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but never really were
”Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.”
Thomas Campbell, 18th Century Scottish poet
I was the fastest white kid in the 10th grade in Mineral Wells. At least, that is what my black friend and fellow football freak Jesse Kimbrough told me.
“They don’t run like you, Eugene,” he’d say during a pick-up tackle football game, which commenced almost every Fall Sunday on the Mineral Wells High School practice field. I was always motivated to run harder when Jesse showed up. I would fly like an eagle in sneakers.
Jesse would become one of the all-time greats at Mineral Wells High School and received a scholarship to play at Texas Tech. I moved away to Arlington, graduated from a little turd of a private Christian school (we dominated all of the boys sports my senior year), married at 19, and headed off to bible college in Springfield, Missouri.
I once could fly. Or could I?
I was a preaching prodigy. By age 12, I was invited to speak at various youth gatherings in and around Palo Pinto County. At 14, my uncle, a friend, and I held a youth revival in Memphis, Tennessee, and other meetings across Texas. At 15, I won the Preaching category at the Texas State Convention of Accelerated Christian Education and spoke to more than 2,500 people at the national convention at Bob Jones University. I was on a church staff at 19 and a senior pastor at 23.
I once could preach. Or could I?
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I spoke with my childhood best friend the other day. As we almost always do, we reminisced about the good old days. Boy, what times we had! We went on adventures. We got into trouble. We stayed up all night so often just doing ornery boy things, like dipping snuff and stealing golf balls from the driving range to cut them open and get the super ball at the center for games we invented. We hopped a box car once and figured to ride it to wherever it took us. Then, we got cold feet, jumped off, and had to make up a story about how we got skinned up. We fished for crawdads and warded off attacking junkyard dogs with BB guns. We played tackle football with no protection or equipment. We played flies and skinners and on the basketball court, he was Kareem and I was Doctor J.
The good old days were really good – for kids.
There is nothing rosier than nostalgia and nothing quite so skewed. Distance lends enchantment to the view. The pain, sorrow, struggles, and suffering melt into the horizon, leaving only the beauty of yesterday, when “all my troubles seemed so far away.”
Yes, I do. I believe in yesterday. I believe in the beauty of precious memories.
They linger like Dad singing, “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” at work or “Have I told You Lately That I Love You” to Mom or “The Battle of New Orleans” on a road trip to my sister and me. They linger like Mom’s fury when she thought another adult had done me wrong. They linger like a first kiss, or the first time I felt Donya’s fingers laced with mine and her body snug to my side. They linger like Ashley’s bright baby smile, Holly’s doll dress-for-a-hat and the walker she called her “push”, and Lacey’s “thunder thighs” in high gear, charging headfirst into an unsuspecting world. They linger like Ty’s sweet spirit and attachment to his Toy Story Woody, which he called “Boody.”
They linger in resplendent beauty minus the hardships, the losses, the devastation. Precious Memories. How they linger.
They do not, however, interfere, with the making of new memories with the likes Jaxon Eugene and his big brothers Axle and James Jr. They do not interfere with Holly and Ed and the miracle of love Tilly brought to their world. They do not interfere with grown man Ty, still sweet as ever, still as good a kid as I have known, or Dylan and his drive to do something significant or die trying, or Ashley and her eternal youthful love for holidays and family traditions. They do not interfere with the way James puts everything into family and teaches his boys to love and respect their grandparents (lucky us) or with Lacey as a rising star at work and a perfect mom at home.
Someone told Horace Greeley many years ago, “Your magazine is not as good as it once was.”
Horace answered wryly, “It never has been.”
The halcyon days of yesterday were not what you remember and who cares? They are now what you remember exactly that.
Make memories by living and loving your way through the muck and mire of everyday doldrums, the stupidity of modern politics, the ineptitude of leadership, the high prices of socialist policies, and the 27 genders and kitty litter boxes of a world gone stark-raving mad.
Today is insane. Tomorrow, though tomorrow, today will be the precious memory to which you cling, in which you believe, and because of which you hope.