Holders of the heart...

“We make a living by what we get, but

we make a life by what we give.”

- Winston Churchill

I just finished reading John Grishom’s  ‘Bleachers,’ the story of a group of ex high school football players returning to the scene of their early glory years. They have “…come home again…” because the most influential person in their lives, Eddy Rake, the most winning coach in the history of their the mythical town of Messina, is on his deathbed.  The protagonist, All American Neely Crenshaw comes back after 15 years for reasons that provide a little tension to the story.

I liked the book, for reasons that will emerge below. It was an easy read and equally easy to visualize my mind’s eye. Out of curiosity, I thought I would look at reviews from people that had also read it.

Flipping through the ‘1 to 5 star ratings,’ a pattern reminiscent of junior high school dances emerged. The girls metaphorically standing on one side of the gym thought the story, on balance, was trite, fairly shallow and a waste of a weekend’s attempt at relaxation.

The boys on the ‘other side of the gym’ basically loved the book and identified with the sense of male bonding that happens in the ‘warrior battles’ of high school athletics. One might argue for many men who played high school sport, these were some of the best years of their lives.  This can be seen at high school reunions where extra attention is given to the greying hair and ever expanding waistlines of former players.

On the other hand, I have an older sister that has been meeting with a number of girlfriends from high school on a regular basis for decades. She and the girls are in their 70s, and for all my attempts to understand what draws them together, it is illusive at best. Apparently they just like each other without an obvious common bond other than friendship. Maybe there is something to the ‘Mars’ and ‘Venus’ thing.

This piece, however, is not about gender specific bonding experiences; it is about the voices in our heads, from incidental or deliberate sources that continue to guide our lives. We have all had influential people (for better or worse) with whom we interacted, whose images have taken up residence in our minds, and remain to this day.

In Grishom’s book several of the players recount, as they huddle quietly together in the stands at the football field, brief stories of how Eddie Rake’s voice continued to resonate so strongly that years later it stoked the fires of fierce drive for survival and success or festered a sense of failure and betrayal, acting as a barrier to personal forgiveness and freedom.

My influential voices…

All of this led me to think of the voices from days gone by that continue to play in my mind…the voices that come and go…sometimes with encouragement and others in condemnation.

For example, I still the hear voices of:

The girl who first said, “I love you.” A voice to which I still feel a gently indescribable warmth ripple through my mind.

My father who by word and deed imparted the importance of duty…the undeniable truth that emergence from the darkness comes by putting one’s head down and taking the next step…and the one after that…and the one after that.

My mother…from the Bible and other stories that came to me as a child. Today when I read the Psalms or the Proverbs or hear those stories – God’s voice sounds just like my mother – apologies to the Almighty.

My younger, late sister Nancy who was my best friend and a single parent, fiercely faced every day never ceasing to encourage almost everyone she met. She often emerges when I need her the most.

My Aunt Nellie, Jim Priester, Harold Duvall, Walden Skinner, Garth Russell, Vert Mooney, Betty Lou Knapp, Griff Fowler, Tom Newbrough, Bill Reppert, June Stout, Theora Bell, Eddie Baker, Mattie Belzer, John Schram, Lizzie Keller, Paul Flicker…all people for whom ‘success encouragement’ was just the way they lived their lives.

John Toothman, my best high school friend, Bob Yund my closest friend in Vietnam, David Price an honest “..don’t give me any BS…” Army buddy.

These names will mean nothing to most of you, but like the cast of characters residing in your minds, they all have had unseen influence.  

There are, of course, other not so edifying voices that have taken residence, but I don't assign them any credits and do my best to keep them locked up in their rooms.

Maybe there was one…

I don’t really have an ‘Eddie Rake’ that drove himself so forcefully into the minds of the youngsters of his football teams.

The most influential for me…the director of personalities living in the boardinghouse of my mind would be my mother.

While I understand she is simply an image in my mind, I still find myself wanting to please that gentle, quietly powerful, and loving soul.

We are, as has been said, an accumulation of all the people with whom we have interacted. Of that I have little doubt.

If you and I find ourselves on the ‘Bleachers’ of life some day, I look forward to sharing a story or two about those folks who still live within the confines of my mine…

ted