By: Tamon Mark Uttech
How are you? I was glad to see you when I did; “Oh Brief Encounter!” I had said I would write, and I have been at it ever since! How many letters have been started, tottered about like a child learning to walk or like an older person determined to try it again, ‘without the cane, without the walker’ (just to see if I can do it). Indeed. Was there ever a time when we did not struggle? To try? To understand?
Meeting an old friend
is like meeting a fairy tale-
Meeting “once upon a time”
again.
Everything we couldn’t know or couldn’t remember rushes to the ‘fore, “Yes, I remember now, I didn’t like that…” But there was also, a time when you did… When it was all new. When everyone who ever appeared in your life could well have been a messenger from the Most High.
You could always trade one set of problems for a different set. If it was new you thought it could be fixed. Me too. We probably still think that way; grandchildren are a different matter. If they aren’t being raised the same way, is something different going to happen? Something better? Worse? Heaven forbid!
You can never go wrong by holding someone’s hand and taking a walk with them. Every single person knows what to do. Stay with their private thoughts or share them. It is a chance everyone takes.
And now? Is it up to our children to accomplish what we could not? They should at least be making an effort! Because we did.
Our effort may have become nothing but a memorial park, some place to visit. “Yes, I got that certificate, that diploma. My dad told me that any moron should be able to do it.” You can see my name. And the date. But the summer nights! Oh, those summer nights! They weren’t a puzzle, some problem to be solved. Oh wait, yes they were. The problem of the time. Just like a season. Leaves turned red from hearing the stories they heard, from the people passing beneath them, and later, amongst them. Some of those people didn’t just like to tell stories, they liked to scream and kick!
And I managed to write the letter, something I said I would do. It works out as a bedtime fairy tale. For adults.
You know what doesn’t matter?
I’m sure you do
and I hardly know you
-tamon
