Run To Him

By



Run to him.



Run and catch the wind. He’s high up on that grassy hill, and it won’t be long before he disappears over the other side.


Who is he?


He is your father. That strange, wonderful, irritating man whose feet you used to stand on as he held your fingertips and walked you around the living room floor. The one who fell down on all fours at your command and let you jump— not climb on, mind you . . . jump —on his tired and slightly sagging back. The man who fixed everything from your broken heart to the crack of dawn. The one who held you in his arms when the lightning flashed and the thunder boomed. The one who threw the ball with you and sat through miniature tea parties and told you to hike up your pants and to go change into something less revealing. The man who told you to take a chance and ask the boy you had a crush on to the dance; the guy who said he’d wait up until you got home from your first date. The man who was everything you loved and feared and couldn’t wait to escape from, the one you ran to for advice and help when the road got dark and the way narrow and bumpy. The old man. Look at him up there. He’s waving and, is that . . . is that a smile he’s smiling? Yes, I think it is. I think he sees what’s on the other side of the hill, and he’s motioning to you to come on up. But not just yet. Live your life first. He’ll be waiting for you on the other side whenever you get there. And when you do, run to him!


He’s your partner, strolling beside you in the moonlight. A giddy, romantic walk, hand-in-hand, barefoot in the surf and the warm wet sand, free as the gulls and the wind. The walk goes gone on and on and on . . . . . . . . . . and on, yet you’re unaware of time’s passing. Your feet are tired and sore. The moon is full, the surf rhythmic and the air fresh and salty. The moon lights your imaginations, it lights your way. Maybe you talk and maybe you don’t, but words aren’t always needed. There are two of you in one now, not two in two. Time and familiarity have brightened the glistening surface of your heart. 


“Girl, ya gotta love your man . . .

Girl, ya gotta love your man . . .

Take him by the hand, make him understand

The work on you depends, our life will never end,

Girl ya gotta love your man . . .”




Pick up the pace, he’s getting away, he’s walking ahead of you. Hurry! Run to him, catch up to him! Take his hand in yours and don’t let go!. The beach is too long and the night too dark for either of you to be walking alone. If you let him get away, you’ll never forgive yourself.


He is your brother. Confidante. Antagonist. Snitch and snoop, friend ,and ally. Procurer of boyfriends and secrets, parent spy and revealer of all that’s been said behind your back. Guinea pig, experiment, mentor, and example, he leads the way and looks up to you. He wishes he could be like you and knows he’d never want to be you; he’s got enough baggage of his own. He’s the one whose job it was to pester you, belittle you, ridicule you, embarrass you and steal from you. His mission was to make you hate him and hit him, and let you know that when you were under siege he was going to be the first one to run to your aid and fight with you or, more likely, to fight for you. Nobody touches my sister but me, you got that? Nobody! Hey, bring your friends. I’m here all day! 


And when he moved out to go to college and you were left behind with mom and dad and the house and the refrigerator all to yourself there was a bittersweet taste to the freedom you never thought was possible. An emptiness you never saw coming. He’s the one you couldn’t wait to get away from— too immature and infuriating to live with. He humiliated you at every turn— in front of your friends, your cousins, total strangers . . . and spent all his midnight hours thinking up ways to drive a wedge between you and your boyfriend, the love of your life. Now he’s back there at home, safely behind you where he can’t touch your life and do you any more harm. He’s your brother. The one you miss talking with and laughing with and pulling pranks on; the one you trust more than you trust yourself. He’s waiting back there and you’ve got a break coming up soon. Run to him! Swallow your pride, dammit! Run to him while you can.


He’s your son. The man child you’ve been waiting to meet, a stranger who knows everything you’ve ever revealed about yourself, and much, much more. He’s the little boy you held in your arms and gave names to all the things he saw in his ever-broadening world. He’s the pirate and the cowboy and the London bobbie and the hippie and the trooper and the puzzle master and the map reader, the geography and world capital whiz. He’s the kid in diapers, in onesies, in jeans and teeshirts, in the heavy letter jacket and Converse sneakers a time and half longer than his feet. He’s the man child talking with you on walks with the dog and out in the driveway at night, about the stars and vinyl records and the law and the things he’ll do differently than you. He’s up in his room missing his brother, and he’s away at college missing the warmth and comfort of home in ways he never thought he would. He’s chomping at the bit to have the kind of freedom his favorite bands sing about; he’s got more freedom now than he’s ever known before, and it unsettles him. He’s out there, about to start his life, and you miss him, though he’ll be home soon. He’s right upstairs living a secret life you’ve promised not to dig into, though you want to know everything. Everything.


He’s your dad. Your partner. Your brother. Your son.


Run to him, he calls you now.












Popular posts from this blog

“Confused and Wanting It To Go Away.”

By
Image
The following text thread speaks for itself. My youngest, now 20, is staying with his grandparents for a couple of weeks before he flies to Maryland to help me move back to Texas. It began with me asking how things were going. Son - Things are fine, time is moving pretty fast but it’s amazing how slow this year has felt. I feel like I can remember something about every week since early February. I’m not the only one who thinks this year resembles 1968 fairly closely. Me -   I heard a historian on NPR today say that the recent events reminded him of 1968 also. The major difference, he said, is that   this time people have time to get involved because they’re unemployed or on lockdown, out of school, etc. Son -    I wouldn’t want to erase this period away, it’s been incredible to see. You no longer can claim “blah, blah we all got involved   back in the day, none of you youngsters protest.” I’d be out there if I wan’t living out of my suitcases pinn...
Read more

Hey, Wide Load, You’re Tilting the Plane!

By
Image
REVOLUTION, I SAY!   It’s time to stuff the profit-swollen airline swine back down into the deep dark corporate pit where they belong! Time to put the genie back in the bottle and cork it forever! Listen. Over the years I’ve flown quite a few times. Many times, in fact. I’ve flown all over the United States and I’ve flown internationally. As of this writing I’ve flown to, I think, 23 countries, plus any number of times internally in several of those countries. The most harrowing of all those internal flights was in 1986 on an Air India jet from Arusha, Tanzania, to Kigali, Rwanda. We’d only been in the air for about an hour and weren’t terribly high above the mountains when there was a sudden boom! and a great shuddering of the entire plane. For half a minute the cabin rocked and vibrated to the sound of grinding gears. It scared the hell out of me, but none of the flight crew seemed particularly alarmed— maybe that sort of thing was a common occurrence for Air India, I don’t know...
Read more

Friends

By
Image
          I mentioned in my last post that I've been away from social media-- my blog and Facebook in particular --for the last eight months. I said I had my reasons. I said I wasn't sure I wanted to be back. I'm not very comfortable around people, even less so in forum where I can't see their faces or hear their voices. I need to look into a person's eyes to know whether they care, whether they're telling the truth. But my instincts (my spirit guide?) suggested it was time to give it a try, so I'm giving it a try. For a while.           I am not the kind of person who makes friends easily. I am not one who turns heads when I enter a room. I am the kind of person, it seems, who has a quiet impact on the people I meet. They don't notice me until I'm gone. And that's okay. My ex-wife always used to say that I am the kind of person who craves attention and "attaboys," but that when they come I don't want them. I run from the spot...
Read more

New Beginnings

By
Image
        Marcher seul sur la route.         It means “walking the road alone.”         Starting back in 2011 or 2012, somewhere in there, I created my first blog site. It was called Pouring Music From a Cup and its banner photograph was the view from the top of Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas. You may remember it.        A few years later I put a collection of my blog posts together, 42 of them, and self-published the collection in a book also called Pouring Music From a Cup . The cover of the book was c reated by a young artist named Summer Westover, and it looked like this:        However, like the blog, I chose to put the book to sleep last autumn. The reasons don’t matter. The point is, the book is resting comfortably on Amazon, along with my other books, and won’t awaken again until it is kissed by a beautiful wandering princess. You can’t see or buy any o...
Read more

LSD And Looking For An Angel

By
Image
“I believe that there is a hidden hero in every man and a hidden angel in every woman.”   She calls herself Lili, though that’s not her real name.  I do not know Lili. We haven’t met— not yet. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure what she looks like. Yes, I’ve seen photographs of her, but they were rather dark and pixilated, and that, I think, was intentional. She says she doesn't feel comfortable presenting pictures of herself in public, but I guess in this circumstance she felt she had to. What’s speaking to me about this odd beginning to what, perhaps, may eventually evolve into a genuine friendship, or even relationship, is that it speaks of a certain humility on her part not often found in others. This may well be a time when I will be forced to accept the person based upon who she is on the inside before I find myself drawn to what I see on the outside. You know that old war horse: accept me for who I am . That’s tough to do when you’re immediately distracted by...
Read more

(For Janna) Can You Miss a Ghost?

By
Image
         Yes. We met on a popular dating site that I won’t name because it’s a nonsensical name that begins with Z, and I’ve had it with romantic nonsense. She called herself “J” which I soon convinced her to reveal stood for “Janna.” And of course she was pretty. At 57 she’d obviously taken very good care of herself. Imagine my delight when I read her profile story and saw how closely it mirrored my own: New to all of this dating experience so I’m a bit skittish and shy. Divorced in 2015 after a twenty-five year marriage … I’m looking first for someone I can trust, someone who enjoys going places but also enjoys a quiet night at home, and someone who is authentic. I retired from education after teaching for 34 years in the public schools. I couldn’t wait to send a message to her! I too was fairly new at the online dating scene, or if not exactly new, patently naïve. I too had been divorced in the not-so-distant past after a two- decades-plus marriage. I ...
Read more

Repetitively Redundant Phrases That Should Be Drawn and Quartered

By
Image
  Let me confess at the outset: I love the English language. Not because it’s my native tongue, although that’s certainly part of its allure, but because its rich palette derives from so many other languages. Unlike any other language in the world, English is malleable, eminently fluid and versatile. Like any other language it has rules and it has exceptions to those rules. It has its variations, contradictions, idioms, dialects, and is utterly confusing with its hundreds of homonyms, homophones, and inconsistent spellings. Then again, like the artist’s palette that has many tints and tinctures of every color paint, the possible combinations of those colors is endless.    Words and sentences are my passion, my comfort; I dare not abuse them. They are my intellectual children. I feel protective and nurturing toward our language. For this reason I wrote a blog a few weeks back titled “Words and Phrases That Should Be Tortured and Killed.” It wasn’t an exhaustive list, but i...
Read more

Teachers — Locked and Loaded

By
Image
Maybe it began with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold when they marched into Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, armed like G4S Security mercenaries and killed twelve students, one teacher, and wounded twenty-one others before, thankfully, ending themselves. Maybe it was the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that occurred on December 14th, 2012, when, for whatever deranged reason, 20-year-old Adam Lanza walked into the school and killed 26 people, twenty of the them children between six and seven years old. Maybe it was the public outrage that at these and what seems like an endless stream of school shootings before and since. But somewhere in the reactionary cauldrons of American public rhetoric the idea of arming teachers bubbled to the surface. Put guns in the hands of teachers, proponents said, and any would-be assailant will think twice about entering a school, knowing that staff members in that building are also armed and can respond with deadly force.   They called it a...
Read more

Words and Phrases That Should Be Tortured and Killed

By
Image
Okay, I get it. Language is derivative; language is fluid and ever-changing, adapting to the times. Cool. Far out. Totally. Choice. P honus-balonus (bet you don’t recognize this one, do you? It’s from the 1920s; means nonsense or, more colloquially, “bullshit.”).   I also get slang, idioms, dialect, colloquialisms, and all the lingual variations that verbal communication implies. I understand that, like, the vast majority of us are not, like, linguists, or writers or, in these times of social media, even, like, literally, decent texters or bloggers.   And I think it’s, like, a generally accepted fact of life and society— any society —that most people are, like, at best only okay talkers. Which is to say, most people talk like they drive: only aware of themselves, in a hurry and unconcerned with how they get there, careless, oblivious, ignorant of the “rules of the road.” Oratorically, they don’t care how air-headed they sound if the person they’re talking to gets the idea. ‘L...
Read more

Rock Me, Mama, Like a Southbound Train

By
Image
First published in July 1998 .            I came to Texas kicking and screaming. Stepped off that 727 at Houston Intercontinental Airport on July 19th, 1973 after having spent two weeks in Sarasota, Florida, with my grandparents, their grapefruit trees, and swims in crystal blue water twice a day at their beachfront cabaña. I’m not sure I ever knew exactly why I was spared the cross-country move from Knoxville, Tennessee to Humble, Texas, when my mother and brother were forced to pile in the Blue Oiler— packed window-to-window and its tailgate bulging with shit that should have been thrown out in the back yard and set on fire —and endure two and a half days of ever-flattening Tennessee, through Memphis, and then the Arkansas state highways, eternally reduced to a single lane for the entire length of the state . . . but they did. Listening to my old man swear at the “ sorry sombitches” at Ford who designed the Torino, at the truckers clogging the left lane,...
Read more