Bookends

    December 9,1943, my mother was born in the community of Uwharrie. Her mother and her grandmother had been washing clothes in a spring that was some distance from the house. Sometime during that day a snow flurry had gone through. Disecting that further, if there was snow on the ground then the water had to be cold, to cold to be washing clothes. If they were washing clothes in the spring or near the spring then there was probably running water in the house. Maybe no electricity. 

    You fast forward 937 months and 13 days and snow had fallen again overnight. Mother looses her battle with lung cancer. She would buried about 3 miles from the spot she was born, beside the grandmother who's house she was born in, and more than likely was by her side when she was born or soon after. You discect this further, the 13 is significant because both mothers sons were born on the 13th. She wanted all her grandaughters to be born on the 13th as well, unfortunately none of them were.

   420 months or 35 years after mother was born, Amy her daughter-in-law, was born to the dismay of all parties involved. It's amazing how if you start looking, you'll find all these similarities. 

Charlotte

 Grateful for my time in Charlotte. 

Grateful for the skyline in the early morning reflecting fresh daylight, grateful for the themed light shows of the skyline at night.

Grateful I can get in my car and go to God made beauty and leave the man made behind.

Grateful for the daily hustle and grind and the eerie, snow storm silenced city.

Grateful for new perspectives that I wouldn’t have seen at home.

Grateful I have a home to go to and people to love and love me. 

Grateful I don’t reside in a dumpster area of a donut shop, scouring for food and warmth. 

Grateful I am not prisoner to an addiction that warps my mind and necessitates stealing.

Grateful I met people I wouldn’t have met away from the city, grateful their true soul could shine through and I could appreciate it.

Grateful part of my journey was spent in Charlotte and I could appreciate it.

Safe At Home

I’ve always been a baseball guy.  Should’ve played. I was going to be shortstop for the Yankees, not some kid from Michigan. Instead of number 2, I would have worn 13. Maybe that would have deterred A-Rod from coming to the Bronx. I remember watching the ‘78 World Series, between the Yankees and Dodgers. I would have been seven. I have been a Yankee fan ever since. I chose the Yankees in part because my Dad was a Yankee fan. I wanted some kind of tie to a man I barely knew then and know even less now. But the Yankees and that ‘78 World Series serve has a home plate.  A safe place to go back too. I was seven, in my room watching baseball and the world was good. You go to your childhood home and you feel safe. There are familiar smells, sounds, and sights. This produces a calming affect of safety. In life’s journey you set out on the base path not knowing what the future holds, but in the back of your mind you know you can make it back home, back to safety. You can get that same feeling from your favorite song or the scent of fresh baked cookies.

The past few months have been traumatic emotionally for me. My oldest daughter graduated from
high school this year. So that started the bittersweet emotional roller coaster of watching her grow and watching her go. Her high school team won the state championship this year. I’m pretty sure I passed my passion for baseball on to her. However she has chosen a team based partly on the cuteness of the third basemen.  My grandparents also shared my love of baseball. With the introduction of cable tv and satellite dishes in the 80s a lot of Braves and Cubs games were watched. In December I lost my last grandparent.  She was the one I was closest with.  That meant my Mom was now on the clock as the oldest member of the family. In March she
spent time in the hospital and her life changed course. So between these things and all the everyday obstacles, I feel like the base path is pretty treacherous at the moment.  2019 has been the year of the pickle

But to take it all the way back to where it started, back to my safe spot, I returned to the Yankees. I’ve spent more time since spring training following the Yankees. I’ve been a fan for over 40 years,  but this year has been different.  I’ve kept up with all the roster moves and this year has been a revolving door of rental players and AAA talent filling in gaps due to injury. I’ve kept up with each series and all their small battles. I’ve found some new toys like The Talkin’ Yanks podcast to make this easier. I’ve kept home plate and it’s safety in my sights at all times.  It’s been a long year but with the help of the Yankees and ‘Emotionalism’ by The Avett Brothers I’m still safe so far.

Retail Thearapy

One of fondest memories of childhood was playing with a box full of empty bottles at my great grandmother's house.  They were things she had used in the kitchen, mostly vanilla flavoring bottles.  I would line them up in rows based on size and different varieties. Little did I know that would be sign of the future, as I have spent many hrs of my life rearranging bottles into straight rows.  The difference now is they are full instead of empty.  I have often wondered if that box of bottles is tucked in the same spot I left almost 40 yrs ago.  Wow those bottles are old.  I hope to find a picture of me and thst army of old bottles somewhere in a sea of old pictures floating around.  A picture that I seriously doubt was ever taken.  I rearranged the empty cans and bottles while she was sewing or baking.  She introduced me to hard work.  She was constantly doing something, whether it was quilting, sewing, baking or working in her flower beds.  There was no paycheck involved.  She just plain worked.
When I was around 9 or 10 yrs old I tackled my baby brother in the back yard. I heard his leg break. I still feel terrible about it to this day.  Well he spent six weeks in the hospital in traction.  I grew up in a single patent home.  Mom stayed at the hospital with my brother. I went to stay with my grandparents house.  Grandmother worked at a department store not to far from the elementary school.  A Walmart kind of store that had a lot of different kinds of things, from clothes, to. cloth, to small appliances.  The kind of store Walmart under cut on prices and put out of business.  A town gathering place.  I would walk to the store after school during my stay with grandma. I learned to enjoy being in the store around Grandma.  It was a small town, so everyone pretty much knew everyone.  I remember the feeling that came from being in the store, like I belonged in a store.  Again  I should have seen the future. I remember playing on an old cash register in the store. You had to pound the keys like a type writer and pull the handle down to get a total. They joked about the cranky old manager.  I saw him not to long ago while running a store of my own in the same small town.   He still recognized me and asked about my grandma. Some of the highlights of my career have been seeing my grandparents in my stores.  I remember being a young cashier almost 30 yrs ago and my grandpa came through my line.   I remember being happy to see him, maybe proud to be working, like I had seen him do.  Then years later, as I manged another store in my home town, my grandma would shop there.  I would stop what I was doing to chat with her.  You often get trapped into thinking that life will pause at certain stages along the way and stay there forever.

The tide of all these memories come rushing back in as my grandmother is struggling in her own head to remember what happened a few minutes ago. She keeps unloading all her clothes out of closet and says she's ready to go home.  The family keeps telling her she's can't go home and puts her things back in the closet.  I don't think grandma is totally referring to an earthly home any more.  Her home burned a few years ago.  That was painful for me.  It must have been devastating to her.  She is ready to go to her permanent home and rejoin her husband, my grandpa in heaven.  She's led a full life.  She's seen her children and grandchildren and great grandchildren grow up.  She's outlived her brother and sisters.  She misses her husband.  Her knees have long since failed her.  I don't think she can see very much of anything anymore. If only she could still see and spend her time sewing or quilting, she would be happier.  Now her mind is deceiving her.  I love her dearly.  It's so easy to not see others around you when you are focused on finding your own way in life, and you miss out on things.  I miss time hanging out in the store while grandma fixes another pair of pants.  I miss that life but it lives on inside me and will til I'm ready to go home. In the mean time I will find comfort and normalcy in other stores along my journey.

Reflections

Shattered mirror on the floor, against the wall
Crumpled memories all around
Connected by a common thread
Too far gone to fix
Too far gone to focus
Jumping from one pile of remnants to another
No connection, only assumptions
No clear picture

First In Flight

You make it to the top of the mountain and you want to stay there.  You hope the descent isn't to steep on the other side. Most of the time you reach the top only to realize there is another peak towering over you.  I was able to reach one of my professional goals recently.  Partly out luck, but mostly it was determination and hard work. But like any good challenge there are a lot of small challenges along the way.  Or at least that's the way I approach it.  Somewhere along the way someone asked how you eat an elephant?  The answer is  one bite at a time.  Same lesson I learned from running, put one foot in front of the other and carry on. Keep your eye on the prize, and go for it.

One of the final challenges along the way was my fear of flying, and guess what I had to fly to the destination.  I wasn't going to let that get in the way of reaching  my goal.  So I set off into the darkness, I knew nothing about flying or preparing for air travel, I had never even been to an airport.  I pick a parking lot and luckily look up as I'm leaving the lot to see that it was O3 and wrote it down.  After wandering the lot at another event, I decided to remember locations.  Then I hopped a shuttle bus to the terminal.  I get out there and realize I didn't plan the next step. I finally ask a couple of NSA uniformed people where I needed to go.  They pointed me in the right direction. I then jump through the rest of the hoops and eventually board the plane.  We taxi and pick up speed.  I assume we are going to go into hyperdrive eventually like the Mellinium Falcon and I will be plastered to the back of my seat.  I eventually look out the window and we are above the clouds.  No Mach 3, no going straight up space shuttle style, no nothing.  I like analogies and the best comparison I can come with is a bus ride. Big Whoop!  I have a fear of heights so I requested an aisle seat, another mistake.  The guy next to me is the Area Person over LP so he is not exactly a friendly face.  In between us is an empty seat.  To survive take off I plug in Jay Mohr and listen to one of his podcast, like I would on my normal commute.  Another trick I learned along the way is to reduce the brain's workload and make things as normal as possible, cut back on the new stuff to process.  The sun is on our side of  the plane so most of the shades are down around me, so I really can't see out.  I finally ask Mr. Suit when we start to descend  if he'll take a picture for me, that way I can prove I did it and didn't just rent a car and drive to Florida.  It turned out to be a pretty cool pic over the wing. It's not really my pic though cause I never really saw the view myself.  It's like me stealing one of your memories and calling it one of my own.  We land and make our way through the maze of the airport to collect our baggage and board a shuttle bus to the hotel.

I started this blog to discuss the different speeds in which our minds seem to measure time and distance.  Air travel gave me a whole new conundrum,  I had been to Florida twice before this trip. The first time I was a passenger in a car and the second time I drove the entire trip.  Those are long days in the car.  Air travel changed all that. Until we went to Universal for a few hrs, it never seemed like I was in Florida.  So instead of finding a way of slowing down the world, I sped it up. 2014 has been that way more often than not. I changed stores and whatever comfort zones and safe routines I had went out the window.  It's all been new and fast paced. It's like I reached the peak and continued over the mountain gaining momentum down the other side.  I have to find a way to transition this energy into climbing the next peak without crashing off the cliff.

Candy and nuts

It's increasingly difficult to slow down life. Too many forces pulling you in too many directions.  I got an opportunity this week however. We took a week off work and loaded the kids up and went to our safehaven.  The one without all life's constant reminders laying around.  It gives you a moment to take your foot off the gas and coast for a minute.  This week is also our wedding anniversary and my youngest daughter's birthday. This causes reflection on the past.  The ups and downs of two lives intercepted and spliced permanately together as well as how did our children grow up so fast. The realization that such times together are now numbered without the intrusion of others.

I appreciate my wife and love her dearly.  I don't think I had any idea what we were in for or what the outcome would be.  We decided to form a parental partnership as opposed to the more traditional route to marital bliss.  I knew I loved her and I knew I hadn't felt this kind of love before.  I'm pretty sure my wife felt the same way.  We just decided to put it all on fast foward. I had to learn quickly how to be a husband and a father, ironically, two roles I knew very little about. I probably still don't know a lot about either one, but I try my damnest to be the best I can.  I'm not sure the traditional route would have gotten me here either. There were too many roadblocks in the way that would have slowed or prevented that from happening smoothly.  We have learned a lot over the last fourteen years. A lot about being parents, spouses, a lot about us, a lot about each other.  One thing
I have found out is that so many of the missing peices in my life and questions I have had about life have been filled in my this relationship with my wife and our children.  It's amazing.  The last real memory of having a dad myself was my fifth birthday. Then came a period of 25 years of questions that I had no answers for. Questions about being a man; a father, a husband, questions about life in geneal. The last fourteen years have provided me a lot of answers for these questions and for this I am greatfull.  My wife and kids probably don't understand, but in a lot of ways it went back full circle and gave me a chance to redo a lot of my life.