Watermelon Man

Morning,

Last night I stood around on a gravel parking lot eating watermelon with friends: Just conversation, watermelon and salt. Finally this morning, I realized it doesn’t get any better than that. I have friends. Just saying that makes me nervous because my track record is not so good at maintaining friends.

I’m realizing at this momentous stage in my life, the big 50 comes in less than a week, that I must learn to change the way I live, the way I view the world, the way I run my life. Why? Because I am the master of dysfunction and I’m realizing finally that there is no ‘fun’ in dysfunction. I’m sure I’ve said this before (what haven’t I said before?) but I am a destination kind of guy. I want to get to where I am going.

I realize that I’ve spent the first half of my life trying to get somewhere that I will never find. There is always somewhere else to get to. Part of this musing comes in the midst of reading the memoirs of a man known as ‘Doc’ Ryder who was a fixture at the college that I eventually graduated from. Doc was an odd fellow, an eccentric. He walked his cat on a leash all over campus. And I was in such a big hurry to get out of school that I never got to know him except in passing. I never really got to know anyone in those days. People just came in and out of my life as I sped by in search of the unknown. But I knew I’d know it when I found it.

I think I found it standing in a parking lot eating watermelon.


I feel the urgent need to grieve all those things that I sped by for so many years. Now it is true that you don’t get hurt if you live your life on the run. You’re usually gone before the pain of a bad relationship or even the loss of a good relationship can hit you. But – and that’s one big but- (to quote Pee Wee Herman) you also miss out on the joy of friends.

From another perspective this face book thing has stirred all of this up inside me as well – all these old friends finding me have 30 or 35 years. It’s exciting and then empty because I realize that I have nothing with them. Not even many good memories because I was in too big of a hurry to get somewhere else not to mention the fact that I trained myself to forget the bad ones. I didn’t have time to make memories: Too busy in high school to get to college, too busy in college trying to get married, too busy being married trying to get divorced, too busy at work trying to find the perfect job.

It’s time for a change and perhaps that change is to not changing anything in my life by moving on to the next best thing. Maybe I need to stay where I am even when I feel pressed to go to the next level after the next thing. Maybe I just need to learn to be a better juggler.
I mean I have all of these friends and granted some of them pay me to hang around, ok most of them do, but that’s ok. It doesn’t make them less than friends. Would it be so strange to keep these friends for the rest of my life? For me – yes it would be strange: But that strangeness may be exactly what I need on the down hill side of life.

Maybe, just maybe, I need to settle into life the way it is and ride that horse ‘til it dies.

I say these things with an understanding that things are getting ready to change or rather that a glorious change in my life is coming to an end. I have had the great opportunity to have a wife the last three months. If you remember, Judy lost her job in the great Nashville flood of 2010. Contrary to popular opinion that has been a tremendous blessing to me. I have spent more time with my lovely bride these last three months than in any of the rest of our18 years of marriage. Without the stress of juggling work and home and other people’s homes I have seen her relax. I have heard her laugh a new, deeper laugh that brings joy to my heart. The members of my congregation actually believe I have a wife now because she is with me all the time. We’ve spent Saturdays letting our wonder lust take us all over the Tennessee country side. We have found many new restaurants. We have gained many new pounds. What a blessing that has been but it is coming to an end in October because she has been given her old job back when the Opryland Hotel re-opens. Then it will be back to 10 hour days, rotating shifts and Judy who?

I will have time to write again. Large quantities of me time. I’m just not sure I want to go back to the way things were. I’ve been spoiled. I will remember what it is like to think I have nothing to go home to so I might as well stay at work.

Now , I’m not trying to get sympathy or anything. In fact, loss is part of the thing that makes a deep friendship so valuable. If you don’t mind the loss maybe you didn’t have too much invested in the relationship to begin with. I thought I was being smart when I avoided that pesky feeling of loss all these years but I’m finding that emptiness is a much worse feeling.

It’s time for me to learn to embrace the pain of loss and cherish it because I can say with all honesty that I have had something rare and valuable in my life these last few weeks. Something I will cherish because given the rest of my life and the hectic nature of the hotel business it may never pass my way again. Loss and joy will intertwine in my life and leave me with a cherished memory. That is truly a rarity in my heart. I am a blessed man.

I think it’s time to listen to Watermelon Man by Herbie Hancock.

Grace and Peace,

Brad