Three Score and Counting
Score One
It is January 1st 1956 and I am alive. I am not breathing but it is okay. I am not eating but that is okay too, I am not hungry.
It is dark and I cannot see, but my eyes do not see anyway, yet I am starting to squint.
The claustrophobia that will plague me later in life is not a problem now.
I am starting to suck my thumb and I am about the size of a lemon.
For maybe the only time in my life, I am safe and warm and content.
The lifeline that keeps me alive is my mother.
In less than six months I have a name. I have a brother who is 2 and half years older than me and a sister four years older. Within five years I have a younger brother as well.
I go to school when I am five. Fearful of embarrassment and disappointment, I do well in school, at least until the distractions of my early teenage years win over the priorities that should concern me.
By the end of high school those priorities are realized once more. But unfortunately the damage is done and the old college try ends in its first year, emotionally unprepared.
I begin to build the work ethic that will drive me later in life, though my mind is still not prepared.
Score Two
It is January 1st 1976 and I am still alive, though sometimes I wonder how.
I am breathing but some might say I am just taking up air. I am hungry and I am eating.
My lifeline is still my mother.
I continue to work and take another try at building my mind but again that is short lived.
I follow my misguided heart away from my childhood home to a new life in a new state. This time I finish my education and find a career.
I have a daughter, then four years later I have another.
My career does well and I advance up the ladder.
But at home hearts grow cold and mending seems hopeless.
Score Three
It is January 1st 1996 and I am still alive. In less than six months I will turn forty years old.
Cold hearts prevailed and soon I am on my own again, my lifeline is now just me.
But that doesn’t last too long as an angel appears and half way into the millennial year my life is shared once again with a new wife and daughter and son.
So now married again with two more children we blend our families the best that we can and we are happy.
Though my career begins the score nicely it ends early in and before the summer of 2000 a new one is cultivated.
I am starting all over again.
But the work ethic kicks in and we do what we need to do to take care of our new family.
Then tragedy strikes with an accident one day that takes the life of our son at the age of fifteen.
And though never the same our family moves forward with the help of God.
More changes occur as the kids grow older.
Now with two grandchildren and the kids all grown up, we still work to make it all good every day, learning that kids will always be kids no matter how old they get.
Working too hard, life seems always too stressful, as the third score comes to an end. Once again career changes occur and the rebuilding begins once more, though this late in life I am not so sure.
I am no longer the size of a lemon, far from it. And though my eyes are working I struggle to see and the squinting that started at fourteen weeks is frequent again.
And though I don’t suck my thumb, some days I feel like I want to. And I have learned that safe, warm, and content are all relative now.
My lifeline is my wife. Without her I would starve physically and emotionally. We have endured much the last almost twenty years. Yet it seems like just yesterday that I was blessed with that first introduction. Contentment in this part of my life is not relative.
And Counting
Now it is January 1st, 2016 and yes I am still alive and breathing. In less than six months I will turn 60 years old. I have much to be thankful for and much to look forward to in what may be my last 20 years though modern medicine may challenge that.
And on this day let the musings begin as I embark on a new adventure and my fourth score.
Happy New Year