Son of my son

Tyler Goold Williams
Tyler Goold Williams

February 11, 1977 – When my son, Jeremy, was born I phoned my father from the hospital to give him the news. The baby was his first grandchild and my dad said something unintentionally funny.

“A boy, great! Our name will continue.”

“Dad,” I replied, “Williams is the third most common name in the English language. The name is safe.” We both laughed. It was one of those special moments between a father and son that I knew I would remember forever.

28 years and ten days later my son had a son and today is his 19th birthday. It’s a big day for him, bigger than he realizes.

I’ve always thought moms deserve the annual birthday celebrations for having done the physical and emotional work. Creating a human inside of yourself is quite literally an unimaginable miracle.

Fathers are bound to their children, too, but physically less so. We have to work a little harder at finding our way into the spiritual connection mothers create naturally.

“My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.” – Clarence Budington Kelland

Parents and grandparents talk a lot about how quickly time passes. It’s true but what we don’t acknowledge often enough is that the time we’ve spent with our children and grandchildren, fast as it seems to pass, is also infinite.

I’m 72 and I think often of my grandfathers, though I wish I knew them better. I marvel at the similarities between us. I appreciate the lessons they taught me through their sons and daughters.

My father died 22 years ago but I think of him daily. He is still my hero but I couldn’t tell you why. We just have that bond.

“A father’s love is like your shadow, though he is dead or alive, he will live with your shadow” – P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

Tyler Goold Williams, I love you for your birth, for who you’ve become since, and for who you will yet be.  I celebrate each day of your existence. I wish I could hug and laugh with you more often. I hope we’ll spend more time getting to know each other but I assure you this: you are the result of thousands of generations of mothers and fathers who loved one another deeply. You belong in the chain of families whose love created you.

Through all of that, through all of time past and future, you are the only Tyler Goold Williams who has or will ever exist.

That’s why we celebrate birthdays.

Be happy, stay healthy. Live your life as you wish it to be.

Love, Grandpa

PS. Call us sometime. The phone works both ways, ya know.

Christmas Music, Spirits of Our Past

What is your favorite Christmas song or album?

I love Christmas and all the songs that celebrate it but the answer for me, hands down, is the entire Christmas Portrait album by The Carpenters. Even the title is perfect; it’s a glorious audio portrait of everything that fills us with the love and magic of Christmas.

The arrangements, lush orchestration, and Disneyesque choir of this album wrap me in a beautiful soft snowfall and a warm, crackling fire. More than five minutes into an overture and medley of traditional religious carols we are primed for Karen Carpenter’s arrival with her angelic voice singing “Christmas Waltz”.

That album was released in October 1978. My wife and I were in our first new house; our son was approaching only his second Christmas, the first one I figured he could appreciate — bright lights, shiny ornaments, presents, and beautiful music.

And that’s the thing about music, isn’t it?  It reflects the powerful emotions of our lives past and gives us a path of hope for the future.

For you, Christmas touchstones may be ignited by Mariah Carey, Michael Buble, or Bing Crosby. Play it loud and often.

In case you’re curious, Elvis had the best-selling Christmas album of all time.

It’s wonderful, but it’s not The Carpenters.

What’s your favorite?

 

The Radio Book, Introduction

(CarolAnn has always said I should write a book about my radio career. I don’t think it’s a big deal and haven’t cared while I was still working. Now, recently retired, I’m going to try, one short essay at a time. — DW, December 20, 2023)


My senior yearbook picture, Highlands High School, North Highlands, CA, 1969

As near as I can figure, my first day working in radio was June 16, 1969. It was less than a week after I graduated high school with the great honor of addressing my fellow graduates with a speech I titled, “The Crystal Dream”.

I was only 17 but already writing too-flowery purple prose.

The speech concluded, “You can grab this world by the tail but you must be quick, lest you find yourself holding the shattered fragments of a crystal dream.”

(The word, “lest” is a red flag of purple prose.)

Some capped-and-gowned wiseass back near the 50-yard line fired off a bottle rocket. A guy in the front row lifted his gown and flashed me his privates. Parents and grandparents in the bleachers applauded appreciatively; maybe half of my 400 classmates clapped too, glad that I was finished.

Then we got our diplomas, tossed our caps in the air, and life started.

For me, radio started long before that.

More to come…

 

November is Norway

Today is November 1, 2023.

I went searching for a pithy quote about November and this is where I stopped looking:

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
–  Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson has always cracked me up. I know I know — she is widely considered to be America’s greatest poet. I’m a troglodyte when it comes to poetry. I’ve spent 25 years ridiculing the “Belle of Amherst” since I wrote a play making fun of her work on nearly every page. After I finished writing it I was shocked to learn that Harvard University Press still held the copyright on most of her creations and they insisted on reading my two-act mockery before granting permission for me to quote her.

Even more shockingly, they decided it was fine, go ahead and perform it!

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul…
–  Emmy again

You can’t make this stuff up. Oh, I get it, in this famous piece, a bird is implied as a metaphor for hope. I just find most metaphors to be unnecessary and often unintentionally funny abstractions.

And yet, when I went looking for a pithy quote about November  I was hoping to find a touching metaphor of life approaching its final days.

Since I turned 70 more than two years ago I’ve made an effort to think philosophically about aging. Songs and stories are always referring to May to December romances and such.

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I’ll spend with you

– “September Song”,  lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, music by Kurt Weill

I retired from radio yesterday and I’m very happy about it. I have no second thoughts and no regrets.

I just wanted to say something pithy that would express my complex sense of aging and, quite coincidentally, of leaving one’s lifelong career in the past.

Norway would have never occurred to me.

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

-You gotta love her, Emily Dickinson

I have wondered if it was sheer bravado whenever I heard retired people praise their retirement as the “new chapter” in their lives. Maybe it is for some, but I’m all in.

I’ve had a wonderful life and I still do. I’m more aware than ever of how fast my life has gone because I cherish every moment. I wouldn’t change a thing. I mean that literally.

I also know that I’m relatively close to the end of my life, but I’m not there yet.

Happily, I’m finally old enough to get it. These really are my golden years.

You’ll get it when you get here.

 

Transitions, part 2: Passages

by Dave Williams

The greatest joy of living is learning. It leads to loving life without needing to understand it all.

Big Tree Park, half a block from our home in Glendora, California.

My recent medical adventure is progressing nicely. I’ve finally been approved for disability checks, and as my cardiologist and neurologist continue to poke, prod, and scan the parts of me that interest their specialties, they’re still unable to find anything at all wrong.

The cardio doc just told me, “Your heart is fine.”

I can’t imagine a more glorious and yet understated diagnosis. Meanwhile, the neurologist says, “Well, you didn’t have a stroke, you don’t have a brain tumor…” and I didn’t hear anything she said after that.

I’m not religiously trained, but neither am I opposed to it. I do have a sense that something greater than my worldly self has guided me through life and nudged me toward major transitions.

Take my marriage proposals, for example. The first one sorta slipped out at a drive-in movie when we were both still in our teens.

“Someday, I’m going to ask you to marry me.”

I actually said that: “Someday…”

My high school girlfriend blinked.

“Is that a proposal?”

I don’t remember how I answered her question because by then I had realized how stupid it sounded and I didn’t know what to say next.

We did marry and ten years later we divorced, very amicably. We’re still close friends.

Seven years after that I was having a beer at a popup bar in a hotel ballroom in Santa Rosa, California. Without provocation or warning, the little voice inside my head ordered me, “Do it now.”

I put down my beer and walked directly to CarolAnn Conley-King, who was laughing and chattering with a group of our friends. I took her by the hand and led her straight through the first door I saw. It led outside to the stinking dumpsters. That’s where I popped the question, properly, this time.

“Will you marry me?”

The day I proposed to CarolAnn, March 1988.

I should explain we were in that hotel ballroom for a country swing dance team competition and we were wearing matching costumes that made us look like extras in the Robert Redford film, The Electric Horseman.

“What?”

She was apparently surprised by the question, as was I.

After making me repeat it CarolAnn simply replied, “Of course I will.”

Thirty-five years later we are still, as Paul Harvey used to say, happily-ever-aftering.

My point is, whether you credit God or some internal self-guidance system, I believe we are propelled by circumstances we create.

In her landmark 1974 book, Passages, Gail Sheehy explained the stages of life that define how we change and grow. Each stage is fraught with worry but we move on because we have no choice, it’s time. This is always a necessary and good thing.

As I often reflect on my countless blessings I accept a certain amount of credit. I brought myself to and through each of life’s transitions, partly by luck but mostly from having the good sense to recognize and attach myself to good people, and to learn from them.

Most importantly, when you fall in love.

When I blacked out in the parking lot of Mooyah Burgers July 31, I entered another passage. Now, eight weeks later, I’ve given up worry. I’m loving my new life of daily opportunities.

My blessings are countless.

Technically, I’m still not retired. But, I have stopped largely defining myself by my job.

I’ve stopped making plans beyond the next hour or two.

And yes, uncertain as I am of the big stuff, I do say a quiet prayer each night.

“Thank you for everything. Please give me another day.”

 

 

 

Transitions

by Dave Williams

For the past six weeks, I’ve been off work and stuck at home because of a blackout I suffered in the parking lot at Mooyah Burgers. Two MRIs and various other medical tests are inconclusive. I feel fine. I could have gone back to work after my one night hospital stay except that Texas law won’t allow me to drive for three months after blacking out and the company that employs me won’t allow me to do my radio show from home. So, essentially, I’ve been visiting retirement.

I sleep later than I do when I go to the job; I wake up to feed the dogs and fix coffee. Then, I chat with CarolAnn before kissing her goodbye as she heads to work. The day that follows is pretty slow. I deal with medical and insurance-related paperwork, do some writing, and take a nap. That’s pretty much it until later in the afternoon when I can anticipate my wife’s return home.

Me on a train in Ireland.

As much as I have insisted over the years on my need for time alone, my life right now feels kind of lonely and confusing. I’m not retired, I’m on disability leave with tentative plans to return to work. But really, I am retired in the sense that I’m completely cut off from my career of 54 years. It’s all in the rearview mirror, for now, at least. That’s not necessarily a sad thing. It’s a mixed bag, really.

And, confusing.

In recent years I’ve asked retired friends how they fill their days. I get as many different answers as there are friends. Some have undertaken new, second careers, others find things around the house to keep them busy, yard work and home improvement, for example. A couple of guys I know admitted to being bored a lot. One of my oldest friends and colleagues told me he’s learned how to make shopping for an avocado fill up most of an afternoon.

Sometimes I think the idea of “keeping busy” is a misguided insistence. I might be happy doing nothing. What’s wrong with that?

The problem with transition is the uncertainty of it all. Should I retire now or wait? Can I even go back to my old career or is that just snuggling under a familiar but old, worn-out blanket when there might be more I can do?

What would that be? What can I do?

And, why do I insist on doing more?

I know all of the suggested answers from writing to volunteer work and just deepening my budding interest (please pardon the pun) in gardening. Maybe there is no single answer. Maybe what I’m doing now, a little bit of this and that, will settle into a comfortable pattern. I don’t know.

I suspect this is a transition that will fulfill itself in time. It’s confusing right now.

If you’ve “been there, done that” or are asking yourself the same questions please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

I may not be looking for answers as much as I’m looking for company.

Golden Years

by Dave Williams

May be an image of 4 people
CarolAnn and I in Northern Ireland, last month: Giants Causeway.

Three weeks ago I celebrated my 72nd birthday and then blacked out in the parking lot of a burger joint after lunch. I woke up some minutes later in the back of an ambulance, was taken to a nearby hospital, poked and prodded just a bit, and sent home the next day with no diagnosis.

The hospital people were very nice. They wheeled me out and wished me luck.

Since then I’ve seen a neurologist and a cardiologist. Both have run tests, neither has provided me with any insights. I like and trust them. The problem is, I’m not their only patient and they have their personal lives to lead. I don’t begrudge them a moment, I just await their educated assessments.

Except for the second-degree burns I suffered from lying in the parking lot during a Texas summer, I feel fine. Oh, maybe a tad dizzy at times. The neurologist did say I suffered a concussion. It should go away. She’ll let me know.

Meanwhile, my wife of 35 years, the Lovely-and-Feisty CarolAnn Conley-Williams, is having trouble sleeping. She looks at me with a mixture of adoration and anger; her experience in that parking lot was the shocking belief that I was dying. I didn’t but in her mind, I still could. Understandably, that scares her and pisses her off.

The company I work for has just learned that Texas law doesn’t allow me to drive to work after suffering a seizure. They also understand that while I could work from home, their own recently enacted policy forbids it. So, they’re paying me to sleep in and, no doubt, counting the expense. I’m grateful for the time I’ve been welcome there, however and whenever it ends.

For a long time, I’ve understood that my career will come to an end eventually and that the glorious achievement of living to my golden years would bring some medical challenges.

I just didn’t expect it all to happen on my birthday.

Things can almost always be worse. We carry on in gratitude.

 

 

 

A selfie

by Dave WilliamsJuly 6, 2023 Bushmills, IrelandMe in a pensive pose, Bushmills, Northern Ireland, July 6, 2023 

I like this picture, but my God I look old.

I’ll turn 72 in a handful of days. I know there are a lot of people older than me who don’t seem to give age a thought but I’m sure they do. How could they not?

Twenty years ago I began to wonder if old people think about dying. I never had the nerve to ask an old person, but now I am one and I’ve got the answer: You bet we do, but not in the way I expected.

The past is a great place and I don’t want to erase it or regret it, but I don’t want to be its prisoner either. – Mick Jagger, just turned 80

I think about dying just as I think about being born — I know nothing about either. I only know everything that has happened in-between. That’s where I live and always have. I wouldn’t change a second of it.

And, I’m not done yet.

Irish eyes are laughing

Killarney, Ireland

Our taxi driver was a riot.

“Happy 4th of July!” he said brightly.

“Yeah, thanks,” I replied. “About that, it’s a national holiday for us but not here in Killarney. Why are there American flags everywhere and what’s the deal with those cheesy statues of Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty?”

“Aye, that would be called licking arse!”

Killarney drags out Uncle Sam every 4th of July to flatter American tourists to open their wallets.

Carolann and I howled with laughter.

“We love American dollars,” he explained, “but we also like the fact that you kicked the feckin’ Brits out of your country. We did too, but it took us 800 years.”

The guy should have been doing standup, not driving a taxi. I told him that but he brushed it aside. He was just having fun and glad that we were, too.

Home from Ireland and Scotland, I can’t get the places we went and the people we met out of my mind. The images of the countryside and ancient cities are everything you imagine but even more glorious.

The people are delightful.

I know, I know – we’re tourists. They work at being nice to us, they kiss arse. But in watching the Irish and Scots interact with each other I love the fact that these hardworking, fiercely loyal family people are steadfast; they have many hundreds of years of common history and culture. They treat each other, and us, with the loving respect of kinship. They know who they are.

I envy them.

 

Grads & Granddads

by Dave Williams

Tyler Goold Williams

Our grandson, Tyler Goold Williams, graduated from high school yesterday, June 9, 2023. Very sad that we weren’t there but we’re as proud as we can be.

The Highlands High Class of 1969 graduated June 10, 54 years ago today. Sandra Delaney and I delivered the commencement speeches. I wrote and delivered a soul-stirring celebration of the golden future that lay before us. It rose in power and passion, ending with a wise admonition to my fellow graduates: “You can take this world by the tail,” I told them, “but you must be quick, lest it leaves you holding the shattered fragments of a crystal dream!”

Our parents and grandparents leaped to their feet with raucous appreciation and affirmation. (I think my inspired use of the word, “lest” sold it.) 

My classmates applauded politely, glad that I was finished. Somebody set off a bottle rocket. One guy near the front flashed his junk at me from beneath his robe.

As we age it is hard to deal with the twists and turns of societal influences and cultural whims. I’m happy to report that family values and traditions are still alive and well.

To my grandson, Tyler, in words my own grandpa might have said to me, “The world is your oyster, kid. Live it and love it.”