the saddest minute ...

So ...

Last night something happened to me that happens about two or three times a year -- I dreamed about my late father.

In this dream he was at my Uncle Henry's house, playing pool. Uncle Henry has this grand old antique pool table ... mahogany with a gold felt surface ... makes you feel like you ought to be wearing tweed and smoking a Cuban cigar in it's presence. Anyway, Joe (my father) was there and he challenged me to a game of pool and we played. And while we played we talked about my work and who I should vote for in the coming election and how I was treating my wife and what were the prospects for the Red sox and Patriots this year and all kinds of other things ... things that I imagine grown men talk to their fathers about.

Well, I woke up ... and for that first minute of fuzzy consciousness I thought the dream was real. I could still feel the smooth wood of the cue in my hand and hear the sound of the balls clacking together after each shot. And I could also hear the comforting sound of my father's voice. In that minute, the great incongruity of my existence seems to have been rectified -- all is right with the world and with me. Then, in the next minute, I realize that it was all just a dream and that Joe is still as dead as he has been for 34 years ... in that instant I completely forget what his voice sounded like though I had heard it so clearly just a little while earlier. Then comes the third minute and I'm mourning all over again -- it is the saddest minute (seconded only by the five or six minutes it's taking me to write about it here).

After a while I'll be over it. sometimes it takes a whole day, but I'll get over it. Then I'll be grateful for this and the other sporadic dreams ... they maybe the closest Joe and I will ever get to a "great reunion on the other side."

In the meantime, do me a favor: If your Pops is still around, maybe give him a call or something. Better yet, if he's close by, go pick him up and take him to the pool hall and shoot a little stick. Listen to him. Let him win. Buy him a beer ... and when you clink your bottles together propose a silent toast to Joe and me. Now that would be very cool.

The Original Daddy-O ...

Today was the 34th anniversary of my father’s death … a dubious thing to commemorate. I was ten when he died so I don’t have an abundance of memories of him, and some of the ones I do have are not very positive. But I do have a couple of very pleasant memories so I think I’ll choose those for today.

There was a summer in the early seventies when my mother took us away from Boston to spend the summer in Little Rock, Arkansas with her family … my father never went with us on those trips. We spent a long time there and I remember being very excited about getting back home. When we pulled up in front of the house I was the first one out of the cab and up the front steps, the first to ring the doorbell. Joe (we always called our parents by their first names) looked out of the window in the front door and his face lit up when he saw me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful smile … and it was all for me.

I used to be one of those guys whose inner child was always whining about how his father never told him he loved him. This memory dispels that myth. He didn’t say the words, but he couldn’t have delivered the message any louder or clearer.

Another great memory … I was in the first grade and Joe was walking me to school. It had snowed a day or so before and the trampled down snow had now frozen into a sheet of ice. I had lost my gloves and we were a little bit late so I was trotting along on the ice with my hands shoved in my pockets. “Van, don’t run with your hands in your pockets,” Joe said to me. “Why not?” Almost before I could get the words out I lost my footing and started to fall. With no hands to catch myself, I landed face first on the ice. Joe helped me up. “That’s why.” Object lesson to all you kiddies out there (Brother Man and Sister Baby take note!!!) when Dad says chill you better just chill first and ask questions later.

Anyway, I’m a little sad today. I barely knew the man even in the limited way a boy knows his Dad … sure would be nice if he was still around for me to know man to man. Dude was, after all, the original Daddy-O!

Old Friends ...

THOUGH you are in your shining days,
Voices among the crowd
And new friends busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old friends the most:
Time’s bitter flood will rise,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For all eyes but these eyes.

--WB Yeats

I recently reconnected with a couple of old friends. By "old" I don't mean their ages ... they're the same age as me and I ain't OLD ... (right?). The friendships are old -- and in a time when friendship doesn't seem to have much longevity, it is cool to find an old friend.

We're not near each other, my old friends and I ... one is in Italy and the other in Taiwan. Yet, I've had some very heartening (virtual) chats through e-mail, blogs and the like. I guess it's a pretty sad commentary on modern life that I feel a closer connection to these distant friends than I do to many of the people close by ... a little sad, but comforting nonetheless.

Thanks Seamus and Sue for being Old Friends with me!

The Glory of the Mundane ...

Woke up this morning after having slept a full eight hours (which almost never happens) still feeling tired and unmotivated ... unprepared to dive into the morning routine.

Then I remembered something I once heard a preacher say. Now I had heard this preacher a number of times before and I've heard him a couple of times since and he's hardly ever said anything I thought worth remembering or repeating except this one time. He said that miracles happen all the time ... tiny ones that are virtually imperceptible unless you have tuned your soul to revel in the little things, to recognize that there is glory in the mundane.

That's a good thought for me this morning ... The sun rose as it always does. I get to see my children off to school, my wife off to work. We're all healthy and happy -- sheltered clothed and safe in a world where most people are none of the above.

Miraculous. Glorious. I'm grateful

Read a quote from David Frost this morning ... talking about a particular individual he said:

"He's turned his life around. He used to be miserable and depressed, now he's depressed and miserable."

Well, I know that guy ... shamefully, I often AM that guy. But not today!

From my ol' pals Paul and Art ...

I am just a poor boy and my story's seldom told
I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises.
All lies and jest, still the man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest ...

Not sure exactly what it means, but it feels like ... well ... how I feel. I guess this is as good a place as any to empty my pockets and see if I can make some sense out of it all.

In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade

And he carries the reminders of ever glove that laid him down

Or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his pain,

"I am leaving, I am leaving," but the fighter still remains.