Running against the wind

    Down the road of time
A perspective of 60 years of living and dying and all those things in between

AGAINST THE WIND BOB SEEGER The years rolled past And I found myself alone Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends I found myself further and further from my home And I guess I lost my way There were oh, so many roads I was living to run and running to live Never worrying about paying or even how much I owed …Against the wind We were running against the wind We were young and strong We were running against the wind

THE RIVER
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
I come from down in the valley
Where mister when you’re young
They bring you up to do like your
daddy done…

             Patience is defined as “quiet, steady perseverance, even-tempered care; diligence; the ability to resist restlessness.”

            The author writes in the Psalms, “So don’t return us to mud, saying, “Back to where you came from!” Patience! You’ve got all the time in the world—whether a thousand years or a day, it’s all the same to you.”

            Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next.”

            If I had to pick an element of my personality that has caused the most trouble, it would be without question or doubt my lack of patience.

            I was 27-hours short of a degree in Communications from Mississippi State, got an offer to become the first sports editor of the Starkville Daily News and latched on.

            For another 10 dollars a week, it seemed, I would move. I moved from Starkville, to Meridian, to Columbus to Jackson to USA Today back to Jackson to Reno, Nev., back to Jackson, to New Orleans. Make me an offer and for 20 years I would take it., although I turned down six offers one heady year, back when I was something – or thought I was.

            I was in such a hurry to find whatever in the heck it was I was looking for that I never found whatever in the heck it was I was looking for.

            I even gave up during those 22 years, from 20 to 42, writing, the love of my life. I became a designer, then an editor. My life was run by decisions that were never very good, impatient choices, improper choices.

            I was, quite literally, running against the wind.

            I was, without wanting or even noticing as it happened, becoming my adoptive father’s mini-me

            Glen William Turner came from rough stock, from coal miners from West Virginia. They apparently were very poor, but truthfully. I know little about his family, and I haven’t seen any of them in decades. For a while, my adopted parents and I went to West Virginia  every Christmas, and occasionally during summers, but that slowed as I grew older and finally stopped in August, 1969. Dad’s family began dying off, and as I understand it now all are gone except for my Aunt Elsie, living in Florida in her 90s.

            As I grew up, Dad worked away from home a lot, and he drank when he was home.  Once he spent an entire fall working in New Jersey. Another time, he bought a trailer and lived in it while working in Vicksburg, Miss., as they built a new bridge over the Mississippi River.I know he liked to play cards. I know he was good with his tough, callused hands, good at building things, even working on cars.

            I know he liked sports, but we never really talked about sports. He was raised in a culture of racists, voted Democrat when he voted, was union above all things.

             He never went to church. He never threw me a ball. Never understood what I liked or didn’t. I’m absolutely certain I was disappointing to him in my own way.

            He wanted someone to hunt with. He got a kid who talked to an imaginary friend, Jaboni, and read comics. He wanted someone to share his iron-worker, construction career with; I quit the only summer job that we ever shared together.

            He quit school in the eighth grade. I went to college. We both made a living with our hands, it’s just that mine were never callused. They typed, not hung iron.

            I've been told this was a cultural thing, that men were "different" in his generation, but my father never once told me he loved me, and he sure knew nothing of hugs and such. Heck, once he broke his hand hitting a solid wood closet when I ducked as he swung. It was one of the many, many shouting matches we endured. Oil and water really had nothing on us. We didn't mix well, at all.

            Gary Smalley and John Trent, authors of The Gift of the Blessing, propose that for years after we move away from home physically, we still remain chained to the past emotionally. That our lack of approval from our parents in the past keeps a feeling of genuine acceptance from others in the present from taking root in our lives.

            “Some people are driven toward workaholism as they search for the blessing they never received at home. Always striving for acceptance, they never feel satisfied that they are measuring up.”

            In so many ways, I became my father, the only model I had of male parenting. I worked extra hours to succeed. I was motivated by the desire to be “blessed” by my bosses.

            I worked myself into a marriage that collapsed after four years. I worked myself into a frenzy. that money couldn't calm I worked and I worked, and by the world’s thoughts, I was a success. But truthfully, I was nothing I would call successful.

            My father died April 3, 1989 from liver and lung cancer. Months before his death, he accepted Jesus as his savior. He stopped drinking, and he switched his tobacco usage from cigarettes to chew. When he went into surgery for the first time for the cancer, I was there along with my mother and my aunt, who had led him to Christ. He told my mother and my aunt he loved them. As he was wheeled away, the silence that followed him in the space that would have been mine was palpable. He had the opportunity to say words of love. He chose not to.

I never made him proud, that I was aware of. I never made him smile. I never made his joyful. But I certainly tried, at least I think I tried.

As time rushed away from the two of us, though, I began to understand I was absolutely running against the wind as I headed into my birthday 18 years ago. Another watershed moment, perhaps the greatest of all those moments, came as I turned 42.