Mid Summer Teen Report
The seventeen year old is horizontal and still sleeping. It’s 11:45 a.m.
He awoke briefly in response to the plastic bag of dog poop camped at the foot of his bed. A helpful little reminder that poop patrol goodies are temporarily housed in the distant back yard and not in the garage garbage cans.
He’ll emerge, voluntarily by 1 p.m., or involuntarily at any time the spirit moves me. If neither parent nor paycheck requires his consciousness, he will grunt his way through the kitchen and descend to the basement, adolescent sustenance in hand. There he will remain vertical on an as needed basis, and eventually resume a parallel oneness with the couch in front of the t.v.
The sixteen year old is vertical and watching t.v. in the family room. To her credit, she emerged circa 9 a.m. She has had the ritual bowl of Capt’n Crunch Crunch Berries, the breakfast of choice for summer hiatus, while watching Regis and Kelly and The View. She’s now ascended to the upper level and commenced the late morning schedule. Shower, make up, hair.
Ok, they have summer jobs. Big deal. I did, too, at that age. One dollar per room cleaned at that Holiday Inn. Hoo boy, those were the days. On a good weekend I could rake in twenty-six, twenty-seven dollars.
The rest of my time was very well spent.
Sleeping in on days off.
Cruising up and down the main drag on nights I could sweet talk Dad in to letting me have the car.
Hanging out with friends doing nothing in particular as far away from my parents as I could get.
Failure
Babies are burning and no one is seeing.
Mothers are wailing and no one is hearing.
Words are falling and no one is catching them.
The Children
Even seasoned reporters cannot bear the horror. Little children screaming, their tender flesh seared like the steak you threw on the grill last night. Their mothers by their bedsides, aching to cradle them, but daring not to touch.
Hezbollah. Israeli. Hamas. The children.
We stand by and watch. After all, what can we do? There will always be war. The Middle East will always be at each other’s throats.
And it’s only the price at the pump that really gets our attention.
Now go throw that steak on the grill.
Healing from the Inside Out
Ain’t it a bitch to take the long road?
Back in my college days, I played nurse to a very close male friend who’d had surgery near his tailbone. I know, I know. Such devotion at such a young age. Ok, he was a very, very close friend.
My friend’s surgery left what the doc called a “cavity wound”, meaning that a large chunk of my friend’s shake-your-booty had been removed. His particular wound was so deep, so invasive of body tissue, that it had to be left open to heal. The wound would then heal from the inside out. In order to promote this, it needed to be packed each time the dressing was changed.
Already having a PhD in smart ass, I queried why the doc hadn’t just gotten out the sewing box. It would have been a hell of a lot easier on me, which of course was the critical issue.
Instead, I cleaned and packed. Slowly, carefully. Twice a day. Every day. First thing in the morning. Last thing at night. For weeks. And weeks.
Because I loved my friend. And because that was the only way that deep, gaping wound was going to heal. From the inside out.
And then the light bulb came on the other day. That’s the same way the food addict in me has to heal.
Pinball Thoughts
Thoughts are bouncing off the walls of my gray matter like pinballs off the flippers of those long ago machines at the Purdue Union arcade.
The words, though. Ah, the words do not come. This, too, shall pass.
Dailyness
This is one of those times. No earth shaking. No black hole. Just the usual stuff. The daily stuff. Wake up. Do the day. Go to bed. Get up and do it again.
Thank God for those times once in a while.
Independence Day and 217 Year Old Wisdom
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
The Thomas Jefferson Papers,Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, January 8, 1789
