THE MAYONAISSE JAR

I MADE THE BEST OF IT

  

While I am used to being chided for “thinking too much”, I never give into the pressure created by hearing that repeatedly since I was a teenager.  The reason it does not affect my mien, is that I am unconvinced that I do “think too much”.  For me, the evidence of being that deep of a thinker has only rarely surfaced in my life.  Was I truly doing all that bang-up of a job thinking, perhaps then I would be more inclined to agree.   Do I think deeply and attempt to be profound?  Most certainly!  But with the estimate “storage capacity” of over 700 terabytes, I believe that it is beyond the average human being’s ability to “think too much”.

I have said in my journal before that I do not have a “favorite” among my daughters.  But KT is clearly “first among equals”, even as the middle child.  The few infant photos we took together reminds me of an error that will not be repeated this visit, that I allow too few photographs of myself.  Though I certainly will take plenty of my daughter and Flat Ruthie too, I aim to get in a lot of them myself, holding and standing as close to my daughter as possible.

As I am with my thoughts, I never get lost in sentiment.  I have never really “wondered” what could have happened if Nixxie and I had managed to become a couple, just as I have never considered what my relationship with Skye would have been like had I managed to hang in a little longer with my starter wife.  Of course, the chances that had my marriage been a little more tolerable would also undo KT AND Lexxie.  And this is another reason why I will not admit to the “think too much” theory, because I rarely, to the near exclusion of the idea, do much “what if”.  When it comes to all that kind of thinking, the a**hole in me speaks to me just as he would to another person lamenting their woebegone life, and says, “I guess you should have done better in high school.”  This is not a literal statement as much as it is a comment on the implicitness of the opportunity to have chosen differently when the time of choosing arrived in your life.  I did not have to marry my ex, I did not have to have unprotected sex, I did not have to mess up with Tee Jay and I DEFINITELY did not have to put up with Mookie Dee’s bullsh*t!  To whatever extent I participated in these various episodes in my life does not exonerate those who were complicit with me, but neither does their complicity me of my responsibilities.

So there is some sand in my mayonnaise jar.  Figures, as I have grains of sand in my pocket, that taking the golf balls and pebbles out of my pockets, that there would be sand and stuff mixed in when I dumped the rocks and balls into the jar.  Maybe I lost some volume, but so what?  And I mean it, so what??  As many “golf balls” I have put into my jar, I feel pretty darn good about the contents of my mayonnaise jar.  And because of that, I feel like I am living in the casino of life, and I am using “house money” to make my bets!

The twins (my Army and Chicago sister) can tell their children of how their uncle used to box with “this guy, and sparred with that guy”, and how he sent postcards (hey, I got one from Route 66!!) along with gifts from the places he had gone.  Hey, they may even tell them how much I inspired them to do the things that they did with their lives, eh?  How is THAT for a legacy??

I still remember how the last time KT and I were together in “the provincial town that I once jogged ‘round”, how Mookie Dee snickered at watching us eat our plates, because it was uncanny how similar our dining habits were.  And I still hear Nixxie joking me about how, “… she does something and I say, ‘You ain’t got that from me, that’s your FATHER in you!’, and she laughs and laughs, teasing the way only someone who is “down with you” can get away with.

“Down with you.”  Ah yes, an urban-ism that connotes how committed another person is to a cause, a relationship, a phrase that elevates a relationship to the rare air of “George and Weezie” when it comes to being IN love.  I prolly WILL expound on that thought after KT goes back to Carolina, but for a few weeks this summer I will get to experience the feeling of unconditional love in the eyes of another human being, someone who is going to be "down with me"!

I think that you are never as ready as you would like to be for a big moment and I am no different.  Could “this or that” be like “that or this”?  I am sure that things could be “this or that” but as Blake said when he found out that Roma was not there for the big salesmeeting:

“Well, I’m goin’ anyway!”