Do It Again

She does it a lot.  You reach down, Marty turns her cheek to you, you kiss it, and she says, “Do it again”.  You kiss her cheek again, she says, “Do it again”.  This repeats four maybe five times, so always be prepared, Marty digs being loved.

That wasn’t always the case; she struggled with feeling loved, with feeling worthy of love.  Marty wasn’t ever sure she deserved the love and affection of those around her, more important; too often she didn’t feel very lovable.

That has changed.

She likes to be hugged, she likes to be kissed, she likes for you to hold her hand, touch her arm, rest your hand on her shoulder, she loves affection.  Mostly she loves knowing she is loved and she eagerly accepts that love and the affection that comes with it.

Marty can still be kind of ornery and occasionally the old tart, acerbic Marty arises.  Like, when she told me that my shaggy hair and shorts and sweat shirt were just a little bit of an embarrassment to her.  But, on the whole, I would call her sweet, loving and someone who loves to be loved and is not shy about saying give me some more.

All of us, at times, struggle with the idea of accepting love, accepting care; even from someone we know loves us.  Marty was/is not alone in that.  We don’t feel worthy of another’s sacrifice, we don’t feel we deserve adulation or praise or affection.  We have that voice in our head rattling around telling us, “You are not worthy, this other person’s love is more than I deserve, I’ve done nothing to cash in such a rich reward. “

Marty felt that, it made her angry, it made her sad, it was frustrating.  Not anymore.  Today, in our new normal, she gets it.  She no longer thinks about being worth loving, she doesn’t run all of the negative around in her head, that would be too hard, she simply says, “Do it again” with a level of assurance and expectation that you are going to kiss her cheek as many times as she asks and that it is okay, it is perfect for her to ask, again and again and again.

I attended some business training years ago that focused, to a small degree, on accepting compliments, accepting nice things people would say to you.  We learn early in life to be humble and too often we take our humility to absurd levels, not accepting kindness, not accepting good things; we must pass on kindness from others if we ourselves are good.  We need to learn to accept those kindnesses and simply say thank you, accept the words, accept the love.

The Marty of today knows, she absolutely knows she is loved and I think she finally believes she is lovable, worthy and deserving of my love, of our children’s love, of our family’s love, of our friends' love.  She gets it, she understands that we can never particularly deserve another’s love and affection, we can never earn that greatest of things through our actions. 

Love, the love of other people, the love of God is given freely, it is not earned, we don’t necessarily deserve the love of others, it is the greatest of things, it is the penultimate gift we give and receive. 

When it’s offered we simply have to accept it; we simply have to say, “Do it again.”

Superman and Heaven, Wisdom from Marty

Spoiler alert on a couple of fronts….If you plan on seeing Batman VS  Superman as it comes out on DVD or HBO and want to be surprised by the end of this less than inspiring movie, stop reading……I’m going to tell you how it ends.

And, if you are planning on dying at any time in your life, I have another spoiler. Both of these come from the all knowing sage, Marty.

First, the Superman thing. 

The Batman vs. Superman movie was pretty well savaged by the movie critics, they weren’t all wrong, it was kind of hard to follow.  We actually kind of liked the movie, but I like film, except the Magic Mike movies, both of them were a special kind of bad.

Superman VS Batman was overly long and chaotic and too visually dark especially if you have to sit up close like we do in the wheel chair section, note to theaters, give us a break please.  But, it was a movie, there was popcorn involved and it was fine, light afternoon entertainment, until the ending.

Here’s the spoiler, Superman dies and is buried at the end (theoretically).  I mean how can that be?  He’s indestructible, he can fly, he can do anything and these morons kill him?  Really?

I grew up a huge, huge Superman fan.  Bought and read all of the comics and watched the old George Reeves version on TV when I was somewhere you could get that station.  I ran around the neighborhood with a towel pinned around my neck flying and jumping off of some really high things until I figured the bath towel was only going to hang me if I didn’t quit. 

I was a pre-adolescent Superman apprentice so naturally I was affected by Superman’s untimely demise.  In fact I’m still a bit shocked, not Trump is our new president shocked, but Superman is dead shocked.

After the film, I sat in the movie darkness next to Marty as the credits were rolling by and with a heavy heart and deep sigh I said to Marty, “I can’t believe they killed off Superman, how can you kill Superman, how can Superman be really dead?”

Marty who was a little bored with the chaos on the screen looked up from her Diet Coke and said with a voice that sounded just like an impatient mother soothing their 10 years olds angst , or a bored partner impatient with her spouses idiocy,  “Ging (the shortened version of a nickname), don’t worry, it’s only a movie.”

Yea, I know, only a movie.  It’s not like I believed in Superman or anything but I wore a bath towel around my neck and jumped from roofs and they killed the man, they killed Superman.  Thanks Marty, I know it’s only a movie, geez….

Then there’s the whole dying and waking up in heaven after life thing.  Marty is a strong believer in the heaven after life thing.  She hasn’t always been there, but she is now.  Almost dying several times can give you a different perspective on this kind of thing.

We were driving down the highway one day talking about stuff and she told me she really believes that she will see her Mom and Dad again someday.  She knows her Mom is in heaven and mostly believes her Dad made it there too.

Remarkably, she believes I’m going to be allowed in her heaven too, with one caveat, she says I will be a lot nicer and not near as bossy.  She doesn’t really much like that whole bossy thing, never did from anyone which is why she is not 100% on her own Pop being in heaven. 

So, there you have it.  A super hero is dead but it’s only a movie and Marty’s apparently bossy grouchy husband will have a free ticket to the good place. 

Hope to see you all there, a long time from now.  You might not recognize me because I will be so much nicer.  I’ll be the guy with the towel pinned around his neck talking to Superman, and of course Marty.

Stripping Down

Two weeks ago I went to Dallas to see number one Grandson play soccer and then I took him to Toys R Us to shop for his birthday.  Marty didn’t go, Marty couldn’t go, it was a fast trip and there was really no way to get her wheelchair to the soccer field.  I don’t know if she really wanted to go, but I went alone wondering if I should have found a way to accommodate her.

Last week we took furniture to our daughter in Dallas in Marty’s new van.  I was amazed at how much stuff we got in the van.  Marty and I were having dinner and I asked her if she wanted to go and she said yes.  I then talked about trying to get all of that stuff in the van and how tight it would be.  Marty looked at me and said, “Do you have room for me?”

 

Of course I will always make room for her, that’s exactly what I told her, but that's not always the simple truth.

Sometimes to survive you have to simplify, you have to find the bare essentials and strip life down to the basics.  That’s what we had to do in our lives to cope with Marty’s stroke, that’s where I took us, thinking, believing we needed to focus inward to survive.

With Marty, when we came home, it was all about survival, hers and mine. Simply staying alive and mentally stable took all of our energy and efforts and even then we sometimes came up short.

 Recovery from a stroke takes a tremendous amount of energy and focus.  Everything is hard and exhausting.  Thinking, talking, eating, and breathing, basic living skills all require enormous amounts of concentration, calories, and focus.  The extras in life like relationships, work and play are shoved to the back of the closet until you can move out of survival mode.  (See Maslow’s hierarchy of needs….we start with survival)

There are a lot of problems with this whole stripping down thing, like,  you get really tired of looking at yourself naked, you see way too many of your own flaws.  You end up pushing too much in the closet, you get too internal and too focused on just living and you forget that the world outside your sphere still exists and still matters. 

You know, or you think the stripping down is temporary, but it soon becomes an integral part of your life that seems permanent.  You know in the back of your brain that sooner or later you have to start adding elements of life back in and that can be scary, a little daunting.   Reincorporating yourself back into the ebb and flow of life is hard.

The truth is if you step out of the main stream, eventually you get left behind; other people evolve and move on without you.  It only makes sense because the stream, the river is still running, with or without you.  The boat really does leave you where you stepped off and you don’t get the benefit of gently floating down a creek and seeing the same sights as the rest of the world as a leveling experience, you have to get back on where everybody else already is and that is frightening.

And, bringing Marty up to speed adds a real level of complexity and difficulty.  I want her to be part of life, I want her to be able to re engage, but the truth is, on so many levels, she simply can’t, she doesn’t have the physical, mental or emotional bandwidth to do it and I find myself, too often, leaving her sitting on the bank and watching as I start putting my toes back in the water.

It makes me feel horribly guilty.

I will always have room for her, I will leave stuff on the side of the road to make room for her, I hate that she even asked the question, “Do you have room for me?” 

It’s one of those care giving issues.  It’s an issue of caring for yourself and making sure that the cared for are present, are literally cared for, are noticed and are part of the flow of life. 

That’s not always easy, in fact, it’s very rarely easy, but nobody said it would be.  They did say it would be worth it, for once they were right.

Poop or Chocolate?

There it was, poop, on my hand.  I reached for the first thing I could find, a tissue, at tissue on the cabinet, a used tissue, and without thinking wiped away the poop leaving a residue of snot on my hand. 

This is care giving my friends.

The best part about this, and truly, truly, there aren’t many best parts of stuff like this, it doesn’t really bother me anymore.  I no longer dry heave, I no longer shudder and recoil, I just wipe off the dirt with more dirt.  Its life and frankly with warm water and soap you can clean any part of your body. 

You can really tell you are settling into your role with all of this if you can stomach the nasty stuff, then tell the story and laugh about it.  As Marty sat in her chair and I told her, “I just cleaned my poopy hands with your snot,” she busted out laughing.

Caring for someone who is unable to care for themselves is going to be dirty.  People do stuff that is smelly and, at times, a little revolting, it’s just a fact of life when you are dealing with people.   If you haven’t had to get dirty with the person you love, if you haven’t gotten on the ground and smelled the sometimes acrid odor of life just wait, you will.  Caring for someone requires you smell the both the roses and the fertilizer.

Love is not easy.  We watch the rom-coms at the movies and it’s always the same formula, fall in love, things are great, go through an ugly event in life, come back together as the music swells.  In real life you occasionally have to pick up dirty underwear or shave in the company of someone sitting on the toilet.  It’s real life, we gotta do some stuff.

I did some stuff with our kids, I cleaned up puke, I wiped noses and butts.   I don’t remember having to fish poop out of the bath but I’ve seen my son do it.  It’s not something anyone likes, it’s something you get to brag about later and something you get to laugh at your son about when his children make a mess in the tub. 

Here’s the thing (I actually say, “here’s the thing” in real life when I’m going to make a particularly keen point) caring for someone you love, caring for someone who is sick or broken in some way is hard and is messy.  Heck, the truth is loving someone, really loving someone, is hard and messy, it just is and don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise.  Being in love, loving is hard dirty work.

It’s also incredibly rewarding and life sustaining.  I’ve said it more times than you care to read or hear but caring for Marty is purely and simply the best and most decent thing I have ever done in my 62 years.  I feel more important, more valuable, more loved by my love than ever and that my friend is the greatest reward there is.

I’m reminded of the scene in the movie Baby Momma where the veteran parent looks at the brown spot on her child, wipes it with her finger and asks her child, “Is this poop or chocolate?” as the mother to be looks on horrified that someone would so casually touch what is potentially poop.  The Mom then touches her fouled finger to her tongue and pronounces, “Chocolate.”  Cracked me up.

That’s the way it is, only sometimes it really is poop, which is okay because it washes off.

It's Marty's Birthday

Yesterday two of our grand kids went to school.  Lily started real kindergarten and Noah, the old pro, started first grade.  Today their grandmother, my bride of 40 years has a birthday, she turns 62.  These are big days.

I knew our kids would grow and have kids, I knew when grand kids came along they would grow and go to school.  Frankly, there were many days I did not know if Marty would see her 62nd birthday.  Ten years ago it didn’t seem likely, ten years ago it didn’t seem likely see would see 55.

But, here we are, our kid’s kids being real human beings growing and starting new amazing chapters and Marty surviving against the rather ugly odds of two strokes.

Life is an incredible journey.

I know our grand kids  and their parents, our kids, will survive their first days and the next days.  They are good, smart kids who will thrive.  There will be dark days, even in kindergarten and first grade, that is life, but they will walk through the dark days and find light at the end.


In celebrating Marty’s birthday we understand that the next birthday is not a guarantee.  Eleven years ago we celebrated Marty’s 51st birthday, the one after her first stroke, I was still pretty naive about Marty’s prognosis and how our life was going to turn.  I talked a good game about not taking any days or any firsts or any lasts for granted.  I thought I understood how precarious life could be.  I didn’t.

I think I got it now.  I think I understand that neither Marty nor I are guaranteed a 63rd birthday.  The 2nd stroke pretty well convinced me that we all walk a very thin precious line between here and gone so I think it’s important to recognize and celebrate the milestones.

On Marty’s 62nd birthday I want her to know she is loved, I want her to know she is amazing, I want her to know that I don’t take one day, not one damn day, of her presence for granted.  I want her to know she is, in my eyes a living miracle and a testament to God’s grace.

Today Marty turns 62 and our two of our grand kids go to a 2nd day of school.  Here’s to many a happy day for all and here’s to 63 and all the little days in between.

Class of Seventy-Two

I’m 44 years and 250 miles removed from the red dirt of my home town, Colorado City Texas.  As we drove along the back roads of Texas, as we drove through Bangs and Zephyr and crossed Bearfoot Creek and Yellow Wolf Creek, as we moved from oak to scrub oak to large mesquite to small mesquite I began to feel the familiarity of home, a home long time gone.

Skip, a literal lifelong friend, and I drove into town, from the south.  We drove into a town I left in 1972, the summer after I graduated from high school.  I have returned to west Texas infrequently for reunions, Skip a little more often.  The town is different, it has evolved, it has changed, it has aged, just as we have.

My childhood homes, the houses I grew up in are long gone, no buildings, no foundations, no nothing.  The earth has started the process of reclaiming the road where I learned to play baseball and ride bikes and where I played under the street lights with neighbors.  In time, I suspect, the only thing left to mark our lives there will be two solitary cattle guards, guarding nothing but pasture grass and mesquite trees.

The town is different, it feels different.  Just like me, like Skip, like all who attended this reunion from all six graduating classes, the town has celebrated success, suffered from natural aging, mourned radical change and evolved in a world where evolution leaves nothing unscathed.

It’s interesting that this part of the world still has such a gravitational pull on my psyche.  As we drove into the town it still felt like home.  My old house is gone, every piece of the home I knew for years has been eradicated, but the town, the little west Texas red dirt town still feels a lot like home to me.

The town holds my memories, it holds my history, it connects me to that part of my life where I started to become a real human being.  It connects some of the dots; it connects some of the trails I’ve walked to get to where I am today.

The memories of skies turned orange from the dust from cotton gins in October, learning how to put on footballs pads, and marching down 2^nd Street with the junior high band while Bob Newman, the band director, walked the sidewalks confiscating pea shooters from the local hoodlums intent on shooting the band are still very much alive.

 I never feel the first cold winds of winter without thinking of those skies and those times spent with my friends enjoying free life in a small town.

It really does come down to the people, the people who, in spite of the miles and years, are the only ones who know a special part of your life.  It’s the history you have with these people, not the number of years, not the continuous contact.  They are all part of your formation, all part of your connection to your past, to your own history, to your beginnings and your essence.  These are the people that knew who you were before you were an adult, before you were changed by the vagaries of life. 

It all comes down to Skip and Dean and Randy and David and Sherry and Barbara and Sharon and all of those who also hold the memories who are also connected to this little town.  Its Fay and Debra and Sonny and Wayne and Dewain and Mark and Judy and Kathy and Carolyn who lived through the same times, who remember what it was like when we heard about JFK being assassinated, who watched the same dumb television shows and watched the Beatles and listened to American Band Stand and know who Sky King is.  These people hold the key to your memories and they will forever be a part of your beginning, your growing up, your heart break, your tragedy, your victories, your failures and your recoveries.

Sorry guys but you’re there for life whether you want to be or not, you get to all be a part of who I am as I carry on with Marty, with my kids and with my grandchildren.  You are a part of me as I am, like it or not, a part of you. 

That’s why it makes sense to stop in every now and then and talk.  I like that.

Hearing Fear

I was eavesdropping, sort of, maybe.  I mean can you call it eavesdropping if you are two rooms away listening another person’s phone conversation?  I listened to the mother, I listened to one side of a two sided conversation, I listened to a mother express love…..and fear.

I didn’t know who she was talking to for sure, I figured it was a son, it sounded like a son conversation.   I listened to only her side but I knew what was being said on bother sides of the call.  I think her son was saying I want to go out; I want to go party a little with my friends.  I know the kid, he’s old enough, he’s as responsible as any college kid is, he’s a good young man on the verge of finishing college.

The mother said, that makes me scared.

I heard her end of the conversation, I heard her say that other good kids, good guys had gone out not looking for problems but that problems found them and they were dead.
The mother said she was scared.

I don’t ever remember having or hearing that conversation with our son.  I never had that conversation with my parents.  We told ours and mine told me, always respect the police, they are the authority, respect the authority.  We never felt fear.

Sure we worried like all parents, like my parents, that’s a parent’s job.  I remember worrying about wrecks, about bad behavior, about normal misbehavior.  I never worried about my kid being pulled over by the police, I never worried about my kid getting questioned for DWB (driving while black), I never worried not one time ever that my kid would be shot by the people we fundamentally trust with everything.

The mother was scared; she was scared about things I have never faced, fears I have never felt, fears I suspect, I will never feel, except for children like hers.

I could hear it in her voice, this was real fear, not feigned racial indignation, not noise for a nosy guy eavesdropping, she had no idea I was intruding on her conversation.  She was worried and has been worried, not only for her sons but her brothers.

She has had “the talk” with all of her sons.  Her brothers have had “the talk” with her sons, you know the one, the one where they tell these young black men to watch what they say, to watch how they act, to never question the authority of a law enforcement officer and to always keep their hands where they can be seen.

Is this real?  Is there a real danger to these young men, do they really need to fear for their lives from people we should always, always trust the most?  It doesn’t matter, it matters that a mother is scared. It doesn’t matter if you or I as white folk in America believe it; it is a black man in America’s reality. It is the reality of the mother of those black men.

I love the police and since I gave up a somewhat sketchy youth I am never too concerned about passing a police officer, though I always check my speed.  I am in awe of the job they do and could never do the societal duties we ask of them.

These brave men and women do a job most of us, frankly, would be too frightened to do.  Cops do dirty, hard, dangerous work every day to make the lives of other people better.  Law enforcement deserves our respect, support and appreciation.

None of that means the mother I heard is not scared.  None of that means her sons and her brothers aren’t in more jeopardy than my white son.

I don’t know the answer to the problem.  I am not that smart.  I do know the start of the answer, ask the  people that know the questions, do you fear, do you trust?

Then believe the answer, it’s real.