Tea Glass in Smoky Brown

She made her tea with tea leaves.  Lipton maybe, or Louisanne.  I'm not sure which.  Not with bags, but with loose leaves seeped in hot water using a cloth.  Maybe on fancy days she'd use a cheese cloth, but it was tinted dark from using so much it wasn't recognizable as cheese cloth anymore.

The tea had a strong flavor, and was heavily sweetened.  Syrup would have been jealous of the dark water's flavor and sugar content.

I loved it.  I can taste it now, the way it settled on the back of my tongue.  There was usually a pitcher of it in the fridge on any given day, and for Sunday dinners and holidays the tea would flow like oil on Jed Clampitt's land.

On holidays, we used Solo cups.  And names were written on them, and cups were washed and reused.  So it was possible you were using a cup with a name on it, just not your name.  So you just simply remembered the name on your cup this time.  But on any normal day, the glasses were kept in the cabinet to the furthest right.  And the tea glasses had a brown tint to them.

Out of the whole house, if there had ever been any one item in it that would remind me of her, and her very best days, it would have been a tea glass. 

One afternoon I stopped by, and someone had bought for her new drinking glasses.  The old ones were on the counter top, and I took them before I left the house.  I didn't need new drinking glasses.  And to her, they were not something to keep, if she had been given new ones.  But not one to throw anything away, she offered them to someone else.  I took a set of four.  I didn't need them, and they don't hold any magical power.

But I just couldn't let them go.

. . . like Jesus does. . .

"All the crazy in my dreams, and both my broken wings, the devil man know, he don't stand a chance.  He loves me like Jesus does."

 The beautiful lady in the red dress that fades in and down during the refrain is as gorgeous in real life as on this video from the ACM awards.  I've been lucky enough to fall in love with her music and her sound, sitting on a patio on a summer day, somewhere in Memphis, Tennessee. 

In my heart, this song is Valerie June, with a guest spot by Eric Church. 

But more so, in my heart, this song reminds me of the man I love.  I think he may be a little more crazy than I am, and I love him for it.  And I know, no man has ever loved me like he does.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdYAm9I8Evg

Good Friday

I can remember it like it was yesterday. 
The boys that thought she and I should meet.
That took me in the crowd and sat me down beside her.
I have an impression of a large convention hall, filled with kids on this Good Friday church convention.
Those two boys changed my life by introducing me to her, and she changed my life too.
Good Friday.

Out!

. . . Jesus went up to the Temple and there he found the dealers in cattle, sheep, pigeons. He found the moneylenders at the tables. He made a whip out of cords; drove them out of the Temple, sheep, cattle and all. He upset the tables of the moneychangers, scattering their coins.
"Out!" Jesus said. He had little respect for the holiness codes; for traditions which excluded the poor, which created outcasts. ~ from A Litany of Maundy Thursday, First Congregational Church.

Black Sunday at Big Lots

I could write an entire blog about my experience this morning standing in line at a Big Lots waiting for a no-brand-name tablet that was going on sale.  And I wouldn't write one bad word about Big Lots - but plenty about people in general, people in line, and humanity. 

And most people were perfectly nice.  But the ugly ones, they were way too ugly for an $80 no-name tablet. 

Which I didn't get.

But by the time MyFella, Jamie & I had finished breakfast, we decided that what I really want is a Kindle anyway. 

MyFella, "No, that's not enough power for you.  You want to be able to run a spaceship."

Me, "No, no, that'll be my new laptop.  The Kindle is just to look up things on imdb while I'm watching t.v. And imagine how cool I'll look reading books on the couch with my legs pulled up under me, and my new Kindle in my hands."

So the Kindle is coming, and I'm kind of excited.  And no weird people at Big Lots.*



*which remains one of my all time favorite stores.  it's the other customers I don't like.

You have no idea how much I love you.

A 7 year old kid told me that the other night.  Just out of the blue.  I had decided to drive to my parent's house in my hometown on Valentine's Day after work.  The boss let me off just a bit early, and my nephews were staying the night with their grandparents. 

And at the dining room table, trying to help him with his homework, the youngest one said, "You have no idea how much I love you."

What a funny thing for a child to say.  But I tell you what, it can't possibly be more than I love him.

How he makes me feel.

"I drive your truck."

The song came out months later.  And the truck is long gone.  But I suppose since his is the most recent death in my life, the song would naturally remind me of him.

The white truck, the one in which he taught me to drive.  The late model Ford with 4 in the floor, and my scrawny arms too weak to pull it.  My grandmother laughing at the site of her descendent jumping over the bumps in the well tilled field.

And time passes, and keeps passing.  My brother calls.  And within a few hours, I'm taking my mother on a road trip.  We've arranged to exchange her like a package, he gets her to point B, I take her on to point A. 

He didn't recognize me.  I honestly had the impression he didn't recognize anyone in the room.  But his personality, his jovial spirit, shone through and he talked to people like he was genuinely glad to see them.  He was up occasionally when we arrived.  He couldn't walk far, but he walked. 

I knew they had married before she was out of high school, he having obtained my grandfather's permission.  He would always speak highly of my grandparents, in much the same way that people always speak highly of my uncle.  And they would live out their lives together.  But I hadn't considered the reality - they grew up in the same small town.  They had walked to school together 30 something years before I was even born.  There was never a time in their lives when they did not know each other.

He passed away on Monday before Thanksgiving.  My grief somewhat abated by the knowledge that, as an adult, I made conscious decisions to see them, to visit them, to drive to their house and spend the weekend with them.

He may not have recognized me the weekend he died.  But while he lived, he knew that I loved him.  

Abandoned

An abandoned building in my home town.

Breakfast

I know it may seem silly.  I'm well into my. . ahem. . 40's, a grown man whose been living on my own for plenty long enough.

But some days, for whatever reason, I go to my home town and stay the night with my parents.  And I just love waking up in my parents house and knowing that my Mom will fix me breakfast. 

It's not much, I don't eat a lot of breakfast. So it's not the food.  It's the presence, the act, the morning in their home and knowing that my Mom cared enough to get up and make me something to eat.