It's another night, another weird day in Fibromyalgia. After sleeping through dinner, I went upstairs to sleep in earnest. I couldn't keep my eyes open, so I figured I'd make the best of it. When my wife came to check on me, I had lower back pain that wouldn't go away. I tried massage, I tried stretching, and I tried different towel rolls. Nothing would make it go away enough for me to sleep through until morning. Sitting up somehow makes the pain go away.
So now I'm awake, and I'm writing, which helps take my mind off the remaining ache. This, I think, is the therapy of blogging.
You know who would make a great blogger? My dad. He'd be a great blogger. He has all this experience and hard-won knowledge that he's tried to pass on to me. I've listened, and I've tried to put into practice what he's learned. Yet I can't help thinking how much better the world would be if he simply sat down and wrote everything out. Forget the world! I'd have one heck of a gift to give my kids and grandkids if, starting with him, the Walden family men would put down their best thoughts and experiences for their children's children's children. Even if he doesn't, I hope someone else out there does it.
When I was 25, I was a new daddy. My oldest was just approaching the age where she could reach the edge of the counter. I could already tell that she had the best of her mother and the best of her father in her. She was very relational and very intentional in what she did, even if she didn't know why she was doing it. She knew mommies and daddies and uncles and aunts and grandfathers and grandmothers and cousins and nephews and nieces and how they all worked together. If she forgot a name of her extended family, it wouldn't be forgotten long. She loved reading and writing, even if she just drew tiny little circles in a notebook. And we had pages of circles!
SO, with a fresh gift from my new employer, I began writing in a journal. I began telling my eldest and her future siblings all about their dad at 25, giving her my "best thoughts" and noting significant changes in her life, such as when she accepted Jesus in her heart. It is now what I knew it would be: one of her most prized possessions.
Does her brother have one like it? No. Does her sister? No, although they are both welcome to leaf through it when they get older. But as the eldest, she keeps the book. If the others were to ask me for one, I would write one, but it would feel different for them. They are each unique children, and my love for each of them is just as unique. Kylie's journal is just one manifestation of my love for her.
Maybe I need to ask my father to write some stuff down for me. It couldn't hurt. The trouble is that he's convinced that prophecy points to the second coming of Christ happening very, very soon. If that's true, what's the point of writing anything down? My point, however, is that just as artifacts survive and tell us about the people who lived 100, 200, 300 or even 5,000 years ago, journals record who we are today. You can't have an artifact if it's never created.
How many photos of flowers in Winter Park do we have, dad? Do the flower beds remember them? Do we even remember where the flowerbeds were after all that construction in the years since we took the pictures? No, but those flowers were beautiful! Living, vibrant color growing in a mountain valley are preserved on a piece of film that, years later, you then took the time to scan for all four of your children. Are your thoughts and visions and dreams and experiences less worthy of such preservation?
Papa, write for me. Please?
No comments:
Post a Comment