going and going and...

It all just keeps going, and going, and... well, you get the point.
I used to measure the year strictly according to the calendar. As the end of the year approached, and seemed to go faster because of all the holidays and festivities associated with them, I could not help looking back over what the year had held for me. I don't wait for the calendar's cue anymore.
These last couple of years the "end" invaded my thoughts much earlier than the calendar's indication, it now begins with school bus traffic signalling the end of Summer, and the first hints of the arrival of Fall. This has prompted a need to go visit the Fall, since here in Florida it comes and goes mostly unnoticed. It was important to me that I witness this briefly offered display with my own eyes, with my own soul. I knew I should not allow myself to miss it. The opportunity would not present again for considerably more than 300 days.
Utilizing my usual method of planning, I made the decision the day before I left to head to Asheville for a tour of the Biltmore Estate. It seemed like a great dual purpose plan. I would finally, after years of telling myself I should, see this grand architectural phenom, at the same time that Autumn would be dressed in her most spectacular Fall frock. And with that plan, I was off.
Driving alone, aiming my car north at seventy miles an hour for more than eleven hours, provides ample time for thought, contemplation, and reflection. The complete change of scenery is inspiring.
I thought about the people in the vehicles I shared the highway with. Where were they going? Did they, like me, divert from the routine of daily schedules because they too saw the importance of time out, time to look, time to be? Did they, like me, consider that we were headed down this highway as fast as the law would allow, in a hurry to a reach a single destination, and in so doing think it better to slow down because of the little treasures we were surely missing along the way? Isn't it just like life? Always busy, always over scheduled, always running late for the next something. Speeding along in a hurry to get there, without much consideration that when we do get there, it's almost over.
When I arrived in Asheville it was a beautiful, crisp, blue sky Smokey Mountain day. The temperature was a sunshiny sixty two degrees. I looked, I walked, I hiked, I wearied my camera, and my feet, and found a place to call home for the night so I could have some sort of Autumn enjoying repeat the next day.
That next day was invested driving along the Parkway. Together with the sun, clear sky and cool breeze, I was treated to Fall's finest pageantry. I absorbed it all into the deepest depths of my soul. It was my soul food. I could feel my soul swelling with fatness, and I liked it! But the sun kept getting lower in the sky and I was reminded of the long drive still ahead of me. It was time already, to go.
I stopped for the night, since I had left late in the day and didn't really want to drive after dark, you know, deer and all. I thought about just bucking up and driving the eleven hours all the way home, it would save the expense of another night in a hotel and get me into my own bed. I decided against it. My Mom told me I shouldn't drive after dark in case of car trouble, I wanted to be able to tell her I obeyed. At more than half a century old, I still wish for her to be happy with me. I also knew that as much as I love home, once I pulled off of the expressway, the much too quick trip would officially be over. Well, there was unpacking yet, but that part of the trip is better left out.
I was not ready for it to be over.
But again, isn't it just like life,
with all that is passed by as we go as fast as we can along life's highway,
and after all that hurrying to get...where?
All of life's plans and dreams and schemes and anticipations,
come,
and then go,
and then its over.
It just keeps going, and going, and... well, the point is,
When God shows you beautiful,
and He constantly does,
look,
and thank Him.

P.J.

Pure

At fifty something, it is not easy to have an untainted view. There are of course, some very positive results that come with having lived enough life to accumulate the knowledge and wisdom that comes only from experience.
Much has been learned, and from that, certain emotionally expensive things will not be repeated. Certain other things will be repeated as often as possible, like chocolate and trips to Disney!
It has been a beautiful pleasure in the last several weeks to have some nice long visits with my grand kids. Without any effort on their part and with no intention of doing so, they teach.
Their communication is simple, basic, their best attempt based on their very limited experience with life, to relay what their heart feels to what my mind comprehends. Like a sort of missing puzzle piece language of verbal prattles and squeals, along with facial expressions.
When my own kids were just babes and tots they taught me to be fluent in what I liked to call "gobblygook". That language disappeared as the more common universal language took over, but has recently reappeared as the second batch of wee ones to the family are fast becoming linguists.
The youngest of the three, not even yet a half a year old, has a smile that not only lights her whole face from ear to ear and hair to chin, but her whole little self wriggles in delight. Unhindered, untainted, pure, heartfelt to her fingers and toes delight! In fact the glee she experiences is too much to be contained in her little self and actually shoots through her fingers and toes to everyone who witnesses the phenom, and the proof of my words is clearly written on the faces of those witnesses whose own ear to ear upturned lip expressions fall under the spell of her influence.
The same sort of delight is evidenced as it continues to have similar affects with the two year old who throws his head back with a belly laugh at what has just tickled him, the simple hilarity of a greeting card with a monkey sound! Over and over he opens that card to repeat the process that was at first so immensely enjoyable, and it proves to be just the same each time. Again, all the onlookers are sucked in to the vortex of pure glee and delight.
At five years old things are beginning to change, life is pressing it's way into the once innocent thoughts that are slowly, as experiences are gained, seeping in and stealing away what can only be held onto for just a short time. Still, when her eyes spot me in the room she runs and hops up into my arms speaking my name as if it were honey dripping from her genuinely delighted to see me lips! And that honey makes Grandma, the only name she knows me by, sound like a choir of angels to my ears!
It is in those moments, those brief, too seldom moments, that experience knowledge and wisdom don't count for anything and hold no value compared to the delightful innocence of the children.
At the age of fifty something, I get to know the true secrets of living life full. Because of them, I witness and experience ever so briefly, the wholly satisfying essence of purity.

Dish Washing

Several years ago my son presented me with my first dishwasher.
It was life changing.
There are occasions since that time when I have washed dishes by hand, like Thanksgiving or any special occasion that uses more than the usual amount of dishes, or some that I want to be more careful with. But mostly since that very first time deciding which line to position that beautiful black wash cycle knob on, I have relied almost exclusively on my machine.
It has been like a good friend who has kept the dirty little secrets of what is hidden inside, behind the closed door, and it has relieved me of that one more job at the end of an already job weary day, offering silently and dependably that I sit down for a while, take a load off, put my feet up, let it do all the work. Of course I have been thankful to oblige.
When I remodeled the completely inefficient, grossly undersized space to a space only slightly more suitable to the needs of my family and I, a double sink was installed next to the opening fit to hold a dishwasher.
As the number of us who utilize the space has decreased, the space has increased. Where there once was barely enough room for all the kitchen gear, there is now room enough. This also has to be attributed at least in part to my weeding out of unnecessary or too seldom used items, keeping only what I really like to use.
Considering all this and the fact that it’s just 3 adults who live in my home now, I find it a little unbelievable that we would ever have a dishwasher and both sinks full of dirty dishes!
True, the dish washing detergent was gone but only that for the dishwasher, there was still liquid detergent, there are 3 licensed, employed, able bodied adults in this house, any one of whom could have gone to the store to purchase detergent and any one of whom could wash dishes the old fashioned way…
After a trip to the store to purchase detergent and a few other items equally important to the smooth function of the household, I for the umpteenth time, turned that little black knob without even thinking having done it so many times previously, and the machine faithfully began its chore.
I pressed the plunger on the stopper to plug the drain in the sink and filled it with hot sudsy water to wash by hand the remaining dishes, a task I had not done in a long time. I was a little surprised to admit to myself that it sounded like a good idea. I actually used to like washing dishes when I lived in Illinois because it warmed my perpetually freezing winter hands, which warmed all of perpetually freezing me. While I was not cold or in need of warming up there was still something about the act that was inviting. The smell of warm suds, the way they fell off under the light pressure from the faucet for rinsing, I liked it.
I thought about the times of washing dishes with my sweet friend 25+ years ago, and what a wonderful time in life it was because of her friendship.
I thought about my little boys whose job it was to wash the supper dishes night after night for years and with our big family it was no quick task. I remembered how they complained and really did not want that job, and how I wished they did not have to do it. They did have to do it though because I needed help, I was tired, and each family member should contribute to the overall quality of the life of the family as a whole, pulling some of the weight of what needs to be done as they are able. They did have to do it.
I thought about the photograph I have of a couple of those boys hard at work and play as they arranged the washed and dried dished in a stack one by one, creating a dish tower on the counter. Their ability to improvise a less than desirable situation to be an opportunity to express creativity impressed me.
I smiled about it then, and again as I washed my sink full of dishes.
Among the items to be washed was a large 1 gallon Tupperware pitcher. I bought 2 of them 20 or more years ago and still own them both. They were to me, in the life of my large busy family, a most ingenious piece of kitchen equipment with push button release vacuum sealing lids to keep drinks from spilling out the spout making drips all along the way to a glass, when carried by a small person who is not mindful of such things.
I thought how it is still as good as new even after accommodating hundreds, maybe thousands of gallons of Kool-aid and sweet tea guzzled down by hot sweaty little boys anxious to get back to the business of serious outdoor activity.
How much tea went over that spout to fill the glass of a thirsty boy just taking a break from a bike or car repair, how many friends found refreshment in the contents of that pitcher, how many sips for tea parties and picnics spilled over that spout for my little girl and her friends, countless.
Washing the dishes today was perhaps the best or at least one of the best spent 20 minutes I have had in a while.
I am not suggesting that I might be better off hand washing my dishes regularly by any means.
I would not suggest that I won’t be upset when my poor old dishwasher finally gives out as has been recently indicated by the unusual sounds it makes now.
I would certainly be surprised if I am not frustrated the next time the kitchen is a disaster because of the dirty dishes of 3 adults while apparently only 1 of the adults is on dish duty.
I am just pleasantly pleased at how thoroughly I enjoyed the chore of dish washing today.
It can have a transporting effect on ones memory.
P.J.

Miller Woods

The other day while perusing facebook , a picture posted by my son of what appeared to be a filthy, uncared for, even abandoned old kitchen made me think, oh my, where in the world is he?! Why did he take a picture of that?! In a fraction of a second that thought combined with knowing he was back visiting our home town, became the realization of what I was seeing, what his picture was showing, our house, the place that he and I once called home.
I was immediately shocked and sick with disbelief, followed with overwhelming sadness as I stared at what was left of my once beautiful little kitchen, the one room I still tell about because to me it was just perfect, then and now still my favorite of any room I’ve ever been able to call mine.
I looked at that picture and saw with my eyes the vaguely familiar; combing every square inch I recalled what it looked like before this.
I ate there as a child at a pink Formica table when it was my Grandma’s kitchen. She made lunch sandwiches spread with a layer of butter and jam, and topped lunch off with peanut shaped cookies or butter cookies with the hole in the middle that fit on my finger, or windmill cookies for desert, and milk in a jam jar glass the perfect size for small hands. Some evenings when my whole family visited, Grandma would cut slices of Sara Lee chocolate cake from its pinched foil tray and we all together ate at that pink table.
It was the kitchen of the house that Grandpa built with his own hands, sweat and determination, for his young family. It was his vision and provision for them. The lumber for that house was salvaged from another, dismantled board by board when that house’s purpose was completed, when its family had grown, and moved on.
My Dad and his brothers tell of their memories removing old nails preparing the boards for their new assignment, the very modest new 2 bedroom home of old wood. All 3 brothers would share one of those small bedrooms until they were grown to men. Grandpa and Grandma would live the rest of their life together, right there.
Grandpa farmed using his old tractor, up before dawn. He wore a fedora hat and a sweater with patch elbows and smoked a pipe. Grandma ironed, wearing her apron, sprinkling the clothes with a pop bottle sprinkler. She wore silver framed cat eye glasses and thin white bobby socks; she carried a hankie and a skeleton key with a string on her wrist or in her apron pocket. A cuckoo clock could be heard keeping time in the living room.
That kitchen became my kitchen for several years when my own children were small. We ate at the same pink Formica table, on the same pink vinyl upholstered chairs, placed in the same spot of the pink and black checked tile floor that I scrubbed and waxed on hands and knees. I washed my dishes where Grandma washed hers, at the white porcelain one piece sink and counter that topped the white metal cabinets. The same little panda bear salt shaker that graced the shelf of Grandma’s kitchen when I was a child enamored with it, lent charm to mine. My babies chewed on teether cookies while their big brothers dipped cookies in milk, just like I had years before in that same space that had changed so little, and yet so very very much.
In my melancholy Ecclesiastical mood I am socked in the stomach and shot to the heart with wishes. I wish we had never sold that house. I wish that we had had the foresight to know what a gem it was and would be to future family members. I wish I could have it back to do better. I wish there was a way to restore what is un-restorable. I wish I’d had enough money that money would not have been a deciding factor. Mostly, I wish I had known the dreams and stories of the builders of that house, my grandparents, my Dad and uncles as boys, every last detail because they mattered to me, then and now still. I wish I could say great care has been taken to preserve what they built, in their honor. I wish I had at least taken more pictures.
All houses crumble, even the palaces of great kings lie in ruin eventually. So will mine. So will my children’s should time continue its countdown.
We have only this, now, and I can say with Solomon, “He has made everything beautiful in its time, also He has put eternity in their hearts, I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives…every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor-it is the gift of God. I know that whatever God does, it shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it. And nothing taken from it…and God requires an account of what is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:11-15)
My past has been beautiful in its time, that time precious to this time.
I remember, with overwhelming gratitude for it.

P.J.

Poems of my grandparents written October 3 and 5, 2001

~Maybelle~

What I remember fondly
of youth full days
Point often to her
in many simple ways
Like a big bottle of pop
on a Sunday afternoon
Or a curvy bottle
of Cotillion perfume
Butter and jam sandwiches
cut in half
“Horse tails” sticking up
out of the grass
A flowery apron
and a springy hair band
A hankie or tissue
clutched in her hand
Dolly Madison dolls
from around the world
A necklace and bracelet
in rows of pink pearls
Sara Lee chocolate cake,
a special treat
Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson
on late night TV
Pretty glass doorknobs
on doors with keyholes
Where the skeleton key tied on
a white string goes
The cuckoo clock, knick-knacks
and jam jar glasses
Memories that sweeten
as more time passes
Back then it was our normal,
now it is nostalgic
But yesterdays with Grandma
still work magic

P.J.

~Donald~

Its 4:00 a.m.,
dawn still slumbers
His day has begun
despite the clocks numbers
That built-in alarm rings out,
work to be done
Daylight is burnin’,
get a move on son
Denim dungarees
and a plaid cotton shirt
And a cap to begin
another day’s work
There’s earth to till,
seeds to sow
The tractor in the barn
is rarin’ to go
He built their little house
by the sweat of his brow
His boys helped,
he showed them how
Peonies, lilacs,
apples and pears
Grapevines and rhubarb
all grew there
Work at the plant
earned him a wage
From Ford Motorcars
‘till retirement age
There was camping and fishing
amongst dragon flies
Skimming lakeside
under sunny skies
He raised up his boys
and cared for his wife
With hard work and commitment
all of his life
My mind’s eye
still pictures him there
In the old living room
in his favorite chair
I wish back then I’d known
how good it would be
To remember Grandpa
and what he'd still mean to me.

P.J.

I Have Pictures!

I used to be young.
It was a long time ago so I don't really remember a lot of the details but,
I have pictures.
Paper frames of the people I have shared life with in the places we shared it. Moments in time frozen and accessible for reliving, though in the reliving the details may become askewed.
I used to have them in albums and knew from the album cover where to look for a particular child or event. The cumbersome albums became architecture in my house, lined up on a shelf like a heavy horizontal beam jutting unnecessarily through the space, wholly unacceptable.
It was a surprise when I saw the contents of those bulky, dated, even somewhat hideously embellished albums reduced to envelopes. Those envelopes, dated as closely as I could recall all the many years later, fit nicely in an old rectangular wooden suitcase.
In just one suitcase containing date estimated envelopes of photographs, our lives were summed up.
Since that time an endless collection of photos have outgrown that space spilling into new envelopes and envelope containers, and for years now have been digitally stored in folders on my computer and on back up disks. This is a far far friendlier solution for burdened decor, with the bonus benefit of easier dusting.
Those early photographs went from a thick beam awkwardly juxtaposing itself in our room, to a suitcase that could be easily concealed in and retrieved from a closet.
A whole record of living, carried in one hand.
When I was young I thought I would always remember, never forget those times and the sweet early language of tiny boys and girl conversation, that the way they looked and sounded were indelibly etched in my sharp, carbon capable mind. These people, these things, these moments and events were too precious to ever forget.
Sadly, I was wrong.
Forget I have.
But, I have pictures.
Some of the frozen recollections are from a much earlier time, when it was not the baby faces I positioned myself behind a camera to capture, but mine the baby face being captured.
They are the still shots kept in the files way in the dark dusty back of my memory's archives. They are fewer faded colorless, but treasures nonetheless. Kept there in the back, not because they are less valuable than those filed nearer the front but because they are filed sequentially, and there are many files. As with all antiquity, though there may be a more substantial layer of dust in the cracks, even the dust adds to the value.
The value of the pictures was established, even as they established the beginning.
All of that, what is visually recorded in those photos, either to memory or tangibly, had to be, before any of this could be. This now is because of all those then's. Those way back in the back less often viewed, more seldom retrieved pictures, are the cornerstone of us. Their value is that they are the evidence of the foundation, strength and position of them in the lives they silently testify to.
They are not silent to me though, I can hear them. When I look at them not only my eyes remember, sounds and smells and even feels re-awaken.
I have a picture of me sitting on Grandma's lap in the webbed lounge chair right in front of her rural home. It is alive with the loud buzz and clacks of field insects, and I can feel the fluffy tuft of un-pictured horse tails growing along side the railroad tie edged driveway of tar tabs. I can smell the tar, and the green. It is a powerful 3 & 1/2 inch paper square of various shades of black and white lines shapes and shadows, proving that I was, Grandma was, there, way back then, when I was young.
Every one of my old wooden suitcase-full of photographs is as deeply meaningful, sensory alive, foundationally relevant and memory evoking as that one.
To go through them each, one by one, reliving the moments, well, it would take a lifetime.
A lifetime really can, almost, be retro-fitted into just a few small seemingly insignificant containers. But only by special invitation will the viewers of those container's contents, be lavished with the secrets and hidden treasures, of the whole unseen story actually contained therein.
I have pictures.
All totaled up they would be somewhere in the area of a hundred years worth. Most of my pictures are only 50 something, 4 to be exact, and newer.
I love who they attest to, the life they witness of, the events they prove.
Looking at them is an indulgence into personal lives.
Not so much unlike a juicy tabloid's version of front page full color photo-shopped sleazy journalism with trumped up stories meant to seduce and pacify tongue wagger's.
These stories though, are real, and way better than the fiction of even the craftiest imagination. We, my people and I, are the real insiders of the stories, we know what even the pictures right there before one's very eyes cannot possibly reveal.
I know the stories those pictures can't tell.
I know that while the stories those pictures can tell, are rich and colorful and a delight to my eyes, I know also that it's all the stories the pictures keep secret that delights my soul.
I know, and have proof that life is precious and the most beautiful of gifts.
I have pictures.
I used to be young, and there was so much I did not know.
Now I am not young. I'm not yet old either, but I do know a lot more.
I know I would need to live to the age of 108 to be only 1/2 way through my life right now. Realistically, I am as much as decades past 1/2 way.
I know that now was not as far away as I thought it was then.
I know.
I have pictures.
Taking more pictures, enjoying my camera, recording for future reference the proof of life's beauty, capturing an entire story in a single still moment, has become a favorite activity. And I have envelopes and cases and folders and disks full of our stories. And, there are at least as many more tucked safely in the files of my heart and memory, that can't be proven with a photo for anyone else to see. They belong to only me. I'm the only one who gets to see them.
As 54 July's provable by photographs bear witness to the fact that I am no longer young, they can also bear witness to this:
with a winning hand, having put all my cards on the table, all in, I hit the jackpot. I took my winnings in exchange for my youth so I could live a life that I now know because of the living, is indescribably invaluable.
My winnings are received in regular installments.
Way back then, when I was young, my Grandma's lap was just the right size for me.
Now I am the Grandma.
Funny isn't it how Grandma laps are always just the right size.
They really are.
I know.
I have pictures!

That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith...handed down from your grandmother...2Timothy 1:5 (The Message)
P.J.

JULY 4th 2011

If I had been born in another place and time I think I would have shriveled up and died.
I'm a wimp.
I am much too fond of my toothbrush, hairbrush, flip flops, camera, computer, air conditioning, crushed ice, hot water and flush toilet, to even really begin to consider doing without what is still very much out of reach for an awful lot of the world's population, though there is no guarantee that it will always be readily available or that I won't one day be forced to do without them.
Freedom was purchased for my privileged independence, paid forward to my account.
Freedom to be, think, speak, live, and pursue happiness has always been mine. I haven't got the foggiest clue what it is like to not have freedom, nor does a single person alive and born in these God blessed United States of America.
No excuses about how hard life is, we all have hard things to conquer and only so much time, we can come through or buckle under, pick one.
We each are privileged to have the doors of opportunity wide open to us.
It was expensive to establish this nation.
It is expensive to maintain the privileges of it.
It is expensive to pursue happiness.
Only the rarest most valuable things in life come with the heftiest price tags and all the money in the world cannot purchase them, sacrifice is the only acceptable currency.
Objects of desire satisfied by a material pay off lose their luster, beginning to depreciate the moment the purchase is made. What is truly valuable continually increases in value and requires constant attention, commitment, dedication, devotion and protection, without which it would be lost or stolen or removed.
Hold on, stand up, and fight for what is valuable because "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" ~Edmund Burke
I am so thankful for my position of privilege as an American in 2011!
Happy 235th Birthday America!
p.j.

...the goodbye's

Yesterday began "the goodbye's", they continue through tomorrow morning when Jamey's pedals make their first rotations into his adventurous vast unknown.
It's like being a 21st century pilgrim or pioneer setting out on a journey with a good vision of how that journey will play out ultimately but without a clue of the details.
All the things taken for granted on a daily basis, an electrical socket, a hot shower, a soft pillow and bed, a cold drink from the fridge, unavailable.
He has an array of supplies that will make the travel comfortable and still as light and unencumbered as possible, and intends to frequent establishments where he can tap into wi-fi and electronics rechargings.
He expects he'll do some couch surfing but largely he will camp in a one man tent with few if any conveniences.
He will mostly follow maps created by bicyclists for bicyclists and include information pertinent and specific to bicyclists. He has confidence that he will fare well.
He is taking only a change or 2 of clothes and the 1 pair of shoes he'll be wearing. Those shoes have been "broken in" so he knows they are comfortable, but in typical Jamey fashion he decided they should get "funned" up. So he asked Ape to splash them with her creative doodling.
Now, every spin of the crank and every step on unknown soil will be accompanied by the familiar. Sister's doodled shoes.
And what's more they were doodled with the sharpies purchased to make the banner for his send off party hosted and well attended by the people who love and appreciate his colorful character, his friends and family.
So the shoes are now simply a representative of all who will be thinking of him, praying for him and cheering him on, right there with him.
You never walk alone Jamey, never ever!