Valentine's Day

Everyone who knows me knows I love my bride. They all know she's the most important thing in the world to me and the reason I get up when the alarm clock screams. Everyone who knows me knows I loved my Mother. I can't think of baseball, collard greens, Frank Sinatra or Glen Miller without getting tears in my eyes because I worshiped the woman who gave birth to me. Everyone who knows me knows I love my sisters. Three distinct individuals who all did their part to raise the baby of the family. Everyone who knows me knows I love my Mother-in-law. Mother-in-laws become the butt of way too many jokes. Not mine. When my own mother died she made it a point to pull me aside and tell me that she couldn't replace my Mother but she'd do her best to make sure I knew she loved me and wanted to take care of me. She does that and then some. What people may not know is that, so far, the first person to make me cry like a baby on this Valentine's Day wasn't a woman (and it's supposed to be a woman that makes you emotional on the day we've set aside for, well, mushy things.) No, the person that put me in a 'mushy' frame of mind was my father-in-law.
He put a Valentine's card in my hand yesterday. Hallmark's handiwork didn't mention a son-in-law. It mentioned a son........period. We talked on the phone later in the evening and he wanted to make SURE I'd noticed the card didn't say son-in-law....he wanted to make sure I'd noticed it just said "Son."
My own father left this world when I was a still a young man. ONE time he shook my hand and I damn near fainted. I figured he loved me, but was never really sure. He's probably somewhere now regretting that he didn't tell me. By the same token he's probably somewhere thanking God that Charles Fowler IS taking the time to tell me. He may one day get the opportunity to thank Charles Fowler personally for saying things he never got the opportunity to say. I sure hope that day ain't in the near future.

Nancy

I'm not much of a praying person. When/ if I do pray it's usually a "there's no atheists in foxholes" kind of a situation. But when I do, I usually end it with a message to to any of my angels who might be listening. I guess it makes praying more believable if you're praying to souls you've known "in the flesh" rather than the Creator of the universe. I'll keep that list of angels private...but if you know me, you know who they are.
So that brings me to you Nancy. There I was standing in the lobby of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Loganville, Georgia about to be a pall bearer at your funeral. You immediately got added to my list of angels. We'd had lunch together not a full day before you left us. For the first time since we met, you hugged me and said "I love ya'....I'm proud of ya..." But there I was just days later in the lobby of that church, asking my newest angel how to make my bride smile again.
Christmas wasn't good - she went through motions and went to church and lit candles and acted like all was right with her world. But it really wasn't. It only served to remind her how much you loved Christmas. Just days before she was elated that you'd put up your "dream tree" in the living room....a tree that Rich's would've been proud to light on Thanksgiving night (yeah, I'm showing my age.) But then you weren't there to see it lit on Christmas morning.
When I first started dating the woman that became my bride, you were the friend I was most worried about meeting. I knew you cared so much for her that if I didn't pass your inspection, it might be a deal breaker. Thank God you approved. So much so that you bought me a Christmas gift that very first Christmas. I exhaled because I guess that meant I passed the test.
I'll be hollering at you quite often in the weeks, months and years to come. I know there's going to be times when the hole you've left can only be filled by your laugh, your hard head and your determination. And not just for her - you provided a swift kick to my posterior on more than one occasion....I'm sure I'm going to need more. So, for me, you're heaven's newest angel...I know you're making the other angels behave!

"Woke last night to the sound of thunder...."

Oppressive heat. What the old folks used to call "stinkin' heat." You could walk outside yesterday and cut the muggy with a knife. But you know what? I love it. LOVE it. I thump my chest and say "yeah it's hot but this is the south and it gets hot! Deal with it!" Kind of like folks from Minnesota and Wisconsin move down here and laugh at us calling any weather cold. I see hot and muggy as part of what makes us, well, US! Long days, sticky nights and lightning bugs. LOVE it!
The muggy and the hot made a nice stew for some huge thunderstorms. I enjoy those loud storms as much as I enjoy the hot. A short blast of cool and wet and the earth smells clean and looks momentarily green...a short reprieve from the scorched look it wore before the storm. As a small child I remember those loud, dark and scary storms as an opportunity to get wrapped up in a parent's ability to shield us from all evil. "It's just noise." "Listen,,,the time between lightning and thunder is getting longer..that means the storm's moving on." "Look! The devil's beating his wife! The sun is out and it's raining at the same time!" That's when a daddy is a daddy - when he's making the storm go away. I don't have any children. But I have a yellow Labrador Retriever who was less than thrilled with the loud proceedings yesterday. I wasn't paying attention 'til I walked through the living room and noticed her lying between couch and coffee table. All I could see were big, fearful, begging, brown eyes. "Make it go away!" I stopped what I was doing and sat down on the couch and rubbed that belly 'til she was sure that not even the devil himself could get in through the back door. A belly rub and supper hitting her bowl made everything right with the world again. I felt like a daddy.

Sunday night at the First Baptist Church....

I'd spent the majority of the weekend in the woods, drinking beer and smoking meat and engaged in general male camaraderie with some fellow neanderthals. It was hot and it was fun. Needless to say I needed a shower in the worst way when I got home Sunday afternoon. My bride was thrilled with the mud on the outside and the smell of sweaty men inside her Tahoe. Anyway, I got the needed shower and we proceeded to go hear her mother sing at the First Baptist Church. I figured I'd washed the dirt off of my outside and now I could go commune with the Baptists and cleanse the weekend's debauchery from my soul (there's "Power In The Blood!")
My mother-in-law sings with a group called The Silvertones. They're a group of senior citizens that sing old-time gospel sort of music. My grandfather used to call them "singings." I reckon that's what I went to this Sunday night - a "singing." It's a huge choir - a hundred or so folks. I don't remember the names of many of the songs...doesn't matter. The music's not what I took away from the evening. A little background...
I've documented well some of the wars I wage with my own mind. I've drastically changed my body over the last two years but my state of mind is still short-circuited from the years spent in poor self-image and lack of self-esteem. With the weight gone I now find a variety of other things to seriously dislike (even hate) about myself. Mostly my lack of (what I deem) success in any one area. I've tried a thousand things. Failed at most of 'em. I now sit here forty-six years old, pretty much convinced that the best of times are gone. I've missed any opportunity at making my life notable beyond taxes and a mortgage and I'm fairly convinced my wife regrets the decision she made to walk down that aisle thirteen years ago.
I've got a big step I want to take and not discussed with many folks - a magazine the concept of which was born in my head some fifteen or sixteen years ago. 'Course then I wanted it to be a hard copy publication. In the last year I've come to realize that most publications I read are online magazines. Hence the notion of this magazine once again has life in the corner of my mind where I keep dreams (that corner is getting smaller and smaller.) I've even been offered assistance from a very talented relative who can assist with web design and all the stuff I know nothing about. He says my concept is good and we ought to run with it. His youthful exuberance should be rubbing off on me. To some degree it has. But I live in paralyzing fear that if I give this a shot and it goes nowhere it'll join the list of dreams that became duds. And, looming large, we're back to that number - forty-freakin'- six. Why start something at this age? I'm staring at fifty and starting to hear peers whisper about retirement plans. So really what's the point of me taking this leap now? Life's half over..it was a helluva ride. Just enjoy your morning coffees, your afternoon martinis and baseball. Start eating dinner at 4:00 in the afternoon and marking bowel movements on the calendar.
But then there stood those Silvertones, singing and smiling Sunday night. Their average age is 74. They've raised families and had careers. It would be easy to say their best years are behind them. But in talking to them I realized that, for them, every year is the best year. As long as there's breath in their lungs their journey continues. They're leaving Sunday for a tour, taking their songs on the road. There's musicians in their midst, learning new instruments and expanding their repertoire. There's one woman who writes and is constantly working on new stories. One fellow stood up to give what I reckon they call a "testimony." (I grew up Methodist..if somebody stood up in church it was to announce what to bring for covered dish or how much registration fees for softball would cost...I don't remember "testimonies.") This fellow is a retired Marine - in his early 70's. He still looks the part - tall and lean and cut like he lifts weight daily. However he has now found the one foe that even a bad-ass Marine can't conquer - bone cancer. He told us best-case scenario was four years. He didn't cringe at the thought, though - he stood there with a smile on his face and told us that if all he had was four years he was going to make it a very busy four years for him and his wife. When the words left the doctor's mouth I would've quit - he got excited about how they were going to spend the time that was left.
It's just not fair - I'd talked myself into quitting..and here are these folks making me ashamed that I'd let a defeatist attitude creep in again. I reckon forty-six isn't so old. I reckon I need to go to more "singings."

Home

Somewhere in the middle of the night in the middle of middle Georgia - near Thomaston, I think - I realized that I probably shouldn't have been driving. My fever was getting higher by the minute. I was shivering while maintaining a death grip on the steering wheel. It's a rare occurrence when one can drive through Georgia in the heat of summer and not run the air or roll down a window. That little Chevrolet Citation was sealed up tight as a drum because I was freezing. The right side of my face throbbed, the result of an ear infection that I'd found while swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. I started running a fever that morning and it was getting worse by the hour.
See, we'd gone back to her family's place after our beach trip but her family hated me. I don't use the term loosely.....I mean they really hated me. They hated the fact that their daughter was dating an overweight person (On prior visits to their house they'd even gone into my luggage to see what size pants I wore.) They hated the fact that their daughter was dating someone from Atlanta (which, in the minds of many folks in rural Georgia, is where all the sin on earth originates.) They hated the fact that she'd moved away from their little town in south Georgia and made plans and decisions that didn't involve them or their family business. They said she'd "changed" since she'd left home and they hated it. But most of all they hated me.
So here I was, driving through the hot night, burning up with fever not really knowing where I was going. Her family had made it abundantly clear that I couldn't stay there because "it just wouldn't look right..." No matter - I'd just about decided that I was ready to leave her and that part of my life far behind and home was the only place I wanted to be. None of my plans had worked. Everything I'd left home to accomplish had escaped me and I was going to be tucking my tail between my legs and running back home. I'd deal with all of that later. At the moment I needed some sleep and some medicine.
I'd made it to Griffin. I was finally able to pick up the Braves on the radio. The sound of Ernie Johnson's voice was the proverbial "light in the window." I was almost there. I knew that, as she was sitting in the nearly empty house that I'd grown up in, my mother was watching the game that I'd just found on the radio. She was hanging on every pitch and every at bat. For as long as I could remember she'd loved baseball and, because of her undying devotion to the hometown team, my family had sat through some awful, awful baseball. The Braves weren't always good, but they were always her team. Even before the Braves there were the Atlanta Crackers playing at the old Ponce de Leon park. She'd worked as a teenager in the old Sears building across the street from "Poncey" and had walked over to watch many innings of Cracker baseball. Even as a child she'd been taken to watch Crackers games by an old black couple that lived near her family in the mill village they now call "Cabbagetown." "Effie" and "Ham" babysat some of the mill children and often took them to Crackers games and they all sat in the "colored" section of the old ballpark. I remember hoping that I'd get home in time to watch an inning or two with her because that would surely feel like "being at home." But it was late in the game and I knew that by the time I got there she'd have the television turned off and would be lying in bed, doing crosswords and listening to the radio, catching the postgame show and out of town scores. That image in my mind was almost as comforting as actually being there.
I realized I should call. She'd be frightened if a car pulled into the driveway this late at night. The road had gone from a two lane blacktop to a 4 lane freeway now. I saw a pay phone by a convenience store and pulled in. Getting out of the car and on my feet I realized how sick I was. The ground seemed to move out from under me and I'd never quite had that sensation unless a bottle of tequila was involved.
She was thrilled to hear my voice. There was no questioning why I was coming home just elation that I was. "How much longer 'til you get here?" "Please be careful." "Are you hungry?" I assured her that I wasn't hungry but didn't tell her that my appetite was gone because I was so sick. If she knew I was driving sick she'd be on pins and needles until I arrived.
Getting back in the car I felt better already. The lights got brighter and the traffic got heavier. I was still shivering from the fever. By this time, my head was a cinder block that I couldn't hold up anymore. But finally I was in the neighborhood and being someplace where every name on every street sign conjured up a different memory of childhood friends and bike rides and touch football was an instant comfort.
When she opened the door her face went from delight to shock. "Are you o.k.??" She hugged me - "OH DEAR LORD! YOU'RE ON FIRE!! LAY DOWN NOW!" I didn't argue. I made it to her couch and collapsed. Soon, I was full of fluids and Tylenol. I tried to explain to her what I was doing home. She told me not to worry about any of that. "Just rest.....just rest..." A cold washcloth soon made it to my forehead. For the first time in weeks, maybe months I was relaxed. I actually started getting drowsy. The last thing I remember before I fell asleep was her sitting down at the end of the couch. I learned an important lesson that night - modern medicine can feed us all of the narcotics, anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications they want. You can try to make the bad days better by pouring your favorite adult elixir over ice. But none of that can make you feel better as quickly as the touch of your Mother's hand on your forehead checking for a fever.

Uncle Ralph's Hands

"Where you planning on fishing tonight?" I was so taken with being allowed to drive the boat that I'd driven it right past the power lines that hung over our favorite fishing spot. I turned it around, found the power lines and dropped the anchor. The sun would soon set and our lanterns would be lit. We'd spend the evening cursing bugs, drinking coffee out of his thermos and dozens of crappie and catfish would soon be one step closer to Aunt Nell's frying pan.
When the weather turns warm, my mind returns to those summer nights spent fishing with my Uncle Ralph....back to the days before Dawson County was a suburb and you could spend a night fishing on Lake Lanier and not see another living soul. I learned how to fish. I learned how to drive a boat in daylight and dark, using the tree line against the night sky to guide you. I learned a lot of words and expressions my mother didn't approve of (how hard must a rain be before it can be described as falling "like a cow pissin' on a flat rock" ?? ) I learned how to tell by the sound of a dog's bark off in those dark woods that it wasn't just barking for the hell of it..it was chasing something. I also learned that the wretched stench coming from those woods meant the dog wished it had chased something besides a skunk. I learned that there's lots of ways to make an honest living and it doesn't matter so much how you're making it just as long as you're making it. But I always thought the means by which Uncle Ralph provided for his family was a pretty fair measure of a man. And you could see those hundreds of days spent in hard labor when you looked at his hands.
His hands and fingers were constantly busted and bleeding. A Winston cigarette looked like a toothpick in those thick fingers. They never really looked clean because you can't wash off years of sheetrock mud and red clay. As a child, he and his hands became quite the measuring stick for me in determining how much of a man a man really was. Like I said, it was just important to him that you earned a living, not how you did it. My father made a living at a desk. I make a living in front of a laptop. But I'm still hell-bent on believing that going to bed sore every night means that you've done a good day's work...and a hard day's work is satisfying on levels that go beyond financial.
I saw him lose control of his emotions exactly once. I was 17 years old and his youngest child was lying in a hospital bed losing a battle with cancer. After hours spent by that bed he walked into a waiting room, sat in a dark corner, put his face in his hands and quietly cried for just a few seconds. I couldn't hear him crying, but I knew he was. He then wiped his eyes, lit one of those Winstons, took a few quick draws, put it out in an ash tray and returned to his dying son's bedside. THAT, I thought, is how a man handles tragedy.
Being in my mid 40's is a much stranger experience than I ever imagined. I tend to look at myself from the outside in, as if I'm watching someone else get older, not myself. In my mind I'm still 20-something and turning over a thousand things in my head I want to see and do and accomplish before my time on planet earth ends ("...so something like a swiss army knife..yeah, that's my life...") I'm sometimes caught off guard when I realize that I AM that person who's getting older and the death of loved ones reminds me that nothing is forever. For years my weight was the enemy..now time is the antagonist. Weight I could conquer...time's a real ass-kicker. But also constantly hanging over my head is the example shown to me by men like Uncle Ralph. Men who were men, by God, and in charge and in control. I'm not quite sure I'll ever live up to the template they left me.
The last time I saw Uncle Ralph alive he was the one in a hospital bed. A ventilator was doing his breathing for him and the end was near. I took his hand to tell him I loved him and to thank him for all he'd taught me. And, though the rest of that body had turned frail those hands still felt like sandpaper, as if he'd spent that very day turning someone's patio into a sunporch or planting fifteen rows of beans.

"We are the people...."

"We are the people,
our parents warned us about..."

Being the youngest of four children meant wherever I went as a kid, I was usually the youngest one there. My parents never had the challenge of managing a barrel of monkeys like the folks I see at the grocery store (with 3 kids, 2 buggies and a boatload of headaches.) When our family went somewhere it was me and a bunch of grown folks. It never occurred to me to act like a fool because nobody I was with was ever acting like a fool. I had several templates to choose from when learning to be an adult. Problem is, I'm now 46 years old and still trying to figure it out. I don't FEEL grown. I probably don't SEEM grown. I've been domesticated by a lovely woman who probably wonders if she's bitten off more than she can chew. But I'm not playing the part of "adult" as well as the grown folks I grew up around and certainly not as well as the ones (especially the men) who raised me.
I once had an older, semi-retired coworker who made a clear point with me in the course of conversation. He got most exasperated and said "Thank Christ your generation didn't have to fight World War II!! We'd all be speaking German!!!!!!" It's not our fault we've got "the greatest generation" to live up to. Current events dictate heroic responses. The enemy was clear in 1939 and then certainly became more clear in 1941. Here in 2010 our enemies aren't quite so obvious. The enemy is sometimes wearing a designer suit with a red, white and blue flag pin on his lapel. The enemy is sometimes sitting in his basement and is one keystroke on a laptop away from hacking into our personal lives, our checking accounts or even our national security. The enemy looks like the rest of us but is a step away from hijacking a plane, planting a bomb or releasing some toxins into an air conditioning vent. Hell, I reckon sometimes we're our own worst enemy. So forgive us if we haven't assembled the Calvary and charged where angels fear to tread. We're not sure where to charge!
It was 70-something degrees yesterday. So I opened the windows, shook up a cocktail, threw supper on the grill and blasted "Physical Graffiti" from the living room onto the patio. I chuckled because the thought occurred to me that I hadn't come from very far from being 21 years old - sitting in the sun, getting baked and listening to Zeppelin (though, when I was 21 "getting baked" carried a much different connotation..now it just means I need some sunblock!) My wife reminded me that I'm always the one complaining about kids in the neighborhood and their loud music. I made it quite clear that there was, in fact, a distinct difference because I was listening to GOOD music.
I'm rambling, but here's my point. I'm having a helluva time making the real ME catch up to the chronological ME. I used to find great amusement in laughing at someone who was (what I considered at the time) OLD but still wearing the same outfit they'd worn to Woodstock. Now I'm fairly certain that someday I'll be that same character...wearing a worn out Buffett t-shirt and a ratty old pair of flip flops, in dire need of cutting whatever hair I have left, my cane in one hand, a martini in the other. And some young soul will laugh at me, certain that they're never going to reach a point in life where they'll be that ridiculous.