Life in Black and White

The following is taken from my soon-to-be-released book called “Parkinson’s & Recreation 3 - The No Parkinson’s Zone” Chapter 21 - Life In Black and White

“If you spend any time with a man, you'll realize that we're all still little boys.”—Paul Walker

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/paulwalker424434.html

Sometimes, it takes a lifetime to capture a moment’s worth of understanding. Sometimes a moment’s understanding heals a lifetime worth of pain. It is almost unimaginable how much time can be packed into one moment’s worth of revelation, like the moment in the “Wizard of Oz” when every thing bursts from the starkness of the grey tones of Kansas into the vividness and glory of technicolor found in the Land of Oz—until it happens to you.

My life was like that for far too long. Something deep inside of me told me life was to be lived in color, but reality spoke something less-than to my little-boy sensibilities. I saw what I saw. Sometimes the boy grows up on the outside while his little-boy soul gets left behind. Sometimes it takes little boys much longer to grow up on the inside. Funny how watching one’s dad lying asleep in ICU causes a grown man to somehow revert to and remember being that man’s little boy and magically relive a lifetime in the matter of a few second’s time.

Seeing this giant of a man in my little-boy eyes now working for every breath made me look back with a grateful fondness at just how rich my life truly has been. Thank God for such moments of color and clarity.

Far too many times have I heard the stories of men who lived their entire lives in the black-and-white of regret and unrealized dreams. Thank God for the pain of recollection that time and perspective have melted into the full-fledged color of the wonder of a life full of grand riches, grand adventures, grand treasures, grand memories and the audacious grandeur of simply changing one’s point of view!

Of course, I still see the little wounded boy running from the sexual encounter in the men’s room that day after the man did what he did. This time, rather than feeling the dread and fear that kept me from telling anyone what had just happened to me, I saw a before-unseen-hand protecting me from physical harm. In that one moment of clarity the little boy was transported back to the beginnings of life. Standing there on the edge of that precipice, something called me to step into the abyss of the canyon that once separated the boy from the man he would one day be. And step off, I did.

My little-boy life was amazing as I look back. Even though much of my life was relegated to the stark black-and-white of pain due to the secret I had kept, the re-living is in breathtaking color! As the labored breathing of my father fills the hospital room, I find its monotonous rhythm somehow comforting, and before I know it, I am lulled into a beautiful reverie.

Can you remember the days before remote control? Can you recall the days before color television? My children find it unfathomable and ancient that I grew up in such long-ago and backward days! I somehow find it incredible and worth the living-through now that I am nearing sixty-three years of age as of this writing (I am finally finishing the writing as I near sixty-seven!). We only had three channels and something called UHF, which stands for ultrahigh frequency, whatever that means! I took it to mean that a particular channel was only visible and discernible by dogs and space aliens! Having three channels and no remote control meant that when dad was sitting in his chair and needed the channel changed, I would hear the then-dreaded words, “Change the channel, boy!”

In those days, I quickly grew tired of the constant up-and-down of being the human remote control, but now…now that daddy is in ICU…I am somehow grateful for the memory and the interaction of the son and his father. In those days, my perception was that daddy only spoke to me when he needed me to do something for him, or when I needed to be disciplined! Now, I was grateful for the conversation, no matter how one-sided it seemed in those days.

Those were the days of rabbit-ears (antennae) that TV sets required to receive the magical signal from somewhere beyond little-boy understanding of such things. When the addition of tin-foil molded to the end of said “antenna" didn’t quite do the job, I was directed to hold the end of the rabbit-ears in one hand while standing in the awkward positions my dad would suggest! Rather than respond in the weariness I felt during such moments, I looked back with joyful gratitude that the recollection brought flooding into my soul. When my mom would see my exasperated look, she would suggest that I let go and see if it worked better now. And if it did not, she would often step in and rescue me, assuming the awkward position I had previously held! What a gift this memory now became…

Sunday nights after church meant going to the drive-in on one end of our small town for ice cream cones. It was always so funny to me that the same people we had just seen at church were always at the drive-in, too! I do not even know why it struck me in such a humorous way. It just did. Perhaps it was the comfort of seeing the same trusted faces I had just seen. Perhaps it was the simple joy of knowing one was loved. As difficult as it was to believe in those days that I was lovable, it appeared amazingly and achingly obvious as I looked back.

One of my favorite TV shows of the day was called “Flipper”. Even though I could not have explained my feelings during those days, Flipper somehow gave me hope. My feelings since that day in the men’s room had seen the innocence and trust of a child robbed and replaced with fear and longing to be rescued. As I prepared for 7:00 PM every Saturday evening to arrive, no one knew the need I had to watch the show, and the dread I felt if I missed an episode.

Porter Ricks, Chief Warden at the fictional Coral Key Park and Marine Preserve in southern Florida, along with his two sons, Sandy and Bud, went on amazing ocean adventures with their trusted friend, the bottle-nosed dolphin, Flipper. In my imagination, I found myself being pursued by the villain, or worse yet, the shark, in each episode. Never once was I disappointed! I sit in the ICU with my dad while mom goes for lunch…and I am re-living my adventures with a dolphin! I see my dad as the great Porter Ricks to my little-boy Bud. And rather than feeling like the hopeless little-boy I once was, I see the man I was rescued to become. And my dad is the hero I was in need of all along.

It is so amazing to believe that I once saw myself as I did. The little-boy taking the skiff out into the ocean. The foolish choices I made in jumping into those shark-infested waters. The fear I felt in all those years wasted of believing myself unlovable and my dad incapable of loving me, or even of saying the words. Even now as I watch him sleep, I am being rescued by the love he was incapable of expressing all those years ago, that now so indelibly speaks to me through time as I can now see the many ways his love was demonstrated in living color.

I see myself cared for in the multiple jobs he took on all at once to simply provide for me and my brothers and my mom. The hours away from home I took as a lack of love in those days now overwhelm me with the sacrifice he was willing to make on our behalf. Getting up before dawn to feed the cows and break the ice on the ponds for a place to drink on those cold Oklahoma winter days. Rising from the heat of a water-cooler-fanned night in the days before air conditioning to repair the many tractors and farm vehicles from around the countryside in his mechanic’s garage, and then tending to the fields of cotton and soybeans and baling the hay until it was time for bed on another hot night only to look forward to doing it all again the next day.

Somehow I am no longer on an episode of Flipper, but am in another well-loved and well-remembered show from my childhood. Every day after school and after chores, I lived the many adventures of Gilligan and his castaway companions: the Skipper, Thurston and Lovie Howell the Third, the Professor, Ginger, and Mary Ann on Gilligan’s Island! I recall many specific episodes and even the words to songs from the show, like the episode where Gilligan sings the line from Hamlet “to be or not to be” to the tune of the Opera “Carmen’s Habanera”, or the episode when the girls do a show as the Honey Bees and sing the words “Like a bee needs its buzz, like a peach needs its fuzz, You need me, You need us…” In almost every episode, they long for rescue. But the incredible thing I now remember is just how happy and joyful Gilligan was in spite of his circumstances. Even though I did not experience that same joy as a boy, I believe God was setting me up to live it as the boy gave way to the man.

One of the most amazing things that comes to light in such moments of recollection is how something so seemingly small and insignificant as a silly TV show or sing-song lyric can be used of God to bring about maturity and healing on an epic scale! I am at once reduced to wonder and gratitude. Wonder at the ability of our God to waste nothing, and grateful that He sees the smallness of me and makes a big deal out of it.

Just as I recall Flipper being in black and white and Gilligan being so happy in spite of his need for rescue, those memories used to be in the same monochromatic tones of gray, but now are somehow transformed into the glory of the colors of the rainbow as I re-live them in light of the passage of time. Perspective is everything. Rescue was there all the time. I may not have seen it then, but I see it now. And the black and whiteness of it all gives way to magnificent color. This is the story of taking back stolen ground. It is the story of how ashes can be transformed into heirlooms. It is the story of the incredibleness of seeing my life from a God-perspective. Incredible.