A Lazy Old Man

A lazy old man from The Shores,

Wraps his dog round his neck while he snores.

Sitting up on the couch,

With a dog-induced slouch,

He feigns sleep to avoid all his chores!

Choose Your Path, Which May Be No Path At All...

Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism...there are many major religions to choose from if one decides to choose at all. From the sidelines it seems extremely presumptuous for any one of them to say that their religion is the only true path. But it is necessary for each to do so. Without true belief, there is no value. You have to join a club if you have any expectation of having the epiphany of the club’s experience. Belief becomes reality for the individual and the group.

Some of us believe there to be many paths to the same place; all valid, all of great value to the participants. Human ego has a problem with viewing death as the end of the individual. Of course matter returns to matter and life begets life, but our “soul”, the essence of “me” is what we desperately want to believe will go on forever. We think that it can’t just blink out at the end of life, a flame no longer burning. So we attribute God like mysteries to address our own inability to understand or accept the finality. American Indians didn’t understand the sun and viewed it as a god, giver of life. We collectively demand a big story to address a big issue. All these years after the Kennedy assassination the conspiracy theories drag on. How could the life of a man of such high stature be extinguished by a man of such low stature? It needs to be balanced in our minds. It must be a conspiracy; a lone gunman couldn’t pull that off. But time and time again we’ve seen investigations that tell us that is exactly what happened. One guy in the right place at the right time managed to do the seemingly impossible. We just don’t want to believe it.

I was raised a Christian in a Christian nation. Had I been born in India I assume it would be different and most of my peers would be Hindu. That’s just a twist of fate. Like most people, I hope there is a “life after death”. I hope to see my friends and family and pets again. One of my daughter’s best friends died unexpectedly several months ago and everyone said the inevitable: “she’s in a better place”. Bullshit. This beautiful young girl should be here with her family and friends. This is the better place; this is heaven or hell depending on how we use our time and how we view the ride. Do I hope I’m wrong? Of course I do. Unfortunately I believe that it is what is, what we see is what we get, and that can be heaven or hell... and naming it can make it so.

24 Hours

OK, it's been a good day.. That’s not unusual but I still like to acknowledge it. Being acutely aware that my first 60+ years seem to have passed so quickly, I try to take time to appreciate the steps along the way, and try to make each one count. If I ask myself: “What is the best possible use of my time right now?” the answer may well be something like: eating ice cream (although that one doesn’t really work for me because I don’t like the stuff, I think it’s nasty.) or maybe just sitting on the deck and watching the birds around the lake. It doesn’t necessarily have to be tied to great productivity. Smelling the roses is important. That said, I do love to be able to put a line through the items that I constantly make note of on my ever changing “to do” list. I never scratch out the completed tasks to the point of illegibility, that wouldn’t have the same visual impact as it does to be able to actually see the completed item and give myself a mental pat on the back for having completed that particular task. Obviously I'm a man without a mission, trying to justify too much time to sit and think about how little time there is.

Around dawn, I put air in my bike tires and went for a ride after feeding the dogs and taking them out for a walk in the park that begins at the back gate. Sasha, our standard poodle, has a new toy that looks like a long, flexible cane with a cup to hold a tennis ball on one end. That thing is designed to help me throw her ball 3-4 times farther than I am able to throw it by myself. So Sasha now knows that she needs to run far and fast before looking over her shoulder for the ball. She is built for speed and that new ball launcher makes for some serious dog exercise. Now Kira, the Rottweiler mix, is a different story. She doesn’t run, so don’t push her to do so. Kira takes her time and just likes to poke around without any stress or silliness like chasing some stupid ball. We believe that Kira’s father was a full-blooded Rottweiler and her mother was a pot-bellied pig, but Kira is sensitive about the specifics of her lineage so we try not to discuss it in front of her.

After my ride, I cut out the dead stalks and branches from the landscaping, raked the back yard, and filled in the Armadillo holes in the front yard. The Armadillos like my yard more than any other yard on the street and our lawn looks like a shell pocked war landscape. At Home Depot the plant lady tells me that it is because of the grubs under the grass. Apparently the Armadillos can hear the little guys as they wiggle around several inches under the topsoil. Each hole they dig to go after the grubs is about 6 to 10 inches deep. Having had no success with my Have-A-Heart trap baited with Boars Head all beef hot dogs, and after letting the dogs chase the armadillo under the car several nights in a row, I knew that I had to spread grub poison on the lawn. No grubs, no armadillos. I do have a 22 caliber pistol and a good flashlight which provide a very effective alternative approach to Armadillo removal but there are some uncomfortable and messy issues with that solution. The neighbors aren’t delighted with 3am gunshots in our hood nor the bath-robed, wild-eyed, guy doing the shooting. So I spread the poison two nights ago. Yesterday when I filled in the new holes I noticed that there was a grub about the size of my thumb in the bottom of each hole. They seemed to be squirming in their death throes. I think the poison was starting to work and they must have dug themselves out of the dirt trying to escape it. All of this was very gratifying and gave me some reason to believe that my Armadillo invasion may soon come to an end. I’m told that Armadillos aren’t too bright and apparently their taste is suspect as well; those grubs are very nasty looking, certainly no match for Boars Head all beef hot dogs in any taste test by sensible people. Obviously Armadillos don’t qualify.

Later in the day I watched a new UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) show that I had recorded the night before. When Carla’s not around I play the sound portion of the show over my stereo and make the walls of the house vibrate with the roar of the crowd when someone gets knocked out. That was right around 4pm, so Carla had gone to work and that house was all mine. UFC goes very well with a nice, cold India Pale Ale, so the formula goes: UFC + IPA= GUY HEAVEN. But unlike the stereotypical males portrayed as shallow, housework impaired idiots on most mainstream TV, I got just as much enjoyment out of cleaning the refrigerator and cooking dinner afterward.

The second refrigerator sits in our laundry room/workshop area and was stinky from some soup that thawed out too quickly in a plastic baggie and dripped chicken broth down the shelves and into both vegetable crispers. I removed and washed all the shelves and wiped everything down with a warm solution of water and baking soda. When everything was dried and put back into place, I went back to the refrigerator throughout the course of the night just to open it and marvel at it’s sparkle and shine. Mainly though, the refrigerator cleaning was just a time killer while the Lamb Shanks baked. Before I tackled the cleaning, I braised Lamb Shanks in Olive Oil after rolling them in freshly chopped Rosemary and fresh ground black pepper. I removed them to a plate and braised carrots, onions, and diced garlic in the same pan and used red wine to deglaze it. Then the Lamb goes back into the pan along with some more wine and some beef broth. I put the lid onto the Dutch oven and put it into a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees for 3 hours. That Dutch oven is Mandy’s cast iron pan that she used in Charlottesville for all those years that she worked for Grandma and Grandpa. I use it all the time.

The 3 hour cook time gave me plenty of opportunity to clean the refrigerator, hang some tools in my workshop, clean an old brass soap dish that Carla brought home from the Goodwill store, text Hannah and Ruth several times, take the dogs out for their late exercise, and hang a new laundry line in the back yard. After cleaning up and crossing off some of the now completed chores from my “to do” list, I steamed some fresh Asparagus to accompany a plate of Lamb Shanks and a skinny loaf of French bread that I had picked up earlier at Publix. A glass of red wine made the dinner complete. Just excellent.

I slept from 9pm to 3am when Carla came home from work and climbed into bed with me. Her hair was fresh from the shower and she smelled great. We talked excitedly about our day, our hopes, plans, expectations, the kids…enjoying each others company and warmth in our wonderful bed…just as we have for over 33 years. It was a great 24 hours. And yes, I need a serious hobby or job or something...

Athens Alabama, 1968

"The invasion of Athens by the incoming students from the North in 1968 was a harbinger of social change which would sweep through the South in the coming years."

That’s what an article said in the “Style” section of the Athens Courier many years later. Of course we had no clue at the time that we were storm troops destined to accelerate a clash of cultures and ideologies that was to “sweep through the South”, and the nation itself. That Pan American turbo-prop bringing kids from New Jersey into the Huntsville airport may as well have been a military transport dropping paratroopers behind enemy lines. My friend Art Mazzucca dove in by way of his 1964 mustang. It could have been a Sherman tank bringing armed forces from the Northeast. The incoming troops didn’t speak the language of the South any more than the Athens locals spoke ours. But it was much more than a culture clash of North vs. South. These particular Northern invaders had been listening to the music and messages of social change. Robert Zimmerman had been croaking his predictions to this crowd for a few years now and they dressed in bell bottom pants and wore longer hair as a visible sign of their support of his heresies. Many of them had a little something special wrapped in Zig Zag packaging and tucked deeply into the toe of an extra pair of shoes.

No, Athens wasn’t ready for this invasion at all and the invaders had little understanding of the impact their arrival was to have or the strong feelings it was to ignite.

Ohio the Wonder Dog & Car Detailer

Many years ago a friend & I were returning from an Eric Clapton concert in my brand new Mazda RX7 turbo after having had too much fun, and apparently too many adult beverages & beanie weenies for my friend. Halfway home, without warning, his head started to spin in circles like Regan in the Exorcist and he projectile vomited beanie weenies all over the seat & dashboard of my new car. When we got to his house, I pushed him out onto the yard and drove home to bed. The next morning I braced myself and looked at the damage. The car was sitting in the sun, baking. Every crevice of the passenger side bucket seat, every stereo control on the dashboard, the right side sun visor, the pocket in the door... everything stunk and was chunky with hot beanie weenies. I knew that I faced hours of highly unpleasant clean up work. That’s when my wonderful German Shepard nudged my leg and showed a more than passing interest in helping me out. Perfect. I opened both car doors and went inside the house. My dog “Ohio” detailed that car for several hours, her long tongue being the best possible tool to get into those crevices and around those stereo knobs. She even got the spots on the ceiling. Later, a quick wipe-down with Lysol completed the job. Best damn dog I ever had.

Group Home Breakout...

The group home had been in chaos ever since the breakout over a week ago. Two burly male nurses were doing their best to track down the escapee, but it was tough. He could be like a chameleon, he could blend right in. They knew he loved boats though and they were slowly working their way through the entire marina. A successful capture would require all of their training and all of their psychological skills to net this nut. For now, all they could do was to keep looking at every passenger they encountered, examine every face; they knew there just had to be some kind of a clue…

Taylor's Pork Roll

An old friend from high school mentioned Taylor’s Pork Roll on his Facebook site the other day. It planted a seed in my head that immediately took root. It’s like someone whistling a jingle or a song hook from a TV show that you’ve heard a thousand times. Not even as subtle as a Trojan Horse, it doesn’t disguise itself or sneak in, it just walks boldly right into your brain, friendly as hell perhaps but it totally takes over. You hear that jingle all day long, over and over and …over. That’s how it was with Rich Bartel’s reference to Taylor’s Pork Roll. Once he got me started, I mentally grilled it, fried it, made sandwiches on hamburger rolls, and slathered grainy mustard on thick piggy slices of it. So I found myself at 4am pushing my mind’s eye to retrieve the image of the Wal-Mart cooler where sausage & bacon live to see if I remembered any Taylor’s Pork roll there. No luck, I really don’t think they stock it. Rarely do I see it carried in Southern stores. Mostly it is a Northeast food item. Ground pig parts. It’s just that when you grill it or fry it a bit aggressively, the burn marks add flavor that is enhanced by the ooze of caramelized pork fat and sugars…Like my friend says: why are the very unhealthiest foods the most delicious? I don‘t know but think it best to exercise moderation in all things, including moderation.

So, yes I love that fabric covered roll of mystery pig parts ground up and pressed into service for all of mankind to enjoy…but apparently only if that mankind happens to live in the Northeastern United States, preferably New Jersey. Certainly it would be a plus if the enjoy-er had a name like Vinnie or Tony and also wore a wife beater T-shirt that hugged his upper torso and made him look a bit like a pork roll himself. But mostly it’s all about childhood memories, and about Mom. Because Mom was always there to see to it that we had a “good breakfast”, and Taylor’s Pork Roll played a part in that. Cod Fish cakes, Kippered Herring…lots of scrambled and fried eggs… In those days that was apparently a key to predicting success in the day ahead. Kind of like the New York suburb version of poking through chicken entrails, the better the breakfast, the more we could predict that we would have a good day. Cereal would certainly translate to just a fair day and of course no breakfast was a certain recipe for disaster. I think Dad probably just had several Camel cigarettes for breakfast so it’s amazing that he didn’t rush right out and butcher a neighbor or two. Of course we don’t really know just what he was up to every day when he “went to work”. I mean that “going to work stuff” was such a shield it could pretty much cover all bases. Once Dad was in his suit there was no questioning his intent, and when the train brought him home 9 hours later to smoke a Camel or two for dinner, he was equally bulletproof. He had done his job. He had donned his suit of armor, rode the iron steed into the city, fought the good fight for his queen, and now all he asked for was a Coke, a Camel, and maybe a little bubbly Lawrence Welk on TV.

Dad cared about dinner about as much as he cared about breakfast. But Mom cared, she cared big time. If we all started the day with a “good breakfast” we ended it with an equally “nice dinner”. Often dinner was a meat item, a starch like potatoes or rice, and of course, a vegetable. Usually the veggies were cooked in a pressure cooker that had a round metal hockey puck riding the steam shot from a valve on the lid. It controlled the internal pressure, bucking up and down, whistling and spitting like a cowboy trying to ride a bronco of hot compressed air. That pressure cooker had a safety valve too. It was a very small circular ring of soft metal that could blow out into the ceiling if ever the steam got too explosive and tried to bust out the walls of the pot itself. I was truly conflicted about that valve, always wanting to see it blow, but I thought it best to stay clear of any potential trajectory just in case. Mostly I remember Mom cooking frozen blocks of chopped spinach in the pressure cooker…oh, and also frozen blocks of horse meat to feed the dogs.

Mom wore pearls, and a dress, and Channel No 5. She used two matching gold hairpins in her blond hair, wore a big diamond wedding ring, and two small “safety rings” to keep the big ring on tight. One safety ring ran a full circle of small diamonds around her finger, the other one was rubies, I think. Those safety rings fascinated me for some reason. Mom never sweat, she was never dirty or disheveled, she never swore or even raised her voice, but she was the boss over Dad, and he was the boss over us kids. For me, Mom was about the prettiest lady there ever was, something like Grace Kelly. I remember seeing her at a cocktail party wearing a colorful tiara and looking like royalty, which seemed quite appropriate for her. Actually though, Dad looked a bit like Prince Rainer. I remember from the newsreels that Prince Rainer smoked a lot too.

After dinner was over, I would pick up Dad’s silver ashtray and empty it into the trash can under the sink. When I rinsed it under water the face of the eagle on the Mexican silver dollar in the center of the ashtray would shine brightly from the frequent abrasion of burning tobacco and Pernica’s bi-weekly cleaning with Gorham’s silver polish. Tarnish never had a chance to build up. Our house was that way too. Untarnished, because of Mom. She was my best friend and my security and my protector. If a wild Wolverine had come running at any of her kids, it would have gone badly for the Wolverine. Of course it was good to remember the pecking order if Dad started to rumble to much in our direction; Dad was boss over us kids, and Mom was boss over Dad. So ultimately, it was Mom’s world, I liked that. She ran the show with quiet strength, organizational skills to shame any corporate CEO, and unconditional love for her brood. Every kid should be so lucky to grow up with a Mom like that.

Your Mug

“This mug just causes me to ask so many questions” but then, of course, everything does. It's nothing special about the feeble attempt at humor written on the mug itself, it's about your own constant, incessant questioning of...everything... that almost drives you crazy. Whenever it looks like it's dead and done, you just can't leave it alone, you have to prod it with a stick to see what's up with that particular possum. It's about your parallel disgust with those who smugly pull answers wrapped up in neat little packages from various pockets when challenged to think. That's one reason you buck the plug-in-play dogma of Christian lemmings. No thinking required there, all answers supplied. Stupid answers admittedly but more comfortable for most than dealing with the kind of open questions that ambush you and violate your peace on a perfectly nice day as you sit on the deck trying to relax for a fucking minute or two. It would be so easy to fill your pockets with your own little packages: “There, I'm done with that one, I never have to think about it again. What else you got?” but you can't do that can you? You have to stir the pot because you just can't accept those easy answers that are so blatantly transparent. So what's the bottom line? Where can we say that we know anything? Sadly, we can't. Quote all the great thinkers of human history. They, like the rest of us...don't...know...shit. So we self medicate with drugs, alcohol, food, sex... a million different diversions, anything to provide a brief respite from knowing that we know nothing at all. Find peace with that and maybe you can finally relax and enjoy that cup of coffee and the scent of the trees on that sweet deck of yours.

Sara's Teeth

The fun had come to an abrupt end. Sara just refused to stop her endless whining about that damn piece of crab shell stuck in her teeth. All they could do was to sit and wait it out hoping that some passing tourist was carrying a bit of dental floss. Unlike her, they were trying to be good sports; they all acted like it was OK to just sit there and listen to her pick her teeth, like they actually did care; but it wasn’t OK, and they didn’t care. Soon they would have to ditch Sara. Levi was already lost anyway, studying the lines of a large, older woman across the street as she struggled to get out of her car. One heavy ankle was now on the ground and he knew he had to move quickly if he was to rock her world and make a few extra bucks again tonight.

Lilly

Lilly comes to me in the quiet of the morning when I'm sitting in the big chair drinking coffee so thick and dark it could pass for shoe polish. She lowers her head and pushes it between my knees, inviting my hands to knead her head and shoulders. A foster dog with adult cataracts, Lilly's blindness causes her to be more needy of physical attention than the other dogs. Stretching out my fingers on both hands, I start at the top of her head, working my fingertips down to her skin to feel for ticks. I massage her ears and look inside just in case. Continuing down Lilly’s back, I give her a good scratching just above her tail where she can't scratch herself. That's a little slice of dog heaven for her. Then she's ready to run along side of our own dog, Kira, as Kira does her “go get the paper from the front of the driveway” trick and bring it inside, dropping it on the kitchen floor for me while I get a little treat for her. Actually all four dogs benefit from Kira's routine, as they line up at the word “treat”. All sit and stare intently at me except for Lilly of course, she stares at the cabinet to my right.

Tane's Farm/Letter to Duke

One memorable Summer when I was a kid, my brother, Kenny, and I stayed on Taine's farm in Gordonsville, Va. Taine, a distant cousin of my Grandparents, was a tough old Southern lady that knew who her people were for many generations back and had buried several husbands on her journey to that spot. Duke, her grandson, lived with her in a huge colonial mansion at the end of a long driveway through neatly plowed fields . The gravel road circled in front of the house in a heart shape that was shaded by huge Oaks and lined with “Box bushes”. The cavernous house was well over 100 years old with no central heat or air. All but a few rooms on the first floor were closed off to conserve energy and opened on weekends for tourists who paid a small fee to get a glimpse of the “Old South”. I found Duke on the internet recently and wrote him a letter...

Hello Duke!

I guess it’s been about 55 years or so since Kenny & I stayed at Taine’s farm one summer. 1957 perhaps? If I was 9, Kenny was 12. You must have been 15 or 16. Something like that.

Taine always seemed so strong and self confident, much like her distant cousin who I knew better, Alice Clark. They both looked like they had been cured in the beef jerky factory, and were just as tough. I only remember Taine wearing slacks, mostly jodhpurs, more comfortable on horseback than on foot. She gave me cherry bombs to throw at the basset hounds to teach them to stay behind an imaginary Maginot line about 20 feet out from the screen porch. For some reason she didn't like the dogs to get too close to the house. The cherry bombs doubled as grenades to lob into the nests of sparrows that foolishly chose to raise their families in the eves of that red barn/garage. Taine had gotten a new car that summer and was determined to put an end to the bird-poop shower her car was subjected to while parked inside. She paid 25 cents for every pair of sparrow feet that I brought her.

I didn't really know Mr. Snow, your farm hand, but I was keenly aware that he was not like the business men in my white collar neighborhood back home. He really did have a farmer’s tan and I was shocked to see this ruggedly bronzed guy take off his shirt one hot afternoon to expose skin that was almost blue-white. Who were those women that lived in his house? His Mother and sister? Didn't they work? What did they do all day? Where had they come from and what happened to that family when the farm sold? It was very mysterious to me. One of the women would stand on the front porch and just look around, but didn't venture out beyond the porch. Long black hair to their knees and similar dresses to their ankles. Very haunted and gaunt. All that summer I never saw one of them leave the house. I wanted to look inside their place, see how they lived, what their furniture looked like, but of course that didn't happen. I never went into their house, or even went too close. I thought that they had secrets that were best left uncovered.

Mr. Snow was friendly enough though. Certainly he liked to watch “wrasslin” on TV and he came into the main house on Saturday nights to watch Haystacks Calhoun on that little black & white screen in the parlor. One time Mr. Snow let me walk out into the pig field with him and told me to be on my toes around the sow. He said that the pigs were half wild and that they could be nasty. Of course he had trained Watch, that wonderful German Sheppard, to “sick” on command, so I felt safe with him protecting us. Did Watch really pull the skin off of the curly tails of some of those pigs as he taught them a lesson? That was the story and I loved the idea of his savagery that was controlled by a single command.

Having been brought up in a sterile, structured home in the suburbs of New York City, that farm just amazed me. Mutant kittens nestled in the barn straw. The dogs were encouraged to root through and eat any they found. You and Mr. Snow cut the budding horns from young steers and the blood shot out of their heads as if their horns had been replaced with squirt guns. Deaf to their bellowing you rubbed big globs of some kind of caustic goo into the wounds to prevent any continued horn growth by burning the stump into an infertile scar. One afternoon while bailing hay, I got to ride along on top of the baler when it exposed a ground hog that started to scramble for cover. You ran up to it and kicked it under the jaw about ten feet back. Dead as a door-nail. You picked it up and joyfully gave it to one of the guys to fix for their dinner. At our own lunch and dinner Taine served milk in individual quart glasses. I never tried so hard to drink milk. Unpasteurized, raw milk, kept in the stainless steel container that was half submerged in the cool water of the spring house. Every meal seemed like a milk drinking challenge to me.

You often saved me from Kenny when he thought I would make a good BB gun target. You would grab the gun and pepper his ass yelling: “how do you like it?”. That was sweet. You were always laughing and joking too, especially with Taine. One afternoon she was sitting on a lawn chair in front of the porch under that huge Oak, lazy dogs scattered with the leaves on the ground. She said “I thought such and such was true…” You told her: “That’s what you get for thinking when you’re not used to it.” For a 9 or 10 year old kid, that was about the funniest quip I had ever heard.

My family rented the little cottage behind the main house a few times prior to that summer. We stayed there for Easter once. I was probably only 5 or 6 then. Some other kid was there too. I don’t remember who she was. One afternoon she was bathing and yelled out from the bathroom to Judy, “Has Hugh ever seen a naked girl before?” I guess Judy thought nothing of a girl about my age running out to get her clothes and told her “sure, it’s no big deal” Then that little girl slowly walked around the room with her eyes on mine and got her stuff, measuring her effect on me, before going back in to dress. I sat mesmerized. That was the first time I realized there were certain mysteries in life that I knew nothing about but certainly wanted to, if the paralysis ever left me.

As I said on the phone, I suspect you felt about that farm much the way I felt about my own Grandparent’s place in Charlottesville, Sheppard’s Hill Farm. When they sold their land it affected me deeply. I knew every valley, every stream, every hilltop on that farm and thought it would always be there. It was the one thing in my life that was stable and could never change. Route 64 came through though and blasted away the privacy. Silt from the raw, wounded mountain, filled the pond. Grandpa Maverick decided he couldn't keep the place up much longer and opted to move to a condo in town with Grandma. It all seemed like too much change that shouldn't happen. That was in the mid 1960’s and things started to change everywhere throughout the country then. I guess you went off to Viet Nam, and Kenny did too. That changed you both. As for me, my childhood was over and those times I spent in Virginia became much valued memories for me. I close my eyes and entertain them from time to time, like taking out a hidden jewelry box, I examine each memory, each jewel, a whimsical smile.

Memories Souvenirs

Think I’ll fly back to the future, my days of future’s past,

to look at dreams I used to dream and know now, none will last.

No more than just a second, just like these forty years,

and forty more will come and go,

just memory's souvenirs.

Those souvenirs were hard to pry from memories web-like maze,

Implanted 40 years ago in days of Purple Haze.

Each reveler brought out a piece for everyone to share,

And each piece then would spawn ten more,

From days of flowing hair.

In looking back we gathered strength, and know now how to go,

Into the twilight of our lives the gathering did show,

That only memories truly last, like gold throughout the years,

So sweet, so warm and so intense,

Those memories souvenirs.

Job-Site Dawn

Walking through the wooden frame of the house we're building for you, I was drawn to the lake behind it. Breathing in the crisp air that swept unobstructed across the water, I stood on the bank with my eyes shut tight, trying hard to ignore the task list that kept popping up in my minds eye like some viral screen saver screaming for attention. Suppressing everything but the slowly waning chorus of frogs exhausted from a frenzied night of late season posturing and the breeze gently kissing my face, I could feel the openness of the lake and of the surrounding countryside itself. A mockingbird stood atop a survey stake like Hillary on Everest, the wind lifting its tail feathers in tandem with the bright orange tape flapping to mark the spot. Unlike last time, he didn’t scold me for trespassing nearby, choosing instead to generously share the fragile quiet. A subtle scent of fresh water mussels coming off the lake transported me back to a cozy booth that afforded sanctuary several nights prior, when I nestled up to a bowl of green lip mussels smothered in chopped garlic and white wine. Again I struggled to focus on the quiet of the new day, but the last peaceful moment was lost with the rumble of approaching trucks carrying workers eager for the bolder sounds of pounding hammers accompanied by country pop music played to distortion on Wall Mart boom boxes cracked and splashed white with plaster. And so begins the frantic carnival of a new day, even now anticipating the peaceful balance of tomorrow’s dawn.

The Streets of Venice Beach

I want to brace myself against the wind from the sea,
Drink in the salt air and cheer it on to sweep the streets clean.
Let me pause to savor this peak moment of joy,
As my senses scream, absolutely alive, awake, alert, and almost free…
Of the tether to my everyday world that allows me this brief vision of life without it.






 

Four Strong Winds

If a guy's outfit included a sharply pressed Gant shirt, Weegin tassel loafers worn without socks, plaid slacks like old men wear on the golf course and a rolled umbrella that wasn't to be opened in even the harshest downpour, Athens, Georgia was a great place to be in 1966. On the other hand, if you happened to be wearing wide bottom bells with Zig Zag patches on the leg and dimes for buttons on the fly, a pull-over top with a full-chest red Chinese star and long unkempt hair, it mostly sucked. Oh, and at the University of Georgia in 1966 there were 17,000 guys and girls in the rolled umbrella crowd and about 6 of us bell bottoms.

What a revolting development that was, but I guess I brought it on myself. As my remarkably unremarkable high school years came to an end, my parents approached me and said: “Hugh, you're an adult now. Choose a college you like, get accepted, and we'll send you there.” So I applied to seven good schools that shared a common trait: up until that time they had been all-girl schools and now they were going co-ed. I guess ratios of three guys to every 200 girls somehow seemed academically appealing. OK, anatomically appealing, but hey, I was 18! When the parental units found out they got all twisted over it and said: “Hugh, apparently you're not an adult now. We're sending you to the University of Georgia in Athens because your sister lives there and she can keep an eye on you.”

Having grown up in New Jersey in an affluent suburb of NYC, Athens, Georgia may as well have been the moon. I had been riding a bus into the Port Authority terminal to run around in “The Village” for a few years by then and enjoyed listening to Bob Zimmerman croak his heresies and traversing back streets trying to score a matchbox or two of bad Mexican pot. Now I found myself stranded in a room on the top floor of a huge men's dorm that sat almost on top of the UGA football stadium with a roommate from a small town in Idaho who had never been anywhere but there, and here. He was amazed by life off the farm and punctuated each new discovery with a sincere "gosh!" or "golly!". I thought I was in a sensory deprivation tank, 20 years before it was invented.

One Spring day the newspapers reported that smoking dried banana peels produced the same effects as smoking pot, I could be seen trudging back to my room with an entire stalk of bananas over my shoulder. Special order. With my roommate back in Iowa for the holidays, I skinned, dried and smoked seemingly endless banana pelts in hopes of finding some kind of salvation from the hell I had been relegated to. Of course the whole thing had been wishful thinking on my part. Smoking dried banana peels does produce a bit of a high, just as replacing oxygen with any kind of smoke would do. Mostly it was good for a nasty headache.

What's a boy to do? Well there was one thing: a refuge so sweet it was almost sacred. My older brother had bought a new reel-to-reel tape recorder when the Army had him stationed in Hawaii before they sent him to Vietnam and ruined him for the world we had grown up in. He lent that recorder to me. So I had this great reel-to-reel and a padded headset with an extra long cord that snaked across the room to my bed like a curly tailed needle to a junkie's arm. Overhead two long pieces of twine connected the corners in an "X" shape hung with the Playmate fold outs torn from multiple magazines. Underneath my boob canopy the sound was fantastic. All pre-CD left and right channel bliss. Ian and Sylvia had released their “Four Strong Winds” album two years prior and I had it on the reel to reel.

"The song is a melancholy reflection on a failing romantic relationship. The singer expresses a desire for a possible reunion in a new place in the future, but acknowledges the likelihood that the relationship is over."

I feared the loss of that close proximity to the electric sparks of social change that NYC had offered, lamenting the loss of my former life,

Things eventually got better of course and vastly more exciting. I also grew to prefer Neil's version of "Four Srong Winds" as well. But then and there, it was Ian and Sylvia who helped me escape.

Lying on my bunk, a square peg, that album was an opiate that floated me up, out of the physical world. It helped me survive my imprisonment. I traveled the astral plains.

So when Vince Dooley and his Bulldogs played their games in the arena next door and shook my dorm to its roots, I cranked “Four Strong Winds” through my headset and lay back, bulletproof.

Guano, Cow Pies & Peppie's Pizza

It was an adventure of extremes, borne of boredom and executed without the clutter of forethought. Our core group of cave crawlers had been on this ride many times. We would suit up in bright orange jump suits zipped from crotch to neck over grubby clothes. As the sun went down, we would drive to a farm on the outskirts of the County. Pulling our car deep into the brush at the side of the road, we hiked through a cow pasture filled with warm, oozing, shoe sucking piles of cow shit. Pausing for brief reflection next to a rocky mound, we watched the large black mouth on the side of the hill sneeze out warm damp air choked with bats now launched into the night sky. 

There we ducked down and entered the earth.

This was Limestone County, so it was riddled with limestone caves. I only knew of this one though. We went at twilight so the farmer wouldn't see us to chase us away but we still had enough light to help us get to the mouth of the cave next to a stream that had probably been instrumental in forming it 1,000 years ago. Perhaps bright orange wasn't the smartest choice for these particular covert operations but no one would accuse anyone in the group of being smart. We were way too wasted for smart. Totally toasted and moving forward. Crouching slightly as if to present a smaller profile for an irate farmer armed with rock-salt shotgun loads to spot, we trudged through this farmer’s field lined up like the seven dwarfs on a path to Snow White’s boudoir. But it wasn't Snow White’s bed we lay on in the inner chamber, it was guano. Bat dung, shit. Once we entered the mouth of the cave, staying low to let the bats exit as we entered, the passageway narrowed like the throat of a blacksnake. We had to squirm over, under, around and through to get to the main chamber. That opened up into a room the size of a two car garage into which someone had dumped a truckload of damp peat moss. It must have taken those bats a very long time to make that pile and it was relatively dry and fairly comfortable to lie on. Bats are legendary bug eaters so once their bat digestive systems sucked all the nutrients from the bug’s bodies, I guess all they had to shit was mashed bug exoskeletons. Certainly guano is sold as expensive fertilizer but it could make a decent pillow stuffing too, like those barley stuffed pillows that are supposed to help prevent neck pain. Anyway, once we got to our inner sanctum, we chilled. I would take off my Pea coat and lay it down like a rug to lounge on. We put incense sticks in the ground, set up candles on our perimeter, and smoked our brains out.

That’s it. That was the goal. We just wanted to get to a place where even the most rabid Alabama State cops wouldn't find us and paranoia wasn't an issue. Get as wasted as you want. In that cave there was no sun, no stars, no moon, no lights, no external sound…no time…just the sound of our own breathing bodies.

North Alabama in the late 1960’s was a place where paranoia ran rampant with my crowd and was well justified. If those state troopers could get their hands on a long-haired pot smoking kid from New Jersey they would probably shit themselves with pure glee. Everything was wrapped in suspicion in those days and conspiracies abounded. We assumed that all Alabama State Troopers were at least 6’6” and had the IQ of celery. So to be tucked safely away in the bowels of the earth with like minded freaks and lots of rolled appetite enhancers was pretty sweet.

Just as we had bid the sun farewell and marched into the earth at twilight, we would likewise reverse the trek and see the first glimmers of sunrise as we marched back out at dawn. This time though the dwarves were covered in a combination of mud slime and bat shit: long hair matted and streaked, all of us filthy, wet, and hungry. It was a perfect time for a huge breakfast at the all night pizza place where we could gorge on a pie flowing with grease and doused with hot sauce. Gotta love Peppe’s Pizza.

The graveyard shift would just be coming through the doors from their chicken plucking chores down the street at Sweet Sue kitchens. These people were production line pluckers and disembowelers who had been raised in the country on squirrel brains, greens and close family relationships. Certainly the gene pool was very limited and facial deformities were the norm. They sat on their side of the room, we sat on ours, staring openly at each other wondering just which side of the moon each other had come from.

A brightly colored jukebox blasted George and Tammy, common ground on which we could all agree. That, and gooey slices of warm pizza, dripping with hot sauce and washed down with ice cold soda.

Some things are just too fantastic and perfect to allow any justification for disagreement.

It’s All Upside Down Without You…

Gonna grind some eggs, fry up some coffee,

Start the day wrong, without you I’m not me,

It’s all upside down; I can’t make it work,

I’ve just tried very hard to prove I’m a jerk.

It’s all upside down without you.

The dogs put me out and throw me a ball.

Express their approval when I pee on the wall,

At night I sell beer to the Jiffy Store guy,

Keep my opinions inside, I’m so painfully shy,

It’s all upside down without you.

I’ll turn off the car and back into the drive,

Leave work in the morning, just when I arrive,

Greet strangers warmly I meet in my day,

But snub all my friends; attend the ballet

It’s all upside down without you.

When finally like Popeye “I can’t stands it no more.”

I’ll come track you down at that damn Goodwill store,

While you pick through your bargains and see their potential,

The workload for me becomes exponential,

I’ll gladly do it, just please come back home,

It’s all upside down without you.

Wetwork dreams

 I don’t think that the water will last beyond another week; ten days at most. It won’t last for all of us anyway. So that raises an interesting question. Who gets the water? Who survives? If help really is coming early next month, the five of us will be dead by then if we share the water equally. So what’s the point? Two could live until then perhaps, three with luck and the willingness to gamble with the lives of all three being over rationed and not able to make it... Either way, two of us have to go- at a minimum. Three would provide a better assurance of survival for two lucky darlings. Or deadly darlings if the three losers can’t follow through on the result of a drawing of straws. And then if there is an unwillingness to execute or self execute, the plan, what then? How do the two winners dispatch the three losers without some kind of an edge? A very sharp edge would be helpful

Then there’s the democracy thing. Anne is a complete idiot that won’t be able to last regardless of how much water we have. She’s already starting .to break down. She thinks all of this is some kind of pathetic plan, that we are all in this together to “get” her because we are jealous of the fact that her husband financed this whole deal and made us take her along. I wish it were that simple. Ben’s another problem. He’s too old, too fat, and he needs too much water and food to feed his bloat. He slows us down and is too high maintenance. Even if he gets his share of the water, then what? He still won’t be able to walk all the way back to the landing strip. So why even draw straws to see who gets what? Those two are dead weight anyway and we need to jettison them …permanently. I just don’t know if I should undertake that nasty little project by myself when Aaron and Jennifer are sleeping or if I should include the lovebirds in the …”execution” of the plan. Certainly I can make it look like an accident. Anne and Ben almost walked off of one of the steeper ledges on the way here anyway. If they actually went over the edge while trying to get back to the landing strip at night, who would be surprised? It would serve them right for being so selfish for trying to beat us back to that last canteen of water we left by the side of the runway. Ben was the one who ditched it even though I told him not to. But he wined and cried that his pack was too heavy and insisted that the one canteen would be enough. Of course he never expected the unprecedented heat we encountered or the piss poor maps that led us down paths that only existed on the infrared satellite photos that we thought we were so clever to sneak out of the USGS office in Washington. Ancient stream beds that long ago turned into depressions filled with impassable explosions of jagged shale. It took us twice as long to get here as we originally planned and it took three times the water just to survive the heat.

So we still have a concern. If we take Anne and Ben out of the equation we may be able to survive. although I have a problem with that “may be able to” part. With Anne and Ben gone it’s just the lovebirds and me. They won’t like the odds of three people trying to live on just enough water for two any better than I do and of the three of us, who do you think they will want out of the picture? I’ll have to sleep with one eye open and my hand on my knife. But if Jennifer has the stomach for a real attack, if Aaron can convince her that it is their only chance, I could be in deep shit. They are both fitness freaks and I think that Jennifer could hold her own…to a point. If it becomes an issue of me against them, I’ll need to strike first. I won’t be safe once Anne and Ben are gone so all I can do is go for Aaron right after they’re done with.. No sneak attack, no dark of night stuff. Just flat out get it done and over with A S A P. Jennifer won’t have time to react until it’s too late. Then she’ll be so stunned that she won’t be able to. She knows that she can’t get back without my help. She will also know that I can’t let her go back and talk about what happened to Aaron. Maybe she’ll try to convince me that she won’t tell. That’s after I convince her that only two of us could have survived this whole thing anyway and I choose to save her, and to save her from Aron’s lies as well. She doesn’t know anything about his relationship with Tiffany back home. She thinks that they are just coworkers. That will really burn her butt. I expect then, when she settles down and it all sinks in, that cute little Jennifer will be grateful to be alive and grateful to be rid of that conceited lying jerk who’s been blowing in her ear for the last two months. I expect her to be grateful. Big time. So there may be a little bonus in it for me. Ultimately it won’t do her any good, of course, but it will help to kill the time that I have to wait until the next plane is due. I’m just glad that I had the foresight to bring a deck of cards to play a bit solitaire before the plane arrives.

Ohio

Ohio is feeling old but still hunts on bright nights.

I collected her prizes and hung them in the tree of death.

Her larder swings with stiff winds and drips with memories of once plump Opossum civilians who should have chosen the road not taken.

Still needle-toothed skulls leer down at Ohio with a mocking sass.

No knowledge that it’s a little late for such bravado.

NAGS HEAD, N.C. 1956

The scorching yellow sand and unforgiving sun burned into my skin and into my memory.Those summer vacations at our beach cottage, fifty some years ago… Our house was the only building in sight, a little blue speck off a paved road that ran parallel to the beach. A cinder block oasis on sand so hot it made the rubber of my sneakers stick and smell all melty. The inside was cool and dark, fanned by a steady breeze off the Atlantic. A real study in contrasts; the passive sand assaulted by an aggressive ocean in an ever shifting line of combat. The sound is constant, inescapable. At first intrusive, it quickly becomes reassuring, even necessary for untroubled sleep.

Everything was so simple then. Sun, sand, water, and family, in a little house where they all came together. No T.V., no MacDonald’s, no 7-11's. Fewer choices to make you crazy. Unlike these days of SPF awareness and skin cancer warnings, we used to burn our skin to blisters on the first day just to make our vacation official. By evening we would each be radiating enough body heat to make sleep difficult, our skin so sensitive that a single grain of sand in the bed felt like glass shards from a broken bottle. Judy and Kenny both appeared to have been painted with blood, their hair bleached white. Like my Grandfather's nose when he took his nitroglycerin tablets, their skin was so red and angry you thought it best to get a little distance. Walking wood stoves. No one really minded though, it was all part of the experience. Of course I may feel differently in a few years when the front half of my nose is removed along with the skin cancers started on those long ago summer days. Like Lon Chaney in "Phantom of the Opera" I'll have a hole in my face where my nose once was. I still get too much sun, but now I'm careful to use a sunscreen of SPF #15 or above. It's just not the same though and I even feel guilty about getting any sun at all. It's like I said, we have too many choices now, we are too aware of all the consequences. It was great being eight years old in 1956. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

Lots of tomato sandwiches were OK though. Mom made them with white bread, mayonnaise, and real tomatoes. Local summer tomatoes that you could eat with just a little salt, but the best way was with white bread and mayonnaise. We would sit around the table in the living area next to the kitchen and look out at the rolling waves beyond the breakers. I can still feel the anticipation of having the sandwiches put on the table and being given the word to dig in. I always believed that I could eat at least ten of them, although I guess I never did. Kenny was eleven then and he really could pack them in. It was a good time to sit together and cool down, escape from the sun, let our eyes adjust. Quiet, cool. Tall iced drinks sweating large liquid rings onto the table. Just the sound of the waves, our own voices, the chatter of ice cubes in the glasses. Damp bathing suits, legs sticking to the chairs, the gritty sand under our bare feet on the cool cement floor. We all took turns sweeping piles of sand out the door every day. After lunch it was back to the beach. One afternoon we changed the routine and went to climb a nearby sand dune; the highest peak in the area. At the top Kenny decided to roll back down. As he reached an unstoppable speed, nausea hit, creating a red halo as he continued to gain momentum. It was those tomato sandwiches coming back again to say "hello". At the bottom of the dune, where the curve flattened out, Kenny was finally stopped by the base of a cactus. He had managed to spray a red line down the last fifty feet of dune, a real credit to his ability to suck down those tomato sandwiches. A low flying pilot would have seen a long straight red line pointing to the bruised body of a skinny boy propped-up on his elbows and dry heaving under a cactus; proud of his run, and proud of the awesome volume of his vomit. Kenny lived for a dare, and now dared anyone to top that. I didn't want to.

Each new day was magic at the beach, not knowing what the sea had brought in at high tide and left behind. The watery invasion always left a changed neighborhood in it's retreat. New shells, crab claws, driftwood, just generally neat stuff. I found one fresh skate egg, all leathery and tough and I put it in a glass of salt water on the screen porch ledge. After changing the water several times a day for a couple of days, the egg actually hatched. It produced a perfect miniature skate. I stared at that thing for hours, fascinated, and then let it go in the surf. Interesting shells, surf rounded glass, dried starfish, all made their way onto our window sills and tabletops; any flat surface would do. I had a special fondness for a smooth brick that I found in the surf. Although it was just a regular construction brick, it had been sanded into an oval shape by the sea. It had weight and substance and held the heat long after I brought it indoors. I used to sleep with that brick under my pillow, just to keep my hands on it's smooth, almost sensuous surface. One night I was awakened abruptly from sleep by my Mother dancing on one foot, holding the other, and crying and swearing. She had briskly pulled my pillow off the bed to fluff it up and had received a flying brick attack on the big toe. I was surprised and delighted by the scene. Not that I wasn't concerned for Mom's well being, it's just that it was so special to see her dance, cry and swear all at the same time. I don't remember ever seeing Mom cry or swear and only remember seeing her dance once (This was years later in the paneled basement of our last Westfield house. It was the "twist". She and Mrs. Barns and Mrs. Nye had all gotten hip to Chubby Checker.) Anyway, to wake up to a show of such rarity, a display of behaviors so at odds with one another; crying and dancing and swearing. It was quite special. It seemed a little like Mom had decided to loose her mind and had been considerate enough to wake me up to see it. With no explanation to me, she danced out of the room and was gone. Over the next weeks and months the changing dark colors of her big toenail served as a reminder of a brief and exciting few minutes when Mom went nuts.

A similar kind of giddiness struck only a few days later. We were all down at the water when Judy pointed up the beach to a large object thrashing in the surf. Whatever it was looked to be the size of a Sumo wrestler, but it definitely wasn't human. It's those next few minutes as I ran down the beach behind Kenny, Sue, and Judy that I remember most. My mind flashed images of just what we were to find. . A VW with arms and legs, an alien from space, a robot which fell over and couldn't get up. It was those minutes of pure exhilaration, when the body on the beach could be anything non-human from any world, that I still remember so clearly. The reality itself wasn't bad. A huge sea turtle had washed up, half dead from a head wound delivered by the prop of a boat. Not so great for the turtle, but pretty special for an eight year old. The fact is it would still be pretty special now too, but I would approach it differently. I would know it wasn't an alien.

We had a blue Ford station wagon in those days, with tastefully modest wings above the taillights. It had long flat seats in front and back like parallel vinyl sofas. Cars didn't have seatbelts to restrain kids then and the whole area behind the front seat was our gymnasium. It was normal to slide snakelike over the backseat, feet in the air, maybe lie in the far back and perform foot puppet shows for passing truckers. Boredom bred friction on the long drive to North Carolina, so Kenny picked on me and fought with Judy. We all blamed Sue for any bad smells in the car, and eagerly looked forward to going through towns with paper factories so we could insist that she had polluted the air for miles around. Mom and Dad told the story about the time Sue fell out of the car when she was a little girl. I stared at Sue's chin for evidence of the scars they said you could still see, but I never could. Sue got us singing rounds of "White choral bells" and Dad was visibly relieved to have the group activity turn in a more positive direction. He was always tied up in knots in those days, and a 300 mile car trip with four kids fighting and passing gas in the pre-air conditioned luxury of that hot metal box on wheels was no picnic. Dad sat on one of those woven plastic covered coil things that flipped up and down like a toilet seat. It kept you from being sweat glued to the seat. Mom didn't have one on her side but I don't think she sweat much anyway. At the beach, the car sat next to the house, unprotected from the elements. The only element that I remember was the sun. It would turn the car into an oven too hot to use. Metal parts would burn the flesh of careless passengers even after the car was declared safe and we were several miles down the road. Of course metal was metal then, not silver tone plastic, and it held the heat well. After baking in the sun for hours, making popping noises and launching blurry heat snakes skyward, that car was dangerous.

I realize now that it was Dad who must have lobbied to return to Nags Head each summer. He truly relaxed there, lying in the sun, burning off layers of New York City hustle. Dad got darker than any of us, although Sue came close. He got the color of our mahogany dining room table. Mom claimed this was proof that he was Mexican, as she had suspected when she first met the infamous "Mr. Miller". That was the alias he supposedly used when Grandma introduced them on a cruse ship in 1938. Of course Grandma had targeted and grilled Dad long before she forced him on Mom. She had found out the important things; who his people were, and what his future earning potential was. Dad had the highest security clearance possible, he had a background check by Grandma. Now with his own law firm and four kids later, Mom still claimed that Mr. Miller the mysterious Mexican, was up to no good. Dad took the kidding in stride, often singing and whistling as he lounged around in his maroon boxer swim trunks. It was great to be around when Dad was in a good mood. The best was when we got him to play a tune on his forehead with spoons. It was at those times that all was right with the world.

I called Dad the other day just to touch base and say "hello". We often trade bad limericks so I had one for him:

While growing quite old and quite wise,

A man with mere slits for his eyes,

Played his head with a spoon,

(A very dignified tune),

And encored with a two fork reprise!

Although Dad laughed politely, he's old and shutting down. I'm not really sure he understood what I said.

Let Me Hold You In My Arms...

I will always hold you in my arms,

If you’ll just close your eyes and let me.

I know you’re grown now,

So strong and sure,

But every now and then,

Shut out the troubles in your world.

Let me hold you in my arms.

From time to time, just close your eyes,

And let me hold you in my arms.

Little Girl Still Half Asleep

Little girl still half asleep, like the day itself,

blocking the sun from entering her cabin.

Hair styled by the nesting birds of her dreams,

wrapped up safe in my T-shirt,

still trying to decide if the new day is even welcome

to come inside at all.

Dance in the Air

I know those feet, those toes. They used to wave at me from a crib and tap dance in the air when I approached. They were fat then and smelled of powder. You rushed to put one directly in front of the other when you would tightrope walk the top rail on our old deck, arms outstretched for balance, giddy with anticipation of doing a cannonball into the pool below. Certainly those feet have seen a lot of sand, but not a lot of shoes. Your Grandma marveled at how you ran barefoot, laughing as you led the way, up the steep gravel drive of our country house in Virginia. Your two year old feet oblivious to the large, sharp chunks of gravel freshly laid. Of course I've seen those dirty pads, curled together and sticking out from under your covers, after running so hard all day that you collapsed into a coma-sleep so deep it seemed you had been abducted by aliens who left only your inert body behind. Those feet have always moved forward faster than most, reckless, fearless. They've walked in sandals wet from puddles of urine still warm from water buffalo you paused to speak with in Thailand. Footprints all over Southeast Asia can compare notes with those in Argentina and Brazil. Who was this girl? Where is she going? Planting her feet on a surfboard off the South of France? Skipping into a Tapas bar in Spain? You probably did wear shoes there. I know those feet that were dangling from a perch on Table Mountain yesterday. They point out to Capetown and beyond, where the waters of the South Atlantic meet those of the Indian Ocean. That junction has long tested the meddle of sturdy ships and their captains. Can you see them now? Out there battling high seas? Will you soon kick your feet in those turbulent waters? I would ask about the path you run right now, where is it going, where does it lead... But I know that the footprints on your path are only visible when looking back, something you may do someday. But I suspect that won't be anytime soon.

Buttons On Your Robe…

Let me help you with that, the buttons on your robe,

And guide you to the safety of a chair.

We’ll go down to the dining room and make a grand entrance,

All eyes on us as we move together in slow motion.

Your hand in mine; let me lead the way.

Sharing time with you is priceless; there is nothing I want more.

And if your unsure hand should stall and drop a bite of dinner in your lap,

You care, I know you care, but I don’t care at all.

I’ll just smile and love you.

Sixty years ago you taught me how to button my clothes.

You helped me into my chair.

If food fell from my dimpled hands, you just smiled and loved me.

And I felt safe with you.

All too soon my hands will shake like yours do now.

My girls can help me with the buttons on my robe.

I’ll think of you, and feel safe, going forward in slow motion,

Your hand in mine, showing me the way.