Tag Archives: memories

This Old House

I paid my parents a visit recently after a number of years overseas, first as a military member and then as a contractor. Because I live on Okinawa, visits are far less frequent than I would like.

My father has been dealing with Parkinson’s Disease for several years now, and each time I’ve visited, it’s been a surprise to see the impact to his condition. Some years ago, it was relatively small – the involuntary shaking of his hand or the quivering of his lip. Then, more recently, there was weight loss, weakness, frailty, difficulty speaking.

For most of this year, as I understand it, my father has been confined to a bed. Cared for by my mother, my brother, and a team of hospice nurses and assistants who visit briefly every weekday. I was unprepared for the extent of his decline, even though I was rushing home to spend time with him for fear that his condition might worsen. Now he fights with hallucinations and has moments where he can’t hold down food.

Spending time with him reminiscing and interacting was deeply meaningful and important, even while it drove home how much he has changed from the physically strong man I looked up to as a child. Sitting with him, holding his hand and comforting him through a hallucination, shook me.

I know it’s often a natural cycle. The parents take care of the children who grow up to take care of the parents. (Really, my brother and his family have borne that responsibility, and I’m grateful.)

That it’s natural and common doesn’t make it easier.

During this visit, we also stopped by our old house, which is in the process of being sold and renovated. Some months ago, my brother and his wife got a condo close to them for my parents to live in, so the old house is emptied of almost everything of value except the memories.

The piano I learned to play on growing up is still there. My dad’s train set that he spent years building is still there in the basement next to my old room. The backyard is a shaded refuge under the trees we planted as saplings in our youth, which now stand tall in the sky.

There was a bittersweet parallel that I couldn’t ignore.

This old house,
A home for many decades,
Still standing,
But advanced in years,
Dented, damaged, 
Declining, nearly forgotten, 
Seemingly abandoned.

Hair disheveled like the grass, 
Long and swaying in the breeze
Limbs and muscles weary, bruised,
Cracked and crumbling 
Like the walls and stairs, 
Weakened from years of use.

Hands and arms shaking, trembling, 
Unable to hold their grip;
Pieces of loose and broken tile
Sliding about with each passing step.
Skin splotched and stretched thin,
Wallpaper torn and hanging, 
Discolored yet still warm
With better memories back then.

Struggling to maintain control,
And humbled by inability to do so,
A flooded basement warping the wood walls.
The creaking floorboards and supports
Like crackling of aged joints
That have borne more than their share 
Over many months and years. 

Stuffy air lingering throughout the house,
Stagnant, damp, a little off,  
Like ragged, labored breathing
And a respirator’s constant sound.
Every room emptied of all but frames 
Of furniture beyond repair 
Places once filled with so much life,
Now stripped and bare.
This house no longer feels like a home. 

But the outward appearance doesn’t tell
One’s history and significance over a lifetime,
Just as the frail body of an elder 
Reveals nothing of their deeds and exploits
In their prime.

Once these creaking floors that sigh
Echoed with pitter-patter footfalls
And the nurturing love of a mother
Quick to answer her child’s cries. 
Once these walls resounded, stirred 
With the laughter of children And the stern 
but loving guidance of a father.
Once the sturdy bricks and doors
Held safe a family, like strong arms
That stretched and joined 
And formed a covering
Like the interwoven branches 
Of the towering trees
That form a canopy of shade
And comforting peace
Once the keys of the dusty piano
Rang out with delight, 
Clear and strong
And filled the house with joy,
Poured out from hearts full of song.

To look at it now, 
This house doesn’t seem like much. 
In disrepair and discomfort.
Ready to be repossessed. 
But there is One who sees beyond 
What earthly eyes and thoughts assess 
Who knows the value, holds the deed,
And cherishes what He purchased.

This house may seem in shambles now
But the real renovation is nearly done
Beyond the veil, a Builder waits 
With the keys to a glorious mansion
The One who truly buys and flips
The worst of run-down properties 
Who turns their rubble into gold,
Disgraces into testimonies,
Who gathers up the ruins and
From ashes draws forth beauty
Safe and stately far beyond 
The hand of decay or disease. 
Broken structures He rebuilds
Remakes, revives, restores, until 
Souls stand alight with glory filled 
Before the Throne; their voices tell,
With faith made sight, yes, it is well. 

Album Day 2

My wife and daughter got me doing the “post 10 albums that influenced your musical taste” thing on Facebook… but I’m much too guilty of pontificating to simply cut and paste the standard blurb. I’d rather share the story of why the song or album matters.

And so we come to the Christian Metal album:

The cover totally captured that This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti vibe, which scores it even more bonus late 80s / early 90s Christian points.

My brother was the one who had all the arguments with my parents about what was acceptable and what was not, what boundaries he could push and which were unyielding, what amount of Christian in the Christian Rock was enough to make it not just Rock ‘n’ Roll from the pit of hell.

I feel like my parents did pretty well with the information they had available to them. Like a lot of churchgoers at that time, they accepted what their spiritual authorities and mentors had to say about different trends going on among the youth, and sometimes those spiritual leaders only had the information given to them by hearsay or by a form of the telephone game… hence some of the extreme misunderstandings like “the Satanic panic” era for Dungeons & Dragons. (I talk at length about the way D&D is viewed by Christians in another post.)

Side note: we managed to get some tabletop RPG time with games like BattleTech—nothing demonic about giant stompy robots covered in lasers and missiles!—and Middle-Earth Role Playing—essentially D&D but with a d100 system instead of d20, and all set in Tolkien’s world, which was barely tolerable as opposed to blatant witchcraft or occult imagery.

Back to the Christian bands…

Stryper had some kind of non-troversy for saying things like “To Hell with the Devil” (theologically accurate, but I suppose it’s coarse language), so they were out of the question. Petra was acceptable but they were pretty chill really… sort of a (much more overtly) Christian U2, I suppose… and we wanted something heavier.

Deliverance was one of several bands my brother introduced me to, and this tape got a lot of use. In addition to the screeching guitars and echoing vocals, they had some surprisingly meditative tracks – a version of Psalm 23, and the instrumental intro song for the album.

Barren Cross and One Bad Pig are the only others I can think of off the top of my head… and also a band called Vengeance that was basically growling indistinguishable from the rumbling overdrive of their guitars. I couldn’t quite get that one, other than for comedy value.

Vengeance was basically the Christian version of the band in whichever Ace Ventura movie it was where they use the growling for comedic effect. I think that was Cannibal Corpse.

Wow. Listening to this so many years later, I am glad I left some musical choices in the past.

Albums because why not

My wife and daughter tagged me in the “post 10 songs & albums that influenced your music taste” trend on Facebook, and—although I normally resist such things—I figured I should go along. It would be a fun way to reminisce, and kind of a challenge to see if I could really narrow my choices down to just ten.

Then I figured, “Oh hey, I am wordy and rambly, and don’t just want to share a pic of the album with the same cut-n-paste blurb from the original trend. Maybe I should put this on that blog thing I continually ignore.”

Bonus: Since I’m “in a creative funk” / procrastinating / uninspired / suffering “this is pointless” syndrome regarding writing fiction, maybe this will get me putting thoughts into words into sentences into something online.

So the first choice was “November Rain” from Guns ‘n’ Roses, Use Your Illusion I. This was one of the few songs I practiced and learned during the last year or two of formal piano lessons I took between ages 5 and 13.

I loved the mix of evocative piano and Slash’s sweet guitar solos, and it was fun trying to figure out how to mimic those wildly different styles on the keys.

A bunch of those songs stick out in my head as high school favorites—mostly the ones with fun piano parts.

Off the top of my head and in no particular order: Locomotive, Estranged, Civil War, Yesterday, Live and Let Die, Don’t Cry, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, and 14 Years come to mind as favorites. You Could Be Mine is up there on my list too, but I didn’t realize it until Terminator 2 came out, which is one of the true cinematic masterpieces of all time.

Regrettably, while learning to play November Rain, I ignored my piano teacher’s warnings and encouragement to keep practicing the stuff I didn’t like to play—tough classical music and such. I remember a conversation with him where he said something like, “If you’re not going to practice, then I don‘t have anything else to teach you.”

Teenage Me heard the latter part and ignored the condition at the beginning of the sentence. I figured I was good enough for anything I wanted to do. Maybe I thought that I didn’t need anybody… contrary to the final lines of the song, oddly enough.

Just a few years later, I met some jazz pianists who admitted they weren’t all that great, and they were doing things on the keys that I couldn’t understand or follow. Then it dawned on me that I had so much more I could have learned. So… not just an album, but a life lesson.

Side note: My favorite song of the two albums is probably Estranged. I think it’s because (imho) it has even more variety in the musical dynamics and it also has a lot of energetic parts that I loved playing on the keys, even if they weren’t meant for piano.

Too Young For This

“You are one of the old guys!”

I know it’s rare that we catch our aging in progress; it’s difficult for us to notice the process taking place. There’s often a moment of sudden, painful clarity. 

The above quote was one of my moments. 

“You should talk to one of the old guys,” I believe is what I said just before the fatal blow to my youthful pride. In the middle of a conversation with military coworkers, I thought of myself as roughly their peer, in age and experience. One young woman informed me ever so gently that this was not the case.

I joined the Air Force early, at age 17, which required a parent’s signature to approve. So I have often been the young one in any group. Once that changed, the reactions shifted to “whoa, I didn’t realize you’ve been in the service that long.” Even those eventually ceased.

I’ve already done my 20 years. Two days from now, I will finish my 22nd year of active duty. My hair is going gray (so my daughter likes to remind me), I sometimes limp, and I serve on a no-running profile, so age has taken its toll. 

Speaking of the daughter, one of the surprised reactions I get is at the fact that I have two teenaged children. Maybe most folks have better sense than to start so young, or maybe there’s still a touch of “I didn’t know you were that old” left. 

But today after flying for twelve hours, I got my own surprise reaction when my daughter’s Facebook profile revealed she is engaged to her boyfriend of over a year.

Gah!

There is a ring in the middle, among the pearls.

Now this is nothing out of the blue–they’ve been talking and plotting for quite some time. But a distant concept that “someday soon after I turn eighteen I plan to marry him” is different than a public proclamation of “this is happening.”

I will turn 40 just before she turns 18, so it’s not like I can say I’m still young. I’m just not old enough for this quite yet.

After its reign of terror through Hollywood, the music industry, and the Cincinnati Zoo, 2016 struck one last, very personal blow.

Bring on the new year, this one sucks. 

…but maybe not too fast. There are only so many more moments left, like snowflakes falling on a warm winter day, melting and vanishing before they touch the ground.

Memory Lane

After a week under the weather, and in an effort to get past the bit of flu / cold / plague still lingering in my gut, I went for a brisk walk today. 

It’s 72 degrees and sunny. I have sunglasses, music, and a mug of coffee… plus I need some exercise anyway.

I walked past the house we lived in for eight years last time we came to Okinawa. It was alright when we moved in with a 4 year old daughter and almost 3 year old son. By the time we moved out, with four kids and two of them in double digit ages, it wasn’t quite so suitable. 

But it had a grand tree my oldest kids loved to climb. Perhaps somewhere on a hard drive, but definitely stored in my memory, is the image of my son’s grinning head popping out of the top boughs of the tree (a good twenty feet up). 

It also had a small hill down which the kids would ride their Tonka truck. They even tried “Okinawan sledding” by sliding down on flat cardboard. (I may also have tried these activities, but I can assure you they are not meant for grown-ups.)

The house is right across the street from a school with a huge playground. And as I crossed the street, three young children dashed across the open grass toward the swing sets and slides, laughing just like my littles used to. 

 

The place most of my kids will remember as “the park” when they were little.
 
I remember making that trip with the kids, to chase them around the park in games of “Monster” –which was basically ‘tag’ with a lot of roaring and other noise, and it usually ended with me laying vanquished on the ground, a victorious child trampling on my back.
Kadena is a large base, with many different housing areas. When I was first stationed here, after my wife and I married, we moved into a house just on the other side of the same park. I walked past that house today too.

The whole base is full of memories. There’s hardly a road I can drive–or in this case, walk–down without thinking, “That’s where so-and-so lived.” I walked past the house where my oldest son’s best friend lived… past the house that once belonged to the alcoholic mom with the adorable but crazy toddlers… past a home where my wife (then just a friend) house-sat for an older couple while they were on vacation… and several homes of church friends or former co-workers… places where we’ve enjoyed Sunday afternoons of food and fellowship, or Thanksgiving dinners, or Christmas season get-togethers.

19 years ago today, I went for a walk with my then-girlfriend. We were both stationed here on Kadena, living in dorms by the gym. We would walk for hours, chatting, saving geckos in the streets during the day and star-gazing at night.

 On that day, on a small concrete bridge where we liked to sit and talk, I paused to tie my shoe. 

Then I produced the ring I had worn on my pinky and popped the question. “Will you marry me?”

I waited until April 2nd so she wouldn’t think it was a gag.

That was half my lifetime ago. Half my life, more or less, on this island and stationed at this base. Half my life spent with the lovely woman who said yes… and I’m glad I can look back with fondness, not regret.

Thanks, Jami, and my awesome kids, who have all put up with so much over the years.

Big Brother Turns 40

No, not the Big Brother of George Orwell’s classic 1984, although that work does get referenced below. Nope, I’m talking about my big brother, Pete.

Pete is on the left, hating the camera as always.
Pete is on the left, hating the camera as always.

I wrote a poem for my parents’ 40th Anniversary some time ago, and it was well received.

My sister-in-law called a couple months ago and reminded me that my big brother’s 40th birthday was coming up. “If you want to write something for his birthday, I know he’ll love it,” she said.

“Uh… sure,” I replied. “I can write something.” But what?

For two months, this project has nagged at the back of my mind, with no clear direction of where to go.

Then, a few days before his birthday, I remembered time spent with my brother and my mom, writing various haiku.

We followed the 5-7-5 syllable format for our haiku. My mom and brother would try to write poignant and powerful things about summer, love, the future, spirituality.

I think I wrote about really important stuff: ramen, video games, and my favorite toys.

In the spirit of those fond memories, I started jotting down some haiku about my brother and my relationship with him.

40 of them would have been too many, but 14 seemed a good number.

Big Brother, forty?
I don’t know what I should say
Past “Happy birthday”

You only enjoyed
Two and a half years without
A little brother

My entire life I’ve
Had a big brother, and I
Wouldn’t change a thing

We’d play karate
My villain, you the hero
I’d want to be like

You put up with me
Chasing you and all your friends
You included me

You introduced me
To the wonder and magic
Hidden in pages

Kingdoms like Gondor
Worlds like Narnia, Bespin
Past and future times.

Sentient robots,
Dragons and dwarves and Wookiees
Doctors and hobbits

We spent hours and nights
Combing nuclear Wasteland
Swapping floppy disks

You challenged my faith
Encouraged me to stand firm
When others gave up

You opened the door
Of my first comic book store
And I was drawn in

To art and legend,
Heroes in tales of virtue,
Overcoming flaws

I unlike Winston
Need no O’Brien to make
Me love Big Brother

So much of my life
Was shaped to imitate you.
For that, I’ll say “Thanks.”