Sometimes events spur you to pause and think back over your past. Maybe that past flashes before your eyes at some moment when a possible life altering event happens. That's happened to me a few times, generally while driving and suffering the bad habits and lack of care by other drivers more intent on texting or conversation than handling a speeding car. That flash of my past happened once on my boat in the middle of the night many miles out in the Gulf of Mexico when a lightning storm hit close enough to fry my eyebrows.
The thing is, when my life or some portion of it passed before my eyes in those moments of fright or panic, it was more of a feeling of my life when I grew up in Tennessee. It was a disjointed scrap of memories that was the smell of fried chicken and steaming cornbread, the blazing sound of katydids in the stifling heat of August when you just begged for some rain to cool off the day, the twinkling of lightning bugs as evening turned to night, bullfrog croaks on a summer night, the sound of car tires crunching on a gravel road (no gravel in Florida where I've lived most of my adult life), the delicate sound of snow falling that you could only hear if you closed your eyes and strained to listen as pine trees turned to snow cones, our dogs rolling in fresh snow as happy and excited as young boys - all these scraps of sights and sounds in around a millisecond of time, flashing in my memory.
Or, maybe some thing or some event triggers those childhood memories. I recently met up with an old and dear friend - my best friend for a lot of my childhood - after 48 years (thanks to Facebook). My friend, Arnold, is a minister, a man of great learning on one of the most important subjects to which you can devote your life. Ministers, pastors, priests, rabbis, preachers are healers of the soul, just as physicians are healers of the body. He is pastor of a church out west, a long way from Tennessee and even farther from Orlando. He has a big congregation, his family and just reading his church's website, he is involved in just about every aspect of operations and charity work. It was easy to see that the love for southern cooking that we both grew up on in Clarksville hasn't worn off and that my friend is a big contributor to church bake sales. I commented on Facebook that I still have very fond memories of chess pie, a regional delicacy of egg and sugar custard found in Tennessee, but rarely elsewhere, and Arnold baked and mailed me a pie for Thanksgiving. I'm sure it's not the first pie he has mailed.
When Arnold left for college I drove him to the bus station. He was leaving to study religion and become a minister; a heavy burden of study, memorizing and reading rested on his shoulders and I was in awe of his bravery in choosing his path. That was the last time I saw my friend until last week when he sat beside me at the Columbia restaurant. He was the same Arnold; oh we were both a bit shorter and somewhat heavier. His voice seemed softer and my hearing is getting bad, but we were the same two as we were when we grew up, just older and greyer; a bit wiser and a good bit slower, but still the same. Meeting him at his hotel after all those decades had the same feeling as if I were visiting him at college a few months after his bus ride. I slipped back through those many years to when we were at school together, when we would wolf down cheese burgers late at night at a small diner and solve the world's problems.
These days I am going through chemotherapy for lung cancer. It's not something I tell many of my friends, but without thinking I mentioned it to Arnold; I wanted him to know - he would want to know, just as I would want to know of a big problem of event in his life. I wish to hell we didn't live so far away from each other. Meeting up after so long with a old best childhood friend is much like a time machine trip, a second chance not at reliving one's youth but to move back in time to make up for some of those lost years. When I get past this small dip in my health I will mail my friend an apple pie.
The thing is, when my life or some portion of it passed before my eyes in those moments of fright or panic, it was more of a feeling of my life when I grew up in Tennessee. It was a disjointed scrap of memories that was the smell of fried chicken and steaming cornbread, the blazing sound of katydids in the stifling heat of August when you just begged for some rain to cool off the day, the twinkling of lightning bugs as evening turned to night, bullfrog croaks on a summer night, the sound of car tires crunching on a gravel road (no gravel in Florida where I've lived most of my adult life), the delicate sound of snow falling that you could only hear if you closed your eyes and strained to listen as pine trees turned to snow cones, our dogs rolling in fresh snow as happy and excited as young boys - all these scraps of sights and sounds in around a millisecond of time, flashing in my memory.
Or, maybe some thing or some event triggers those childhood memories. I recently met up with an old and dear friend - my best friend for a lot of my childhood - after 48 years (thanks to Facebook). My friend, Arnold, is a minister, a man of great learning on one of the most important subjects to which you can devote your life. Ministers, pastors, priests, rabbis, preachers are healers of the soul, just as physicians are healers of the body. He is pastor of a church out west, a long way from Tennessee and even farther from Orlando. He has a big congregation, his family and just reading his church's website, he is involved in just about every aspect of operations and charity work. It was easy to see that the love for southern cooking that we both grew up on in Clarksville hasn't worn off and that my friend is a big contributor to church bake sales. I commented on Facebook that I still have very fond memories of chess pie, a regional delicacy of egg and sugar custard found in Tennessee, but rarely elsewhere, and Arnold baked and mailed me a pie for Thanksgiving. I'm sure it's not the first pie he has mailed.
When Arnold left for college I drove him to the bus station. He was leaving to study religion and become a minister; a heavy burden of study, memorizing and reading rested on his shoulders and I was in awe of his bravery in choosing his path. That was the last time I saw my friend until last week when he sat beside me at the Columbia restaurant. He was the same Arnold; oh we were both a bit shorter and somewhat heavier. His voice seemed softer and my hearing is getting bad, but we were the same two as we were when we grew up, just older and greyer; a bit wiser and a good bit slower, but still the same. Meeting him at his hotel after all those decades had the same feeling as if I were visiting him at college a few months after his bus ride. I slipped back through those many years to when we were at school together, when we would wolf down cheese burgers late at night at a small diner and solve the world's problems.
These days I am going through chemotherapy for lung cancer. It's not something I tell many of my friends, but without thinking I mentioned it to Arnold; I wanted him to know - he would want to know, just as I would want to know of a big problem of event in his life. I wish to hell we didn't live so far away from each other. Meeting up after so long with a old best childhood friend is much like a time machine trip, a second chance not at reliving one's youth but to move back in time to make up for some of those lost years. When I get past this small dip in my health I will mail my friend an apple pie.
