? Of course, nobody knows.

Yet, I wonder. First off, I wonder why they chose seven seconds. Not five or eight, but seven. Seven, probably the most holy of numbers in religion. Don’t believe me….google it. I could copy and paste an entire page on the holiness of the number seven. I won’t.

In an existential way, I don’t wonder “what” happens during those last seconds, I wonder “how long” those last seconds last. I compare that thought to St. Thomas Aquinas’s conjecture about “how many angels could dance on the head of a pin”

Stephen King kind of touched on the subject too in his “Dark Tower” series of books. If you haven’t read them, it’s a difficult but worthwhile endeavor. All of existence hinges on a particular rose and what exists there…the nexus of time and space and size all play a big role. Go read it.

How big is an angel? How big or small could they be if they really exist, and if the creator wanted them to be a particular size?

How vast is space, how tiny are we? How big are we, and how tiny are amoebas?

How long is seven seconds, or even the last second of a person’s life? Could be elongated to last an extended period of time for the person who is dying? Could one second of our time, last long enough for a dying person for them to “review” their entire life before they breath their last breath?

Could one second last an eternity to them?

I might try to catch that episode of Dr. Oz just to see what they have to say. Of course, I have my own “weird” ideas….as you can see. But, who knows? Who can tell?

My Daddy once told me that unless a man had something useful to say, he should keep his mouth shut. As most of you realize if you know me, or have read my writing it’s obvious that I should keep my mouth shut most of the time. I just can’t help it though, useful or not I have to say what I think.

What I am opening my mouth (or keyboard literally) to talk about today is hope. That’s right, hope. I have to have it. It has to be there, like a piece of driftwood in the vast ocean when you are drowning. Something to grab hold of and stay afloat. My hope is for the future. The future in which I will be missing, but my children and grandchildren and whatever descendants that I may be blessed with (who will never know I existed,) will know.

Right now, it kind of looks bleak, and that is why I have to have hope. I don’t think there is any way that the members of my generation, the baby boomers, can fix the mess that we are in now. It’s not just one mess, but MANY different messes going on simultaneously which make things so complex.

There are the changing demographics of the entire world. People of different races and cultures are traveling far and wide in this day and age and settling in places their ancestors would never have imagined. As they do this, they become familiar with each other and one thing leads to another and you have relationships being built between these members of different races and cultures. Some still try to stick with their own cultures, but inevitably I believe will fail. The children of the future will probably look like all the beautiful little biracial and multiracial children we see running around. I think at some point there won’t be any black, yellow, red and white anymore. There will be one color and one international culture at some point. I don’t know how far in the future that this may occur, and I don’t know if mankind can keep from destroying each other first with nuclear weapons but if they can then that’s one thing I think will happen. It will be a huge challenge for our descendants who are at the “transitional” stage. (Or maybe that’s where we ARE now?) It could well be that the future inhabitants of this planet will “ease” into this situation so gradually that no one will ever know it’s happening until it’s upon them. I don’t think it will be a bad thing either. One of things that continually breeds discontent, distrust and war is the difference between people’s race and culture. If there IS not difference then they will have to find something else to fight about. Maybe they won’t be able to.

There is the quickly changing face of technology. I would have NEVER in my wildest dreams as a child imagined the world as it is today. There have been so many advances in the last 50 years that it makes the 1950’s seem like the Stone Ages. What we take for granted every day now, would have seemed like a trick of magic back then. Computers will continue to advance and now that robotics IS actually taking off like Isaac Asimov thought it would, our descendants can look forward to a world where the physical part of living will become easier and easier.

There will be issues that come up, ethical issues, which will challenge the very core of the morals of our society. What about a computer program that can store the “essence” of a person on a program, and come up with a “virtual” person who is exactly like the person who is dying. Anyone ever seen the movie “Freejack” with old Mick Jagger? That’s science fiction still, BUT so was Jules Verne back in the late 19th century. It may not be that a person’s “essence” can be stored on a computer and then put back into another person’s body. I am not sure it will ever get to that point. BUT to create a “virtual” person with the knowledge and character of a real live person is but a few steps away from becoming a reality. You can “store” Grandma or Grandpa on the handy dandy virtual person program, and pull them up to talk to any time you want. How would you like that? Kind of a spooky thought isn’t it? Yet, right now people who play the high tech computer games that generate “characters” to play through (the avatar type games) are already interacting in a very close knit way with these “quasi-people.” You can give them character traits, physical characteristics, and other things which make them “almost” seem human. It’s only a few steps away until you can do the same thing with your dear Uncle Bob, believe me. Soulless, yes. Interaction there will be. There could also be a use for this type of program to reduce overpopulation, in that people who are not allowed, or don’t want to have a “real” live child, can have a virtual child which they can “raise” from a baby all the way up through adulthood. The cost would be quite a bit cheaper to raise this type of “child” too.

Medically speaking, the people who can make it 20 or 30 more years are likely to be able to live practically as long as they want. With the research and discoveries in genetics that are now taking place, it won’t be long until the genes that cause “aging” as we know it, will be discovered and neutralized. People who are well off enough financially will be able to benefit from this expensive technology and beat “the system” Dick Cheney may actually still be here in the year 2100! Arrrr…?

I think that many diseases which afflict people such as cancer, heart disease, and all the big killers will be beaten. People will have to be run over by a Fire Truck in order to die. That’s about the only thing which will do it. However, I am sure there will be a lot of volunteers to be “uploaded” into the computer program which I mentioned in the previous paragraph. After all, who REALLY wants to live forever? And you probably will still have the old aches and pains that won’t go away. (Maybe not, they may have something for that too) Besides, you might be able to do things on that computer program you could NEVER do in real life, like fight dragons, or fly.

That would be a hoot, right?

Hmmmmm…..

When was the last night I prayed.

It’s been some time…..

Jesus said when he returns he will come “as a thief in the night”.

Remember Christ says, “When I come, it will surprise you like a thief! But God will bless you, if you are awake and ready. Then you won’t have to walk around naked and be ashamed.”

Suppose he does just that, and returns in the dead of night, in secret, but… only comes into the hearts and minds of those people who really, truly are his followers. Those who are really, truly ready to receive him, his knowledge and power. He would know which ones, because it’s easy for him to read our hearts. He knows what’s really there, regardless of what we present to the world as being our true selves. Many are presenting selves that are not true.

Suppose they, or we are “caught up” spiritually, and don’t physically disappear, but instead are “raptured” while in our sleep? Changed and transformed to wake as new beings.
Suppose then, believers wake up as totally different beings. Spiritual, supernatural beings capable of changing anything and everything about the world around them, including people, animals, plants, the oceans, the mountains and the air.
Suppose that we or they, really are the inheritors of the Earth, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: “The meek shall inherit the earth.” An inheritance… as in something which is left behind by a person who is no longer there, for their heirs to take as their own property, and do with it as they will.

A new earth.

A new heaven and a new earth. Brand new, unspoiled, teeming with life and beauty. Imagine the most beautiful sunrise you have ever seen and then multiply it by a thousand times. That’s the kind of newness and beauty I am talking about. That’s the kind of newness and beauty which I saw.

This was a dream that I dreamt last night and I woke up startled! I was not yet changed into that spiritual being which I wanted to be, but I wanted to be ready to be changed.
I thought about it for a long while. I said a prayer that I might be ready if that wonderful dream ever becomes a reality.
Then, I turned back over and went back to sleep and had another dream.

I woke up again this morning early and got up to exercise for an hour and thought about that dream again. It’s totally antithetical to the type of dreams I usually have. It’s unusual for it to have stayed so long in my brain.

I wondered where in the world the impetus came from for that dream.

It’s been a long time since the last time I have prayed.

I won’t say how long that’s been.

When I was a young man my beliefs were different, mainly because my knowledge was self limited. Even a college if something an instructor said didn’t match what I had in my head as being “right” I just never let it sink in.

I was a know it all, who had ingrained dogma pumped into me. My values were shaped by the low number of years I’d lived. I was not “sticking up for what was right”. I was play acting life as I knew it.

I credit my wife for beginning my change. She taught me that women should be respected, and that their opinions counted. She quickly let me know that marriage is a shared endeavor, not a case of “this is the woman’s job, and this is the mans. By the time my first son arrived, we’d been through a good “practice run” with my daughter and were pretty much out of the bad fighting stage. Over the years I have taken on a big part of her love for animals, and have relied on her to tell me when I’m generally totally wrong about things.

I went on in my working career to be a supervisor in QA, which was pretty much populated by women….except of course by the supervisor. I always treated everyone of them with respect, and deferred to their knowledge in many cases. For over twenty years I had women working for me in various jobs and never, ever had a complaint of a harassing nature. There are a couple of FB friends on here who worked with me during that time, who can back me up on that point. I treated women thee same as I did the occasional man who worked for me. I very much regret not trying to go above and beyond to get a higher wage for them, but I just went with the flow of what the company paid. Wages weren’t bad, but the men were paid more per hour in the areas in which they worked. I always made sure that they each got good Christmas presents from me, and I always made them free copies of the song demos I recorded.

There was one lady who was an inspector for me, who really liked country music. I had given her a full CD of songs while we were working together. I got a call from a man about five years after that business had been sold out to a large carpet company. “I’m ——-‘s husband,” He said “She had a stroke two years ago and can’t speak well. She wore out the CD you gave her and desperately wants another copy. I tracked you down through another old worker from the plant”.

I made another copy, and took it too her house in Armuchee. I spoke with her as best I could for an hour while I was there, about good old times at the plant, how hard the work was. She was almost paralyzed totally, but she thanked me very much for the CD. “You were the best boss we ever had” she said.

I wept as I drove home. The truth is, she’d been one of my least favorite workers. Always griping, but getting her work done. But she had liked me more than I had liked her. I never knew. I had always treated her the same, so she never knew either.

I never had much use for gay people when I was young. I thought they were all just perverts. That’s because I had never known one. When Paula and I moved back home, I started buying plants for our yard from these two guys who owned a nursery. I thought they were just business partners, but over the months I found they were also partners. This was still back in the mid seventies, so their relationship was still very frowned upon as a general thing. They didn’t have any friends, so we started inviting them over to our house for meals and card games. They loved playing with our daughter and our dog. They were intelligent, well spoken and well educated. They were out to bother nobody else, they just wanted to live their lives. We had the over for quite a few years, and we always had good times. One year, I noticed their relationship starting to crumble. Pressure was being applied by one of the guys family to quit the relationship. He gave in to his family, and the other partner moved back to Chattanooga. The one who stayed behind is an “old bachelor”

I never considered gay people to be abnormal or abominations anymore after that. I purposely opened myself up to knowing more gay and lesbian people, and the more of them I knew, the more I understood that they were as they were because it’s the way they were made. Many people still won’t agree with me. I don’t really care though. I do not see how we cannot be a society which is compassionate enough to just “live and let live”

Now we come to today.

Over the past several years I have had a Facebook friend who is transgender. I know that for sure now, although I have long suspected it. Over the past several months I have witnessed the hell he is having to go through….yes he, now she has had to go through to do something that could not help but be done. It was not a choice, but an imperative that had to be done in order that this individual could be complete. In order that she could be who she was born to be. I read as relationships crumbled, as extreme loss was suffered in those relationships. I cried as I thought, how I had been born with a brain wired to match my body, but that’s not always the case. That’s not always the case.

There was a man on America’s Got Talent who sang today. He was born in a female body, but always identified as a boy. He was tormented, bullied, beaten and abused. But I watched as he sang beautifully today on that show as a fully transitioned man and I openly wept. Oh, the things he has had to go through that I never had to. The things that my gay friends have suffered from family and peers that I’ve never had to experience. The travails of being a woman in a man’s world I have gotten a pass on because of my luck in chromosome placement.

Some will read this long piece, and think I’m dead wrong and disagree. Some will read, and as usual just won’t comment. Some will give it a like, some will just scroll on by as soon as they realize the subject matter. I don’t care, this is my opinion and mine alone. This the chronicle of my needed change, which didn’t come as soon as it should have. My shame along with a tiny bit of retribution. Take it however you want, or not at all.

After that song today, which my seven month old granddaughter stood and watched in rapt attention without so much as a twitch, it had to be written. It just had to.