Imperfection

Imperfection                

By John W. Vander Velden

            Why are those we watch most closely the ones that make the most mistakes?   I believe I watch myself closest of all – and -- I am certain that I make more errors than most others.   There is no question about my perfection -- I'm not!   Maybe everyone thinks the same thing...?  That they are the most flawed individual they know.

 But if they think it -- I know it!!!

 I once told a friend, "Everyone makes mistakes -- nobody's perfect."  He told me that wasn't quite true because -- wait for it -- he was, perfect that is.  I'm not certain that my friend really thought he was perfect, but he sounded quite convinced at the time.

 I considered the statement arrogant, and if he truly believed his words a bit delusional, but now I pity those that know so little of themselves that they do not see their mistakes.  Our mistakes make us human.  Imperfection is the one thing all of us have in common. 

But that does not mean we should just cave in -- give up -- blunder along not caring what we do and who we hurt.  By no means -- looking at ourselves -- seeing our failings -- should first and foremost open us to accept mistakes made by others.  Then we should honestly consider how we can move in directions of improvement.  Listen more perhaps.  Consider others and their feeling.  Trying to be a bit more patient, would certainly be a good thing.  Be kind, first -- before kindness has been given -- or when unkindness has been laid at our feet.  These small things that may not come easily, but move us forward to a slightly less imperfect place.  No, I will never be perfect.  Likely I will never be quite as good as most others, but that doesn’t mean I should ever abandon the struggle as I move forward – hopefully -- on a road whose destination will remain -- in this life -- beyond my reach.  The road toward perfection!

(338 Words)                                        9-8-2013

 

Southbound and Back

Southbound and Back            

By John W. Vander Velden

Having returned from our excursion, I take some time to share our adventure.  Florida seems to call us.  Perhaps it’s because we take our trip in mid to late March, and we have winter “up to here” and seek warmer environs that the state comes to our minds.  In any case an episode of “Island Living”, on the travel channel, introduced us to Amelia Island and we were off.  For the unfamiliar Amelia Island is north of Jacksonville on the western most portion of the east coast.  Does that make sense?  Get a map and you will see what I mean.  Cross the St. Mary’s River and you find yourself in Georgia.



Fernandina, FL 

Jackie and I love the sea shore, and Florida has grand beaches, and of Florida’s grand wonderful beaches thirteen miles reside on Amelia Island.  No we did not walk every inch, but several miles of white sand passed beneath our feet the week there.  We find something in the wind and waves, the thundering breakers that vibrate our ribs and lift our spirits.  We laugh at the antics of the sanderlings, those tiny birds carried on racing legs toward the retreating water only to dash before the next foaming surf.  We gather shells and talk as we walked on the seashore.  But most of all we feel connected to something much larger, seeing, hearing, feeling, and smelling a power that drives wind and water.  God’s hand visible, and to us obvious.

In the craziness of our everyday the time spent away returns us to our middle.  Seems strange doesn’t it? That you need to travel a thousand miles to reach your center.  But it was not the distance that mattered, but rather the purposeful separation and through that separation the joining.  It reminds us that we both work too hard, have accepted too many obligations, and try to keep too many people happy.  And after three hundred and fifty some days of juggling all these things an escape is not only deserved, but necessary.

We were fortunate in the weather department.  Some sprinkles on our driving days but the skies were clear throughout our stay on Amelia.  One morning broke cold and windy…I mean cold and windy…I mean like Indiana cold and windy.  And of course we took a river cruise that morning.  We were not alone for I was told they carried a capacity crowd.  For all those that cancelled…wimps…left openings for those like us that chose that ride on a whim.  We sat inside and they supplied blankets…thin…I mean very thin…blankets.  But it made it all the more fun, and Captain Pajama Life Jack kept us in stitches as he described the island and former inhabitants.  A great time and I recommend it to anyone…cold or not.

Now Amelia Island has a lighthouse…of course or why would we have come.  OK it was not the only reason…maybe not the top reason…but you know us and lighthouses.  BUT…and it’s a big BUT…the lighthouse is operated by the coast guard and the grounds are off limits, except on days when they offer a tour, not the Wednesday we were in town.  Now I must mention that the site is in a residential district for Amelia Island Lighthouse is the furthest inland of any Atlantic coast lighthouse.  It is hidden by a thick grove of live oak trees.  We searched for it for more than an hour and drove passed it twice.  You can catch a glimpse of it from the highway or from Fort Clinch State Park, but both keep you a mile away.  At last I found an alley that led to the gate only to be foiled by trees that prevented even a fair view.  Hmmmmm.  Maybe next time we will be on the island on the right Wednesday, a body never knows.

Speaking of Fort Clinch…well I mentioned the park…we spent an afternoon wandering around the fort and another walking on the fishing pier.  The pier, we were told, at a half mile in length, is the longest in North America.  Why did we walk it, you may ask?  Because it was there…and so were we.  It seems reason enough when you’re on vacation.  And it should be reason enough anyway.  The water of Amelia Island seems to draw fisherman…and fisherwomen.  For every bridge, every pier, every breakwater seems covered with them.  We spoke to many.  Most are locals open and friendly.

We ate in courtyard cafés, like “The Happy Tomato” and “π pizza” and other places with great food…too much usually.  Jackie loved all the quaint shops in Fernandina and continually wondered, how she could get that neat stuff home, so most of it remained in Florida.  We played two rounds of “Adventure” golf.  That’s what they call put-put these days.  We tied on the first and I got slaughtered on the second.  But it was fun and that’s all that mattered.  I mentioned the beaches, but the best was in Amelia Island State Park on the southern tip of the island.  Miles and miles of undeveloped coast.  We nearly had the beach to ourselves.  It seemed to draw us on and on and took great effort to turn around to walk the miles back to our car.

It would have been easy to lose track of the days, but Friday morning came and packed we left the hotel that had been our home base for the week, and taking A1A south we slipped out of that little place that seemed so near paradise, and began our way home.

Our trip to Amelia Island with stops in St Augustine…a great place too…and side trips to St Mary’s, Georgia and Kingsley Plantation on St. George Island will be one we shall always remember.  We look forward to our return.  

(974 Words)   4-1-2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emotions

Emotions

By John W. Vander Velden

 

Just because you can’t place them in a brown bag, lock them in a box, or seal them in a jar doesn’t mean that emotions aren’t real.

 

Why is it we categorize things.  Without thought we decide what we feel is real and what exists in some sort of imaginary existence. We cannot hold pain in our hand yet none would deny it as a real thing.  Yet when we consider emotions, we label them as some sort of vapor-like concept, something each has but well, really not…sorta.  Yet each of us deal with fear, joy, loss, love, sadness, and the countless other emotions that find their way into our everyday.  These are the things that shape our lives just as surely the door to the bathroom that gets stuck when the humidity rises.  We exist in a universe of solid and unsolid things that are in truth very real.

Who can say that love is not a real thing when our heart skips a beat at the mention of someone’s name?  Who dares to tell us that fear is unreal when on a cold dark stormy night creepy sounds send our breathing into hyper drive?  That joy is not real, the first instant we hold our newborn.  That these things and the countless others are merely stimuli that cause biologic changes or propel our mind to imagine implausible truths or circumstances.  Baaaa!

Our existence is filled with so many things, and each of them are real to us.  The faucet that drips and prevent our slumber may not matter to our neighbor, unless he becomes troubled by our illuminated rooms at all hours.  The drip is to us a real thing, a real annoyance, to him out of earshot insignificant.  Just because you friend is not allergic to cheese does not make your allergy less…or unreal.  We live in this mixed bag of things and feelings that form who we are, and all of them are really real.  Emotions shape how we see the world and how we deal with it.  Emotions give meaning to living.  Emotions can protect us, but sometimes they stand in the way of living.  Emotions add color to our day, blues and golds, as well as the entire gamut of the rainbow.  Emotions can lift us to the stratosphere, or drag us to the ocean’s bottom.  Emotions are like the air we breathe, invisible but very real!

(404 Words)                                       9-8-2015

Twenty-seven

Twenty-Seven…

By John W. Vander Velden

 

There are numbers that stand out, and there are numbers that seem to blend invisibly into the row of integers.   Twenty-seven is one of those kinda’ insignificant numbers that carry little weight on its own, just not quite halfway between twenty-five and thirty.  But when I consider the journey of my life I find each day carries value, so why not twenty-seven years.

I look back…too often I will admit, and looking back I recognize a “sheer point” in my life.  Each of us has those moments, when everything changes.  I think it is important to dwell on those moments in the past that changed our lives.  I believe it helps us understand the place we find ourselves…at this moment.  But in any case, I think about a snowy Saturday afternoon when I stood at the front of a packed church and waited…not long, but I waited for my beloved to join me there. 

But that joining was more than two people standing side by side.  It was more than some spatial approximation, a closeness that could be measured by a ruler.  It was the joining of two lives, the binding of people promising each other a closeness unmeasurable.  The term cleave come to mind, the welding two individuals into one life.  Those that have not found themselves in that type of relationship cannot understand the depth and strength of that weld nor do they comprehend the freedom each part of that alloy receives from the joining.  But those, the fortunate, the ones that gain so much by surrendering just a mite of themselves, find themselves in calm agreement.

Twenty-seven years.  Years of challenges, years of striving, in the face of misunderstandings and hurt feelings, years of achievements, years of growth, years of support, and years of supporting.  Easy…not always…but easier than trudging on alone.  Time has made us as converging lines, coming ever closer together as the years pass.  The binding only began twenty-seven years ago.  The binding grows stronger each day with the knowing, the lessons life teaches, the time shared…the laughter as well as the tears.

I am not the same man I was twenty-seven years ago.  My beloved is not the same woman.  While I stood and waited, filled with fears and self-doubts, I could never have imagined the adventures we have shared since that day.  On that day one man and one woman became more than a couple, we became something bold, something new.  One plus one is so much more than two!

Some might say that twenty-seven years is a long time, but I, even when I look back, would not.  Time rushes on and my life will continue to change.  I know that this segment of my life’s journey has had its effect on me…it has made me a better man in so many ways.  I thank Jackie for that as well.  I thank her for the nine thousand eight hundred and sixty-two days…each and every one of them…we have shared.  But most of all I thank her for the love she has so freely poured on this undeserving man.

So happy anniversary my dear, perhaps twenty-seven years is no longer the beginning…but it is nowhere near the end!

 

May God...

 

 

 

 

May God...

 

Words on the Wall

Words on the Wall                   

By John W. Vander Velden

 

I took a moment to look at a needlepoint my mother had done years ago.  I didn’t study the delicate tiny x’s that, linked together, formed the image she had created.  I looked at the words on the wall. 

By Het Consert Deslevens,

Krygt Niemans EEn Program 

The words are in mom’s first language, Dutch.  I will confess I cannot read “Hollanse”.  I should, but I can’t.  I can pick out a word now and again…but it’s Greek to me.  But no worries, mom included the translation on this small work of her art. 

From Life’s Concert,

No One Gets A Program. 

Some might think the translation is clumsy…maybe.  But the meaning is clear enough. 

I think we are cheated.  The books we have read, the movies we see have seen, seem to indicate that there is a set sequence of events that make up life.  A program.  And we, as we stumble along, feel embittered when our life deviates from paths we are taught as normal.  We build our lives around imaginary scenarios of what should happen and when.  We stress when goals go uncompleted on schedule.  I had a whole list of things that I would achieve by twenty-five.  You how that went.  But since that time I felt I was always running “catchup”…you know get with the “program”. 

Mom was with dad when he passed in the living room of their home.  My younger brother was there.  I was there as well.  He was alive one moment…and then he was not.  At least not in the way it takes a pulse to measure.  You see faith tells me different.  But it was a very dramatic moment…the moving on.  A cold hard…harsh…unbelievable moment, we had witnessed.

Many times for the remainder of my mother’s life she would say, “He didn’t say good bye.”  The way he departed really bothered her.  She had been “hoodwinked”.  She had been led to believe that opportunity must have existed and was ignored.  She needed to remember the words on the wall…and what they mean.  Life doesn’t follow a program, and all those touching stories are nothing more than STORIES…not impossible but not necessarily real.

My father did not know the moment would arrive that morning…but he understood mortality very well.  The years he had trudged with his illness reminded him daily of the lessons that a lifetime of livestock farming had taught him.  The years we shared with him during that struggle should have told us.  Told us with words not formed out of letters or syllables. Told us that the end of that battle had but one outcome.  Dad tried to tell us good bye, maybe we weren’t listening.  Maybe we did not want to see it, tried to keep it beyond our thoughts, lock it away for someday.  But someday came, and we were not prepared.  It did not fit the “program”.  The event should have…well it should.  But it didn’t and we should never have believed it would.  Because like that needle point states…life doesn’t give us a program.  It is a difficult lesson to learn…I can’t say I have passed that test. 

I read the words and look back and see the truth.  And if the patterns in my wake show the disarray of hopes and accomplishments, then should I be surprised by future’s life “swerves”.  No!  Plan…yes.  Expect…maybe. Surprise…no doubt!!!  It is the very adventure to life.  There is no going to the last page to see how the story plays out.  Tomorrow and all the tomorrows we will be allotted are blank pages of possibilities.  They contain disappointments as well.  But that day ends with the promise of…no…there is no promise…no program…is there.  So use the day…wring out all that it offers…do the good thing you need to do…today…now.  Make your own pattern.  Don’t expect thing to follow even your expectations…let alone anyone else’s.  Times, life is just a dirty mess.  Times, we feel certain the whole world is unraveling.  Believe in yourself…believe in the day…believe in love…and believe GOD is still in charge, no matter what!  These are the thing that needle point makes me consider.  This is a truth I often overlook. 

So, I find that though my parents have moved from this dimension to the next, they still speak to me.  I see their faces and hear their voices, and sometimes see their words on the wall!

(771 Words)    2-13-2016

 

Fathers

Fathers

By John W. Vander Velden

 

How we feel about people is shaped by our experiences.   As we, through time, interact with others part of our understandings comes from actions we observe, but also our interpretations of those actions. Feelings are emotions…those quasi real things that make up so much of our lives.  So should we be surprised that our “feelings” about another person are shaped by impressions as well as deeds.  Or simply…how we feel about someone depends upon, how we feel about someone.  There‘s no logic in that statement…but often there is no logic in emotions to begin with.

A story.  There was a time when all the young men of a community were rounded up by forces of an occupying country.  Labor was needed and so, six sons of a man had been gathered and held in a large room with other boys and men.  The oldest of the six received permission to take the youngest to the restroom.  There, since the child was smaller, he helped the boy escape.  A remarkable story don’t you think.  But it is only half told.  For the youngest son ran home and told his father of the ordeal.  The father went to the place his sons were held, faced the authorities, and convinced them to release the remaining sons.  You see the family raised food, potatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce.  He told how he needed the labor in order to produce the food people needed…including the “fatherland”.  For the authorities confiscated large portions of every farmer’s production.

Should I be surprised that when each of those six boys grew to men and had families of their own, they would name a son after their father?  Would the action of that night be so different that the thousands of days they had witnessed in their father’s presence?  No!  Feeling were built upon the actions observed daily and personal interactions that bind one generation to the next.

One of things we all have in common…is we have a father.   Unfortunately some never have a connection to their father.  Unfortunately some men do not deserve the children they have sired.  Only those fortunate, have the kind of father that would march right up to a soldier and demand their child’s release.  Only the fortunate, have a father that is connected…involved…someone that takes the responsibility and the time needed, even though he carries so many other demands.

But sometimes children don’t notice.  Sometimes they remember only the distasteful.  Sometimes they rebel incapable to accept the lessons offered.  Each of us measure the man that was our father, and the tools we use may not be accurate or fair.

Even among my siblings my relationship with my father was unique.  I worked with the man for more than thirty years, long hours side by side.  The sheer volume of time spent changes what you know about someone.  Did we agree on EVERYTHING.  No!  But I came to understand the man better.  And in understanding came to even a greater respect.

So as I think of the man…flawed as he was…on what would have been his ninety-first birthday.  I hope he knew just how much I admired him. That I loved him.  It is my hope that he held some sort of respect for me, his son.  I hope that one day my son might say as much.  For I learned most of what I know about fatherhood from my dad.  There are many fathers in the world…I miss mine…

(586 Words)                3-3-2016