At First Sight

I was standing on my side porch (technically, they're both side porches, I was on the little one) when I heard the sound of a truck driving up and out of the driveway belonging to the neighbors we around here refer to as the "Hole People." We call them that because they live in a hollow, a low piece of land. I've never learned their names. Not because I didn't want to; it's just how it is. They're a rough looking bunch, them hole people...

The driver of the truck was a visitor of theirs, and as he drove by my house, he waved. Of course, I waved back. His truck was beat down, red in color, at least most of it was. The rest was rust. It was a loud truck, for its small size. As he drove on, I walked into my house, hearing the roar of the little red truck grow more distant as it drove down the road and away. I made it to my kitchen when I heard that roar again, growing louder and then go silent just as it got to what I guessed to be my driveway.

"Beep-beep!" Feeling that the truck was sitting in my driveway, I made my way back outside, and sure enough, there it was, sitting there, with the biggest, hairiest man I've seen standing half in, half out of the truck. He was an older man, and when I said hairy, I meant hairy. I mean, he had tufts of hair coming out of his ears, man!

"You need that tree cut down?" He pointed to a tree that had fallen in my yard. It hadn't fallen like you'd expect a tree to fall, with a Timber! and a loud crash. Rather, it had slowly started leaning toward the bottom half of my yard, taking its time in threatening the integrity of my fence as it loomed toward it, inch by creeping inch. It is a huge tree, definitely able to crush the fence and if it was 15 feet to the left, my little shed as well. But, before it could do any of that damage (eventually), it nestled its top limbs into the "V" of a double trunked tree on the creek bank. And there it has been sitting around, waiting for time and decomposition to take its toll so it could sock it to the fence.

"I've been visiting my friend and noticed that tree. It's been that way for a long time. I can cut it down for you. My name's Leeroy. L-e-e-r-o-y." And without a hitch, he went on. "I see you have a lot of bicycles and a few lawnmowers. I also haul off scrap metal. You wanna get rid of that stuff?"

The wheels in my brain started turning, slowly at first, having seized up from non-use, but eventually it saw where 2+2 did actually equal 4. I had been needing to get that stuff hauled off; been needing to have that tree cut down; and here was a guy who could do both. My only problem was having the money to have the tree cut. Several people had quoted about $400 to cut and remove the tree.

"Wanna trade all that junk for me cutting up that tree? You don't mind if I leave the cut wood in your yard? I wouldn't be able to haul that off myself." He said all of this with his huge chest puffed out, and even though he was a rather large man, he was older, and I believed him about his limitations.

"Yes. Yes I want the tree cut. Yes, I want that scrap hauled off. Yes, you can leave the cut wood in my yard." I couldn't believe that all those things I needed to do, but for financial or timing issues couldn't seem to ever get to, were about to be done. Today. Not in another 6 months. Not even in another week. Today.

I must say that Leeroy didn't look like someone who was out to be helpful. His looks were very deceiving. A big burly man in a beat down old pickup truck, with tobacco stains in the thick hairs of his mustache and beard, making his living cutting down trees and hauling off people's junk didn't fit my picture perfect idea of a Good Samaritan. But in the silence between the roaring of the chainsaw, we talked. He was one of 62 grandchildren who were not unfamiliar with possum or raccoon on the dinner table. He said he was raised by a "fine Christian woman who taught fine Christian values." He said things like "The engine is strong, but needs a rest now and then" as he referred to his own body. He kept naming off names of local people and streets as if I had lived here all my life as well. He even showed me how to unhook and lay my chain-link fence down so that it wouldn't be crushed when the tree fell down. I didn't even think twice when he asked for something to eat because of his low blood sugar. I didn't have to.

Sometimes people are not as they seem. Appearances don't mean much when you look beyond the exterior shell and see who they really are; when you put aside your prejudices and pre-conceived notions. I'm not saying that everybody hides who they truly are behind a veil of intentional or unintentional deceit, nor am I saying that this man was a saint. But who I initially saw and who I eventually saw were two different people. He had the same rough exterior of course, but his heart was in the right place. In his own words: "I'm not saying I'm perfect nor have I always been a good man, but I try to do good, and that's close enough."

As he pulled out of my driveway with the bed of his truck piled high with a teetering stack of bicycles and the promise to come back at a later date with help to get the lawnmowers, looking ever the part of a redneck Fred Sanford, I realized that it wasn't me who got the better part of the deal. I did get things done that needed to be done for a long time. He even hauled off that carcass of a refrigerator that has been sitting outside for months. Doing what we did sure wasn't what I had planned on doing for several hours on a Sunday. In fact, I was in the middle of doing dishes, laundry, and housecleaning when he first came by. But I sense that he got what he wanted in the way he knew how; by doing something for someone else. For me, he was a blessing in a perfect disguise.

And I learned something else too. Wayne. The hole man's name is Wayne.

Reflektor

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." -Anton Chekhov

It was the night of the last full Moon, we were driving home and as we were merging onto I-75 north at East Brainerd, my daughter said, "Moon." And there she was, just visible above the horizon, ruddy tinged and huge. She kept her eye on me as I drove north, sometimes hiding parts of herself behind a rise in the land, but by the time I exited at VW Drive, she had risen above what I could see, all huge, veiled ever so slightly by a thin layer of high, wispy clouds and intermittently striped by contrails. I could feel her presence. I stopped to get cat and dog food from Tractor Supply, and when I came out, she was partially visible above a part of the Bauxite Mountain range, half above, half below, and I could see where trees met the ground. It was very much a postcard moment and I stopped to take it all in.

"The moon is radioactive," said my son from the back seat as we made our way towards home. "It's glowing." A haze of clouds made the Moon appear to be encircled by fuzzy rays of energy. He went on. "My teacher showed us today what would happen if the Sun exploded. The force was so great that the Earth was pushed all the way to Neptune's orbit." Can the Sun just explode? I told him that it was highly unlikely that the Sun would just explode. I explained that I had read that before that happened, the Sun would have already expanded and engulfed the inner planets and burned Earth to a crispy, black ash, like a marshmallow left too long over the campfire.

I don't claim to know everything. My knowledge is based upon what I've lived, read, heard, or otherwise absorbed. On rare occasions, I come up with something all by myself. I'm more of a smart ass than a smart head, but eager to learn more with my brain than with that nether region. My kids are smart. Not Albert Einstein smart. Not Stephen Hawking smart. Not even John Nash smart. Not yet, at least. But as we drove, the conversation soon turned into a think fest, with my daughter joining in with thought provoking questions.

A few days before that, I was on my tablet, stumbling around and had clicked on a link. It was link in a series of 'just one more' links that occurred after "This is the last one" was uttered the first time. The picture that pulled me in depicted a rendering of a futuristic event. The image showed edges of our own Milky Way galaxy about to merge with the Andromeda galaxy. I recalled the article and told my kids about how scientists predict that in about, oh, 4 billion years from now, these two galaxies will merge into one galaxy. What I find interesting is that it said that even in this cataclysmic event, the stars are so far apart from each other that the chance of a stellar collision was negligible. Not that humans will be around to witness this event. Remember the sun expansion thing? Yeah, it would not have happened yet, but apparently the process is supposed to have already started and evaporated the oceans and burnt up the oxygen on Earth; you know, stuff humans need to live. This brought on the discussion of light speed and light years and an expanding universe and how little we humans know about anything.

My daughter's interesting observation concerned this limited lack of knowledge as humans. She said, "Not only do we not know what's beyond the reaches of our farthest space probes and strongest telescopes, we barely even know what lies at the bottom of our deepest oceans. We don't know what certain organs in our bodies are for. Why are they even in us? What's that organ everyone seems to have removed?"

"The appendix?" I asked.

"Yeah, that thing," she said. "It can be there for years, then decide it wants to kill us. So we remove it. But what if that organ is what gets you into paradise? What if it isn't in your body at the Pearly Gates and you are refused entrance? What if it is the only thing that will keep the zombies from attacking you in the Zombie Apocalypse?"

"Well, I got mine, just in case," I said.

I'm a child of Luna. I'm a Lunatic. I've always been fascinated by her. Just as her phases affect the tidal patterns, I feel they affect me as well. It's a fact that people get crazy when the Moon is full. ER personnel say that more people are seen on full Moon nights than any other night. Ask a werewolf what he/she thinks about the Moon. Ask a late-night taxi driver or the 24-hour greasy spoon diner waitress about the Moon. Ask me, and I'll tell you differently. I'm quite the opposite. I'm usually happiest when the Moon is full. In fact, I consider the opposite phase, when she is in her New phase, my "time of the month." I'm moody. I'm melancholy. I'm looking up for something that is there, but yet not there. If you pay attention to anything I say, you're probably sick and tired of hearing my lunar rants every four weeks. But that's my life, sometimes big, bright, and in your face; sometimes unseen, dark, and brooding.

I remember when I lived in Florida, my grandmother always kept those staked reflectors on either side of the driveway. You know, those red or blue flashy circles on sticks that said, "This is your driveway." Sometimes one would go missing and my grandma would swear someone was stealing them, one at a time, breaking up an original set, the young whipper snappers. Many times, the reality was that they had fallen over and no longer reflected the headlights of oncoming cars. Their ability to point the way didn't work so well laying on the ground. And they didn't work in daylight or without an external source of light shining on them either. Essentially, they were useless, at night at least, without being shone upon.

The Moon has no brightness on her own. She doesn't emit light; she only reflects light from a source much bigger than herself. This external light source must be present in order for her to be seen. Sometimes, and only when she is at her fullest and brightest, another object will come between her and that source of light, but only for a short period of time. When that happens, her brightness is dimmed; she's made dull and muddled. But even while she's bathed in shadow, she is still visible and darkly beautiful.

I know how she feels. There's times when I believe that I have no brightness on my own; that everything I say or do is merely a reflection of something I've heard, something I've seen, or something that's moved me to think. Being affected by outside influences is a major way many of us learn anyway. Many times I've been told that I don't say much. Well, it's often true. Just like the Wise Guy on the mountain, whose true brilliance is truly questionable, I don't say much unless it means something. I remember an episode of 'The Beverly Hillbillies' where Jethro was caught up in hanging out with a group of beatnicks. There was one guy who said nothing through the entire episode, up until the end. The others told Jethro when he asked about the guy's silence, that he didn't speak unless there was something worth speaking. When he did finally speak, everyone shushed to hear what he had to say.

Observe and Absorb; that's what I do. Take in, process, file and store for future use. Reflect whatever has decided to shine upon me. But, then at other times, I feel that maybe, just maybe, I am the source of light; that I am the one shining upon others. I know of two reflectors that I shine upon. They take in and reflect whatever is illuminated on them. And in the process of reflection, they illuminate what is absorbed. I try so hard to shine nothing on them that would dull their brightness or muddle their shine. I know I'm not the only source of light to shine on them. They are subject to this whole world and everything in it; the dark and the light. I choose to shine brightly, for them, for others, for myself.

Luna; you're still number one in my book, but I choose to shine brightly, as brightly as the star that illuminates every feature of your beautiful, one-sided face.