Tuesday, November 25, 2014

THANKSGIVING 2014

                                              
I wanted to write about Thanksgiving because I feel it’s becoming a somewhat forgotten holiday. It used to be a long, late fall weekend, when with friends and family we stopped everything to reflect on the things we were thankful for in life. Although a lot of us still make an attempt to celebrate, the real day has been lost, somewhere between Halloween and Christmas. You see outside of some extra groceries, there isn’t a lot the merchants can do, to make a windfall off of Thanksgiving. Yes, like it or not, money drives everything in our society now days. On a side note, I saw today that my Christmas cactus is blooming, two months ahead of schedule. It too, can’t wait

Let’s have a little test here and be honest with yourself. Does spending a weekend with yourself and your loved ones really turn you on? Or does crashing the crowds on Black Friday, looking for that ultimate bargain, seem more like what’s up your alley? Maybe it’s a chance to reconnect with grandpa and grandma and go for a slow walk on a warm November day. Or does six hours of football seem like the better choice? Or is it just a four-day weekend and it doesn’t matter why? It’s four days off.

There was time when I used to think, more like a lot of people think on Thanksgiving about all of the busy times but then something told me to pay attention, because Thanksgiving was important way then and it still is now. I think back when I used to pick up my handicapped brother who was all-alone and bring him out to our house for dinner but I can’t do that anymore because Ken passed away this summer. I fondly remember my dear wife getting up at six in the morning to get that bird in the oven and make that stuffing that got you drooling just thinking about it but I can’t do that anymore either because she too has gone to heaven. I used to enjoy the house being full of my family and their families and little kids playing games with their cousins and siblings, reconnecting with each other, if only for a few short hours but I can’t do that anymore either, because they all grew up and moved away.

This year I will probably go to my sons place for Thanksgiving. It’s the closest family I have. He feels about family like I do and I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful I can still drive myself down there and for being able to write about this. I’m thankful for my health and for Pat who has made my life exciting again and giving me a new purpose in life. I am thankful for my faith and the friends I have made. For the readers who take time to talk with me. I hope all of you have someone, someplace to enjoy the holiday with. But most of all I would be remiss to not say, I’m thankful for the love in my heart that continually trumps the evil this world has chosen to tempt me with.

 I am especially thankful this year because at least for a while, while living through life, I made some memories and no one can take that away from me-- at least not until my mind is stilled. On my living room wall there is a picture that means so much to me. It’s a family picture of my family. It was taken at Thanksgiving four years ago when she was still with us. I feel a sense of pride and achievement in it because you see way back when-- before all of this ever came to pass---it was what I wanted so much and I’m so thankful it came to be.       



Wednesday, November 19, 2014

NEARING THE END OF THE ROAD

                                               
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my neighbors and dear friends moving away and how painful that was going to be for them and me. Twenty-seven years of memories to sort through for both of us but what seemed to me to be the most egregious is--- this was because it had to be-- not because someone needed a change of scenery or was taking a new job. They used to say, “when life handed you lemons you made lemonade” but there comes a time and a place when you have all of the lemons you can tolerate-- and there is really nothing you can do with them-- but eat them.

Their place sold quickly and last Saturday was moving day. The yard was full of trucks pulling trailers and for a while it was family members totting out boxes and furniture and everyone was busy but then in the late afternoon, I saw him standing in the yard looking wistfully over the lake. I used to see him crying on the end of his dock on Labor Day because the end of summer was so painful for him. I could only imagine what was going through his mind now. An old man, alone with his thoughts.

All through our married lives we seem to bounce from place to place. It’s an apartment at first, to a starter home, to something much better. Maybe two homes or a motor home or a condo, someplace warm in the winter. But all of the time, the clock is ticking and the time will come when all of this just seems too much to take care of and worry about. Money can become a problem, as does your health. Then that sad decision comes that its time and that last move looms on the horizon. All of your life you were moving on up and had your sights set on even bigger things then you now have but suddenly you realize you’re at the top of the hill, the end of the road and you don’t want to think about what lies ahead, even though you know.

I remember when my wife was diagnosed with cancer and we knew from the start there was no cure but we hoped and prayed that tomorrow would be no worse then today. That the chemo was working and we weren’t going to get too hung up on what we knew was coming but live in the day-- in the moment. Then one day she went for her treatment and they took us to another room that was more like an office and the doctor wasn’t making eye contact with us anymore. He explained it was the end of the treatments, the end of the road. As a terminal cancer patient you have to sometimes feel like a condemned prisoner on death row who X’s out the days on a crude calendar drawn on the wall, until he takes that last lonely walk. 


We all have our dreams and aspirations and yes even our end of life dreams about how we would like to tie it all together and go out in a blaze of glory but you suddenly realize that you have so little control over that. I can only imagine what it felt like for my neighbor to drive down that driveway, one last time and know that what is up there in his rearview mirror, is what was once in his windshield, twenty seven years ago. I walk around my place and every corner, every nook and cranny, harbors some memory of a time or event that took place there. True you do take the memories with you but it’s not the same. It’s not the same without the cries of the loons, the waves lapping the shoreline, the painted sunsets over the still waters and even when you close your eyes, the smell of the lake. A.A.Milne of Winnie the Poo fame said, “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

Monday, November 17, 2014

VETERANS DAY

                                                                                    

The year was 1953 in the town where I grew up, Staples Minnesota. Mostly a railroad town but still a sleepy farming community too. I was twelve years old and at that awkward age-- somewhere between a boy and a young man. It was early spring, the icicles were melting and the water was running in the streets. The sap was running and buds on the trees were swelling in anticipation of summer. It was too early for baseball and to late for skating and I was bored with winter and waiting for summer as I wandered uptown daydreaming.

That late afternoon I had walked up to the depot to watch the train come in. The son of a railroader, the trains were in my blood. This was still the days of the steam engines and I had never grown tired of watching those behemoth, black steel steam engines, belching steam and smoke as they chugged into the station pulling a line of box cars that seemed to stretch for as far as the eye could see. This train was a passenger train however and right behind the coal and water tender there was a baggage car. On one end of the car was the storage for all of the boxes and baggage, with a roll up door and on the other end was the U.S. mail.

On this day I had perched myself, not in front of the depot on those red cobblestones but on one of the baggage carts, that sat under a canopy on the east end. They were green with red wheels and looked like huge wagons, made to carry big loads. The steel wheels would click on the bricks as they were pulled around the depot apron. I had watched them load them many times but never with what they were going to be carrying today. The door on the baggage car slid open and there were two men standing there at attention in blue and red uniforms, white hats with rifles by their sides. Between them on the floor was a flag draped casket.

I heard a noise to my right and there was a hearse, it’s back door wide open like a big yawning mouth. The noise I had heard was an elderly woman sobbing into her husbands shoulder as they made the transfer. I shrunk back trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. The honor guard stood at attention until the body was transferred to the baggage cart and then into the hearse. I looked up the tracks and the engineer and the fireman were also standing beside the engine, their caps over their hearts.


From studies at school I knew we were at war in some place called Korea, but then it seemed like we had just got out of a war and now another had started.  I was immune to the effects of it all, at my young age-- that is until that day. It was the day that I realized what war could really do. That this young man had come home at last, after giving all he had to give, for his country. That his grief stricken parents had given their son, and others gave someone’s brother, someone’s cousin, someone’s friend to keep our country free. This image has stayed with me all of these years as if it was yesterday. I think of it every time I see the Staples depot and now if you stand where I stood and look to the east you can see the Veteran’s memorial, beside the railroad tracks and I think how fitting.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT


A few days back, I was asked if my father believed in corporal punishment? I asked if that meant getting a spanking and they said “yes.” Under that definition I guess he did. For the most part I respected my dad too much, not to do what I was asked to do. But it was the things he never told me not to do-- that I did-- that got me in trouble a couple of times. His spankings were never a very painful thing but more of an embarrassment to me. He wasn’t a violent man, even when he had to spank.
I am grateful that my dad disciplined me. I think in the end it made me a better person. As a father I don’t recall ever-getting physical with my kids except to pinch their shoulders to tell them “That’s enough,” In retrospect my kids were pretty good kids but I give their mother most of the credit.

Fast-forward to today and all the buzz is on corporal punishment because some children have been severely punished, even to the point of death. The excuse that you were treated that way when you were young, sounds like something some defense lawyer dreamed up. When you’re twenty-nine years old and still believe that to be so--- you must have been living behind a rock.

Then we have the people who don’t believe in even raising their voices to their child. I was in a church the other day and the women in front of me had about a four or five year old girl who kept kicking the seat in front of her. She was told to “stop that” numerous times but she smiled at her mother and kept on doing it. In effect the child was telling her “I will do it if I want to.” Finally her father reached over and held her legs down to the seat. Then the child started crying and went to her mother for support. The father got a disgusted look from his wife for making the girl cry. Right then and there that child found out how to play her parents against each other. I’m sure that won’t be the last time she uses that tactic.

Grand parents are also on the outside looking in. My wife used to go shopping with our grandkids and their mother. The kids ran wild in the store. When my wife tried to intervene she was told, ‘if the kids needed correction that wasn’t her job. “ When my wife said, “Someone needed to correct the kids” she was told “kids will be kids.” I think the mother knew the same Lawyer I talked about earlier. My wife had no choice but to quit shopping with her when the kids were along.


I have known people who could freeze their kids in their tracks when they said “no” or “stop that.” To me that’s a sign that somewhere along the line, respect for their authority, was established. I don’t believe in hitting your kids anywhere but on the butt and then only with an open hand and then when all else has failed. If it’s done right and only when verbiage fails, you won’t have to do it very often. Respect for your parents or a guardian is the first lesson in respect for others of authority. Teachers, coaches, grandparents, anyone who is instrumental in working with your kids. Your inability to teach your kids respect, will only hurt them in the long run. You’re not doing them any favors by trying to always be their best friend.