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The Holiday Chronicles: The New Year, Epiphany, Hope, and Rain

The Holiday Chronicles: The New Year, Epiphany, Hope, and Rain

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It’s windy.

I woke up this morning to find a Christmas tree rolling around my back yard.

I knew it wasn’t my Christmas tree because I didn’t put one up this year.

But I have one now.

And I am guessing I also have at least one happy neighbor who I am sure had been stressing over when that tree on his curb was going to finally be picked up.

Now his stress is over. Now I can have that tree on my curb and I can stress over how long it’s going to be there and when it is going to be picked up.

 

We are already over a week into the New Year.

The New Year’s celebrations have come and gone.

And like every year on New Year’s Eve as the day slips into night, and I go to sleep, I wake up with the new dawn in the New Year having some renewed spirit.

An epiphany.

Like something is sure to change…

This year, will be, unlike any other year…

This is the year I am going to … (fill in the blank).

I have passed Go, collected my two hundred bucks and I am ready to go around again, only this time…this year,  maybe I will land on Broadway.

I get another chance to do it better. Maybe forget some pain or unpleasantness from the previous year, because that was yesterday this is today.

And for some reason, today… feels different.

 

Hope.

I wrote about Hope a couple of years ago at a time when I thought I needed to be reminded and maybe we all needed to be reminded that it was going to be okay.

But I think it may help sometimes to have these transition days like a New Year’s Day to metaphorically wipe the slate clean and start anew.

Taking a thought from Hope, I don’t know for sure if God has already revealed what is in store for me.

But here is my New Year’s epiphany…

Maybe He has?

Maybe I was right when I proposed in Hope that that I might be living my rewards already. Maybe the truth is I landed on Broadway twenty years ago and I am already living those rewards I worked hard for and prayed for.

And though I am still going to have those days when I wake up to random Christmas trees rolling around my yard, it’s okay.

This is it.

This is the year I am going to…realize that this is it!

And it is just as it should be…

 

As I thought about trying to wrap this up it occurred to me if I had to summarize 2018 in one word it would be rain.  Rain that destroyed my grass and turned my yard into mud, and kept my tomatoes from turning red.

So while at the gym this evening I listened to rain songs…Lowen and Navarro, the Jayhawks, John Hiatt.

And I settled on Hiatt to sum it up:

 

Batten down the hatches
But keep your heart out on your sleeve
A little bit of stormy weather, that’s no cause for us to leave
Just stay here baby, in my arms
Let it wash away the pain
Feels like rain

 (from Feels Like Rain, John Hiatt)

 

And once again, let our dreams continue undimmed by change, tragedy, conflict, and the tears that may be shed as a result.

 

And let it be, a happy new year.

 

 

 

Tubas and Saxophones, The Dave Clark Five, and I Love You

Tubas and Saxophones, The Dave Clark Five, and I Love You

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My first saxophone, circa 1965, but it was already old when i got it.

It was The Dave Clark Five in the early sixties that caused a young “want to be” rock star at seven or eight years old to begin to fantasize about playing the saxophone one day in a band.

Our grandson Cameron,  age six, asked Santa for a tuba for Christmas.

A tuba.

We don’t know why he wanted a tuba for Christmas.  Not that there is anything wrong with that or the tuba,  I just can’t think of any cool current bands with a tuba player.

Our ritual for putting Cameron to sleep includes Kim and me each individually going in to visit him to say goodnight. The other night while I was in saying good night to Cameron, he asked me:

“Pop Pop, why didn’t Santa bring me a tuba?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “Maybe he wants you to first learn to play your guitar, your drums, your harmonica, and your piano.  Then it will be easier for you to learn how to play the tuba.”

So because of the Dave Clark Five, when I turned nine years old and was able to start the music program in grammar school (sorry that is elementary school for those of you who aren’t from Jersey),  I got my first saxophone.    I was in the fourth grade and played it until I was in the seventh grade.

When I was twelve I got my first harmonica.

When I was sixteen or seventeen I put my first guitar on lay-away at Jack’s Music Shop in Red Bank New Jersey.

I now have six guitars, a number that equals the number of chords I know how to play on those guitars. I have two saxophones, and I have about twenty harmonicas.

Though I have a deep love of music I think my self-diagnosed attention deficit disorder never allowed me to master any one of those instruments beyond the point of just being able to have fun.

Last night, while listening to some music, I started thinking about Cameron and his tuba.

Then I started thinking about me and my musical instruments.

So naturally that led to the thought that I had to write something about all this.  Next, I remembered I had once written something that I thought at the time was really cool, that might fit somewhere in this developing concept.

So I started searching my spiral notebooks,  and then my computer files,  but I never did find those really cool words I once wrote that I thought would be so fitting.  Though it was definitely way cooler than this,  what I wrote back then had a similar theme to this:

I don’t know why I never learned to play harp like Delbert.

And I don’t know why I never played saxophone like Clarence.

Or learned to play the guitar like Bruce, or sing like Richie Furay, or write songs like Hiatt.

 

And I don’t know now what any of this has to do with anything…except maybe confirming my ADD tendencies.

But there was something else.

Because while I was searching for those really cool lyrics that were never found, I did find this:

My Mom Often tells me

By Donny

 

My mom often tells me, I love you.

When I am in the most miserable mood ever, and my mom is yelling I still know all of this yelling will later be followed by I love you. 

This saying reassures me that everything will always be alright.  It lets me know that somebody cares for you.  This saying makes you feel like everything I’m doing is fine and I should keep up the good work.  I don’t understand why when my mom says I love you, it means a lot more than when anybody else on earth says it, I love my mom.  She is my mentor, my friend, and someone I look up to.  I couldn’t ask for a better mom.  I thank God for blessing me with a gift like this

 

I don’t know why Santa didn’t bring Cameron a tuba.

And I will never know why God took Donny away from us either.

But I am happy that I found this essay of Donny’s since Monday is Donny’s birthday and sometimes we just need to get these messages.

A message that “reassures me that everything will always be alright.” 

So happy birthday Donny!

I can assure you that your mother still loves you.

And that everything will be alright.

Oh…and tell somebody that you love them, it means something.

Donny and cousin Josh