Thank You, Thank You For Coming

Some call them alternative housing or assisted living places. Some are called nursing homes. I’ve only been in a couple…and it seems they are mostly like any other home, they differ. It takes special people to work there, gifted in ways most of us are not and the last thing one wants to think about, other than that other thing we don’t like to think about is having a loved one or even ourselves living there. But it happens.

Mom and I visited one the other day. Mom’s eighty eight and she wanted to give an old friend a “warmer” to put on her bed. I have no idea how old the old friend was, probably not eighty eight. We’ve been lucky. “You know, she may not recognize me this time, she was coming and going the last time I visited.” Mom said. “Well, that’s ok, I said, I’m sure she’ll enjoy the warmer anyway.” I waited in the lobby and browsed through some photo albums while she went down the hall. The pictures showed a happy staff who looked like a great bunch of folks even though they stared death and her “handmaidens” in the face every day. After twenty minutes or so mom came back with a smile on her face and I asked, “Well, did she remember you?” “No, she said, but I could tell she was trying hard.” (I guess that was enough for mom.) “I’m sure she’ll enjoy the warmer.” “Yeah, I said, wonder where she was today?” “She seemed happy” was all mom would say. “That’s good.”


Years ago, at a local church, there was a greeter. He could always be found standing out front prior to the service and whenever you showed up, whether seven days or seven years since your last appearance, he would say, “Thank you, thank you for coming.” He was a short little fellow with a great memory, a widower with a big Sunday morning grin each time you entered the vestibule of the church. “Thank you, thank you for coming” he would say, as if your simple act of walking in the door was the most important event that had taken place at that church in years... equal to a visit by the Pope perhaps or maybe Billy Graham.
 
He seemed really happy to be able to say “thank you” each time someone entered. A few years ago a friend and I went to see him in his nursing home after he’d had a series of strokes. We asked for his room and the attendant showed us down the hall. We both had misgivings about the visit, I hadn’t been to church in years, and a walk down “guilt trip lane” was just not something I was into that evening. As we got closer to his room I felt the walls closing in, as they say, but my friend helped me take a few more steps. Then there we were, face to face with this wonderful little fellow who had made us feel at home each time we visited the church. I didn’t think he would remember me but he did, or so I thought, and as soon as I entered his room he looked up from his wheelchair and said, “Thank you, thank you for coming!” I felt relieved and grateful he had remembered this old sinner from a few years back. I started to mumble something about “how are you” or some such and then he said it again, “Thank you, thank you for coming” and I realized those were the only words left for him to remember, six simple words that had meant so much to the people attending his church.
 
We stayed only a short while and left with tears as the echo of his greeting followed us down the hall. “Thank you, thank you for coming.” I wondered where he was that day and thought about all the memories and words he could have been left with in the home. He may have been luckier than we know, forever the greeter, “thank you, thank you for coming”.

Getting One's Mind Right

It is that time of year again, “the holidays”, and let’s face it…they started with Thanksgiving. From now until “Superbowl Sunday” no meaningful work will be done by anyone except those who consider work life and life work. I suppose I’m one of those but I do enjoy the reward that comes as a result of me doing my life’s work. In other words, if I won the lottery, I would still do what I do…well for a few hours anyway. Still, when this season arrives, as my wife would say, to quote Strother Martin in “Cool Hand Luke”, “you gonna get your mind right!” Well, I’ve had thirty years to get my mind right and still find myself in the “ hot box” cause “what we have here is…”failure to communicate”.

My wife takes this time of year seriously and it usually begins with unpacking the attic. That’s where all manner of stuff “holiday” is located for eleven months. This takes two days and three fights as I threaten to have a yard sale and she gets all melancholy about fifty year old Christmas stockings in need of a good seamstress. I go up the ladder while she stands at the bottom and greets each piece of holiday cheer as though she were seeing some relative for the first time in ten years. If these pieces could talk I’m sure they’d be saying, “Please, not this again, just when we were getting comfortable up there…who wants to hang on somebody’s door for a month!”

She also thinks the holidays mean family reunion time and that’s great but when you’re sixty-three a lot of the family’s Elvis moment came and they “left the building” and the ones still here are oft times starving, too young to remember the ones worth remembering and in love with somebody who they bring to the holiday festivities, usually at our house. And of course there’s always the living relatives you’d rather not see in the first place who manage to “just stop by” for a day of eating and cleaning out the liquor cabinet. This is where I do the, “this ain’t no soup kitchen routine” which gets me in a lot of trouble, particularly if they happen to be on her side of the family. So I have to get my mind right or the holidays will be a time to remember for sure as “Miss Holiday Spirit” will remind me how I ruined another opportunity to watch old people drink, and young people eat massive quantities of turkey, watch football, sleep on our couch and turn the bathroom into a Nascar experience.  

 I guess it’s that male menopause I’ve been hearing about but for the last several holidays the pets we’ve had down through the years always seem to come to mind. If I recollect correctly, they only drank water, ate their own food, watched the animal channel, slept on the floor and most times used the bathroom outside. They were a great bunch of folks to have around and when I see them in family videos, dadburned if they don’t seem like family. There was old Chipper, the blond cocker spaniel, whose ears always got in the dressing when he ate out of his bowl. And Duke the Boston Terrier who would chase a squirrel up a tree trying to get Christmas dinner on the run. Or Deuce the hairless Yorkie whose idea of a good holiday meal was anything he didn’t have to run down to eat or whatever somebody would bring to his bed. They were my kind of folks. But, like ol’ ”Bring on the Eggnog” says, I’ve got to get my mind right. I would suggest flying to some exotic warm place but I haven’t had my “junk” touched in years and it looks like the TSA officers have their hands full as it is.

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

The mid-term election looms over us and I felt compelled to write about something politicians must know a lot about, stress. Can you imagine the stress involved in spending millions of dollars on getting elected to “higher” office only to find you are not worthy or wanted? To put your soul, mind and body into the effort, expose family, friends and pets to today’s scrutiny only to be rejected by the voters who, by now, are very familiar with everything from your last colonoscopy to your favorite Dancing with the Stars contestant. By the time you read this many will be feeling the pain of rejection, some rightfully so; others will feel the stress of taking on a new job and for the first termers, one for which there may be no means of preparation.

 

But stress seems to be different things to different people. Stress to a politician these days would have to be wondering when and where he’ll be when someone digs up enough dirt to make sure he doesn’t win again. And speaking of digging, stress to a dog would have to be a flea, small, insignificant but the dog never knows when one will bite and so you see that worried look on the poor pooch’s face when he’s got a flea (female dogs probably don’t have fleas). Then, when the bite does come, the dog goes nuts and begins biting itself to find and kill the rascal that bit him. I’ve noticed that my boy Hercules will sit with that worried look on his face if he has just the one flea but if he’s got a bunch of fleas, he just gives up and sleeps in a state of depression. It seems that when we have a lot of stressors in our lives we do tend to “give up” and just let things happen. I suppose Ol’ Herky feels like he might have a shot at the one flea but when he’s got ten, who cares! I would buy him one of those stress balls but he’d just stress out trying to figure out how to hold the thing.

 

Folks with a lot of kids don’t seem to stress out as much if one “goes astray” so to speak, whereas my wife and I spend days worrying about our one daughter, who keeps telling us she’s perfect. I can’t refer to her as a stressor so I just call her “small stuff”, as in “don’t sweat the small stuff”. “Small stuff” got to me the other day so I tried listening to music. Found one of Beethoven’s sonatas, No. 6 it was, and of course found myself thinking of the out of doors, the farm, cows and such. That brought to mind the time I was visiting my Uncle Melvin in Sevierville, Tennessee, walking the land as it were and stepped in a cow paddy, then tracked the stuff into his house. I turned off Beethoven, put on some country music and poured myself a strong one.

 

Stress is most times where you find it and it can be found anywhere. I still think of sitting on my brother-in-law’s porch in the N.C. mountains, enjoying a Danish and watching the squirrels wreck havoc on his bird feeder until the quiet was interrupted by the sound of his twenty-two echoing through the woods as he blasted away at his stressors. I guess those squirrels were his “small stuff” but the boom of that 22 was large stuff to me as I choked on breakfast. Still, finding out what the “small stuff” is in your life is not easy and without knowledge of that you might as well be pouring Drano down a manhole. I’m looking forward to Tuesday night when we see the results of months of work and some new faces on the political horizon. Let’s all hope they don’t continue pouring our tax dollars down the D.C. manhole that ain’t no “small stuff”.

The Popcorn Tree

It was a clear fall morning and dad and I were sitting on the porch enjoying the sun in his and mom’s rocking chairs. We had the football games to look forward to and other than that, nothing going on. I had no idea what happened next would mean so much over the next few years. She was walking past the front porch hauling a basket full of small plants in a carrier. She looked to be about dad’s age, stooped from osteoporosis and breathing hard when dad hollered from the porch, “hey, whatcha got there?” “Oh, nothing much, just a few popcorn trees” she replied. “Well, lemme take a look, we been needin some trees on this lot.” And with that he gingerly got up and walked to the street. Dad was known for saying the first thing that came into his head, like it or not and so out came, “Shoot, that ain’t nothing but a weed.” “Nope, it’s a popcorn tree” she said. Put one in the ground and see what happens.” Dad was also known for his frugality so his next question came easy. “How much?” When he heard, “No charge” he was sold and took one of the small “weeds” back to the porch. He and mom planted it later that day. Dad could be a stubborn kind of fellow and for the next ten years or so he called these plants, there were now four, everything from roots to vines but never trees. They stand about thirty feet tall now and I never heard him call them a tree but each year, about this time, the yard is full of beautiful shade, and these little white balls that cover the ground to remind mom of the love of her life, dad. He left us about this time last year.

 

Several years ago I brought one of the roots of those trees back and planted it in my front yard. It’s about twenty feet now and as it continues to grow, it reminds me that things are not always as they appear, nor are we. It stands as a reminder that we can all look like weeds at some point but when placed in the right soil, grow and flourish. Dad took a chance that day, took that elderly, stooped over woman at her word, “it’s a popcorn tree” and he planted. He watered, watched and nourished that “weed” out of curiosity really, just to see what would happen. One thing he didn’t do was give up. Now the fact that he never really called them trees is moot. Like it or not, the man spent many an afternoon in the shade of something growing from the ground. I know we sometimes look at our children and think, “Lord have mercy, will this thing ever become a tree?” But one has to remember, some plants need more than others, more food, sun, water. That first popcorn tree would have died in the ground had dad not provided for its needs. Our children are no different and there is no statute of limitations on love. When I read about the tragedies involving the children of Macon and other areas, I think about the popcorn tree. Someone saw a weed too soon and simply gave up or were afraid to give it the water and food it may have needed to survive. Another way of thinking about it is our children may or may not provide us with “shade” as we get older. Some may leave us in the desert of despair and rightfully so, for we failed to help them become the shade trees of our future.