Hide and seek....

                                          Don't whistle in the dark, pretending your not afraid, if your playing " hide and go seek".

                                                                They find you...

                                        That's all the "philosophical" I got tonight....

                            

                                   I am more afraid than I care to admit, and I'm hiding.

                                            It doesn't matter why ( well, it probably does, but I'm hiding tonight and not going there ), but trying to keep busy enough to dodge feelings I cannot change by sheer will, is tiring me out. 

                                                  Distraction is my idol today.

                                        I want to pray, but do not want to feel...

                                                    Not the best combination...

                         So I pray that God sees past my feeble, philosophical attempts, and Blesses me anyway...

                                                

                                         I come from a long line of people who don't do "powerless" particularly well. The family motto has always been " I better do something, even if it's wrong"

                                                          I am powerless...

                                There are situations I cannot fix and people I cannot cure.

                             What answers I have ( that happen to be correct), are not what is wanted to be heard.

                                    There are some who even I , cannot out stubborn...

                                                                  Imagine that.

                                            So I'm doing all the wrong things, purchasing regrets and wasting precious time...

                                                    So I sit here hiding, whistling...

                                                      Best prayer I got to offer, today...

                                            

The Farm...

                                  My brother left to move back to Florida, without a word to my family.

                      Of course he said goodbye to our mother, but no one else.

                            Me, I'm slightly angry, offended and trying almost hard to resist being both resentful and judgmental...

                                 It's not so much me. We never have been especially close, and I am used to this passive- aggressive control deal. I spent a large portion of my life perfecting it, and probably could give him a few pointers in improving its effectiveness.

                        What upsets me most is that he didn't say goodbye to my kids...

                                         They get excited whenever he's up, looking forward to the times they get to see him. He might go outside, once or twice, and toss a football with them, but that's about all the time or attention they get over a summer he's here..

                    A half dozen times, over the course of their childhood...

                                    My brother in laws are exactly the same.

                           None of them will ever know who my McMonkeys really are; the things they love, the passions they have. They may know the obvious, like favorite sports teams, but the little idiocincricies of their hearts will continually elude them.

                                                They are missing so much...

                                                   Not the kids. The adults...

                                   

                                     But in other ways, my bubs have been exceedingly blessed.

                               

                   My family, on my mothers side, have been having a Labor Day picnic for over fifty years. All the relatives, aunts, uncles and cousins eight times removed, show up, hang out and catch up on lives that have drifted in different directions, the preceding eleven months. I get to see four and five generations of family coming together in a living tradition, all in the same place, all on the same day...

                                                       And so do my kids...

                                            When I was younger than my little trio, my mom and dad would load the three of us into our Matador station wagon and drive us up to the farm. I remember my great grandmother wearing a straw hat with dollar bills stuffed into it, donations to be used for steamed clams they cooked...

                                  My aunts and uncles were teenagers, and it felt so cool to have them pay attention to us. I don't think most adults know how good it makes kids feel to not only acknowledge them, but to take interest in them and what they enjoy.

                                     I was certainly blessed, to have grown up in this...

                                                             We all were.

                         For years, in my twenties and mid thirties, I was invited to join the family. Having not been there, for all those years, I felt very uncomfortable going back there.

                    Not because I didn't want to reconnect with my family, because I certainly did. I just hadn't been there in so long and I felt disconnected.

                               Guess that's what happens when you disconnect...

                        One year, my Wonderful Wife and our tiny toddlers showed up. I saw aunts and uncles that I hadn't seen in decades. Memories came back, amazingly happy ones...

                         I remember going to visit my grandfather and grandmothers house when I was tiny . It was one of my favorite places to go, as a child. There was a big field and out back was a stone pile that I could smash with a hammer. Some of the rocks looked like marble...

                         Of course, the coolest thing there was an outhouse.

                          Still functional. I used it quite a few times. Super cool...

                              It was so strange. My mother always acted ashamed of that house. I looked forward to seeing my grandfather ( my hero and namesake) and grandmother, aunts and uncles.

                    We used to walk down the street to a tiny store and buy candy...

                                     

                                     I now get to see my gracefully aging aunts and uncles, great aunts and everyone else that I just classify as " cousins"...

                       I am so grateful that my McMonkey clan is included,and invited into this....

                         I am so grateful for those carrying this tradition on and for the people who plan their vacations around its date and make the trek from many states away, to come...

                                 I am grateful that I can bring my children to connect to another generation, that may just bring them treasured memories of their own childhood, as they grow up...

                               So, I'm not really mad at my disappearing sibling...

                                         I guess. I'm just sad. Not so much for us. We miss him, but the kids are getting used to it.

                                       I'm sad that so much of the " real " stuff that life tries to Grace us with is not even seen by him.

                                                                Sad. 

                                                             That's all...

          

The transmorgifier's demise...

                                                                   ACT 2

                 As we were heading out to Church this Sunday morning, four minutes late and still loading the car, my youngest McMonkey begins screaming bloody murder. I finish filling the last water bottle of ours, and then trek the length of our back porch, to the source of said caterwauling.

                It seems the eldest partial primate had walked over a still wet and crumbling card board box that our dishwasher had arrived in, two months ago...

                                Oldest son screams to the near dying( by all rational observations) youngest one, who is probably going to be a theater major, that all he did was walk on a stupid piece of garbage-cardboard box.

                               As with most things in my family, the backstory might add understanding, but not necessarily sanity, to the second act of this play...

    

                                                                ACT 1 

                    Our dishwasher,many moons ago, began turning on at various times, by itself, day or night; sometimes it began an entire wash cycle, while at other times just adding an extra rinse, five or six hours after it had sanitized and stopped. Being an industrial electrician, I studied, ordered parts and installed them. The ghosts inhabiting the appliance seemed happy with the added attention, and increased their shenanigans, three- fold.

                        I figured that dishes and pots were getting extra clean; my Wonderful Wife, thought otherwise...

                             Thinking that swapping out the unit for a new one would be easier than another repair, I smiled and acquiesced.

                                 My family tends to have very long back stories...

                In the end, the swap was not easier, I used a few words that my kids would be grounded for, and my youngest son, Jacob, became proud owner of a brand new, industrial grade, form fitting, cardboard box.

                           Markers of all colors and types disappeared from our house. The ghosts that inhabited the dishwasher seemed to have transformed into sticky fingered poltergeists.

                                 Pens, paper, sticky tape, all were fair game...

                       Having given up my search for any implement to make a grocery list, I lounged on the couch. I figured I might need half a bag of potato chips and a nap, to sort this mystery out.

                           Just then, my littlest McMonkey banged and barged thru the house, near screaming ( ok- actually screaming ) DAD! DAD!- YOU GOTTA SEE THIS THING I TOOK THE DISHWASHER BOX AND MADE THE COOLEST FORT IT HAS RED AND GREEN AND I CAN FIT RIGHT IN IT AND IF MOM LETS ME BRING BEAR OUT WE CAN SLEEP IN IT ETC ETC ETC

                    The lack of punctuation was not a mistake. It is exactly how he talks, when excited.

                           He would carry it with him across the yards, both front and back.

             Jacob can be an uncanny cross between Calvin, from " Calvin and Hobbes " and The Little Prince, sometimes..

                  Angelic and deep, caring for his stuffed animals with a love like The Little Prince showed his rose...

                         Imagination so strong that a cardboard box becomes like in the comics, a "Transmorgifier", and a fluffy bear becomes just like a certain stuffed tiger....

                                               You just gotta know Jake...

                       He would bring his box onto the porch or in our garage, for safe keeping.

                                     A week ago, or so, I told him it took up to much space in the garage. His mom said the same thing about our porch.

                              I put it outside, in the space between the porch and the garage, figuring the placement was a good compromise...

                          Of course, the rains came. The once proud fort or spaceship  now became a dilapidated tenement- just not too Jake.

                                  His brother saw it wet and wrinkled, and stomped it...

                         

                                                                   Act 3

                                        

                                 The first thing I did that morning was to get them all on the inside of my house. I didn't want anybody thinking Jake was really dying and calling 911 or Social Services...

                                         So I tried to explain to the two perplexed older brothers a lesson that I didn't even know how to describe to myself...

                    I hemmed and hawed, trying to find the words to help them understand how something seemingly worthless, like an old, withered box could be precious to someone.

                                    Try explaining that to a twelve and a thirteen year old...

                                                   I stopped in mid sentence.

                                 " Upstairs in my sock drawer, I have notes and pictures that you all have drawn and written, years ago." I said.

                                                    The two older ones smirked, amused and doubting. I looked them in the eye as I began pulling my wallet from my back pocket. " Those letters and pictures are some of the most precious things I have in this house. If there was a fire, after making sure everyone was out, I would grab them all, as I left." As I was saying this my fingers perused my wallet, searching.

                            I pulled out a tiny, handmade million dollar bill that Nick had made for me about eight years ago. Their eyes opened wide in disbelief and puzzlement.

                 " I've had this in my wallet since Nick gave it to me. Every year, when I get a new wallet and go thru all the " stuff" that gets collected, I hold this in my hands and remember getting it. I put it next to any few real dollars I might have. You're mom watched once,as I switched things, from one to another, as puzzled as you guys are now.

 She asked why I didn't throw that away, because he had made thousands of them, some still stuck in her vacuum cleaner."

                                       I couldn't explain it well to her then, either.

                         All three of my boys looked touched and surprised. Nick was actually smiling.

                              " If someone found this piece of paper on our porch, they would throw it away, without a thought"... I said as I gently placed it back in the outside flap.

                                  For a millisecond, I think they got it. Soon, they were arguing and justifying, again...

                            I told them that this was a subtle lesson that probably wouldn't mean anything to them for a very long time. 

                                                        " Huh?" they replied.

                                                       You gotta love teens...

                      

Sand between the toes and a Jackson Pollack thought train...

                                     We spent a week at the ocean, slamming into rogue waves on the beach, riding their crests and intermittently being pile driven into the sandy bottom...

                                Is there a better description anywhere, of Heaven?

                     My lungs and sinuses cleared up, and once again, one week out of the year, I lived without an otherwise chronic cough.

                          I fought crazy currents whose sole intent was to drive me north, with an unending barrage of mass and force. There were extended moments where I actually won, for a while...

                             Each day, I left exhausted, scraped, sunburnt and bruised.

                                                           Glorious...

                     But all ecstasies harbor a bit of of nagging agravation and discomfort. Mine is always the trip from the berm to the boardwalk; when the sand grinds between the toes and rubs against my sandals straps...

                     Love the beach but hate the sand, sticking to my piggly digits...

                                        It's gotta be something, doesn't it?

                                That sand washes off with a quick blast of the hose, but there is a sand that works its way into you, from sources God surrounds you with; the things that haunt you and grind uncomfortably into your soul.

                           I escaped all thoughts of work and all the things home that normally weigh upon my mind and heart. I dodged the ghosts of worry and fears, for those loved, not with us...

          I managed to set aside, moment by moment, the guilt of abandoning sick relatives, whose lives would not be improved measurably, even if I were present.

                                        But those grains of sand rubbed against my soul, anyway...

                        When God leaves these grains, it is to irritate, as much as polish. He wants us to be haunted, as He instills convictions that we really don't want and would rather not have...

                                  So he leaves grains of sand instead of seeds...

                       Seeds are comfortable. They grow gently and bring gradual, beautiful and predictably measurable growth. Given the choice- always choose seeds...

                       Sand is consistent, but can exist, irritatingly for decades, if need be.

                               It never becomes comfortable, and grates not only the soul , where it touches, but also the brain, the thoughts and the mind.

                            

                          It seems like the last few seasons, God has been working on my heart...

                                 That was not my choice. Not my choice at all...

                             I prefer logic and and answers with theoretically sanitized outcomes; not faces and souls sitting on a vendors scale, throwing of simple calculation with emotional plea...

                                I had informed God a time or few hundred, that He would surely get much more return on investment by going with my strength. I'm thinking, I tell Him, that my brain, at one time, was clocked pretty high, on the I.Q. machine. Following that stream of logic, investing there, would have made much more sense. 

                        Demonstrating His infinite Wisdom, God totally ignored my well thought out plan; of course, in a complete opposite direction, He leads ( boots) me ( my buttocks) into areas foreign and terrifying.

                                The work is not complete, but today I cannot see individuals simply as variables in economic equations, or accept the term " collateral damage" easily, in my soul.

               Labels and preconceptions and margins of error, today cannot erase the actual people that always fell under them.

                              Uncomfortable. Difficult. Maddeningly complex and confusing...

                                         But the moments of peace in my soul are now more frequent, and not nearly as " theoretical"...

                                      Guess that damned sand had a purpose, after all...

                            

                                    There has been other sand that was poured in, long ago...

                           

                             All I can say is, that soon, God will be working on my mind...

                               Thought I would be more comfortable with this concept.

                                                                 I'm not...