Tim's Tales from the Road
Tim's Tales from the Road
My Grandpa Orin and Grandma 'Bill' walked their Irish Setter 'Rusty' along the trail that jumped 'leap frog'' alongside the twists, turns, and curves of Bull River. Nestled in a gorge in Montana's Clark Fork country the trail was narrow and impossible to negotiate with any dignity. The dog, on a long leather leash, kept bounding around the wrong side of various objects. As soon as grandpa bent down and untangled his dog and himself from one tree, the dog immediately wrapped them both up in another.
The dog had to remain on a leash. Grizzly and black bears were everywhere, and if allowed to run free, Rusty would only serve to irritate them. The berries were not yet in season and the huge creatures were hungry and irritable. The previous night Billy rescued me from a bear as it rummaged through our campsite while I slept. Asleep in their travel trailer, she woke to the sound of the bears digging through the garbage in the next campsite. Dozing outside in a sleeping bag, next to the picnic table I was oblivious.
Unable to rouse my grandfather, the seventy plus year old woman took matters into her own hands and dashed outside. Encountering a bear just past the door of the camper, she scrambled to grab me sleeping bag and all. The bear rose up on his hind legs as she flew past him charging back into the camper with me dangling in her arms. For her it was just another day in a life of demonstrating her independent, strong willed determination, and she once again stepped up to whatever challenge was in her path. The next morning as we had breakfast and surveyed the trashy mess the bears left behind, she made a comment to my grandfather that she should have grabbed his rifle. To which he nodded a muffled "Yep 'spose you should have."
Just as good a shot as he, he was not at all chauvinistic in the 'who got to defend the grandson from the bears' department.
The trail that day was a showcase of wildflowers and the hills towered over us as we followed alongside the wandering river's banks. The late morning sun was splendid and although I did not know it at the time, the simplicity of that moment following in my grandfathers bigger than life footsteps would be a moment that I would cling to later in life. During the easy times and the troubled ones, it was always the three of us. Elderly folk and the "young in' " as they were fond of describing my thirteen going on thirty. Over a decade later when the good lord brought Dallas into my life, we became four. Inseparable.
Yet in spite of those bonds, we were still prone to the foolish, occasional soul wandering that all of us must do. Wandering off on uncharted life trails only to get lost and have to be rescued by the others, we always came back to that warm campfire lit circle numbering four. Through out all of that time, from thirteen to now, our bond stayed strong. And, looking back through the fog of those early life lessons, I suppose Orin and Billy were on to something. They "got it". When I think back on those hikes, I wish that I had paid a little more attention. Thirteen, going on thirty, going on two.
Together we continued on our hike. Between grandpa's frustration and the dog's total lack of cooperation, progress up the trail was slow if not nonexistent. Trees shook as grandpa tried to get the dog to hold still long enough to get everyone on the right side of the tree trunk or bush. Usually the leash became further entangled around legs and feet. Each new entanglement provided comic material for my grandmother and I. Our humorous evaluation of his futile efforts frustrated grandpa. "What are you two laughing at?" he would ask. "What's so funny?"
Less than a mile up the trail, and already we were driving him crazy. And, sure enough within seconds the dog and he were once again tangled up in a bull pine. The dog panted and licked his face while he, exasperated, tried to get them both free. Grandma and I counted eleven straight cuss words without a 'breath, break, or but…'
Rusty wasn't the only one driving grandpa stark raving mad. Grandma and I were always "splitting" posts with grandpa. While he managed to keep the dog and himself on the left side of this tree or that rock, we would invariably go around the right. Splitting posts and taking different paths was an ominous sign to Orin Lopeman. And, Orin Lopeman was as superstitious as they come. To walk together was required. Side by side. Not separated by a telephone pole, parking meter or a tree. But, next to each other, as if joined. And if an object or obstacle was encountered which would prevent this unity of spirit in motion, then one of the party was expected to stop and wait until everyone could pass on the same side of the pole, post or tree trunk. This required thinking ahead. Planning. Coordination.
His request was simple enough. Just stay on the same side of things. Walk in unity. Let nothing separate you. And if something did, then utter the simple phrase "bread and butter". Easy. Elementary. Basic. And totally impossible for a brainless, thirteen year-old grandson and an eight year old hyper and brain dead Irish Setter to accomplish, grasp or remember.
I will never forget the look on his face as he, sweating and frustrated, was bent over the wild eyed slobbering dog trying to untangle the two of them and he witnessed me carelessly pass on the other side of a tree, separating him from me. I forgot to say, "bread and butter" in the process. As he looked at me while the dog licked his face, his eyes registered disappointment and hurt. "It will bring us bad luck, Tim. We will not part as friends. We will become enemies. Now get back over here on this side of the tree…or say bread and butter."
His eyes pleaded with me and so I said it. Not knowing why. Not understanding these rules. Aware of the complications my grandfather's superstitions brought to everything. Yet lost as to their meaning and their purpose. But, he was my tall Coloradan Hero and he must know something that I did not. Something about bread and butter. After quickly saying the magic in that phrase the panic in his eyes disappeared and he relaxed returning his attention to the wild eyed spasming dog.
Orin Lopeman came into the world with true grit and determination. He knew early on about cowboy 'try'. Born on the harsh wind driven badlands of the Colorado Front Range near Pueblo, across the dry range country just outside of Colorado Springs, he was a mix of Native American, and English ancestry. His grandmother, a full-blooded Choctaw who feared being returned to the reservation, was a determined woman who, after severing all ties with the ‘res’, settled in Colorado in a self imposed exile. She married an Englishman and buried all links to her past. Her fear of the federal government was so great that she had fifteen different names in addition to her native name. Yet her disappearance from the Choctaw nation was a success. Later attempts to trace her heritage led to endless dead ends. When she left the Choctaw nation and forever abandoned her head rights, she also forever buried her offspring's heritage. It was as if she had never been a member of the tribe. And her children would never know from where they came. An imaginary gulf came to separate one family from another. Yet there were also a few painful links back. Some trails may get overgrown but they never totally disappear.
One such trait possessed her son, my grandfather's father. Although Orin's father may have lost all the links back to the trails leading home, one stubborn tradition somehow found its way into his life: The trail of sweet liquors and alcoholism. Poison Water, Fire Water, and on Sundays, Holy Water.
Handsome beyond description, as my grandmother Billy later described him, Orin's father was the sort of man who, in spite of being in a drunken stupor for most of his life, could still captivate the attention of any woman who already didn't know his history. And even some of those who did. When the tall, dark drunk walked through those early, western saloon doors, many women's better judgement crumbled. Orin's mother Cleo was no exception to that crazy magic. From their pairing came Orin Lopeman, an English and Choctaw, part pure 'hell fire' and part 'heaven sent', don't spare the horses, cowboy. To hear Billy Lopeman tell it now, from the time he set foot on the earth he was determined to be determined.
And even now when she says it, her eyes sparkle. "Determined to be determined," she whispers through her weathered voice and then there is a weak pause of words while her heart races over decades and her breath is once again taken away. Eventually her eyes again meet mine and then, refreshed after that brief walk across the clouds, her eighty two year old face mirrors youth and days gone by.
Orin Lopeman never lived a quiet life. He grew up hard and by the time he was in his teens he was independent and caring for his sister as they bounced across the small town marquees of Colorado. His father’s binges with firewater foretold a life of poverty forcing his mother into divorce when 'good women' didn't. Orin was on his own by the time most are just beginning to find their way. Talented in the trade of commercial art he worked for Fox West Coast Theatres as a sign man and then joined the navy where he was stationed in Australia. He stood on the decks of the USS Missouri at the signing of the peace treaty by General MacArthur and the Japanese that ended World War II.
Initially he was unlucky in love. He received word that his first wife was divorcing him and taking his first two children away as he fought in World War II. Out of the country and fighting the war, he was defenseless as she, with generous counsel, constructed a legal barrier between he and his children that was impossible to penetrate. Heartbroken, he discharged in Australia at the end of the war. In Sydney Australia, he fell in love again and with his second wife he started over. Eventually Orin brought her back to the states.
One dark night while he slept and his children played in an adjoining room, his wife crept in and shot him. Left for dead. She, and the neighbor she was having an affair with, fled taking the kids with them. Jumping around the globe with Orin's children, she never looked back. For the second time in a row his flesh and blood was stolen from him, this time, crash-landing in Australia after brief lives spent on the run in Pennsylvania and South Africa. Exiled. He did not see his children again until they were in their teens. And by then it was too late. Some wounds never heal with time. Some distance can't be bridged. Some things the mind of a child cannot ever hope to understand. Even with the aid of the relief maps and contours that life experience sometimes provides adults. Orin's second shot at fatherhood was an also ran. He never had a chance. Never got out of the gate. Once again, someone jumped the gun and by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late. Separation. Continental drift. Wide open spaces. And, in all the chaos, no one remembered to whisper, "Bread and Butter."
He could have quit. Surveyed the wreckage and hit the bars. Worked his looks. Settled for the least common denominator. Instead, Orin met Billy and theirs was a match that worked. Twice divorced, she too was disillusioned. Being a single mother, raising a child alone during times when women didn't end up single without the aid of a morals charge, was never in her plans. And at first neither was Orin. The tall handsome, cocky English/Indian courted her hard. At first she resisted his advances. Billy was skeptical of another marriage. Orin didn't take the hint. Instead, he intensified his efforts. She reconsidered. The fun loving cowboy could dance her off the floor to the time being kept by the Big Bands. He kept her laughing with his awful jokes. He loved horses as much as she did. He treated her as the rare and precious Montana jewel that she was. He loved her nearly grown daughter and her horse Cherry Pie as if they were his own.
Persistence and time wore Billy down and she eventually said 'yes' to the man who would stand beside her for the next 38 years. It was a simple union. Three was a charm. Billy was as disillusioned with marriage as Orin, yet, in spite of her hesitation, they married and attempted to put their lives together again. Soon enough when the neighbors looked out their windows they witnessed Orin shaving in their open barn breezeway. Looking into a small mirror, a towel draped about his neck and his step daughter's horse, Cherry Pie, leaning out of the top of the Dutch door, bobbing her head and supervising every stroke of the razor, his life seemed complete. Deprived of raising his own kids he looked at my mother as his own. After so much separation and so many false starts, flesh and blood was irrelevant. Orin looked at the world and those in life as more than mere DNA and tissue that either was or wasn't his. His take on family leapt over lineage and crashed through family trees. Where blood did not bind spirit did. There was no discussion on the matter. It was just the way things were. And once Orin Lopeman considered a person family, those bonds were impossible to break.
"Orin's Signs" read his business card. Doing commercial sign work out of his shop in the back of their modest house, it was in that magical place where his brushes made words appear and commerce flow for the movers and shakers and the dreamers in Spokane and the Inland Empire. His signs rose up from the prairies and the mountains, from the cities and small towns, and from everywhere in between. His history was grounded along with those signs posted from Eastern Montana to the Pacific Ocean and from the western provinces of Canada to the California line. I couldn't go anywhere in the west without seeing my grandfather's hand left to mark a venture here or an opportunity there.
As a child, I never considered the ramifications that Orin's blood did not resemble my own. Running into his shop with other kids we would petition him to lift his shirt so that we could see his bullet wound and the fact that his belly button was in a different place than ours. He did the counting for us in games of hide and seek. Sneaking out of the shop before grandma could spy on us we hit the toy stores and he would generously add to my collection of Matchbox Cars telling me, "Don't let your grandmother know we are doing this. See if there are any you don't have and we'll get them for you. We just have to get back before she catches us and realizes we are gone. Otherwise…." and he would pause with that look that grandpas give which foretell of dire consequences, "You know how your grandma is. Now hurry Timbo!"
And so I would rummage quickly through the shelves looking for cars that I didn't have and we would carry the loot back home. Later in the week my grandmother would sneak off with me and repeat the procedure as we went looking for Hot Wheels cars and the other treasures that boys love. "Tim, you can't let your grandfather know that I bought you those cars…." Shaking my head yes and wondering at the same time at these two people who took such great pains to sneak me out of the house without the other's knowledge. All of this done so that they could demonstrate their love for me in a real and tangible way. Both of them knew separation and this time out of the gate they were determined to not repeat the past.
In spite of the demands of their business, Orin and Billy always had time for me and it was under their patient instruction that I first learned how to whistle, skip stones, build a fire in the woods and eventually drive. My grandparents were the first people that I could ever tell the dark secret which was threatening to rip me to shreds. The awareness of differences that I had that others my age didn't. Shortly after graduation from high school I shared with my grandparents that I thought I might be gay.
I told grandpa on a hot August day as the roar of the distant Burlington Northern freight trains burned into the background. He turned from the sign he was painting and placed the brush down on paper. Turning back towards his work I followed his gaze towards the still shiny wet words advertising for a local drug store "Aspirin at 20% off". In the silence of the shop where the air was stiff with the smell of paint, I had no idea what he would say. Scared beyond my wits at actually "saying it", I felt my unsettled. Looking at grandpa’s quiet composure I didn't feel as if he was angry but I had no idea then that his words would probably save my life. "Timbo, I've known many men, good men, who were gay. Served with some in the navy even. Don't make any difference to me. You will always be my grandson and I love you. But your mother and father are going to shit bricks."
He stood up and looked at me and suggested we go get some lemonade. I was relieved to see that nothing in his eyes had changed. He didn't seem upset. His temper, which was incredible to behold, remained extinguished. Things were as they had always been. I was still "Timbo, Timbo whatcha gonna do'e o?"
That summer we dodged a few missteps as we all worked through "it". Grandpa thought I needed to be educated so he drove me down to an adult bookstore and while I waited outside he bought me a book on lesbians. While the book wasn't really going to answer my questions, the thought counted. It took guts for him to ask the man behind the counter if they had any books…about gays and, when they didn't, the book about the two women seemed just as appropriate.
Some good assumptions were made and some bad ones were made but through it all, grandpa never wavered and always stood tall behind me. Wanting to make sure that I was 'sure', on many occasions he offered to drive me to Wallace and find a woman from one of the brothels located in that mining town. I declined. I was 'sure' and that summer as I prepared to head off to Bible College to try to get "fixed", I remember grandpa saying to me "Timbo, some things you just can't help. But I wish you well just the same."
He knew I was trying to make my folks happy yet his most important concern was that I was happy and that no matter what happened, that I felt loved. I was his grandson and that meant everything. Nothing else mattered. On one of the few occasions where my grandfather ever spoke of his children he said, "Timbo, I've been 'splitting posts' all my life. I never got to raise my own kids. My own flesh and blood. Your mother's not mine. Yet I treat her as if she was. And I think of her as mine. She isn't my flesh. She isn't my blood. But you know kiddo, she is. She's my daughter no matter what anyone says. She is my kid, And you’re my grandson. No matter what you always will be," and with that he reached over and tousled my hair and turned back to the sign he was painting. I should have listened to him then and avoided the heartache the next four years provided as I struggled with sexuality. If I could have taken comfort in his words instead of those of my parents, coming out would have been far less bloody. It was the only time where I split posts with my grandfather and unfortunately I learned the hard way that his love intuition was stronger and better placed than any cold doctrine could ever be.
The early evening light filtered down from the tall cedars and the firs quietly swaying overhead in the July air. Stepping out of the camper I surveyed our campsite and wondered where grandpa was. Earlier in the day we went shooting. My grandfather and Dallas held their firearms like pros shooting into a dirt bank. Orin loved his guns. His collection of magazines and firearms was impressive. Hidden all over their house, he was always pulling this gun or that one out to show it off and talk about its features. But today as I surveyed the campsite with its eerie silence and patches of sunlight filtering down from the trees, I wondered if grandpa had taken his guns and gone back into the woods.
Camped at Sullivan Lake near the BC-Washington Line, this was my grandfather's favorite place to camp. Peaceful and uncrowded, the lake took up gentile residence in a valley surrounded by the tall Selkirk and Kootenai Mountains. Having just learned that grandpa was terminal, his recently diagnosed lung cancer seemed an uninvited guest. Dallas and I suppressed the awful feeling that this would be our last camping trip with Orin and Billy.
The previous night, lingering by the fire longer than usual we listened to his often told tales of the war and of Colorado and horses that he had loved. Watching his face reflected in the fire and the memories of his life spill out into the flames, his warm voice carried us far way with those the tales. As he spoke, each story was given new life. As those histories danced upward into the darkness, his youth seemed to be carried on the wings of those sparks. In love with life and all his experiences, I wondered if any moment could be more perfect. As I traced the sparks chasing the stars I imagined that God must be looking down upon us and genuinely pleased with these stories. Dallas sat next to me on the same log and occasionally drug a stick through the fire's embers while grandma seemed to be lost in all the memories that fell into the circle and danced around us.
Still lost in the glow of the previous evening, I walked towards the lake and found my grandmother and Dallas sitting alongside the shore as the waves lapped at their feet. Sitting down beside them, I looked into the sky and watched as an eagle rode the wind currents. Each circle seemed to broaden and I wondered if the view from up there seemed any more beautiful than the one from shore. The three of us were all thinking the same thing. None of us wanted our time on the shores of the quiet lake to end. None of us wanted to acknowledge that grandpa might not be around for the next summer. None of us could imagine life without him. Or what life would be like between now and then.
Looking at Dallas I realized how similar that he and my grandfather were. Stubborn and willful, their tempers were famous. Grandpa fought men in war and in the boxing ring and Dallas fought bulls in rodeo arenas. They were both men of courage and strong conviction. You could count on them and their loyalty was never subject to question. Comparing Orin and Dallas from side to side, I had no doubt that both were solid and true in their pathways. In a world of confusion, I always knew where I stood with both of them and I never doubted their sincerity. It occurred to me as I saw the shimmering water catch the light against the blackness of the depths that my partner was in many ways exactly the same man as my grandfather.
"Grandma, you seen grandpa?" I asked.
"No Tim, I thought he was with you?" she answered.
"Nope. He's not in the camper or anywhere around the campsite. I thought Dallas and him had gone shooting again but I see Dallas is here."
A slight breeze hit our side of the shore and the towering forest responded with the hollow sound that a forest makes as it touches wind and caresses breeze. Now it seemed to be an unsettling reaction to the awareness that we all had that Grandpa had wandered off. Over the previous months Orin started forgetting things. Constantly misplacing keys or calling people and forgetting whom he was talking to. Some days were better than others. Most were minor. Some were major and it was difficult to watch all the various parts of such a strong man crumble simultaneously.
"Well, we better go find him. See if he's lost or just found someone to talk to about the war," Dallas said.
Dallas looked everywhere while we waited for Orin to show at camp. His search produced nothing. As the sun drifted down over the mountains and the valley was lost in the dark shadows that mountains leave over their subjects we waited nervously. Grandpa remained missing for several hours. Dinner came and went and we were on the verge of finding a forest ranger to help with our search when Orin finally made it back to camp. Disheveled and upset, he was terribly troubled by the fact that he'd gotten disorientated and lost. Aware and confused, no amount of reassurance would remove his fears that his mind wasn't working the way it once did. Feeling pure doom, I considered a 'grandpa less' future. The fact that the only person who I'd ever thought might stand up for me when I was a child might soon be gone, was dreaded. Separated slowly from those he loved day by day, treatment by treatment and procedure by procedure the reality that life usually has unhappy endings seemed impossible to ignore.
Later that night as he and I walked back down to the lake to watch the moon dance on the water, we split a large stump and his hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed me. Still strong although now he walked hunched over, his grasp pulled me back around the tree. Looking at me in the moonlight he whispered, "Timbo, you forgot to say Bread and Butter." The irony of that moment was too much and I had to turn and watch the water to keep my tears from him. I wished that I could pull him back from the cancer that threatened to separate us.
We walked down to the lake and in the stillness I thought that maybe just once God might freeze time. That we all might remain in the light of his creation. Comforted in the hold of the mountains and surrounded by the perfect love that hardship, endurance and steadfast words instills in those who are willing to look for it.
Two years have passed since Orin passed away on an early cold December morning next to his beloved Billy. We buried him on the day before Christmas Eve. Looking back at that season I know that it was the darkest I have ever known.
Several weeks before his death, Spokane was hit with a huge ice storm, knocking out power to many parts of the city for weeks. Orin and Billy had no heat and their immaculate yard was now just a series of branches and broken trees. One of the last memories Orin had was to see his beautiful yard destroyed by the ice storm. Upon word of the disaster, Dallas recovering from his own surgery drove down to Spokane and loaded Billy and Orin into the truck. Making them as comfortable as he could, the treacherous drive up to the ranch was almost more than grandpa could handle. Arriving at the ranch, his life seemed reduced to medications, oxygen bottles and transitions between here and someplace else. Dallas stood with them through that time and with the aid of a hospice nurse's telephone instructions, they tended to the failing man.
While winter unleashed her fury on the mountains around the ranch, either Dallas or Billy always stayed close to his bed. Keeping watch against the night and staying with him on the same side of life. In the quiet punctuated only by Orin's labored breathing Billy and Dallas stared out of the windows of our house watching the river in silence as the snow fell relentlessly out of the winter skies. The end was near and although there weren't any dogs to untangle or straying grandsons to rescue from untrod pathways, time was short. Looming on the horizon was a giant post that would be split. Not even a quickly muttered "bread and butter" could prevent the inevitable separation. Still, until that moment came grandpa would not be left alone.
Sometimes I like to think that all of the hardest lessons in my life have already been learned. Sometimes it would be nice to sit back and take comfort that people such as my grandfather and Billy and Dallas have been so influential, molding my ability to analyze the world with a clear head, that I would never revisit previous mistakes. What may seem painfully clear to them is not always so with me. Things get muddled and priorities reversed. Jim, the man who cares for my horse recently told me that the sign of true ignorance is the amount of time a person makes the same mistake. And how many times a person has to learn the same lessons.
With the approach of Christmas this year and the awareness that it would be my father's last Christmas Eve Service, I found myself once again learning about bread and butter. Although my parents and I have dialogue, I long ago accepted the fact that their approval of my relationship with Dallas would not be forthcoming. It was simply a matter of doctrine meeting flesh and blood, conditional acceptance rather than non-conditional acceptance. Acknowledging each of us as people, I believe that they generally like Dallas, but their beliefs will not allow for the acceptance of us as a "gay" couple or the treatment of our relationship on the same level as that of my sister and her husband.
The shame and judgement of their beliefs is too threatening to them to risk any other and so they hold fast to these principles which have always guided their lives. Dealing with a gay son has hardly had the ending of an ABC movie of the week where after great upheaval suddenly everyone cries and comes to their senses. My family is not The Lifetime Network. Our solutions to the conflicts in our lives are never that easy. Because we are, after all, Lutherans, and especially in the area of sexual matters, all endings must be painfully drawn out, bittersweet and not subject to easy explanations. If we can't understand our actions, certainly no one else can. Especially if God forbid people find out about our struggles to find some common ground upon which we can all live without killing each other.
I understand my parent's position. So many times in the black and white world of conservatives, shades of gray represent nothing more than a feared start to compromise down slippery slopes. If they accept this gray area then God knows it’s only a matter of time until they accept that one. Life from this view is about all or nothing, either or, choices. There is no room in this outlook for "and/but" decisions that fall somewhere in between. From their perspective answers exist for every question and unanswerable questions were never meant to be examined in the first place.
I have lived in this no mans land all of my life and were it not for the clarity and insight of my grandparents I would have gone insane long ago. Yet in spite of knowing all these conflicting philosophies and beliefs in advance, I still humbly got to revisit some lessons again. I had to relearn the pain of splitting posts and walking on opposite sides of objects. And that to do so creates separation. Choosing different routes along what should be the same path creates distance.
Instead of spending Christmas at the ranch where we could be ourselves, I attempted to honor my father's last stand in the ministry. Dallas and I had not seen each other much during the previous months and as he ran all those long lonely nights down the interstate, I am sure that he looked forward to Christmas and a time to relax and celebrate. But the immovable post of my conservative parents came between us instead.
Their rules and their inability to acknowledge our union created extremely painful division. I should have seen it coming but sometimes the desire for a whole family can cause rational people to do very foolish things and make choices that have long term consequences. My parents enjoyed all of their kids reunited and together under one roof, giving them great satisfaction. Dallas was there and although he was treated with respect, it was impossible to ignore the conditions put on his presence. The sad by product of my parent's happiness was that two of us felt as if that roof didn't really extend all the way over us.
The week between Christmas and New Years was a long one filled with misunderstanding and good intentions complicated by raw emotion. As I thought about my childhood and about all those times I walked on the wrong side of this or that object, I remembered that tall English Choctaw. A man that saw through blood and who adopted more than just "family" into his heart. He knew those who were his own and those who were not. With all his superstitious ways and confusing sayings, he never let me forget what was most important. As I drove through the dark December nights this past Christmas I remembered his unconditional love and acceptance of us and all the occasions where I felt my grandfather's hand reach around to gently pull me back from the disaster of separation. I could still hear him say, "Bread and Butter Tim, you got to say Bread and Butter." Yet during those lonely, post holiday nights as I drove, I finally got it and for the first time really heard that voice and remembered all those reminders. It may have been too late this year to avoid the painful repercussions. But, it certainly wasn't too late to prevent a repeat next year during the holidays.
"Let nothing come between you." Grandpa had it right. Sometimes the gray things in this world actually are black and white, especially if they are observed in the right light. Grandpa was a man who lived by the brush and reading colors was his job. He could tell the difference between all the shades that life hands us. He made choices of color almost everyday of his life. Yet somehow when the colors ran and the black and whites mixed into gray, he could still pick the perfect place to plant his brush, making sense of it all.
Sometimes the most important choices do have consequences. But they are the choices that need to be made just the same. Gray has its place, alongside the bright colors and the contrasting dull ones. And as grandpa could tell me now, if he were speaking to me as he painted some sign in his shop, some fence lines are ambiguous. Yet those posts are just as dangerous to "split" as the posts of the other fence lines which rise up straight tall and are easier to discern.
As I look towards the upcoming year and think about the brightness that should be the holidays, I am committed to avoiding splitting anymore posts. Next Christmas, Dallas and I will be at the ranch. We will be celebrating all the goodness of the season. Christ's birth, and that we have each other. We will bring in the New Year in an environment where we can be ourselves. My folks are welcome and we love them as they are. With plenty of bread and butter.
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