Something about Even In The Shadows caught more than my ear and it sent my mind soaring back in time.
Something about dreams and remarks like My air and my blood, the wind that fills my sails came to mind and I thought about how words can be the ultimate contradiction in that they can have such power and such emptiness too.
Few people understand because so few have had the experience and even then few walk that path. When you walk through fire you risk being burned but you also open yourself up to untold rewards.
The Inconclusive & Impossible Proofs Of Life
There are conversations that echo in my head reminding me of how much in life cannot be proven in the ways in which we sometimes want, wish and hope for.
The shades of gray that populate the places between black and white pulling curtains of ambiguity over our heads forcing us to close our eyes and use other senses.
When you cannot rely upon the tactile and the empirically proven you go a different direction and see if maybe that offers something you cannot find any other way.
Last night there was a visitor in a dream who I haven’t seen in quite some time and I refused to answer questions because I said my questions had never been answered.
They told me it was ridiculous and I shouldn’t play such games and I said I was serious. When they pushed harder I said I was familiar with double standards and quoted my buddy Pablo.
“I hate when you are like this.”
“I hate when you are like this too so we are even. Maybe it is a never was, never could and never will be kind of thing or maybe it is something else.”
“You are talking in circles.”
“Nah, I am saying the same thing I always have. When you think of me, I think of you. It is that simple.”
Teenage Girls
A thousand years ago when I wasn’t quite a wee lad anymore but was still far from being a man my father told me to be careful how I treated girls.
“Remember some boy may be looking at your sisters and thinking the same thoughts you are.”
His words have stayed with me and while I can’t say I might not have done as a good a job of following them as I could I have tried.
My own daughter is in the other room dealing with a situation that I can’t just fix by saying “I have a shotgun, shovel and a place in the desert” or a hard glare because that is not how adults deal things.
Especially when the situation isn’t related to dating but friendships among girls and I find myself baffled and bewildered by what I hear.
So I do my best to be the supportive father, to listen and to offer advice that is sound and reasonable.
And I ask her mother to explain this nonsense to me and think of my middle sister and the stories I remember from when she was younger.
I am sure she has some new ones she could tell but from the position of the mother of a girl who will turn 16 in two days.
In some ways that really shocks me, maybe more than having a nephew who is filling out college apps or a son who is going to be 17.
A 16 year-old niece.
She is not the only girl with a birthday that day and I know other moms who are as proud as they can be of their girls.
Maybe I should ask one of them for suggestions about this other situation because surely the teen girls and mothers would have a better clue as to how to make sense of the mishegoss.
Or maybe not.
****
Three days ago I sat in a Starbucks responding to emails and listened to a couple of mothers talk about their daughters and dating.
It was a very candid conversation with the one telling the other she was certain her daughter was going to be very similar in her approach to dating as she was.
I don’t know what means but it made me think of some forty-something year-old women who I knew as 16 year-old girls.
Or maybe it really made me think about how I won’t mind if my daughter chooses not to be like the teens I remember.
Not because they were bad, because they weren’t but because…she is my baby and I’d like some things to take a little while to change.
The Time Is Coming
Got Carefree Highway playing on iTunes and more good memories of road trips across country and around California/Texas.
I can’t fit 576 months of life experience into a head that hasn’t been around for 160 or even communicate all the ideas I want into one that has 588 months.
So I just do what I do best, live my life and keep pushing forward.
Been through so much, encountered so many challenges, loved and lost and so much more.
Told the bigger teen when he asked a question I am too stupid to know when to quit and too stubborn to die.
He rolled his eyes at me and asked me a few more questions and I responded with my own.
“Ask me my biggest regret?”
“Ok, what is your biggest regret?”
I smiled and said I am working on changing that right now.
“Dad, I don’t understand what that means.”
“That is ok. if I you asked a few people who know me really well they would probably give you different answers than I would. Hell, they might even say I am lying if mine didn’t match theirs but I am good with it.”
“Dad, I still don’t understand.”
I gave him my best warm smile and a hand on the shoulder.
“It is my deal and it wouldn’t matter if I told you because it is my narishkeit to handle. It is something that moves and motivates me, pushes me forward. I am convinced some things will happen regardless of what I do so I focus on other areas and do my thing.
You need to figure out what moves and pushes you and then use that to push and or pull through when needed.”
