the green bee

Get Low, a movie with Robert Duval, is playing on the television tonight.  I happened across it as I was channel surfing...trying to find something to dull my senses so that I can fall asleep soon. 

Listening to Robert Duval's voice, seeing the scenery in the film of country lanes with trees on both sides of a lane...leading up to a cottage way out in the middle of nowhere...reminds me of my step-dad Dan.  I used to call him Dan'l Boone.

 He was a good ol' boy from East Texas.  Had about 30 acres of wooded property outside a little town.  I remember working on the fence rows -- clearing brush on hot summer days.  Helping nail corrugated  metal to beams that would become a barn....then climbing on the roof and tarring the seams so that the rain wouldn't flow like a river through them.

I miss that 'Old Goat'...one of my other nicknames for Dan.  I miss working on that property.....digging post holes...hammering in 'u-nails' (my name for the u-shaped nails we used to attach the barbed wire to the fence posts when enclosing the horse and mule stalls Dan and his brother Gene laughed loud and hard over that!)...I miss playing cards with Dan, my momma, Gene, and his wife Norma...It's the closest thing to family and roots for me (not including my husband's extended family or our 'adopted' family).  I miss Texas. 

Dan's brother Gene passed away yesterday. His nickname was sometimes 'Old Goat' too...He always smiled when I called him that.  Gene used to try to teach me sign language for 'old goat'...He had significant hearing loss and was always learning new sign.  Little did I know that someday my ears would go bad and I could use those skills also someday!!  I guess that's where the nostalgia is hitting me hard right now.  The music from the movie, the scenery, the euphemisms, the way the people speak...and Robert Duval--Dan and Gene are so like Robert Duval's character.  I'm sad that another life has passed on.  If I hold on to the hope and faith that there is heaven, I can remember Dan, Gene, and Norma without too much pain.  I am thankful for the time we had as family.  I am thankful for the banter, the card playing, the smiles...the hard work.  I am thankful for belonging.

The movie, Get Low , is about a hermit seeking forgiveness.  About a forbidden love that ended badly.  About dying with dignity.  

So nostalgia..quit me.  Let me go...unless it's happy memories that you are bringing me..No regrets, no hiding out.  Let me have peace...and beautiful memories.

 

 Nostalgia describes a sentimental longing for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations...I wish that all my memories were happy...however, they aren't...like most folks, I have ghosts...I will choose to remember the beauty and the smiles though.  

xoxo!