Winifred Pearl

I woke up this morning before daylight and heard the bluebirds defending their new roost in the house on our back fence. Sounded like the chickadees were trying to horn in and being quite the pests. I lay there a while longer and felt the cold nose of a Labrador Retriever on my hand. Seconds later my sweet bride was scratching my back and asking me if I was ok. Funny, I was sure that today had been cancelled here on planet earth. I'll draw upon perhaps the oldest cliche of all and declare that life will go on...it just has a hole in it now.
As she was taking her last breaths yesterday afternoon I told my Mother we would miss her. I told her I'd think about her everyday. I told her she'd still be here every Thanksgiving when I cooked the turkey and dressing she'd taught me to make. I told her she'd still be there every Christmas when I made a plate of her potato candy. Most of all I promised her I'd never again let the Atlanta Braves make the first or last out at home or third...it irritated her terribly when a baserunner let his ego write a check his legs couldn't cash.
When I was a young child - I don't know, maybe 7 or 8 years old - I had a terrible case of pneumonia. Ended up in Crawford Long Hospital for several days. The night before I was admitted to the hospital I remember running a high fever and shivering while Mother held me in her arms. She was singing that "Sunshine" song. "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...you make me happy when skies are gray. You'll never know dear, how much I love you,,please don't take my sunshine away..." Over the last week, on one of the nights I spent at the hospital with her, she was restless, moaning, agitated and in pain. It was about 3:30 in the morning and I felt like the two of us were alone in the world. So I grabbed her hand and returned the favor and sang her that "Sunshine" song. I thanked God Almighty that the song still has magical powers to calm the sick and nervous. She gave my hand a squeeze and went to sleep, finally. I realized, once again, that life comes full circle. She was now the baby and I was now the adult.
She'd be pleased with my breakfast this morning - a bowl of grits and a cup of strong coffee...two of the finer things in life she taught me to appreciate. She'd be glad that I got out of bed in the first place and allowed our world to keep turning. It's still turning,,,it's just a lot emptier now.

Here's your profile....

NOW FIT IN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is going to be hard to put into words. But I'll try. The changes this surgery has brought to me physically - increased stamina, fewer aches and pains, my lifelong bout with asthma almost becoming non-existent - were to be expected. What is surprising, however, is the increased amount of introspection this profound change in my body has caused. Before my surgery it was easy (for me) to define who I was - I was the fat guy. Nothing else about me mattered and being "the fat guy" trumped anything and everything else about me. I let it define who I was even though I can now see that's wrong. That said, now that the weight is going, going and hopefully and ultimately gone, the focus becomes who I am if I'm not "the fat guy." And I've done a lot of thinking along those lines.
I've expressed here before how much I love music, songs and songwriters. Ok, so surely the type of music I listen to can help define me. Alas, it's no help at all. The cd player in my truck holds six cd's. At one point you could go from Roy Acuff to Miles Davis without missing a beat. Can there be two more opposite ends of the spectrum than Miles Davis and Roy Acuff? Let's get even more basic than that - "Pick-up truck" and "Miles Davis" don't belong in the same sentence. I'm odd, I tell ya..........
I've also mentioned in this blog how I generally try to avoid politics. As my father once told me, "don't discuss religion or politics with people - there's no right or wrong answers and folks just get mad." But, for the sake of our discussion, perhaps my political leanings could give me an idea of who I am. Again, no help at all. I'm not a liberal. I'm not a conservative. I'm somewhere in between. I sure don't claim any party affiliation...I have a general mistrust of all politicians from either side of the aisle. I've grown profoundly sick in these last few months of individuals who assume they know where I stand politically based on my age, ethnicity, etc... I actually had a work-acquaintance riding to lunch with me last week who was bemoaning the skills (or lack thereof) of a coworker...he raked her efficiency over the coals and ended his summation with "and you KNOW she voted for Obama..you can just tell it......" Of course he thought he was safe insulting this person who he thought HAD voted for Obama because surely a forty-five year old, caucasian, southern male like myself had not. I let it drop and didn't let him know how I voted either way...but his presumptuousness peeved me. But I digress...
I'm a beer and chicken wings while watching a ballgame kind of a guy. But I'm also a write poetry and watching babies laugh makes me cry kind of a guy. I like watching NASCAR but I religiously keep up with who's doing what on All My Children. On my nightstand you'll find Eric Clapton's biography followed closely by Robin Roberts "...Rules To Live By..." I'm ODD I tell ya.....
I was raised by some men that, in my mind's eye - were MEN in every sense of the word. Even now my father-in-law (who I couldn't love anymore if he was my biological father) fits this role well. Men are men, by God and they have answers and strength and wisdom and courage. Chronologically I'm forty-five but still feel as bumbling as a seventeen-year-old senior at Stone Mountain High School trying hard to figure out what in the hell to do with his life. I know that if I peeled away layers I'd see the frailties and insecurities of these men that plague us all. But still I use them as a measuring stick of who I should be...and it's an ideal that I'll never live up to, given the pedestal on which I've propped them. So we're back to me just needing to be "me." Great.....
Dear God...if a mental health professional reads this I'm going to be admitted for observation.

Silly stuff......

I can no longer pass a chair without sitting down. Not because I'm tired, but because I can now sit in any chair I darn well please. Prior to weight-loss, I had to have a team of engineers review each possible sitting apparatus for structural soundness and to make sure it would support my considerable girth. Now I see a chair, I sit in it. With God as my witness, last week in Bass Pro Shops I sat in a chair that I'm pretty sure was part of some display. But I had to sit in it because it was "THEYAH." (lame reference to JFK's reasons to go to the moon...nevermind......)
Occasionally, when walking, I stop to bend over and re-tie my shoe. No other reason than because I CAN. Similarly, I sometimes bend over and just grab my toes and stretch my hamstrings and calves...just for the hell of it.
When in the office, I now park on the far side of the parking deck and walk the LONG sidewalk that goes around the perimeter of the parking deck because I CAN. That habit may change when it's 125 degrees outside...but for now, it's much fun.
This past weekend I went with my bride to lunch to meet an old friend from her youth. Not very long ago I would've stayed sequestered in the house, not wanting anyone to see what she'd married. And I would've missed the opportunity to meet a fascinating individual whose friendship is important to Rhonda and therefore important to me. Similar situation this weekend...she has a reunion to attend and spouses are invited. Again, not long ago I would've been riding the recliner watching "Redneck Wedding" while she went alone. Now it's Monday and I'm picking out what to wear.
Gotta go,,,time to sneak in the neighbor's backyard and try out their new patio chairs....

The day the music...uhhhh... became undead.

I've been loving songs and memorizing songs for as long as I can remember. I saw my first concert when I was a mere seven years old. Three Dog Night at the old Fulton County Stadium. Some guy named Rod Stewart opened for them. Having three older sisters gave me plenty of exposure to music ahead of my time. I was mesmerized by that music and the people who wrote it at a very early age. When other children were probably reading bedtime stories, I was reading the liner notes of the albums that were always strewn across my bed. The proverbial "now I lay me down to sleep" was more than likely a "Wait a minute...Irving Azoff produced this crap? He's better than this!"
Anyway, I've always loved songs. Around twelve years old I started writing them. I'm not saying they were any good, but I started writing them. I always kept it a secret because I thought it was silly that a child would be writing songs and knew that, to anyone else's eyes, they'd be likened to the "crap" I mentioned earlier. After literally years of getting up my nerve I finally HAD to show them to someone. That someone was my sister Susan. I'll always credit her for this - her attitude wasn't a condescending one - "Oh, isn't this cute! Little Timmy's trying to write songs." She told me she loved them (there's no way she loved them..they were BAD.) She told me that my style of writing (STYLE?) reminded her of this guy she listened to named Jackson Browne. So she bought me his "Running on Empty" album. Despite the fact that I was clueless what the song "Rosie" was really about until I was in my 20's I was completely taken with the music. In no way did I liken anything I wrote to what he wrote, but it still inspired me. It also gave me the courage to start showing my stuff to other people - mostly my other sisters and my parents. They were equally as encouraging and complimentary and I'll always be grateful.
But massive weight gain caused my songs to suffer the same fate that everything important in my life suffered - neglect. Only recently have I taken out the briefcase where I keep all my song stuff. Only recently have I gotten my guitar out of its case and reminded myself what some of those songs sound like. I've picked up my mandolin again and, though I'm not exactly Bill Monroe yet, I'm getting better. I've recently gotten back in touch with one of my oldest friends, Mark. He's a natural musician and a great songwriter. (Check out bearfoothookers.com to check out the band he's currently in and the music he's writing.) He wants to get together and work on stuff I've recently written...got an e-mail from him just this morning inviting me out to his place. The common denominator in all of this is, of course, my weight loss. My music - as hokey as it sounds - is part of me. If I didn't like me, I didn't like it. The cost of this surgery was astronomical...but I'm beginning to think it was a bargain the likes of which Kmart couldn't put a blue light over!
Now you're all Googling "Rosie" to see what it's about....aren't you?

In Living Color

I had a professor at LaGrange College named Dr. David Naglee. Dr. Naglee was a renaissance man in every sense of the word. He was a concert cellist. He built grandfather clocks by hand. He wrote books and lectured at universities all over the world. He was, at one time, listed in Cambridge University's "Who's Who Among Intellectuals." He was also the biggest professional wrestling fan I've ever met. He always said he wanted to start a tag team called "BOANERGES! THE SONS OF THUNDER!" ("Boanerges" means "sons of thunder" and was the name Christ gave to James and John because of their inclination to be hot-tempered. I encouraged him to come up with another name for his tag-team as that may have been a bit above the head of the average fan of professional wrestling.) I once told him that he reminded me of a Van Gogh quote that said "The best way to know life is to love many things..." His response - "My lands! I certainly pray that doesn't include cutting one's ear off!"
I tell you all of that to tell you this - Dr. Naglee had very poor eyesight and was colorblind. He was an avid golfer but often asked his students to go play a round with him because once he hit a ball it was gone for him. When you played with him you had to keep up with your shot and his as well. I can't remember the whole story, but there was a time when his eyesight was failing and doctors told him to expect the worst. Thus began a severe bout with depression. A man who built his life on lecturing, writing and reading would, of course, be lost without his ability to see. Though he wasn't Roman-Catholic he paid a visit to the monastery in Conyers, Georgia. Apparently he sequestered himself there to pray, meditate and ask the Almighty why this was happening to him. Again, I can't remember the details but as he left the monastery in his car suddenly, for one fleeting moment, everything on the road he traveled was in color. For the first time since his teenage years he was able to see colors! He stopped by the side of the road and wept. He felt he'd received a direct message from the creator of the universe. He always said "the voice of God isn't necessarily a language...sometimes it's a picture." As far as I know, he retained his vision through the remainder of his life.
Last week while walking the streets of Charleston as well as the beaches of the Isle of Palms and Sullivan's Island I felt like I was seeing the world in color for the first time in years. We walked and walked and walked...there was no aching or shortness of breath. I enjoyed the scenery instead of scouring the scenery in search of a chair or a bench. I felt very alive as if these were the first steps I'd ever taken. I know this borders on melodramatic and you probably think I'm being wayyyyyy over-the-top. But the moments are becoming more and more frequent where I'm caught off-guard as to how drastically different my life has become. There's no more going through the motions...I feel like I'm actually going somewhere and that there's purpose to all actions.
I've seen the beauty of Charleston. I've stood on the battery and watched dolphins play before. I've seen that flag flying out on Fort Sumter many times. I've stood in awe at the majesty and grace of those old homes. But this time I saw it all in color. Best part is, so did my bride. She didn't have to worry about how I was doing or how I was walking. Dr. Naglee was right - sometimes it's a picture not a voice.

TGIF

There's Fridays and then there's FRIDAYS. Today is a FRIDAY. Reason being, we're on vacation next week. We'll be in Charleston, one of our favorite places on planet earth. We went on our honeymoon to Charleston and have been back once. I'm looking forward to being able to walk and walk and walk.... A visit from me to Charleston usually meant that scores of oysters were about to meet their maker. With my talent for slurping oysters now diminished because of surgery most of them will be safe this time around...but I plan on putting at least a small dent in the mollusk population of coastal Carolina.
So the Atlanta Braves are setting up shop with a minor league team here in Gwinnett County. I put in an application to usher or work guest relations. A chance to make extra money in my spare time AND watch free baseball. Perfect storm for yours truly. I've had two interviews now that both went well. I had an interesting moment during the second interview. The gentleman asking the questions asked me "would you say that you're happy with your appearance?" I'm not sure who was president the last time I was happy with my appearance, but I'm pretty sure he's dead by now. It made my week to give a positive response to that question.

Lagging behind...

Ok, so I'm behind. This subject matter was stuff I meant to deal with LAST Friday. It's been a crazy week with work, work, oh and there was also work.
Last Friday night my bride and I acted like we were 25 again (well, we acted like I acted when I was 25...she was a better-behaved 25 year-old than myself.) Anyway, an old friend of mine has been after me forever to go hear his band. They're The Bearfoot Hookers, producers of what they call "Beer drinkin' gospel" music. It's good stuff. It's a lot like the stuff he and I used to listen to in many a wee hour in his basement back in our younger days. They've been quite successful in the storied music scene over in Athens and they'll soon be recording a third album. Therein lies the problem - y'all know that I avoid Athens at all costs. But on this particular Friday night they were at the Sweetwater Bar & Grill in Duluth - much friendlier environs - so we went to check them out.
Problem - they're the headliners of three bands playing that night, meaning they'll start about 12:30. There was a day when I used to head out at 12:30 on a Friday night but those days have passed. If I'm awake after midnight these days it's because nature's called. So around 7:30 we took a nap. That's right, we went to bed at 7:30 and set the alarm for 10:00. Thank God it was wintertime...if it'd been summer it would've still been daylight. I am officially old.
The reunion with my old friend was an excellent time. His band was good and he was glad to see me. I told him that I was sorry I'd avoided this evening for so long, but there was no way in the world I wanted anyone from 'the old days' to see me at by biggest. He rolled his eyes...."you're weight's not who you are, Tim. It's still not, even though you've lost a lot and look great. Everything that makes you fun to be around and a good person is still there no matter what body it's living in..." I mustered up the manliest guy hug I could and we promised that we'd come out to his house soon for dinner. He wants to check out songs I've been writing and see what can be done with them. I've actually been writing new stuff and touching up old stuff in anticipation of this happening. I do appreciate his comments...but I wouldn't have had the confidence for any of this to be happening 220 pounds ago. Life's good.