The mournful look on his face is permanently pressed into my memory, like one of those patches mom used to steam press over the tear in my blue jeans. Something was torn, terribly deep, in that young man’s life. It had something to do with moral failure and was so painful he couldn’t talk about it. Whatever it was, it had happened recently those many years ago. He wanted help so badly he would sit in my office and just cry, or stare mournfully into some other world only he could see and I could not. Like he was watching the life he thought he was going to live passing before his eyes, slipping from his grip.
I was working overtime not to be voyeuristic in my questioning. I had long since passed the stage where I found the moral failings of others intriguing or even remotely fascinating. If there is any compassion in you at all, the kind borne of self-humiliation, watching others stumble only breaks your heart for them, never seeing their failings as a source of entertainment or distraction. Something had broken that young man’s heart. He was able to say enough to point toward himself as the source of the failure. There wasn’t an ounce of blame in him toward others. But, he was never able to actually name whatever breach of trust over which he was self-destructing before my eyes. Looking back some years, I sense that it had to do with marital infidelity, though, to this day, I don’t know that for a fact. He had certainly broken someone’s trust, especially his trust of himself.
Of all the ministry experiences I’ve wished I could relive, that moment rates at the top. I’ve replayed that hour in my study so many times, saying out loud the things I wish I had said then. Something, anything that would have helped ease his burden or bear it more responsibly. That young man eventually faded into the rest of the faces of the past that stand like mile markers on my memory’s highway. I have no idea what became of him. I wonder what he finally made of the sin that was haunting him that day, his own personal demon.
A colleague recently told me something one of his professors once wrote in Greek on the chalkboard. “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.” Some people have better poker faces than others and you’d never know anything is wrong. With others, you can read their pain in the grimace being permanently etched into their face as though with a laser, one burning cut at a time.
No matter what we see on the surface, we just never know what stories, what demons, lurk in the shadows of another’s heart. We never know what private battles of conscience they are fighting. It’s just safer to assume that every person we meet is fighting some battle and to be as kind to them as we would have them be to us. Almost certainly, the kindness we extend to others in their private pain will come back to bless us in ours’. Or, not.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Electric Fence
The very first church I served as pastor was located in the extreme northwestern corner of the Texas panhandle. The country was flatter than your computer screen and, for the most part, treeless except for a scrub brush here and there. Any summer day could be hot unholy but, a long sleeve shirt felt good at night as even the hottest July days cooled off in the high elevation. The winters blew cold, hard and long and wet. Maybe it was the stark geography or the spirit it took to settle that country but, whatever it was, the people were the best.
One of those folks was Kent Cartwright. Kent and his family lived fifteen miles northeast of town. There was nothing between his place and the North Pole but so much barbed wire. His ranch wasn’t in the middle of nowhere but, as the old-timers liked to say, you could see it from there.
Kent made his living out of the earth as a cattle rancher. It was hard to see where the dirt stopped and his well-worn boots began. He worked long, brutal hours, rain or shine, light or dark, sleet or snow, blistering hot or freezing cold. Raising cattle was a 24/7 kind of life. Something about being that close to the earth gave Kent a common sense view of reality that I found not only refreshing but even healing.
When things at church got boring, or started driving me crazy, I’d drive out to Kent’s place, hop up in his pickup and just ride around with him for hours. Kent had this long slow West Texas drawl. It took him ten seconds longer to say anything. Conversations could take a long time. An hour in the cab of Kent’s pickup was better than three on anyone’s couch.
One day, Kent began explaining the science of fencing. Turns out, there is one. Different kinds of cattle, geography and weather patterns demand different kinds of fences. In time, the lesson included electric fences. I couldn’t resist asking the next question.
“Kent, have you have you ever peed on an electric fence?” I asked, not sure how Kent, one of my deacons, would feel about knowing that his pastor knew how to say “pee.” Kent thought for a long time. Then, in that pokey-slow drawl, he answered, “Nope. Talked to an ol’ boy once that did – and that was good enough for me.”
I’m still laughing, twenty-five years later. Whatever that “ol’ boy” had described as his experience must have been horrifying as the stream of electricity followed his stream back up to his private parts in truly shocking ways.
I’m also still remembering the sage warning. We really don’t have to try to something before we criticize it. We don’t have to commit adultery or cheat on our taxes or spend money we don’t have or drink too much or stay in a career that’s robbing our soul and destroying our family. Sometimes, we can just talk to some ol’ boy, or girl, who did. Maybe that will be good enough for us, too. There’s more than one way to learn a lesson from an electric fence without getting burned, too.
One of those folks was Kent Cartwright. Kent and his family lived fifteen miles northeast of town. There was nothing between his place and the North Pole but so much barbed wire. His ranch wasn’t in the middle of nowhere but, as the old-timers liked to say, you could see it from there.
Kent made his living out of the earth as a cattle rancher. It was hard to see where the dirt stopped and his well-worn boots began. He worked long, brutal hours, rain or shine, light or dark, sleet or snow, blistering hot or freezing cold. Raising cattle was a 24/7 kind of life. Something about being that close to the earth gave Kent a common sense view of reality that I found not only refreshing but even healing.
When things at church got boring, or started driving me crazy, I’d drive out to Kent’s place, hop up in his pickup and just ride around with him for hours. Kent had this long slow West Texas drawl. It took him ten seconds longer to say anything. Conversations could take a long time. An hour in the cab of Kent’s pickup was better than three on anyone’s couch.
One day, Kent began explaining the science of fencing. Turns out, there is one. Different kinds of cattle, geography and weather patterns demand different kinds of fences. In time, the lesson included electric fences. I couldn’t resist asking the next question.
“Kent, have you have you ever peed on an electric fence?” I asked, not sure how Kent, one of my deacons, would feel about knowing that his pastor knew how to say “pee.” Kent thought for a long time. Then, in that pokey-slow drawl, he answered, “Nope. Talked to an ol’ boy once that did – and that was good enough for me.”
I’m still laughing, twenty-five years later. Whatever that “ol’ boy” had described as his experience must have been horrifying as the stream of electricity followed his stream back up to his private parts in truly shocking ways.
I’m also still remembering the sage warning. We really don’t have to try to something before we criticize it. We don’t have to commit adultery or cheat on our taxes or spend money we don’t have or drink too much or stay in a career that’s robbing our soul and destroying our family. Sometimes, we can just talk to some ol’ boy, or girl, who did. Maybe that will be good enough for us, too. There’s more than one way to learn a lesson from an electric fence without getting burned, too.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Normal
Last summer while I was so very ill, unbeknownst to me, a dear high school classmate was also deathly ill, 1500 miles away. It was months before we caught up with each other’s stories. The illnesses were different, though both life-threatening. I just got started a little sooner than she did.
We talked about how strange it had been trying to re-enter our worlds, looking for some sense of normalcy. We both affirmed that, when you are gone that long, for whatever reason, the standard of “normal” has been redefined. New roads have been built. Others have closed. People have moved on while you were locked down. From your bed you could see the sun rising and setting each day. In my case, my hospital room was too high to be able to see the cars and lives passing on the streets below, on their way to their new life, while mine stood freeze-framed, locked in place.
People would ask us if “we were back to normal.” Some asked because they were genuinely concerned. Some asked with a tone in their voice that betrayed impatience. Answering their questions, despite their motives, was complicated by two facts.
One is that, when you are hit that hard, every part of you gets taken down. There is no part of your being, physical, emotional, spiritual or psychological that is not sick with you. In my case, when my liver nearly died, my heart, my soul and my mind all suffered. In short, it was easier to recover physically than it was to recover, say, spiritually.
I got out of the hospital just a little over a week ago. Hard to believe it’s been a whole year. I want to say that I’m back to normal, except that normal isn’t what it was the day I went into the hospital. That’s the second thing that complicates answering the “Are you back to normal?” question. What’s normal? I’m still figuring that out, frankly, and hope to be for a while.
There were those who just couldn’t understand why it took so long. That’s only because they’ve never been that sick. Someday they will be and then they’ll be more compassionate, maybe. Until then, the lesson from it all is just for me. “Be kind,” someone once wrote. “Everyone you meet is carrying some heavy burden.”
We don’t have to have a personal understanding of anyone else’s pain in order to be compassionate toward them. Compassion and empathy should be our default positions with everyone we meet. We never know when we may need to ask them to scoot over so we can climb into the same bed with them.
We talked about how strange it had been trying to re-enter our worlds, looking for some sense of normalcy. We both affirmed that, when you are gone that long, for whatever reason, the standard of “normal” has been redefined. New roads have been built. Others have closed. People have moved on while you were locked down. From your bed you could see the sun rising and setting each day. In my case, my hospital room was too high to be able to see the cars and lives passing on the streets below, on their way to their new life, while mine stood freeze-framed, locked in place.
People would ask us if “we were back to normal.” Some asked because they were genuinely concerned. Some asked with a tone in their voice that betrayed impatience. Answering their questions, despite their motives, was complicated by two facts.
One is that, when you are hit that hard, every part of you gets taken down. There is no part of your being, physical, emotional, spiritual or psychological that is not sick with you. In my case, when my liver nearly died, my heart, my soul and my mind all suffered. In short, it was easier to recover physically than it was to recover, say, spiritually.
I got out of the hospital just a little over a week ago. Hard to believe it’s been a whole year. I want to say that I’m back to normal, except that normal isn’t what it was the day I went into the hospital. That’s the second thing that complicates answering the “Are you back to normal?” question. What’s normal? I’m still figuring that out, frankly, and hope to be for a while.
There were those who just couldn’t understand why it took so long. That’s only because they’ve never been that sick. Someday they will be and then they’ll be more compassionate, maybe. Until then, the lesson from it all is just for me. “Be kind,” someone once wrote. “Everyone you meet is carrying some heavy burden.”
We don’t have to have a personal understanding of anyone else’s pain in order to be compassionate toward them. Compassion and empathy should be our default positions with everyone we meet. We never know when we may need to ask them to scoot over so we can climb into the same bed with them.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Fresh Air
The other day I was driving along and, out of nowhere, there came this memory of a person at church who had been particularly unkind to me, even seemed to enjoy it, get energy out of it. What she did and said easily rate as some of the most disrespectful, dehumanizing, insensitive and heartbreaking things I’ve ever heard come of out of the mouth of one who would claim to be a Christian.
Where did that come from? I was having a nice day until that memory got caught in the car with me on a very hot day. It was flying around like a wounded hornet looking for someone to sting again, me in particular. Every attempt to flush her out the window only made her madder and drove up the chance of me having a wreck exponentially. How’d she get in my car? How come I couldn’t get her out?
As I remembered what she said, the tone of her voice, the scowlish-mean look on her face, I found myself right back in the room where that conversation took place. My heart was racing. My palms were sweaty. I was coming up with things I was going to say back to her if and when she ever came up for air. I actually started talking back to her, as though the hornet was listening. Suddenly, it occurred to me that, by just allowing myself to remember what she said, I was actually reliving the moment, physically, spiritually, emotionally, feeling the hornet’s sting. From head to pucker, I was tight as a drum, needing to cry but not able.
Just as suddenly, something (or, Someone), recalled to my memory one of the Apostle Paul’s more potent hornet-swatting scriptures. “This one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and pressing on to what lies ahead.” Like a swatter, it’s one piece of equipment, with two sides. One side is forgetting, the other side is pressing on. Without both sides, it doesn’t work.
That’s when it occurred to me. One of the greatest of all spiritual disciplines is that of being able to remember but choosing, instead, to forget. The capacity to remember is a gift of God. Some researchers say that every event we’ve ever experienced, good and bad, is recorded somewhere on a molecular piece of our cerebral computer. Along with that gift, God also gave us the gift to say no to certain memories, to assign them a place in our heart and mind where they will starve to death for lack of attention. It’s a spiritual discipline, remember. It takes commitment and practice, all of your life, knowing how to remember but choosing instead to forget.
I’d like to tell you about some really awful things others have done to me, and some I’ve done to others. But, then again, I’d just be swatting at hornets and reliving the stings of them all, and wrecking my life and the lives of others for no good reason at all. Driving along, I think I’ll just leave the windows down and let the fresh air of God’s future clear my head. I might even stick my bald head out the window and feel the freshness of the new morning that just came with the sunrise!
Where did that come from? I was having a nice day until that memory got caught in the car with me on a very hot day. It was flying around like a wounded hornet looking for someone to sting again, me in particular. Every attempt to flush her out the window only made her madder and drove up the chance of me having a wreck exponentially. How’d she get in my car? How come I couldn’t get her out?
As I remembered what she said, the tone of her voice, the scowlish-mean look on her face, I found myself right back in the room where that conversation took place. My heart was racing. My palms were sweaty. I was coming up with things I was going to say back to her if and when she ever came up for air. I actually started talking back to her, as though the hornet was listening. Suddenly, it occurred to me that, by just allowing myself to remember what she said, I was actually reliving the moment, physically, spiritually, emotionally, feeling the hornet’s sting. From head to pucker, I was tight as a drum, needing to cry but not able.
Just as suddenly, something (or, Someone), recalled to my memory one of the Apostle Paul’s more potent hornet-swatting scriptures. “This one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and pressing on to what lies ahead.” Like a swatter, it’s one piece of equipment, with two sides. One side is forgetting, the other side is pressing on. Without both sides, it doesn’t work.
That’s when it occurred to me. One of the greatest of all spiritual disciplines is that of being able to remember but choosing, instead, to forget. The capacity to remember is a gift of God. Some researchers say that every event we’ve ever experienced, good and bad, is recorded somewhere on a molecular piece of our cerebral computer. Along with that gift, God also gave us the gift to say no to certain memories, to assign them a place in our heart and mind where they will starve to death for lack of attention. It’s a spiritual discipline, remember. It takes commitment and practice, all of your life, knowing how to remember but choosing instead to forget.
I’d like to tell you about some really awful things others have done to me, and some I’ve done to others. But, then again, I’d just be swatting at hornets and reliving the stings of them all, and wrecking my life and the lives of others for no good reason at all. Driving along, I think I’ll just leave the windows down and let the fresh air of God’s future clear my head. I might even stick my bald head out the window and feel the freshness of the new morning that just came with the sunrise!
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Getting Lost
Back to Garmin. Nancy gave it to me for Father’s Day. We found out pretty quickly that you don’t need it to navigate places you know well. At home, Garmin leads a lonely, quiet life. Out in LA, though, Garmin was a life-saver. Driving in totally strange places, we never once got lost, unless we ignored the directions, which was an option we actually chose once.
What we could see from the freeways was so limited. The winding drives up the mountains where palatial mansions clung by inches to vertical hillside foundations kept begging us to come have a closer look-see. We decided to listen to whatever voice was calling us up those unknown pathways, to take a closer look, without directions. We just wanted to drive wherever the road took us. We weren’t afraid of getting lost. We knew that, when we were ready, Garmin would tell us exactly where we were on the planet and how to get back home. Getting lost was the cost of exploring a world you just can’t appreciate from a distance.
Letting your children go off to college, you can’t realistically pray that they won’t ever get lost. They will. Sometimes, horribly lost. Sometimes, lost for a long time. What you can pray is that they will have the courage to explore unknown pathways. (I didn’t know until horribly late that education’s synonym is “exploration.”) A huge part of me believes that the day we won’t ever take an unknown road for fear of getting lost is the day we stop living, no matter how many more years we keep driving. I want Cameron to explore. I know that this all comes with the very real risk that he will get lost sometimes. I take my courage, my eternal hope, in God’s raw, unconditional grace.
Years ago, Cameron asked Jesus into his heart. Letting me lower him into the water, he made his profession from the baptistery as he arose symbolically to a new life as a faith trailblazer. In a time, a place and a way no human mind could ever grasp, the Jesus who had known and loved him before he was even born became an even more intimate part of his life that day, one of the benefits of which is the presence of God’s Spirit in Cameron’s heart. A kind of spiritual Garmin, if you will, is always present with him, even when he chooses to ignore the directions.
My hope comes in knowing that getting lost is a part of life, even of faith. I can’t explain this as much as I trust it. But, the best stories of my life and the best part of my faith were forged while stumbling through lost places, looking for a way back home, even when I was lost because I chose to be. Like I said, I can’t really explain how God’s unconditional grace just won’t give up on us. I do believe with all my heart that grace never, in all of eternity, ever gives up. God is the eternal shepherd, never resting until the last single lost sheep is found, even when they behave like bad-tempered goats.
As he leaves for LA and whatever unknown roads await him there, I can also hope that Cameron has seen in me a good witness of what it’s like to get lost and still believe. Losing is an invaluable part of faith exploration. When he is lost, there will still be that still, small voice within his heart. If Cameron will just listen, that voice will lead him back home, no matter how lost he is, no matter how long he’s been lost, no matter why he got lost.
That’s how God is. There is no place on this planet where God is not already present. We can never go where God is not, and, therefore, where we cannot be found. Joy happens the day we personally discover just how much God loves exploring, too, looking for his lost children, and leading them back home.
What we could see from the freeways was so limited. The winding drives up the mountains where palatial mansions clung by inches to vertical hillside foundations kept begging us to come have a closer look-see. We decided to listen to whatever voice was calling us up those unknown pathways, to take a closer look, without directions. We just wanted to drive wherever the road took us. We weren’t afraid of getting lost. We knew that, when we were ready, Garmin would tell us exactly where we were on the planet and how to get back home. Getting lost was the cost of exploring a world you just can’t appreciate from a distance.
Letting your children go off to college, you can’t realistically pray that they won’t ever get lost. They will. Sometimes, horribly lost. Sometimes, lost for a long time. What you can pray is that they will have the courage to explore unknown pathways. (I didn’t know until horribly late that education’s synonym is “exploration.”) A huge part of me believes that the day we won’t ever take an unknown road for fear of getting lost is the day we stop living, no matter how many more years we keep driving. I want Cameron to explore. I know that this all comes with the very real risk that he will get lost sometimes. I take my courage, my eternal hope, in God’s raw, unconditional grace.
Years ago, Cameron asked Jesus into his heart. Letting me lower him into the water, he made his profession from the baptistery as he arose symbolically to a new life as a faith trailblazer. In a time, a place and a way no human mind could ever grasp, the Jesus who had known and loved him before he was even born became an even more intimate part of his life that day, one of the benefits of which is the presence of God’s Spirit in Cameron’s heart. A kind of spiritual Garmin, if you will, is always present with him, even when he chooses to ignore the directions.
My hope comes in knowing that getting lost is a part of life, even of faith. I can’t explain this as much as I trust it. But, the best stories of my life and the best part of my faith were forged while stumbling through lost places, looking for a way back home, even when I was lost because I chose to be. Like I said, I can’t really explain how God’s unconditional grace just won’t give up on us. I do believe with all my heart that grace never, in all of eternity, ever gives up. God is the eternal shepherd, never resting until the last single lost sheep is found, even when they behave like bad-tempered goats.
As he leaves for LA and whatever unknown roads await him there, I can also hope that Cameron has seen in me a good witness of what it’s like to get lost and still believe. Losing is an invaluable part of faith exploration. When he is lost, there will still be that still, small voice within his heart. If Cameron will just listen, that voice will lead him back home, no matter how lost he is, no matter how long he’s been lost, no matter why he got lost.
That’s how God is. There is no place on this planet where God is not already present. We can never go where God is not, and, therefore, where we cannot be found. Joy happens the day we personally discover just how much God loves exploring, too, looking for his lost children, and leading them back home.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Male Assist
“Male assist!” the TSA agent always yells just after I set off the metal detector at the airport. It happens every time and I’ve finally resolved myself to the fact that it always will. That’s unless they invent a device that can distinguish between the titanium that used to be my right knee and a genuine security threat. The other day, on the way to LA, they actually put me through one of those machines that blows spurts of air all over you. It was kind of exciting, actually. Almost like a cheap ride at Six Flags. Not sure what Puff the Magic Blow Machine tells them, but it didn’t hurt, nothing fell off of me and at least I cleared that level of security.
The part that bugs me the most is what happens right after I take everything off that’s holding me up. My shoes, my belt, my watch. Like one of the sheep being led to the sheering, I drop it all into plastic bins and onto a line that’s passing through an X-ray machine so fast they couldn’t possibly detect a 747 trying to get through. At least I’ve learned the value of only wearing shorts and sandals when flying. I don’t look very hip showing that much hip but it does help get my knee through easier. Something about being able to see my knee replacement scar makes the security guys frisk me less.
Frisk me they do, though. Some friskier than others. Not that I’m really worried about untoward advances at my age, from any sex. But, honestly, some of those guys seem to enjoy it more than others! One time, after the security guy wanded me over like he was prepping me for a giant rotisserie, he then gave me a thorough blue-glove pat down in the places he’d just wanded! When he finished I actually asked him if he wanted to share a cigarette. He looked at me with one of those thousand-yard stares and I figured trying to explain the joke would just ruin it, or get me locked up for the night. I just moved on.
“Male assist!” is always the first warning the National Security Agency gets when I set off the alarm. It’s so abrupt, almost crass or rude. The biggest set of lungs in TSA history announces, “Male assist!” so loudly to anyone who wants to hear that even to my not-too-pre-hearing aid ears it sounds like, “Herb! Tampons, aisle six! Price check!”
They never tell you you’re growing older. You don’t even realize it yourself until one day you wake up and shock yourself with the first glance of the morning in the mirror wondering how your granddad slipped his skin over your body during the night. Other than that, the surgeons will begin replacing your broken, falling-off parts and, if you have to travel, someone will yell, “Male assist!” Then, you’ll know for sure.
The part that bugs me the most is what happens right after I take everything off that’s holding me up. My shoes, my belt, my watch. Like one of the sheep being led to the sheering, I drop it all into plastic bins and onto a line that’s passing through an X-ray machine so fast they couldn’t possibly detect a 747 trying to get through. At least I’ve learned the value of only wearing shorts and sandals when flying. I don’t look very hip showing that much hip but it does help get my knee through easier. Something about being able to see my knee replacement scar makes the security guys frisk me less.
Frisk me they do, though. Some friskier than others. Not that I’m really worried about untoward advances at my age, from any sex. But, honestly, some of those guys seem to enjoy it more than others! One time, after the security guy wanded me over like he was prepping me for a giant rotisserie, he then gave me a thorough blue-glove pat down in the places he’d just wanded! When he finished I actually asked him if he wanted to share a cigarette. He looked at me with one of those thousand-yard stares and I figured trying to explain the joke would just ruin it, or get me locked up for the night. I just moved on.
“Male assist!” is always the first warning the National Security Agency gets when I set off the alarm. It’s so abrupt, almost crass or rude. The biggest set of lungs in TSA history announces, “Male assist!” so loudly to anyone who wants to hear that even to my not-too-pre-hearing aid ears it sounds like, “Herb! Tampons, aisle six! Price check!”
They never tell you you’re growing older. You don’t even realize it yourself until one day you wake up and shock yourself with the first glance of the morning in the mirror wondering how your granddad slipped his skin over your body during the night. Other than that, the surgeons will begin replacing your broken, falling-off parts and, if you have to travel, someone will yell, “Male assist!” Then, you’ll know for sure.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Calling Home
The first thing I felt this morning was nostalgia, and I’ve only been in this place three days. That was long enough to add some new life-long memories to a place in my heart reserved for Cameron, my youngest son. It’s been way too long, longer than I remember, since he and I had seventy-two uninterrupted hours together. Part of me wants to stay, though my heart is calling me home.
We landed in Los Angeles Tuesday, missing the earthquake by just about two or three hours. We were actually kind of bummed about that. I’ve never felt an earthquake, don’t stand much chance of ever feeling one in Texas. I’ve had plenty of earth-shaking experiences, though. Like taking my youngest son 1,500 miles from home to find a place to live just one month before he moves away.
We found the place, by the way, the very first day. We both laughed about how men hunt and women shop. We took the first place we saw. It’s one of three 11x19 rooms just above an art professor’s really messy studio. (Do clean studios ever produce really good art?) He will share a bathroom and a kitchen with two other students who are never there, like he won’t be, either. The Craigslist advertisement read “Spartan conditions,” which turned out to be an artistic way of describing a 1930’s era place with rotting stairs, cracks in the walls, barely enough light to walk around and no AC. In LA, though, that’s where he’ll start. He loves the place, plans to paint the walls and make it his own. The smile on his face was like soul medicine; it did my aching heart good.
Finding a place and talking to the financial aid people at the Art Center College of Design seemed to quell the little bit of anxiety he felt about moving this far away. It’s where he wanted to go. I’d never even heard of the ACCD before he mentioned it. Apparently, a degree in film from there will go a long way in the world he’s passionate about exploring.
Yesterday, having already bagged the crib, we went to see The Dark Knight, at the Universal City IMAX. I’d been on those grounds before, over twenty-five years ago with a youth group from Abilene on a “mission” trip. I have few memories of that trip. I’ll always have yesterday’s.
After that, we took a drive up Mulholland Drive. Its breathtaking mountainside overlooks gave us a spectacular view of downtown Los Angeles and a little more perspective of the massive city my son will call home for the foreseeable future. In the middle of all those millions, a piece of my heart will live there now, too. I’ll have to come back and check on my LA heart when Southwest runs Internet specials.
We cut our traveling budget by being more careful about where we ate. Olive Garden saw us twice, the same one. Last night, over really good Italian flatbread, chicken parmesan and a so-so plate of fettuccini alfredo (I make the best), Cameron looked up and thanked me for coming with him. At 19, I let him swig the last drop in my complementary glass of way-too-fruity house wine. He almost looked a little too experienced at the swigging part. I swallowed my spit harder than he did the wine. Flatbread and wine, it was a communal kind of thing, you know.
We rediscovered something I always suspected, that we have more in common than I think I ever did with my dad at nineteen. We actually enjoy hanging out with each other. We played together with the Garmin while the irritating computer-generated holy-spirit-of-driving voice guided us around a city I’ve never driven, without ever getting lost (well, almost). We finally found the mute button and just read the directions. The radio stayed off most of the time. We talked and said “Wow!” more than once, gawking at the hilltop mansions humans from another world call home.
Our plane takes us back home tonight, at least for another month. Where will home be next month? What do you when one son you love more than yourself lives one place and the other son you love that much, too, lives 1500 miles away and your wife who loves you more than you love yourself sleeps right next to you every night? You reach down and pat your dogs on the head then you roll over and thank God that your heart is big enough to love that much, to stretch that far and to call more than one place, “home.”
We landed in Los Angeles Tuesday, missing the earthquake by just about two or three hours. We were actually kind of bummed about that. I’ve never felt an earthquake, don’t stand much chance of ever feeling one in Texas. I’ve had plenty of earth-shaking experiences, though. Like taking my youngest son 1,500 miles from home to find a place to live just one month before he moves away.
We found the place, by the way, the very first day. We both laughed about how men hunt and women shop. We took the first place we saw. It’s one of three 11x19 rooms just above an art professor’s really messy studio. (Do clean studios ever produce really good art?) He will share a bathroom and a kitchen with two other students who are never there, like he won’t be, either. The Craigslist advertisement read “Spartan conditions,” which turned out to be an artistic way of describing a 1930’s era place with rotting stairs, cracks in the walls, barely enough light to walk around and no AC. In LA, though, that’s where he’ll start. He loves the place, plans to paint the walls and make it his own. The smile on his face was like soul medicine; it did my aching heart good.
Finding a place and talking to the financial aid people at the Art Center College of Design seemed to quell the little bit of anxiety he felt about moving this far away. It’s where he wanted to go. I’d never even heard of the ACCD before he mentioned it. Apparently, a degree in film from there will go a long way in the world he’s passionate about exploring.
Yesterday, having already bagged the crib, we went to see The Dark Knight, at the Universal City IMAX. I’d been on those grounds before, over twenty-five years ago with a youth group from Abilene on a “mission” trip. I have few memories of that trip. I’ll always have yesterday’s.
After that, we took a drive up Mulholland Drive. Its breathtaking mountainside overlooks gave us a spectacular view of downtown Los Angeles and a little more perspective of the massive city my son will call home for the foreseeable future. In the middle of all those millions, a piece of my heart will live there now, too. I’ll have to come back and check on my LA heart when Southwest runs Internet specials.
We cut our traveling budget by being more careful about where we ate. Olive Garden saw us twice, the same one. Last night, over really good Italian flatbread, chicken parmesan and a so-so plate of fettuccini alfredo (I make the best), Cameron looked up and thanked me for coming with him. At 19, I let him swig the last drop in my complementary glass of way-too-fruity house wine. He almost looked a little too experienced at the swigging part. I swallowed my spit harder than he did the wine. Flatbread and wine, it was a communal kind of thing, you know.
We rediscovered something I always suspected, that we have more in common than I think I ever did with my dad at nineteen. We actually enjoy hanging out with each other. We played together with the Garmin while the irritating computer-generated holy-spirit-of-driving voice guided us around a city I’ve never driven, without ever getting lost (well, almost). We finally found the mute button and just read the directions. The radio stayed off most of the time. We talked and said “Wow!” more than once, gawking at the hilltop mansions humans from another world call home.
Our plane takes us back home tonight, at least for another month. Where will home be next month? What do you when one son you love more than yourself lives one place and the other son you love that much, too, lives 1500 miles away and your wife who loves you more than you love yourself sleeps right next to you every night? You reach down and pat your dogs on the head then you roll over and thank God that your heart is big enough to love that much, to stretch that far and to call more than one place, “home.”
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