Written on my Heart

I just got off of the phone with my sweet mom. I am really blessed to still have her on this earth. Living in her petite, senior apartment in Texas, she is a good thousand miles from me, but through the magic of cellular phones we get the feeling of closeness whenever one or the other gets a twinge of the lonelies.

As our conversation meandered from “what’s for dinner” and “good books to read” to the terrifying, potentially lethal snowstorms we may or may not have in Ohio and how I should never, absolutely NEVER, venture out onto a snowy road…the subject of my new blog was broached. First off, I had to spell and define “blog.” Bless my mom’s heart…she has never owned a computer or knowingly used WIFI. She has heard of Facebook and the internet and knows other people can find out about pretty much anything and anybody at any given time, but she is content to peer over the shoulder of a child or grandchild to experience the mysteries of social media. 

As I explained the nature of a blog and tried to give my reasons for wanting to have one in the first place, my mom said, “Well, it’s kind of like an autobiography.” Well…yes…I guess. I assured her I would never intentionally share anything too embarrassing, or too personal, or (hopefully) too upsetting to people I love. 

This is where it got good.

Mom said, “You know, your dad wrote his first sermon in 1987, when we lived in Colorado.” Hmmm…”So he was 60 when he did that?” “I guess so.” 

I asked further, “When did Dad start writing poetry?” “Well, that would have been after we moved back to Texas…around 1993 or ’94.” Hmmm…”So he was around 66 or 67?” “That’s about right.”

My dad went on to write dozens of poems and, eventually, over a hundred hymns. And he started that diversion in his 60’s.

I feel like just stopping right there. Let that just settle into my gut. 

I’ve read most (probably all) of his poems and songs. He loved words, I mean really LOVED WORDS. He enjoyed turning a phrase just so. His hymns were filled with words we don’t really use in conversation anymore…maybe I should say they were “fraught” with them. But it gave him pleasure, and he was good at it. And as the years progressed, he couldn’t imagine a day when he did NOT write or rewrite something, relishing reading it aloud to his little audience of friends or family.

So I’m a lot more like my father than I thought. For some reason I’m fascinated by words and with ordering them just so. And for some reason I could not get my nerve up and challenge myself until now.

Mom said, “I think your dad would like that you’re writing.” “Yeah, I think so, too.”