A Ballad About You

Mom looks at Facebook and asks if I can explain the story of Sweetcheeks.

“Well dear mother, if we were to go for walk down Coventry or gathered for a meal at Geraci’s, Tommys or a number of other famous restaurants I could tell you a tale. But it is far too long and complicated. Call it in an inside joke.”

It’s fair to say there is no one who has more history hearing my tales than her and Mom can tell you the preschool teachers said I would be a storyteller.

Anyhoo, she wasn’t in the mood to determine whether I would actually explain myself so she let it go. And let’s be honest, she had almost every one of her grandchildren with her and her favorite son so there was no reason to go down that rabbit hole.

Though I was tempted to tell her the story of “I wrote a ballad about you” and that silence is consent and five or six other things.

When the mood strikes I can string together quite the story on paper or verbally and though I was exhausted, I felt that urge.

Hell, it is still with me tonight so who knows, I just might take advantage of it. If you had a tasty delight and some time…

“Soul meets soul on lovers lips.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

Been reading Shelley in between rereading two of Gladwell’s books and that quote stuck out as have a few others.

like this one

“Forget the dead, the past? O yet there are ghosts that may take revenge for it, memories that make the heart a tomb, regrets which gild thro’ the spirit’s gloom, and with ghastly whispers tell that joy, once lost, is pain.”

and

“He wanders, like a day-appearing dream,
Through the dim wildernesses of the mind;
Through desert woods and tracts, which seem
Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.”

Epilogue

Heard from my nephew and niece they think I am starting to look more like my father.

Got me thinking for a moment about whether that means I look like the seventy something  year old they remember or if it is closer to how I think of him.

That made me consider for more carefully how I see him and I realized it is a fluid view. When I think of memories he is usually whatever age he was at the time that corresponds with that image.

I almost never picture him in the hospice or slowed by age/infirmity, only when it is tied into that time.

So I suppose he probably slides between around 40 and 50 something. Is it because it almost makes him a contemporary?

I don’t know.

Should I worry about whether the kids think I look older than I am?

Nope, don’t have time for that nor do I believe I look like I am in my seventies. Don’t look like I am 25, but I don’t look like a senior citizen.

I am a regular guy living a regular life that has moments of extraordinary.