Stolen Boy’s Weblog

To blog or not to blog? That was my dilemma. Of course, the answer might not necessarily be available through the cavernous extremities that stood in place of my near-vacant mind. It was New Year’s Day, after all. So I sifted through the wreckage of gray matter and determined that, “Yes,” I will blog the new year in because I have some things of importance to say. Whether ears stood at attention ready to listen would be irrelevant, I had decided. Because I could feel the wisdom percolating through the ether and it told me the ears would appear once the words filled the air.

I breathed in as the howling Santa Anas greeted me like the hot August sun. I blinked at the beauty of a new beginning and a red-tailed hawk screaked overhead. How blessed I was. There was no more reason to fret over what should have been, for I already knew I had so much. My grandmother sat to one side, her ninety years of wisdom grating on my memory, her love filling my heart. She giggled as she repeated the story of how I used to drive her crazy when I was a kid and she lived out on the farm. My uncle raised these big old rabbits, and I’d go and let them out of their cages. And they would scratch and they’d claw at my smooth bare chest and I’d let them out in the pigpen. And then I’d run into the house all sweaty and panicked and tell granny that the rabbits got loose and the pigs were chasing them and granny better get to work. Then I’d lie in wait. Behind the rabbit shed. And I’d muffle the laughter as granny would race through the pigshit all out of breath, grabbing one rabbit after another, sticking them back in their cages, wondering how on earth they had escaped in the first place. It wasn’t until this Christmas that she learned the truth. And now, after all these years, granny too could have a laugh. No, she wasn’t happy I’d done that to her all those years ago, but she laughed anyway. And to the left of me, my lawyer mother also laughed. They laughed because those times were so far gone. They laughed because those times were so near. They laughed because they loved me. Because I was their son. Because I was their grandson. I was now the one who helped care for them. It was me; the same crazy kid who did all those crazy things so long ago, who had finally learned how to return all the good he had received.

I realized that this was all that mattered. The love of life I held at each arm could never be replaced. Money and fame and sold books took a distant second place to what it was that we shared. It’s called life. It’s called love. It’s called respecting all that surrounds you for, in your heart, you recognize you are already in possession of it all. And I have my lawyer mother and ninety year old granny to thank for it. That is why I started to blog in the New Year.