Half the registered voters in Texas voted early this year. When I got to my polling place on time today, Election Day, I felt ashamed for being late.
I’m just kidding about that. Everybody in the place was all smiles: poll volunteers, voters, kids tagging along to get a whiff of democracy.
I still like voting on election day. This morning it was in the neighborhood fire station. Last time I went into a school cafeteria. Often I’ve met my neighbors voting in a garage down the street. Garage voting is neat. It smells a little like bicycle tires and sometimes they have a dog I can pet while I’m waiting in line. Sometimes they have free coffee and if you get there early enough, maybe even some doughnuts.
That seems like real grass roots American democracy to me.
Voting early and by mail is convenient but I don’t want to vote from home. It makes me sad to think that before long we’ll all be voting with our smartphones. We will, you’ll see.
I think we should spend more time with our neighbors, shaking hands and introducing ourselves, smiling and feeling good about being there.
In Texas fall teases you like a puppy. It yaps at you, snaps playfully at your fingers and then darts away to plan another surprise attack.
I wore a sweatshirt last week. Today it will be 80. Tomorrow could bring snow. It’s the wonder of Texas weather that I love because I don’t like predictability.
Life itself is unpredictable and that’s how it should be, even and maybe especially life’s tragedies.
A man arises before dawn, showers, shaves, kisses his slumbering wife and kids goodbye and then he leaves home and dies.
I don’t mean to be morose. It’s just the unpredictable nature of life.
On my early morning radio news shows I’ve told these stories daily for decades. We get used to them, both in the telling and the hearing because the stories are framed in frigid cop talk, in matter-of-fact terms detached from emotion and personal reality.
“Dallas police responded to a fatal head-on crash early this morning. Officials say a wrong-way driver slammed into a late model Toyota southbound on I-75 near Walnut Hill. The driver of the Toyota died at the scene.
We don’t even learn his name.
Let’s see how that’s affecting traffic: live with Traffic on the Fives, here’s Bill Jackson…”
Bill explains that emergency vehicles have the wreck confined to the divider with officers directing a ten minute slowdown into the right two lanes.
“Meanwhile, inbound on the Dallas North Tollway there’s a slowdown at Northwest Highway…”
The Toyota driver’s wife and kids are still sleeping as a hundred thousand commuters deal with a traffic jam.
The family will probably be wolfing down breakfast on hurried schedules when the knock comes at the door.
But, I digress. I was talking about unpredictable fall weather and the unexpected turns in our daily lives.
Live as a child.
Most people seem to live their lives focused on annoyance, oblivious to the small joys of the moment. We worry about trivial things and bitch about each day for trivial reasons.
We wish it was summer, we wish it was Friday.
We wish away the unpredictably wonderful moments of our lives.
We’re constantly told to live for today, in the here and now, and to stop and smell the roses. I don’t know anyone who has figured out how to do that but I’m working on it.
I thank God each morning for another day of life.
I don’t wonder if He exists. I’m just happy to be grateful.
Before I go to sleep at night I conjure images of my wife and children, my grandchildren, the friends I’ve made and the handful of very special people I’ve known and loved in my life. I give thanks for them all. Then I drift off to sleep without a care in the world.
Tomorrow will be another unpredictable day and though the possibilities include everything, glorious and tragic, I’m looking forward to it.
I’m going outside to mow the lawn now. It might snow tomorrow or I could die tonight.
I was just trying to organize my iTunes files. It’s a maddening process that forces me to access the gnat sized portion of my brain that insufficiently understands digital stuff so that I can preserve the memories of my heart.
I rarely listen to music and until just now I didn’t understand why.
I grew up in the sixties loving the Beatles, the Stones, Janis and Jimi. I was a radio rock jock at 17. I used to crank up the music LOUD when I was behind the mic in the KROY studio on Arden Way.
That time of my life passed quickly. I remember it fondly but I don’t live in the past. For some reason I’m not overly sentimental.
Once in a blue moon though I stumble across a song that brings a memory from my heart to the surface; it pulls my younger self out of the past and paints a moment with goodness and glory that can only be imagined.
This is a performance of a particular song by a group of musicians I knew during a very special time in my life. Like memories themselves it’s a grainy piece of film with a somewhat ethereal soundtrack that can’t do justice to reality as I have held it.
In my heart, I’m still there with the boys in the band as you see them. We have not aged. I’m on my feet under a freeway with hundreds of other fans shouting with joy, frozen in time on a Saturday night in a Sacramento spring.
Sharmayne is with me. This is our song. The trombone player is her man and I’m her best friend.
34 years later Sharmayne is gone and I can’t find Fritz. Rainer, Dieter, Charlie and the other boys have taken their lives elsewhere.
This is probably why I don’t listen to music much anymore.
It hurts too good.
NOTE: This is the Allotria Jazz Band from Munich in 1984. This particular performance was filmed in Germany, not Sacramento. That’s obvious by the narration. Still, Sharmayne and I thrilled to their music and this particular song many times over the years they appeared at the Sacramento (Dixieland) Jazz Jubilee.
Today I have some words of advice for my sons and theirs. We dads are very good at this. Even if the advice is sometimes nonsense we never stop spewing warnings, admonitions, analogies, metaphors and stories that begin with, “When I was your age…”
My own dad was a master of the art. He’s been gone for several years now but every day of my life things happen that remind me of something he said or did largely created the better parts of the man I am today. I still seek his advice and he still delivers.
Whenever I am faced with a perplexing decision I only have to ask myself, “What would Dad tell you?” The answer comes to me in a flash.
Jeremy and me camping c. 1986
It works very well the other way around, too. Sometimes I have a dilemma that just can’t be sorted out by weighing the pros and cons of alternative actions or decisions. If I simply ask myself, “What would you tell Jeremy or Nathan to do?” I get my answer immediately with clarity and confidence.
These wise tricks of fatherhood are excellent tools and I highly recommend them. They almost always work.
Almost.
So, the first piece of advice I must give my sons is: have faith in your wisdom but embrace your honest ignorance. There’s no shame in it.
Repeat after me now the three little words that are the most powerful item in a father’s bag of tricks:
“I don’t know.”
Say it again, fearlessly, as if you mean it this time.
“I don’t know.”
The more you say it the easier it becomes but you also must understand that these words should never be used except in sincerity. Your eternal responsibility to your children requires that you make every effort to help them find their way through life’s labyrinth. You, of course, are still finding your own way through the maze and sometimes they will encounter an intersection you’ve not seen. So, again with feeling, please:
“I don’t know.”
It’s getting kind of warm and charming, isn’t it? Maybe later we can address the other three words you need in your toolkit which require much greater skill and caution:
“Ask your mother.”
Post Script: After she read this my wife, the lovely and feisty CarolAnn Conley-Williams said, “You need to add the other three words that are the most important of all: ‘I love you.'” I replied, “That’s obvious.” She said, “No, it’s not. Many fathers can’t or won’t say it.”
She’s right, of course. I didn’t think of it because we Williams dads have no problem with it at all. You can read her comment below.
I have a device that fits in my hand and pocket and contains immediate access to all the discoveries, written histories and cultural achievements in the history of humanity.
Think about that for a second. It’s staggering.
We’ve landed men on the moon and robots on Mars. Modern medicine is on the verge of curing and preventing Alzheimer’s, cancer and genetic causes of heart disease.
But my home office printer is a spaz.
Peruvian folk dancers
I have a powerful desktop computer that will whisk me off to faraway lands to enjoy the music and dancing of foreign cultures as they are actually happening. I can learn a new language and how to build or repair a house.
I can see and talk with friends I haven’t contacted in decades.
But my printer, a mere three feet away, can’t print a single page of text without sounding alarms and screaming out error messages. Each time it does we have to do a dance, my printer and I.
Jonathan Harris as Dr. Smith and “The Robot”
A few minutes ago I set the dance into motion by rebooting the printer, as usual. It has been clicking, clunking, whirring and spitting out blank pieces of paper since I started writing this. It shakes and clatters frantically, reminding me of the flailing arms of the robot in the original Lost In Space TV series of the sixties.
“Danger, Will Robinson!”
The app in the computer that contains my text source is ready to rock and roll, but the chunk of plastic next to me – which regularly reminds me I need to buy a new yellow cartridge to continue printing black ink – is still groaning and wheezing like a garbage truck.
I just turned 67. I feel fine, just got a clean bill of health in my annual checkup. I’m mentally alert and a whole lot wiser than I’ve ever been before.
But now I hear the steady tick-tick-tick I never noticed until quite recently.
The older I get the more excited I become by the life all around me. After fifty years of chasing career goals I’m close enough to the finish line now that I’m free of constant pressure to keep moving. I can sit down and look back with satisfaction. I can glance ahead with few wants and no expectations.
I enjoy my work more than ever because I’m not trying to go someplace else.
We’re always told to live in the present but you can’t get there until you get there.
Now I really do smell the coffee and the roses. I’m learning to let go of the nonsense and enjoy what’s left.
CarolAnn and I share the little things in our lives with more joy than ever. I’m embarrassed to admit I find myself paying the kind of detailed attention to our dogs that I should have paid to our kids when they were little. I tried, I really did, but there was always the background hum of things that needed to be achieved away from home. Now that’s finally gone.
I wish my boys could be boys again. They’d have more of me than I gave them 30 years ago. Still, they love me and they get it. I just didn’t know any better. I was being who I had to be at the time.
“Regret is just a memory written on my brow, and there’s nothing I can do about it now.” – Song written by Beth Nielsen Chapman, sung by Willie Nelson
But now there’s that damned clock. It doesn’t bother me because I fear death, it bothers me because I have so much I want to do yet and I sort of kick myself for not getting up to speed before now.
I know what you’re thinking and you’re right, what difference would it make? Each achievement would have simply brought a new idea. I’ll never finish as long as I can find things to excite me. I get that and I’m grateful.
None of us know how much time is left on the clock. When it stops we’ll be right in the middle of something important. So, here’s what I think:
At 67 achieving goals is less important than having them.
(Originally published in 2009. Hey, I’m only plagiarizing myself.)
When I was a kid we didn’t have air conditioning, just a swamp cooler. On really hot days I just laid on the cold tile floor under that fan and panted like my dog, Rusty. I always figured that’s where the term “dog days of summer” came from: dogs that just lie around and pant in the heat.
As much sense as that might make, I looked it up and here’s the deal:
The Ancient Romans called it caniculares dies (days of the dogs.) It arose from the notion that Sirius, the dog star, was angry this time of year and caused the Earth to get very hot. To appease the star’s rage the Romans sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of Dog Days.
No, I don’t know why it had to be a brown dog.
The Romans, of course, thought nothing of committing carnage upon any creature that moved if it might be even remotely possible that a good screeching, bloody sacrifice would serve some useful or noble purpose.
This is why the Ancient Greeks were considered the brains of the outfit.
About eight o’clock this morning at work I went to the men’s room and ran into the custodian doing his job.
We’ve smiled and howdied in passing before and we’ve never swapped names or had any conversation but this morning I asked, “How are you?”
He said, “Great! It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
He was cleaning urinals at the time.
I would guess he’s making minimum wage. This is a five story office building so I guess he spends his whole day cleaning toilets, wiping down counter tops and mopping restroom floors.
I have an office in our home that was originally a guest room. After we’d lived here for a couple of years it had only hosted two guests so CarolAnn decided I should put it to daily use. If anyone else comes to visit we’ll cross that bridge.
my favorite corner
My room has family pictures on the walls and one very special photo in its original 67-year-old cardboard frame parked weirdly in a desk paper organizer. We’ll get a frame for it sooner or later. For now I get a warm, secure feeling from having my dad and mom smiling at me as I sit at my computer still trying to make something of my future.
They’d like that future planning, even at my age. They taught it to me.
Don & Nancy Williams August 6, 1950
It’s their wedding picture, taken August 6, 1950. I was born exactly one year later. As a young child unacquainted with the social implications of the times I always proudly told people I was born the same day they got married.
Our 30th year together
The Valentine’s Day card is from my CarolAnn from this past February as we started our 30th year together. It’s one of those just-perfect cards that seems like it was written specifically for the two of us. It allows me to be with her even when I’m alone in my room.
The smaller photo is our youngest grandson Tyler in a Christmas pose from a couple of years ago. He reminds me of why I want to keep learning and growing.
Tyler Goold Williams
Oh, and the Snow White lamp? It used to reside in our Disney themed room in Southern California. We don’t have one of those here so it stays with me. I love the warm light, the bright colors and the constant reminder that we’ve invested a good portion of our time and fortune to the Disney Corporation. We feel it has been time and money well spent.
I love our home, every bit of it, but this is my favorite corner. It’s a snapshot of a small piece of my happy life.
The world can be a brutal place especially for the very young and helpless. Occasionally such a life is delivered to us. We do what we can.
This baby bunny was taken from its nest in our yard by one of our beloved pets, probably Cora, the cat.
Cora is a predator. She can’t help it, she’s a cat.
There were two babies to begin with. One was convinced to drink kitten formula in CarolAnn’s hands. In this very short video you can hear us cooing and worrying as if we were its parents.
When the feeding was finished the babies were put in a soft bed we made in a small box. The box was placed in our backyard flower garden with hope that the mother rabbit would retrieve them during the night. She did not. By the following morning one had died. CarolAnn took the other to a professional wildlife rescuer who specializes in rabbits.
Seems like a lot of effort to save a tiny wild animal, doesn’t it? Especially by people who routinely celebrate when our pets kill a rat in the same yard.
I can’t make sense of that. I just know I’m still worried about that bunny.
Voting early and by mail is convenient but I don’t want to vote from home. It makes me sad to think that before long we’ll all be voting with our smartphones. We will, you’ll see.
