I stared at the screen for a moment and wondered what I was most irritated about and heard my father ask me why I would waste time arguing with a fool.
Looked out the window and said “I told him to walk away and let it go and mostly let go…mostly.”
Dad didn’t answer me and I was sad but grateful because I have at least a dozen other things that I would have liked to share with him.
Come this July it will be five years he has gone and I often wonder when it will stop feeling like yesterday and a different lifetime.
Cue Barton Hollow by the CivilWars and Please Read The Letter by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.
Traveling time has returned and my turn as the road warrior is no longer a thought but a reality. Going to be here and there and everywhere soon and I am playing around with whether I will keep a road journal or just tip tap upon the keys with a similar pace to the last few weeks.
Funny thing is I thought I hadn’t posted very often but decided I ought to take a look so I had better data than just a feeling.
Turns out it was more often than I thought but definitely slower than I have been posting at other times.
Put It Out There
Put it out there and see what happens is the advice I received in a class a thousand years ago.
It was during the time in which I really was in my twenties as opposed to the silly musings of others who know nothing about me.
A time in which I wrote copy daily for both print and radio and editors told me where I ought to focus my attention so that the consumers of a particular medium would choose to keep reading/listening to me.
And yet there was a different course in which our professor shifted from demanding structure to creativity.
“I want you to put it out there. I want you to just write and say what you think. Tell the man/woman you love them in a way that makes them take notice.
Tell the business their product is awful in a way that grabs their attention because they know if your words end up in a letter to the editor they’ll be through.
Don’t let fear and self criticism douse your flame. Shine bright.”
I have done that at times and in places. I have opened up in ways I rarely do and provided opportunity for glory and for failure.
Some have asked for such things and been rewarded. Some have been rejected. Some haven’t been asked but have nonetheless been given it, sometimes to be read and sometimes not.
We used to argue about whether it was better to receive criticism than silence because at least you made someone feel something.
At least you moved them, even if that movement was a verbal assault about your lack of ability and or ideas.
We argued about being seen and heard and what happened if you got neither or if instead you got a hearty dose of lack of support.
That feels like yesterday and a lifetime ago too.
Maybe that is a good thing for someone who likes to write.
Learn To Count In Yiddish
Mom and I talked about how my dad said he used to sit on his Bubbe’s lap while she played cards and that because of that he learned how to count in Yiddish.
Bubbe died in ’53 when my dad was 10. Bubbe was born in 1875 so she wasn’t particularly young when she died but she wasn’t that old either.
Though she was definitely older when my dad’s mom, my grandma was born, about 40. Bubbe managed to outlive three of her kids and I wonder if that played any role in her own demise.
It had to be hard to for my grandma to lose three of her siblings and her mother during a relatively short period of time.
Life happens and things change us and or force us to change and I wonder how these things influence us as go along.
Music break
What Happens When Your Friend Is A Silly Fool
Staring back into the past pulls memories up through the mist and I see dad and I talking about something else from college.
Can’t remember exactly what prompted it but he was hot about something and that set me off too. We began to battle and I sarcastically said something like “what happens when your friend is a silly fool Josh.”
Dad didn’t suffer that sort of talk and his eyes grew icy and cold.
“What happens when you your friend is an asshole and you are not smart enough to recognize it” is pretty close to the words of wisdom he shared with me.
Can’t help but snort at the memory and to think about how he might have looked at the smirk on my face now.
Would have been a very different discussion today as the kid he once battled with has some lines in his forehead and more than a few flecks of gray in his beard and upon his head.
Overall there is far more black than light but there is evidence growing the gray may one day win the war.
That kid would have appreciated how much music can be loaded upon a phone prior to a road trip and he would have been good with the number of books can be loaded upon the device too.
Sometimes I see him looking back and at me and hear his comments and questions about what has happened and what still may yet come.
Leave a Reply