The Clown

He’s a clown and if you never saw him embellish himself as Emmett Kelly and witness his bantering about on a St. Patty’s Day Parade or take an impish delight in the ease of his devilish playfulness with his grandkids you’re missing pure joy!

You wonder how he’s lived so long with a heart as big as his, because you know he’s surely made it exert double duty for all these years. But God must have given him a heart way beyond its normal capacity. And yet, now it is this very heart that struggles, it labors under the weight of his generosity. The very notion of what Rich’ heart was meant to do, confronts the infection that impales him.

To see him lying in his hospital bed is such a disparate sight; wired like the inside of a computer. Tubes flowing here, monitor lines running like rush hour on 64, more CRT’s than on the show room floor at Best Buy. This is not how Rich should be seen. He should be sitting in his barcalounger with little CeCe and Kuper on his lap with his ever faithful “King” at his side, bantering with his bride Delores. Surely he’d rather be navigating a cross cut at Steinberg gliding through the defenders eyeing the goalie or, deciding which club to use on the 12th at Tee-Up, or encouraging one of his many grand kids to slide as they turn the corner heading towards home plate,

Guys like him are icons.. They don’t make them like him anymore. And being an icon, like all God’s creatures, he’s here on loan from God; to bless us with his presence for whatever time God will give us. God has loaned him 84 years, 62 of them with his love, his passion, his bride. We should all be given a blessing like that.
So, as I look to the heavens, I say these words with respect, with devotion, as prayer, “Let him live”.

"For All That's Been Said and Done"

I've been meaning to put this little video together for Mary and Paul for sometime. I've been remiss lately as another "family" course of action has remanded me. If you've read any of my posts over the last several months, you'll understand. I had intended to use another song (and I still most probably will) but for the time being, this one has certainly touched my heart.

I am the "kid" of Mary and Paul and in several of my posts about them and their human frailties, I have readily admitted to their shortcomings and in a typical muse about dysfunctional families, it has been all to simple to oblige their failings as my parents who only went to war with each other and took myself and my sisters as prisoners. And yet, I don't blame them for they only had so many parenting skills to pass onto me. And what strengths they did have as parents, they gave to me. Kids don't come out with a manual and even if we did, we"re way to young to read it to new moms and dads. I could have acquiesced to their disturbed emotional duress and used them as an excuse. But parents can only be responsible for so long for their kids. The rest is really up to us. Looking back. I would be negligent and there would be a sufficient degree of remorse on my part to think I had lousy parents. There had to come a time in my life to accept my entrance into adulthood, establish the boundary that parents must develop from their children, and learn that I may have been "robbed" of a childhood because mom and dad may have missed an opportunity with me. But to hold that against them and take it into my adulthood will only deprive me of my own happiness. The only person who got "robbed" here is me and it was my own doing.
To this day, I continue to look to Mary and Paul.

Thoughts for today

Well the pace of my blog has suffered in the last few weeks as I've tended to rest on my laurels so to speak. The recent activity has centered around my pup-Dancer and his struggle with cancer. And while I know the "bastard" can still win, I choose to relinquish my preoccupation and adhere to the more subtle delicacies of life-such as orchids. It's not that I don't fall back on his condition and my continued hope that the "bastard" won't win, I must distract myself. I'm giving up a quote from that famous poet-William Wadsworth Longfellow for some more fluid thoughts for today.

"Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart."

And while I humbly approach these words with trepidation...the shadowy future must not be laid with fear. I know it with His intervention that I will have a manly heart.

I shot the Orchid Show at the Botanical Gardens this weekend.

Here's one of the images I enjoyed.