We live in interesting times. The nation is heading into a presidential race that includes a billionaire, former reality game show host, a female former senator of Jamaican and Indian parents, and a single gay Libertarian man who ran for the Senate in Georgia and got two percent of the vote there. Whew! It’s nice to see how diverse our nation is, even if it seems like we’re the crazy Uncle Curtis of the family of world nations. There’s always France. They do stuff that makes us look normal. Check out the Olympics opening ceremony in Paris, if you don’t believe me. I ain’t lyin.
In my own personal life, also, I find myself living in interesting times. I’ll turn fifty-nine next month, and the potential for retirement is within my sight, if not my grasp. In the next five years, all of my four kids will be forty and over, I’ll have to decide when to dip into my social security money, and all of my grandkids will be well into school and smarter than me. Not that they aren’t smarter than me now, they’ll just have kindergarten, middle and high school diplomas to prove it. I’ll have to start following Mark Twain’s advice about it being “better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt”. Great tactic for people my age to appear wise. I have my ways.
Laura Gail and I have moved into her mother’s house, too. God rest your soul, Gmaw. It’s been a big change. More room. More stuff. More cleaning and work. It’s been both a hassle and a blessing. Thankfully, Laura Gail still knows where everything is, or should be. I’m still making piles. I’m working on it, though. Besides losing Gmaw, leaving our old house makes it even sadder for me. I know I was only there for twelve years, but it was home. My wife was there three times longer, but she’s not the sentimental mental case that I am. I attribute too many human characteristics to inanimate objects like books, trees, stuffed animals and houses. Kinda makes it harder to part with things when need to. It’s like you’re burying a friend. Yeah, I know. Sentimental mental case. I’d be a much worse hoarder if it weren’t for my wife. As in most cases, she makes me appear saner than I really am, like the rear-view mirror makes things smaller than they really are.
The thing about change is that it holds the hope of things being better than you can imagine. When the world turns upside down, a lot of the craziness can get shaken out and go down the drain, like emptying the trash when you’re on the last plastic bag. You want to use it again, but you can never get it be completely like it was before. All the old crazy falls out, but you’re going to put new crazy back in the bag soon. Some of it will be new, some will look just like what you got rid of, but it will all be “interesting” to see. We just have to be sure that, whenever possible, we use a new bag. I like the ones with a slight scent. Get a new bag and start over. There will be stuff to get rid of later, and when I do, “Poppa’s got a brand new bag” as the illustrious poet, James Brown, esquire, once said.
Christopher Taylor Stone turns forty-one this Friday. You’d never believe I used to change his diaper and watch “Super Friends” with him. He’s a Physician Assistant in Nashville, with a beautiful lady at his side, a brand new roof over his head, and still rocking black-painted Emo nails and chasing bands across the country when he can. Proud barely touches on my feelings for him. He’s my first born. He let me read him stories when he was small. We played ball together. We had piggy-back rodeos on my back. The man he’s become is compassionate, strong and faithful. He has “heart”. He helped make me an adult. I wouldn’t be who I am today without him. The change he brought to my life was one of the best things that ever happened to me. He made me get a brand new bag. Thank you for that, Christopher. I love you. Enjoy, and happy birthday!
God bless y’all!
Rolling Stones 