It's a Big 'Ol Circle

Wanna hear a bit of truth? Do ya?

You never know who you are going to meet or what is going to happen. You can’t tell who is going to step into your life, even if for the briefest of moments. And you never really know what you are going to do when faced with a decision, no matter how important or petty it is.

I was given eyes so that I may see today. I saw, I related, I acted. The initial decision that I made was not given a second thought. It was a no-brainer. Maybe, depending upon what you believe, I moved up a rung on karma’s ladder…got a star in my crown…filled a social need. All I know is that I have been given, and I had to give back.

I stopped for gas on my way home tonight. As I was making the left hand turn at the light near the gas station, my attention was drawn to two people, standing on the corner and holding a sign. As I moved through the turn, I could get a glimpse of the words written on the sign. “Starving makes me hungry”. The holder of the sign was a man who seemed to be in his early twenties, short dreadlocks draped upon his head, coveralls and sandals wrapped up the ensemble. Standing next to him was a woman, a little thin, but not skinny, with short stubby beginnings of dreadlocks, with a tank top, hat and jeans. I admit that I knew that I was going to do something for them as soon as I saw them, but the sign sealed it for me. I filled up with gas and by the time I was done, they had moved to a corner of the Wal Mart parking lot adjacent to the gas station. I pulled over and into a parking spot.

You know, when the woman came over to my bus window, she didn’t ask for money. She called me “brother” and after our hellos, I asked her what was up, what was the story. They were traveling and had made it this far and were doing what they had to do to keep going. I didn’t ask where they were coming from or where they were going to. I did ask about what they needed. Like I said, she didn’t ask for money. But she did ask for blankets or sleeping bags for them and two others who, because of the heat, were with their dogs in the truck they were traveling in. I knew I had lots of blankets in my bus. Some blankets that I had collected over the years, some of them hardly ever seeing use. I picked out four that I could give them. I remembered that I had some Diet Dr. Pepper and water on ice in the cooler. I gave them to them. I had some hot dog buns that were left over from lunch today. No hot dogs for them, but I gave the buns to them too. They were shading the sun with T-shirts. I threw them a tube of sunscreen.

I don’t go carrying around this stuff on purpose. Most of the stuff in the bus stays there, such as the blankets, but the sunscreen was left in there by someone else, the hot dog buns were from lunch, and the drinks were from my trip to the Cleveland greenway yesterday. I had no clue that I was going to be giving personal stuff to two total strangers. I just knew that these people needed and I was able to give what was at hand. I’ve been there. Not on the road without a home. Never been a nomad. Kinda like to stay close to home, ya know? But I have been in need and someone has been the giver to me, the taker. I have also seen pleas for help from a friend in another state, needing help, a place to stay…and was not able to do a single thing to help. But here, I would do what I could.

Mama Lou and Link. That was their names. Given names, made up names, I don’t care. They sounded all right to me. I gave them what they needed and I felt blessed to have been able to give. Even though I knew I was helping other people out, I couldn’t help wonder if I was partly doing it to help myself out as well...to get a lift out of giving someone else a lift. I thought that as I pulled away after wishing them luck.

Now the rest of this story wasn’t so “spur of the moment”. I was headed home. I wanted to get home. But from the time I left them I couldn’t stop thinking there was something more I could do. I didn’t have any money, and I had told them this. It was ok. I saw at least three cars stop and give them money, $5 here, $10 there. Campground fee money or liquor money? I didn’t care. I hoped they could make enough to find a place to sleep tonight…

I made it to Apison and it hit me. No, not a brilliant idea, but a raindrop. Then another, and a few more, then a bunch of them. That’s when the light bulb came on. No, still not the big idea, but one of comfort. The rain made me remember that I had some rain ponchos in the back of the bus, under the rear seat. The rain, the remembered ponchos, and the desire to turn around and give them to those people…THAT’S what brought about the last minute turn around. Necessity. They needed money sure, but I couldn’t give that to them. But there was one thing they needed that I could give them, and that was food and drink. I turned left and headed back to Ooltewah.

All the way I was thinking thought in my head. “What if they’ve already moved on?” “I wonder if they are vegetarians.” “Oh, I hope they are still there.” Almost a mantra, a prayer, I kept repeating, “Please let them still be there”. I made it to Ooltewah and quickly made my way into Bi-Lo. I picked up some water, trail mix, granola bars, cold sliced watermelon, some bananas, and some beef jerky, paid for it and almost ran back to my bus. I left there and after going through the traffic light, I saw they were still there, and their two friends had joined them, along with their dogs.

They saw me coming and I could hear my name being called out. Cool. I noticed that the sign said something different. “These are my friends. I made them myself”. I chuckled at the play on words and parked where I had before, got out, opened up the sliding door of my bus, and gave them what I had gotten. The ponchos, the food, the water. These they took with much appreciation. Before I left, I asked if I could take their picture. I warned them that it would probably end up on my blog. Mama Lou said that if it was anybody else, she would have told them “Hell, no!” But they sat down with their sign and their dogs and granted me my request.

I was done. I had given what I had to give and had nothing else. I wished them luck, told them where the Salvation Army shelter and Community Food Kitchen were located and got in my bus, fired her up, and with a wave of my hand and with “Bless you, brother” ringing in my ears, I drove away, most likely never to see these people again.

I felt good. I had always said that if ever given the chance, I would give back what I have been given. I don’t stop for every person I see standing on the street corner with a cleverly written sign. I don’t know if I related to these people as those I would have been hanging out with in the frazzled fuzzy days of the early nineties. Dreadlock dude with beard…free-spirited sprightly females…you remember them, don’t you? I don’t know why, but I just saw these two and knew that I was going to do what I could for them. Chock it up to a little bit of human compassion. If you don’t know what that is, look it up and try it sometime. You just might like it.

Going home, I passed a house where Ron, an old acquaintance of mine lives. As I passed, I heard a “Hoot!” I had been invited to stop in before, but just never had or took the time. I took the time this time. I got there and started catching up with the past. Come to find out, he rooms with another blast from the past, a guy named Shane. In the conversation, and after others arrived, I was invited to stay for supper. I didn’t have any plans for supper; in fact, I was eating on a bag of beef jerky I had gotten for myself. I wasn’t sure I would stay, but when I was asked a second time, I decided that I would. I ended up having cheese-stuffed hamburgers and homemade tater tots. Never had homemade tater tots before, and let me tell you, these are not O’Reida tots. No. But they were “All-Righta”, that’s for sure. I need to tell Shane that if he isn’t planning on keeping the lovely lady who concocted this meal, then he needs to think again.

What goes around comes around. Karma. Doing unto others as I would have done unto me. Some kind of psychoanalytical babble theory on the relativity of returns…I don’t know. I just know that I was given, I gave, and I was given again. At all three stages, the mood was appreciation and happiness. When I was in need and was given to, the appreciation of being helped caused happiness. When I was able to give, I was happy to do so and appreciated what I do have. When I was given back, I was appreciative and happy to have re-connected with the past in the form of friends. And I even received the gift of a cactus…

What’s going to happen to Mama Lou and Link? I don’t know. I didn’t ask where they were headed. They wanted to head downtown and I gave them information as to where they could get other help. Shoot. I work downtown, not too far from the Salvation Army and the Community Kitchen. Maybe I’ll see them tomorrow with their dogs and their sign, looking to get a few more miles down the road, maybe with a few more “self-made” friends, and hopefully not “hungry cause of starvation”…I wish them luck.

Greased Watermelons, Hot Potatoes, and the Ticking Clock

Sunday was my birthday. I spent this past weekend camping at a beautiful place with beautiful people. I guess the whole weekend was a birthday party, not just for me, but for several others who were there and whose birthdays were close together. I’m glad there was Friday and Saturday, cause Sunday was spent packing up and driving home. But that’s ok. It was a great weekend. It was time well spent.

My daughter is going to an all-girls summer camp this week. It will be the first time she has spent this much time away from either of her parents. A full week of meeting new friends and making memories to treasure. After we had arrived home and cleaned up from camping, I had to take her to her aunt’s house not too far away from my house. Since her daughter is going too, she took my daughter on Sunday and dropped them off on Monday morning. As the time came for me to leave with my son and come back home Sunday night, I started thinking about how big my girl is getting. She was so excited about staying at a camp, sleeping there like a giant sleepover at a friend’s house with more girls to play with than she could imagine. I was excited for her too, but overwhelmed with the prospect that she was not going to be with either myself or her mother. I told her I loved her and for her to have a good time this week. I gave her hugs and kisses and told her goodbye. I put my son in his car seat and came around to my side of the bus to get in…and it hit me. Tears started welling up in my eyes and my body began to hitch. I couldn’t stop it. I had to go see her once more and tell her the things I had just told her all over again. She saw my wet face (even though I had wiped away the tears only minutes before) and asked why I was crying. I just looked at her and told her they were happy tears and that my little girl was now a big girl. That was mostly true, but I think part of it was that I just knew that her childlike innocence was slipping away and I couldn’t help her hold on to it, no matter what I did…

I remember going to camp as a child. I remember spending an entire week away from family. The first time was the worst. I had never experienced being away from my grandma for that length of time before, and the homesickness hit me hard. But as time went by, and I realized just how fun the place was, and how many new friends I was making, the desire to be home again faded and was replaced by a longing to stay longer than just the appointed week. I remember the spring fed swimming hole with a dock and the water slide that made you almost fly before gravity took you to the water’s surface. There were holes big enough that we could swim through and for just a moment, feel like we were swimming through long tunnels, even though it was no more than six feet or less. In that spring, we also played a game. The counselors had thrown in a dozen or so watermelons. The object of the game was to jump in, grab a watermelon, and try to make it back to the dock without someone stealing it from you. But what made the game harder was this: the watermelons were lathered with Crisco. No sooner did you think you were home free with the prized watermelon that it would either slip out of your hands all by itself, or someone would just swim up and push it out of your hands. It took all you could to just hold on to it without losing it.

Remember the game of Hot Potato? You would stand in a circle of others and pass a ball around the circle and try to pass it off to the next person before the music stopped (ala Musical Chairs) and you were left holding the “Hot Potato”. You didn’t want to be left holding it because then you were out of the game. Now for real…hot potatoes are hot. This past weekend we made baked potatoes in the campfire. I really think that if you do it just right, there is no finer way to bake a potato than in a campfire. But you have to get them out of the red-hot coals. Sure, you can use tongs, if you have them. We had some, but they were plastic and really flimsy, so the potatoes had to be taken out by hand. Talk about hot…the true game of Hot Potato was on. Just grab one and get it out of your hand as fast as possible. This wasn’t just a game. You could get burned.

I’ve had my share of greased watermelons and hot potatoes. A lot of things that I really wanted to hold onto have slipped out of my hands, either because I couldn’t hold on to them tight enough, or outside forces pushed them out of my hands. And like a hot potato, some things I wanted so badly that I took them into my own hands and ended up getting singed. There had to be a reason why I couldn’t hold on to them. I truly believe that if I was meant to keep them, then I would still have them. They slipped out and became a part of me that each and every one of us share, something that the rich share with the poor, the evil share with the good, and no matter what you do to retain as much as you can, it slips away from us all…and that is the passage of time. I was watching an episode of Curious George with my son this morning. In it, George was tired of having to go to bed while it was still light outside. The Man in the Yellow Hat had shown him how to set a clock and George thought that if he set the hands back an hour, he would be able to play until dark and The Man could continue reading his book longer. Every day, he would set the clock back an hour without The Man realizing it. This resulted in The Man being several hours late for an appointment with the owner of a blimp that George wanted to ride in. George almost lost out on something he wanted because of trying to gain more time.

You can’t just create time. The mere movement of the hour hand backwards on a clock doesn’t do anything to stop actual time. As The Man in the Yellow Hat told George, “Our clock has to show the same time as everyone else’s clocks”. So true. That’s why you must try to retain the memories you make today, in real time, because what you have now may slip out of your grasp, just like the minutes and seconds of our lives. They slip away and you ain’t ever getting them back. Hold on to those you love. Make every moment count. One day your child is learning to walk and the next day they are running full speed away from you. Make the best of holding on to them and the memories made while watching time become a part of your past. You can’t stop it, but you sure can make sure that your allotted time on this planet is filled with making the best of it and filling it with happy memories.

I saw a sign on the end of a pier in North Redington Beach, FL that read, “God does not take away from Man’s allotted time on earth, the time spent fishing”. I like to think that you can replace “fishing” with “loving” and the meaning would not change. Show your love every day and maybe you can actually hold on tight to things and moments in your life that can just as easily slip from your grasp. And even though time won’t stop, it sure will seem like it.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine
staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long
and there is time to kill today

And then one day you find
ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run,
you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run
to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
thought I'd something more to say

BREATHE REPRISE
Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire

Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

“Time” by Pink Floyd