Tenderness

I’ve been waking up around 4:45 in the morning for the past few weeks. No alarm goes off except the one in my head, but you can set your watch by me. I’ll get up sometimes and watch a little TV hoping for a thigh master infomercial. Then, after 15 minutes, I go back to bed and try again.

First, little things surface. Things I need to do. Change the oil, spam, pay water bill…I keep a pad on the nightstand where I can remind myself.

Next, I see faces. My cousin Susan whose polio hasn’t kept her from dancing; my uncle David who would get down on the floor with us; my dad in his Air Force uniform with his foot on the fender of his Ford (three years before me); my mother with a mouthful of clothespins hanging out sheets on the line in the back yard; a small dog with patches of bald lying on a towel near the door; my sister having tea-parties in my mother’s petticoat and red heels; and my brother on the bed under mine turning pages of any book he can get his hands on.

I smell quilts in the cedar chest; my third-grade teacher; my grandmother’s breath (carnation milk); camphophenique; fresh-mowed grass; biscuits and bacon; and popcorn.

I hear my mother stirring her coffee; my dad whistling to wake us up; the tearing of an old white t-shirt for the rag bag; my little brother counting his money; and my grandfather praying.

It is not such a terrible thing being awakened at 4:45 to be reminded of a lifetime of tenderness.

Holding Hands

I remember the first time I held hands with a girl the way some remember their first kiss.

It was my junior year; summer of ’65. I was at a Baptist youth camp. Her name was Jan. She was blonde and barely 14. She was a preacher’s daughter who knew the ropes (redundant).

It was Friday night, our last night of camp; the night when things turn tender. I had met her earlier at the Canteen. We'd talked and she'd said maybe we could sit together in the big open-air tabernacle. We were third row center. Her dad was preaching.

It was Texas hot and humid. We were fanning ourselves like mad, courtesy of Roy Akers Funeral Home. But Jan was wearing a sweater over her camp shirt. Maybe she was cold-natured.

Ten minutes into the service she pulled her sweater over her head, laid it across our legs, reached under it and put her hand on my knee. I put my hand over hers and kept it there until everyone else was leaving.

I floated out of that service, and camp, changed forever. Saved!

When a couple is sitting in a restaurant in the middle of a cold war, the most difficult and loving way to break the mood is to reach across the table and take the other’s hand. The gift of touch, unexpected and intentional, can soothe hurt feelings, dissolve anger and make peace.

It is stronger than words, taking the hand of someone you love.

Take the Plunge

I got my first bicycle before I knew how to ride. A green Huffy Mainliner. I was in the front yard when my dad drove up on a Saturday with a big box in the trunk. It was meant to be a birthday surprise but it's tough to sneak something by me, then and now. (Paranoia has its perks).

As soon as my dad and the neighbor man got it out of the box, put the handlebars on and fixed the chain I wanted on!

"Can I ride it?" I asked him.

"Hold your horses," he said, and he took out the training wheels. Ididn't want training wheels. Raymond Westmoreland didn't have training wheels. Penny Wilson (a girl!) didn't either. Besides that, they were yellow to match a stripe down the side of the bike. Toddler yellow.

I started riding in circles in the backyard like those brown bears in the circus. This is nothing! Then, after a week my dad decided it was time to take the show on the road. The training wheels came off (his idea, I was liking them). Before he pushed me out onto Havana Street he said, "Get ready to fall."

WHAT?!

He straightened me up, pushed me, ran behind me for a while, and then let go. I fell immediately, hurting my arm trying to catch myself.

"Two things about falling," he said. "Don't catch yourself or you'll break your arm. Second, don't tense up. Relax. Roll with it."

Easier said then done. Most of us try to catch ourselves automatically when we fall, especially in public. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall." I've fallen many times and tried to make it look like I haven't.

Some of us fall like we're drowning. We fight and try to take everybody close down with us.

Nobody learns to walk, ride, or love without falling. Baby birds leave the nest and either fall or fly. But the only way for them to find their wings, which have been there all the time, is to take the plunge.

Looking Up

My friend keeps inviting me to the lake. Her family has a house there. She says “You need to get out of yourself and look up at the stars.” I smile and tell her I’m a city boy and that we’ve got stars, too. She says it’s not the same.

The truth is I do look down a lot. Computer, watch, phone, day-timer, shoes, mail, newspaper, stomach. I look down into my dreams, and even deeper into my private world of wonders.

As you can see, looking up is not a major part of my routine.

So we went to the lake house. I was prepared for mosquitoes and poison ivy. I packed protection.

We went out on the deck as the sun was going down. The orange ball in the lake. The trees on fire. Words are too small.

We sat under the moon and the stars. She drank a glass of wine. I smoked a cigar. A thousand stars in the sky. Love is in the air. The answer is blowing in the wind. Starry, Starry Night. (And any other “outdoor” songs you can think of, except “Kum Ba Yah.”)

In the Tom Hank’s movie, “Joe vs. the Volcano,” his ship sinks and he ends up on a raft in the middle of the ocean. He runs out of drinking water. The sun cooks his skin, then his brain, and when night comes he looks up and starts seeing things. He sees a sky full of stars dancing over his head. A moment later, the moon comes up huge on the horizon and joins the dance.

He struggles to his feet, spreads his arms and prays, “O God, whose name I do not know. I forgot how big you are. Thank you for my life.”

Indeed!

An Immersion of Grace

When trouble is breathing down your neck, heartbreaking trouble, why is it that somehow, for no logical reason, the clouds will break and hope will rise?

It happened to me here in my room a moment ago. Happened to me. It was unexpected, even uninvited, but it came anyway, without knocking. It is fleeting, like when Hank Williams sang: “I Saw the Light,” I imagine it came and went suddenly. You can’t corral it. It has a life of its own. “It will be what it will be.” It happened to Bill W., founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. He had hit bottom. He was lying in his hospital bed drying out when light first broke in on him. A very smart and cagey man who could never get his mind around it.

I am wondering about it now because it seems so dark outside. Even the future feels closed-off. The last thing I expected was an immersion of grace.

Whatever the setting or situation---however tight---grace muscles in. Sometimes it comes quietly like the warmth of the sun. Other times like the sudden chill of a November morning.

Taking Inventory

All over the radio you hear, "HUGE inventory close-out sale to make room for fall!" I worked in a men's clothing store when I was in college. Inventory was when we locked the store and stayed up all night counting belts and bad ties. We were the only automated part of the store back then.

We didn't understand the necessity of taking inventory, but it didn't matter. We only needed to understand four words: time-and-a-half.

When I went into rehab taking inventory was important. It's amazing all the things they wanted us to count. Like, how much money we had spent on alcohol. Or, who we held grudges against and for how long; what we were afraid of; and who all we had manipulated, and how. It was like I was visiting a country I hadn't been to...and the country was me.

Last month I started drawing a map of me. I am trying to include every humiliating thing. I don't think it's a country you would like to visit. There is a cemetery where some people who are buried there aren't dead yet. There are several bombed-out churches. There is a massive desert. There are several libraries, three movie theatres, two photograph galleries, and what appears to be a deserted island.

There are ruins, like in Mexico. I have done some careful digging to see what is there.

All in all, it has been a good experience, this map-making. It is a colorful way to take inventory.

I have carried one short sentence in my pocket for when things get dark. You might want to put it on your refrigerator. It is from Rumi, a Persian poet.

"Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure."