This has been a difficult project, this seven things, thing. This is the last of the seven things, since it is the seventh thing...ok? I'll get back to writing something else as I have time.

The last thing about myself is this: I love being home with my family. Home, right now, is Spokane, Washington. I love it here in Spokane. We have four distinct seasons. I like that. I didn't grow up that way, but my kids will. I love the way the darkness of winter slowly gives way to the gathering warmth of spring. The coolness of the breeze and the chill in the morning reminds us that it is only spring, and that summer isn't far off. In the spring, life returns once again, slowly at first, then more rapidly later in the season. By summer, as the heat begins, the blooms grow with reproductive fury, trying to bear their fruits before the imminent onset of fall. Fall slowly sneaks in a few hints, like a cool breeze at the end of a long hot day, some time in mid September, and by October, the nights are noticeably shorter, and the days pleasantly cool. Then winter comes. In late fall we have all made our slow preparations, covering the deck furniture, covering the BBQ grill, closing up the window units and replacing the storm windows on the house. By late October, if you haven't done these things, you will pay the price.

I love being at home with my family too. I love the lazy weekend mornings when my sons come into our bedroom and curl up with us and laugh and giggle. I love the little gurgling smiles I get from our youngest son. I love watching cartoons with my kids too. I love it all. I am a lucky man. I had no idea, when I married my wife so many years ago, that I'd be where I am now, with the children we have now, but I'm satisfied, happy, and content, most of the time.

So, that's the last thing about me. I'm not sure what it is, but there it is.

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I don't want this next thing about me to come across wrong. I don't want my mother to be sad about it, and I don't want people to think that I don't want them around. I do. It's just that, well, I like to be alone.

I grew up, from about 1980 on, alone. It wasn't a bad alone, it was a good 'alone.' It was the kind of alone where, as a kid, and sometimes an adult, you can spend a lot of good time thinking, imagining, and just living inside your head. I still enjoy that. I enjoy my alone drives from work to home, and back again. I enjoy shutting my door at work and working alone, without distractions, just me, my thoughts, and my music.

Sometimes my mother worries about me when I mention that I was always alone as a child. But, to tell you the truth, I think it was the best thing for me. I would spend hours walking around the ten acres of land that we had in Boyd, TX, just living in my head, and living out imaginary adventures.

So, I am a loner. But I love being alone with my little family, with my wife and my boys. I've let them into my little private world, I think. I still have to have alone time to recharge, though.

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I like old things. I like old houses, old books, old buildings. I love things with history. I like to think about where they've been and what they've seen over the years.

Pictured to the left is Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Odyssey printed in 1753. I like to think about the shelves these books have sat on over the years...the sunlight through windows that they've felt and seen...the days through which they've lived and the long gone voices they've heard, not to mention the long gone hands that have held them. I like to try and imagine what happened to volume one of this set.

I love old things. Do you?

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I love to travel. I do. I love to go to a new place and just look around and experience it all. In my line of work, I occasionally have to go out of town for training. I enjoy the traveling part, the being in another city and stuff. The only thing I don't like is not having my family with me when I return to my empty and lonely hotel room.

I don't know where I get my wanderlust, I just like it. When I was 18, I traveled by myself to Hawaii. That same year, I went with a church group to South America. Later, when I was 20 years old, I traveled by myself to Nairobi to spend two months with my parents who were there at the time. However, travel is expensive. Very expensive. I fear that I will not be able to travel with my family as much as I would like in the future. I want to show my wife and my children the world around them. I want them to see how other people live in other parts of the world. I want them to see some of the grand and magnificent things that I've seen in even my own limited travels. But I don't know if I'll be able to do this. I hope I will, but the world is an expensive place.

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If you know me personally, you will not argue the fact that I love music. I listen to music all day long in my office. I listen to music in the car. I listen to music outside while I grill hamburgers. I also sing. I have the voice of an angel...well, sort of. I also play a little keyboard. I'm not saying the keyboard I play is little, I'm saying I play it a little bit...however, now that I think about it, since I don't have a full piano in the house, the keyboard I currently play is, in fact, little. Oh well.

Music is a huge part of my life. I've always listened to all sorts of music. I remember, being about seven or eight years old, being given a hand-me-down 8-track player for my room. I would play stuff on it like the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, Gino Vanelli's album Storm at Sunup (still a favorite today, actually!), and others. I would imagine myself singing these songs in front of audiences, belting things out like I was a rock star. I'd rehearse my stage "moves" in the privacy of my room. Later, when I was older and actually did sing in front of crowds, at church and school and such, I was always too self conscious to really do any of the practiced "rock star" stage moves. I'm pretty sure the people at the church I grew up in were glad I didn't do these moves anyway.

What types of music? All types, really...with the notable exception of country music. I do not like the sound, and often times, the sentiments contained within country music. It bores me, and irritates. I know that sounds elitist, but it's true. But I still have Johnny Cash on my playlist. People often find this contradictory to what I've just stated above, but I feel Cash transcended several genera's. At least, thats my opinion, others may dissagre.

I have been called, in the past, a musical snob, because I listen to what many people consider Progressive Rock. While it's true that I indulge in heavy doses of the popularly labeled "Progressive" or "Art" rock, both old and new, I am not limited to this genera. I enjoy many other types, and always have.

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The first thing about me, in the previous post, is one of my earliest memories. I'll now share with you some things that I do not remember. It's not that I wasn't there, I was. It's just that my brain has decided, for whatever reason, to block out certain portions of my young memory, for good reason, it turns out.

Most people can remember being six, seven, and eight years old. I only have spotty memories of these years. I do remember soon after I turned six, an elderly uncle drove up in our driveway, I ran up to the window of his car and said "I'm six!" He replied "You're sick!?" I didn't know what to say, so I ran off, confused, but still happy in my six year old glee. There are other small bits of memories that come through, but none of them are very clear. You see, sometime in 1976 (my mother will clear this up, I'm sure), my father became very ill. He was in the hospital a lot, and was near death, several times, I'm told. I remember seeing my father laying in his bed in our home, when the illness began, and my mother bending over him. Then, the memories become strange. Driven from here to there by my older siblings. Being disruptive in Sunday school. Things like that. I distinctly remember, one Sunday morning, after being dropped off at my Sunday school class by my sister, becoming increasingly agitated by the teacher during the lesson. I remember, at one point, running to the other room, and hiding under a puppet show thingy and screaming for people to leave me alone. They had to call my brother to get me to come out from behind it. To this day, I don't know why I was so irritable and agitated so often. I can only assume that it was due to the stresses on my confused young mind during this time.

I also remember something else from this dark era. I remember, in the night time, waking up with an odd feeling. A feeling of disassociation from my own body. I sense of everything getting bigger, while I shrunk in size. Also, on other occasions, it would be the opposite, I would feel my size overwhelming and my mind floating in utter fear above all the tiny objects in my room. My sister says that she sometimes found me, during these years, when mom and dad were away so much at the hospital, awake in the night, at the top of the stairs in our house, crying. I don't remember that part, but I do remember the disassociated feeling. I have it still, on very rare occasions. It seems to be tied to stress, and lack of sleep. But I'm not sure.

So, there it is. My non-memories. A period in my life that is darker than the rest. I'm not sad about this time, or upset. It was just something that happened. Also, this is how I experienced this time in our family. It affected us all profoundly, and is still with us to this day. We all experienced it in our own way, and we all remember it in our own way. I can only imagine that life would have been even darker still, afterward, were my father to not survive his illness. Thankfully, he did survive, and life went back to normal, and my memories clear up around 1979-80.

Labels: seven things

I don't know about this exercise, this "seven things" thing. I'm not sure what to divulge about me, that most of my readers don't already know. Still, I suppose I'll give it a try by starting early in my life. I don't know if this will be interesting, or the most boring series of posts ever done here. We shall see.

I was born in 1970 in a hospital that no longer exists, in a suburb of Fort Worth, TX called North Richland Hills. That's me in the picture to the left being held by my aunt not long after my birth. I am the youngest of four. My closest sibling in age is my brother who is nine years older than me. My earliest memory involves my brother, a Chinese lantern, and a glow-in-the-dark yo-yo. I remember laying on the bottom bunk of a bunk-bed, and seeing the glowing Chinese lantern hanging from the ceiling, as my brother jumped down and showed me his glowing yo-yo. I was apparently sleeping in a bed, so I must have been at least two years old or so. That would make my brother about 11 or 12 at the time. This seems to fit since he seemed shorter in my memory than he does presently.

I don't really remember anything else until we were moving out of that particular house in North Richland Hills, to our house in Boyd, in 1974. I vaguely remember running around in the empty living room of that house with my cousin. That's it.

Anyway, there's day one!

Note:
I've been corrected about a few details in this post by my mother that I must point out. I am confused about the hospital in which I was born. I was actually born, according to my mother (and I suppose she would know) in Harris Hospital, in downtown Fort Worth, TX. Incidentally, our first son was born there as well. The hospital I'm confusing it with is, most likely, Glenview Hospital in Richland Hills, TX, where my father spent many an ill day and night (see the next post). The hospital has been converted to some sort of retirement home, apparantly.

Also, my brother is 8 years older than me, not 9. I never was good at math.

Labels: seven things