Sometimes

Sometimes
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Sometimes I wonder about things which are important only to me.
Sometimes I wonder about things which should be important to all.
Sometimes I wonder about things future and in past.
But, always I wonder.

Sometimes I look at the night sky filled with stars. 
Sometimes I look at the think of all the worlds there must be out there. 
Sometimes I look at the tiny ants toiling while building their own little worlds.
And, always I wonder.

Sometimes I look at the strife in the world around me with all its mysteries.
Sometimes I lie back and dream of a way it could be with just a little effort.
Sometimes I don't care, sometimes I do care, always I'm entranced.
And find new ways to wonder.

Sometimes I lie, alone, in bed dreaming of things possible and those not.
Sometimes I see the evils in our world and the good inherent in man.
Sometimes I see the questions which have no answers and answers to questions unasked.

And, again I wonder.

Sometimes I see such simple questions unanswered.
Sometimes I see pure hypocrisy paraded as virtues.
Sometimes I see minds ruled by hatred and lies.
And I no longer wonder.

For I have looked high to the heavens for truth.
And all the while it is beneath my feet.
Trite, trash, unworthy of a thinking, feeling creature.
Then, I wonder even more.

Frank  VanHoose
November 2019

Parent's Pride vs Parent's Living Vicariously

My elder sent me some photos of her elder and did not mention what the photos were from.  It was he, him and Dad with a bouquet of  roses.  And, I sent her a reply about any special moment with one's kids is like nothing else.  And it is.

But,  as usual, it set me to thinking a lot about a parent's pride in a child's accomplishments versus a parent living their own dreams viciously via their children.  Far too much of that going on. Why do we have parent's showing their ass at a kids little league game?  Whose game is it anyway?  Parents who subject their children to this sort of thing need to be taken for a long walk on a short pier.  Seriously.

We had our childhood.  If it did now work out the way we would have liked...Shit  happens.  Most of us were not the kids who hit the grand slam in the bottom of the last inning or hit the winning shot with zero on the clock.  Deal with it. Our children's dreams are just that, THEIR dreams.  Our job as parent's is to help them on the path to achieving THEIR dreams not reliving our own.  Our time came.  Our time passed.  Now is Their time not ours.

Makes me realize it does not matter what his achievement was.  That belongs to him.  Just that his parents were there to share the moment in support of him, joyous for him, not for themselves.  Well, yes, for themselves too.  But not for whatever dream he achieved but because they had been there supporting him in pursuing his own dream, his own way and being honestly joyous for him without needing to interject their own dreams  over his. 

I think (hope) I have always taught my kids they should not allow the praise or criticism of others to deter them from following their own paths to their own goals and I'd support the for whatever that goal was and I believe they are teaching their children the same thing and following up on it by celebrating their children's successes without trying to push them into paths where they, themselves, have failed.  They are allowing their children to be who they are and one success means as much as any other.  It is, after all, our children's dreams not our own. 

See, I realize now those are my successes.  It does not matter what my job title was, how much money I made, how big my house was,  what car I drove, etc.  It matters only that I love my kids and they know that.  It matters that I pushed my kids to follow their own dreams and by doing that they will allow my grand kids to pursue their own way in this world and be happy for them.  And, that will follow down through succeeding generations.

Something to think about when the volunteer umpire calls strike three on an obvious ball four or any other setback or even achievement your child has.  Celebrate THEIR victories.  Commiserate with them on THEIR defeats.  Those are theirs not yours.  It does not matter if they with a game or lose it, just love them, support them, give them a hug... and keep your damn ego out of their life.  You had your own childhood, let them have theirs.

Its a Stormy Night in South Carolina

I suppose it has been a while since I've written here.  Its been an eventful time in my life.  Some good, mostly bad.

My brother died.  My hero for all my life.  My best friend.  Much more of a dad to me than my father ever was.  My younger nephew was killed by a car and it was probably his fault.  The woman who meant the world to me died and I had know warning.  I found out I have stage 3 Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis with projected life expectancy of 2 - 5 years.  I found out my low blood pressure has lead to Mini-Strokes for years and different parts of my brain are deteriorating (thank goodness for spell check or you'd see just how far down I've gone).  Despite all this, the state of South Carolina (In its infinite knowledge of the condition and concern) has determined I'm still able to work.  Whoopee.  

But that is just a general background and nothing really specific to this post.

Here in Lexington, SC today and tonight have been stormy.  Sitting here now at my computer with all the other lights off so I can see through the wide open patio blinds to the growing darkness outside.  Darkness enhanced by a heavy fog  or very low lying clods which limits vision to around fifty feet.

Its nostalgic, its a reminder of all the good things and also all the bad things.  Fortunately mostly the good.

Back between summer of 1956 and summer of 1961 we lived in an old log cabin at a forestry tower in rural, south eastern, KY.  Place called Spring Knob.   Lots of stories about that place but those have been explored earlier or not.  But none of them have any place in this narrative. This is about my love of storms.

That cabin was on top of one of the highest hills around.  And when we had storms we had some humdingers.  The bottom of the clouds were often down the hill from us so we were surrounded by that cottony whiteness, interspersed with vivid flashes of lightening and deafening thunder.

As a small child they scared hell out of me.  Somehow, at the same time, I loved them.  So exelerating and exciting.  Kind of like the attraction of a new roller coaster.

I guess I never really thought about it that much but over the course of my life I find more and more of my memories centering around storms.

In my teens when we'd have a big rain I could move my bed next to the window where I could watch the creek rise up over our foot bridge, up our drive and several feet into the old barn.  
In some of those same years I'd go hunting and when a storm rolled in I'd find a convenient rock cliff, start a fire, place my shotgun well away from me, start a fire and sit back and enjoy the wind and rain.

When I bought my house back in '98 it was surrounded by trees.  When a storm would come along I'd go to my porch and sit and enjoy the smell of the air, the way the wind whipped the branches of my trees around, have a Bud and a Smoke and just enjoy.

Been a good many years since I smoked or drank Bud but I still love my storms.  Not sure what it is but the storms just call to me and the more violent the better.

I've been through more than one hurricane.  First was David in Florida 1978 or 1979.  '79 I guess.  I recall sitting at the kitchen window thinking, "So this is a hurricane?  I've seen a hundred worse thunder storms in the Kentucky hills".  

I guess the worst was Hugo while I was in the Army at Ft. Jackson in Columbia, SC back in the late 80s.  Rode that one out in a moblie home.  

Nothing at all so severe since but even the mild storms comfort me.  I truly do feel sorry for the victims of storms but, even with that, I do feel a surge of excitement whenever I hear about the possibility of local, severe weather.

There is no debate as to my sanity.  I'm batshit crazy as most anyone who knows me can attest.  So, I'm sitting here tonight looking out my patio door(window) wishing I was able to just head out into the night and not care where the morning sun finds me.

On a Morning Like This

We sold our house last year. (2017)  We now live in an apartment in a 'mixed use' development.  We just got too old and too many health problems to keep up a house as well as having almost priced ourself out of the neighborhood.

We've been here about nine months now.  My wife used to walk here after the stores opened so she would feel safe but I never felt much like walking though my doctors have been trying to get me to do that for umpteen years.  But, for the last six weeks or so I have been walking in the early morning most days.  Sometimes it is down to Panera Bread.  Some days just to the little performance/park area near us in the development.  

Sometimes I take my breakfast or lunch with me and sit on one of the benches in the shade and let my mind drift where it will.

This was one of those mornings when I only went to the park and sat for some time.  I was looking at the trees, the blue of the sky and the race betweem the upper altitude clouds and those lower.  It was a beautiful morning.  When I left the apartment it was 74 degrees.  There was a soft breeze blowing.  There were even several birds flitting around.  One in particular flew in and landed on an outstretched branch quite near me.  I sat there watching the bird, watching the sky behind it fading from blue to white to blue again and thinking.

Today (09/11/2018) I just sat there thinking.  I was thinking how perfect the morning was and all those people I loved who are no longer here to enjoy such days.  So many people who tried to live a good life, being health concious and all and still left this earth early.  While I've lived a mostly self-destructive life for the past 25+ years.  They're gone and I'm still here to enjoy a morning like this.  Makes no sense to me.  But that is reality.  Some facets of reality makes no sense to even the most gifted physicists.  

This has been a very bad year emotionally as I've lost (funny euphamism.  they died) too many people I cared for.  My brother, his brother-in-law, my youngest nephew and the woman who might (or might not) have been the mother of my youngest daughter.  I mourn them all deeply and cannot bring myself to realize they are all gone.  Forever.  Gone.

And before this year there are so many more who have passed on.  Some older which was expected but far too many who were younger.  So, I sat there watching the bird, the sky, the fast moving clouds and thought about all the people I cared about who were not able to enjoy a morning like this.  It is saddening, humbling and a mystery why I, who have been destroying myself for a quarter century am still here when so many who at least tried to live a healthy life are now gone.

I started counting them but there were so many I just stopped.  Being born to older parents and being the youngest I guess I should expect to have lost my older relatives but I've lost so many whom were so much younger.  

So very many people in my life I have cared about who no longer have the opportunity to enjoy A Morning Like This. 

I Have No Idea What to Call This

Nothing jumps out at me.  I've tried to write out memories of my brother but I am finding no matter what I am thinking of it all leads back to him. 

I have said, and it is true, people are like the trees on either side of the road when you're driving on an interstate highway.  Always there but never noticed unless there was something different about them.  But that was only momentary as there were thousands of trees by the road ahead.

That is what people have been to me for a quarter of a century or more.  Just a passing, momentary consciousness followed by complete blankness.  Thousands, millions of trees as we pass through life. 

When I was younger I tried to please everyone else and was never pleased myself.  In my later years I tried to please myself but found myself unhappy.  I feel like I used to be a driver but now I'm just one tree along the road.  Quickly noticed, quickly forgotten.

My older brother passed away a little over a month ago.  All my grand parents, parents, aunts and uncles have long ago had dirt shoveled on their coffins.  Did not really bother me for a host of reasons.   Some are I never liked (not hated) most of my family.  There were only a few I cared about.  One cousin who, at this time, is still alive.  She has been special to me for over fifty years. 

Be that as it may, since my brother passed away I notice, not matter what I'm thinking, somehow it all comes back to him.

Him being gone is hard for me to deal with.  I'm just now barely able to write about it without crying to the point I can't go on.  I still cry but I want to say some things needed to be said.

And, right now, I still don't think I can say ('write') them.  I have such a hole in my life I cannot explain it to anyone else.That's it for tonight.  Can't keep thinking about him and writing.

Rest in Peace, Little Brother. (In Memories) PT. 1

As the title suggests I just received work my brother passed away a few hours ago.  He has been sick for many years for many reasons.  Today a massive heart attack took him out.  Quickly at least.  So, I thought I'd write down a few random memories.

He was 23 years older than me so I really only knew him as an adult.  I guess my earliest memory of him was when I was about two years old.  I had a new tricycle and he took me up to the top of the Wash Rock hill and let me try to ride down by myself.

Now, the hill was not that steep or that far.  But, it was a dirt road and it was pretty rutted so I did not make it very far until the ruts interrupted my journey.

Somewhere around that same time I remember he, our mother and I wading the creek a little way above the Wash Rock.  I had a little, toy windup submarine.  He was showing me how to use it and it disappeared under the creek bank and was never seen again.

Not long after that we moved to a different house just down from the Spicy Gap on Rte 40 a mile or so inside of Martin County.  He used to whittle wooden rocket for me.  He'd cut a notch up near the front of the rocket then used a knotted string tied to a handle and use that to accelerate the wooden rocket to, what for me was immeasurable heights.  

That was where I first ran into the idea of people dying.  I don't remember who it was but my mother took me to the grave site for the funeral and explained to me when people died they were put in a "bury hole".  

Odd, I don't know what it has to do with my brother but it, somehow, seemed to be worth mentioning.  I think it may fit in this set of memories later, though.

We moved to the Spring Knob forestry tower somewhere around when I was four of five years old.  My memories of that place are much cleared and there are many more of them.  I remember my brother and one or two of his friends walking out on the tower beams on the first flight and jumping off to tumble like a paratrooper hitting the ground.  

I remember one day I got fascinated by the sound of the air hissing out of the car tire and just kept trying it until it stopped.  Only had a small "bicycle pump"  but he pumped it up and  never sad a word that I can recall.

The place we lived was a log cabin.  Had one large room for living and sleeping, a reasonable sized kitchen to the left as one faced the house and one other room kind of propped up with posts as it hung out over the slope of the hill.  There was also a front and a tiny back porch.

I recall one time our mother told me to go wake him up for breakfast.  He slept on a couch in the big room.  So I walked up to him, asleep on the sofa, and punched him as hard as I could in the nose.  Bled like a "stuck pig".  He threatened me when the bleeding stopped but I don't remember him doing anything later.

We had a green nineteen fifty sever Chevy which had been under water in the fifty seven flood.  When I was growing up that was the flood every other flood was judged by.  It was the definition of a lemon.  Always something wrong with it.

One day my father griped he "wished it would just roll over the hill".  Next morning the car was not in the parking place.  It was found a mile or so down the road.  Over the hill.  Three guesses what happened to it.

He quit school when he was sixteen so he could go to Mayo Voc-Tech and graduate before he would be eighteen and the tuition went up.  Stood him in good stead I guess.  He was a diesel mechanic in the Navy.  Became a "Master" mechanic for Ford, Chevy and Chrysler later in life.  Also became a very good welder. He was sent to the Great Lakes for training and immediately got double pneumonia and spent his first several days in the Navy in the hospital.  That was the beginning of all his health issues.

When I was six they sent me to live with my grandparents during the week to go to a little one room school called Preston Gap.  On Friday evenings he'd come to pick me up to take me home for the weekends then bring me back on Sunday evenings.

At that point in time all the roads for miles were dirt or in the creek.  One cold night we had not gotten very far on the rutted, old road when the tires slid in a deep rut and the care got "Center Bound".     He had to get out in freezing weather, jack up the car then find rocks to fill up the ruts under the tires.  Don't remember how long it took him but we made it home that night.

Just a Hill in Spring Time

Just a Hill in Spring Time
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A long time ago
I was another person
In another place
A place now gone
Replaced by fading memories.

There was a hill
Behind our house
Where I'd go
To lie in the Sun
In the yellow sedge.

A small space
Among the trees
Open to the sky
Home to one Apple tree
Covered in lovely, white blooms.

A peaceful place
To be alone in body
As well as in my thoughts
just watching the clouds
Drifting like my mind.

I don't think of it often
It was so long ago
I wonder if it is still there
Or has it disappeared
Alongside so many memories.

And when I die,
Will it be gone forever
A fleeting, frozen moment
In time for a kid
Who loved it long ago.