62 Years

My Mom called me every day last week to ask if she had paid me for their cell phone for the year. She repeats the same thing a dozen times in a conversation now. She remembers her childhood and some things about the past but her short term memory is virtually gone. My Dad is getting tired, I can tell. He says he'd rather have it this way than the tables turned and he be the one in need of care. She is getting more and more frail and unsteady. She fell twice in the past couple weeks. As many times as we've suggested moving into a one story house or something closer to us, I know they will stay in the three story until my Mom falls and breaks something and will have to be put in a nursing home.

Sixty three years they've been married. I know all the years have not been a joy for either of them. I remember when I was in high school they had separate single beds in their bedroom. Of course we weren't that far removed from married people sleeping in separate beds like in "Ozzie and Harriet" and "Father Knows Best" in the 60's and so it didn't really raise a red flag, but now I know it was one. I remember my Mom sniping at my Dad at supper then. She always did that, but I recall a particularly despondent look on my Dad's face in those days. My Mom told me a few years ago that there were a few times she had her bags packed while Dad was at work but had them unpacked by the time he got home from work. She was glad she stuck it out. Now that she has dementia she has mellowed out and she is happy. I told my Dad he's lucky she's not like some other old people I know who turned mean. I think he's glad that she, and he, stuck it out too.  I look at them and my Mom's words ring in my ears and sometimes I get a twinge of "what if" about my former marriage.  But I did what I did and I worked at this one, though I have to say the Wifey has never given me a reason or excuse to look elsewhere.  We're not too many years from this. God knows who will be taking care of whom. But it is enough to know that we'll be taking care of each other.

It has been about 8 months since I quit my school job and started back in construction. I'm definitely feeling 62. I hurt my back last week but had three critical path jobs so I gutted it out. That's nothing new, I've done it lots of times before, but I know for sure I'm not 35 any more. I don't recover from heat, injuries and fatigue as fast as I used to. As many "tricks of the trades" I know, there are no tricks that make framing 14 foot walls when you can't bend over and pick up a level easy.

I've done a lot of things to make money over the past 46 years. I'm perfectly capable of "working with my brain" and that was what I always thought I'd do for the long haul, but I keep coming back to working with my hands. Of course, working with your hands as a craftsman takes "brains", but the creativity and tangibility of construction, whether it is painting, finish carpentry or just carrying heavy stuff from here to there, has a soul-satisfaction to it that I couldn't quite find in an Excel spreadsheet or even crafting a concise and clear email. When I was working for the school I did construction on the side to keep my sanity. I feel blessed that I can flip that and do construction full time and craft sentences as an avocation. As much as I love to write and had fun collaborating with Fr. Joseph on "Fire from Ashes"  and re-editing and getting "Lord of the Hunt and Other Tales of Grace" ready for publication (soon), I think if it were my full time "job" and sole source of income I'd come to despise it. All in all, Solomon was right: "The sleep of a working man is sweet." I go to bed at 9pm mostly now.

We put our last dog down today.  Maggie died on Thanksgiving morning and Bella died a couple months ago. Carlos has been going downhill over the past few months. He was blind, deaf, had a tumor, and his back legs were crippled. We decided to put him to sleep before he just completely broke down. He knew something was amiss when we took him for a ride to the vet. We've always stayed with our dogs when we put them to sleep. It's hard, but it is part of the bond that will be fulfilled in heaven in the eschaton.

 Our grandbaby is a year old already. Sorry, new parents... all the "cute" has been sucked out of the universe now. 

 The Grandbaby is "multi-racial"... Our daughter is 1/4 Chinese and the baby's father is African-American. When I forewarned my Dad about our daughter's boyfriend's race before we all went to visit them. He said, "She can do better than that".  I had to remind him that he married my Mom at a time when "Yellow" was a plague and everyone who was east of California was a "Jap". When my Dad introduced my Mom to his parents, my Grandma looked at my Mom, then at my Dad and said, "We sent you over there to kill them, not marry them." So he came by his racism honestly. I was the first grandchild and, as the story goes, the first grand child makes everything OK.  This is my Dad with his first half-black great-grand baby.

All is right with the universe.

Book is Published

A little over a year ago Fr. Joseph Huneycutt and I met in person for the first time and after spending a weekend together decided to collaborate on a book about "perpetual repentance", what to do when we've been a dog and eaten our own vomit after "tasting the heavenly gift". We submitted our manuscript along with my illustrations and it was accepted.  A couple days ago we received an email from Conciliar Press that it is now available HERE

AN EXCERPT:

Sinning is like dating our exes.

Temptation is my “Little Black Book”.  It is a list of the phone numbers (OK… and email addresses and Facebook profiles) of old friends or lovers that I broke up with long ago but still hold a soft place in my heart.  They are people I chose once and then chose to give up and throw out of my life.  I know I ditched them for a reason; they were bad for me in some way. The problem is, I don’t know why I still hang on to their number and call them up when I need what they once gave me that I once enjoyed. 

St. Peter, quoting the Proverbs, says going back to my old “friends” is like a dog that returns to its vomit. (2 Peter 2:22)  That is probably one of the most unappetizing images in scripture. But it is exactly what I do when I go back and eat what I spit out and threw up in my “conversion”.   

The problem with all of us is, if sin really looked and tasted like vomit, the choice would be easy.   

So, I despise self-promotion, but I also have a blog, podcasts and a FB account, and have written a couple of books, so I can't fake not enjoying some sense of notoriety. The royalties on this will buy me a couple of nice dinners out with my wife so it's not about the money. I sincerely hope it points some people toward the mercy of God shining, even dimly, in their darkest place.