AT HOME

If you had a good childhood and were raised in a close family, chances are good that your family life now is comfortable.

I love my wife and my home life with her.

Yet, I am probably not alone in thinking this….. I have deep, maybe unspeakable loving memories of my life at home when I was a boy.

My home life consisted of my father, my mother and my two brothers. My whole life up until I went to college evolved from and revolved around that unit. We moved from one city to another when I was three, 10, 11, 14 and 15. My father entered the ministry when i was 11 and we changed churches as well, those last two moves.

As we moved, we became tighter as a unit.

We did not have a lot of interference.

There were no electronic devices.

There was no texting in the 60’s or 70’s.
There were three channels on the television. Programs ceased at about 12am and the stations actually went off the air.

I look back at pictures of my father, mother and I when I was a baby and I find myself staring at the old photographs trying to remember or regain that innocence I saw in them and in me.

That’s why those feelings arise when you think back to that time or see pictures from those times. It seems that it was absolutely a more innocent time.

I can remember never worrying about anything.

And we did not have hardly anything. But I did not consider that.

My life was so full of those four people I never felt the lack of anything.

The sense I get when I am staring at the old and somewhat yellowed snapshots is…I am trying to get back in my mind to that person I see in the picture who looks like I did when I was a boy.

I cannot do it….but the connection I experience is almost mystical because I feel it so deeply yet I fail to be able to define it precisely.

I look at my father when he was 25 years old, holding me and looking at me… and I sense a connection deep within my soul….but I come short of the words.
I look at my mother lying on the floor, tickling my leg when I was about six months old…..and I see a 19 year old girl looking at her firstborn with love, hope, joy and smiling as if everything in the world was in perfect alignment.

At 62, I cannot look at these pictures very long without the feeling rising up from somewhere under my heart and up into my throat.

As my brothers and I grew up we remained close. I cannot give any definition to who I am as a Man without my parents…..yet, it might be even tougher to gain that definition without my two brothers.

I believe I would give my life for them.

For my boyhood was spent around and with them.

They are now Men with wives, children and great families themselves. They have been of tremendous positive influence on their communities.

But I remember them when we were boys. We stayed home together on particular nights and all of us would watch Mission Impossible
( the real M.I….Pre -Cruise) or Marcus Welby, where my mother would cry at almost every episode….and sports, there was always sports.

We would play whiffle ball in whatever backyard we had and imagine we were every player on several different teams. Eventually, we were able to watch, together, as my youngest brother excelled on the football field.

Those days are why we can get together now and stay together for days without any argument or angst. Those past days of innocence and seeming perfection….arranged and given to us by our father and mother have molded us into the Men we are.

I turned 62 yesterday.

My life currently is full. My wife is the object of my affection and we share the love of Christ, the peace of our home, the blessings of her children, and the love of my brothers and their families. Good fortune has brought me many friends and a full career and great days ahead.

All of these give my life color and validity and are Gifts from God.

Yet, those four other people I see when I look at the old pictures of my family have given me the definition of who I have been able to become, and the foundations of the life I now live. My remembrance of them is made deeper and richer as I understand I had no hand in selecting them…
for The Hand which has written the story of my life, formed and gave those four people to me…. and I am always and everyday grateful.

Terry
August, 2015