Windmills...

                                        I remember one night a very long time ago.

                    A good friend of mine  who was barely past the legal age of consent, had been drinking a little to much and was being strongly pressured into a sexual situation with a couple of men in their twenties. I had known her for quite a few years and knew that she had been raped when she passed out at a party when she was fourteen years old. That was how her virginity had been taken.

              We had talked about that situation, many times together growing up. For some reason we clicked emotionally and she trusted me with her pain...

                 So when these men wanted to take advantage of her, I had to step in...

                             I knew I could not win the fight that was coming. One of them was probably the best natural born fighter I'd ever met, pound for pound. Great hands, great feet and an almost artistic ferocity and grace in his violence.

                 I had a few pounds on him, but was completely outclassed and didn't have a prayer in winning . I knew the intensity and completeness of the damage that was coming.  I couldn't win this, but I couldn't walk away and I couldn't give up and stay on the ground when I was knocked down...

                                            It was a long and painful night.

                            I took the worst beating I have ever experienced that night. Multiple broken ribs, both sides of my face broken and my sinus cavities both smashed, leaving a pencil thick hole to breathe thru on one side, and the other side closed completely, not to mention the nose broken in multiple places. I just kept getting back up....

                                            I did not stop what happened that night.

                                                 Some would call my actions stupid .

                                          Walking into it, I knew I wouldn't change a thing.

                      I knew from the very beginning, that my stepping in was completely useless.

                                                         But I couldn't walk away...

                                      

                                             Charging a windmill with no hope of success...

           

                                                          I fought God once.

                                               A very long and drawn out battle where he took away all the things I treasured and demanded...

                                  Completely outclassed and out gunned, knowing the eventual outcome, I still walked into that battle of wills, knowing I would be both emotionally and spiritually decimated.

                                         But of course, I could not walk away...

                                                   So I was broken. Very broken.

                                                       I almost didn't get up...

           

                                               Charging a windmill that re-made my soul...

              

                            I've spent double decades, not approaching windmills anymore. Tired, broken, defeated, I finally had given up. Most things I found did not require that frontal, attacking approach..

           Philosophical and smarter, I realized now that not much out there is worth that kind of fight.

                                             

               My body still is broken, unattached ribs that move when I turn wrong or sneeze, an arm that hangs useless if I reach backwards incorrectly. That's left over damage from thirty years ago, not old age....

                         In the last few weeks I have argued and fought with every single salaried supervisor and manager in our plant, and am a few levels of them deep into corporate.

                  I have had arguments with my co- workers at decimal levels that certainly exceeded our corporate assigned hearing protection....

                                     There has not been a day in the past week that I have not been in someone's office, up front, charging windmills...

                              I see a gross ignorance of safety standards going on that could easily prove fatal to workers in our plant.

                                       They are good people who are listening to incompetent electricians that are completely ignorant of our companies safety culture and beliefs...

                          So I have been working my way up the ladder, supervisor to supervisor, manager to manager,  to regional manager, on the things we need to do, to make some situations safe...

                                I have been stressed beyond belief and am walking in my sleep again.

                                  I guess I'm not done with windmills, yet...

                             There have been threats against my job, both veiled and outright. People I work with tell me to shut up, drop it and make no more waves...

                                           Be a team player in this... Or else.

                  I came home a few days ago, ranting to my Wonderful Wife, apologizing to her that I am not the kind of guy who can cut this loose, not the kind of guy who can let this go.

                                      Not the kind of guy who can walk away...

 

                                  So why am I bringing all these useless battles up?

                        I'm wondering how I should approach my boys about charging windmills...

                              Do I tell them it's a good thing or useless and stupid?

                            Should I guide them to sidestep windmills or battle with all their heart?

                                   Looking backwards, I have no regrets that matter over the battles I took and knew I would lose. Some of these, if not taken, would have made facing myself, impossible...

                                                          Precious failures...

                                     Thru them, I learned who I truly am and sometimes, more importantly, who I am not.

                                             I cannot tell them , only guide...

           And let them know that fighting an un-winnable battle, sometimes is the right thing to do..

Vampires and stuff...

                                     I remember as a child being scared of vampires.

                            Scared is not nearly an accurate description, but terrified just may fit.

                                            Yep. That fits pretty darn good...

                              I read the vampire comics and the vampire books. Anybody who has ever seen the movie " The Lost Boys" and remember the Frogg brothers will have a pretty accurate picture of me, as a kid.

                                       Even in the summer, sleeping on the second floor with no fan or air conditioning, I slept with a sheet or blanket. My mom would come in sometimes at night, shake me awake and pull off the sweat drenched sheet that was inevitably wrapped around my throat.

                             I watched every movie with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing made. The house I grew up in, the house I live in now, is surrounded by graveyards. Six cemeteries within less than a mile...

                         We went thru them often, at night. One time my friends and I brought an old stethoscope with us and layed on one of the two rectangular shaped tombs that had been present forever and then put the stethoscope on the cover, and listened. I heard a heartbeat! After screaming and using all my willpower to control my bowels, I had my friends listen, also. They heard it, too...

   None of us stopped to think it was picking up our own heartbeats, because our chests were on the granite slab...

                     So at 10:00 p.m. on a warm summer night, three kids ran screaming down the hill that leads to my house, past one more cemetery, on the way.

                          Cemetery road is the name of the street, leading to my house...

                   I don't know exactly where I picked up this fixation and obsession. I do know that not much else made me afraid, as a kid.

                              My father came to America from Poland about sixty five years ago, and when I was young, he and my uncles had our family history researched and obtained our historic coat of arms.

                                                Any guesses what it said?

                                                  Dweller of the graveyard.

                                            Seriously. You cannot make this stuff up...

                                 My brother Karl, the middle brother who was afraid of nothing, told everyone that we came from a long line of vampire hunters. Its true we had relatives, many,many generations past, that lived in the vacinity of The Carpathian Mountains,  but i have absolutely no clue what their hobbies were. All i can say is "Not me"...

                I had a big wooden cross on a long leather necklace, hanging on a nail i pounded into the plaster walls lath, by the side of my bed. It was never more than an arms reach away...

              I woke up many nights screaming, arm outstretched and cross in my hand...

                     The scary nights were the ones I awoke screaming, not clutching that cross.

                                I remembered those nights most, as I tried to go to sleep, nights later, terrified if they came, I would be to slow...

                                         Crazy thoughts in a crazy kids mind...

                                 

                            I still like vampire movies. Usually I don't wake up with sheets wrapped around my neck, anymore. The problem is the new ones rely on way too many special effects and entirely to much gore.

                    I think what fascinated me most as a child, was that the battle between good and evil seemed so close to even.

                    Not that evil had anywhere near the power of good, because it never did. 

            Remember the battle in Salems Lot between Barlow and the Priest? Barlow asked the priest to set down the crucifix and face him with his faith of God to the vampires faith in evil. The priest refused and the crucifix lost its power. The power was the faith that the priest had in it.

                  As he prepared to feed, Barlow told the priest that if he had set down the crucifix when he was originally asked, that he would have won...

                                                      He would have won.

                      Vampires may not be real, but the lessons taught in their myths often are.

                                 Satan has no power against Jesus. That battle was won before creation, as time holds no relevance to an all Powerful God. Jesus is, was and always has been and always will be...

                  So Satan was defeated from the beginning, by Jesus's substitutionary death, as time is not part of the equation, and God is not hindered by it...

              Any evil cannot stand against the Blood of Jesus, if it's protection is faithfully claimed.

                     All it takes is one person with perfect faith and no battle exists. Evil is banished.

                                                           End of story...

                     So what it comes down to is that we are all just a little too much like the Priest in Stephen Kings story.  

                                       Being imperfect , our faith has limits.

                                I suppose that is probably how it is supposed to be, because that is exactly how it is...

                       I will never have perfect faith because God only has one perfect Son...

                                                      and it ain't me...

                                                      and It ain't you...

                            

                                   An imperfect faith highlights my need for Gods infusion of it, in me.

                        Because it never really is my faith, it is His, lent or given, in His perfect plan.

                                     

                                        I'm glad there is no such thing as vampires.

                                   That is an understatement. A very big understatement...

                                       One of my favorite quotes is that of a five year old boy being asked if he believes in vampires. " No" he replies. " But I'm afraid of them anyway..."

                                     Me, I believe in Satan and I believe in evil.

                                 I know Jesus has defeated them. I have faith in that.

                                          Enough to stand across from Satan?

                                                         I do it every day.

                                                       Every Christian does.

                                                           My results vary....

                                                          How about yours?

First Christian songs...

                                     A long time ago, years before my initial salvation, my best friends mom invited me to Praise and Worshiping , at their house. I tried to surrender many times, but of course, i had a different road to walk for long while, first.  Mrs. E. never knew how much of an influence that she was in my life, planting and seemingly wasting many fields worth of seeds inside me, that seemed stagnant, as I dove into a completly different type of lifestyle...

                 But I did often go to her house as neighborhood Christians showed up, and my second mom strummed her Autoharp to old Christian songs. I connected with a friend I had grown up with, and he would bring his mandolin and guitar.

                              He introduced me to" new" Christian music ( this was pre 1990s) and my favorite artist was Randy Stonehill. Marty would play his songs along with Bob Dylan, in his Christian years.

                                 For as long as I can remember, I'd been looking for the old album ( yes, I said album. It was a long, long time ago...)

                                 All I can say is that U tunes rocks!

                                          Found it finally.... 

                                      Randy Stonehill -   Welcome to Paradise...

                             Im listening to it as I type, smile on my face, remembering the hope that preceded the darkness...

                          Remembering Jesus was there with loads of his children, preparing my way.

               I wondered why, a little earlier this month, exactly why He took so long. After writing, I sat down and shut up, awaiting inspiration, if not actual direction. Needles to say, Jesus and His flock came thru from the very beginning. I was just too stupid to see it. Every step, there were people waiting for me, not me waiting for God...

                      Recently I was caught up in questions that bound the heart that my Lord had long ago freed. Tracing back thru my life proves that never was I alone or abandoned by Him or His people. It looked that way, because I spent most of my time looking at the wrong end of the compass, of my own heart...

                    A striking reality is not so gently bashing my tiny brain today with these facts.

                          I'm almost ashamed at how much was invested in me, along the way, long before there seemed to be anything worth hoping for.

                                                               Almost...

                                  But this heart has its compass pointed toward Jesus's Faithfulness and is driven by an awe that He would be so patient, for so long,  let alone that His followers would. They constantly seemed to show up and frazzle me with their unconditional love, at the most right, yet in opportune time...

                               So today, I see that no one is further than a hands grasp away, as close as someone's prayer... As close as anyone's prayer...

                                        God worked deeply in Mrs.E... He worked with all those who celebrated His gifts and His Words. He not only heard, but answered the prayers for me, sent to Him decades ago.

                         Little by little, I am being grown in Faith. Sometimes gently guided and other times brutally dragged... But the Truth is that Work is happening inside me, by greater love and power than I am capable of.

                    So today I send prayers of thanks for all those who chose to to people my life, with Gods Grace, especially when their seemed no earthly reason to do so.

              Maybe that's part of how it works. We love and believe in those who are completely earthly hopeless. We use the only power that we personally have, access to God, thru prayer.

              Prayer and love, especially for the unlovable, seem to help instigate God to perform miracles... Maybe not instigate, because I'm sure the miracle was already in his plan A all along. Maybe He just wanted to see his children notice and address a brothers need, in the only way they new how...

                      With the only " power" they had...

                        I don't know. Most of these questions and theories will end up in my " God box"..

                             You know the one, the one that holds all the question you have ever had and written down, that you just couldnt answer, and placed it in the box, to ask Him later. No matter how much you read His Word and ask guidance from those with more Faith, Trust and Experience in such areas, nothing seems to fit... So you plan to ask, when you eventually see Him.

             I have mine. My plan is to ask for answers when we meet in Heaven. I've got a strange feeling that I will be voiceless and too lost in gratitude to utter a word...

               But I keep that box anyway, mostly to help build my trust and faith. I trust that I do not need all those answers today and that my life will function forward with absolutely no ill effects, without them...

         The truth is that His answers are not mine for the asking. Maybe that's why he didn't want Adam to eat that apple, in the first place.

                  It doesn't matter. I am blessed and have had Angels on my shoulders since the very beginning. Maybe some were humans. Maybe most were humans, I don't know...

   One more slip of paper for " The God Box..."   

The fishtank...

                    A long time ago I was doing some reading. I don't know whether it was Leo Buscaglia or one of the other hundred or so authors in the self help section that I regularly perused, but in some long forgotten read, was an interesting group of paragraphs that has stayed with me since...

                An experiment was performed with tropical fish in a very large tank. Before the fish were placed inside, a glass divider was put roughly in the middle, leaving only half of the tank accessible to the fishes. The fish were then dropped in and swam from one end of the tank to the divider and back.

         They left them like this for an unspecified, or more likely, unremembered by me, length of time...

                                    Eventually, the people doing the experiment did remove the glass divider and then watched and waited. What they reported in their results was both unexpected and disturbingly understandable...

                             The fish would swim as they always had, back and forth from one end of the tank to the spot the glass divider USED to be...

                              They stopped just short of the glass planes placement and turned around, trapped by the memory of the glasses once present limits...

                                I've never done this experiment on fish before and can't claim for certain it's validity on them, but I have seen the same affect on other species.

                                                    Mostly human ones...

                             Like most of you, I have a mirror and a memory. I don't look in the mirror nearly as often as I did when I weighed 170 lbs and had a full head of hair, but I still do look sometimes.

                  My memory is shot. Clouded and kailaidescopic in its recollections, many pieced together from stories and flashbacks of times long before the booze and uncountable thumps to my head had taken place..

                                                  I still remember that divider. You can tell, because if you watch me " swim", I still stop millimeters before the removed glass section and deftly turn around, swimming back toward the " tanks" wall...

                                     The sad thing is that fish swim in schools. 

                          Rarely will one swim away, alone. So the odds are pretty good that a lot of fish are swimming this way, along side, not even knowing.

                       I think the section of tank we inhabited is the world. That would make the divider the wall of sin that separates us from God. The one who removed the glass section is Jesus...

                                 And the rest of the tank, now freely open?

                                  Maybe that would be Gods Grace and Love...

                              Of course once Jesus removed the glass, the entire tank would become Gods Grace and Love...

                                   But by swimming in only a small section, we limit the abundance He freely gives...

                                    I'm probably the only one who finds himself in the small section of the tank, most of the time..

                                       The fact is, if I TRULY trusted Gods words, not only would I be swimming the length of the tank, but when I hit the end I would jump out like a flying fish, into the outside I couldn't see.

                                      Somedays I do venture past where the glass divider used to be. There are moments that my spirit has leapt out of the tank into deeper and cleaner and better water that The Lord always provided, when I leapt.

                                   The problem is, that my memory is short, and that does quite a number on Faith...

                                I think that may be why I write things down, sometimes. To remember and remind myself that every time I leapt I was either caught or landed well enough to stand back up and jump again.

                                     Faith and memory are so closely tied together.

                                       

                                        All we need to do is to remember Gods track record, as my Pastor always says... 

                                          Faith can never wither, if we keep doing that.

                                     

Plans, trains or automobiles???

                   My Wonderful Wife turned fifty in September and chose to spend it with me, at a nice little romantic getaway for the two of us...

                                     

                                      Soon it will be my turn to plan...

                               Between us, we will be one hundred...

           

               Of course I am planning somewhere on the North Atlantic, ocean view and a pier I can stand on. The Wonderful Wife thinks it may be a bit cold for this in mid-March.

                                                    Silly her...

         The ocean is supposed to be cold. Truthfully, you shouldn't be able to tell the difference in water temperature, whether it is June or February. That is the North Atlantic's charm. If you want warm and calm, you should just go to the Florida Keys. But if you want to experience the true soul of the Seas grandeur, you must go north.

                    A friend of mine at work, when hearing me talk of planning this trip, asked if I were going alone. I laughed a bit and told him no. Actually, at that point in time, I was planning bringing all three McMonkeys with us...

                                   When I told him that, he laughed...

                           I jokingly told MaryAnne what my friend had said, about me going alone. She told me that she wouldn't have a problem with that. Then I laughed.

                                     A lot of laughing going on here...

                         In the midst of my craziest days, somewhere between my getting sober and entering the laughing academy, I would often pack my sea bag, put on my old navy pea coat and wool watch cap and head to the nearest bus station. The ticket lady would ask me where I was planning to go and I would tell her just sell me a ticket for the next bus that was going to any ocean, up north...

                               I loved traveling alone, eating alone, going to the shore alone...

                        I never had a problem with going to the movies or dinner by myself.

                                         

                                                       I'm not that guy today.

             He's still in there, somewhere, hoping that the guy I am would just pack his bag and go.

                  He'd probably be just as happy if I didn't pack a bag at all, as long as the bus, train or automobile was heading north east, until the road became sand...

                                         I'd like to say that when emotions and fears come up deep inside, this idiots ears didn't perk up, like a dog hearing someone say the word "walk"...

                                       But the truth is, sometimes they do.

                            

                                        The funny thing is that what once was Heaven for me, today would break my heart. 

                                  My soul then was one of a loner. Now it is the soul of a husband and father.

                 What once brought me a few days of peace, today would only be a constant reminder of what I didn't have in my sea bag and didn't pack...

                                 The lady who's arm wasn't wrapped around me and the children who weren't nudging each other out of the way, to lean against their dad...

                    Years ago, every answer I ever thought I  needed could be found standing alone, staring outwards past the breaking waves, on the horizon.

                 Every answer I need today can be found holding my family close and praying to our Loving God....

                      When I am sad or grieving or lost, that is where I find my answers and my peace.

                                        

                                                           They are my Ocean...

                               

                            So I have no clue exactly where we are going. I do know that any trip will include us all. I still would like to taste the salt of the chilly winds and watch the clumps of seaweed being pushed up the beach, with the incoming tide. I want to put my hands in the frigid water and splash it gloriously into my face...

             I want to watch my inquisitive and short sighted kids running thru the surf in the only pair of sneakers they brought with them and capture that incredulous and confused look on their mothers face, as she wonders just how someone with her inherent intelligence and common sense could birth McMonkey that fit into the easily distractable mold of their father...

                             And to see it turn into perplexed laughter as she gets the shorthand we have, as we look into each others eyes,  mine asking her gently, what did she expect?!?

                                                     I mean really, she did marry me...

                               I remember about four years ago we all went on one of the big paddle boats on Lake George. It was mixed reactions between the kids on whether they were enjoying it.

                I remember looking toward the back and seeing Nick sitting in a deck chair and staring quietly and contently, past the boats wake. 

                        For a moment, I smiled with a pride of companionship, at my eldest son, barely eight years old, staring out, like his dear old dad...

                                       Today that memory haunts me, a little bit...

                      I hope as he gets older, that he keeps his peace with God and the ones he loves instead of scanning the horizon for something different, that gives him calm but not love..

                                      It is not just my hope. It is my prayer...

Trusting authority...

                             I read in the paper an interesting story...

                   A Washington County church pastor had been talking to a group of heroin addicts and listened as they told him how they needed space for an outreach for those addicted. He walked them thru his churches buildings and mentioned that they had space. He said they could look at doing it there.

     A young lady, a heroin addict, said she was surprised. She told him that she didn't think people like her would be welcome in a church...

                   The Pastor said he cried when he heard her say that.

          He told that story to his congregation and all 200 of them came up and surrounded him after the service, saying they wanted to do it.

                       He went away for a trip and when he returned a large section of the churches neighbors came to him and showed him a flyer that the group of addicts had made up and passed around, stating they would be doing outreach to addicts in the community, from the church.

                The Pastor was surprised, as this was the first time he had seen the flyer.

                          A dozen neighbors showed up at the village board meeting and addressed their concerns. They didn't want drug users or criminals in their neighborhood. A realtor had told one woman the resale value on her house would drop 10 percent and she promised legal action against the church if they were not happy with the action taken. One person said they had a 14 year old in the churches youth program. He said they weren't against it, just put it someplace else...

          The Pastor soon announced that the church would no longer play a part in hosting a recovery center. Much of the decision was based on the respect and care for  the churches neighbors, the Pastor said...

                                             I didnt know how to feel about this...

                     Initially, I judged this man harshly. Not a good reaction for a professed Christian.

                                               Not a good reaction, at all...

                                   After days of struggling with " the proper response" I should have and not knowing, I simply decided that I would have Faith in this good mans judgement.

                                              I chose to realize that the burden of his congregation and community was given to him by God. I chose to respect his authority and judgement, and I chose to pray for him, his congregation and his community...

                                      That is not the reaction I would have had six years ago...

                                     I have been blessed to be part of a Church with amazing Pastors whose decisions in the past, I disagreed with. I have shared this with them many times, explaining that when I prayed to God for wisdom and direction for my response, He simply told me to keep going, sit down and shut up...

                     Yes, that is exactly how my God answered my prayers...

                             So I hemmed and hawwed and searched for anything I could find to justify my discontent. I dissected sermons given, looking for fault...

         I ranted at times to my lovely Wonderful Wife, and at times mumbled about leaving this Church I loved, out of principal...

        She suggested I pray over it. I told her I had and that Gods response was for me to keep going, sit down and shut up...

                    Quietly, this spiritually faithful woman suggested I listen to God and perhaps practice obedience....

                           As week went to week and month went to month, I began to see the Wisdom of our Church leaders decisions. 

                                                       I realized I was wrong...

                                In the years since, I have spoken with most all of the people whose decision I initially disagreed with. I listened to how they all had prayed and searched scripture, searched their hearts and put their God and His Church first. How broken hearted they were over those who chose to leave the fold rather than accept the choices of those whom God placed in authority over them...

                                I am not inclined, by my nature to respect authority, but I have been excessively blessed to witness exactly why I should be.

                                 So today, I trust the judgement of a man I never met. I trust the God who placed him in an extremely difficult circumstance and the fact that he made a choice that probably broke his heart. I do not have his burden of leadership. I will never understand the weight he carries.

                              I am grateful that he carries it, though. 

                               

The great American rubber duck race...

                           As I looked around my surroundings and perused my families motions, I began to realize how strange my life seems to be peopled.

                          I remembered a trip to the county fair a few years ago. My children were fascinated by the rubber baby duck stand.

               You know the one... Where rubber ducks with Sharpie written numbers on their little yellow buttocks, circle the the continuos oval waterway, encompassing the gaming tent it inhabits...

              Kids pick up the duck, look at the number on its butt and get a prize.

                     They have absolutely no idea what kind of prize they will receive, but they have extremely high hopes. It never matters what they get because it is new and a treasure...

                                              It's kind of like having kids.

                              As Forrest said, you never know what you're going to get...

                    I know he was talking chocolate, but Forrest Gump was a pretty intuitive guy. I think he would agree with this comparison.

                               I mean, who can really argue with rubber ducks?!?

                Now I am overjoyed with all three of our " picks". I cannot picture a better group or a better fit. But sometimes you watch your little waddlers twirl in circles or float backwards, bouncing off the tiny duck bumpers, alongside the stream, and wonder if it would have been simpler if the tattoo on their buttocks were a few digits different...

                            But with kids, you tend to take it in stride. The little yellow duck booth gives no promises or warranties. You know that going in. At best, it's a coin toss, trying to predict the personality and heart of the duck that you get...

                        The best thing is that there are no losers in the race.

                            You just have to find the rhythm in their waddle...

                        You study their wanderings, observe their grazing patterns and pay attention to the tone of their quacks.

                        And never let what you initially expected, overshadow the priceless you have...

                             It doesn't stop with the children. If you really stop to think about it, it kind of ties into your choice in a spouse...

                       I know. It is completely different with a spouse, your saying. You spent a LOT of time picking them out of that little stream. You studied them intently as they glided through the gently flowing roundabout, assessing how they reacted to the little turbulent areas of waves.

                      Your eyes never left them, circling and happily bobbing, as they traveled the watery course. At the right time, you picked them up and double checked that Sharpie stamp.

                                               Of course, you had to be sure...

                              But after the popcorn was gone and you'de finished the cotton candy, you left the county Fair parking lot and headed home.

                        Sometimes both ducks stare at each other and wonder if there is some non chalant way they can re-check that Sharpie mark again... Make sure it's still the same...

                      Marriage is like that. You sometimes look confusedly at the duck you picked and see someone completely different.

                        And again, you find you have to find the rhythm in their waddle, because it's changed a little bit... 

               So you study their waddling, observe their grazing and pay a little more attention to the tone of their quack. You remember that you both are winners in this little race and never let what you expected overshadow all the priceless that you have...

      My Wonderful Wife is not the woman that I married. I thank God every day for that. I adored and immensely loved who she was, but the woman she has become outshines the one she used to be, every single time...

         Sometimes I struggle with the changes and the differences. Not because they're not better, because they certainly are. I struggle because they are different and different can be... different...

                                              Does that make any sense?

                                 I would pick that duck again, every single time...

                     I am not the same duck she originally picked. In some ways I hope I'm better. I hope when she non chalanty checks that Sharpie mark that still is legible on my buttocks, she smiles and says " Yep. It's still him"...

                       My crown feathers are a bit more scarce and the layer of fat between the flesh and pin feathers is certainly thicker nowadays. I still spin in tiny circles when I'm bored and bounce a little too freely on tiny duck bumpers, along the way.

                    I know she has had to work at it, at times...

                                     Maybe, it's  not work...Married to me, it probably is.

                                But maybe,  it IS all in the symphony of the waddling...

                                     Don't ask me. I still think my kids are ducks...

                           

                                

Passing the torch...

                     I burnt my head on our fireplace, while attempting to repair it...

                                            Not my hair. My head.

                             Both of my youngest McMonkeys asked me with flicker of fear in their eyes, if what I was doing was safe. Could I possibly get hurt? It looked dangerous, they said.

                       I told them it was completely impossible to get injured, head lodged in a propane fireplace and using a Zippo lighter to try to trick the thermocouple that senses the pilot lights heat, to open the main burner valve.

                                 I knew what I was doing...

       They laughed, accepted my pronouncement and went outside in the snow, on their merry way.

                     At dinner Stephen asked what happened to my head. I offhandedly mentioned I may have singed it on the propane insert...

                            You see, I knew what I was doing. Anybody remotely aware of there surroundings and with a wit of intelligence could have sidestepped this little flesh fricasse...

                               But I got frustrated and hurried. This had worked a half dozen of times in the past, in one quarter of the time.

                                  I forgot, without the fake log to dissipate the heat, how hot the top shroud would get. My sweaty head bumped the shroud and singed a four inch line across the top of my scalp.

                                                                  Twice.

              Of course twice. I never have ever made a mistake, just once...

                        On a happier note, my eldest ran the snowblower for the first time. No issues, he was intuitive and safe. I watched him walk out of the bathroom, after dinner and saw one of those commercial replays of him going thru the same door at age five, age seven, age nine and age twelve, in my mind...

                                     I realized I'm becoming obsolete.

                  Most all the things that need doing, my children are old enough and smart enough, to do...

                    Mowing the lawn, cooking their meals, getting ready for bed, dad not needed.

                        For someone intent on not missing the small moments, it seems many of them have passed even though I was present. I didn't miss them, but they passed anyway...

                         So I manage to keep a few niches to myself, like gas grills and fireplaces...

                                      At least I keep things interesting....

Reality , what a concept...

                      I have been sick recently. In the past few weeks I have managed to dive out of bed, jump from a straightened out recliner I had been gently sleeping in, and a day later, drove off of the road, into an adjacent snow filled field.

        OK, I can't blame the car on sleeping. Sick, but awake...

                    What these occasions all shared were the simple fact, that I was sick and tired and in a " zone".

            I always have had the habit, since early childhood,  of jumping out of bed and running thru the house and down the stairs, without light, without thought and without memory.

                     Many nights in the cobwebbed past would find my oldest brother running down the back staircase and my other brother following me down the front one, both trying to stop me before I left the house...

             I would be screaming, trapped in a nightmare that my mind and body respondeded, not by what it saw or heard externally, but what was transpiring inside my little noggin...

                       To my body, the dream was real and true events were imaginary.

                              My neurologist called them " night terrors"...

                 I spent years terrified, waking up in the morning with bruises and scrapes I didn't go to sleep with, slinking down the stairs and seeing one brother or the other with welts and scratches, looking up from the kitchen table, angry and tired.

                The dreams weren't real but the situations they created were.

                           Kind of makes you wonder what " real" is....

                    I spent entirely to many years of my life being a mixologist of both legal and illegal chemical compounds, and have had what some would call " hallucinations".

                       I remember one night, walking back from a bar about a mile and a half from my house.

It was cold and clear. -10 below zero cold and the mixology that night, included some extremely special mushrooms. The trees were bare and the remaining  branches were glazed in ice. My peripheral vision picked them up, following me, these silent , tiny and incredibly evil tree people, jumping tree to tree, branch to branch, just beyond the limits of my peripheral vision.

            I entered my house, insane smile frozen to my face, climbed the stairs, turned off the lights and crawled under my bedcovers, still seeing the ice sparkled eyes of the tree people, terrorizing me...

        ...even without lights on.

                   They sure seemed real. On cold, clear nights I still look twice over my shoulder, wondering if their still there.

                                 So what makes something " real"?

                                     Emotion?

                                     Reason?

                                     Sanity?

                           Of course, tree people don't exist. Especially in the daytime and if you have never experienced their hallucinated presence... But if you have experienced them in their irrationality and impossibility, you may find yourself gently questioning their invalidity, as the cold wind blows across the hairs of your neck, alone, at night...

                               What Pavlov has proven to me can seem irrefutable while at the same time being impossible.

                      My brain sure does the freak thing, late at night...

                                 Those who know Faith understand that it's presence is Infinitaly greater than any taught knowledge. You don't always know when you have it. And sometimes there is a lag between the having and the knowing and the feeling...

                                                   But it is real...

                                     When you see someone with real Faith, you know it.

                    Even if you don't have it yourself, it is obvious, when seen in someone else..

                               But you do see something, and it reaches inside you, just a little bit.

                                            It quietly, silently asks a question...

                                            It asks you to believe with them...

                                         It asks you to choose what is " real"...

                                   

                                               A funny thing happened recently...

                                     One of the biggest questions alcoholics have as they enter recovery is exactly when they became a drunk. It is usually an impossible question and many get so lost in it, they end up relapsing instead of dealing with their disease. It is a common enough occurrence that A.A. has a saying. " Once you become a pickle, you will never be a cucumber again. The when it happened doesn't matter"..

                           I never knew when my drinking changed to desperate and destructive. I had a general idea, plus or minus a few years...

                                            But I never knew exactly when...

               A friend, a couple of months ago, wondered why I saw myself as such a bad egg, back then.

     She never saw that in me. I've had a few different people express that sentiment, in the past twenty years or so...

                                     It all clicked into place a few weeks ago....

                         I remember exactly when I began hating and despising myself, over stupid choices that led me to believe I was something evil and unforgivable...  

                                     I just didn't know it, at the time...

                                      It was a lie, perpetrated in my own brain.

                                            All created in my own head.

                                              That never happened...

                                 

                                                  So, was that real?!?

                             

                                        I have had many conversations with my God recently.

                           Mostly, wondering how he could let me walk for the majority of my life, caught in a trap of my own setting, grateful that He eventually freed me, but resentful He left me in it for so long...

                        My whole spectrum of emotions have been in a swirling flux, between an overwhelming feeling of grace, from the freedom, to a deep and simmering struggle to understand, bouncing between anger and sadness and loss...

                      Never once before had I ever been upset or confused about the road I chose. I always understood the purpose of it, and my need for following it. I never questioned fairness or Grace withheld.

                                              But ashamedly,  I have, lately...

                  I know that doesn't go well with the Christian identity, but I have moments of questions, questions of what if, questions of who I would have become... Perhaps a much better Christian, without those experiences I dove head first into, in desperation...

                     This is true insanity. I have been Graced with the best of the best...

       The best and most Wonderful Wife. The best three McMonkeys ever to swing in a tree.

       The best Church and best friends and best circumstance anyone could ever hope for...

               But somehow, in all the gifts, I still find ghosts of loss.

                           So I pray a lot. I try to run the " philosophical" bend rather than the questioning ones...

                     God chose to let me take all the roads I traveled for His perfect reasons. I always believed they were necessary, but recently I think He could have cut me a little bit of slack, back then...

                                                 How ungrateful I am.

                                               How terribly human...

                                   So I wasn't guilty of the things I thought I was, but that doesn't matter when God has plans for you...

            I'm not doubting the plans or there implementations. I am not even doubting the results.

                                            I am just sad for loss. Lost time and lost opportunities....

                  Deep down, I know all the whys for the roads. I know why He had me take them.

                        I know He was correct in all He chose. In my soul, I doubt none of it...

                             But in a tiny corner of my heart, I am haunted by " what ifs"..

                                          And a few " What could have beens"...

                                     So Jesus is working on me, taking His time to make me right, in my heart.

                                           Just like every other moment of every single journey, every single road past...