An Auntie with wings

We slipped quietly into the room at the nursing home, purposely not wanting to make a noisy arrival. My Mom reached for her baby sister’s hand and patted and asked how she was feeling on that chilly, sunny Saturday morning.

Had your coffee and donut this morning, sis? Brought you some visitors. Ol’ Joey boy and his fiancé came down from Indianapolis, and Kris’ boy, Logan, are here today.

I moved to the side of her bed, knelt and gently entwined my fingers with hers. Hey, don’t bother to get up. Just thought since we were in town we’d stop by to say howdy,” I said. Her right upper lip lifted a bit and she squeezed my hand. She understood my weak joke.

Fine, good, she whispered.

A million-eleventy megazillion thoughts were pouring through my memories and emotions as we clasped fingers. Here reclined a tiny woman who taught me at an early age some fundamental yet effective curse words and appropriate PG-13 responses to what life throws at us. A person who has spoken her mind since her first birthing scream; who has loved her children, family, and other inner circles with unbridled passion; and one who largely has lived a life on her terms, yet acquiescing as we all must do from time to time.

Voices in the lonely desert

So there he was  in the desert on a solitary trek. The spirit – that divine wind that knows no boundaries – had led him to this lonely place. The searing daily heat, and the numbing cold of night. Nothing to eat. Hours of personal and spiritual reflection And a time to gain guidance from his father.

It’s nearing the end of forty long days and nights. Then he hears a soothing, sympathetic voice. "I know you’re starving. Look, if you’re really God’s son, why don’t your turn those rocks into bread?”

And the hungry man answers, “Don’t you know the Scripture? Man doesn’t live by bread alone but on every word that God speaks.”

Suddenly, the traveler is magically standing on top of the Temple and looking around the city on the hill. A mocking voice speaks to him: “If you’re really God’s son, I triple dog dare you to take a leap. After all, the Scripture says He will send angels to save you.” 

To which the Galilean replies: “No doubt they would, but it’s also written in the Scripture not to test God.”

When tinfoil hats produce golden proposals

For those who like to wear the tinfoil hats and conjure up wacky intrigue, it was a conspiracy of sorts beyond any doubt. There were many abettors and operatives sought for their advice and opinions well in advance of when the prime directive was decided. And thus was born a clandestine caper worthy of any Oliver Stone movie.

It was conjured early last fall as the mastermind had given the matter some serious thought, gleaned from experience and reasonable expectation. It gained steam as the autumn leaves fluttered aimlessly to the ground and another season was about to emerge. The time for action loomed.  So, others were snared into the plot and sworn to secrecy.

Most were relatives and a few well-chosen colleagues. They listened to the proposed mission outcome and offered timely and intimate tips on how to most effectively target the prime directive: Strike fast and hard with blitzkrieg brilliance. One of the main conspirators, who will only be referred to as “Big Mama,” suggested how it could best be carried out “using a soft glove,” she chuckled slyly.

And so the process began. Carefully select the necessary resource and choose the proper occasion. Move silently and swift with a sniper’s patience and cunning, fully aware the cover could be blown by an errant slip of the tongue. Consider all of the options and potential outcomes. Pick the time and place. Be prepared to adapt.

The plan was decided. The shock and awe would be delivered on Christmas Eve 2012…

Glad to say I have graduated to kindergarten

Back in 1988, Robert Fulghum came out with a slim book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It was a collection of this Unitarian minister’s observations gleaned throughout his life. But the book wasn’t a heady compost of sage advice based on decades of experience; rather, approaching the world through the eyes of a child.

I sneered and chuckled the first time I read that book. The sentimentality of his words oozed slowly like warm maple syrup spreading across a stack of homemade pancakes. I was amused by his attempt to boil this complex world down into a rivulet of simplistic solutions. Sure, it made for genial suggestions and would fit nicely into Mister Rogers’ neighborhood, but not the real world.

Here’s what Fulghum wrote:

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school. These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren't yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

I have since re-read Kindergarten a few times. And much, if not all of it, now kicks in as I approach nearly six decades of break-dancing across this fragile, blue orb of ours. Lessons learned as the calendar pages seem to flip more rapidly.

Friendship at first bite and the day I met Elvis

Friendships often begin in the most usual and mundane ways. Perhaps through a simple introduction from a third-party or a chance encounter in some circumstance or at an event. Sometimes, you just have to take the initiative at an opportunity to step across the room and shake a hand.

When you’re a kid, it can happen at school or being teammates in a sport or similar activity. On occasion, friendships begin in more unique ways.

Consider, if you will, how I met my best boyhood friend, circa 1961, after my family moved into a home on Kensington Avenue in the sprawling Gotham that is Evansville, Indiana. He was a year or so older than me; it was spring and I was amusing myself in our hardscrabble backyard doing nothing when I noticed him crawling across the fence and heading my way. I was faced with the spontaneous decision if he was a friend or foe. So, I ran at him took a swing that missed, then sunk my fangs into his lower left leg, through his denims.

After my long-suffering parents apologized and his widowed mama sorted it out and became acquainted, this kid and I became fast and endearing friends over many years. His name is Markle (a family choice), but his name is, and always shall be, “Mark.”

There doesn’t seem a time from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, when our two lives weren’t entwined. He was a grade ahead of me at Harwood Elementary School and was always quick to give me the low-down on teachers’ quirks and expectations for the next school year. 

An Army Halloween Story: A Hillbilly Werewolf in Okinawa

From the dustbins of past writings (circa 20009) ...


Recently, I was in the local Wal-Mart to pick up a few cut-rate medicine cabinet essentials and made a casual detour down an aisle stocked with your traditional Halloween stuff. Among the offerings were ghoulish, grotesque masks of every kind.

But the one that caught my eye was a fairly righteous Wolfman mask. It wasn’t the modern lycanthropic kind, slack-jawed and yawning to sink its pointy fangs into a victim. It was closer to the Lon Chaney look of the 1940s movies – a grunting, growling thing. Kind of a cross between Eminem and Mike Ditka.

And what once was stored in some distant folder of my memory banks returned momentarily.  I was back in my Army MP days in Okinawa nearly four decades ago and to a place called Torri Station. For quick perspective, the entire island was a heavily fortified conclave during the latter days of World War II, when American foot soldiers and sailors were pounding the place. In fact, my Dad had been there less than three decades ago as to witness that horrible adventure.

One of our roles on that post was to regularly patrol a jungle area. It was an eerie place to patrol during daylight; far more ominous when the sun slipped beneath the horizon of the South China Sea. For you see, that location was strategically placed and was dotted with a multitude of tall antennae that our spooks used to monitor intelligence from Vietnam, China and Russia. For all we knew, they might have been dialing in Communist porn.

It was the site where GIs launched a major invasion and where many died on the beach and in the surf. Its legacy was countless unexploded bombs and God-knows-what else stuff from that grisly campaign. And there were caves, tunnels and pits of deadly nests of Habu snakes.

And later came the The Sobe Ghost.” 

Happy birthday, Mama!

I cannot think of my good Mama withhout considering all that she has endured and accomplished. Born into a family that had a bit of money, thanks to her father’s prosperous newspaper business in Crittenden County, Kentucky. – good, proper and respectful folk, mind you – their fortunes drastically changed when the Great Depression hit. The world suddenly had plunged into a chaotic abyss at the time of her birth.

Barefoot much of the time during those long bluegrass springs and summers, she and her older brother Pat, explored and endured the hardships of those dark times in Marion. Her parents scrambled to find whatever ways they could to survive, with their younger sibs soon joining the family circle: Caroline, Walter, Jimmy and Martha. And two step sibs, Buddy and Elaine, who, although older, exacted a positive influence on so many lives.

Over early morning coffee sometimes when I visit, she recalls the good, bad and ugly of her childhood. Usually the anecdotes are punched with laughter: An African-American woman, the granddaughter of slaves, and her husband George who looked out after my Mom and her sibs when their parents had to work days on end out of town. These surrogate parents taught her, perhaps, tolerance in an age when some were cruelly labeled as “Uncle Toms and Mammies." And worse.

Dummies and bigots see the world and its issues purely as black and white. My Mom sees them as Technicolor 3-D realities.

She matured, this barefooted gal from Kentucky, and eventually moved to Evansville, Indiana. At Central High School she excelled during WW2, developed many educational and artistic talents. But as fate would have it, a grinning, gold-toothed sailor would change whatever dreams she had on an early December day in 1949.

And in the best ways, they meshed, these two unlikely souls, and made a life. For good and ill. Till death did them part.

A life that spawned three children and several grandchildren and grands. Though her husband has been gone nearly nearly 22 years, this woman is the cement, the foundation on which many lives have been built.

For you see, Norma Patricia Henry Stuteville (a.k.a. Pat, Trish, Aunt Trisha, Gramma Pat, etc) has lived a meaningful life at an altitude far beyond the summit of Mount Everest. And I am blessed to have her as a mother. 

On this 12th day October in the 2012th year of our Lord, may my Mom always know that she has been, and continues to be, much loved. What you have given is returned in great measure.