The Bench

This week's song - In The Blood - by John Mayer - Great song about the role of DNA in our lives. Take a listen.

September 2001

I believe in magic.

I've never been here alone. When I’ve frequented this beautiful park, it has generally been hand-in-hand with a child or a beautiful woman, but never on my own. Near the water, just next to the playground, you’ll find a bench. Parents sit and watch their children at play. Young people in love sit and talk about their future after walking along the path by the lake. Children get their photo taken. When a tornado recently visited the hallowed park, it uprooted trees, destroyed structures, and ripped apart playground equipment. After the storm did its worst, the bench remained. I knew that in order to find the words for this piece, I needed to drop by and take a seat on the bench. On an early fall Saturday in 2000, before the leaves changed and the heat relented, I visited the park, as I had on many occasions, with my wife and two young children. Shelby was 4, Andy a mere 18 months. Although I've been back many times, that was the last time with Cheryl. I am immediately confronted by the bitter-sweet memory of a day in 2001 when I had my photo taken here with Shelby and Andy. It was a day to celebrate their mother and the dedication of the bench in her honor. I’ve always enjoyed visiting the bench and hearing of others who have seen or used it. I’m proud to see my children’s little handprints preserved in concrete on the ground just in front of the bench. I place my hands on the prints and close my eyes, trying to remember when their hands were this size. They are now 21 and 18. I look up to the bench and see the marker that reads “In Memory of Cheryl W. Pryor - A Mother Who Loved This Park,”  and I delight in the fact so many see her name. There is still an element of disbelief. I hope people read it aloud, letting the sound of it carry into the air.

Jeremiah and Jackson on the Bench

I was drawn here on this day because of my trip to the great Pacific Northwest this past weekend where, on Sunday, I sat in a small Presbyterian church in Clarkston, Washington. It seemed like a million miles away. I sat in a pew near the back, bundled in winter clothes and listened to the pastor’s sermon. I shared the lord’s supper with seventy-five congregants which included my wife, Nancy, and my baby girl. It is Shelby’s church, her family so far from home. When the young pastor and his wife asked her to babysit months ago, they picked the right girl. Shelby is the conscientious and caring child I hoped she would be when Cheryl told me she was pregnant on a beautiful October day in 1995. She is my fair-haired servant of the Lord who follows her heart and his teachings. She’ll be the first exhibit of my closing argument to Saint Peter. I’m counting on her…heavily. She became a youth leader in the church.  Shelby has become a regular in the pastor's home.

We broke bread Sunday night with Pastor Dave Webster and his wife, Dawn, while their three children, Jeremiah, Jackson and Mary, ran through the house, the sound of running bare feet dominating the air. We spoke of Seahawks football, the terrible state of my football program and, of course, my Shelby. I thanked them for inviting her into their church, for inviting her into their home and for watching after her while she was so far from her father. It is hard to say these things. Saying them brings home the fact she is grown and far away. We talked about the unbelievable coincidence that their first church out of seminary was Concord Presbyterian, a beautiful church down by the lake just a couple of miles from where I live and grew up. We talked about Knoxville and people we both knew. We talked about the unbelievable coincidence that my daughter would find them and their church so many miles from home. It's a small world. And then, we talked about the bench. 

Dave and Dawn often frequented this park - The Cove - during their brief time in Knoxville. They know the park. They know the bench. In their scrapbooks, tucked on a shelf in Clarkston, Washington, so far from Knoxville, my daughter stumbled across the photos of Jeremiah and Jackson Webster taken in the sacred place we often frequented when she was a child. In the photos, two little happy faces smile from a bench dedicated to Shelby’s mother. Sometimes “It's a small world,” doesn’t really cut it. Sometimes we have to wonder what magic is at work in our world just beyond the conscious, patiently waiting to reveal itself. How much is there to be seen yet escapes our sight? When it does reveal itself, do we always take it in, hold it, and appreciate the magic? Probably not. But, on this fall day, as the sun shines and children play, I sit on the bench and take in the magic.

I love this park.

Ole Jack

This Week's Song - Fire Escape - Andrew McMahon - Just because.

I am a son of the suburbs, raised in the shade of shortleaf pines and sugar maples that cover power lines in a middle-class subdivision. I never rode a horse in my formative years. Instead, I mounted up a yellow Schwinn Scrambler with a black banana seat and trail tires and flew down Heritage Drive with my posse on a mission to buy baseball cards at the White Store. I played junior golf at the country club and learned to roller skate at Skatetown U.S.A. on Mondays after school. Odds were not good that I would ever own and tend to horses in my lifetime. But then again, I couldn’t know that Nancy would walk into my life.

Jack

In the fall of 2005, the beautiful and mysterious creature I married just three years earlier took me to "look" at a house and surrounding property in Lenoir City on one of those East-Tennessee afternoons at the peak of autumn when providence descends into the valley from the mountains and the colors leave no doubt of a loving God. I thought the house hunt was a phase, just my wife itching for a change - a "hey-let's-take-a-look-around" moment. Boy, was I wrong. The farm stood in the middle of a forest of exploding color and included a four-stall-red-roofed barn and fenced pasture. It wasn’t a fair fight. 

I’ve always hated change. It took my first wife’s death to bring me to fully understand that change was inevitable and something over which I exercised no control. Perhaps it was because I finally realized that life was not a series of paths forking in the wood. It wasn't a multiple choice test, but instead, maybe a roller coaster, the wheels of the car following a track designed by someone else. Once you strap yourself in there is nothing to do but hold on and see what's in store.

After I met her, I let go. I followed her way, her instinct. I still fight it but I stopped trying to control everything. This cloud, this whisper of a woman, so filled with mystery, magic, and beauty, after less than 4 minutes on the property, said "I want it," and I didn't think twice. She hadn't even been inside the house. Not only was a farm cast into my path, but something had to go in the barn, and that was her ultimate dream. Just like that, the boy on the Scrambler, educated inside the walls of a fine university and a first-class law school, a man who's hands were soft and void of callus, a man of letters and books and the law, a man who'd never maintained more than enough land to require a push mower, became a farm owner and, yes…a horseman.

His official papers from the American Quarter Horse Association revealed the name of Two Eyed Jack, III.  On May 30, 1985, when Nancy was graduating from high school, and my only cares in the world included varsity basketball and the girls roaming the halls of Farragut High School, Jack was born to his mare, Miss Snipfire, on a barn-stall floor in Bottineau, North Dakota. As he was struggling to raise himself onto his awkward rail-thin legs I was in my first year of driving, seated behind the wheel of a 1984 Camaro Berlinetta, a cocky 16-year-old blaring AC/DC, sporting a Members Only jacket and convinced that if I didn't already, I would soon own the world. Who could know or believe our paths would cross.

Jack's trip along the track was colored by tragedy. His first owner, a teenager, shot and killed his step-father after the man sold Jack without permission. Jack had been loved that much. There'd been other stops for Jack along the way, including years with a man who would drink until passing out on trail rides only to have Jack safely deliver him home. Then, after 22 years of finding his way to my family, our paths crossed on a day when the first snow threatened on our new farm. I handed a man an envelope with cash in it after he unloaded the horse into his new pasture. That evening, as darkness fell in unison with the temperature, Nancy and I went to the fence to feed him for the first time. As we walked to the fence, a red bucket in her hands and a bag of grain in mine, the snow began to fall. The flakes - first the size of dimes, then nickels and then quarters - were wet and of the kind that excite young children and the child still living in all of us. It was the kind of snow that somehow enhances silence. Nancy broke the silence by banging the bucket against the fence as instructed by the man who delivered him. We waited as the sound echoed in the trees. We couldn’t see him in the field. Out in the dark, he heard the bucket. Long before we ever saw him we heard him. He galloped toward us, the thundering of his hooves digging into the clay and the sound of his exhalations piercing the falling snow. We didn't know where he was coming from but the sound of him sliced through the night like a train without headlamps. She grabbed my hand. Suddenly, he emerged from the snow only a few feet from us, his breath rising like a cloud, his head bobbing back and forth to shed the flakes. When he plunged his face into the bucket we knew we would never forget what we’d just witnessed.

We tended to and loved Jack for nearly 10 years. The girls rode every now and then, but the majority of Jack's time spent with us was in the role of a large pet. Nancy often would feed him and sit with him in the barn. We would also go down together, engage in long talks about the kids and friends and family with Jack chomping on his grain and hay in the background. He was a constant in our life and not a day went by that I (or anyone that knew me) wasn't amazed by the fact that I owned a horse. But, kids grow up and move away. Priorities change. Seasons end. Two years ago, we returned not only to the suburbs, but to the very neighborhood where I grew up. As I write this, I look out the window of my home office upon the street where I rode my yellow Schwinn Scrambler. I sometimes see my 12-year-old self, curly dark hair, wearing my #89 Tennessee Jersey (Larry Seivers for those of you who don't love the Orange), trying to ride a wheelie up Heritage Drive with three packs of baseball cards in my pocket. Our beloved Jack is 32 years old and is barely hanging on. Yes, 32. He lives on the farm of a dear friend who loves him. Nancy and the girls visit every now and then. Nancy and Cori went by the other day to say goodbye. The word is that his health is failing. I don’t know what to believe about his health for Jack has always beaten the odds, but I know it won’t be much longer. None of us can stop the sun from setting.

The children in the photo above are now 24, 21, 21 and 18. There is so much we want for our children, but the thing I want most for them is to find someone who helps them lose their sense of self. I want each of them to find someone for a lifetime, not a season, to find someone who makes them see the world differently, who opens their mind to experience what life has to offer, and who convinces them everyday that they are the most fortunate person on the planet. The right person can make you into something you were meant to be or return you to yourself when you didn't realize you were lost. The power of the right person is beyond question. It comes early and often and screams at you when you need it...and even when you don't. It makes its presence known at the oddest times - perhaps every morning over coffee or with a hand on your knee in the bleachers at a basketball game. It can come in a whisper or when you cry together over a great loss. You are reminded when a foot kicks yours in the night or with a call or a text or a note or a sweet word, but make no mistake - its power will not be denied. It may come into view on the most beautiful day or when the chips are down and its 4th and long, but its beauty is most evident when it simply nudges you in the unexpected moments - like on a dark night, by a fence, listening to a horse thundering toward you through the snow.

A Shooting Star

This Week's Song - Please Come to Boston - by Dave Loggins - The 1974 classic has been recorded by many artists. It was Jacob's favorite. I kinda like it too.

Michael Young would take a second job in the two weeks leading up to the 4th of July. In those days, money for things like fireworks was scarce, but his children loved fireworks - especially Jacob. So, Michael worked at the fireworks stand, and Jacob got his fireworks.

When he was in first grade, Jacob was unable and unwilling to focus at school. He loved mischief and his red bicycle. He was always in motion, a kid and then a young man with a fire inside.  He lived and loved fast. He was whip smart and when he reached the right age he could weld anything that needed welding. Jacob Young was curious - about things and people. He could talk to a wall. He didn't have any quit in him, and he came by it honestly. But, I often don't meet someone until tragedy strikes.

Happy 4th!

I met Jacob on an overcast winter day in 2009. I stood beside his hospital bed which rested in his grandmother's house.  There was a table for his medicine, a lone chair, a television and another bed. I'd read his medical records, the long cold words on CT and MRI reports that translated to ruin. "Hi Jake, I'm your lawyer." His head was turned away, his hand drawn beneath his chin. Among the dark locks of hair was a severe depression in his skull. He cut his eyes at me and moaned, indicating disapproval. "Jake!" admonished his mother, Kelley, much in the same way she had when he was a little boy. On this day he apparently didn't want a lawyer in his room. Who does?  The vestiges of his youthful vitality, the fire of 24 years, smoldered beneath the bed-ridden and broken kid before me. His injury was profound. I expected hopelessness. I got something else. Looking back, I can't believe they even let me in the door. Jake would come to tolerate me. I'd come to love him and his remarkable family. 

"Jakie Boy," as his mom called him, had been a fun-loving, fiercely loyal friend. He was fearless in everything he did. His little brother, Josh, was in awe of Jacob. Jacob simply never met a stranger, regardless of age, race, gender or stature in life. He was protective of the weak. Ask Owen, the boy with Autism who went to school with him. Loyal and protective. Sometimes our best qualities end up hurting us. In the prime of his life, Kelley and Michael Young's beautiful baby boy suffered a traumatic brain injury that would've killed most men. He'd come to the defense of a friend in a dark parking lot. Things escalated. The result was the end of life as Jake had known it. It was the end of life as the Young family had known it. However, light finds its way into the dark places. The Youngs are pure light.

Michael Young looks like he just walked off the Appalachian Trail after five months of isolation. His thick black hair, peppered with streaks of gray, comes to his shoulders. A beard with the same colors is broad and hits him in the middle of his chest. He is soft-spoken and one of the kindest people I've ever known. He is a quiet man. "We were just too young," says Kelley when asked about her marriage to Michael. They'd been teenagers when Brandy came along and didn't give up on the marriage until after Jacob and then, finally, Josh arrived on the scene. People mature. People change, Marriages crumble, but as I continued to represent this family over the next few years, it became increasingly clear there was an obvious respect and love that existed between Michael and Kelley. They were married to other people, but the romantic love of youth transformed via mutual respect and a common interest in bringing up children the right way. Regardless of what you call it, there was no missing it. Jacob's accident seemed to strengthen that bond and, in fact, bring the entire family closer together. Pure light.

Jakie Boy

Kelley and Michael didn't care what the doctors thought once they got past those first weeks. Talk of nursing homes and eminent death didn't set well with Mama Bear. It didn't set well with anyone. They moved Jake to Mamaw's, and settled in to a new life letting love lead the way. For the next five years they split up the time and work it took to not only keep Jake alive, but to show him every minute of the day how he was loved. Kelley slept in the twin bed next to Jacob's when it was her night. Despite holding down a full-time job, she'd make the trip every Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, and every other Thursday night to her ex-husband's mother's home to sleep next to her son. "Mamaw" opened up her house, and they should've put in a revolving door. Only love walked in. With her ex-husband down the hall asleep with his wife, Renee, Kelley would rise every 2 hours to change her son's position in the bed to avoid bed sores like the one he got during his initial hospitalization. Once Jakie Boy got home from the hospital, something the doctors said he'd never do, his big sister, Brandy, quit her job to take care of him every single weekday. "Can't" isn't part of the Young vocabulary. Everyone grabbed an oar and started rowing. Renee, Michael's wife, and her son helped. Jacob's niece would lay in bed with him and signal to the family when she sensed a problem. Don't tell the Youngs Jake won't leave the hospital. Don't tell them he won't live a year. Don't tell them he belongs in a nursing home. Don't tell them he can't feel or communicate. When it wasn't Kelley's night, it was Michael's. Jacob didn't go two hours without touch or love. The care was around the clock. 24 hours a day. Seven days a week.

For 5 years.

Jacob Young was never alone. Never.  He never went a day without someone telling him they loved him. Kelley would lie in bed with him and pray, tell him he was so handsome, tell him what was going on in the rest of the family, and shave her baby's face. She joked that Michael had forgotten how to use a razor, so she shaved him. Brandy would manually exercise his legs and change her little brother's diapers. Brandy would tend to his daily living needs and watch television with him.
 During one of those long days of caring for her brother, Brandy came across the movie Cold Mountain, a love story, based on the beautifully written novel by Charles Frazier. The movie featured Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. In the heart-wrenching final scene, Brandy turned to see a solitary tear rolling down Jacob's face.

They took Jake to the beach. The logistics and planning would rival the operation known as Zero Dark Thirty. His toes were put in the sand. He smiled. It was worth it. It would be his last trip to the beach, but every one of the family members pitched in.

typical birthday

Time caught up to Jacob. Kelley was the last to arrive. Michael insisted on life saving measures and to withhold a 911 call until his mother arrived. As they stood by their boy Michael and Kelley professed their gratefulness to the other for parenting their children. The longest road had ended. Their hard work was done.

Kelley has a photo of Jake in the back window of her car so that she can see him in her rearview mirror and imagine he is riding along with her. If you sit on Mamaw's front porch you can see Jakie Boy's headstone in Hopewell Cemetery where a celebration seemingly takes place once a week. At night, when he feels the need, Michael can look out from the porch and see a solar powered angel light where his boy rests. If you pass by the Maryville cemetery on Jake's birthday, Christmas or any special occasion, especially the 4th of July, you will see a big group of family and friends milling around, laughing and sharing stories. You may hear fireworks and see balloons floating above the tree line. Kelley, Mike, Brandy and Josh are usually there, as are Renee, and Mike and Kelley's grandchildren, friends and anyone else who wants to celebrate. Don't tell them Jacob is dead. They'll smile knowing you are wrong. It is not only powerful to be loved. It is powerful to give it, and in the giving, it never ends. This week, the fireworks ignited by flame arced brilliantly into the night-time sky, exploding into a beautiful display of light. I'm miles away, but I thought of Jacob Young and his remarkable and loving family as lights ignited the sky above me.  Happy 4th!

Don't Stop Believin

This Week's Song - Don't Stop Believin - Journey. Steve Perry, Jonathan Cain, and Neil Schon wrote this anthem.

We all have dreams. Mine included NBA stardom and headlining a Rock N’ Roll tour. Those dreams died an early and predictable death. Pryor’s can’t jump and we have little, if any, musical talent. A shame, given my love of both basketball and music.

Piano Man

The first album I ever bought was Journey’s Escape. I knew I had to have it when I heard the keyboard intro on Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 in 1981. I was 12. I’d listen to “the countdown” from start to finish on Sundays. I was in love with two or three girls at the time, and I’d write down the name of love songs that I just had to have. After I purchased the album I’d sit in the floor and play Don’t Stop Believing over and over, wishing I knew how to play it on the piano. I fantasized of taking to the stage and my seat at the piano, adjusting the microphone, and starting into that beautiful intro. My voice would pierce the crowd and roll into the night, leaving my peers, and especially those girls, dumbfounded, starstruck and hopelessly in love. When I would jump into the second verse…”A singer in a smokey room, the smell of wine and cheap perfume..” something in them would break and unalterably change, making them forever mine.

Then, one night, near the end of middle school, I heard my friend playing the song on a piano. I immediately asked Bennett Millikan to teach me the introduction. He did. It is the only song I ever learned. I never took a lesson, only playing the Journey song over and over on our family's piano to the annoyance of my little brother and sister. The song became a staple of American Rock music. It still has a strong presence on radio and television, having enjoyed a revival with such shows as Glee. Journey was just inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Whenever I hear the song, I smile, but I’ve long given up on living out my fantasy of becoming a rock star. I’m 48, can’t sing a lick, and know only the intro to the one song. The dream is dead... Or so I thought.

The breeze coming off of the bay creeps through the open doors of Rum Runners making the water-downed-overpriced liquor just fine and the average musical talent seem special. The bar was filled with people my age - some married, some not, and some not entirely sure. All come to drink, some to dance, and most to sing along with two guys playing adjacent pianos. The crowd includes tables of women on “girl’s trips” and bar stools occupied by men on "golf trips." The confines of that bar are a study of the middle-aged. At their core, they are all the same kids in the old rickety gym with the lights down low, waiting for the DJ to play the right song in the Spring of their 8th grade year. The place was packed the other night. I was one of the golf-trip guys on a bar stool as the two piano players were going back and forth playing SEC fight songs and racking up tips. Though the place was packed, there were only a few on the dance floor. I told my friends I’d had enough and was going home. I really didn’t want to go to the bar in the first place, but I was the golf trip host. Bennett Millikan, who'd been one of my best friends since Kindergarten, said “you still know that Journey song.” I told him that I would always be able to play it, mistakenly inflating my musical skills, certainly not thinking that he would approach the stage and offer up $100 to the tip jar to have me play a song for the crowd. I would later find out that it took more than $100. My friend told them I was Senator Eugene Pryor of the great state of Tennessee. I have creative friends.

When I heard them call for "Senator Pryor," fear shot through me like lightning. There were two reasons. First, I certainly know that I possess no musical or singing talent, but, second, and more importantly, I am also aware that I am genetically incapable of turning down an opportunity to perform regardless of the embarrassment that most certainly follows. It is a curse, but it sure makes me fun in a bar. I was scared to death as I approached the baby grand but displayed an outward false confidence all lawyers know from their early days in the courtroom. I was, after all, chasing a dream. One of the musicians got up and offered his seat to the young Senator. I leaned over to the gentleman who was seated at the occupied piano and whispered, "I only know the intro. You are gonna have to do the heavy lifting.” He smiled and asked what key I would be playing it in. “I have no idea what that means,” I said. He laughed and said, “Show me where you put your fingers.” I did. Then, I took my seat, adjusted the microphone and looked out over the expectant crowd. Suddenly, I was where I was born to be. I gave an eloquent introduction, mentioning my mini-Casio keyboard I got on my 13th birthday, 1981, and love. I filled the crowd with great anticipation with a final plea to "grab the guy or girl you've been making eye contact with all night and get on the dance floor." Talking is easy. Then, without a moment of hesitation (never hesitate - commit), I began to play. In public. The piano. To a packed house.

Author (far right) next to his piano teacher (Bennett Millikan)
Mrs. Iroff's Class 1973 (The great Barry Plumlee far left)

My first notes of the introduction were flawless and partially drowned out by the crowd exploding onto the dance floor. The introduction to that song produces a chemical reaction that is part nostalgia and part aphrodisiac in people of my vintage. The other piano player jumped in and the man who was supposed to be playing my piano took a seat at a drum set, and we were off to the races. I quickly realized the other guy on piano was pretty good. I was so focused on playing the song correctly and keeping up with him that I didn’t sing a lick of the first verse. He did the singing. It became clear I couldn’t keep up the pace of the song. By the time we reached the second verse I was barely playing the piano at all. My playing wasn’t good, but I realized something amazing - my playing was completely inconsequential. The sound created by the first piano and the drums completely masked my ineptness! I realized I could completely stop playing and it would not effect the song. Even better was the fact everyone thought I was playing! I was getting all to the credit without an ounce of contribution...well, I do have unbelievable stage presence. So, quite naturally, as the time for the second verse arrived, my confidence level was sky high! "We" sounded great!!! My time was at hand. I focused on appearing to play the piano and leaned into the microphone, winked at a cute girl on the front row with her hands raised high above her head, and belted out, “A singer in a smokey room, the smell of wine and cheap perfume…”

When the song ended, I ran my hands up and down the keys, Jerry Lee Lewis style, and walked off stage to a standing ovation. Bennett, my kindergarten sidekick and piano teacher, high-fived me. I smiled at the piano player, who was laughing, and made my way to the door, knowing both the exhilaration and adoration that keeps Mick Jagger coming back and the shameful lack of guilt that allowed Milli Vanilli to sleep peacefully during their fraudulent run. My life is now complete. Don’t Stop Believin’.

Learning to Fly

This Week's Song - Fire Escape by Andrew McMahon - because it is Nancy's favorite right now.

She was scared. The pain and anxiety in her stomach had her bent double. The school trip requiring her to travel away from her room, her home, her town, her animals and her family was too much. She was 11. The previous Summer, her father had to drive through the night to pick her up at a weekend camp in the upper East Tennessee mountains. She was homesick, her anxiety manifesting into physical illness. Now, facing an overnight trip further away, the sickness was back. Perhaps it was the normal fear of a sweet child so used to the comforts of home, so loved by so many. Perhaps it was an ordinary coming of age tale. Or, just perhaps, it was the fact her mother died when the little girl was only four. Separation was a big deal. More than likely, it was a little bit of all of the above. 

The bus was leaving the school at 8:00 a.m. for Charleston. Her class was staying overnight and returning the next evening. She worried until she was sick. She didn’t want to go, but she didn’t voice it. But, they knew. Her father knew. So did Nancy, the woman who married her father. 

So, when the bus pulled from the school, a lone car followed it all the way to Charleston. The little girl who rode in the car told the woman who married her father that her tummy felt better. She’d long ago stopped being the woman who married her Daddy. She was "Mommy" and she'd earned it. The mother took the little girl to the field trip sites in Charleston, she stayed nearby in the shadows the entire day just in case she was needed. Even after she entrusted the little girl to her teachers and classmates, the woman spent the night in another hotel nearby. During the night she fielded phone calls from the little girl assuring her she was strong, that she was not sick, that she just a few miles and minutes away and that she loved her. There was always that - proclamations of love. Always.

Shelby will turn 21 next month. After 2 years at the University of Tennessee, she moved to Idaho. Idaho. She calls her mother almost daily. She will be working in Washington this Summer. Washington. The state. Her family has not seen her since Christmas. She is flying, a young woman in charge of her future, confident where the path has led. She is looking for who she is without the fear of distance, the fear of separation, and without the fear of failure. 

My little girl is a kite. Plenty of us take our turn holding the string, but only one of us taught her to fly. 

The card arrived yesterday from Idaho. "Dear Mom...I know that without you, I wouldn't have the courage to take chances and live my life to the fullest." That pretty much says it. Nancy had two born unto her and inherited two born unto another. She has loved and nurtured them in equal measure. She has done so without depriving one of them of the love they each need, crave and deserve. She doesn't orchestrate their lives, she supplements and fosters the life each of them is meant to lead. Cori calls every day from Australia. The boys call upon her when there is a problem or opportunity to grow. Her shoulders are broad, her love is deep, and her capacity for it all is beyond comprehension. So on a day we celebrate mothers, I lift up the mother who has done more than just love her children - she has loved mine and made them her own. she has become their guide to the universe. She inherited a broken family and made one that is unbreakable, and she continues to teach all of us to fly. Happy Mother's Day.

One Buggy Love

This Week's Song - In Spite of Ourselves - by John Prine (accompanied by Iris DeMent) This one is a real classic. Hilarious. I'm sure there is some "One Buggy Love" in there. 

"She's my baby, I'm her honey,

I'm never gonna let her go"

One Buggy Love

The fellowship room at Concord Presbyterian Church filled up on Valentine’s Day for the annual Sweetheart Banquet. Mike Berger made a special Chicken Cordon Bleu with rice and roasted vegetables. There was a Strawberry Pretzel Salad. I’ve never been to a church social or potluck dinner where  Strawberry Pretzel Salad wasn't on the menu. Perhaps its origins can be found in Leviticus. The director of the night’s festivities called in November to invite me to serve as the featured speaker at the banquet. “You’ll follow Peggy, who will play a few pieces on the piano,” Jim Shawn told me. “And, of course, we’d love for you to bring your sweetheart.” 

Given the occasion, I knew what Jim was asking me to do. Jim’s daughter, Amy, was my first wife’s best friend growing up. Amy and the future Cheryl Pryor grew up in the same Farragut neighborhood where skinned knees were healed with a mother’s kiss and the sounds of children at play danced on the branches of the Pines and Sugar Maples. Mrs. Shawn was my 7th Grade teacher. Jim relayed that I was her favorite student in a long and distinguished teaching career. No surprise there. She did say “favorite,” not “best.” The Shawn’s loved Cheryl, and in the Fall of 1984 I began to join in the sentiment. What Jim Shawn was asking me to do on this day of Love, was talk about Cheryl and Nancy, the only two sweethearts I’ve ever had, and the compelling story that goes along with us. He expected me to inspire, to cause laughter and tears. I suppose I shouldn’t complain. When you are crazy enough to write about your life, you should expect to be asked to talk about it. I accepted. When my kids asked what Nancy and I were doing for Valentine’s Day, I told them I was giving a speech about LOVE. “Why?” asked the always inquisitive Cori. “Don’t ask silly questions, girl. I am an expert in the field.” Eyes rolled.

There has been one constant in my life for 48 years - Love. My story is not a secret - Boy meets beautiful girl, they fall in Love. High school romance turns to Marriage. They have babies and start to build a life. Girl dies unexpectedly, boy is broken. Sadness ensues. Then, lightning strikes - boy meets another girl, and an unexpected and great Love follows. If you want the details, read my blog (One Last Prayer, parts 1 and 2) or stop me on the street. The first Epistle to the Corinthians proclaims “Love is not proud,” but give me a minute or two and I’m sure to disappoint the Apostle Paul. I love telling my story. It celebrates Nancy, the most magnificent and remarkable woman on the planet, and it keeps Cheryl present and warmly remembered as the special woman, wife, mother, daughter and friend that she was. Not to mention, I get to brag a bit about the two amazing women who had plenty to choose from but chose ME. So I sat down to craft an inspirational oral history of my life and the great Loves that have been visited upon me when the phone rang - It was my Dad. I set my pen aside and listened as he told me about taking my mother to the grocery store. During the recounting of that momentous event, I was reminded of the origins of my understanding of Love and the fact they came along way before Cheryl and Nancy graced my life.

"She's My Baby, I'm Her Honey"
One Buggy Love

“You take half the list, and I’ll meet you at the register,” my mother told him. Her knee needs to be replaced. She’s already had one of them replaced and avoids the subject. My father struggles with recurrent Atrial Fibrillation and some arthritis in his knees. “Nope,” he said with enthusiasm, “we’ll take one buggy and do the whole thing together.” The two of them meandered through the grocery store, aisle-to-aisle, each grasping the cart and each other at times for support as they carefully selected the ingredients for a meal they would prepare together. During the trip to the store and while making dinner they talked about their children, grandchildren, and their two golden retrievers (Maggie and Molly). As Dad shared with me the major event in his day, the subject matter took me back 16 years when I first heard him speak of this kind of Love. 

I sat across from him in his office in the Winter of 2001, just weeks after Cheryl died. We were trying to understand something incapable of understanding. The focus had been on the children, but my father took this opportunity to tell me how he mourned for me. He spoke of his sadness that I hadn’t been able to experience the ultimate stage of love. He described it as the Love that is formed in the fires along life’s road, that takes a place above and beyond the puppy love of adolescence, is far superior to the life-altering passion of youth, and more transcendent than the work-horse love of raising children and seeing them to adulthood. I made the connection between the two conversations as I listened to him, smiling through the phone, talk about his walk with my mom through Publix. After 54 years together, they are in love. It is a love forged by time, perseverance, and patience. Those who have acquired it celebrate with linked hands and walks on the beach. It is found in the aisles of grocery stores and in the silence of reading the Sunday paper next to one another. It was also noticed within the confines of the banquet hall at Concord Presbyterian Church on Valentine’s Day while Peggy’s hands dance on the pearly keys as I watched these older couples smile at one another. It is a peaceful and quiet Love, confident in its origins and strengthened by the battles it has won. In its purest form, it is incurable and contagious. As I looked around the room from the podium and spoke of it, I saw it. I was in its midst.

While a story about my path must include my beloved Cheryl and Nancy - the heartbreak of loss, the solitude of grief, the rising of hope of new romance and, without doubt, the dress Nancy wore to a Latin dance class in the spring of 2001- Man, that dress was something else - it is Bob and Norma Pryor who deserve the ultimate salute. Simply put, they have shown the way. My siblings and I were raised in a home where love and dance and laughter resided, where we bore witness to the power of love and the light it could shine into the world. I told the people at the Sweetheart Banquet as they moved on to their coffee and chocolate lava cake.

After finishing the talk and another helping of Strawberry Pretzel Salad, Nancy and I said our goodbyes and headed home, stopping by Kroger for a bag of dog food, a gallon of milk and some ice cream for Cori. We used one buggy. 

The Push

This Week's Song - Butterfly Kisses by Bob Carlisle - Ya, I know. I hate this tear jerker too, but Shelby and I loved it when she was a pup. Never thought I'd end up with two girls, but boy am I lucky. 

In the dawn of a new life, after a bold move by Nancy and I to marry and merge families after less than six months of dating, we loaded up our Ford Expedition with our four young children and new puppy and headed off to the panhandle of Florida. This would be our first vacation as a family. My children (Shelby and Andy) and her children (Cliff and Cori) had become acquainted during our whirlwind courtship, stood with us at our wedding, and lived with us during our brief time prior to the trip. We were slowly becoming a family. Kids don't get to choose, but I was going to do my best to make this an extraordinary family.

The Push

The SUV was packed tight. Bicycles hung on the rack attached to the back of the car as we made our way down highway 331 in lower Alabama. The drama and psychology of traveling with four newly-acquainted kids at the ages of 9, 6, 6, and 3 was a daunting task, and a magnificent and frustrating experience. Nothing amplifies the flaws in familial relationships better than an eight-hour drive with a beagle pup crammed in one vehicle, followed by 5 days in a condo. We knew the trip would be important. It would help forge our relationships for years to come. Nancy and I would exchange plenty of "What-have-we-gotten-ourselves-into" looks that week. Each child’s struggle to establish identity within a new order was apparent and something Nancy and I had discussed before deciding to merge our families. We even visited a child psychologist to help prepare. It was like preparing for a tsunami. Things had gone smoothly, all things considered, but the relationships between the kids were evolving. 

Shelby and Cori are the same age, but our daughters could not be more different. They had actually been classmates in preschool before Shelby’s mother tragically died and Cori’s parents divorced. For a child, divorce is a different kind of death. It requires its own adjustment and form of survival. Death and divorce must both be grieved and they must be accounted for in each step of forging on. Johnny Cash would say that Nancy and I had been married in a “fever,” but we were adults (at least we thought so) and we knew that throwing four young children in a stew and mixing them in could turn out delicious or utterly unpalatable. 

Tybee 2016

After a day in Destin, the seven of us went on a walk to a place called Jolee Island where there are swing sets, hiking trails and plenty of places for all to run about and get exhausted. When kids are that age getting everyone exhausted is an integral part of the plan.  As the kids were climbing on the playground equipment, Shelby posed the idea of a foot race with Cori. Shelby was the child who planned what everyone was going to do. Even at 6, she always had an agenda and was pleased to offer up the schedule for the afternoon. She also looked for advantage in every situation, like the time she would leave Cori a letter in her stocking, supposedly penned by Santa Claus. In the blocked and broken script of a child, the letter read “I saw what you did to yur sister. If you do it agin you’ll never get prezents.” This portended a level of brilliance I’m still grasping. Cori was sensitive, athletic and competitive. If you’ve ever had a sensitive and competitive child you know that wins come with a great sense of inner well-being and losses…well, they are simply unacceptable and a catastrophic event bordering on the end of the world. Cori was fast, Shelby was calculating. Shelby negotiated a head start which Cori graciously, if suspiciously, conceded. Nancy and I eyed each other with absolute dread.

Wedding day 2002

The race meandered through palm trees and tropical brush along a sandy path. We could hear their footsteps and Shelby’s giggles as Cori closed the gap. We caught glimpses of them in the trees under a warm Florida sun. If God has a favorite song it is the sound of six-year-old girls laughing and running. They emerged in a clearing closing on the designated finish line. I held up the camera taking photos furiously as they approached. They both held looks of determination as they gained on the end of the race, fighting as if their lives depended on the outcome. As they crossed and Cori claimed victory, Shelby raised protestations of cheating, “She pushed me at the end!!” she claimed. “I did not!” Cori retorted. I counseled the girls on the values of competition and their bond - the fact they had each other to compete with and talk to the rest of their lives. I told them the value of having siblings. They always cause you to try harder, to be your better self.  I thought it an unbelievable opportunity to impart this lifelong wisdom to two beautiful and loving girls and counsel Shelby on making excuses, especially in light of the fact she received a head start. "I did not push her!" Cori continued to insist.

Shelby is now 20. Cori is 21. Both are Juniors in college. When I toasted them at their graduation, I said, "To the father of daughters, they are always 10 years old in pigtails," but I should've said they are always 6 racing through palm trees. Each is an honors student at their respective college. Shelby is my spiritual baby, following her heart and her savior wherever they lead her. Cori was on four-state-championship-finalist soccer teams and is a social butterfly. They could not be more different, but they love each other as…sisters. They competed with grades in middle and high school. Despite their differences and the lack of shared blood, they have made each other better. They have been the best of friends and watch out for each other. They keep up with how the other is doing in school and in other aspects of life. As I write, they could not be farther from me unless they were on the moon. One is in Idaho, the other is in Australia for a semester. As far away from each other and me as they are, they are so close to each other. Their relationship is a great source of pride and one that will survive my existence on this planet. This is a meaningful consolation given my selfish and broken heart.

I sat down later that evening after the big race and looked at my photos from the day. The photo above is legend in our family. It is blown up and has had a prominent place in every home we’ve owned over the years. In it you can find the joy, the determination, and the competitiveness that defines my girls. In it you can find the very essence of my happiness. It never fails to make me smile...or cry. It is simply called, “The Push.”