I’m okay, and you’re probably okay too
It was a few month back when I had my annual physical examination. After paying little regard to my health during my teens and twenties, I’ve become much more attentive since hitting the big 3-0.
Right about the time I entered my thirties I noticed I couldn’t go up and down the basketball court like I once could. An afternoon of flinging the pigskin around with the fellas left me with a sore arm the next day.
While I’m hardly fitness buff, and certainly don’t eat as well as I should, I try to offset this by making regular visits to my local “sawbones” for a comprehensive physical examination. Each year he says the same things: all my numbers are good, I need to exercise more, and take it easy on dairy and the fried foods. Aside from the occasional sinus infection every other year or so, I’m seldom under the weather. I haven’t missed a day of work for a health-related matter in years, knock on wood and praise God.
Our $2 million library is a bargain at any price
It was my great pleasure to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony at our new $2 million library last week. I was far from alone, as hundreds of people from all over East Texas were on hand to see the fruits of the McMillan Foundation’s generosity. I am thrilled with how it has turned out. My family and I have stopped by regularly since it opened the following Monday and look forward to countless visits in the days, months, years, to come.
However, it’s not all roses and rainbows. Since news of this endeavor first became public several months back, there’s been more than one individual who has voice their displeasure with this project to me.
A cynic rediscovers Valentine’s Day
For the better part of my adulthood I’ve vacillated between extremes when it comes to Valentine’s Day.
On one hand I’ve often decried the overt commercialism of the day, to dismiss the day as a wholesale invention of the greeting card industry. I’ve often been ‘that guy’ who refuses to go along with the consumerist bacchanalia to vain sentiment and maudlin displays of trite affection.
On the other hand, I’m a shameless old-school Romantic of the “sentiment by impulsive theatrics” variety. The stories of my exploits are legion. Don’t believe me?
Communicate slowly, live a three-dimensioned life…
I go among the trees
and sit still.
All my stirring becomes
quiet around me
like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them,
asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives for a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes
and I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations...
...I hear my song at last, and I sing it.
As we sing, the day turns,
the trees move.
Having our baby in Henderson
Last week my wife and I welcomed our fifth child into the world: “Xander” was born in the early evening hours of Jan. 30 at ETMC Henderson.
Child, Roland
O you,
most fearful,
child of my house.
O you,
in whom I have aged
nine years in nine months.
A burden,
and not a burden,
But a blessing unknown.
Child all of hopes,
benedictions,
dreams,
blights.
In nightmares
you've been lost to me
l o s t nightly
in tear-stained sleeplessness.
I am one of fearful mettle,
trembling
I hold, what I hold tightest.
Many faults are held deeper,
beating within my chest
a chest of false fire,
and a torch yet unlit.
As with all your others,
I cast you off,
a small stone
sunk into the raging tide,
a crimson arrow
hurled into the dark of night,
flung wildly
like a hope and a prayer.
My graying mane and weary eyes grow old,
seeing last new son of my household born.
Emerging in haste, a secret now told.
poems of His promise, my lineage adorned.
To my son on the day of his birth…
Dear Lamb,
Today is the first moment I’ve had to stop amidst the harried hubbub of task and obligation to sit and write a few lines in observance of your birth, these two days prior.
Oh, and if you are confused: I call you “Lamb” right now because you are so quiet and serene in your conduct, save for a few grunts that sound more like bleats whenever you are hungry or need to be changed.
So, I call you “Lamb” for now. It doesn’t seem to have caught on with anyone else, but I like it… I once read that Eleanor of Aquitaine called Richard the Lionheart “Lamb” his entire life, even after he was well established as one of the great barbarians of the Crusades.
I don’t know how old you’ll be when you read this letter, but I beg your indulgence… this letter was not written to the hulking, red-headed and hairy-legged incarnation you will likely become sixteen years from now, but to the wide-eyed and fuzzy-cheeked cherub whom I can hold burrowed into my arm.
