What keeps me going today: the actual sleep I got last night
What moves my feet today: knowing that tomorrow is another day
I could do without: forgetting my Lexapro today
I had another daydream this morning. I guess I have daydreams because I don’t really sleep enough to have them at night. They are usually either in the shower or walking somewhere on the $62 million campus, by the way, that is just the grass and foliage. Sometimes I have them in the car, but I have to be careful because I might fall asleep at the wheel if I daydream. Most of the time I begin to log these down and the dream will continue. I wish I had done this everyday instead of just starting a few days ago.
I don’t have daydreams of work. I don’t have daydreams of anything other than playing music and being with my wife and kids. I say kids plural because it is still a dream…I wish for the day where we have more children.
Today’s daydream was a little different. Much how my mind works the dream was in flashes…much like a picture show of snapshots. We had three little ones by this point. Little Bear is almost 6 years old. Another around the 3 year mark and yet another around a year old (much like little bear is now). We are in a home that feels like ours. It has been home for at least a couple of years. It is very “70s” with the paneling walls in the family room and we have the tall shag carpet. Naugahyde furniture surrounds the room along with the new kitchen appliances but still in the 1970s avocado green. It doesn’t smell like moth balls. It smells like new construction. Fresh paint, freshly cut wood, and new carpet. The smell is light and refreshing. The kitchen is right next to the family room. It is a source of light and life. The cabinets are white. The walls in the kitchen are a creamy yellowish color, but not so light that it melds into the white cabinets. Lovely is there preparing dinner or lunch, I don’t know which one. There are windows with practically see-through white curtains. We are all in the family room/kitchen downstairs. I have pulled down one of the older guitars from the wall hangers on the wall. The guitar is one of the ones I let the kids play. I have my trusty pen and yellow legal pad. The words are spilling out like a blue and white flood. They are my emotions. [Recently, in real life, my words are dark colors along with blood red…very angry and surrounded by calamity. This peace and freshness is new to the music of my heart.] The little’uns are all busy playing. The youngest is tugging at my right pant leg. Little bear and the middle child are playing joyfully together around the toy box I built for them. It resembles the one I had as a kid. I begin working the chords to the music and adjust the phrasing of the song. The kids draw close. I begin to explain to the rugrats about what I am writing and why I am choosing the words in this order. I am talking over their heads, but they just want to spend time with me under my guard and protection. They have always loved hearing me play and sing. My family is my greatest and most cherished audience. Lovely, my wife, stands over the spring onions (which I don’t like, but they are good for us) and weeps. Her tears are not from the produce, but from the production God is showing in my heart. I wink at her. She smiles with the nose-crinkling smile she does when she blushes. The youngest begins to try to strum the guitar. I allow it. Maybe the little one has ideas for this song that I should apply. I weep because I have turned over the control…I have turned over the process. After all of the fighting with myself…after all of the war I have waged on my body…after all of the emotions I locked away and suppressed, I have now been broken. My youngest child to date is picking up the legacy. I place the legal pad on the round side table beside my big “writing chair.” I ease the guitar away from the baby. I clap for the baby and cheer to encourage. I return the guitar to its resting place on the wall hanger, which is at arm’s length from a sitting position in “the chair.” I laugh out loud from the bottom of my belly. I boisterously call everyone over to sit in my lap. Lovely and the three little’uns run over. Lovely and I weep tears of joy for God has blessed us tremendously. We don’t have much as the world looks at us. No $30K cars, no massively impressive home, nothing amazing except for hope in God and the family and talents he has blessed us with. We look at each other and acknowledge that we still miss our second child. It has been just over five years now since the baby died. We smile again knowing God’s goodness. Then a tickle-fight…the songwriting can wait until later…it’s what I do. Write, record, play.
Prodigal Thinker 