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 |  My 5th house in Blogville, located at the corner of Humor and Human Interest |
"Invalid Item"  started 2005 ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "Invalid Item" started 2006"Invalid Item" started 2008"Invalid Item" started 2012Above are links to four other blogs I've done over the years here at WDC. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** My reason for being. My one true love. My universe. Me and my bride, Melinda McClain Welcome to my fifth home here in Blogville. Over the past two years I have gone through some changes. Widowhood, stroke, depression....all life stages of life I experienced. This is my attempt to move on, to get over it, to.....live again. So now I have a new blog house here in my beloved cyber-city of Blogville and the intersection of Humor and Human Interest. Come by for a visit anytime you like, friends are always welcome. We'll sit a spell and talk. I want this new Blog home to be light and airy so the topics I write about will reflect what passes for humor for me...most of the time. I will also write about a subject near and dear to me: Animals. All sorts of animals...great and small. That is not to say I won't get serious at times, I will, but one thing I won't do (hopefully) is write about politics. As Val Kilmer said in Tombstone: "My hypocrisy only goes so far." |
| This was written three years ago, about two weeks after the death of my wife. I have been urged to put it somewhere safe so as not to lose it if the computer crashed or Something happened to my Face Book account where it was originally written. Since I've been a member here for over 15 years, I figured it was the safest place for it. Many of my friends here have already read this but there are many new faces and I hope you will read and maybe get something good from the reading. As most of you know by now my wife, Melinda and I met online, through a mutual friend. Mel lived in Michigan and I lived in Texas. Now as interesting (at least to me) as the first time we spoke was, that is not what I was thinking of this morning. I got up today, greeted by a house that was empty of her presence and I began to think about how this woman had filled my life over the past 15 years. It is hard, sometimes to remember what life was like before she came along but the memories I have of that time are ones of a great emptiness. I existed, I functioned, but I did not really live. So it is that as I made that first pot of coffee and fed the fur-babies, my mind wandered back to that first day....the day Melinda flew into Texas and directly into my heart. We had been talking via the Internet and phone for almost six months when, one day out of the blue, Mel simply said: "I have a week of vacation coming up, so why don't I fly down there to Texas." I could not get the words: "OH HELL YES!" out of my mouth fast enough and we began to make plans for her visit. We had, of course, exchanged pictures and we knew what the other looked like, but Mel said she was terrible at recognizing live people from remembered photographs and she was worried about spotting me in the crowd at the airport. You have to remember here that this was before 9/11, when people were allowed to wait for arriving planes right at the gate and there was always a crowd of family and loved ones waiting the arrival of each plane. I told her not to worry, I would be wearing my cowboy hat, western shirt, and jeans....."You can't miss me", I told her. It was not until she was in the air and half way between Detroit and Houston that it dawned on her...."Uh, wait a minute, I'm flying in to Houston, TEXAS; three-fourths of the men there are going to be in jeans and a cowboy hat!" She was right too. There I stood waiting at the gate in a crowd of men wearing jeans and cowboy hats! I too was thinking...."this could be trouble." So the plane lands and the passengers start to debark....and I stand and look, and look....and look..... She is the very last person off the dang plane and I am already starting to think that maybe she got cold feet at the last moment and didn't even get on the plane. Then....across the crowded the crowded concourse, I see her. She seems to simply float toward me instead of walking like a mere mortal. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes upon. Dressed in a simple, knee-length, lime green dress that accentuated the tan skin of her throat and face, her blond hair cut in a short bob and her beautiful blue eyes locked on me and seeing right into my soul. I had brought a bouquet of roses for her and I held them in my hands, forgotten. A million thoughts were going through my mind at once. How do I greet her? Do I give her a friendly hug, do I kiss her on the cheek, do I shake her freaking hand......???? GOD, I COULD USE SOME HELP HERE!! She solved the problem for me. Without ever breaking stride, she walked right up to me, threw her arms around my neck, and gave me a deep, long kiss that made my toes curl and the flowers drop from my hand forgotten. "Hello, cowboy." She whispered in my ear. "Well howdy, my little Yankee girl." I whispered back in a voice that was hoarse with emotion. Loving her was easier than anything I'll ever do again. I knew this fundamental fact almost from the moment our eyes first locked at the airport. You see, Melinda was unlike any woman I had ever met in my life and I had known a few; This wasn't my first rodeo, as they say in Texas. But God she was so damn different. After she kissed me there in the Concourse of the airport, I looked down into her eyes and of course there was passion there, but there was something even more important; there was peace there. In that instant I felt a peaceful flow of "Rightness", for lack of a better word, that covered me from head to toe. I smiled then like I had not smiled since I was a kid.. We quietly locked hands and started toward the baggage claim to retrieve her suitcase. Once down there, we waited with the other passengers as bags circled the carousel. Her bags, like her, were the last ones off the plane it would seem. While we stood there something happened that would repeat itself many times over the next week; A perfect stranger, a little old lady struck up a conversation with Melinda. I discovered quickly that one of the magical qualities of my love was that people tended to gravitate to her. She seemed to have this aura that drew people to her and made them want to share their life story. As she did this first time, she always listened with complete attention to that person. She would treat each stranger as if they were old friends....that was at the center of her magic; she had a heart so big it accepted anyone who approached. I just stood and listened to them and I smiled....yes, that's my baby. We finally retrieved her bags and we made it to the car and started off for the seventy mile trip to my home. I have made that trip many times both before and since, but I don't think it ever went so fast as it did that day. We talked constantly, a haze of discovery that covered us and made time cease. Before I even realized it, we had arrived in my little town. As we took the off ramp for the road into town, it dawned on me that I was about to do something that could be quite uncomfortable. I was about to introduce this woman to my two sons who lived with me. One was 19 and the other one was 14 and I wasn't sure just how it was going to go over with them. I had never before brought a woman home, choosing instead to keep my social life from disrupting the home life I had built with my kids. By the time we pulled up to my driveway I was sweating bullets, as they say. I shouldn't have worried though, my boys came out to the driveway when we pulled up and when Mel got out of the car, both boys had these big ole grins on their faces that I had not witnessed in quite some time. Mel hugged both of them as if she were greeting her own children and, like their father, both of them fell in love with her on the spot. Patrick, the 19 year old told me that he and Rick were spending the week end with friends. He said this while giving me this exaggerated wink and nudge in the ribs. I turned about three shades of red and hustled everyone inside. Soon afterwards the boys had made their gleeful exit and Melinda and I decided to change into more comfortable clothes. It was then that she made a curious request. She asked if we could take a walking tour of the town. I thought it was a strange request but I would have done whatever she wanted to do. How can I describe that tour? For me, when we started out, it was just a ho-hum thing, I mean, really it was just a small, mostly deserted downtown section filled with empty buildings and faded storefronts. I had seen it, walked over, driven through it, a thousand times. It was like the speed bump you pass over each day going to work...you know its there, but you rarely even register going over it after awhile. But if it was a walking tour she wanted, I was damn sure going to give it to her. So we drove downtown to the center of town and parked the car at the courthouse. From there we walked up one side of Main street headed North. I began to point out buildings in a sort of monotone voice, stating the obvious: "It use to be open but it closed down after Walmart came in." Finally she stopped me: "Honey," she said in a soft voice, "I can see all that. I want you to tell me what it was like when you were a kid. Every town has its stories....tell me those." I looked down at her, for a moment at a loss....when I was a kid? How do I....YES. Time slowed down, then began to flow backward as my mind cast back to capture the memories. Time stopped. Time. We went back... I took her hand and started walking slowly with her once again and the words seemed to pour out of me..... "Over where we started...the courthouse...Did you see that plaque? That was where a giant live Oak tree stood. They cut it down a few years ago because it had started to rot, but it use to be the "hanging tree" back a hundred years ago. Oh and when I was a kid, me and my buddies would climb up in its lower limbs to watch parades down main street." And as I spoke, I could actually see that time once again. Hot July morning. Me and my buddies scampering up in the low branches of that tree and waiting for the parade to begin. Each of us armed with pea-shooters so we could try to spook the horses ridden in the center of the parade.Yes, I could see it so damn clear, as if I were back there again. " Over there, that use to be the drugstore.” I told her,pointing to a large empty building. We crossed the street and stood in front of the empty edifice “They had a soda fountain and a bar. Every Saturday we would come to town and Dad would treat us to a chocolate shake or a banana split." We both stood for a moment and stared through the front glass and into the empty old building. I could almost see us kids twirling around on the stools as we waited for our treat. Ghostly images, trapped in my mind and released by the simple request: "Show me..." And so it went. We walked all over that town and at each building I had a story to tell. Every step of the way was strewn with forgotten memories, things I had not thought of in decades, ghosts of people long gone and forgotten....all there waiting for this visit. By the time we had finished the tour, she knew more about me than I had ever told any living soul. I was terrified that I had shown so much of myself to another living human, I had guarded those secrets of my youth all those years, never sharing with anyone....anyone but her. So I figured, what the hell, I might as well go the full way. I took her back home, we packed a picnic basket. I would not tell her where we were going. "It's a surprise." was all I would say. We headed West on Hwy 190 and drove about fifteen miles before we came to our destination.....Lake Livingston. The lake was built back in the early seventies and was a massive 84,000 acres of water that stretched for miles and miles. I turned off onto a little used road and parked the car where the road ended, then we took the basket and walked through a small stand of trees. When we broke out into the open, we were standing on a large hill, bare of anything save one large Oak tree. Beyond the hill was the lake's edge and water stretched away to the horizon. This was my favorite place on Earth. It was where I came when I needed to see a sunset and find peace. So we sat under that old Oak tree and eat our dinner from the picnic basket and drank a bottle of wine. As the sun began to set over the water in a fiery display of light, I once again slipped into the past as I described to her the land and how it was before the lake was there. The old river bottom, the rich, black land soil, the forests of giant Lob lolly Pine with herds of deer grazing beneath them. I spoke of the alligators and the bear, the cougar and the coyotes, the beaver and the wild pigs and of how all that land now gone under water was their home.....and mine. How as a boy I fished and hunted the land. Once again, as I spoke, I could see it all come to life as if I was back then. As the sun finally dipped into the waters of the lake, I finished my stories and I held her close and whispered: "Thank you for this day." She smiled at me, took my face in her hands and kissed me softly and with that kiss, she became a part of my soul as sure as if some happy God had melded us together with lightning. And so ends our story.....at least this telling. "What about the rest of the week?" You ask. Well, my friends that week passed, as weeks are wont to do. It passed in a blur of happiness, discovery, passion and sweet sharing. Then she flew home..........for awhile....then she returned and she has been in my life, she has BEEN my life, ever since and so shall she continue to be until the day I die....still loving her. The difference now is that she is the Angel sitting on my shoulder. |
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