Years and Years

 

Years and Years  

               

By John W. Vander Velden

 

 

 

Years and years ago, they began this journey,

Having no idea where this new and frightening path would lead.

 

Years and years ago they could not see the pain and disappointments,

The loss, the illnesses, the failures they were forced to face.

 

Years and years ago they could not imagine

All the wonders and magic found within ordinary days.

Nor anticipate the amazing mountain peaks

Of life’s grand vistas.

 

Years and years ago, they began this journey

And now stand near their destination.

 

Memories, the good, the bad,

The trail taken, the road avoided.

 

Years and years ago they began a shared adventure,

Called life….

 

(105 Words)  10-1-2016

 

 

The Optimist

The Optimist

By John W. Vander Velden                

 

I would consider myself an optimist.  I think being an optimist is a good thing.  It means that you are hopeful about what lies before you.  Seeing the better, if not the best, drives me to trust others.  But being an optimist carries a price…and sometimes that price is high.  For seldom do things follow the perfect path and often optimism leads to disappointment.  Disappointment leads to questions, questions about many things, but most often whether my hopes have been well placed to begin with.

I am not a fool, or at least I hope I am not a fool.  During those times I have been crushed, I recognized that hopes and reality rarely mesh completely.  Yet, I continue to hope for the best but remain certain I will have to settle for what comes.  Seems a bit ridiculous doesn’t it?  Maybe it is.  But, to me, it beats the alternative.  Should I expect disaster on every turn and be surprised when destruction does not come?  Would living in such a “dark cloud” improve my daily life?  Yes, living so would eliminate the moments of disappointments, but would not everyday be filled with depressed feelings of a world filled with impossibilities.

That type of existence does not seem a “living life to the fullest” kinda’ life.  But perhaps I understand that darkness more than others.  For though I would call myself an optimist, I deal with a chronic darkness.  Few would know that facet of my health.  I do not mention this weakness for sympathy or some misplaced honor, but rather as a statement of fact…it is something I have to deal with every day.  Everyone has battles they face, unknown to all but their closest, and this is one of mine.

Perhaps optimism fuels depression.  Who can say?  Perhaps feeling deeply about things fuels it.  I couldn’t tell you.  But I am an optimist.  I hope for things that seem beyond the normal range of possibility…even though I understand those results are unlikely.  Optimism sees the candle in a dark room.  Pessimism stands near that small light and only sees the blackness.  Which would you prefer to be? 

I see God in what others might believe a cold dark world.  If that is the only light I see…then let me be the optimist!

(387 Words)  3-7-2017

 

 

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Eight

By John W. Vander Velden

In life, most of us would like things to stay as they are.  But life is not stagnant.  For if life remained puddled and un-changing then perhaps after a time it too, like a pool of standing water, would lose the very vibrancy we need. 

There are the changes most profound in our lives, and the binding of my life to another ranks high on that list.  But looking back…and remembering…I can still see that day clearly.  A snowy cold March day.  I remember the snow blowing across US 6, thin white wisps skittering from left to right as Jim and I drove to the church.  The hours standing in a small noisy Sunday School room, the excitement and tension that filled the space I shared with family members and Gerrit, my closest friend.  Strange that on that afternoon someone else would become my closest friend.  Not that I don’t think the world of Gerrit, but he would understand, it’s the way it should be.  Like I said life’s changes.

Much of that day is a blur of hours and events.  But I remember how I felt then…how seriously I took the significance of that day.  To me the vows taken then were forever… Frightening isn’t it.  I think it should be.  I remember waiting at the front of the church for a beautiful woman.  A woman that for whatever reason, foolishly agreed to tie her life to mine.  I remember her trembling lips and all I wanted to do was let her know everything would be alright.  But I was not so young or naïve that I could, in all honesty, make such a promise.  For I understood that in life things change, and no one could guarantee the perfection of smooth sailing in our future.  All I could do was promise that no matter what, we would face…the whatever…together.

That was the promise I made that day.  That is the promise I make each day.  That one plus one is so much more than two.  And a truly bound couple is a force to be reckoned with.

But today I must convince myself it has been twenty-eight years.  Surely it cannot be. 

Wasn’t it just....

Well, no….I guess it wasn’t…

But when I allow myself to think about all the things we faced, all the challenges, all the problems overcome, all the wonderful times, all the things we have done and seen together…well then…I guess…yes, it has.

Life continues to change, and we continue to grow with those changes.  I still cannot promise that everything will be alright, that the future is all blue skies and songbirds.  But I cannot imagine facing… the whatever…without Jackie at my side and am grateful I don’t have to.

So I wish my beloved, Happy Anniversary, and state here and now, that she is the best thing that has entered into my changing life.  Together, my love, together we have all the years that God gives us.  Together we can face any changes that lie ahead.  Together we can look past storm clouds to the rainbow that will come.  For twenty-eight is but the beginning…

(534 Words)  3-16-2017

  

Partings

March 3rd 2017

By John W. Vander Velden

 

Oliver was just a cat…our cat.  He had been our cat for almost eleven years.  As cats go, Oliver was a good cat.

Oliver had long hair…orange fur.  He left it all over, most of the year.  Ask Jackie about how much he shed.  I used to say we could knit a cat from the fur we had to clean up.  Not that shedding was the only way he left hair in our domicile, but I won’t get in to that.  We were told that orange cats have tooth problems…Oliver did.  But it wasn’t the fur…tons of fur…it wasn’t the teeth.  In the end, it was his kidneys.

We had known for years that he had kidney problems.  Special food, which he hated, had done wonders.  But even wonders have their limits and eleven years is old for a cat.  I’m sure some of you have had cats much longer, but it’s old all the same. 

So we come once more to parting.  Anyone that has walked this earth as long as I, has had to face many partings.  Sometimes it is the parting of friends and neighbors due to relocation.  Sometimes it is the parting due to changes of employment.  Sometimes it is the purposeful separation caused by the falling out of favor.  Yes, we have all had to deal with partings and for the most part, it is painful.  Another word comes to mind but I refuse to use it even if it pounds at the inside of my skull yearning to escape.  I will hold that word prisoner for now.

Some might say I’m too soft or sensitive for my own good to allow the death of a cat to remind me of other painful separations.  But Oliver was a good cat, within the limits of what a cat can be.  He had been part of our household for years.  He will be missed.  And that’s the point, isn’t it.  We miss those things we lose…providing we had them in the first place…and providing they mattered.

So as I stood beside the small plot made for Oliver, I remember other good pets, Fluffy, King, Ike, and all the rest.  How they, in their time, had enriched my life, by just being the dogs or cats they were.  But my mind went to other partings…certainly more painful separations.  Like I said I have had to face many.  The ache from those times returned.  Not nearly as severe as when I endured those separations years ago.  And I am reminded how much my world was changed by those partings…then…It changed a little today.

For there are those wounds that never completely heal.  Maybe that’s a good thing.  Maybe it reminds us that we are human…that we need connections….Connections are vital to who we are…. They help to make us who we have become.  Connections are made stronger by empathy…caring about others...trying to understand others…doing our best to see their situation.  Having empathy is a good thing, but sometimes it hurts like….well, there’s that word again.

Partings remind us how bound we are to things…but much more, how we are bound to people.

I dread the thought of partings.  Yet I know that parting is part of living…or life.  Some say parting makes room for new relationships.  I figured I had room enough to add those other to the collection I already had.  But today…well today…I said good bye to an orange fluffy friend…and the parting…well…. 

 

 

 

 

(598 Words)                  3-3-2017

Strange What You Remember

Strange What You Remember

By John W. Vander Velden

Strange what you remember, and strange when those memories pop into your head. 

Sometimes my childhood memories are little more than a blur.  Just some disconnected moments that for one reason or another stand out among the uncountable days of my youth.  I remember when I was very young, of collecting little green apples from beneath a tree in our yard.  I would load them in my brother’s toy truck, which I may or may not have ask to use, and play on the floor of our front porch.  Why that particular moment stands out I have no idea…but it does. 

There are many such glimpses into the gray years of days long ago.  Whether my childhood was happy or sad would depend upon the mood I carry when I go back to those days.  I am certain there were times of unbelievable joy and other days as well.  I understand, now, that life is a mix of highs and lows, and childhood is a complex time.

But I write this post because there was one day that remains clear in my mind, a day that comes to me often.  I was just a couple of weeks passed my tenth birthday.  It was February 20^th 1962.  The date might stand out to you historians…more on that later.  It was early, a heavy dew covered the grass, a light mist filled the air.  We were moving…again.  Everything we had was loaded on dad’s red 49 Dodge truck, with its cattle sides raised and a platform built over the cab.  A big dark olive green patched tarp covered the whole of it.  We had stopped to say our good byes at the Coughenours, the owners of the farm, in Florida it was called a ranch, and my father’s employers, and headed out.  I remember that I was filled with a mix of excitement and regret that I would not see those dear people again.  I remember riding “shotgun” in our white 59 Chevy Biscayne two door, looking out the window that Tuesday morning, seeing what had become familiar slipping away.  I remember Duwayne, the neighbor kid wave, his hand barely moving at waist level, as if he didn’t want there to be a need…for goodbye.  And I remember the tears that came to my eye and the words my mom said.  “It’s hard saying good bye to good people.”  Yes it was.  It still is.

There is a great deal more to that memory…to that day.  That old truck, we followed, couldn’t break 40 miles per hour. It made for a long trip.  I remember a stop we made, a radio on the lunch counter, and how we leaned close for news of John Glenn as he orbited the earth. But most of all I remember a dark haired boy standing beyond a white board fence in the early morning mist, a face I have not seen since that day.

(492 Words)                            2-22-2017