I GOT A PROBLEM

                                             

When my wife became ill, I had to take on some roles in life that I am ill-prepared for. I’m like a nineteen-year-old bride, playing house for the first time. At first, I thought, this can’t be all that bad, and for the first time in my life—except for the three disastrous years for me, between leaving home and getting married—I’m the boss, or at least I think I am. So I pumped myself up a little, and got on with the tasks at hand. Now I’m here to tell you that being the boss isn’t new to me, as I was in management for many years and had many employees. Flash ahead to right now. My only employee seems to be an old Labrador dog who does what he wants most of the time. Somehow, it’s just not quite the same.

The other day, I hauled the wash down to the laundry room and separated it into two piles, white and dark. Don’t ask me why I did that, as I have no clue what happens if you just throw the whole load in together, I just did what I was told. Even the boss can take some direction, right? “Wait a minute! I am the boss, and if I want to, I can throw my tightey whiteys in with my blue jeans.” I am going to do that someday— just not today. I found a white sweatshirt with a dark blue collar. So, Mrs. high and mighty, what’s the answer here?” It’s still on the laundry room floor, as I haven’t made a decision on that one yet. Next, I select the size of the load. I looked in the machine and it was half full. Is a half full machine a large or small load? Glass half empty, or glass half full here. If I was able to toss them all in together, it would have been a big load and problem solved. Note to self—if you’re ever washing just for yourself, buy black underwear, sheets and towels—no more white stuff.

Upstairs at last, I noticed muddy dog tracks across the kitchen floor. Ha! Time to do a little disciplining, boss man. Where is he? On our bed, and why does he have to lie on my pillow, belly down, Ish! Note to self—when dog dies, get smaller dog that can’t jump on bed. Preferably, a female dog that doesn’t love my pillow so much—and change that pillowcase right now. Now, need to wipe up kitchen floor. Oh, oh. This just might be the dishrag I’ve got here. Oh well, she has a whole drawer full of them, and I’m the laundry man, am I not? Besides, it’s a dark-colored one and that fits my plans. Note to self—need new kitchen floor, in a mud color or something with a dog paw pattern in it.

What to make for supper? Chili and beer sounds good. Haven’t had that for a few days. I must ask the little woman—Veto—Plan B is in affect. Mrs. Marie Callender, you cook a mean meal, babe.  I just need to shove it off on one of our dinner plates, instead of that little plastic tray, and who will know the difference except the boss. Good thing you do the shopping, boss man. “What’s that, dear? Where did I get the fettuccini recipe?” Crap, she knows. Note to self—hire a housekeeper.

Love and Marriage

When I graduated from high school and ventured out into this big scary world, as emotionally immature as I was, a story that I had heard over the years made a huge impact on my life. It was a love story that was so special that one could not ignore it—and it was about my father’s parents and my beloved grandparents. They seemed to be so in tune with each other that it was almost impossible to think of them as individuals. It was never just grandpa or grandma with me; it was always my beloved grandparents. They were George and Gracie, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Anthony and Cleopatra. They were an inseparable team and when one of them died, it seemed like the end of the world for the other, and in their case, it was.

As life went on, and I took a partner, the example my grandparents had set out for me became my guideline, my instrument of thought when it came to building my marriage and my relationship with my wife. I had learned from them that that there was no “me” in a good marriage, just an inseparable “we.” That together, we could raise good children, build a loving home, and lay the blocks for their future lives with someone else as their life partner. But more than that, with or without children, we were the support team for each other. I had seen how fragile and incomplete I was alone, before marriage, and knew now—after marriage—that she was completing me with all of the missing pieces that go into a successful union and family.

As different as a woman and a man are anatomically,  they are also that different emotionally. But when you blend the best of both of them, you come out with a homogenized team that is the finer of two worlds. Love and respect for each other is the cornerstone and centerpiece of all of this. From love and respect, come all of the pieces that let you make it big in marriage. Pieces like problem solving, and sharing all of life’s ups and downs. You are there to laugh together, to cry together, to love together, to take care of each other, and to die together. You get to know each other as well as you know yourself. You have, in effect, melted two hearts and two bodies into one.

The only downside to all of this is—you can’t always go out together.  Then, this wonderful union is ripped in half, and you are lost in this frightening world once again. Your heart will look like a lovely porcelain vase that was dropped and glued back together. It will still hold water, but the scars from the breakage will always show. You may find love again someday, or what you perceive as love, but in the long run, if you felt like my grandparents felt about each other, and my wife and I feel about each other, it would be so difficult to ever get back to where you were. You see, it takes a lot to erase what you felt and experienced for all those years, and to be truthful, you might not want to even try. You and she or he set the bar a long time ago, and it just isn’t fair to anyone else. 

The words that describe the perfect marriage describe something that cannot be truthfully claimed by anyone—because what is the criteria? What is the measure? I know that only when you lose half of the team, will you finally realize how close you came.

SPRING AGAIN

                                             

The poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson once said, and I quote, “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” I guess when I was a young man those thought’s of love-- or what I perceived was love, bubbled out of me in the dead of winter way back then. Yes raging hormones and runaway glands got all mixed up with thoughts of love. Now that I’m an old codger though and those thoughts and urges have greatly diminished, springtime does seem like an aphrodisiac of sorts that’s really not sexual in nature, but I do realize all to well what Alfred was talking about. You see to me, spring is like a new beginning. It’s as if Mother Nature who just last fall put all of her flora and fauna away for a few months just to tease us a little, is now bringing it all back together again, as the trees bud once again, and the grass turns back to green. It’s a time when we replace the smell of the furnace, with the smell of the mother earth.

Each year at this time of the year spring becomes the great precursor for the summer months ahead. The forerunner for yet another round of the lazy crazy days of the season we all rejoice in. It’s the season when projects come off the drawing board and become a reality. A season of flowers, and fruit, and vegetables, and a season of long carefree days in the warmth. There is baseball, fishing and long days at the lake, soaking up sunrises and sunsets. There are baby animals and birds replenishing the ageing stock and insuring the continuation of the species. But first of all must come springtime, the season that ushers it all in and lifts us up gradually from the winter blahs, quietly transitioning us into the summer of sun and fun.

Nowhere on Gods green earth is this change so dramatic as it is right here in the lakes country we all love so much. Maybe its because I’m old and realize that the summers of my life are not infinite that I so look forward to them. That summers in my life are now just a memory, more than a reality. Maybe its because I have learned through the wisdom of life to love so perfectly and that an old mans fancy, compared to a young mans fancy, turns to all of the things he knows makes this world so wonderful, because he has lived them, over and over again.

There will be days in springtime that play with us however. Days that will say, “Not so fast my fickle friend, because summers coming, but winters not quite at the end.” Charles Dickens described it best as, “One of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” Patience is a virtue however and all good things come to those who wait. Virtue can only be described as our moral goodness and something we have to practice and learn. Not just in springtime, but every day of our lives.

Mike Holst

Baseball

            

When I was a young boy growing up spring always brought me a promise of school out and another carefree summer. But it also brought one other thing almost as precious, and that was baseball. I was addicted to the game, not only playing it, but watching my heroes like Duke Snider from the Dodgers, Henry Aaron from the Braves and Willie Mays from the Giants. Everywhere I went my baseball glove would be on my belt or the handlebars of my bike. I had shoe boxes full of baseball cards and could recite statistics for most of the players. I would hover in my bedroom at night when I was supposed to be sleeping, my little electric radio tuned to St Louis, Missouri. It was the only station I could pick up carrying a baseball game.  I would listen to Harry Caray in that signature voice of his say, “Now batting number six, Stan the Man Musial.” These players were to me what every red blooded American boy wanted to grow up and be. Then something happened and it’s never been the same since.

Greedy owners who cared little about the devoted fans they had accumulated over the years, took their teams to the most lucrative markets they could find. The Dodgers broke a million of those bums’ hearts and left tiny Ebbets Field for glamorous Los Angeles. The Duke would never again hit one out over Bedford Avenue. Willie lost that big center field in the Polo Grounds where he roamed and made all of those dazzling catches, to go to the city by the bay, and Hammering Hank who seemed to just glide around the bases, left them crying in their beer in County Stadium in Milwaukee. There would be teams moving every year after that and then the players took a page out of the owner’s playbook and they found themselves an agent and free agency themselves.

I cried the day I saw Harmon Killebrew in a Kansan City Uniform. He was to the Twins what all of those other greats were to their respected teams where they had played their hearts and guts out. I never forgave the twins for that. He was one of them that didn’t ask to leave. Now there is no more allegiance by the owners or the players to the fans. It’s all about the money. Who cares about the kids that worshiped you? The ones who sat wide- eyed in the bleachers just to get within fifty feet of their heroes, and prayed with all of their hearts for a home run ball or dangled their arms over the fence, begging to touch fingers with them.

I had a friend who lost his dog and he told me he would never get another. It was just too hard to lose them he reasoned. Well that’s the way I feel about baseball and the players now. Don’t get too attached to them because as soon as some wealthy owner opens his wallet they will be gone, and if you don’t build the team a new ball park every twenty years they will leave too. Maybe it’s time to go fishing. I’m not sure but I don’t think anyone can move the lake. 

HANDS

                                                            

When my wife and I were married almost a half of century ago, one of the photos in our wedding album was a picture of our crossed hands. I don’t remember it being taken and it must have seemed insignificant at the time. I was probably lost in the excitement of the day. For a few brief minutes the other day, looking for a different photo, I took out that album and I stared at that old black and white picture. Then I went and took her hand in mine and looked at the physical differences, all of these years have made to our hands. Those same hands, still wearing the same rings, we gave to each other on that day. Those hands that were so vibrant, unwrinkled, and unblemished back then, now showing the ravages of age and time. The bones are so much more apparent today, the skin parchment thin and peppered with age spots.

But then my meandering thoughts went in another direction and I thought of where those hands had been and how much they had accomplished over all of these years, and the stories they could tell if they could talk. I looked at her hands again and I saw them white with flour from the kitchen counter and black with dirt from the garden. Stained with berry juice at canning time and splotched with paint. I saw them dabbing tears from a little girls eyes and holding a wet cloth to a sick child’s forehead. I remember them turning the pages on a Doctor Seuss book while our son sat wide-eyed on her lap. I watched as they raced effortlessly back and forth on a typewriter keyboard and remembered the yards of cloth they had pushed through a sewing machine. I recalled how good they felt when they massaged the tension out of my shoulders after a hard days work, and the times they gently held my face while she softly kissed away all my troubles.

Then I looked at my own hands and remembered the day I cut my finger off at work, --the scar still visible. I remember the countless nails I pounded building our home and the nail I shot through my finger-- the one that no longer bends. The times I played catch with my kids in the backyard and showed my son how to throw a curve ball in little league. There were the times they were black with soot from my days on the fire department or sticky with someone’s blood. The days I stood by my parents grave and wiped my own tears away with the back of my hands. The times I baited hooks for my kids in the boat and all the times I offered them in friendship to so many people, and the times I just held them to my face and clasped them in prayer.

But the times I remember the most is when I took her hands in mine and we walked and talked, or just sat and tried to give each other a transfusion of caring and love, as if our empathy and emotions could just flow miraculously from fingertip to fingertip. Her hands fit so well in mine that first time I held them way back then, and today---well they fit even better. It’s as if our hands somehow became the coupler for us, the point of origin that joined us together over all of our years of partnership and remarkably today. Their simple touch can convey our innermost thoughts through some unexplainable process, which defies explanation and needs no words.

STORY TIME

Once upon a time, in a world far away, people were fed up with the amount of government in their lives. So they packed their possessions, and sailed across the sea—to a new world—where they could live without the tyranny they had been living under. America offered them a chance for a fresh start and a good life.

These were people who wanted to have a say in their government, and to have the freedoms that, before, they had only dreamt about. The freedom to worship as they pleased, freedom to say and write their views, freedom to elect people who would be their legislators in a congress, who would represent them and their needs. These legislators knew they could never please everyone, but they wanted to please most of them, and so they called it, “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” They wanted to form a more perfect union and realized it would never be all-perfect, but that is how a democracy works. So America, “the land of the free” was established and there were a lot of challenges over the years. A war came along that threatened to split the country in half, but finally they came to their senses, mended the rifts and carried on as the proud United States of America. Other countries threatened us, too, but we went to war to defend these freedoms, and defeated them.

Then, there were people who took those same freedoms they had been granted, and even though they were a small minority, they got their way as their lawyers litigated, what our forefathers had written, into things that were never meant to be.  Freedom of speech became the right to use profanity, tell lies and incite riots. Freedom of religion meant the one or two percent, who hated God, could get courts to chase the religious principles, that this country was founded on, out of our schools and public places. Freedom of the press meant you could peddle filth in magazines, television, movies and the internet. The right to bear arms morphed into assault rifles and guns that have no purpose but to kill another human being. We gave up on English as our official language, and told people we would teach them in whatever tongue they pleased. The door for immigration, at Ellis Island, was closed and people just snuck in any way they could. Drugs poisoned our society and sent crime rates soaring, as addicts turned to prostitution, stealing, robbing, and even killing, to feed their habits. We incarcerated more people than any country on earth, but still it grew.

The government of the people became the government of the lobbyists and special interest groups, or anyone else who had the bucks to buy political favors. Greed was rampant, and what had started out as capitalism with regulations, became true capitalism, where there are few winners because the one with the most money wins.

So in the end, the country became something it was never meant to be. It went broke over endless social programs, and useless wars, until it could no longer do business with the rest of the world. Congress became dysfunctional. The rest of the world grew increasingly wary and impatient with America, and so the country was on its own. The people looked to distant shores, like their forefathers who landed here did, but no longer was there a place to go and set up house all over again—the end.