Good Friday

    
Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!
Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia!
Charles Wesley

     There were always cupcakes that looked like Easter baskets.  Mama would take coconut, mix it with green food coloring, then put the "grass" on top of a cupcake already covered in white icing.  She'd nestle in some jelly beans and then bend a straw to make it look like a basket handle.  She took the Easter Basket cupcakes to Sunday School for the third graders she taught for years.  We'd have extras at home.  I think about her and those cupcakes every Easter.

     There was the year that Daddy began some huge project in the basement a couple of weeks before Easter.  He kept asking me to come downstairs and assist.  Every time I asked him what we were building and every time he found a way to avoid the question.

 "Just hold that board still so I don't hit you with the saw."
"Yessir,,, but what are we building?"
"It's a secret...I don't want to tell anyone in case it doesn't turn out the way I want it to...."

     Being the engineer he was I could tell he'd drawn up some plans for whatever it was on some drafting paper from his office.  But that wasn't unusual - the simplest of household chores sometimes started on drafting paper from his office.  When Easter morning finally arrived, I was led down to "the project" now finished in the basement. Turns out it was a rabbit pen and I had been given two live rabbits in lieu of an Easter Basket that year.  I liked them even better than the peanut butter eggs and jelly beans and Easter Basket cupcakes.  At least one of them lived much longer than rabbits usually do, not dying until we'd moved to a new house and I was a teenager.  It might've been my best Easter.

     Easter always meant a new suit.  You had to get a new one, not just because of Easter protocol but because you were growing at such a pace that last year's suit didn't fit or it was just showing the wear and tear a reckless male child can exact on a good suit.  Some of them were God-awful gawdy, in colors that would've been plain garish the rest of the year.  But on Easter they seemed perfectly natural, as did the gigantic hats that adorned my sisters' heads.   Those hats looked like they were on their way to the Kentucky Derby, not the Methodist church at the corner of Metropolitan and Moreland. I remember Easter being the only time Daddy slapped Vitalis in my hair, using it's miracle powers to control a cowlick that could double as a television antenna.  I never knew why he had a bottle of Vitalis in the medicine cabinet - he was bald.  I reckon to use on that one Sunday a year, so that my hair would be as spiffy as my suit.

     After church there was ham.....lots of ham. And green beans.  And deviled eggs.  And more ham.  Being older and slower and busier I now know the Herculean effort involved in a spread like that one.  Especially AFTER you've made the Easter Basket cupcakes, helped sisters get those huge hats to perch on their heads just right and kept  a rotten little boy in a new suit from going down to the dog pen to play with his favorite creatures ( "You can 't go to church smelling like a dog!")

 Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once he died our souls to save, Alleluia!
Where's thy victory, boasting grave? Alleluia!


     Last night, late in the evening on Maundy Thursday,  I decided to watch the news before I went to sleep.  On the news, I saw infant lying amongst the rubble of a freshly bombed airport terminal,  crying at the top of its lungs.  I suddenly wasn't so sleepy.  No one responded to its screams because that baby's dead mother was lying next to it - the nails in the homemade bomb someone turned loose in that airport had found her body instead of her baby's.  Though someone slowed down long enough to take that video on their phone they didn't stop running.  "I couldn't run past a dog crying for it's mother, how can those people just ignore that baby?"  I decided to not be too hard on them because I've never found myself in the middle of a terrorist attack and don't know how I'd react. I was glad the lady of the house had already fallen asleep so that she wouldn't see a tear roll down my cheek as I tried to rest.   I tried to relax.  I even tried to pray.  I didn't do much of either.

     This morning's Good Friday.   I worked hard to put my mind on my job, answer emails, make some calls and play catch up from a busy week.  But I didn't turn on the news.  I didn't want to hear that baby crying again.   So I kept my nose to the figurative grindstone and kept hoping it'd feel like the middle day of the three days that are supposed to define the faith I was raised to lean on (no matter how dark things became.  "There's Power In The Blood!")    But it was so much easier back then.  Easter Sunday and church and Charles Wesley hymns and ham and bunny rabbits and fancy cupcakes and more ham.  Yes, the world was much, much nicer.   Hell, we even loved going to school most days!  I can remember one time, in second grade, Mrs. Kilpatrick (who was at the same time the scariest and sweetest teacher God ever put on earth) showed us a map of our United States.  She went around our circle, pointed at a state and we took turns telling her what each abbreviation meant.  Everyone else got "GA"   or "TN"  or "NY"    I got "VT"  I said, "uh,,,,Vietnam?"   It was some word I'd heard on the news, you see. 

          “He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activites in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.”
Cormac McCarthy, "All the Pretty Horses"

Coffee & Crosswords

     "If you like colored water, you'll have to get your coffee somewhere else."  God knows the Luzianne coffee with chicory root that she used to brew in the morning could put hair on your chest (or take it off your head - a distinct possibility given my father's head and the way mine has turned out.)   Singing in the morning.  Who sings that loudly before the sun's up?  I can remember as a child thinking "if I didn't have to go to school and got to stay at home all day and do crossword puzzles I'd sing in the morning, too."   But that's not all that consumed her day - I was just too innocent (ignorant) to realize it.  Like anyone else raising a family, our clothes got washed, a broom got pushed and a hot meal at suppertime starts in the afternoon.  But when I think about her, the first images that come to my brain are strong coffee, crossword puzzles and that constant singing in the morning.

     Today would've been her 91st birthday and I considered going to the cemetery on my lunch break, putting down some flowers and standing there sad for a minute.  But I could just about hear her voice - "You've had a cold all week.  You don't need to be standing out here in the wet and cold."   She used to say she didn't want an open casket when she died ("I don't want people standing around saying 'Oh, doesn't she look good?!'  No!  I'll look dead!")   In the same conversation she would tell me "and I don't want people standing around at the cemetery staring at the ground.  That's not me in the ground."   Indeed it's not.  "Sweet" is something that lives on in our hearts, in our memories of her.  And 9 times out of 10 it's the first word I hear folks use when remembering her. "Your mama was so sweet."   "She was so sweet to us."  "She was sweet and she could cook!"  

     And she could make a pretty good cup of coffee.  My bride loves to poke fun at my own coffee addiction.  "I've never seen anybody who could just chug scalding hot coffee like you and  Erfy!"  I take it as a compliment - maybe if I can chug coffee as well as she did someday I'll learn to be as sweet as she was.  Probably not...and there's no chance I can breeze through a crossword as quickly as she did.  And my singing is not something you ever want to hear at any time of the day.  The fact that today's her birthday didn't make me  miss her any more than I already miss her every other day of the year.  And she'd be ok with that, I think.  "Just finish your work, make a pot of coffee and decide what you're gonna cook Rhonda for dinner."  I miss her but I can still hear her...

     

Penguins in the woods.....

     I just didn't want to get involved with Monday this morning.  A pot of my favorite coffee and I was still sitting and staring,  in spite of the big chunk of adulthood staring me in the face through a laptop and emails.  If you had a "Christmas break" then God bless you.  For a lot of us, Christmas break was Christmas Day and then another week of work then a day off Friday for New Years Day.   Had I scheduled my year a little differently, I would've taken some time off during the holidays but sometimes year-end business doesn't always lend itself to that.  In fact when I turned on my laptop I was bombarded by folks who HAD taken a chunk of time off since the week before Christmas and were now anxious to get things rolling again.  I was just anxious to drink coffee and feel sorry for myself.   And, as for my bride, being an RN rarely lends itself to long breaks of any kind.  At least I'm able to work from home and didn't have to get back into the commute and traffic like she did.

     I poured another cup and turned on CNN.  They interviewed Donald Trump.  I listened to the interview because I'm grown, by God, and listening to folks running for office (especially THAT office) should be on my agenda.  A few minutes in I couldn't decide if I was disgusted or frightened that someone who apparently went to politician fantasy camp (but then made the team!) was THIS close to the Oval Office. 

     STILL not wanting any part of Monday I poured another cup and started flipping channels.  Came upon some cartoon where a tiny British girl was imagining all the things that lived in her imaginary woods.  She decided her woods were full of penguins.  The little girl playing alongside her said "Penguins don't live in the woods!"  The first little girl had a swift and convincing retort with "They do in MY woods."   I couldn't tell you the name of this cartoon but I watched more of it than I did the Trump interview.  A little girl wanted to frolic in woods where penguins lived.  Hell, who wouldn't??   I was jealous of her innocence and imagination.

     Back in my single days - when I lived alone in a crash pad with a 130 pound Labrador Retriever - I had an odd cure for insomnia (because, well, I'm odd.)  Stashed away in my nightstand was the first book I ever read and had  held onto through all the changes and travels.  Anytime I had trouble sleeping  I grabbed my copy of "Charlotte's Web," opened it and started reading on any page.  I knew the story well enough to immediately follow whatever was going on with that girl and her pig.  A visit to childhood usually relaxed me enough to put me to sleep until an alarm clock forced me to, once again, deal with adulthood. 

     I'm not sure if I still have that copy of "Charlotte's Web."   It's probably best - I should learn how to deal with the "daily unadulterated crap" without trying to resurrect childhood innocence.  Still I think there's a reason why we leave this world sometimes curled back into the position in which we entered it (and, during our journey, spend a lot of time looking for our own patch of woods full of penguins.)  

Bigfoot and a schoolboy heart...

At the house we lived in up until my ninth year on the planet, there was a crawl space by the basement stairs that seemed to go on forever.  When going down the stairs you could look over into the crawl space (the only part of that basement that was unfinished) although I seldom did.  I didn't want to see eyes looking back at me.  I didn't want to hear anything moving around.  Anytime I had reason to go down into the basement I simply kept eyes forward, turned on the tunnel vision and made a mad dash down the stairs.  

But then, one day, the kid that lived next door to us (who was my partner in crime in many situations our parents probably wanted us to avoid) got up our nerve and went halfway down the stairs and crawled up there with two flashlights.  We spent half a Saturday getting up our nerve and then summoned up all the bravado that can live in a child of single digit age and climbed from staircase over into crawl space and began our journey.  Needless to say, we found nothing but Georgia red clay and some vents in the cinder blocks through which one could see out into the side yard.  We crawled far enough to look through those vents at green grass and sunshine.  We then crawled back out of there quite disappointed,  having lost a good measure of excitement from our young lives.  Granted, it was excitement grounded in fear, but excitement none the less.  And on that Saturday afternoon, it was taken from us! 

Life is so much more fun if you think "something" is up there, out there or in there.  If we've discovered everything that creeps and crawls and swims and flies then I think we're living in boring times!  Plus my wife just gets way too much enjoyment watching me glued to television shows where folks from West Virginia to Australia are out in the woods and jungles looking for creatures that live (for some folks) only in legend and folklore.  But I like to think  they're just one step away from coming face to face with Bigfoot (or the Grafton Monster or the Hellhound or a Yowie.....)

They spend a lot of time on these shows howling off into the dark night.  Sometimes they get a response.   "SEE!?"  I yell at her!  "SOMETHING ANSWERED THEM!!!"    "It's some other goober off in the woods yelling back at people stupid enough to be out yelling at things that aren't there!" she responds, usually through chuckles.  She says it worries her that I lend any credence to their "research."  Truth be told, I can spot a fake or staged "reality show" as easily as the greatest skeptic.  I just don't want to. I guess being scared of stupid things is the last way someone my age can hold on to the heart of the child still living somewhere inside of an aging body.  Besides, one should watch these shows if for no other reason than to feel better about themselves.  Some of these "hunters" and "researchers" are more likely to find Bigfoot than they are a barber or a dentist.  I ain't a handsome man but DANG I can clean up and look a sight better than that!! 

The weather lady and the rain and Mama and black coffee....

       It was that great southern philosopher Lewis Grizzard who many years ago said that the weatherman talked too much.  "All we want to know is whether or not it's going to rain."  If he felt that way twenty-something years ago, he should hear meteorologists these days (they're now really smart and sometimes women.)  This morning, for instance, I just wanted to know if the rain was going to be of the Biblical proportions they'd been promising all week (turns out it was.)  But before I could hear the bottom line, I had to be educated about how soil temperature in Idaho had caused a frontal boundary to spawn a wedge that pushed high pressure back to Mexico and that - mixed with Gulf moisture - meant that we all could quite possibly drown by midnight. "But in case you don't, we're giving away antibiotic-free turkeys to 100 viewers tomorrow.  Remember, you must be watching to win!"  
     I was gathering this news from a meteorologist on a different channel than our usual (yes, one of the signs of old age is that you have a preferred news channel.)  I actually didn't know this woman was still on television.  Just the sight of her face, though, brought a smile to mine.  I was taken straight back to a breakfast with Mama many years ago, not long after we'd first started noticing signs of dementia.  Our roles as adult/child had just started their reversal and on this particular morning I had to promise to take her to breakfast if she'd let me take her to get a flu shot.
     The flu shot went by without incident but in the middle of that breakfast she suddenly hit me on the arm and got quite animated.  "LOOK! THAT'S THE WOMAN THAT TELLS THE WEATHER ON CHANNEL 2!!!!"  I was really hoping that the object of her shouting was sitting a great distance from us, rendering her unable to hear Mother's glee.   No such luck - she was at the table right next to us.  I could've reached out and hit HER on the arm.  I just said "I think you're right" and gave an apologetic smile that tried to say "sorry, but she's old and it doesn't take much to excite her."   The meteorologist  just gave me a wink and a smile that let me know it wasn't as much an intrusion on her day as I feared it would be.  A minute or two of silence passes and I'm hoping the episode was behind us...but the hollering started again.   "GOOD LORD SHE'S A TALL DRINK OF WATER!"  I thanked the Almighty that her height was the only thing of note that my mother could find to holler about.  The only thing I noticed about her was that she apparently has a coffee addiction that rivals  my own.  She pounded as many cups as I did and drank it black, the way the Good Lord intended for people to drink coffee.
      So, anyway, a promise of bad weather turned into a visit with Mama.  Laughing instead of hurting is a good way to miss her. 

    

Leave it to Clapton....

     You think you've never heard of Conor, but you have.  If you've heard Eric Clapton sing "Tears In Heaven" you're familiar with Conor.  He was Eric's son, who fell out of window in March of 1991.  But his demise (sad and horrific as it may be) isn't the part of his life that holds me captive.  It's his birth.  Because, when retelling the details of that birth on August 21, 1986,  Clapton wrote in his autobiography:

"I just had an incredible feeling that this was going to be the first real thing that had ever happened to me.  Up till that moment, it seemed like my life had been a series of episodes that had very little meaning."  

     So a resume that would ultimately land you in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame THREE TIMES (once solo, once with Cream and once with The Yardbirds) had little meaning for you?    Having your name scribbled on subway walls followed by "....is GOD"  meant little?  Changing the way people play guitar FOREVER meant little?  A career that ultimately won 18 Grammys meant little?

     If Eric Clapton, at ANY POINT, felt  that his life had little meaning....dear GOD imagine how the rest of us on planet earth feel.  Those of us with broken dreams, marriages, careers  and promises...imagine how WE feel.   I've read every word of Clapton's autobiography twice.  And no words included hold as much meaning as the notion that he ever (EVER) felt like his life had little meaning.

     I'm not alone in growing older by the day.  Hell, everybody I know has pains and issues that remind us that we're "Growing older but not up...."  (to quote another great songwriter whose roots are planted in soil much closer to my native soil than Clapton's)   But inside all of us lives the fear that - as we near our expiration date - we've done NOTHING to make people's lives better.

     I can live with never being monetarily rich.  I only want to keep people I love comfortable.  Anything past that is gravy.  I can live with the hits & misses of career choices - they only gave me opportunity to meet some very cool people, some of them (though gone) still touch my life.  But what I don't want to happen is to leave this opportunity thinking that I wasted time.  You see my Mother lost 3 babies on the way to having me.  That's a LOT of a pressure to live under....thinking 3 other souls didn't get to walk on this planet so that I could.  Perhaps they would've done better.  Perhaps they would've built buildings.  Maybe they would've become philosophers, professors or engineers (like our father!)   But they lost their shot so that this one person (ME!) could live to learn how to pluck a guitar, write a few songs, start a novel (or FIVE!) yell very loudly at Georgia Tech football games and make folks feel at home when they come to watch minor league baseball. 

     I wake up every morning and look at the sweetest face God ever put on earth. There is (and always will be) a good dog lying near where we sleep.  If that's as good as it gets, then I really need to believe that I've won.  But I'd like to tell Eric.................QUIT WHINING!  YOU'RE CLAPTON!!!!!!!! 

    

Mama's Boy

     Respect prevents me from calling him an old man.   Yes, he's lived 81 years on this planet.  He sometimes loses his sense of time and place.  He moves slowly, sleeps a lot and takes a long time to get out a vehicle.  That's especially sad because - aside from faith, family and country - vehicles have been his life.  But there's one time when he's no longer slow.  There's one time when he practically jumps out of a car and hits the ground running, knowing exactly where he's going.  It's when you take him up a road that the rest of the citizens of Bibb County, Alabama probably mostly ignore.  At the end of that road, when it turns to gravel, sits an old country church and a cemetery on a hill.   There's no fear of falling when the walking stick he calls "Slim" barely touches the ground, guiding him over sweet gum balls and uneven earth to get to the spot where his mother's buried.  A man can live to be a 100 but any walk that ends with him being in proximity to Mama is made expeditiously. 

     In our younger years, they hold us when we're hot with fever.  There's nothing that calms like realizing your mother is in your bedroom in the middle of the night, ignoring sleep because she could hear the way you're  sneezing, wheezing, coughing or shivering.  Then, no matter how many years pass,  all food is judged by the way Mama cooked it.  All flowers, in the springtime, are remembered as "the ones that Mama planted around her front porch" or "down there by the mailbox."   Days of the week are remembered as the ones when she walked up a certain street in a very small town to have her hair "set" so that it'd look good come Sunday morning.  Our Daddies are special and have another world of things they teach us.  But they don't become the one thing that turns us into mush when someone mentions their name after they're gone. 

     I watched him for a minute, and I thought he would cry.  But he just turned and looked at me and said "that was my Mama, Tim."   I said "yes, sir....I know."  There were headstones in that old cemetery proudly regaling their service to the "Confederate States of America."   He noticed them and said "yes, that's interesting."  But then he turned and headed back down the hill, again looking old and slow and in need of assistance dodging those sweet gum balls.   He rushed up the hill to feel  that spirit that gave him life on this earth.  He walked back down, again an old man, hoping that a bunch of gospel hymns are true and he'll walk with that sweet soul down streets of gold someday.  I think right now he'd settle for one of her biscuits and a bowl of 'fields and snaps"  that she cooked whenever he came home hungry, be it from high school football practice, college or the Army.  .