Hair - history revisited

Last night I took a walk down memory lane.  I saw a production of the rock musical Hair.  The performance values were great.  The voices were great.  And the flood of memories is great.

The 1960's were a turbulent time in the history of America.  Those are the years of my youth into adulthood.  Eisenhower was the first president I have a memory of.  He seemed to me a nice grandfatherly person.  He and Mamie felt safe.  There was a cold war going on - the Russians were our enemies.  But Ike and Mamie kept us safe.  From there we floated into a brief period of optimism - Kennedy was elected and all the world seemed bright and rosy and possible.

With shocking swiftness that ended with Kennedy's assassination, swiftly followed by Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.  Viet Nam heated up and became nightly news.  Kent State happened.  America was breaking apart.  Just like now.

My dad died 29 years and 3 days ago.  I really miss him.  He lives on through me and my family, but his real physical presence is what I miss.  He was the wise touch stone in my life. I hear him talking to me still, but I long for new words for the new places I’ve traveled since we parted.

I walk these paths for both of us.

Learning to breath

Somehow I get myself in a pickle, over and over and over.  You'd think I'd have figured out by now that I'm not responsible for saving anyone and that I'm powerless to change anything but me.  Nevertheless, I find myself running as fast as I can to pick up the pieces for those around me, so their life is nicer and smoother.  In the process I give up my time, money, and sanity.  THEN, I get resentful.

Lost

I'm feeling a bit lost the past few days.  My Mom's memory is taking some sever hits and her short term memory is really really short - like gone in an instant.  As she loses her autonomy I am losing my history and being forced to step up.  I feel more like stepping out and away.  I want to run.

I need a familiar.

Lost

Just spent time writing a new post, the phone rang, I went to help my friend find some info on the internet, accidentally closed the Blogger window and POOF - gone.  Time gone, thoughts gone, post gone.

Kind of a metaphor for how helping too much goes.

When I help

When I help my adult children, am I really helping?  Or am I crippling them? Is my help a sop to my vanity?  Or is it a sincere effort to lift them up?  Are my ideas of how to live life even relevant to their lives?  Sometime I think it is time for me to go off to the forest and live a hermit's life and let my kids fend for themselves.  After all, they are in their 30's, they should have a clue by now.

Too Bad I Can't Drive and Write

When I'm driving in my car, I can think of a million topics for blogging.  I sort and edit and drill down to the meat of the subjects.  When I'm confronted with a big white screen and a row of tools, all my pithy remarks go poof.

Lately I've been pondering how much I did like how things were done in the past.  I don't want to do away with computers and smart phones and beautiful HDTV, but I miss the human touch of "the olden days."  I liked dialing "O" for operator and getting a human - not a phone tree.  I liked calling my local newspaper and the person answering had my accent and was located in my town; not the Philippines.  There was better connection with local human interaction, instead of computers and far away helpers.  There is something nice about being able to say "did it rain at your house" as a conversation starter and know that the person on the other end lives, just like you, in an area that just had thunderstorms roll through after months of drought.

The local human touch seems to have gone poof.