There is an intersection in my heart where my yesterday and my today meet. Sometimes they shake hands and exchange pleasantries and sometimes they throw down with a take no prisoners stance that I know from experience will leave me weary and much worse for the wear. I spend long nights aching for a familiarity that only comes at night where my mind is allowed to drift to yesterday bolstering me up and giving me strength to face tomorrow. It is always the same, I awake to sunlight streaming through an eastern window rising to meet the day. I know that I will be ok but sad for all that has been left behind. The passing of the players of my youth always has this effect on me. You relive the laughs and quake at the sorrow that has left you on the floor wondering how this world could possibly do with out them in it.
I wake up to hot breath in my face, dog breath, thanks Rome. My not so subtle reminder with four legs, that the days of horses and cows, mountains and prairies have long since passed and that just like the seasons spent in a frozen landscape I will get through it. Yet another of the characters from my past has moved on into another sunset. I find myself wondering how long has it been since I was home. I always talk about our love for Colorado but home for me is Montana; where the sky is as big as the hearts of the people who live there. Growing up in a place like that never leaves you. Like a Charlie Russell painting it's etched into the sand stone cliffs in your heart and drifts endlessly through the rivers of memories in your mind. You know that gods country is different for everyone; everyone that is except those who grew up in Montana.
I grew up in Great Falls Montana dirt poor and happy. We made do with what we had and worked hard for everything else. I learned early you can be poor but you can be clean, bar soap is cheap and with a little elbow grease even the deepest stains will yield; just like our memories to time. I often look at my childhood and wonder what the hell my parents were thinking, I would never let my kids do the things I did; roaming wild and recklessly. They were so hard on us, like a relentless torrent of water cutting us and shaping us to be the people we are today but giving us just enough space to spread our wings and when we were ready to fly away. What am I afraid of... nothing I tell myself and yet everything perhaps. Give me a rattlesnake and a field of hay bales over pleasant conversation about nothing any day! It is what I know and what is comfortable to me.
I try and teach my kids the values I know, honesty, hard work, reliability, and fortitude; this in a world that can no longer define these things. I know as we lay to rest another of these forces that shaped who I am today; you can not buy these things they have to be taught and learned, with patience and practice. I search my memory trying find the blue print on how to be brave in the face of death; I am certain I learned this at some point. I was never very good at playing dress up;pretending was never a game for me to master. I am a "what you see, is what you get type of person". I know all I can do is face it the days head on, with the knowledge that I was given the gift of time spent with people who could give me something money can't buy, love, hope, strength and self worth. I pick myself up off the floor, dust myself off and open up the drawer and write down all the reasons I am grateful for growing up in a place like Montana counting her as one of them.
She like so many others are etch into the cliffs of my heart. I will add her name to all those who have gone on ahead of me marking the trail so eventually I too will find my way home. Time is a friend of no one and sooner or later we all yield to its force. It is this force of nature that we call life. I regard its reminder politely, with a subtle nod of my head and steady eye contact, I bid her a good day! Then I turn and look at the face I see in the mirror and I say to myself you only live once, so lets start living.
