Time Pieces

I was so small that I could hide under the end table in the living room, next to the couch. I’d lay under the table and watch feet go by. My mom would play Marty Robbins’ Greatest Hits on our long stereo/TV unit. I was very impressed by this media device. It took up an entire wall and served as a table to put food on when guests were over. I stared at the speakers on the thing, with the green carpet soft beneath me. The green curtains flowing in the breeze. I could smell Windex in the air mixed with the smell of spaghetti sauce or some other thing going in the kitchen. It seemed that my mom was always cooking or cleaning. Washing clothes. Doing something in the yard. I’d sit under that table and watch the feet and listen to the voices. Hearing what happened in the house without me in the mix. Amazed sometimes at how long it took someone to ask where I was. I remember the light, the cast of it. There are many different kinds of light. Morning light, afternoon, evening. The light of bulbs in dark rooms. The light changes the colors. Deepens them or flattens them. Some days are days of deep color. Some days are grey. I remember.

The scene shifts and I am slightly older. I’m sitting on the inside of the house, looking out the window at the rain. I’m watching it trickle down the window. I’m impressed at how well the window keeps the rain out. It makes me feel more safe. I like the way the water looks, the way the light bounces off of it, as it rolls down the outside of the window. I like the sound of the rain on the window.

The scene shifts and I’m walking out the front door, completely encased in clothes and a coat and gloves and the snow is piled very high. The sun is bright and it is so, completely, white out there. It hurts your eyes to look at it. And I dive into that light and make tunnels in the bright snow. I want to be an Eskimo until I get too cold. I hate being too cold. It upsets my insides.

The scene shifts and I’m laying on my new bunk bed, staring at the slats above my head, holding up my brothers mattress. My brother is sleeping above me. Just before the light was turned off, I slid my glasses onto one of those slats, thinking that it’s great to have that little shelf there just for my glasses. The light is off. I stare at the light coming in from under the door. I listen to the voices outside my room. I can’t make out what they’re saying. I stare at that light until I fall into sleep.


Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

When Knievel Was King

Oh yeah, I was totally and completely an Evel Knievel fan.

What? Like you weren’t? Right. Only if you weren’t born yet. And still, even then...

Of course, at first, my mom wasn’t too sure about this . . . fascination. After all, his name was “Evel.” It couldn’t have been more clear. But it wasn’t clear at all. Turns out his name was more of a gimmick. Hyperbole. And it wasn’t actually “Evil,” right? It was “Evel.” Vowels make all the difference. Turns out he was a nice guy. At least as far as Evel’s connection to me as a kid, he was an all American daredevil who jumped motor cycles over rows of cars, trucks or whatever else he could find, in ever increasing numbers while telling us kids to stay clear of drugs.

He set world records, jumping over things with that motor cycle. It was magical, my friend. Magical.

I didn’t know much about what he did with his private life. That was the stuff of legends. All that mattered was the joy of waiting for him to jump, then the joy of watching him approach the ramp, then the joy of seeing the jump and seeing him land. When he crashed, it really upset me. I wanted him to make it. I didn’t want him hurt. It really was all about the jump, the risk, the daring do, and the flash of a smile when he was through.

For Christmas one year, I received a treasured gift. It was an Evel Knievel action figure with stunt bike. The most popular toy in the land of America at the time. It made the toy company over 300 million dollars. Viva Americana! Oh yes. It was a little Evel on a little motorcycle that you wound up with this round lever on a little red plastic platform. Zim zim ZIM, louder and louder. You would launch Evel and he would ride and jump over a ramp, over whatever you might put in his path.

Here’s what happened.

Someone broke my Evel. And when they did, they just shrugged their shoulders and walked away, like it didn’t matter. And no one did anything about it. It was not replaced. It was not fixed. I was left holding the sad and tattered remains with no hope of justice.

Now THAT was evil.

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Reremembering

Sometimes at night, when I can’t sleep, I find myself trying to think back as far as I possibly can. I try to figure out what my earliest memory is.

I have a very strong visual memory. I can recall images of some long ago events like they happened this morning. I can remember faces, but I have a hard time remembering names sometimes, even the names of people I was really close to. I can give you directions to almost anywhere by giving you landmarks, but I can’t remember the names of the roads. I can remember pointless details and lots of facts that I’ve learned over the years, but I would never find my car keys if I didn’t keep them on a hook by the door.

Memory is my blessing and my curse. There are things I’m so glad I remember and many things I wish I could forget.
  
But I was trying to remember my earliest memory, and I find it’s very hard to place certain memories chronologically. In posting on this blog, I’ve had to contact my mom several times to get the time sequences right on things and recall some of the things said. But I think my earliest memories are just visual.

I remember a shed in the backyard of the house we lived in when I was around 3 years old. I also remember the basement flooding in that house, and another “episode” where my older brothers were teasing me in that basement by singing the song “Sherry” by the Four Seasons, and replacing the name “Sherry” with the name “Davey.” They made me cry.

Don’t you hate them for that? Mean old big brothers. (We have resolved all of our former conflicts, in case you’re wondering.)

I think the earliest memory I can pull up is some images of the inside of a crib, with some toys. My mom has confirmed these images. Apparently I had some health problems when I started out and I spent a lot of time in that crib with some plastic toys which I was determined to consume.

Do you have an earliest memory? I’d really like to hear what it is. I find it fascinating. Are your earliest memories visual or do you remember sounds or is it more about an event or a circumstance? Some people I know have almost no memories from when they were very young and others seem to remember everything.

Einstein said, “Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.” But it’s also all we have sometimes. So we make due with it.

Image of human brain synapse in the state of storing a memory,
by Michael A. Colicos, UCSD.
For me, storing them is no problem.
Finding where I stored them is the problem!

Psalm 77:11-12
Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2010

Drive-In

Growing up, I lived a few streets away from the Jolly Roger Drive-In theater. When I was really little, we actually went to this theater a few times, but into the 1970's, and I have no idea how they got away with this, the theater started showing some hard R and maybe even X rated movies, it’s a little hard to remember, except that my parents were outraged, of course. And, so you understand, this was not in the middle of nowhere. This was in the middle of a suburban neighborhood and any kid was free to go over to the street that ran next to the theater and feast on carnal knowledge better left unknown.

But they showed other things too, especially in the late sixties and early seventies. I remember watching one of the Ray Harryhausen movies on the street that ran next to the theater, trying to figure out what the people were saying, but still amazed at the images on the screen. I believe it was one of the Sinbad movies, but it’s hard to remember.

Almost all of my movie viewing during the first 10 or 13 years of my life was done at a Drive-In theater. I saw Disney’s The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (good old Dexter Riley, played by the incomparable Kurt Russell). I saw some Disney Animated films, and I always loved every minute of it. I would watch my siblings slowly doze off as the night wore on into the second show, wondering how they could stand to miss the movie.

I loved the popcorn and the “shrimp” roles that had who knows what really in them. I sure don’t think it was shrimp. I loved the atmosphere. I loved the way the gravel made noise under the car as you slowly made your way to just the right spot to park and see the show. I loved everything about the Drive In. The whole thing.

I think my favorite Drive In experience was when I saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at the Ecorse Drive-In. This was in a suburb outside of Detroit. I would have been a very impressionable eight years old at the time. My family and I were eating at a little burger joint we went to a lot that was across the street, near the Ecorse Drive In. When we pulled out of the restaurant, instead of turning left for home, like we usually did, we turned right and went into the Drive In. I still vividly remember this moment. We all shouted and screamed, we were so happy to be going to the show. My parents laughed at us.

You need to understand that we almost never did this. We couldn’t afford it. So it was once, maybe twice a year at best. For us, this was a very big deal indeed.

And it was Willy Wonka. And it was amazing.

This movie still holds a special place in my heart, partly because it’s such a great movie, with strong songs and a performance by Gene Wilder that is completely worth the price of admission. But also because I can still remember the light of the movie shining on my parents faces in the front seat. I remember looking and thinking about the shape of their faces. I remember the smell of the popcorn and the glow that filled our car as we huddled together quietly in the dark, listening to the little speaker hanging on the window.

Entranced and at peace, we were a family. We had scars. We had been broken. Life was not perfect, but this was one of the good days. We were one.



Peace to you.




© LW Publishing 2010

Green Army Men

When I was little, the Avon lady called, which means she came by our house to sell my mom some Avon products. My mom seemed to like the Avon lady, and I’m sure she would have loved to order all kinds of things, but it was relatively expensive. So she’d usually have a nice chat with the Avon lady and buy something small.

One time when the Avon lady was over, I became interested in the little catalogue they used. I have no idea why. But I somehow ended up standing at the table looking through the little catalogue while they talked and, low and behold, there were toys in there. What were toys doing in there?! They weren’t fancy, but it opened up a whole new world. Avon selling toys. It meant that anything is possible!

Not really.

But there were some green army men in there. If I remember right, they also had little farm animals and cowboys and such. They were in sets and they had lots of pieces. I was amazed to find them in there so I showed my mom. Can you believe it mom! Toys in the Avon book! She looked at it and then she looked at me and said something I’ll never forget. She said...

“I can see how a little boy would like to have that.”

I remember feeling kind of warm when she said it. How could she see? How could she know? It was a mystery. But I trusted her. After all, she bought a set for me. And I got to wait in wonderful anticipation for it to arrive. It seemed to take forever. But I vaguely remember playing with it in the back yard, in the dirt. And I did NOT use antibacterial soap when I was finished. Regular soap worked just fine.

Thing is, memories of the toy itself are gone. Lost in the haze. But my mom’s simple moment of empathy will never be lost to me. And now I’d like to have empathy with my kids. I want to understand them. So I try to remember what it’s like to be a kid. To struggle as a child. To want and not be able to reach. To have to rely on someone else for things whether I like it or not. Sometimes I get down on my knees and look around the house to see it from my youngest daughter’s perspective. I find that praying from that position is helpful too.

I think part of this is that I don’t want my kids to lose their trust in me. I know they’ll lose some of it as they become more and more aware of my limitations. But I hope that by remembering what it was like, by remembering how it feels, I can find a way to relate to them, to be honest with them and, hopefully, understand them a little. That way I can help them try to get through the madness of youth without becoming completely overwhelmed by pain or sorrow or loss.

I can dream, can’t I?




Matthew 18:2-4
Peace to you.



© LW Publishing 2010

Requiem

Perhaps you can sing with me.

My friend, Mickie Davis, just passed away. The funeral is tomorrow (Monday). Mickie was one of the most kind people I’ve ever met. She reminded me of my grandmother. Mickie was always kind. She always had a smile on her face. I never heard her say an unkind word.

She will be missed. She died from Alzheimer’s Disease. She was 88 years old.

I learned at a very young age that this was a part of life.

I was doing some work on the internet the other day and came across an obituary in memory of my sister Sharon. The classmates from her high school put it up. Sharon died in 1969. Her friend Don was driving the car they were in and he died too. I was 5 years old.

In the picture she has a haircut sort of like you’d see in that Hairspray musical. It must be her graduation picture. I remember seeing this picture around the house growing up. More than ever I realize that she was just a kid, barely out of high school.

I remember the funeral like it was yesterday. They did funerals in churches back then. If I remember it right, she was in a funeral home for a day or two and then they took her body to the church for the service before driving to the cemetery. We were in the church, sitting on the front row. The sound of crying, wailing, all around. Our pastor, Pastor Nance, did the service, but I have no idea what he said. What do you say to the parents of a nineteen year old girl who dies from exhaust fumes leaking up into the car? How could any of it make sense to a five year old?

There’s something that scared me that day that I didn’t tell anyone about for a long time.

While the service was going on, just before they had us stand and go look at the body, I heard a strange noise. Sounded sort of like a grunting noise. I heard this noise and my little five year old brain instantly told me that my sister was waking up. I was sure, for a moment, that when I walked up to the casket, she would open her eyes and yawn and say something like, “ What’s going on?” At that point everyone would laugh and say, “Wow. We thought she was dead! What’s the matter with us?” But when I looked into the casket, she didn’t move and I realized the noise must have come from outside the church. Could have been anything.

I remember being nervous about them putting her in the ground. What if she were to wake up and not be able to get out? What if I wanted to talk to her about something?

All that week, people coming over, bringing food. There was so. much. food. Adults talked in their strange language. Southern accents floating in the air. People cried. People laughed. Sometimes all at the same time. Conversations were hushed. Some of it I could make out, other things were too quiet to hear or too cryptic to understand.

This thing that happened, it broke my mom. For a long time she was broken by this. There were a lot of things she couldn’t do without getting angry. She couldn’t go on vacation without getting angry. Holidays were hard too. I didn’t understand it at the time. I didn’t make the connection, but I understand now. We have to move on but we don’t have to like it.

Years later some women at our church were having a dinner. They were trying to find a speaker and I suggested my mom. I told them to have her talk about her life. She’s done a lot. She’s seen a lot. She’s been through a lot and still loves God in Christ. It really is inspiring.

She agreed to speak. I wasn’t there, but I heard she talked about a lot of things, including the death of her daughter. She met a woman there who had lost a son a few years before that. Mom was able to comfort in a way no one else could. They talked. They tapped into the reality that they weren’t alone in their brokeness.

It seems to me that my mom is different since that day. I’m not sure she would agree, but it seems to me she’s more relaxed, more at peace in life. She doesn’t seem broken anymore. Just wise.

Pictures of my sister are kind of haunting for me, but not in a negative way. They just bring up images, vague memories.

I remember her coming over to our house. She had moved into an apartment or something. She brought cookies with her. I remember her walking in the front door. I remember her smiling at me, opening the cookies and handing me one.

She thought to do that.



If you want to see that picture of my sister, you can find it here...

http://www.lowrey1967.org/class_profile.cfm?member_id=1901876


1 Corinthians 15:37-44


Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2010