My grandson Sam has an iPhone. If i remember correctly, he is close to the age we gave Sarah hers, although it was a long time before iPhones. i will not be a curmudgeon (for a moment) and make some dumbshit observation about walking to school in the snow without a cell phone when i was young. In fact, i think it’s a good thing he has one: it has a security aspect in that he can get in touch with his mother or father when he might be confronted with a problem. It also is giving him what has become an essential life skill, the capability to use a phone and electronics, the world of the cloud.

It also gives me the ability to communicate with him at any time. We have “Facetimed” together once, on which i commented here several weeks ago. i have been trying to figure out what i could do when and what i shouldn’t do when when Blythe, my daughter, Sam’s mother, clued me in — i take some substantial “clueing in” a lot according to Blythe, my other daughter Sarah, and Maureen.

So this afternoon, knowing Sam would be at soccer practice, i decided to text him to give him some encouragement about practice. It was then i realized i know no soccer terms except “GOOOAAALLL!!!” And man, i hate that almost as “Going, Going, Gone.”

My terms of encouragement back in my sports days were fairly simple:

Basketball: “Don’t double dribble”/”Keep your hands up” / “Use a bounce pass.”

Football: “Kick ’em long”/”Hit ’em hard”/”Watch his belly button; he can’t fake you out with that.”

Baseball: “Swing level”/”Use your body to block the ball”/Use both hands to catch a fly”

There seems to be little cross over. “Kick ’em long” seems about the only one which might apply to soccer. But is that a good thing?

What a pickle.

Today, my father would have been 102.

He was my best friend.

He said little to me in terms of how to live my life. I am pretty sure i only received about four letters from him my entire life. Later, he said very little on the phone, letting my mother do the talking.

Everything he did, everything he said, and everything he wrote had a powerful impact on me.

And boy, did we enjoy laughing together.

And i must say separating my thoughts about him from those about my mother is just flat impossible.

i am one very lucky man.

i miss him, but i also learned from him life moves on, and our task is to live it well, and do the right thing, regardless of the circumstances. So i will once again repeat one of favorite poems i wrote about him.

Hands, circa 2009

When most folks meet him,
they notice steel blue eyes and agility;
his gaze, gait and movements
belie the ninety-five years;
but
those folks should look at his hands:
those hands could make Durer cry
with their history and the tales they tell.

His strength always was supple
beyond what was suggested from his slight build.
His hands are the delivery point of that strength.
His hands are not slight:
His hands are firm and thick and solid –
a handshake of destruction if he so desired, but
he has used them to repair the cars and our hearts;

His hands are marked by years of labor with
tire irons, jacks, wrenches, sledges, micrometers on
carburetors, axles, brake drums, distributors
(long before mechanics hooked up computers,
deciphering the monitor to replace “units”
for more money in an hour than he made in a month
when he started in ’34 before computers and units).
His hands pitched tents,
made the bulldozers run
in war
in the steaming, screaming sweat of
Bouganville, New Guinea, the Philippines.

His hands have nicks and scratches
turned into scars with
the passage of time:
a map of history, the human kind.

Veins and arteries stand out
on the back of his hands,
pumping life itself into his hands
and beyond;
the tales of grease and oil and grime,
cleaned by gasoline and goop and lava soap
are etched in his hands;

they are hands of labor,
hands of hard times,
hands of hope,
hands of kindness, caring, and love:
oh love, love, love, crazy love.

His hands speak of him with pride.
His hands belong
to the smartest man I know
who has lived life to the maximum,
but in balance, in control, in understanding,
gaining respect and love
far beyond those who claim smartness
for the money they earned
while he and his hands own smartness
like a well-kept plot of land
because he always has understood
what was really important
in the long run:
smarter than any man I know
with hands that tell the story
so well.

i can’t think of many things much better than an instant of today.

i drove up to spend some way too infrequent time with Renee Hoskins and her daughter Kinsley. Renee served in the Marines, is now going to school full time with plans to get her masters in gerontology health and wellness (or something like that: Renee straighten me out if this is wrong), working, continually fighting the VA Bureaucracy to obtain her rightful benefits, and taking care of her daughter. She is nothing short of amazing.

After several months of trying to get together again after a long layoff — Renee lives in Carlsbad, in the north, while we are almost to the border; her schedule, our schedule and the distance makes it difficult — we finally connected but even then, Maureen could not join us due to other commitments.

i drove to the Escondido, arriving at the Children’s Discovery Museum a bit late. Renee and Kinsley were waiting at the door. When i got out of the car, Kinsley jumped up and down, waved, and ran toward me yelling, “Uncle Jim, Uncle Jim.” She ran into my arms; i picked her up, and she gave me a hug around the neck.

And folks, it just doesn’t get much better than that: a great feeling of joy flowing into an old man.

We had a wonderful couple of hours at the museum and a quick lunch. Kinsley is a delightful, well-spoken, obedient, and energetic young girl. Her mother is caring, a strict parent who lets Kinsley grow and develop, and the love between those two is a beautiful thing to observe.

In many ways, Renee reminds me of her grandmother, Nancy Orr Schwarze. Being with someone who resembles a cousin who is so close she is more like a sister can also make my day.

It ain’t quite like being with my grandson, but it’s close. Boy, is it close.

Thanks, Renee.

Today, after Jamie Jacobs posted some family photos, many taken at our old lake cabin in 1974 and another of her grandfather, my uncle Jesse Jewell, i shared and was going to include a link to a poem Uncle Jesse inspired by telling me the story.  He told me the story at Jay and Shirley Smith’s home in Lebanon a year or so before he passed away. It has been revised after my father corrected me on some of the facts. In my old brain, i somehow have moved the year to 1918 rather than the accurate 1913. So here it is, i think again:

Tennessee Steam Engine

Grandpa Cully and son Jesse
back in eighteen,
when my pap was four,
rode the train to Nashville
– a half day’s journey then,
fetching a steam engine,
the first portable saw mill in those parts.

Jesse was a strapping big man then,
a youth, not yet rounded with gut and jowls,
like when i knew him as Uncle;
when he told this story to me in eighty-four:
he wasn’t so strapping at 83,
shriveled into the baggy old man shapelessness,
pale cream complexion with wispy thin, pure white hair,
those eyes still sparking with mirth and caring
in the lazy boy rocker chair in his youngest daughter’s den
that November with the trees bare and grass
straw colored in the brisk sharp sunshine
of Middle Tennessee.
The trip was before Grandpa Cully
lost most of the fingers on his right hand
in that very same steam-driven saw mill on someone’s farm.
his hair had not turned white as it is
in the lone picture i have in the family book.
Uncle Jesse said Grandpa was wiry thin strong like my father
who sat at the other side of the den paying respect to the family,
while i listened to the tale.
Uncle Jesse said Grandpa Cully was more than
pulling his weight rousting the steam engine.

On the way back, driving that steam engine,
they couldn’t make it in one day:
Stopped the night
on a farm in Donelson Uncle Jesse related.
Pretty nice folks to put ’em up
without any idea who they might be.
had a good supper and pleasant conversation.
by my calculation the farm was
pretty close to where they built Opryland,
but the land was still country with
folks a lot more trusting than they are nowadays.

“When there’s static in the air and you can hardly hear
better turn on the radio of the Lord,”
A.P. and Mama Maybelle would intone.
Lonzo and Oscar, Lester and Earl, Foggy Mountain Boys,
even Minnie from Grinders Switch were real;
even Roy Acuff with his cave in Kentucky
would have made the show and held on till
the deep dark of three in the Nashville night
eating long after the opry closed for the night:
porkchopsandeggsandbiscuitsandgravy
with coffee in thick mugs at Linebaugh’s
on Church Street downtown,
just down the hill from the Ryman.

Long after that shiny new steam engine belched toward
Lebanon from the Donelson farm front yard
by Grandpa Cully and Uncle Jesse
did they start the Opry at the Ryman,
even longer before Opryland
sprouted in its full festival of plastic country glory
in that self-same place
where the farm once was, which was
just before the pale, grown soft baby skinned old man
with sagging jowls and kind countenance
would tell me this tale
the last time i saw him.

winds of darkness

oh lord,
i have seen them coming
heard them coming
with thundering hooves and fiendish screams
out of the gray storm clouds,
dark, cumulonimbus storm clouds
and
they sweep darkness over the land:
darkness of
hate, fear
and
me, me, me,
and
mine, mine, mine,
and
there was no sunshine,
just dark
until
the young boy
stood leaning into the wind of darkness’
thundering hooves and fiendish screams
quietly repeating
“i love you,”
and
the darkness did not dissipate
but
but there was certainty it would.

oh lord,
i have seen them coming
heard them coming
with thundering hooves and fiendish screams
out of the gray storm clouds,
dark, cumulonimbus storm clouds
and
they sweep darkness over the land:
darkness of
bigotry, greed, and zealotry
and
there was no sunshine,
just dark
until
the young man
stood tall against the wind of darkness’
thundering hooves and fiendish screams
quietly repeating
“i love you,”
and
the darkness did not dissipate
but
there was the expectancy it would.

oh lord,
i have seen them coming
heard them coming
with thundering hooves and fiendish screams
out of the gray storm clouds,
dark, cumulonimbus storm clouds
and
they sweep darkness over the land:
darkness of
the meaness, selfishness of man
and
there was no sunshine,
just dark
until
the old man
stumbled backward though still fighting against the wind of darkness’
thundering hooves and fiendish screams
quietly repeating
“i love you,”
and
the darkness did not dissipate
but
but there was hope.

and
in the scheme of things
perhaps, perhaps,
that is enough,
hope is enough.