Tommy Boy - part 2

"Spend time in your life building a home  

in your heart. A house has no character..."

- Anonymous

After telling her little boy the story of how Hannah had given her son to the old priest Eli to raise, and after she let him know he too was a gift from God, she began a story about babies when they were born.

The old fellow had not heard this story, at least he couldn’t remember that he had. So, he settled in to watch and listen as his mother spoke to her child.

*

Tommy, arrived on the planet, I suppose, like most little boys do, having no idea what had just happened! If he had been able to say anything, he would have said he was exhausted and hurt all over.

Adding to this, and for no apparent reason, it was bright and cold…real cold. And it was noisy. He didn’t know why. He actually didn’t know anything. All he had sensed before this, and it wasn't much, was comfort, quiet, warmth, and plenty to eat. Something was terribly wrong!

Oh yeah, and he was hungry. He couldn’t say he was hungry; he couldn't say anything but somehow just knew, or better said, felt an aching feeling that was brand spanking new. In fact, there was a literal spank that took his breath away—again better said, gave him breath because that was new, too; he gasped. What!? How did that happen? 

He had no idea this was the first inspiration of his life. It just happened…the BIG BREATH I mean. And that’s how the whole thing started. You could imagine, if even you could remember or imagine what a weird, astonishing thing that first breath was.

A small piece of good news, he felt a sudden warmth. It wasn’t exactly what he had known, but it felt much better than when this thing first started. He didn’t know at the time it was his mother’s skin, who by the way was also exhausted.

All of this was too much! He needed to get home, but that might have to wait because he was on overload and, at the moment, really hungry.

There were other things. Tommy was wiggling around. He didn’t know how...he just was. Like before he got here, he could hardly wiggle at all. After that big breath, he took others in and out and made the oddest sounds. He would have to learn to get used to this.

He didn’t know he had eyes or ears or feely things on his body. Shoot, he didn’t know he had a body with arms and legs and fingers and toes. He only knew (felt) he was somewhere strange and at the moment very uncomfortable. Did I mention he was hungry?

That’s when, on that warm skin, he found a place to eat. It was his mother’s breast. At least he wasn’t really cold, and found he wasn’t as hungry.

He didn't know it then, and despite his desire to return to the 'no care world' he had just left, it would be a long time before he understood this confusing place into which he found himself was actually meant to help him return home. Yes, for him, dare I say, for all of us, it would be a very long time.

Time, hmm…

For Tommy, of course, there was no time, there was no space. So, for the sake of the reader, as the very early days passed, there were new things just about everywhere he turned, or wiggled, as it were.

You see, like all new arrivals, he didn't have many items in his bag of tools. He didn’t even know he had a kit…but he did and inside there were two things: faith and curiosity. Like the breathing and wiggling, they were a part of the package. 

Tool 1: Faith… 

Faith is the thing that we come with that is of kind of like glue. It builds a body of belief…it helps us hold on to consistent ideas and experiences. Of course, Tommy didn’t know about any of that, he was just trying to get by. 

For him, after he began to warm up a little, the first thing he believed in was the nipple. At the start, he needed a little help, but man, was he glad he found that thing. It was pretty strange, but most of the time, when he had that achy feeling, the nipple showed up. It had stuff in it that made him feel better and he latched on to it as if his life depended on it. And of course, it did. 

Even stranger, Tommy learned to tell when that thing was coming before it even showed up. He would get a feeling it would be there. And you know what? It almost always was. The ‘glue’ was on automatic pilot and doing its job.

As it turns out, he would learn that handy feeder was his mom. And even more unbelievable that he was deposited on the planet from her. Course, like all these other things happening to him, he would know that later.

Tool 2: Curiosity

The reason this item comes along with faith in the tool kit is that they work together as a team…like peanut butter and honey (this writer’s favorite). Sometimes faith starts a deal and curiosity adds to it, and sometimes curiosity gets the ball rolling and faith just jumps in to make sure it builds stronger belief. Curiosity might whisper an idea…a small one, ‘cause Tommy was still figuring things out. Then Tommy would check it out…building a little room inside his mind to help him along.

The boy couldn’t feel it yet, but he was beginning to get the impression that survival in this place meant doing and learning new things. The best part was that he was having fun most of the time. 

Well, there was that warm and cold stuff that showed up between his mouth and those feet things. It wasn't too much fun. It seemed to appear a lot, and even though he wasn’t crazy about it, he got used to it. The first few times it was weird ‘cause he’d get turned upside down, rubbed a little and then things would go back to normal.

Soon by using those first two items in his kit, he learned he was ready to look around a little more. 

“And, that my dearest young man," the little boy's mother said."This is what happens when babies are born." My mother knew it was enough for the time being. 

*

The scene with the old fellow’s mother and her five-year-old son slipped away, and it was just two of them. 

“Thanks, Mum," the old man said. "this was so good.”

She put her arms around him, kissed him on the cheek, and said, “That’s what it was like when Tommy…you, arrived in our lives.” 

And with that, she was gone and the old fellow found himself alone. 

Without getting into all the details, it wasn't until these later years he understood it was the power of faith and curiosity that led to the most extraordinary of lives. 

*

That evening, as he sat watching the western face of the mountains light up with reflected sunlight, he looked back on the day. The visit from his mother and the memories of his youth stirred a deep appreciation for his journey. By now, the sun was getting ready to set. Like sunrise in the mornings, it wasn’t really setting, the earth was just rolling away from it.

And so it was with the old fellow’s life. It had begun with muted and unclear colors, that took on a vibrancy of the day’s light. Now, like the earth at sunset, life as he knew it was rolling away. But before it slipped beyond the horizon, the beauty of the sky and his life, reminded him of all that had been given. It was now he knew as he had so much desired when he first arrived…

The old fellow finally understood, after all this time...

He was on his way home.

- ted

Tommy Boy - part 1...

“Every new day is a renewal. The opportunity to 

write a few fresh words in the chapter of life…”

- Anonymous

The old fellow was watching for the sun in the early morning. The dawn was just beginning, the hummingbirds had arrived and the plants that surrounded him were beginning to take on a slight but muted color. 

He knew the sun didn’t rise— the earth actually rolled into it. He used to say that, but it seemed to confuse some folks, so he would nod his head, smile, and just say “yup” when they asked if he had seen the beautiful sunrise that morning.

This day, as was his custom, he was in his ‘morning read,’ touched by some inspirational writings, drinking a cup of coffee, talking to the trees (they share 50% DNA with us, you know), and whispering gentle prayers of gratitude for the life he had led.

While riding the blue ball and waiting for the emergence of the sun, his mother showed up. As happened to him from time to time, she appeared unannounced and uninvited. You see, the times he tried to bring her to mind, he only got brief glimpses. They were good, but when she slipped in like this, he knew she would stay as long as she felt like it.

Yep, riding the planet in the morning was one thing, but riding it with her…well, that was special.

*

It was harder for the old man to get around these days, but when he was sitting still in the mornings, he felt no different than when he was quietly sitting at any age. So here he was, comfortable, and waiting to see what the woman had in mind.

When his mother showed up like this, she was always middle-aged, vibrant, with the loving spirit he had always known.

“Come along,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “I thought I would take you back a little. I want to remember a few things with you.”

In the blink of an eye, they were sitting together as they had as long as he could remember. This time he was five, and she was telling stories. 

On these occasions, she would sometimes break into song. Yep, that woman loved to sing…It was never loud and boisterous, but almost cheerfully prayerful. Kinda like the words and music were a part of her breath and her heart. It didn’t matter what they were…church songs, camp songs, songs of inspiration. There was an intimacy coming from deep inside her, personal like. She told him once she learned scriptures as a little girl by singing them…particularly, the Psalms of David.

This time, the story was of Samuel, a little boy from the Old Testament.

*

“In olden days,” she said, “there was a man who had two wives.”

 She told him where they were from, but it was a long name, and even now, the old man couldn’t remember it. 

“The man’s name was Elkana, and the wives were Pininnah and Hannah.”

“Wait a minute, Mummy,” her little boy said. “What do you mean he had two wives?” 

His mother always encouraged him to ask questions when he didn’t understand something. She would say, asking questions meant he was a good listener. She was also wise enough to know how much or little to give as an answer. Sometimes, she knew, a little would be enough for the moment. Later he would be ready for more. 

She also knew it was important to say when she wasn’t sure.

“Well, honey,” she replied with a smile and a pat on his head. “I don’t really know. It’s just what was in the story.”

“Okay, I was just wondering. Keep goin’,” 

She already had his attention, and not having a good answer didn’t bother him.

She continued the story and told him that Pininnah had lots of children, but Hannah didn’t seem like she could have any. Hannah had prayed and prayed, but it just didn’t happen.

“Then one time when Hannah was in the church, they called it a temple back then, she was praying really hard, and the head priest heard her. She was talking under her breath, and he couldn’t understand what she was saying. He thought maybe she had been drinking too much wine.”

When the priest stopped her, he let her know she couldn’t be in the temple after having had too much wine.

“No,” she said. “I have not been drinking, I have been praying to God for a real long time to ask if He would give me a child. I was just telling him that if would bless me with a son, I would return the boy back to God.”

Well sure enough, when she went home after all that praying, God answered her prayer, and nine months later a baby boy was born. She called him Samuel. 

“She took care of that boy, and somewhere between the ages of three and five, your age, Hannah took him back to Eli the priest. She reminded the old man of her promise and said she wanted to give the boy to Eli to teach him the ways of God. Eli did that, and Samuel became one of the great priests and prophets of God’s people.”

*

The little boy’s mother always had a lesson to share, after telling her boy stories. 

The old fellow knew what was coming but wanted to hear it again.

“There’s something I want to share with you,” she said to her little boy. 

The old man could also hardly wait for her to say the words.

“Honey,” she said. “You don’t belong to your father and me.”

There was a confused look on her youngster’s face.

“Wh..what do you mean?” he asked.

She took his hand and gently patted his face, and this is what she said.

“Your father and I prayed and prayed and prayed that God would give us a son. We promised Him, just like Hannah did, that if He gave us one, we would give the child back to Him. You see, your father and I loved each other so much, that I got pregnant. So, you came from your daddy and me, but your real Father is God. We are putting your life in His hands.”

The boy wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, but the way she told it, didn’t make him afraid, it made him feel safe. 

After he had given this a little thought, he said.

“Mummy, tell me about babies when they are born?”

The old fellow and his mother smiled at one another and chuckled, remembering how glad she had been that day that the boy hadn’t asked, how babies were made.

“Well,” she said. Let me tell you about Tommy Boy.

To be continued…

-ted

Friendship - what would we do without it...

“Friendship is nothing else than an accord 

in all things human and divine, conjoined 

with mutual goodwill and affection…with 

the exception of wisdom, no better than this has

been given to men by the immortal gods…”

-     Cicero: De Amicitia 

(On Friendship)

 

Two old men sat on a bench in Federal Hill Park overlooking Baltimore Harbor. We hadn’t seen one another in a long time. 

 

It was a temperate sunny day. Gazing over the city skyline, we slipped into quiet conversation. We didn’t look at each other much…We didn’t need to. We were together, and that’s what mattered.

 

Barriers to entry…

Men often have difficulty expressing affection for one another. We couch our fondness with good-natured teasing and storytelling, probing for resonance. It’s not as though a flash of insight is required to make a friend, but rather it’s an unconscious organic process that emerges from the simple pleasure of one another’s company. If given a little thought, there is an undercurrent of gratitude. We are, after all, social creatures. It’s just that our gender is often uncomfortable expressing our feelings.

 

Dave and I had long since passed that stage in our lives. There was still the bantering, but by now, we had no trouble letting each other know how much we loved and appreciated one another. There was freedom in that, and we knew it.

 

Decades earlier…

It began when we were youngsters in the military during the Vietnam era, and we couldn’t have been more different - like peas and corn. At the start, we weren’t too keen about one another either. 

 

I was given to pontificating and as rudderless as a flat bottom boat. Dave was a no-nonsense fellow with an obvious internal fire. One might say he was an angry young man. In moments when expressing some sort of nonsense, he, with what might generously be called frank language, would suggest I was full of bovine excrement.

 

How we ever found a place with one another, is one of the great mysteries of the universe…but find it we did. Indeed, how any of us finds friends in the chaos of life, is beyond my understanding.

 

After the war, we lived together for the last year of military service. Somewhere in this time, and for reasons that are unclear, or at least in the telling, we adopted nicknames. I became Leonard, and he, the Indian. Labels in youth that remained to the day we sat on that March morning in Baltimore. Given names? What was the point?

 

That final year went quickly, after which we drifted into the slipstream of life, losing touch.

 

'Losing touch.' What a temporal expression.

 

Maybe we weren’t in regular contact with one another, but real friendships have little to do with ‘slipstreams,' time, gravity, tides, or shifting sands. They are about a touch of the heart. Once boys…now old men, the thread had never broken.

 

As youngsters, the future was waiting. Most of that future, by now, had become the past.

 

Back to the bench…

Overlooking the harbor that day, there was a little reminiscing about  Vietnam, but it was a small part of the conversation. The bulk of our time was spent sharing gratitude for the lives we had lived and our good fortune to still be breathing in our late seventies…breathing long enough to be sitting on that bench on that sunny day.

 

We committed to meeting again later in the year, and recently we did. It was, as it had been in Baltimore, like it had been almost from the beginning…two souls not reconnecting, but simply plugging back in as if no distance nor time passed.

 

There is safety in deep friendship. The relationships are sacred, intimate, and cleansing.

 

I tell my students they will become a product of the five people with whom they spend most of their time. I tell them to look for folks who uplift and edify them. I have been fortunate to have had a small number of long-term friends who fit that category.

 

I’ll bet you do too.

- ted

The unseen hand...

"Life rewards only one thing and that is action. Not dreams, 

nor vision, nor good intent. Large or small, nothing 

happens in the universe without an action.

- Anonymous

What: A tire issue

Where: A parking lot at a tire repair shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico

When: Monday morning at 7:45am

Who: John & Ted

Why: That is the question isn’t it.

 

The story…

I was back in Tulsa, where my late brother had lived. I was going to drive back to Arizona with a few things from his home. An estate sale was coming and Molly wanted a few mementos from her late brother's home before it became a house.

 

The drive began this past Saturday morning early. The intent was to make Albuquerque to spend the night and finish the drive through the Arizona White Mountains and home.

 

Rather than taking the interstate out of Tulsa, I took a scenic drive on country roads. It added an hour to the nine-hour run but was much more scenic. The most notable thing on this leg was unexpectedly passing through Kingfisher, Oklahoma, en route. This spot in the road was notable as the birthplace of Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart. With stretching and dehydration stops, I pulled into Albuquerque after five.

 

The plan was to be up early Sunday morning and be home by late afternoon Sunday. That was the '… best-laid plans of mice and men…' that went astray.

 

What…

As I neared Albuquerque, the car's low tire warning light came on. Pulling into a couple of gas stations and a truck stop, I discovered the tire air machines did not work. Breathing a prayer, with a dash of faith, I pressed forward to the hotel.

 

There were no tire businesses open on Sunday, so I had to stay an extra night.

 

Now we’re getting somewhere…

 

Where and when…

Monday morning, I got to the tire shop at 7:30, wanting to be the ‘…first come first serve customer…’ for the 8:00am opening. I knew it wouldn’t take long to check the tire, whether it could be fixed or needed to be replaced. I was hoping to get on the road as soon as possible.

 

Who…

All of this was foreplay for the unguarded moment that emerged over the next few minutes.

 

At 7:45 a man left the store and headed for his car one space over from where I was parked.

 

It has been a lifelong habit to lean in when I see someone I don’t know.

 

“Morning,” I said

 

The mid-fifties Hispanic man replied with a smile, "Morning."

 

I have a few questions in my kit, if I feel there might be a little more than “…what  nice day…” I asked him his name and gave him mine and fell into a few minutes of quiet conversation.

 

As it turns out, John had been in the military (Desert Storm – '…the storm…'), been a civilian swat team police officer, and was continuing his public safety career. I mentioned I had been in Vietnam as a Canadian in the American Army (my green card had 'qualified' me for the draft). We thanked each other for our service and remarked that most people in this country have no idea how people in different countries live, how dangerous the world is, and how grateful we were to live in a country with some safe ‘breathing room.’

 

Our common gratitude led to a spiritual conversation. We shared how our faith had carried us through darker parts of our lives. These moments of shared humanity reflected how similar John, and I were. The requirement? An open heart.

 

By now, the tire shop was getting ready to open.

 

John said, “Just a moment, I want to give you something.”

 

He reached into his car, and when he came out, I couldn't see anything. He he put out his hand to shake mine and in it was a coin – a medallion, a little smaller than a silver dollar it was in a plastic case.

“This is a faith challenge coin,” he said. “We exchanged them with our military service brothers. It’s an Armor of God coin. I’m giving this to carry with you.”

"And so I will."

 

This was not a religious thing to him…it was a gift of gratitude and faith.

 

It’s hard to express the sensitivity of spirit with which this coin was passed into my hand, and the intimacy two strangers shared in that tire repair parking lot in Albuquerque. This kind of thing could never be orchestrated but only through an unseen hand starting with a simple “Morning” to a stranger.

 

In these times of chaos, anger, name-calling, and vitriol from those who seek our nation's highest offices, it is helpful to remember the small experiences in the parking lots of life that narcissistic individuals with vacuous hubris will never know.

 

The words on the coin — the 'armor of God' scriptures are from the book of Ephesians—timeless words of wisdom...not meant for a specific religion, but spiritual words reminding us the real work in life is not what we do but what we think, because it is thought that leads to action.

 

John would not have known this, but the words on that medallion have carried me many times in my life (Ephesians 6:11-17)

 

¹¹ Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

¹² For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

¹³ Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

¹⁴ Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

¹⁵ And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

¹⁶ Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

¹⁷ And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

 

Why...

Does it really matter?

 

ted

ps. The tire turned out to be fine...