Ten Things I think are worth saving

The Writing of Ten Things Worth Saving

I've been by Mama Kat's again.
I like the prompts, so to the den.
I've chosen one and done my thinking.
Keys are clicking, cursor blinking.

Type it in and proof read,
another pass it will need,
not quite right, darn, take two.
That sounds odd, it just won't do.

Shuffle lines, replace that word
Another pass? That's the third!!
So, with no further ado,
I, humbly, submit to you,


the top ten list of those things I think
are worth saving. (Lord, I need a drink)

10. Your personal work. Face it, we all have our own calling. We do what we felt driven to do. After pouring yourself into your work for a lifetime, do you really want to see it disappear with you?

9. Love letters. Love thy neighbor as thy self. A good rule to live by, but if we are lucky, even for a while, we find love. True love. The kind of love that makes you googly eyed and dizzy. The kind of love that keeps you up at night, not only while you are under it's spell, but even when it is gone, burned out and moved on. The kind of love that has you writing silly poems and leaving them where she is sure to find them. The kind of love that keeps you walking that line, huh Johnny Cash?? The kind of love that makes you keep trying to be a better person, so maybe, someday, they might come home.


8. Your family history. This, despite the previous item on the list, is the one about which I want to write. All of the items on this list are significant and most are tied together, but this one sticks out for more reasons than I care to name, so I will hit a couple of the more significant ones. First, I like family photos. I collect them, I take them, I distribute them, I collage them, I power point them, I doctor them, I have even scrap booked them (don't tell the guys on the rugby team, I'll never live that one down). Second, I like genealogy. I like to hear stories of what our family has done, places we have been, people we have known. History is learning, and how do you know where you are going, if you don't know where you have been? Case in point, I submit to you the above photo. That is my mother at age two. Absolutely beautiful, eh?? It was taken somewhere around 1936, while she and her family still lived in Wisconsin. As she was the first of six sisters, I am not sure if any of her sisters had seen the light of day or not by then. But, I digress. If I had known of or seen that particular photo, I would have had one of my daughter made in a very similar pose. I now encourage all of my brothers to do the same with their children. My only sister beat me to the punch though. She gave me for Christmas, last year, a picture frame with three photos. I was in the middle, my daughter was on top and my son was beneath me. She had taken pictures of each of us in the same location, same pose, same light; and cropped everything but the face (and I mean she cropped it close). The likeness between the three of us was up-lifting. It really helps you realize that you are a part of them and they of you. I am trying to take it even further, though. I have found a picture of My mom's mom that matches one I have of my mother. I scanned the photo of my grandmother at the highest resolution I could get and went to work on it and my mothers photo. I have to get my only sister and my daughter to sit and I will have FOUR generations of the women from my family in the same picture theme. Should be awesome. I will post the results of my project and a close up of my sister's work in the near future. Much the same way as Becky was playing with her photos on her blog, I recommend this to all. You will be impressed with the outcome. Third, as you can see, I like to write. I try to record as many of the stories as I can from our family history. All kinds of stories, the good and the bad, touching or sad. I record them (secretly if I have to) and save them in my journals and writings, both blogged and hidden away. I even have all of my father's written stuff. Someday I will get his book published. Finally, I think family history is important for sentiment. And I find it hard to believe that some just don't get it. When my ex-wife left with the kids and all the boxes packed with stuff from our house, she did a pretty torough job. I'll keep it short, because I don't want to start sounding bitchy . As she was on her way out with the new tvs and the silverware and all the nice trappings that we had acquired over the span of our marriage, she failed to realize what she was leaving behind. She left her family bibles, childhood yearbooks, years of family portraits and timeless photos of many of her parents relatives. As I find these things in my house now, after living away for the last eight years, I am left wondering what to do with them as well as how she could possibly forget these things. I mean, when your house is on fire and you have time to run inside and grab a few things, what are you grabbing?? Are you grabbing the material items worth a few hundred or thousand dollars or are you grabbing those priceless memories that no pile of money can buy. At this time, I will keep them. I will even make sure they stay in her family in the future (she has one sister), but I am not sure if she will ever see them again in her life time. They say time heals all wounds, but I still have some time left apparently. And this is where I struggle with my love for self vs. love for her vs. love for her family.



7. Memories. When we think of our loved ones, whether they are gone on a trip or gone from this earth, they can never be taken from us.


6. Your family ties and friendships. Families are meant to be strong, as strong as we can make them. Blood runs thicker than mud, right? And then we all have friends who are so close they seem like family. Those are the kinds of relationships that make life memorable; solid and long.


5. Your marriage. After God and self, what could possibly matter more?.


4. The children. To me, love is willingly making sacrifices for somebody else's personal well being or benefit. "How cruelly these tiny fingers grip my heart." HGWIII


3. The environment. The Lord made this wonderful place, who are we to destroy it?


2. Your honor/dignity. A lot can happen to us in this crazy world, losing pride is one thing, but honor is the gift you give yourself.


1. Your soul. God gives each of us free will, so the task is up to each of us ultimately.

Mutated Caption Contest

That's right kids; Tuesday IS my favorite day. That means Caption Contest time (and the crowd goes wild). This week I am going to try something different. The photo for the contest is from my personal collection. I took this during a road trip in the northern extremity of Texas. My son and I took my mother to the north. We were going to see my sister, but she and my favorite brother-in-law had high-tailed it to Mexico for the week. We found her teenagers hanging out at the house SOLO!! No big dealio though, they are smart good kids who seem to keep their noses clean. The Son had a blast with the cousins, I got some writing done and some photos taken, while Mom got to relax and spend time with the grandkids. Those two cousins were a good influence on The Son, he learned the inner workings of a potato cannon and a hover craft. He is now in full blown engineer mode, downloading stuff to build exciting new toys.

Instead of a caption, per se, I want all entries to be your own written thoughts on this particular photo. I will post mine next Monday and I will award a prize to the author I deem to have the best submission. They say a picture is worth a lot of words, so let's see what some of those words are. Good Luck and enjoy your time composing.

A Letter to Heaven

So, as well as doing a bit of blogging myself, I like to browse others blogsites to see what is going on out there in the world. One of the local blogs which I like to read pointed me to a second blog that was featuring a writing exercise. The young lady at http://mamakatslosinit.blogspot.com/ has posted a poem from her teen years (written to her dad) on the anniversary of his death. A really good poem written from the heart to a most worthy recipient. All a wrtiter needs (an audience, a message and a motivation) is apparent there. This type of exercise falls right (write??) into the theme of my blog, so here it goes.
Dear Dad,
it has been six years since you have passed. Sure miss you alot. I have moved back home to the house I left and am spending a lot of time with mom. She has now been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease too and I can already see the trembling in her hands more than I care to. I sure have a lot of questions for you. I could use some of that fatherly advice that I didn't have the smarts to heed while you were around. I know that we never really saw eye to eye when I was a much younger man, but I am coming around to see a lot of why you felt the way you did.
The kids are fine and we get to do a lot of camping when I have them on the weekends. Miles has really taken an interest in hunting. We haven't got him to bag any big game yet and to be honest, I don't care if he ever gets anything large. It is the love of nature and the wonders of this beatiful garden that I hop he comes to love. We have done some dove hunting and he can breast a bird as well as anyone. He doesn't shy away from any of the hunting chore work at all. We have a trip to the scout ranch planned for later this holiday season. It will be his first time to see where his uncles and I spent many of our summers and my first time back in twenty years. I never could get him to get involved in scouting. That is a real shame, because I think it gives a young man alot of positive life experiences. Of all my regrets, I would finish my eagle scout if I could go back and do it all over. I know that this disappointed you and although you have forgiven me, the guilt of it just won't go away.
Savannah (as well as MIles) is on the swim team this year. She also is in her third year of Spanish. We try to converse as much as we can in spanish just to help her out (Miles was shocked that I know quite a bit of French also). Last year she got to do a film school in Austin. She loved it and in one week, she and her four group partners made a twenty minute film complete with panning film shots and all. It was really good, especially because of the message (positive self-esteem).
Both kids really enjoy Austin. We spend a lot of our weekends together there. We like to take your old photos and writings and visit the places you liked to frequent during college. I don't think that your love of education missed them. They are both in honors classes and are doing quite well.
Next year we are taking the train to Missouri to visit where your dad and his family grew up. We are going for a whole two weeks and I already have a bunch of the gravesites and homesteads located for visitation. I had no idea that the old family hunting lodge was still there and in operation. We will be staying there for a few days. Mom wants to go and I want her along, but her health makes it hard for her to travel.
You missed your two latest grand children. Kurt and Lisa had Emma first, then Ian a few years later. He looks just like Kurt when he was young, and Emma is such a spoiled princess. You would love them as much as any, they are wonderful.
Tell all we love them up there, and we will be coming home in due time.
Love your son,
Stu

Tuesday Caption Contest

Okay. Last week didn't go so well. I had only one reply and it just said "Hello". Bachelor Paul, by all accounts, won the contest, so I will notify him and send him a prize. This week I submit the picture below.....I know, isn't it awesome........for the caption contest. Give me your best one sentence caption, and I'll announce the winner nexr Monday. And remember kids, Tuesday is my favorite day.

Old Rockers and Old Books

Bruce Springsteen rocks!!

He has amassed 15 studio albums, 12 other released live albums and compilations, 18 Grammy Awards, 1 Academy Award, 2 Emmys, and ranks #14 of all times in units sold (63.5 Million units), but most of all, he plays, writes, sings and lives from the heart. Living Proof that he means something to a whole lot of people.

I am cleaning my house for the first time in eight years (I've been gone, not lazy). Some of the things I am finding are out of this world. Case in point, a 1967 copyright edition of The Beauty of Motherhood, a Hallmark poetry collection. It is a nice book of collected works about, you guessed it, the beauty of motherhood. In addition to works by such well known people as Edgar Allen Poe, Victor Hugo, Lord Tennyson, Longfellow, Teddy Roosevelt, John Quincy Adams, Emily Taylor, Walt Whitman, Milly Walton and someone I've never heard of before, Ano N. Ymous; there are some nice illustrations by Frieda D. Senn. On the very first page front, facing the inside of the front cover, is an enscription. It reads:

To Barbara,
to be read in the quiet hours or at times when you especially need inspiration.


It is signed by Thelma Cullins.

Anyway, it is very important to me that this book, which was a gift to my mother, Barbara, makes it to the hands of my daughter for the birth of her first child. I am a huge believer in the family bond, it means everything. I want my children, nieces and nephews to know their grandparents. I want those kids to know their uncles and aunts. I want those kids to know each other and all the family stories that should be passed down from generation to generation. This sense of understanding of who we are as a family and where we came from and how we got to where we are today is important to me to pass along so they will know who they are. This book, eight inches by four and a half inches by a mere one quarter inch thick, with just 68 pages in total must be given to my little girl at the moment she stops being MY little girl, because the date under that enscription. That date, in that book, which I found in my house after being gone eight long years is just three days after I was born into this world. This book was a gift to my mother at the event of my birth. How it made it's way to my house I have no idea. I do not recall ever seeing this book before, but like Bruce Springsteen, it sure means a lot to me.

Some days....

are better than others. After spending long hours in the dead of night by my father's bedside, watching his body slowly erode from under his cognizant mind. I have gotten quite used to the spectrum of quality in an aging person's life. Some days he loved the world and his life because he was still here. Other days....well, not so much so.

My father was afflicted with Parkinson's Disease. Some of you may not know what exactly Parkinson's Disease is, so I will give a brief explanation. You lose nerve impulse control between your brain and your muscles. He was diagnosed back in 1998, and lived with it until his passing in November of 2002. My dad was an intellect. He graduated high school over in lil' ol' Abilene. He then enrolled at Hardin Simmons in Abilene before tranferring to The University of Texas. He got his degree and enlisted in the military. Officer candidate school was just a stepping stone for him to start his long military career. He retired from the reserves a "full bird" and while completing his twenty, he managed a masters in education from Sul Ross. After all this and a second long career in the oil bidness, he still managed to obtain TWENTY-ONE more associate degrees from the local junior college. He was still enrolled and taking classes up to the point when his disease literally kept him from going to class. My father was also a very good athlete. Besides being a golden gloves boxing champ out of Abilene, he also excelled in basketball, handball, volleyball and more.

So when his body started shutting down, the doctors offered him two different types of medication to help with the complications of the disease. The first drug helped with the body's motor skills (walking, getting up and down, using the hands, etc.), while the second drug helped with the speech control. He had to choose between mobility and communication. He chose communication, which meant he had to sacrifice his independence in mobility. Not an easy choice. Now you might understand how I could watch his body erode, while keeping him company so that his razor sharp mind could still get some exercise. It was by his bedside in the dead of night, watching football games and old movies, that we hashed out a lot of our hard feelings over a few rum drinks. Many were our conversations and many were the regrets we each had, but we could both see clearly now that we loved each other very much. There is much I would like to redo in my life, as there was for him.

Fast forward to yesterday. It has been almost six years since my dad has passed. Now, my mother has been diagnosed with.....Parkinson's Disease. For the love of me, I can't remember the names of the drugs my dad took. I do see my mother's physical abilities withering away. Her mind is not quite all there sometimes, too. So, as I do some of the neccesary chores around mom's house, I got really depressed when I saw her with her head in her hands, just slowly scratching at her scalp. I asked what she was doing and she couldn't remember. It was like she was in La-La land. It just crushed me. Such is life, today may well be a better day. I hope for her that it is.

Tuesday Caption Contest (on Wednesday, no less)

Okay, folks. This will be the first of many weekly Caption Contests. Tune in every Tuesday (because Tuesday is my favorite day!!) for the latest installment. Winners will be awarded on Fridays and the "Prize o' da Week" will be sent out after that. All captions used will follow a monthly theme, and the first to guess that theme each month will win the "Prize o' da month". So with no further ado, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeres the caption.