So I Let It Go

I love my dad for all the good values and skills he gave to me.

I was angry and resentful for all the bad values and inadequate skills he gave me or failed to provide.

There's nothing unconditional about it. When people treat you appropriately they have an opportunity to receive love and respect. When people treat you inappropriately they lose the right to be loved and respected. Your family gets a free pass till you are old enough to make decisions on your own about how you deserve to be treated as a person. After that they have to earn love and respect by showing you the same.

I spent several years in my mid thirties looking inside myself for answers to nagging questions I had. I had behaviors that I knew were bad but they came natural to me so I wanted to know why those things were in my brain. I spent time with therapists and I researched the various facets of psychology specifically as they related to emotions and relationships.

I learned several things but one of the most important is the significance of your environment (nature and nurture) when you are between the ages of 6 and 12 (give or take a year or two for individual differences). These are the years when kids become self aware and aware of their surroundings. They don't necessarily understand it but they are able to process it enough to store the emotions and experiences away for future use. Overwhelming emotional experiences often produce dramatic and traumatic results in adulthood when the appropriate triggers are set in motion. It is not necessarily a self-fulfilling prophecy but the statistics do show a significant correlation between childhood trauma and adult behaviors.

I was never sexually or physically abused that I can remember. There was no overt actions by my parents or grandparents or anyone else who was responsible for my care. I experienced abuse as an observer. I watched it happen to my friends. I watched it happen between friends. I watched it between my parents. I watched it between other kids parents. And I experienced voids where kids should be learning with adults about the world and relationships and people. My relationship role models were not good.

I struggled most of my life not really understanding the difference between sex and love and intimacy. I wasn't given any education about sex. I just learned at a young age that sex is what people do when they like each other. I didn't learn about boundaries and about patience. I didn't have any of either. My initial and only reaction to a girl that I would meet and like was to have sex whether I had known her all my life for for five minutes. Everything I did in a relationship was always working toward sex. Some of it was testosterone but a large portion of it was that I didn't know any other way to tell a girl that I liked her besides shoving my tongue down her throat and my hand in her pants. It's embarrassing when I look back on my behavior in relationships. My research would definitely suggest that I had been introduced to sex in some way at an early age but I don't remember anything like that happening. It could be suppressed somehow but that doesn't feel correct either. I will never know. And on that same note, I found it very easy to get sex from age 14 on. I was a good looking, outgoing, athletic blondish okie boy and there was no shortage of young ladies willing to fuck. I have been extremely lucky to never have gotten an STD or to have kids that were unwanted. I learned about and used protection but the desire to show girls how I cared for them sometimes resulted in safety taking a backseat to desire. I had some exceptional women in my life and my confusion with sex and love probably destroyed many of those relationships. I now understand the differences and have wonderful and appropriate relationships but I still feel the original information stored on my hard drive from time to time. My stepdaughters have taught me volumes about myself...just by getting to watch them grow up and interact with their environment. And I have been able to give them the very best of me and they love and respect me for it and I am the luckiest man ever.

I have a very significantly developed self-preservation mechanism. It stems mostly from the addictive behaviors in my family that I observed as a youngster. When puberty and girls became prevalent in life around 13 or 14 years old there was a pretty significant paradigm shift in my personality. I was very driven with sports and winning and competing and then it slowly began eroding. I steadily became a real jerk to a lot of people. If you were any sort of threat to me, conscious or unconscious, I would resort to bullying behavior. And it was to anybody, boy or girl. I feel really bad now about how I treated a lot of perfectly innocent nice wonderful people who could have just as easily been my friends. I have had some occasion in my adult life to tell some of those people that I was sorry and that healed a lot of my shame. Now it's pretty much a running joke about how much of a dick I was then and that I'm much better now. I was a pretty big jerk till I was able to do my research into myself and then I let a lot of it go. Sometimes my self preservation mechanism triggers and it is manifested in a complete system shutdown. I just want to run away and be alone till it passes and those who love and understand me now allow that to happen and pass and life is grand. It is very cool indeed.

I had kept a big heaping ball of resentment towards my dad for being a drunk and for embarrassing me and for not being loving toward me and for not teaching me the good parts of becoming a man. I have kept it for years and anger would well up in me when I would do something harmful that I could trace right back to him. My dad, for lack of a better word, grew up sometime in his fifties. He quit drinking and changed a lot of his relationships and isn't volatile at all. But it has been too late coming for me. I'm happy for him but it only did a minor bit to help with the chasm between us. We can talk for a few minutes and then my mechanisms trigger and I flee. Since he has changed I got it in my head that maybe he would be able to look back on the person he was when I was in his responsible care and find a sincere way to look me in the eye and tell me he was sorry. I've always thought that would make a lot of the resentment go away. I gave him many opportunities. I set up conversations. I beat around the bush. Nothing ever happened. I talk to my wife about it and she says she can see it in his eyes that he feels bad for the way it was but I was hung up on him telling me personally, heart to heart. So this last fall I was in Oklahoma for a separate event and I arranged to stay at the old family homestead for a couple of days. I made a commitment to confront him with my life story and my problems and how they related to his drinking and yadayadayada. Well, I actually got enough balls one day when we were alone in the house and it was quiet and he was listening to me talk about football or fishing or something. I told him that I had real relationship troubles as an adult as well as a bunch of other struggles. Basically just telling him about me without pointing any fingers at him. Then I said "You know, you spent all the greatest years of my youth drunk." He didn't talk back to me. Instead he lowered his head a little and looked toward the ground and looked to be in legitimate reflection and whispered under his breath "Yeah". And that was it. My plan to demand an apology ended up with some silence and some nonverbal acknowledgement and then I got up and got a bowl of nilla wafer banana pudding. That simple act of acknowledgement was all I needed. It seemed mean and heartless to torment this man any further with my need for an apology just to make him feel bad about himself when he had changed his life. So I let it go. I let it all go. I still have struggles with legacies left by my dad's behaviors but it's not a witch hunt anymore. I know he had a disease. I know that I only understood a fraction of his life and how he got to be who he was. I know now he recognizes his role in some of my troubles. My life is fabulous with a wife and kids that make me happier and prouder every day. I have traveled many a mile and lived a full life and some of the good part of that is because of my dad.

SO I LET IT GO

Simple stories of youth

Age 6. My sister got a tape recorder for her birthday. I think it was about her 14th birthday but it could be a year either way. She also had a tabletop organ that was pretty primitive for a key instrument. It had one key chords on the left hand and one or two sets of keys. I learned some simple songs, mostly kid christmas songs and that Frere Jaques song. I believe I even took it to school for music class in the fifth grade and played it along with the songs I knew. A one finger concerto. In my twenties I had the wonderful experience of being the lead singer of a rock band. Feeling rather empty on stage I purchased a professional keyboard and managed to learn just enough to not look stupid on stage. I played simple parts to fill the background when the guys who could really play did their thing. It was fun and really challenging for me. My sister also had an acoustic guitar. Nobody ever showed me how to play and I never worked out what my left hand was supposed to do. I would lay my fingers on the strings just like on tv but no good sound ever came out. I didn't know you had to push the strings down and it never occurred to me to even try. HA. I have tried to play the guitar on several occasions in my life. I love soulful sad electric blues guitar and have wanted to learn to play but there's just nothing natural about it for me. It's all mechanical and not as fun as I want it to be. Yes I did learn to push on the strings. I think my only musical instrument I ever received was a kiddie drum set. I remember it lasted maybe only minutes before I put holes in all the drum heads. End of drums but at least someone tried. I think it may have been a birthday present because I kinda remember it not being christmas outside the window when I played with it. I used to steal my sister's tape recorder when nobody was home and record myself singing. I have very vague memories of embarrassment of my sister and mom finding out and making fun of me about it. I didn't actually realize the song would still be on the tape when I was done singing. Out of sight, out of mind. I always sang the same song the same way. Over and over and over. “Gimme the loooovve. All I can taaake. Gimme the love all I can take. “ Three lines. Very Eric Clapton. I will admit that the last line had some different delay timing in it. Cmon. I wasnt completely without musical talent. The song was never loud though...I would never sing it loud. I kept it somewhere above a whisper. At that time in my life, the words themselves had plenty of volume for anyone willing to listen. Lalalala lalalala lalalalalalalah.

Chef boyardee raviolis, chef boyardee spaghetti, french toast, cereal, eggs, peanut butter, ice cream. I could cook. Chef Jeff. Or as I was called, Booger Chef and Jeff, due to an ill fated fast food chain called Burger Chef who had a commercial featuring Burger Chef and Jeff. Ah kids.

I had many small metal toy cars. Not Hot Wheels. They were too expensive. Actually I did get one Hot Wheels set that came with an oval track and two cars that ran on batteries. The cars didn't last that long and I lost interest in them since I couldn't keep replacing them. I did use the track that came with the set though. I loved the little cheap metal cars that came in packs of 8 or 10. They weren't close to the quality of Hot Wheels. These were just stamped out of cheap metal with solid axles and plastic wheels. I used to race them around and around the kitchen counter in pretend races. The centers of the corners was always a size D battery taped to the counter. I also used to drag race them down some of those Hot Wheels tracks that I would hook together in a straight line down the length of the kitchen. I even had a little push button starter thingy that made sure both cars left the start line at exactly the same time. I would do tournaments to see which car was going to be the fastest that day. I would tape the start line high on the wall on a convertible table/chair that my Great Uncle Clarence had made and that my mother had hand painted with I believe was a self portrait. Every day I would alter the race course a little to change the physics of the track to see if it affected the outcome of the races. Always manipulating my environment and testing the laws of physics. No wonder I'm an engineer now. I took the time to paint all my cheap cars once with model paint. I also painted the top of my wooden dresser at the same time. It stayed that way till i left for college and beyond. I had bunk beds and a matching three drawer dresser. I remember going to the small furniture store in Claremore and picking it out myself when I was really young. I had the same bed and mattresses till i left for college. The bunk bed has drawers under it. Clothes in the dresser. Toys n legos n comic books in the bunk bed drawers. I always slept on the bottom bunk. I can only think of four or five people who ever slept over. At the same time I didn't like being in other houses for sleepovers either. I wanted the control of my own space and sleeping over didn't give me that. Control probably sums up a huge part of who I am and who I learned to be. It's a common story among young people. Never feeling in control of anything. It also explains a lot of my time alone in the woods. It was my own universe and I could control it any way I pleased. I have a stepdaughter Heather who struggles with the same issues of control. It's maddening to be the plastic airplane in the stream and not the person with the stick. My closest friend in proximity, Bruce, was the only person to ever spend any real time at my house when I was really young. I remember lots of chaos in his house too so I don't think he liked being home either. So, we would we would spend the majority of our days in the woods away from our homes.

I loved to play monopoly. By myself.

I ate at the school cafeteria almost every day for 12.5 years.

I read comics but not the normal young boy comics. I liked Richie Rich and some of the offshoots. I had a lot of them. Never threw them out. Read and reread them often. I had short stints with Mad and Cracked and the occasional marvel or DC superhero but I never really liked them that much. I read a lot of books about bigfoot and gargoyles and other creatures that inhabited that fuzzy space between real and make believe. They just seemed interesting. Never any vampires tho. Wasn’t interested. Godzilla was really cool. I watched the original SNL by accident. I watched the moon landings and every Olympics.

Speaking of, during the 1972 Olympics a bunch of GUERRILLAS stormed the dorms at the games and killed some people. I was absolutely freaking amazed at how anyone would allow GORILLAS to run free at the olympics. And whey didn't they just hunt them down and kill them? My dad let me use a 410 gauge single shot shotgun for rabbit hunting and I was sure I could have tracked them down and taken them out easy enough. I remember my parents were out partying and I was home alone. Yes, I was home alone a lot at that age but in fairness my grandparents lived like 20 yards away and kept a close eye on me. It don't make it right or wrong or good or bad. Its just how it was. I was still awake when they got home and I was animated telling them the story of how gorillas had attacked the olympics and killed a bunch of people. But not Olga Korbut. She was dreamy. In the end they giggled at me and explained the difference between guerrillas and gorillas and it made much more sense to me.

Super Sugar Crisp. Sugar Frosted Flakes. Sugar Frosted Mini Wheats. Breakfasts of champions.

Fireworks

I never liked the little fireworks you get at fireworks stands on July 4 holiday. I got them because that’s what I was supposed to do because I was a boy but I never liked them. We would actually buy ours from a small stand just on the edge of Claremore on Hiway 20. The guy that ran the stand was blind. That always intrigued me and made it special. Fireworks were loud. I didn’t like loud. My parents yelled at each other a lot when I was a kid. Screamed. Really bad things. I don’t know exactly what I just know it was bad. And Ioud. I used to lay in my room and listen and try to get the will to go tell them to stop but I never could so I just lay there unable to move. Quiet. Alone. I have a memory that I told them to stop once but am sure it was just a dream or a wish that was imprinted in my brain as an experience that really happened. I accept loud from things that are supposed to be loud. Race cars. Motorcycles. Airplanes. But not parents and for whatever reason, not fireworks. Loud voices set me off. If someone raises their voice to me it completely shuts me down. I retreat back under the blanket. By myself. Trying to will it stop but never ever being able to do it. I hate fireworks. People fireworks most of all.

My wife NeCole once blew me up with a firework. We were probably 14 at the time. She blew me up with bottle rocket to be exact. They are little rockets on the end of a stick that fly into the air and then explode. They are pretty much banned everywhere now because they set a lot of houses on fire. We were sitting in chairs on the edge of a river lighting bottle rockets in our hand and then tossing them so they would shoot across the water or into it and then explode with a muffled thump and a fist sized flash of light. Even though I didn’t like fireworks, it was fun because she was there and I had to show off for her. Sometimes you gotta man up if you want to get the girl. Bottle rockets were notorious for poor quality control as they were mass produced by the millions. Sometimes the fuses would burn really fast and the firework would take off before you were ready. She held one in her hand, lit it and then prepared to toss it. Only it didn’t make it that far. It blew up before she could toss it. It blew up right in front of my face. She didn’t’ mean to. I didn’t hate her for it. But I’m sure it triggered all sorts of bad memories. Because I was with my girlfriend I’m sure I kept my cool and laughed it away but on the inside I had to be spinning out of control. As an adult I still loathe small fireworks and I refuse to participate. I will watch the big commercial fireworks shows but I try to avoid the little ones or at least keep some distance away. To me they still don’t go bang. They scream. Only now they sound like little kids yelling STOP IT as loud as they can. But its only in their head that they scream so nobody ever hears. Nobody ever hears their screams. Nobody ever heard mine.

Balls of mud and other activities

I was indeed throwing mud balls at the side of our house. A house with white siding. I don’t know why. I was like 8 yrs old. I liked to throw things. I was good at it. Kids do what they think they are good at. Pick up some mud. Use some grass and twigs to get it to stay together just right and then heave it as hard as I could against the side of the house from fifteen yards away. Wham! Wham! Each mud ball would rattle the windows of the house as it exploded on the ivory exterior. The balls of mud would create spectacular patterns on the siding as the core of the mud ball was forced outward from the impact. Not too unlike a snowball fight. With a house. And not too unlike creating snowflake. Except they are brown and lumpy. So there I am. Striking out the Yankees one by one. They were a crafty bunch and these fastballs just weren't getting the job done. I was ahead by one run and the last batter was at the plate. It was Hank Aaron. No, the teams and the players don't have to match. You just play against the best of the best. Always. This situation called for a curve ball. Full count. Now, in order for the curve ball to get to over the plate I need to start it out high and right. Just about the edge of the front living room window. I rocked and fired. The ball of mud left my hand perfectly as I anticipated the graceful arc of the curve ball that would result in triumph. But physics is funny. Sometimes it applies, sometimes it doesn't. I discovered instantly that mud and baseballs do not react the same when imparted spin. Mud doesn't curve. At all. I watched in agony as the mud ball flew straight at and through the window shattering the upper pane of four that made up the window. Crap. I stood there petrified. Then I heard the doorknob of the back door turn, click and then the door was open. There stood my mom. OK. Now I had been tossing heavy loud mud balls at the house for a while with no reaction and now that a little glass and mud entered the house there she was. I was sure this was not entirely my fault. She LET me do it. It was just as much her fault. She calmly surveyed the damage, turned and looked me straight in the eye. "Did you just throw mud through this window?" Panic. Terror. I stood there covered in mud from head to toe, mud balls at my feet, brain calculating my predicament. Then, I gently raised my hand and categorically denied any participation in the breaking of any glass of any kind. I discussed at length how the glass was obviously defective and broke on its own accord without any outside interference of any kind. I don't really remember if i got into trouble because of that. Surely i did but i don't remember it. There is a chance my mom just laughed and made me clean the side of the house with the hose. Dunno. Kids are so dumb. And cute.

We had a swimming pool. It was a 3 foot galvanized steel tub that sat in a small patch of sun just beyond the kitchen window. I swam in it. It was safe. Right up until the biggest effing bee in the entire universe stabbed me on the shoulder. I watched it in super slow motion fly right up to me, ME, a superior being, and proceed to impale itself in an excruciating death dance upon my tender white wing. I was maybe 4. I never moved a muscle. I just watched it happen in silence. Then I screamed. A lot. LOUDLY. Who the hell was that bee to do that to me. What did i ever do to it? I mean personally. I may have used a member of its family for batting practice with a plastic bat but that wasn’t personal but that stab sure as hell was. The animal world needed to brush up on its rules. I was offended. I still am. Bastards.

I could throw a ball and swing a bat pracitcally from birth. In the summertime in Oklahoma there are fireflies. Lots of fireflies. We actually call them lightning bugs but fireflies is easier to type. They come out just at dusk and stay around all night if it is warm and humid and calm. I would take my plastic baseball bat and run around in the dark looking for flashes. When I would see one flash I would run to where the flash was and then scan the horizon with my corners of my eyes for the next flash. Eventually I would connect the dots and guess where the next flash would come. When it did i would triangulate its position and give a mighty babe ruth swing that most often would result in a spectacular flying glowing green dead insect. When you hit them their butts would explode and glow with fluorescent yellow-green sticky goo. Every summer night my plastic bat glowed too. Glowed with the light from a dozen smooshed lightning bug butts. I was superior.

When the creek was full of water during or after a rain I would take little plastic airplanes...hold on. Yes I had these big bags of little plastic airplanes like plastic army men only they were airplanes. All colorful too. Small. The largest plane was only maybe two inches across. I don't know why. I never ran around with them playing Charles Lindbergh games. Anyway i would go out in the rain to the creek and I would put a bright yellow plastic airplane in the stream and watch it float with the current. There were lots of little waterfalls and pools and I helped it along with a stick if it got stuck. I would do this for hours. In the pouring rain. The way the water gave the little toy plane energy and made it come alive and give it movement fascinated the hell out of me. The little plane would spin this way and that and tumble down the falls and bounce over rocks and stumps and roots. And never ever the same way twice. Sometimes I would put two or three planes in the water at the same time to race them downstream. Put it in the water. Poke it with a stick. Walk a hundred yards watching it the entire time. Pick it up. Take it back as far as possible and do it again and again and again and again. All by myself in a pouring rain on a warm summer afternoon.

God never came to dinner

There was no religion in my family. Not on either side. We weren’t atheists that I know of but we definitely weren’t affiliated with any church or belief system. That made us the absolute minority in the middle of the Great Bible Belt where the belief in a Christian god defined all communities and most every person. I would be pressed to remember anyone I knew that didn’t go to church regularly or at least on the major religious holidays. But we didn’t. Ever. Not parents. Not grandparents. I have never asked why. I don’t know if god is present in my family. That’s an entirely different question from whether religion was present. It seems that god was there in some way but it was manifested in nature. Maybe that was just my god. My god as a kid was the one who created worms and fish and trees and fireflies. My god didn’t create people.

There was a Baptist church practically across the street from where I grew up. Wait. There was a Baptist church practically across the street from where anyone in Oklahoma grew up. Or Church of Christ. Or Adventists. Or Methodists. Or some other holy temple. Occasionally gravity would roll me toward the church. There was a real steeple with a real bell in it. Every Sunday morning, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong. It really was a covert advertising campaign. Just like the Slap Chop. They lure you in with bells and whistles and pretty lights and fancy windows and as soon as you enter the cage the door slams shut and you are there. A captive. A prisoner forced to listen and possibly even learn something. It’s not like church is going to hurt you but I don’t understand why it can’t be comfortable. I had real trouble trying to listen sitting on wooden pews. God had clouds to sit on. Why can’t I have a cloud too. But I was enamored by the bell. I wanted so bad to pull the rope and make it go bing bong. And I tried. But the rope was conveniently placed well above my curious little hands. Bastards. Eventually I got the opportunity to pull the rope as one of the church folks lifted me up so I could pull on it when the time came. I don’t know if I ever went back. Mission accomplished. Over and out. Sayonara. Elvis has left the building.

There were some religious zealots on our little road. I don’t know which came first, the chicken (people) or the egg (the church) but many in our loosely bound neighborhood were hard wired to the church. But not my family of course. Being young and impressionable I was considered fair game for the savers of lost souls. And apparently my soul was roaming too free even at 8 yrs old for some of them to bear. So I was often “given the wonderful opportunity” to attend special events or Sunday school or revivals or vacation bible school. I remember getting excited about getting to attend some church event and then when I got there it was always the exact same stuff packaged differently. Very Hansel and Gretel. Bold new wrapping on the same old toy. I would bolt and run home. You can keep feeding a kid the same thing over and over again and expect them to learn. The only kids they were converting were the ones who were forced by their parents to be there in the first place. Like shooting fish in a barrel. That’s just not even fair or fun. Religion left a bad taste in my mouth at an early age. If god can’t keep me entertained then how great could he be?

I was baptized several times. I didn’t know what it was for. I was just a kid. I would go to a different church with different people and the same thing would always happen. They would eventually round up all the youngsters and herd them into a little room and the interrogation would begin. In my mind I was tied to a metal folding chair, blinding halogen lights shined in my face, a steady constant drip drip drip of water beating my forehead, toothpicks would be inserted under my fingernails and broken off, candles on the ground lapped at the exposed flesh of my feet. Then a man, always wearing a poor fitting suit with a white shirt and a hideous polyester print tie, would begin brow beating me in to submission. Do you love the lord? Do you believe Christ died for your sins? Are you ready to join the lord and be cleansed of all your sins? My reply was always the same. YES! YES! YES! Anything to stop the torture and make the bad men go away. YES! YES! PLEASSSSEEE! Then, next thing I knew, I would get dunked in a tank of water. Again. And If I came back to that same church three months from now, the process would be repeated. Again.

It’s amazing how, if you’re going to an event like a church service, that people like my parents automatically assume that everything is going to be safe and good and normal even if they don’t know the people involved.

I got “invited” to a church camp outing camping thingy once. The same process as before. Excited to go then I find out it’s the same old thing. Let me tell you a story about sons of preachers where I grew up. They are mean. They are forced to listen to their dad’s preach at them nonstop. Their lives are tied to the church. They are powerless. There is no sparing of the rod. Heaven forbid you spoil the kids…and by spoil I mean educate them. They have no self esteem because god sees them as imperfect and unclean each and every Sunday of their lives. And when they are set free they lash out and anyone and anything in their path. Puppies, kittens, pretty song birds, cuddly squirrels and me. So I got beat up. No matter what I did, or what questions I asked, or how I conducted myself I always ended up with a black eye or a bloody nose. Often right under the noses of the preachers themselves. “boys will be boys”. No dumbass. Your boys will be bullies. And so are you. Eventually I got old enough to say no to the benign invitations from my saviors and the abuse ended. But not because anyone stood up for me. Because I walked away on my own two feet.

In my mid to late teens I went on a religious journey. I had many friends whose families attended churches regularly and their behaviors just never reflected the teachings in the churches they so lovingly attended. It didn’t make sense to me in any way. So I made it my quest to attend as many different church denominations as I could so I could make a real comparison for myself. It was a research project on my local human population and their relationships with religion. I attended revivals. And church camps. And churches of every sort available. I knelt on benches. I took communion. I spoke in tongues. I did not handle snakes but I watched it being done. I was prayed for and had hands laid upon me. I avoided the back rooms and declined invitations to be counseled about god. I didn’t get beat up. I sang sad depressing hymns and joyous uplifting tunes. I raised my hands to the sky and I spun around and around in place. I got healed of fake ailments a couple of times. I just tried to do whatever everyone else was doing.

My results? Religion never spoke to me. I never felt part of any group. I enjoyed giant made-for-tv churches. I enjoyed services that only lasted a half hour. After all that searching I still felt alone in the bible belt.

Today I am a highly educated engineer. I have an unstoppable quest for knowledge of my universe both within me and beyond me. And I have reached a conclusion. I believe in a higher power of some indeterminate type. There are too many random events that have to come together for a world such as our own. There are questions that cannot be answered. For those things I need there to be someone in charge and making the rules. I also believe in the conservation of energy. So I believe my soul, as a quantum packet of energy, will be returned to the universe when I die and will be recycled into some other form of energy. Maybe my soul will just be background radiation or maybe it becomes dark matter or maybe it will be used to jumpstart another life form. Dunno. But it will go somewhere and the laws of physics of the universe will dictate what happens to it. And some higher power makes up those laws.

My god isn’t interested in me as some school project. My god isn’t trying to build some megatron robot with leftover pieces of human soul. My god doesn’t have some magic kingdom with gates that require you to have the correct password or wear a funny hat or grow a beard some specific length. My god doesn’t need a book of instructions. My god will just do what is necessary when the time comes. Whatever that may be. My quantum packet may just vanish forever mixed with other forms of quantum energy. Maybe my packet will be moved to some other plane of existence and reused and maybe I will be aware of what’s going on and maybe I won’t. I don’t see a lot of use in worrying about it or arguing about it or fighting you over it or convincing you that my way is the only way. I’ll use my personal quantum packet assigned to me to love my wife and love my kids and to learn all I can learn and help others if they ask.

Peace out

The Grandparents

My mother’s parents lived next door to my family basically my whole life at home. I think it happened because we would build on land my granddad would buy and it made sense to stay together financially. Not sure. I could always ask someone but communication isn’t our strong suit. My mother’s father was always known as “Granddad” to me. His real name is Oliver. Oliver Burris. I think his middle name was Wendell and I always confused it with Oliver Wendell Douglas from Green Acres. Olivah! Whud u lahk some hotskakes? Olivah! I’m wearing a nighty and you only ever wear suits and ties. Olivah! I’m going to the barn to see Eb alone. We know Eb could never stay around and look Olivah in the eye because of the guilt and secrets! I don’t have any back-story on it but grandmother’s name was Chloe. It was written on the fuzzy pink cover of her scale in the bathroom. I suppose that was quite a thoughtful gift from someone I the 60’s or 70’s. A personalized fat counter. LOL. She preferred White Shoulders beauty products and the bathroom was always covered with it. Chloe is a confusing name when u r a kid. So somehow in typical kid fashion I managed to bastardize her name into DI. Yes. Two letters. D and I. No I don’t know where it came from. It’s retarded but it stuck and she was DI to a lot of people for a long long time. DI passed away some years ago and I don’t know if it says DI on her headstone but if it doesn’t then I’m going to have to use a magic marker and make sure it’s there. So there you have it. Granddad and DI.

My dad does have parents. His real dad died when he was young. My wife likes to research our family tree and she has informed me that he died of stomach cancer. His mom was always known to me as “Granny Hamil” (GH) and for as long as I knew her she was married to Fred, which I assume was her second husband. Not grandpa or gramps or papa or anything. He was always just Fred. I seemed afraid of Fred. I don’t know why. I just know I was. Maybe he yelled a lot and I tied it in with my parents. Dunno. Fred seemed to be outside the inner circle of family even tho he was always present at family functions. He never did anything to me that I can recall to warrant my fear. He just seemed to be an outsider to me. We didn’t hang out. We didn’t talk. Odd. I just remember all of my grandparent time was spent with Granny Hamil. Fred at some point was, I believe, diagnosed with high blood pressure or some other hypertension type of malady. That may explain some of my fears if his health had made him grumpy. Granny Hamil was an old fashioned granny who fished and cooked giant Sunday meals and had a big garden and canned and pickled and on and on. She was definitely a country grandma where DI always kinda seemed like a city grandma stuck in a country world. GH would take me fishing to heated docks in winter to fish for crappie and we would go to a special place called Big Blue to fish for catfish once a year. Big Blue was the smelliest, most foul maggot infested slab of rock you could imagine. But she would sit in the middle of it with me and we would catch catfish all day long because that’s where the fish were. That was awesome. She made food food food. Fried fish, chicken and dumplins, peach cobbler, turnip greens, poke salad, homemade pickles. She had three sons that I know of. My dad, Bob, and Kenneth and Donald. Donald died in Vietnam during the war. I have some memory of being told he was blown up by a hand grenade but that memory could easily have come from tv or a kid at school. I don’t really know. If I ever met him I don’t remember. To me he was a picture on the wall of someone important that I never knew. I looked up his name in DC at the Vietnam Vet Wall when I visited there in my30’s. I took my picture next to it. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know any of the names on the big granite wall. I wept. That doesn’t happen very often. GH had walls of photos of all kids and grandkids and great grandkids. There were pictures everywhere on every surface. She always made me feel like her favorite. I’m sure I was one of many but she did her job well. GH was a tough old lady. She always was in control of everything and everyone around her till the day she passed.

The grandparents have all passed. One by one. Fred. Granddad. DI. Granny Hamil.

I miss them all.

Granddad and DI

My granddad (mom’s side) played golf and taught me at a very young age. I don’t know exactly when. He made me a special club for my size by cutting down a regular club to fit me. We played every summer for many years. I thank him every time I play golf now. Golf has become one of my forests, a refuge from the world where I can disappear into myself like I was 8 yrs old again. It’s not typically a social event for me even tho I have friends I golf with regularly. I learned to play in Inola OK on a 9 hole course that was barely more than a cow pasture. There wasn’t all that much grass and the greens were kinda homemade and made of outdoor green fake grass carpet. We would play 9 holes and then take a break for lunch. My granddad always had a bag of pork rinds (ewwww) and an orange or strawberry soda from a vending machine. He smoked unfiltered Camel cigarettes for years. One day he decided to quit and he did. Just like that. He was a big man in stature and strong willed and I heard he was generally up for a fight any time when he was younger. He spent more time with me when I was young than either of my parents, at least in my memory. He retired from working at McDonnell Douglas airplane company in the 70’s sometime so he had plenty of time for me. The relationship eroded when I got older and he became sick. There are many stories about my granddad that I will get into later. He is probably the dominant human feature in my childhood epic.

My grandmother (moms side) was named DI. I named her that. See previous blogs for explanation. She read paperback books voraciously. A lot. There were always tons of romance novels and sci-fi novels. She raised dogs, poodles mostly, as a breeder and as a show handler till she got too old and frail to handle the chores. She was always in the shadow of my granddad in my eyes. I guess everyone needs to be ranked in some order when you are a kid so you can prioritize easily in a crisis. She was ranked #2 in that household. She wore moccasins. Those funny little white Indian kind with little beads on them for decoration. I think she got them at the same place all the time but I don’t remember where that was. That always seemed weird to me. Moccasins. She was small in stature and developed that old lady back hump. She lived next door but I know almost nothing about her. No real background story. The family just ended there. I never ever heard any mention that they ever had parents themselves. That’s sad. She was a staunch supporter of my endeavors. She would go to ball games but never was part of the event. I’m not sure how to explain it other than she was there only for me and nothing else. She was probably much more involved than I know but she was definitely one of my biggest fans whenever I was playing or performing, and I played and performed a lot. It made me happy that she was there. In fact my whole family including my sister were always supportive of my many activities and I liked it and appreciated it and fed off it in some way. I think one of the things that was most pleasant about it was that they could recognize and love me from a distance but there was always a fence to separate us. It was a good fit for me as it felt safer to be a a little separated from them. And very sad at the same time.