Never Too Early

Never Too Early at the Edge of Night!

Life is a struggle and part of my struggle in life is to make my life be about other than me. Trivially, part of that struggle is a specific effort not to open speech or writing with the word “I”. Or songs, hymns: a praise song that begins with “I” always gives me theological pause. Anyway, otherwise, this morning’s blog post would have begun, “I love this life.” We love condo living that means there is no prep but to grab my toothbrush and lock the door before heading off to Tallahassee.

Otherwise too, the past four weeks might have been the end of me, here on the edge of night, to borrow from a black and white television soap opera of the 1950s. Twenty five or thirty years ago, seeing me with Tass, and about Tass, and hovering protectively over Tass, a parishioner told Linda, “Tom loves too much.” She’s fine, all reports good. Surgery successful, treatment fixin' to start. We’re driving over after staff meeting later this morning. Walk with Robert, staff meeting, bite of lunch, lock the door and gone.

Years ago, when Tass was in high school, there came a time when Linda's mother needed her to come help out, and Linda planned to drive up to Birmingham and stay with her mother for a couple of weeks. When she told Tass, Tass said, Mom! you can't leave me alone with Dad for two weeks! Linda says, Why not? Tass says, Mom! Dad won't let me do anything.

A morning in Harrisburg, it would have been 1984, because I was not long a priest. An elderly parishioner wanted to talk and asked me to join her for breakfast at a little cafe on the main street in Camp Hill. As we sat at a booth in the front window watching sidewalk traffic, and cars drive slowly by because traffic was always slow there, the woman told me her worries. At some point she paused and said, I envy you, with no worries. I corrected her, I have worries. She asked, What could you possibly have to worry about? I said, I worry about when Tass grows up and goes away to college. Knowing Tass at church, the woman asked, How old is she? I said, She’s twelve. The woman exclaimed, My God, you’re starting kind of early, aren’t you?

First week of February 2011 as we headed to Cleveland lakeside airport thence home to Panama City, the front desk clerk at our hotel had arranged for us to have the same reliable taxi driver he had arranged a few days earlier to take Tass to the airport for her flight home to Tallahassee. In the cab, Linda told him that he had driven our daughter the previous week. He said, Oh, I remember her. She was very worried about her daddy. She must be daddy’s girl. I said, She’s been her daddy’s girl for thirty-eight years. The cabbie exclaimed, Thirty-eight years? My God, I thought she was eighteen.

These memories are not new, they’ve been related on +Time over the past four years. And there are plenty more, all going round in my mind. But then, life is stories, isn’t it. Stories, memories, love.

Did I tell you about August 1992, when I drove her to BWI and put her on the flight to London for her junior year abroad?

No, come to think of it, let me start in August 1990 when I left her at her college in Virginia. I was fifty-five going on ninety-nine.