Thursday, February 3, 2011

Roots......

Our youngest son recently spread his proverbial wings and flew the nest. This resulted in me having to keep one of the "not-until-the-kids-move-out" promises. This one involved carpeting several fully furnished rooms.

We built this house twenty years ago on a few acres of old family property. It was dream of mine to give the children something I never had. Roots. A home they could always return to. Growing up in a military family did not allow me the luxury of a geographic point of reference that I could call home. My kids have that. I wonder if it means as much to them as I imagined it would have meant to me.

But I am off point. That happens a lot to me these days.

The carpet men moved furniture from the fully furnished rooms into other fully furnished rooms. The ability to move about the house became even more challenging than normal (for me). It was frustrating to be so limited and the obstacle course magnified my inability to move fluidly. So I spent the day holed-up in my office.



I almost missed rediscovering a moment from twenty years earlier. While the house was being built, before the original carpet had been installed, I visited to check on the builder's progress. It was a gray December day, chilly but not cold. As I wandered through the lifeless structure a warmness rose in my body. I was a starving plant whose shriveled roots had finally grown deep enough to reach water. I flushed with life knowing my home was to be real.

Alone, I stooped, and just outside the master bedroom, I scratched the shape of a heart into the new concrete. "Bob loves Gale," I scrawled inside the heart.

I had long since forgotten the act but when I looked down and saw the heart, I was again warmed to my soul. The house we had built had become the home I never had and my roots were still pulling nourishment from the spring that was our love for each other.

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10 comments:

  1. hi bob.glad your back,i am always checking to see how you are.you have beautiful memories.please keep us updated with your physical abilities i hope you stay as well as possible as long as possible.did you ever try cinnamon,some good results, are you on meds?what seems to help you?take care

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  2. Hi Bob
    Glad you saw the heart. I'm a bit envious of your happy home since mine is imploding at the moment, and I blew my stack at my ex-husband, Buzz Kill, for fucking up everything with his foolishness in the first place. It's not the first time I blew my stack at Buzz Kill, but I probably shouldn't have thrown my ice cream at him. I'm happy for you, though, and the life you're still having.

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  3. Wow, I'm not sure which is more touching -- the rediscovered heart or the sweet video of the first bike ride sans training wheels.

    Thanks for sharing,
    Donna

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  4. Headstrong - Thanks for following.

    Bernie - I'll post a "physical" update soon. I'll try to address the kookie science behind cinnamon and coconut too.

    PENolan - NEVER waste good ice cream!

    Donna - I have recently finished digitizing all our old video tapes. I hope I can survive long enough to edit them. There are a few others posted on youtube already. Thanks for commenting.

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  5. Oh, there you go, making me cry! That's about the sweetest thing I've ever read. You are a blessed man.

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  6. The reminders of what's important in this life... God gives us just what we need when we need it!!
    God is GOOD... ALL THE TIME! :)
    GREAT POST CW!

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  7. You've already lived a life...that as some prior posts have said....You are blessed...and WE are blessed by your words...what you are writing here is much deeper and much more important than you think...thank you..skydiving is cool...but being a passenger in my taxi IS dangerous ! LOl ;) Peace to you Bob...I admire every molecule of you. Thank you for existing.

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  8. Hey you - just checking in to see how you're doing.

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  9. Very romantic!!!!!

    Something will happen between now and 'then' that will make you say, "I couldn't have missed this day!! This is one of the greatest days, perhaps THE greatest day of my life."

    I'm sure of it happen. Trust me.

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