Writing for Sanity's Sake

A Fathers Love, written in 2010.

I did a lot of writing before I got sick with heart disease and had bypass surgery. I’ll share a few of these little “essays” over the next little bit of time. Nobody has to agree or disagree…or even read them for that matter.

————————————————-

I know a Father’s love is advantageous, if at all possible.

With Fathers Day coming up soon, we all tend to want to pay respect to, and honor our Fathers.

Most of our Fathers are or were very precious to us. Most gave us unconditional love, and they gave us discipline when we needed it. They gave us guidance and advice. They raised us.

I also know sometimes Fathers totally mess up their kids. I watched Forrest Gump again the other night and pondered on how glad I am that there are not too many Daddies like Jenny’s Daddy.

I’m so glad my Dad was good to me, and I have tried my best to be good to my children. My wish is that all children have good role models and tight family units, but most of all that children have parents…People…who love them, and show them so, and tell them so. It’s of the utmost importance that the love is there.

I also remember reading that when his disciples told Jesus there were 5000 people following him, some of them sick…the first thing he did was walk among them and heal them, and then he took a small amount of food and multiplied it many times over …miraculously, and fed them all…with baskets full of food left over.

Bread and fish.

He did not “qualify” these people, nor did he care what class they were, what color their skins were, what their sins were, what country they were from, or who they loved and why. At least I didn’t read that anywhere.

He didn’t even really preach to them at that point…simply ministered to their physical needs, healed them, “taught them” and sent them away. He wasn’t mad because they senselessly followed him far away from civilization. He didn’t berate them. He dealt with them all equally with compassion . He was good at that. He acted like a good Father would act.

If you’re a Christian, or if you are some other religion, or no religion at all…It’s good to remember to treat all people with love and respect, but if you have responsibility for children…you must go even further because the need of children is far greater than adults.

If we are using Jesus as an example we must remember that he did not put himself above anyone…

except for that one last time.

It’s hard to fathom, impossible to describe, how much the world has changed in 50 years. I can’t begin….

I asked Paula, if she could go back to this day 50 years ago…would she? She answered just like I did. Yes, yes we’d go back again and do it all over, live it all over again, and not change a thing. Not one thing, for if even if one little thing was changed…everything would be changed, and there’s nothing I would want to be any different than it is now.

Oh, there have been hard times for sure, sorrows…pain. There’s been some days that I was a little bit like Jimmy Stewart in “Its a Wonderful Life”. But, things change. If you believe in life, and believe in those you love, things change. My life really has been a wonderful life. I couldn’t have asked for anything any better.

The world does not owe us anything. Life didn’t owe me anything, but it has given me so much. I’m grateful for every bit of what I’ve had , and I’ll take whatever I have left.

Without a doubt, much of what we think we know if false. Even being as “smart” as we humans think we are we don’t even know everything about our own bodies! When we move out from there, into the world around us, and eventually into the Universe that surrounds us, our knowledge becomes exponentially less and less.

There are SO many theories on how the Universe started, where it’s headed and how it’s going to end. Some of them are theological in nature, and some are scientific. None of them are right, probably not even near right. I’m talking all the way from St. Stephen, to Stephen King, to Stephen Hawking here.

I shudder when I think about how little I know. I have to take most things I do every day on faith. I have faith when I plug in the coffee machine that it is going to make me a cup of coffee. If it didn’t, I don’t have the knowledge to tear it apart and remake it so that it would. If I put my key in the car, and turn the switch and it doesn’t start, most of the time I wouldn’t know what to do. When I had my heart attack, I couldn’t fix my arteries. Of course there are people who DO know how to fix these things, and it’s a good thing too! Otherwise, most of us would be in a heap of trouble.

But, even those people who are “technologically” smart, don’t have all the answers. Every few years or so, a new theory comes out about how the Universe began. Of course, all religions would acknowledge that it was ‘created’ if you will, by God. A thinking consciousness started the ball rolling and made us what we are today. Makes sense to us as humans, because WE are conscious thinking creatures. That’s what separates us from the rest of the creatures….at least so we “think” (I am not so sure sometimes, when my little dog plays me for a sucker that she is not “thinking” about what she is doing) I guess there is all different levels of thinking, and I am SURE that we are not in ANY way close to the “thinking” if that is what it is, of a consciousness so powerful it could create the Universe.

Now scientists also have a hard time trying to explain how something like the Universe started on it’s on. I read somewhere a few weeks back that they think all the “matter” that it took to get the Universe started, could be compressed down into a ball the size of a basketball, but that it would weigh some astronomically heavy weight. Some basketball! When this thing decided to explode and start the Universe, it continually spread from a central point and made us what we are today. The scientists can look at light coming in from outside our Galaxy that took billions of years to get here. That’s cool. When we look up in the sky at night, and see the stars, we are not really seeing what is happening at the moment we are looking, but what happened years and sometimes hundreds or thousands of years ago and is just now reaching us. For all we know, some of those stars could be, and probably are, gone. Mind boggling ain’t it?

Well, I just don’t believe that either group has ALL the right answers. I personally believe the Universe was created, and didn’t just happen, but I don’t even PRETEND to understand the type of intellect it would take to do it.

I know that we have had books and bibles, and documents from the beginning of the time that man learned how to write, with all the theories about how things happened. All of those came from the minds of man, and have been shaped by the mind of man down through the centuries. None of them are totally accurate. I don’t think that we know accurate.

Now, don’t go all funny on me, and think I am being sacrilegious. I’m not. I don’t go around telling people what to believe, OR that what they believe isn’t right. I don’t have the right to do that, and neither does anyone else. There are, however, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. who would disagree with me. All of those religions consider that they have been given the innate approval, by the being that created the Universe to tell everyone that their way of thinking is the only one that is correct. I happen to disagree with them. There may be some correctness in all of them. Being a type of Christian, I personally believe in that philosophy and some may think it is a conflict of teaching that I would state I don’t believe in telling OTHER people what to believe, but I don’t. Everyone has to decide for themselves, and I think on that particular point that the being that created us, God if you will, has been totally succinct. You choose for yourself whether to be good or bad, light or dark. This choice is yours no matter what your religion or philosophy.

It’s my personal opinion that we will all find out one day, of course. I think that God would be totally unfair to just leaving us hanging about the answer to things. Of course, I could be wrong about that too. We may go to Heaven, or we may lay unconscious of the passing of time until we come back around in the endless cycle of the Universes coming and going. We MAY know nothing, and that’s that. At least there would be peace in that, wouldn’t there? I highly doubt this to be the case, but….

If we are to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks, somebody must go first. Somewhere, sometime, somebody must take the first step.

And yet I see nobody headed towards the anvils. I see nobody headed to the fields to plant their crops. I only see humanity continue to sew the seeds of hatred and discord.

I could have very well gotten into a fight this morning. Yet I did not. I sat and held my tongue as a table of “fine” men laughed about the killing of innocent people.

I bit the sides of my mouth as another table of younger men, with bible verses on the back of their shirts, looked up at the tv on the wall in the front of the restaurant and one big healthy, young bearded good old boy in that group laughed and said that they “got what was coming to ’em'” and then got up shortly and left…perhaps to “get ready for church”.

And I know fair well that while many expressed shock and sympathy at the murder of these innocent people, deep down in their secret heart of hearts, where nobody can see, they were not all that sympathetic.

I don’t say all…God knows that I do not say that.

I know hundreds of families in this country right now are suffering and grieving, and I know there are good people from all walks of life and of all describable characteristics who are helping them and grieving with them.

All I do know is that the more “swords and spears” which exist, which people willingly take up in order to harm others, not for protection…or as old Jed Clampett said: “to keep his family fed”…..the more of those which are taken up and used in hatred and anger…the harder, and harder, and harder it’s going to be to beat them into plowshears and pruning hooks.

I’ve already read all the same old arguments out there, read the same old lines of hatred, directed towards the same people about this murderous spree in Orlando. Same things were said at Sandy Hook, and Charleston. And tomorrow the sales of swords and spears will again spike.

So it’s going to be hard for peace to come. It’s going to be hard for love to prevail, when there is so much hatred out there, so much hatred…and a lot of it coming from the places and people who are supposed to be the emissaries of the words of life.

How are we going to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks when they are so blood soaked that the blacksmith will not even touch them.

We cannot walk together in harmony when we are so many miles apart, and nobody will take the first step towards healing.

I thought today about some of the things I believe, and about some of the things I have believed but have forsaken.

I thought about the idealism of youth and how easily it is lost in the shuffle of the “mission creep” of aging. (Oh how I love the invention of that phrase!) I thought about how aging itself affects the human psyche.. particularly my own.

My memory is becoming weird. On some things I’m razor sharp, on others I’m blunt as a brick. My mind is like a block of unsliced Swiss cheese, sitting where a good aged gouda should reside. Very holey at times, and unexpectedly dense.

So, my thinking process takes unusual paths. But it still functions.

I find I believe that happiness requires a personal commitment and cannot be handed to us by other individuals, or groups of people pushing any certain philosophy. I have waited practically all my life to have the secret of true happiness revealed to me, when all this time I have had it packed away inside.

I have been an irritant and a pest many times. I have alienated some, and confused many others. In my understanding about what passes for conformity I have become a non conformist. I’m sure I often baffle those closest to me with my actions. For that I am so sorry.

Tomorrow is a new day and I’m certain I will not be perfect. I will try harder to be happy though. Even though I hold very little in worldly goods or riches. Even though I fight daily battles with my body, and as I have stated, with my mind. Even though I realize I have fewer and fewer dawns coming. Even with the world in turmoil. Even with all these things…I am happy with the people with whom I share this journey, and these daily challenges. By having the people I am richer than a king, and by having the daily challenges I know I’m still alive and still necessary.

May the creator of all things be with you.

I was looking at a little sterling silver ring that I have which has Amber on the top as the gemstone. I like Amber. It’s one of only a few things that humans use in jewelry that once was a part of another living thing. In this case it is tree sap, which dates anywhere from 150 million to 300 million years old, which has hardened and fossilized into gorgeous hues of color ranging from bright orange to a warm honeyed brown. Sometimes, and rarely, the more recent pieces of Amber have some type of insect trapped inside. They landed on the tree sap when it was sticky, got trapped, and ended up totally incased in the sap, which then hardened around it.

These rare pieces of Amber with the insects inside have been the subject of many fictional works. They were the entire basis for how dinosaurs were recreated in Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park”. A “Dragonfly in Amber” was a book by Diana Gabaldon which she used as a representation of something of great beauty which is preserved, and exists out of its proper time….in the case of this novel it was one of Gabaldon’s characters who represented the dragonfly.

Many human beings are interested in these types of things. To me, they represent something tangible which I can hold in my hand that has such great age that I can barely comprehend it. Here is something which has existed for thousands of a human’s lifetime, and within it is contained a once living creature who’s life ended by the chance of landing on something from which it could not escape.

Time also fascinates me. The age of our planet is almost beyond my comprehension. The fact that a creature which has been spawned by this planet could evolve to the point where he or she could consider that vast amount of time amazes me.

As a student in Geology classes, we learned all the ages, that are used to classify the passage of time of our home planet. We learned how life developed slowly over long periods of that time.

Ordinary days. There is something good to be said for ordinary days.

Quiet times. Still times. These are the times for meditation and thought. These are the times for spiritual renewal. You do not have to be in a large group of people. You don’t have to be in a large building.

These semi sleepy slow days are best. They restore my sanity and give me hope for the future. They help me to understand that the extraordinary things which take place that end up on the news every day affect a small percentage of the population. For the rest of us, there are these regular ordinary days.

I’m glad for them. I’d rather not have a day where I end up on the news.

Right about now, I long for October. I don’t like to wish time away, and I do love fresh tomatoes, squash and okra….but…

It’s not just the Fall itself, but the things that it brings with it. It seems as October rolls in, families become closer. When the leaves start to turn, and the air turns cool and fresh, pumpkin pies, and jack o lanterns are not long off. Turkey smells, and dressing delights are around the corner. December and Christmas loom in the near future.

I will be 68 this October if all is well. Fifty years since I turned 18, fifty years since I moved off down to West Georgia, fifty years since I met my wife. Fifty years already since Martin and Bobby were killed. Fifty years since Vietnam was in full swing. Fifty years since I dreamed of so many things that have not come true, but have lived through fifty years of joys and sorrows which have been the substance of my life.

Fifty Autumns come this October if my luck and my health hold out. Fifty years and life is so different now than it was then, that it seems like an alien world now sometimes. I feel lost in it sometimes. Much more so than in 1968. I felt at home back then, in those days…in my time, and the time of my fellow boomers.

So when the first Autumn winds start to blow, these memories will blow in with them, and though I will continue to live in the moment, nostalgia will at the same time transport me back in time occasionally. I don’t think there’s any harm in it as long as we do not let the past rule us and ruin our present.

Fifty years from now, we’re going to be in somebody else’s nostalgia trip memories, and I can only hope theirs will give them as much pleasure as mine do for me. I so very, very much hope that.

A short time back, when I was 12 years old, I would look up at the adults surrounding me and think to myself “it will take forever for me to be that old…I have so much time!” And I did have time.

There were days that dragged by. Especially those 12 hour night shifts. There were weeks that seemed to take forever to pass, especially those weeks in December as a child. But pass they did. The days that were dragging by drug faster than I could have imagined. Life happened. I watched it, I lived it, and it has brought me where I am today.

None of you would ever imagine the depth of nostalgia which seems to surround me now. I know I should live for the day, because it is all we are. That movement of time from one second of the present, to many years of the past, in the tic of that clock, in the unexplainable measurement of the passing of our lives which we have invented to total up the sum of our existence, is nefarious and unstoppable.

So we all have more past than we will ever have present, and I long for some of those lost minutes and hours. I realize it’s a waste of the ever ticking clock to yearn for the trail we have left behind, but I don’t care. They are my seconds and I’ll use some of them reliving what has gone before if I wish.

I will fondly remember as much as I can of the good times, and the bad….as I try and drift away to sleep tonight. Sometimes I chuckle, and sometimes tears fill my eyes. I miss the people mostly. Those who I have loved, and even some I didn’t. I see with utter clarity the mistakes I stupidly made. I see a few successes I stumbled into. I see how I could have easily been a better man. It’s like watching a movie you are both the main character and the producer of, and each blaming each other for how things turned out.

Then hopefully I will wake up to a new day, polish my clock, and try to make every one of these remaining seconds count for the good. I know it’s futile, because I know me to well. I’ll find some way to muck up some of that time. Maybe not too much of it though!! Seriously, there are not too many people I can look at now and think “I have a long time left before I get THAT old!” I’d have to visit the nursing home.

Fifty years. That’s a long time. Its actually a lifetime.

I have been wondering what has been up with me this week. I just haven’t been normal. Well, I’m not really ever normal anyway, but I I’ll say what passes for normal with me.

I finally figured it out tonight. I had a premonition. Something which never, ever happens to me. But…as I was taking a photo of the sunset….round, huge and pink tonight… I felt a pang and a pain deep inside. It was as if I had seen this view before. This exact view. It touched me as a sadness, almost as a real physical push as I watched the sun sink all the way down into the ocean. I will never see this again. Perhaps I deduced why.

I had been here, on this beach, near this exact spot, fifty years ago almost to the week…perhaps even to the week, watching the sun sink into the Gulf of Mexico. It was my first trip ever to the ocean in June 1966…

School had let out the last part of May. Daddy and Tom Brown had decided to get together with our two families and go to Panama City beach. They had gotten out the maps and plotted the course down old highway 27.

My cousin Judy had never been to the beach either, so she came along with us.

I don’t remember much about the ride except that it was long. The service stations were few and far between, and if you drank too much coke or water and had to pee…well you just had to hold it. So my brother Mike and I did. Hold it, that is.

We stayed at the “Sea Breeze” motel. It was a run down kind of place. They had a “kitchenette” in the place, and when Momma found roaches in it, both she and Daddy hit the ceiling. Daddy went to the front desk and raised t mortal hell with the manager, who immediately sent us down to a little hamburger joint at his expense, while he fumigated the room. It smelled bad when we got back, but there were no more cockroaches. I gotta tell you that’s one thing Florida was famous for back then…the three inch roaches, and there were plenty of them…just not in our room anymore.

With that problem solved, things seemed to go OK from there on out. We stayed five days as I recall.

I was in awe of the ocean. I still am. I couldn’t get over it at first. I finally took my eyes off of it long enough to go to check out the local “game” spot with my buddy Michael Brown. We both bought t shirts with our beach money, which said “Budweiser” across the front. With those shirts on, and with both of us being quite large for our age..we passed ourselves off to the girls who were there as High School seniors. That’s another story for another day….

On the deep sea fishing trip that my Daddy and Mr. Brown had been planning for ages, we caught a mess of red snapper, and I snagged a 33 pound Red grouper which won the “dollar pot” for the largest fish. Forty six dollars! I went and bought a hat and another t-shirt! It was a great trip. I could write a book about that trip…that summer. But the happiness faded. Mom and Dad got into an awful fight when we got home, over of all things…those damn frozen red snapper. I don’t remember the exacts…but it was a bad one.

We never went back to the beach again as a “nuclear” family…just the four of us, although there were plenty of trips in later years after the grandchildren came along.

The next time I went to the ocean, was after I was married. It was in the spring of 1972, when Paula and and I went with some friends to St. Augustine. That was the year Kirsten was born..in August.

So, June of 1966 to June of 2016. Fifty years give or take a few days. I’ve got the pictures from sixty-six to prove I was here. One in the Budweiser shirt. One with the fish. One by the ocean. Got some goofy photos of Mike that he made in one of those fifty cent photo booths. Got a postcard of the “Seabreeze” motel,..minus cockroaches. Don’t have all the people left though.

All the Brown family are gone. Tom, Tommi, Lynn, Michael B. Mom and Dad…Gaines and Evie. That makes six out of the nine who came, and I have transformed from fifteen to sixty five in the blink of an eye………

Except when I was shooting that sunset earlier tonight and I felt my Dad “push” me like he would do back then. That little playful shove…and then go into his little boxing crouch, like “whatcha gonna do about it”. That’s when I remembered where I was, and when I had been here before. And I had the feeling that when I leave here this time, I will not be back to this magical spot again. Not this same spot.

Fifty years is a long time. It’s a lifetime really.