I remember a day in my childhood, at my grandmother\u2019s; it\u2019s her, my aunt, my first cousin, and me, the little boy kid. They were going through a photo album, mostly black \u2018n white, page after page was Remember Them, Remember When, and every time they\u2019d flip to a new page it was \u201cahh\u201d and \u201cawww\u201d and \u201cohhh\u201d. I didn\u2019t know what bittersweet was, but I was hearing the sounds pronounced.<\/p>\n
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Bittersweet is being old enough to notice you\u2019re getting forgetful, yet still remembering your childhood landline phone number. It\u2019s remembering calls on Christmas day from faraway relatives, passing the phone from person to person, with urgency, because long distance was expensive. It\u2019s when \u201cwork\u201d was a few Saturday morning chores that interrupted your real job, playing. Bittersweet are memories of childhood summers of gone-all-day, peeing outdoors, the adults not worried, because they knew you\u2019d be home for supper. It\u2019s driving by your first grade teacher\u2019s house and remembering teachers who were mother\/teachers and teacher\/mothers and grace o\u2019 God, good for you… There\u2019s a house that mattered, and it\u2019s still there, but the people that made it matter are no more\u2026and you\u2019d have to knock on a door that once was never locked for you, and let strangers peek through the little hole\u2026 It\u2019s an empty lot, or a WalMart, but it used to be something else, something special. You\u2019re getting old and realize that almost nobody that drives by knows what it used to be. Bittersweet is seeing your high school class on a billboard as you enter town, District Champs, State Champs, O what a time, and then doing the calendar math\u2026and then remembering crazy still-keeping-his-secret, who climbed the water tower with a can of black spray paint, to say Class of 19xx We Were Here\u2026and smiling at the irony, that now he\u2019s the mayor. Bittersweet is remembering early bouts with death, a goldfish on its side, a moment of silence and then down the toilet, or the puppy that got buried in a shoe box in the shade of the oak tree. Their death was a Big Deal at the time but nothing like hearing Taps at your grandfather\u2019s funeral and Amazing Grace at your grandmother\u2019s\u2026 Bittersweet is watching your parents get old. Momma might have hid the gray, but there\u2019s no hiding the wobble in her walk. It\u2019s being the first one in the family with a fancy answering machine, and the last to get an iPhone, which you use to call youngsters, for help, to install a weather app.<\/p>\n
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I remember in my twenties, my antennae up for change, open to fad, hoping for cool, but when I went home to Maw Maws I wanted everything JustTheSame. She had a yellow cookie jar, a little woodpecker toothpick holder, and some tourist souvenir, a piece of cedar with a thermometer on it that someone had brought home from Hot Springs, Arkansas; there was nothing to covet, but I\u2019d have mourned if any of it had been rearranged. Home was home, and solid, until I left, and the leaving changed me, and I found it true, that you can never go home again. You don\u2019t want to undo the growth in you, but there\u2019s a cost to new rings on the tree.<\/p>\n
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Bittersweet is remembering your grandmother\u2019s favorite lipstick and perfume. You\u2019d never wear either, not once, but for her, all the decades you knew her\u2026 Bittersweet is the smell of your grandfather\u2019s denim work jacket, or remembering how he spliced the broken laces on his work shoes rather than buy new ones, or the empty nail on his garage wall, where his old wooden handled hammer used to hang. It\u2019s remembering the first time your grandfather let you hold a silver dollar, or the way your grandmother kept coins in a little leather coin purse, or the little widow down the pew in your childhood church, who used to give you a Dentyne gum after church if you\u2019d behaved, and the way she reached into her purse just before the deacons passed the plate and untied a knot in a handkerchief and plucked a few quarters and dimes and put them in the offering. Bittersweet is Something Happening and back in the day you knew just who to tell, and how\u2019d they\u2019d react, but now it\u2019s life without them, and there\u2019s a hole for things-like-this, and nobody to fill it. Best you can do is say At Least I Once Had It. I don\u2019t know if envy is the word, but it\u2019s in the vicinity, when I\u2019m around people who are still friends with people from childhood. And by friends, I don\u2019t mean acquaintances, but friends, like it used to be, like it\u2019s been through all these life stages, like it still is\u2026 We all grow, and change, but all I\u2019ve known is growing taking me away, from what I was, to what I\u2019m meant to be. My path, my pace, my pulse: they don\u2019t tell you that all that go-find-yourself is each-to-his-own. And there\u2019s a cost. I\u2019d pay it still, but it\u2019s not cupholder and ashtray change. Bittersweet is having a big table in a room rarely used; most meals are on the couch, with the TV for company\u2026or the opposite, trapped in a large gathering and feeling that worst kind of loneliness, invisible within a crowd.<\/p>\n
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Not a day goes by on Facebook where some mother isn\u2019t posting a picture of a child, with a caption wishing time would slow down. I don\u2019t remember the exact moment when I quit sitting in my mother\u2019s lap, but there was one, and as I aged she kept reaching for contact, come-sit-next-to-me, come-gimme-a-big-long-hug-like-you-used-to, let-me-scratch-your-back-like-when-you-were-little, but I was too wanting-to-grow-up, then too teenage, then I was too young adult, then I was too adult, and what had been\u2026never was again. She never wanted me to stay a child, but there was a cost to raising a future adult.<\/p>\n
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Bittersweet is going to church and figuring that God\u2019s still as here as He ever was, but all the old songs you knew by heart are no longer sung. Bittersweet is a couple celebrating an anniversary and it\u2019s all going-through-the-motions. There was a Was and now you wonder if it was true, and if so, could be again. And so you pray, because what else can you do, as looking-for-love as you ever were, so why not reach out to Him with the corner on whole and lasting love\u2026 When you were young you never understood why your mother wasted so much time tending plants and here you are, about the age she was, tending an heirloom from her, and wondering who\u2019s been nibbling on the leaves in the night. A tomato is a tomato is a tomato, except for you, because it reminds you of your father and his garden, the smell of turned dirt, and the cat that used to rub up against his leg when he went out to check the rows in the morning dew.<\/p>\n
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The Cushion Of Grace I think God is kinder than we know. We get all on-our-knees when something big hits our attention, but I think His hand is always there, even for those who never pray. Sure, we can be mad at ourselves for not smelling the roses when they were blooming, but God understands us, and allows us to not-see-it-coming and then once change comes, we find that God has already installed a great reserve of strength, to help us absorb the blow, and then the healing, a slow motion miracle, and there we stand, on some new plateau, a new view, a new us, and an opportunity to get this stage right, where we see what is, for what it is, and treat it with respect and honor. I also think He does not heal us of bittersweet. For the having we owe the not having. It seems a fair deal; my bitter cannot fill a coffee cup \u2013 my sweet cannot fit in a stadium. As I get older the subtleties of God are more obvious. What else to do, as I go from here, but to trust that the Giver of Life intends on a sweet ending?<\/p>\n
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This edition of Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where we think a sentimental heart is worth all the having and the memories of having. <\/em><\/p>\n Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories can be found on the Eighty-one Facebook page. Any did-good and keep-doing messages are welcome at 81creativity@gmail.com. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I remember a day in my childhood, at my grandmother\u2019s; it\u2019s her, my aunt, my first cousin, and me, the little boy kid. They were going through a photo album, mostly black \u2018n white, page after page was Remember Them, Remember When, and every time they\u2019d flip to a new page it was \u201cahh\u201d and [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1076,894],"yoast_head":"\n