Thinking about Mom

At some point on most days, I have a moment where something triggers a memory of my mother, who passed away several years ago in 2017. The memories are always happy, which I think she would have appreciated. This was my celebration of her birthday from a very long time ago. I called it: 

Expecting Me to Remember

Timing is everything, and if I wait too long, she'll probably be at the beach, just leaving for the beach or returning from the beach. Today is my mother's birthday, and when you live in Florida because you hate the snow of New Jersey, that's how you roll.

My mom married my Dad shortly before she celebrated her twenty-third birthday and was my mother before she was twenty-four. She lived with and loved a man who loved her and all of us very much but didn't know how to say it or show it. She could hear it and see it, and that's all that really needed to count. It took me a lifetime to accept that.

When I was a kid, she was my intermediary in every transaction with my dad-walking a fine line between a proud man and a headstrong son who were so alike they couldn't see the forest for the family tree. 

She negotiated not only safe passage for me to adulthood but for all of my brothers and sisters, including the youngest three for whom she was all the parent they were to have at a critical point in their lives when Dad died.

My mother is not a sweet old lady-she is a tough broad who has stared into the maw of terrifying illnesses and diseases and never blinked. She doesn't meddle in the lives of her children or those of her grandchildren, but when you ask her for advice, you get it with the bark off. When you buy a ticket from Joan, "Joanie" as her younger brother Jim always called her, you get the whole ride.

Whenever I call her at the holidays, be it Christmas or Mother's Day, she's on beach time. Hell, I could call her on Two for Tuesdays at Hannafin's, and she'd be calculating high tides at the beach, which is on the other side of the road from where she lives. I promise her someday we'll get down to see her, but I am my father's son, and she knows that won't happen and she's okay with it.

I'll spend a great deal of time today trying to get her on the phone. And when she answers, she'll be surprised that I called, as she always is even though I always do. 

Some Moms are frozen in a moment. Others seize the day and live every moment of it and more. Happy Birthday, Mom. Life's a beach.
-bill kenny         

Pop Goes...

What did I do before the Internet? Drink, mostly. Okay, not all the time, only while awake. Too much sharing, perhaps? Fair enough. 

I used to type on a keyboard connected to a typewriter that had a computer screen (word processor), and when I would reach the end of my story and letters and punctuation, I would turn off the monitor and off to heaven went the words (I guess). It was a hard life, but I was happy.

Now, I have more bandwidth than cents-but not by much, and some days, not at all. The amazing thing about the internet is it exposes you to a reality far more surreal than any Hawaiian Hallucination Song could ever produce. 

Here's what I mean. 

I've always loved James Joyce. The Dubliners and Ulysses are true wonders of wordplay. "'History,' said Stephen, 'is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.'" No worry about hitting the snooze button today.

It is against just such a verbal banquet that you must judge this paragraph from an ancient Associated Press report. The victim asked, "Why are you carrying a weasel?" Police said the attacker answered, "It's not a weasel, it's a marten," then punched him in the nose and fled.

Take that Beckett and the Waiting for Godot you rode in on!! 

We have your sweeping narrative-your dynamic tension and your unresolved drama. I'm in love with the notion that none of the characters in this story have names-they are pawns in a game of which they have no awareness, much less chance of winning.

The names have not been changed to protect the innocent-the names haven't been used at all because they're not essential to the story. But what is essential? It's in the second paragraph, my friend, everything you, the lonely sojourner on your unarmed road of flight, needs to know: it's a marten carcass and NOT A WEASEL. Thanks for making that clear. "Meanwhile, way across town in the penthouse suite of the tallest building..."
-bill kenny

Wondering Where the Lions Are

Every day, my health hill to climb gets a little steeper and a little longer. As a kid who rooted for the Yankees, I remember a quote from The Mick (Mickey Mantle) when he received a liver transplant after a sports career of hard living: "If I'd known I was going ot live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself." I know that feeling and never wore pinstripes. 

Was seventy-four in April, and as a kid don't remember knowing anyone who was that age, to include my grandparents, though I'll admit I didn't spend a lot of time wondering about their ages. And now, I'm their senior, I suspect. 

Have spent decades not being especially religious, but in my defense, also not being egregiously sacrilegious. For many years, The Lord and I have had an informal agreement to see other people, though exactly whom was never made clear, at least to me. Here's what passes as some thoughts on immortality from a very long time ago. At the time, I called it:

What if God Were One of Us.....

Every organized religion, and a couple of the somewhat disorganized ones, have sacred writings, scriptures if you will. No matter the region, or the religion, it's part of our human genome, the need to be a part of something bigger. 

Be it the Koran, the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the latest roman à clef by Danielle Steel, there's a narrative-a place to go look for details. When you argue a matter of theology and someone says, 'you can look it up!' the texts are what they're referring to.

There's the blood of the Lamb, the descent of the dove, the tongues of fire, the burning bush, and an almost unending number of symbols and signs that The Lord (however you perceive Them to be) uses to get our attention and pass along the Word.

What if we were the first generation of people on this planet who had a Deity? I don't pretend to know what all of those before us had; I'm just saying we're the first, and Our God uses the tools we have today in much the same way as in the days of old we've read about. 

Someone I encountered recently speculated God would communicate the Ten Commandments in text. Sounds reasonable.

Perhaps:
1. no1 b4 me. srsly.
2. dnt wrshp pix/idols
3. no omg's
4. no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)
5. pos ok - ur m&d r cool
6. dnt kill ppl
7. :-X only w/ m8
8. dnt steal
9. dnt lie re: bf
10. dnt ogle ur bf's m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.

M, pls rite on tabs & giv 2 ppl. ttyl, JHWH. ps. wwjd?

What would you ask if you had just one question?
-bill kenny

Only Two Words Needed

The greatest sporting event on earth starts tomorrow.

Let's Go!
-bill kenny

Saw a Deadhead Sticker on a Cadillac

I had a cut on my finger the other day and (perhaps senility has already arrived?), thought it would be a good idea to put some Bactine on it before applying a BAND-AID (I never knew legally it was all capital letters).

My bride, who maintains the medicine cabinet, assured me we do not have Bactine. And, point in fact, for the length of our marriage (forty-nine years this October, though she says it feels a lot longer (because the Germans use the metric system)), we have never had any. Misty-water colored memories, or so it seems.

That led me to think about all kinds of products that I grew up with, and in many instances, old, that have disappeared, and not just from my medicine cabinet. And I suspect that after you watch this; I will not be alone.    

Sears, K-Mart, Blockbuster, and a million or so pieces of the past.
We thought they'd last forever, but they are long gone.
-bill kenny

Into Every Life, a Little Rain Must Fall

In less than a month, we celebrate our Semiquincentennial, but it doesn't feel much like a party atmosphere, does it?  We have so many daunting challenges facing us here in the Land of the Round Doorknobs that we're in danger of being overwhelmed.

Who knew life would get so hard after the fall of the Evil Empire? Seriously. 

I grew up a Cold War kid taught to duck under his wooden desk in Mrs. Hilge's 3rd grade classroom on the top floor of St Peter's (sic) School in New Brunswick, NJ, and to turn my face away from the window (like that would help in the event of a nuclear attack). Of course, my classmates and I came of age in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and if you want to read quaint, it would certainly qualify.

The world was so much easier when all we thought in was black and white. Now we're not only in color, but we're also in high definition. But if we are, how come so much is so fuzzy so often?

We used to celebrate our ability to disagree and not be disagreeable, e pluribus unum; out of many, one. Those days are over. And the horse you rode in on. Now we're all about Shut the F-well, you know what you can shut, and we have operators standing by to make you do it, so don't you make us, okay? 

Every time I think we're too shrill or strident, I count to ten, and we double down and turn it up to eleven again. Can you even imagine how totally screwed up our political discourse will be by the time we get to the Presidential election in 2028? Not me. 

Talk about spooky-we'll be in downtown Creep City by then. Everyone will be supporting a candidate who sets a neighbor's teeth on edge, makes a family member's skin crawl, and who elevates our own blood pressure so much we'll have folks croaking from Apoplexy Now.

I'm afraid we've lost sight of how important we are, especially to those who aren't us-but who have striven and streamed to arrive on our shores, by any means possible, in historic numbers since the Founding of the Republic. 

I hope we've only momentarily lost our way and not permanently lost our minds. If I could, I'd pray that more reasonable voices from all sides of the political spectrum could regain not only the middle ground but also our middle ear, so we might have a return to balance. We don't need to wave a million bloodied banners if we can follow the flag together. 
-bill kenny

Donmandias

 "I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

"And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

"The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
-Percy Shelley