Quiet Remedies - Part 1

Just a warning: this is a long blog.  I'm not going to make it a habit to blog this long, but I need to explain why I'm doing this.

I don't blog.  At least I never have before.  I've always thought that there was enough blogs in the world and that no one needs to read another one, especially one written by myself. "So," you ask, "why now?"  That's a great question.  Allow me to explain:

I have been on a Facebook fast since September, and plan on continuing on with it through December.  It's been rather liberating to be honest with you.  I think everyone should try it.  I've missed out on all the drama that people post on Facebook, and better yet, I've been given a lot more free time.  This is the main reason I've decided to write.  There are others, but none that are incredibly important.

I've been thinking about this for a long time.  I've been waiting for something to write about.  This morning it came.  It was a feeling that came out of nowhere and slapped me in the face.  I actually cried.  Unlike Pierre Napier, crying is a normal thing for me.  My big brother can attest to that.

I started thinking of a place that I needed to go.  I place that I could just sit with someone and just keep quiet, not saying anything.  Somewhere that I could go and just be refreshed.  I could go to the park but there would be no one there to just sit with.  I could go to the church and sit in my office, but there'd be too many people there to interrupt me.  I knew that I've been to a place like this before and for some reason I couldn't remember it. But wait.  Here it comes.  I remembered.

Switch gears for a second.

In the later years of my father's life his health begin to deteriorate a little bit more than any of us expected.  Because of my flexible schedule I would take up the task of transporting my father to various doctors appointments and mainly to the dialysis clinic on certain days.  I would often have lunch with my dad.   We would carry on conversations about music, sound systems, and computers.  It was great to be able to shoot the breeze with my dad and realize the commonalities that we had.

During my high school years I was usually upset at my father.  I thought of him as mean and strict.  I still loved him, but my disposition towards him was not accurate.  I took the first opportunity I could and moved out of the house (but you must know that my parents bought me a luggage set as a graduation present - hint hint).  Four days after I graduated high school I moved out.  The next year was pretty interesting.  My parents moved to another town, I moved to Texas, and somehow the connection changed.  Oddly enough, we all made it back to Kingman, AZ (insert joke here).

As I begin to evolve into a man, I began to seek council from my father.  I started to learn about all the things that we both enjoyed doing.  This was great!  There was an open road for our conversations. I started to see my dad in a different light.   Shortly after I had discovered my new relationship with my dad, something happened.  Something that changed our relationship forever. I had experienced what I thought to be my first big failure in life.  I had to face my dad and tell him what was going on.  I was deathly afraid to tell him what I'd done.

I hate to leave you like this, but I'm going to have to split this one up.  I have a comment question for you:  How's your relationship with your parents today in contrast with how they've been in the past?  I promise tomorrow I will give you the rest of this blog, and I promise to tell you why I cried this morning.