Today, I Loved You

Sometimes, life is plain.  No sprinkles or caramel sauce or whipped cream or even Cool Whip on your ice cream.  No Bearnaise sauce or Bordelaise or thinly sliced crimini mushrooms in a veal stock reduction or even pink sea salt on your bone-in ribeye.  No swoop on your shoes, no clever saying on your shirt, no trendy trilby on your head, no pleats or lack thereof on your chinos.

Life is often vanilla with a little Hersey's.

Life is a hamburger patty with salt and pepper.

Life is a worn green Reds hat.


But that bowl of vanilla, dripping in the summer heat, next to fire you just roasted hot dogs on the last week of school, well, it didn't seem so plain then, did it, in the summer of 1971?

And that hamburger patty, grilled high in the mountains of Arizona over the coals of meadow driftwood as the sun blazed in a glorious sunset, cold beer in hand, was anything but plain.

And that tattered old hat, simple by design, faded and tired and perhaps a little smelly, is not so plain in the memories of two little boys who threw a ball with their dad who always seemed to have it on in the pool and back yard.


We are far too eager in this twenty-first century to complicate and fix.  Honestly, I am as guilty as the next guy.  I often try here to write words for the ages, to write the story that will change everything, explain everything, be everything.  I fuss and arrange, unfuss and rearrange, trying to hit that chord that will ring through time and space towards you, towards the boys, in a time I do not know and a place yet to be determined.  I rarely feel successful at that.

The sad part is that all I am trying to say, through all these layers and words and images and metaphors and tears and fears and hopes and dreams is really very simple:

I loved you today, boys.


Zack grew weary of a bad movie or TV show we were watching on something called Netflix the other night and wandered off and drew this:

Yes, Underground Bugs! by Zack, uh, Pooo.  He spent an hour on this probably.  There is much to note here, a lot to talk about, but... I am not going to.  I've mentioned that those days are over, those days of trying to be cute about all of these images.  It was fun when they were seven or eight, but now, at ten, I know it is time to stop because I don't want anyone to think I am making fun of them.  I will say this, though, he has recently adopted an all caps printing style.  I do that.  My Dad did that.

Every year at the local elementary school the boys will be leaving this year, there was an "Art Show."  Because it wasn't a sporting event and everyone was included and no one won or was featured or singled out, it was ill-attended.  We always go, it's cute and is sometimes the only opportunity a certain kind of child gets to shine.

Nick had this piece in it:

Here are some details from it:

It is watercolor and chalk on paper.


That's really all I've got today.

Don't worry, I'll overcomplicate something again soon, but it is important for me to remember that it really is this simple most of the time.


From Marci's "... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ... "

Mom: "I think God has a sense of humor."

Boy: "He's gonna need one when I get up there."


Fact...

Thanks, as always, for stopping by today.  Listen, life is a love letter - a love letter to God, a love letter to friends and family, a love letter to the past and future and maybe, perhaps at its very simplest, a love letter to ourselves.  Peace to you and yours.