What Is Real

This question is pondered by the rabbit in the Velveteen Rabbit. It is my favorite part of the story because this rabbit wants so desperately to become real. Real is not how you are made, it is who you are, your inner self, your ness, as Randolph Dupree puts it in the movie, You, Me And Dupree. It is who you are and no one can take that away from you. At the core of real lies love. Love is the center of real. The skin horse wisely tells the rabbit when someone loves you for a long time, really, really loves you, it will make you real. You may become loose in the joints and all your hair may fall out, you may not be very attractive to the outer eye, but you will always be beautiful to the one who made you real. There is no other that can truly make you real, but being truly loved by another does do something to your inner being. To be accepted and loved for being you is a rare thing in this world. You bring real into love when you not only accept but love another, with all their idiosyncrasies, because somehow all those little idiosyncrasies are the things you love the most. And even on your worst day you are loved. That is real.

My Father

      My father was a carpenter by trade. After he and my mother were married he built our house, it started out smaller and as my mother had children he kept adding on.
     The things I remember about my father were all of the small things in life that added up to the big things. I remember winning the 4th grade spelling bee, my father folded  the certificate and tucked it in his wallet. I remember seeing him take it out of his wallet and show it off and I knew my father was proud of me.
      I remember when I was losing my baby teeth  my dad tied a string around my loose tooth and used that string to pull it out. I remember getting sick, my mother couldn't get me to take my medicine, so my father came to the rescue and bribed me with fifty cents to take it. I remember him putting me up on the picnic table to give me a hair cut. He put a bowl on my head and cut around the bottom of the bowl, granted I looked like the little Dutch boy, but what did I know, I knew my father was there for me.
     My father was a character, very social, gregarious and funny, people liked my father, most everybody except the self righteous. My dad got in a tangle with one of the leading townspeople in  our town over something that was unjust. She, seeking to calm my father down said, "Mr. Glaude, don't upset the apple cart," to which my father replied, "If there's a rotten apple in it I will upset the whole goddamn cart," one of the few times in my life I heard my father swear. He hated injustice and he dd not like to see people being treated unfairly.
      My father  was generous, many times he invited others  to our home to eat supper with us. My mother never complained, she just cooked extra. My father would give the shirt off his own back to help someone else with no regards to the thought it was taking anything away from him.
     He thought my mother was the most gorgeous woman alive and would always try to kiss her in front of us. My mother was quite modest and would say, "not in front of the children," but my dad would always get that kiss.
     I remember my first bicycle ride, there were no training wheels, it was quite iffy, my father waited in our driveway as I rode past the big maples and turned into the driveway, sure enough I ditched my bike and fell, daddy was there to pick me up and dust me off.
     My father loved music, when he was a child he asked his own parents for a guitar for Christmas and he got it, he taught himself to play. He had a band called Little Joe and the Country Boys and they played a lot of shows, generally my brothers and I went to all of them and would fall asleep in the backseat of the car on the way home. My most favorite memories of my father was of him sitting at our kitchen table, playing his guitar and singing, he would make up silly songs and put our names in them.
     I found this song by Eddie Vedder, it's called The Man of the Hour. When I listened to it I wept because I felt it was a perfect description of my father. My father took his final bow in December 2003. Everything about my father still lives in my heart, his generosity, his kindness and his care about others. These are the things I remember the most and his love for us, his family.
                                                    
 "Man Of The Hour"

Tidal waves don't beg forgiveness
Crashed and on their way
Father he enjoyed collisions; others walked away
A snowflake falls in may.
And the doors are open now as the bells are ringing out
Cause the man of the hour is taking his final bow
Goodbye for now.

Nature has its own religion; gospel from the land
Father ruled by long division, young men they pretend
Old men comprehend.

And the sky breaks at dawn; shedding light upon this town
They'll all come around
Cause the man of the hour is taking his final bow
G'bye for now.

And the road
The old man paved
The broken seams along the way
The rusted signs, left just for me
He was guiding me, love, his own way
Now the man of the hour is taking his final bow
As the curtain comes down
I feel that this is just g'bye for now  

For The One I Love....What I Have Learned About Love

What I have learned about love comes from being loved by you. I have learned I do not have to ask for attention, it is freely given to me. I have learned what it is like to be really listened to, what it is liked to be valued in how I feel and what I have to say. I have learned that love is a free exchange of the heart, without fear. I have learned what it means to be supported emotionally, in the hardest of times, as well as the best of times. I have learned what it is like to be able to lean on you. I have learned that I can depend on your love.
     What I have learned about love comes from loving you. I have learned that I would do whatever I can to keep you from being hurt. I do not like any thought of you in any sort of pain. I value you and what is in your heart, I love it when you share your heart with me.
     I have learned that I not only love you, I like you. I have learned that love means, having and being a best friend. Love is not saying, I love you, love is showing I love you, in our actions.
      You have shown me over and over what love means. Whenever I think of you my heart is overwhelmed with thankfulness for this love. If I could dedicate all the love songs ever sung, all the poetry about love ever written, and everything that is beautiful in this world, I would dedicate it to you, because I love you.

Make a Friend, Stop Judging People

 With all the hoopla going on in Indiana about this new religious freedom law the governor signed in I began to think, if more people became friends there would be less judging. I made a friend a few years ago, we became good friends, my friend is gay. I began to think, what if someone hurt my friend because he is doesn't fit into their thoughts of who he should be, it hurt my heart to think of someone being cruel or of someone physically hurting him. People tend to judge what they have no knowledge of, try being someone's friend instead of judging them for being different than you. This was my post for my friend, Chris.

                                                    My Friend, Chris

This is a note I wrote on my Facebook. It is the story of how I became friends with one of the coolest people I have ever known. I hope my friend doesn't mind me sharing this on my blog, There's an important message here and it is that two people who are seemingly different are friends. We have a tendency as humans to judge others and label them and I think it's important to go beyond that and really get to know someone. After all, I almost let the thought that Chris and I were so different that he  wouldn't want to be my friend wreck what became a friendship. I would have been robbed of knowing this wonderful person that I call my friend. Thank you Chris for being my friend
 April 20, 2011---.I began to think about this today and knew I needed to write this. This is the story of how Chris and I became friends.
I didn't even know Chris existed until about 4 months ago.
I went on Jane Fonda's page and posted a comment. Chris responded with a comment. We had interaction on JF's page for about a week or two. I have to interject this right now, Chris and I are as different as night and day, he is a liberal, I am a conservative. But that didn't stop us from becoming friends. I began to have a strong urge to send Chris a friend request, But I thought, no, we are too different, he would not want to be friends with me. Then one night I was online and posted on JF's page, Chris responded. I told him I wanted to send him a friend request, but figured he wouldn't want to be friends, he told me he would happily accept my friend request then proceeded to send me a friend request which I accepted.
I began to get to know this friend of mine. One of the first things he said to me was, "you get to see my pictures now." I did look through his pictures, he had some fabulous pictures. He is a born photographer, he had some great pictures of a trip to Europe he had made. And he had other pictures, there was one picture of him laying down on the floor with his legs bent under him playing the guitar, I asked him if this was guitar yoga, he said," yeah, I like to snap a string when I'm done playing, it makes me feel like a badass." Chris has an incredibly funny sense of humor, he is very smart and witty.
When I first came on FB I didn't post any pictures of myself. Pictures of me are, well there is no other way to say this, crappy. I did finally post a couple of my high school pictures, one of them was me with braids. Chris called me Wendy, I said, "who's Wendy?" he said, "You know Wendy from the hamburger place." Being a smartass I went and searched for pictures of Wendy, the real Wendy. I posted it as my profile pic. He loved it, I made smart ass comments like, does this mean I have to learn how to cook square hamburgers and attention, all people who live in my house we are having square hamburgers for supper tomorrow night. He thought that was hilarious. In one of his posts one day he complained about eating too much pasta, I posted the picture of Wendy on his page the next day and told him to stay away from pasta and go have a square hamburger. He thought that was funny. When I finally got up enough courage to post a current picture of me his comment was , you're beautiful, kindness radiates from your face. Writing it makes tears come to my eyes because when you're friends with someone it's the inner person that counts.
You see I had a mistaken idea that I was supposed to be friends with Chris so I could bless him, pretty arrogant, huh, but as it turns out he is the one who blessed me. I began to really see for the first time it doesn't matter if you're a liberal or a conservative, all that really matters is love. People don't have to see eye to eye to care about one another. It seems in this country we have become more divided by what we think politically and made that more important than loving one another. Real change comes when a heart is changed and having Chris for my friend has changed my heart.