The Kissing Tree
April 20, 2011 by Katdish · 15 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
The tree stood like a king in the middle of the field, gazing over its sovereignty. It was tall, taller than any building in town. And old, as evidenced by a trunk so thick that it split partway up so as to give the appearance it was two and not one. Its canopy stretched out and then down, as if gathering up those who pause beneath it.
To see it was to recall the Ents of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. The tree was that magical. Put your ear to its wood and you could swear you sensed a beating heart and coursing blood just beneath the bark. Listen, and beneath the chirps of the robins and mockingbirds and the squirrels snacking on nuts you could almost hear the stories it had to tell, old stories of long-ago times and long-ago people, back when times were simpler and a man named Wenger owned the field.
The oak was known by many names, but mostly it was The Kissing Tree. There was evidence of that if you look closely enough, names and initials scrawled into the wood but even then mostly absorbed, adding to the stories the tree could tell. Some said the tree had grown to such magnificence because it had been watered with love as well as rain. But I knew better, even then. No doubt there had been much love kindled beneath that gathering canopy (and no doubt many children), but there had also been much love that was kindled only to be extinguished by fickle hearts and dashed dreams.
Such was my experience there on that day.
Her name was Sara, a neighborhood girl who lived down the road in a house that defied any description beyond a simple Fancy. She was smart and achingly pretty and knew how to climb trees. Once on a dare, she leaped into the murky, snake-infested river down by the place where Murphy Johnson swore he saw a ghost. She swam to the other shore and back again and said it was no sweat.
I knew then I was in love with her. She was perfect. And best of all, she wanted to kiss me.
I was eleven that summer and had never kissed a girl, didn’t know how or how long a person should do it and what I should do afterward. But I at least knew where to take her for that kiss.
We met at The Kissing Tree on a hot afternoon in July. That’s when I saw the tree as king of the Ents and felt it’s beating heart. Sara was already there, dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a white T shirt that showed the bumps on her chest. Seeing them and her and knowing we were alone under The Kissing Tree was enough to make me turn tail and run away, but I didn’t. I was too scared to move.
We talked for a bit, me about baseball and going to the beach the next week and Sara about how her mom and dad always fought and she wished she could run away. I think in that moment I saw her for the first time, not the tough little girl who swam across the river to where Murphy saw that ghost, but the fragile little girl who wanted nothing more than to be loved. As scared as I was, I wanted to kiss her even more then, just so she could hold that happiness tight, if only for a moment.
We closed our eyes and kissed beneath that great oak, adding our names to the stories it could tell.
Things between us didn’t work out. They seldom do when you’re eleven. But I ran into Sara the other day, and our talk wound itself back to that day beneath The Kissing Tree. It was strange that our versions were similar but not exact. She could not remember telling me of her parents. I did not recall us bumping heads before we met lips. And while I swore we kissed beneath the tree, she promised it was away beyond its shadow instead.
It was strange knowing one of the moments I thought had defined me was a fuzzy one. Not as sharp, as exact, as I thought. Now I wonder of all of my reminiscences are such, if my memory has glossed over them and rounded their sharp edges. I wonder if memory is simply an incomplete experience.
And I wonder if that is our blessing or our curse.
30 Bloggers, 30 Days
September 1, 2010 by Katdish · 14 Comments
Times are tough here in western Virginia.
You can see it in the boarded up businesses and the long lines at the employment office. In the vehicles parked in front yards with FOR SALE signs in the windshields, right next to the same sort of sign for the house. The newspapers are full of layoffs, bankruptcies, and health care worries.
Hard times, no doubt about it.
But even in these hard times there are things we take for granted, those basic necessities we can’t live without but are in such abundance we forget their importance. Things like water. I have three bathtubs in my house. Five sinks. Two spigots outside. There’s a creek running alongside our house that give me fresh mountain water for the sprinkler. Water, water everywhere.
Not everyone is so fortunate:
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Bryan Allain (I use that term loosely, since he’s a Red Sox fan) sent me an email asking if I would join with him and some other bloggers in a campaign called 30 Bloggers, 30 Days, $30,000. The goal is to raise $30,000 in 30 days. Here’s the list of fine folks Tyler Stanton and Bryan Allain have assembled:
Bryan Allain, Matt Appling, Trey Boden, Jason Boyett, Everett Bracken, Stephen Brewster, Burnside Writers Collective, Tripp Crosby, Greg Darley, Sam Davidson, Rachel Held Evans, Evan Forester, Chad Gibbs, Susan Isaacs, Kevin Keigley, Lacey Keigley, Wes Molebash, Scott Moore, Eric Olsen, AJ Passman, Katdish, Brad Ruggles, Rob Shepherd, Jeff Shinabarger, Shawn Smucker, Tyler Stanton, Tyler Tarver, Tyler Thigpen, Karen Spears Zacharias
I’ve never asked anyone who reads my blog to dig into their pockets. Like I said above, times are tough. So what I’m going to do is provide you with the information and let your heart talk instead of me. The best part about this campaign is that all money donated will reach a specific group of needy people. Here’s where this money will go:
- Our goal is $30,000. This provides clean water to 1,500 people (300 families, 6 entire communities).
- 100% of the money donated goes towards water projects. Private donors take care of all the overhead.
- $20 provides 1 person clean water for 20 years.
- Our money will go towards building water projects in Central African Republic.
- If you give, charity: water will keep you up-to-date with the status of your project, provide you with GPS coordinates of exactly where the well you contributed to is being built, and take pictures and video along the way.
So, how can you help?
- GIVE. $20 provides clean water for one person for 20 years! Go to the 30 Bloggers, 30 Days, $30,000 site and make a donation.
- SHARE about it on Facebook and Twitter. Follow @charitywater here.
- Blog about it.30 bloggers is simply a starting point. We would love to have more people join in and help spread the word! And if you do blog about it, please let me know so I can link back to your post.
Last but not least, here’s a bunch of cool downloads, banners and twitter backgrounds you can use. Thanks for your time.
Why I got a tattoo
June 29, 2010 by Katdish · 44 Comments
The first rule I ever remember learning was maybe the most important—always keep your promises. The reasoning behind that rule was basic. In the end, all a man has is his word. If we say we’re going to do something, we’d better do it. Simple as that.
I’ve done my best to fulfill my promises over the years. I’ve succeeded most times. Failed some, too. Others have had to be put on hold until the circumstances were right. One of those promises was one I made to myself, one that had been put on hold for seven years. I was determined to keep that promise. Last Saturday, I did just that.
I got a tattoo.
I realize that may sound a little ridiculous. Childish, even. I assure you that neither applies in this situation. My tattoo was serious business, the product of much thought and introspection. It wasn’t done on a whim, and it isn’t, as Jimmy Buffett so eloquently put it, “A permanent reminder of a temporary feeling.”
When I first sat down to write Snow Day, I did so with two thoughts in mind. One was that if it was good enough, it would get published one day. The other was that it could very well give a lot of people what I was so lacking at the time, and that was a sense of hope in their lives.
The odds of getting a book published were not lost to me. I knew what I was getting into and what would be involved. So I promised myself that if I managed to hang on and if God just so happened to smile upon me, I’d get a tattoo.
It’s easy to lose chapters in the story of your life, easy to let the ones already written slip away and into the wind while you’re writing the here and now. I didn’t want that. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.
And I didn’t want a run of the mill tattoo, either. I wanted something unique to me. Something that told my own story.
I wanted a Native American feel, since they’re in both my blood and my family tree. To the Native Americans, every person has their own totem, an animal that acts as a protector and guide through physical and spiritual worlds. Knowing your totem is an innate process, they say, and a sacred one. Though my own beliefs don’t really allow room for spirit guides, I’ve always been drawn to wolves. To the Native Americans, wolves were the pathfinders, the protectors of wisdom and tribe. Loyal and strong and independent. Always watching. At home in the mountains and the wild places.
If God would have made me as an animal, it would have been a wolf.
I wanted a reminder of those long years spent trying and failing, too. I didn’t ever want to forget the faith I found or even the doubts I had, as both served to make me a better man. Our hopes and dreams don’t nearly define us as much as the manner by which we journey toward them. I needed to make sure I could remember that. Which is the reason for the designs around the wolf. Each design represents a year I spent waiting to get published. The small ones are years that went by quickly, when hope was abundant and doubt was hiding. The long ones are the years when I almost gave up.
There are a lot of long ones.
One question has been asked the most—did it hurt? My answer has usually been given in typical Country Boy fashion—“It didn’t tickle.” The truth is that it hurt. The truth is also that I was looking forward to that hurt, because much of the last six years hasn’t tickled, either.
I got a lot of thinking done during the two and a half hours I spent with an electric needle punching me in the arm (the tip of which, appropriately enough, looked much like the nib of a fountain pen). I allowed myself to remember. Everything. The places I’ve been, the people I’ve known, and the blessings I’ve received.
To the artist doing the work, it was just another tattoo.
To me, it was my story.
This post is part of the blog carnival on Strength, hosted by Bridget Chumbley. To read more, please visit her site.
On Writing and Blogging
November 5, 2009 by Katdish · 26 Comments
by katdish
Don’t panic! Billy’s regularly scheduled post will be back tomorrow. This will be my first and most likely only guest post for What I Learned Today.
Truth be told, Billy is taking a much needed rest. A doctor ordered rest. Prayers are much appreciated.
Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won’t carry a quitter. And there always comes a time–if the work is sincere, if it comes from that magic place where thought, memory, and emotion all merge–when you will want to quit, when you will think that if you put your pencil down your eye will dull, your memory will lapse, and the pain will end. – Stephen King, Duma Key
Question: Are you a writer who blogs or a blogger who writes?
(Hint – If you had to ponder that question for more than a nano-second, I strongly suspect you are the latter.)
I will unabashedly say that I am a blogger who writes. I’ll even go so far to say that I can on occassion write well. But to put myself in the same category as some of you reading this post would be an insult to your talent, tenacity and the sacrifices and suffering you have endured for your craft. And I would never do that.
I like to think of myself as a romantic realist — a champion for the promotion of good writing. My heart cries “Injustice!” when I walk into the local bookstore. Because one only needs view the most prominently displayed books to understand that great writing doesn’t necessarily sell books. The size of an author’s platform sells books.
Which is why writers blog:
And twitter,
and have facebook accounts,
and engage with their readers as much as possible.
Which is not to say writers don’t enjoy blogs and social media. I assume that most do. They are a wonderful way to meet kindred spirits, be encouraged and encourage others.
So what’s the difference between a writer who blogs and a blogger who writes? Speaking from personal experience, I would say that as a blogger who writes, the social interaction is what keeps me involved. I want to write well, but (if I’m being honest) the writing doesn’t always come first.
But if you’re a writer who blogs, the writing MUST come first. The ability to write well is first and foremost a gift. But it also a disclipline. One must make a conscious decision to write consistently; to push through all the distractions that can easily become excuses for not doing what must be done. (Or you can continue to try and do everything until your doctor threatens to put you in the hospital. AHEM!)
While reading blogs and building personal and professional relationships on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are effective and even enjoyable ways to help build an author platform, they must never come before your craft. Never forget why you got into this in the first place — to tell your story.
I will take both partial credit and blame for helping Billy Coffey build his platform, and I will continue to do so until he tells me otherwise. Why do I do this? Because like I said before, I am a champion for the cause of good writing, or in the case of Billy Coffey, great writing.
Billy would tell you in his typical humble way that he’s not a writer; that he is a person who happens to write. But I think anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows better. And come this time next year when Snow Day is released, so will everyone else.
Like drinking from a fire hydrant
November 4, 2009 by Katdish · 10 Comments
photo courtesy of photobucket.com
My family and I are gathered on an outcropping of rocks high in the mountains, wondering at the stars. An unusually warm winter’s night has given us the luxury of this little excursion, and we’ve been rewarded with the sort of natural scene that sucks in your breath and makes you exhale in a long, slow whistle.
Planets dance above our heads, stars glimmer, and each of us take turns wishing upon the occasional meteorite. Orion stands guard at his post near the horizon, his belt cinched and shining. The Big Dipper looks as if it’s pouring the Milky Way upon our heads. The heavens are arrayed in a perfect sort of chaos, as if God has sneezed a miracle.
My son gazes up and wonders of rocket ships and aliens. My daughter? Angels and celestial playgrounds. My wife is wondering why we don’t come up here more often, because we should.
And me? I’m thinking about a dog I met last summer…
To read the rest of my encounter, follow me over to my friend Annie’s blog. And while you’re there, say hi to Boz for me. Now that’s one cool dog!
Jump
October 20, 2009 by Katdish · 52 Comments
Photo courtesy of Photobucket.com
I hold out my hands and say, “Jump.”
My daughter stands on the edge of my bed, arms up and shaking. She giggles the way little girls do, part amused and part terrified. And she says, “I’m scared.”
“Why?” I answer. “You know I’ll catch you.”
“But what if you don’t?” she wonders.
“What if I do?”
“But what if…you don’t?”
She giggles again at the father/daughter version of Abbot and Costello and looks down. The carpet seems soft enough to cushion a fall, but maybe not a fall from that height. Her parents’ bed is high. Very high. High enough that if she stretched out her hand, she could almost touch the ceiling.
She’s torn. Jumping would be fun. Being caught would be fun. But jumping and not being caught? No fun at all.
But then I say the two words she really wants to hear. Words of assurance and truth. Words a father not only says, but means.
“Trust me,” I say.
Her giggle turns to a smile which turns to tightened lips of determination. She bends over and crouches down, ensuring her spindly legs give her the maximum jump possible.
In the movie that seems to constantly play in my mind, things always seem to progress in a predetermined manner designed to make me look as good as possible to the most amount of people. Unfortunately, that movie rarely compliments reality. Not only do I royally screw up from time to time, I’m often the victim of life’s cruel timing.
Because just as my daughter crouched down to jump, I started to sneeze.
I’ve never been able to stop a sneeze. I’ve heard it was possible, I’ve even seen some people do it, but it’s always been more of a postponement than anything else. My nose began to itch with fire, my eyes watered, and my head leaned backward. I was so consumed with what was happening that I couldn’t tell my daughter to wait. Just a second. That’s all I needed.
But little girls tend to be both impatient and steadfast in their decisions, and she had decided she was going to jump and nothing was going to stop her.
The moment she bounded from the bed and into the air was the very moment my head swung forward and sneezed, expelling both air and whatever else outward from my mouth in speeds up to 100 mph. I couldn’t cover my face because my arms were still valiantly trying to catch her. There was no buffer between my airborne germs and her airborne everything.
She winced in mid air, and that was the last I saw of her. Because not only is it impossible to stop a sneeze, it’s also impossible to keep your eyes open when it happens.
The full force of the air hit her square in the face and we collided, sending us flailing backward into the open closet. Arms and legs tangle with jeans and T shirts. The air smells of detergent and confusion.
I raise my head out of a pile of dirty socks to see that one of our legs has knocked over the hamper, and I fumble around for my daughter to make sure she’s still breathing.
But I don’t have to fumble. I hear. And I remember that the only thing louder than a little girl laughing is a little girl crying.
“You didn’t catch me!” she screams.
I pick her up and comfort her as best I can, and my wife sits her on the bed and scolds us both on the dangers of roughhousing inside. Band-Aids are deployed to cover nicks and scratches, both visible and not. But there’s no Band-Aid that can cover the fact that I didn’t catch my daughter. That she trusted me and I didn’t deliver.
Boo-boos mostly healed, we sit together on the edge of the bed and ponder. This is a powerful lesson, though one jumbled amongst bumped elbows and wounded pride.
Then: “God would have caught me.” She says it to the carpet and not to me. She knows she can’t hurt the carpet’s feelings.
“Yes,” I say.
“It was just an accident, right?”
“Yes.”
“I still love you, Daddy.”
“And I love you.”
“But I think from now on I’m going to trust God more than you, if that’s okay.”
“I think that’s probably a good idea,” I tell her.
We both sit, silent but better, thankful that God can always be trusted. That He’ll always catch us, because He never sneezes.
For more stories about Trust, check out the blog carnival at One Word at a Time.
Author of Snow Day and Paper Angels (November 2011), both by FaithWords. But don't let that fool you. I'm just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
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