The Demands and Expectations of African-Americans

Mine is not a popular opinion.  In fact, it's probably tantamount, in this crazy time in which we live, to hate speech which, in a bygone era, would be protected under the First Amendment but which now is actionable under several questionable statutes.  

With the death/murder of George Floyd, the country has lost its collective mind.  Cities burned, reparations were demanded, a semi-terrorist group, Black Lives Matter, was founded.  Corporations caved in, commercials began to feature nothing but biracial or black people and kente cloth found its way on to white people's shoulders not named Father Pfleger.

That Floyd's death was wrong and actionable is without question.  But the torrent it unleashed has been less justifiable.  Now, we have to defund the police, because police departments and the men and women in blue are uniformly racist.  Corporate America needs to reconstitute itself, because there aren't enough black people in higher positions.  Hollywood has to diversify, because whites win too many Oscars.  And we all need to examine our white privilege.

Enough.

By no means am I suggesting there aren't inequitable situations in the country.  And blacks' ancestors suffered through the horribly traumatic period of slavery.  I'm not minimizing ongoing racism that still exists.  

But this is not a racist country.

There are too many examples of how this notion of systemic racism is a red herring.  For me, let's start with the seminal SCOTUS opinion of Brown v. Board of Education, the long overdue opinion that put an end to the notion of separate by equal, from 1954.  If there was such systemic racism, how is it that nine old white men voted unanimously to end the Plessy standard?  Why didn't the court use its sophistic talents to uphold Plessy in the name of systemic racism?   

Martin Luther King, Jr., famously declared I have a dream that my four little children will done day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  Dr. King would be disappointed.  Because today, it is not permissible for a white person to judge a black person at all, much less because of the person's character, because due to white privilege, white people are inherently racist.  No, any comment made by a white person about a black person, however slightly critical, is now ipso facto grounded in race.  So if LeBron James is hypocritical about inequities in the United States compared to those in China, we must remain silent.  If the SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson has a questionable sentencing record as a judge, we must remain silent.  If Will Smith walks up on stage during the Oscars telecast and slaps Chris Brown for making a gratuitous joke about his wife, we as white folk must sit silent, because we can't possibly understand black culture.

Meanwhile, openly racist behavior by such luminaries as Caryn Elaine Johnson, also known as Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Reid, Maxine Waters, Nick Cannon and a bevy of wannabe eugenics experts must not only be tolerated by applauded.  To question the falsity of their statements, or the overtly racist overtones, or the openly hostile comments is to be racist.

What Dr. King was promoting was equality.  For a person to be judged on the same level as another of a different race using the same measuring stick is equality.  To not judge a person in a similar fashion is to distinguish, to discriminate, to treat differently.  So if a black person makes a heinous statement for which a white person would be taken to task, it is only fair and right that the black person be held to the same standard.  Yet that's not acceptable in today's heightened race conscious society.

It's hard to say from where this more aggressive attitude is originating.  It could be from affirmative action, descried by critics as a spoils system.  It's counterpart -- reparations for slavery -- smacks of the same sense of entitlement.  Which brings us to an interesting conundrum for the recently confirmed Justice Brown Jackson:

Harvard University has a case pending before the Supreme Court.  In Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the organization is taking the university to task alleging that it discriminates against Asian-Americans by imposing a soft racial quota against Asian-Americans. The case will be heard in the 2022-2023 term.  That's where it gets interesting.

Justice Brown Jackson currently sits on the Board of Overseers, which provides counsel to the school's leadership on a number of issues.  The newly-minted Justice has said, rightly, that she will recuse herself from the case.  This, of course, is unnacceptable to the neo-racists.  To ask the Justice to recuse herself in a case where there is a very real conflict is, necessarily, racist.  Were the situation reversed, and a white Justice were asked to recuse himself due to a conflict, that would be expected and not in the slightest racist.

Double-standards are wrong.  No amount of justification can bless double-standards.  Blacks can be as racist as whites.

It's time for real equality to replace the double-standards.

(c) 2022 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

 

Did Man of Dementia Use His Running Mate?

 It's been over a year since Man of Dementia was inaugurated.  Even the most charitable of observers would describe the first year of the Biden-Harris -- or is it Harris-Biden -- Administration as a dumpster fire, or a train wreck, or a dumpster fire involved in a train wreck.  

No matter where one looked -- the economy, immigration, energy, Afghanistan, voting rights, Covid, SCOTUS litigation, the press -- Man of Dementia not only underperformed his critics' expectations, he failed to live up to his supporters' hopes.

Each facet of this new administration is horrible.  Man of Dementia seems to be cognitively impaired, mostly due to his age, but his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, seems cognitively impaired due to her innate incompetence.  Her insanely stupid laugh, trotted out at interview after interview, has been likened to the Joker's laugh on the old Batman series (somewhere, Cesar Romero is spinning in his grave).  Her vapid, scripted answers that awkwardly try to sidestep answering questions make a mockery of attempts to get answers.  Her inability to be honest is glaringly obvious to the electorate and, increasingly, to the fawning press.

Yet, if she's so bad, why did Man of Dementia bring her on his ticket?

I have a theory.

For all his warts, Man of Dementia is a longtime politician, savvy in the ways of using the process to his advantage.  He may be horrible as a leader, but as a sniveling powerbroker who knows how to turn things to his advantage, he may be among the most adept.

Many remember how the harridan of Blair House went after Man of Dementia in the debates, alleging, not without reason, that his record was tainted with evidence of racism.  It was an ugly attack, but one that is common in modern-day politics.  

Apparently, Jill Biden lost her mind after this exchange in the debates.  The story can be found here:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9595697/Jill-Biden-told-supporters-Kamala-f-attacking-Joe-2019-debate.html

Jill Biden told supporters that Kamala Harris could 'go f**k' herself after the June 2019 Democratic primary debate where the then-candidate attacked Joe Biden for supporting racist policies during his Senate career.

If that's the case, why would her husband put Harris on the ticket?

Race and gender.

The present-day Democratic Party is all about identity politics.  Race and gender are the two measuring sticks the Left uses to rate anything.  And by selecting Harris, Man of Dementia appealed to voters who thought he was progressive, hip, modern.  It allowed them to overlook his many shortcomings; he'd nominated the first female and minority Vice Presidential candidate.

For Harris, it's an obvious benefit to her political career.  For the first time, she attained a position not because she slept with someone powerful or was boosted by her looks.  This put her a heartbeat away from the presidency and history.

But then Man of Dementia played his ace in the hole.  He appointed Harris the border czar, a thankless task in light of the many pronouncements he had made that were essentially invitations to the world to violate our sovereignty.  This put Harris in the unenviable position of having to defend her boss when there was no way to stem the tide of illegal immigration.

Other than one trip to Guatemala to study the root causes of immigration and propose new age remedies addressing gender equity, Harris made one trip to one of the more defended portions of the southern border after the press hounded her about it.  Since then, she's been largely silent about it.

Since then, she's been mostly out of the public eye, unable or unwilling to do anything substantive.

Then, the situation between Ukraine and Russia broke out.  We have no strategic interests in Ukraine.  Ukraine is not part of NATO.  Yet Man of Dementia sent Harris to talk with our German and other NATO allies about intervening in Ukraine should the Russians attack.  There would be very little anyone could do to stop Russia were it decided on taking Ukrainian territory.

So in a year, Man of Dementia has sent Harris on two fool's errands, jobs that no one this side of Henry Kissinger could solve.  To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, Harris is no Kissinger.

The net effect of these assignments has been to create a track record that almost guarantees that Harris has reached the height of her incompetence a la the Peter Principle.  Compared to her, Hilary Clinton is a politician for the ages.  Harris will never sit in the Oval Office.  Her political hopes were dashed the minute she accepted Man of Dementia's offer to be his running mate.  Were she more politically aware, she would have turned down his offer and waited until 2024.  But her vanity and professional greed got the best of her.  Jill Biden, she of the woefully laughable doctoral dissertation, had outplayed her.

There is one problem for the country and one hope for Harris, and that is Man of Dementia's declining cognitive abilities.  Should the 25th Amendment be invoked and he is removed, Harris ascends to the presidency.  And if that happens, we're all in a lot of trouble.

(c) 2022 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Rushing to Judgment

 For myriad reasons, this country rushes to judgment about virtually everything.  Oftentimes, the rush causes misjudgments left and right that should be corrected later but rarely are.  The collateral damage can be enormous.

Just in the last twenty years, this country has seen countless lessons of the ills of rushing to judgment.  Some of the more notable examples are the Duke lacrosse scandal, the University of Virginia frat story published by Rolling Stone, the Nicholas Sandman debacle and the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.  In each instance, the truth as asserted by public news organs turned out not to be the truth but the hopeful narrative pushed by news organizations hoping to cash in on sensational plots.

Perhaps the top reason for this is the rush to be first with a story.  In the United States, claiming to be the first with a story -- and not necessarily the most accurate -- matters a lot to the press.  Were it only the press's fascination with being first with the news, that would be one thing, but a more than gullible public wanting its fears or hopes confirmed is what galvanizes the press to eschew its journalistic responsibilities in order to claim the mantel of being first with a story.

No matter how wrong a story turns out to be, the rush to be first never causes the perpetrator too much backlash. Professor Jonathan Turley has dubbed this the Age of Rage, and no matter how incorrect a news organization turns out to be, as long as the story sounded plausible when first aired, no amount of correction can diminish the victory of having broken the alleged story.  In each of the cases cited above, the story turned out to be almost directly opposite of what the press implied was the truth. People's lives and reputations were damaged.  As far as I'm aware, as of this writing, only Mr. Sandman has found any vindication whatsoever, but because of the press's perfidy, no amount of monetary vindication will erase the stain of having been branded a racist.  Mr. Rittenhouse will, hopefully, soon add to the MSM's debit column in the next couple of years, but with the enormous sums of advertising revenue the MSM takes in, it will but bat an eye, write a check and exchange it for an NDA.

And that's where the rubber should meet the road.  Obviously, given the ordeal endured by Mr. Rittenhouse, he may be loathe to go through another such exercise, but if I were him, after I'd settled with one or two of the lesser miscreants, I'd go to the mat with one of the other, bigger ones.  No amount of money would compel me to settle.  The reason is quite simple:  He can't lose.  There is no way that going through a trial and exposing the craven partisanship of an entity that all but had him tried, convicted and executed for exercising his right of self-defense, he'd be viewed as anything other than a champion by right-minded people  Sure, he may forfeit a hefty payday, but think of what it would be like to expose, say, the bias of CNN by putting them on the witness stand and having them answer questions under oath:

What was racial about this trial, Mr. Stelter?

How did Mr. Rittenhouse commit murder, Mr. Lemon?

Please explain how Mr. Rittenhouse wasn't in fear of his life after having a gun pointed at his head, Mr. Cuomo.

Admittedly, I don't stand to forfeit a $50M payday, but think about all the goodwill Mr. Rittenhouse would earn for exposing the putrid underbelly of the MSM.  Sure, the MSM wouldn't have to write a check, but after undergoing a trial, even assuming it won, how many advertisers would jump ship?  How many would continue to support a propaganda machine masquerading as news organization?  

It's hard to choose which Leftist to use as an example; there are so many from which to choose.  Does he choose the deep pockets, the most vitriolic, the one who stands the most to lose after being exposed?  Professor Turley has written that winning a defamation trial for Mr. Rittenhouse isn't the slam dunk many think it would be, given SCOTUS precedent in New York Times v. Sullivan.  That being the case, why not take the suit to trial?  

It's gotten to the point that for a news organization to be able to claim an exclusive on a news story is tantamount to sell world famous pizza in Newberry, Michigan.  But the audience, lacking either the sophistication or the wattage to discern the unimportance of the claim, eats it up.  To be honest, having an exclusive is no more authoritative in this age than having a broadcasting license.  The lowliest blogger can scoop the major networks if she plays her cards right.

But rushing to judgment gives the newsies one thing:  The rush.  It gives them the chills to be able to say that they were the first to report something, no matter how inaccurate, because the claim of exclusivity will soon be overtaken by events.  For perhaps a twenty-four hour period, the organ that breaks the story is in first place, until everyone catches up, events overtake the original story and corrections begin.  

Meanwhile, the poor focus of the story wallows in the mess created by the rush to judgment, never being able to unring that bell.  There are still, for example, people that believe Mr. Rittenhouse killed black people, that he shouldn't be allowed to attend college and that if he were black he certainly would have been found guilty.  Ironically, these same people are blissfully ignorant of the case in Florida of Andrew Coffee, a black man, who was acquitted the same day as Mr. Rittenhouse of murder and attempted murder when a SWAT team raided his house.

It is possible the Mr. Rittenhouse could sue Man of Dementia for statements he made during his campaign for president wherein he intimated Mr. Rittenhouse was a white supremacist.

Unfortunately for Mr. Rittenhouse, the Man of Dementia has an obvious defense:  diminished capacity.

Think of all the millions Mr. Rittenhouse could take from him that China and Ukraine paid him.

(c) 2022 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

One Year Later

 It's been a year since Custer left us.

That night is one I'll sadly never forget.  Custer was standing there and then, like a cow tipping over, fell on his side without being pushed.  We rushed him to the veterinarian to find out he had a mass on his heart.  It made little sense to prolong his life only to watch him suffer more, so we made the heartbreaking but correct decision to have him put to sleep.

Little did we know it would be the first of three such decision we'd be called on to make in the space of eight months.

When they brought us in to say goodbye to Custer, he was back to his usual goofy self.  I got down on the floor, barely able to control myself, knowing that I had a few precious moments with the dog who had stolen my heart.  He was bouncy and running back and forth between me and Karen.  Knowing Cus, he was enjoying the attention, unaware of what was about to happen.

Before the vet administered the medicine that would take Cus from us, Cus began licking my face.  Even then I took that as him telling me it was all right, that he understood and wanted me to be OK.  I know that's probably very far from the truth, and perhaps I'm deluding myself, but it's what I felt then and what I feel today.

I miss everything about Cus.  I miss his loud, mature bark that he'd he'd let out when I asked him if he needed to go out to do his business, followed by his whirling like a dervish right by the laundry room door; how he never knocked himself out by whacking his head on the door I'll never know.  I miss his feverish chasing of the beam of light from a flashlight on the floor, or the shine of a metal object reflecting the sun's rays.  I miss his running to the kitchen the minute anyone would open the freezer door, waiting for his tribute of pieces of ice to eat.  I miss his him rolling over on his back for belly rubs.  His hilarious habit of photo-bombing other people's photos always delighted me even if it didn't delight them.  When people would get down on the floor to pet him he took it as an invitation to sit in their lap...which he did, always.  I can't recall a time when I didn't have some of his fur somewhere on my clothes, no matter how hard I tried to keep myself clear of it.  It never bothered me; I always liked taking a part of him with me.

He and his brother-from-another-mother Sherman, who preceded him in death by four years, were the greatest and easiest traveling companions.  It was like traveling with the Beatles.  People would stop and fawn all over them.  Sherman was aloof, which only gave Custer more of the attention he craved.

When we got Cus from, of all places, a Doberman Rescue, he was vastly overweight and covered with mange.  He would destroy cardboard boxes, eat raw potatoes and once, infamously, tore up a feather bolster that I had to clean up with a snow shovel.  If Cus knew he'd done wrong he didn't show it.  He sat behind the pile of feathers as if proud to show us his handiwork.  It was hard to get made at him.

Perhaps one the best memory I have of Custer was when he was still able to follow me to the basement.  When I was done doing whatever I needed to do, I'd ask him if he was ready to go upstairs, and he'd go into dervish mode, twirling and barking until he ran up the stairs.  At the top of the stairs, on the landing, he'd wait for me and then, as I'd reach out to give his face a rub, he'd gently gnaw the pad of my palm.  He never broke the skin.  He just gnawed on my palm until he was done, then we'd go into the house and do whatever we both would do.

Recording all these memories is making me break down.  I'm not ashamed.  I loved that dog.  I still do.

He was my first dog.  Sherman was Karen's dog, and although he and I got along fine, he really was Karen's dog.  But Cus was mine.  Cus-Cus was the goofiest, funniest, most loyal dog I'd ever known.  He was far from perfect, which made him perfect for me.

My lasting regret is that I was too sad to think to ask the vets, before they put him to sleep, for a piece of ice.  Cus would have enjoyed that.  So would I.

Someday, I hope, I'll see Cus again.  I'm thankful I had him in my life and I miss him horribly.

(c) 2021 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Joe Biden's America

 We're six months in on this dumpster fire known as the Biden Administration, and it's going horribly, not that you'd know that if you listened to the MSM.  As always, the Left's cheerleaders can't or won't comment on the emperor's clothes, preferring instead to continue to bash Donald Trump and blame all the bad things coming out of Washington in him and his administration.  Cognitive Dissonance has reached new lows.

Biden wasn't expected to be much punkin', as Karen would say.  He'd been in politics for nearly a half century, was doddering during the campaign and spent most of the time leading up to the election in his basement, conveniently blaming Covid when anyone with a pair of eyeballs knew it was his handlers' attempts to keep him away from cameras where his next faux pas could be captured for posterity.

Aligning himself with that harridan of Blair House, Kamala Harris -- or as one wag has anointed her Cackling Pantsuit -- didn't help him much.  After being feted by the fawning MSM in the first couple of months of being Vice President, she's been derided for a series of missteps including rambling incessantly about the root causes of immigration, not giving a press conference for over two months after being put in charge of the border, not going to the border until former President Trump announced his upcoming visit and then going to the most secure part of the border that just happens to have more border all built than any other part of the southern border.

Texas has announced it will begin building its wall.  The LA Times has come out and said that the Vice President's record so far is disappointing.  The Man of Dementia, as seen here: 

attended the G-7 meeting followed by a summit, of sorts, with Vladimir Putin wherein he gave the former KGB agent a list of sixteen sites that were off limit to hacking...thereby suggesting, by omission, that anything not on the list wouldn't disturb us and shouldn't cause the Russian government to crack down on private Russian hackers.  China is emboldened by the weakness of the Man of Dementia, refusing to allow anyone to learn the truth of what happened in Wuhan.  Hunter Biden, the dissolute son of the POTUS, continues to sully the family name, selling his artwork to sycophants for upwards of $500,000 while paying $25,000 for a Russian prostitute.  Biden's younger sister has now been given a book deal, while patronage runs rampant in the White House.

Nothing to see here, folks.  

Meanwhile, Joe Sixpack is faced with onset inflation, gas prices that are now over $4 and even $5 in some places, while at the same time being paid to stay home by pork barrel legislation that insists that people get tax money not to work.  The much-needed infrastructure bill has now become one of the largest excesses in congressional spending, with Orwellian rhetoric stretching the meaning of infrastructure from roads, bridges and buildings to include so-called human infrastructure, or day care, teacher raises and other nonsense that's already been provided for in the earlier stimulus packages.  All the while, the Man of Dementia insists that taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 will not be increased.  Just how in the hell does he expect to pay for this?

So now, the countdown clock on the ascension of Cackling Pantsuit to the presidency begins in earnest.  Some squares sold for six months, but that was never going to happen.  Two years was the more popular choice, but now it looks as if the lesser of two evils must be debated:  Will it be the Man of Dementia for the full four years, or does Cackling Pantsuit get a two-year trial run?

Either way, the country is screwed.

Republicans are licking their chops at both the midterms and the 2024 general election.  From all indications they'll win in both elections.

They'd better not screw it up.  From all indications, they'll have a lot of work to do.

(c) 2021 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Enervating Phrases

Ever since I was a wee lad in parochial school, when the nuns would speak to each other in either Polish or some other foreign tongue to keep us students in the dark, language has fascinated me.  I have actually read books by William Safire, Edwin Newman and William Buckley on the use of the English language.  Despot though he was, I admire Churchill's facile yet complex use of the English language.  Perhaps that's why I learned to speak Spanish and want to learn to speak Irish and Arabic, although the latter two are unlikely to ever come out of my mount intelligibly.

Be all that as it may, it also explains why some things irk me irrationally.  I'm not talking just about those verbal miscues as axing questions, going to Warshington or seeing something that is heart-wrenching.  I'm talking about things people say that are just so jarring to my ears -- even if they're perfectly acceptable to others' ears -- that I scoff when I hear them.  More often than not, my objections center around verbal indolence -- people just fall back on these things either because they've heard them so often they think it's hip to repeat them or they can't figure out the correct way or a different way to say something similar.  To that end....

To Your Point:  This comes out a lot on talk shows.  I first heard it ad nauseum when I listened to Mike & Mike, then The Five.  When someone says something with which the next speaker agrees, that speaker says, To your point....Why not just say:  I agree with what you're saying, or, To add to what you just said...?  Instead, it's fashionable now to say To your/X's point....Egads, be original or learn how to use other parts of the language.

Journey/Chemistry/Connection:  This is always mentioned at some point when couples -- usually celebrities or those in the public eye -- mention their love affairs.  It's either a discussion about how lucky the person is to have the other person along on their shared journey, or what great chemistry or a  wonderful connection they had from the minute the laid eyes on one another.  How hackneyed.  Just find another way to say that the person bowled you over with her beauty, or how the person's personality shone through above every one else's.  These nebulous terms are meant to sound sophisticated when all they really do is show that the person is lazy and can't find ways to adequately describe the person whom she loves above all others.  And this isn't gender-specific; both genders are equally indolent.

I Married My Best Friend:  Great.  I get it:  You like each other.  I've got best friends, and they I have the love of my life.  My sin par.  Best Friends are not Lovers.  Or at least they shouldn't be.  They should be more.  They should be above everyone else on the planet:  Friends, family, strangers, presidents, prelates -- you name it.  

Soulmate:  This one tickles me.  On these foppish shows like 90 Day Fiance, where contrived situations put two people together on the fast-track to marriage, the contestants -- because that's what they really are -- wax loving about their opposites as being their soulmates.  In one hilarious instance, a Frenchwoman who was horribly treated by her American paramour to whom she'd referred as her soulmate broke up with him after his less than gentlemanly ways and then resurfaced a few months later with a new (and decidedly uglier; although the first one wasn't gracing the cover of GQ any time soon) American fiance whom she readily introduced as her soulmate.  We all make mistakes.  Any one who's been divorced will attest to that.  But this all-too-ready leap to soulmatehood is a little unsettling.

You're the Man/In the hole:  This is pure golf.  I've tried to play golf.  As I tell anyone who asks me that as far as golf goes I'm a heck of a first baseman.  Still, I enjoy watching the Ryder Cup and the Masters at Augusta (the course more than the golf).  But when these wannabe Jack Nicklauses start screaming either of these after the golfer strikes the ball it sounds so...pretentious.  The person speaking is trying to elevate himself into the golfer's level, to which he decidedly does not belong, but it's of no consequence.  And doing this in public does what, exactly?  It's like a bunch of drunk frat boys who grew up and remained drunk frat men.

That's What I'm Talking About:  This has come to replace I like this/that.  Someone will be shown something or will simply see something and utter this tired, overused phrase as if they had been talking about whatever it was right before it was shown.  I've never understood whether this is meant to sound hip or self-important.  Either way, it's kind of douchey.

We're Pregnant:  Um, no you aren't.  Unless there's an umbilical cord connecting both parents somehow, with half the baby in one parent and half the baby in the other, only the woman is pregnant.  And if both parents are pregnant, doesn't that mean the father gets a say as to whether to abort the fetus?  You can't have it both ways.

Fish On:  This is the pescatorial equivalent to You're the Man/In the Hole.  Casual fishermen, emboldened by any number of fishing shows on TV, will shout this when they hook a fish.  Whatever happened to I got one!  And what exactly is the fish on (I know, I know).  Unless I make my living fishing, I would avoid this one.  It's douchey.

Woke:  I know what it's mean, but isn't Woke a verb?  When did it become an adjective?  

Just:  This is a pet peeve, and it's really wrong of me.  The next time a layman gives a prayer in church, count the number of Justs that are included in the prayer.  Then listen to the pastor pray and count the same.  The disparity is huge.

Just sayin'.

(c) 2021 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Twenty-five Years

 Twenty-five years.

A quarter century.

It was twenty-five years ago today, May 12, 1996, that I last saw our Mother alive.  It was Mother's Day, and Mom had terminal lung cancer.  We didn't know how much longer she had to live, so each day we had with her was precious.

Mom had undergone chemo, but for some reason -- I don't remember why -- radiation was not considered.  Mom had lost a little hair, but she hadn't lost much weight.  She looked tired, drawn, but didn't seem to be putting on a brave face with us.  She seemed delighted to have her children around her.

Mom was to me my rock.  She gave me life, protected me from Himself, encouraged me, taught me about life and living and was always in my corner.  Sure, we had disagreements, spats even, but in the end she was the one person on whom I know I could count.  I wasn't married and was just beginning what would turn out to be a disastrous and unfortunate serious relationship, so she was to me my girl.  I acquired the strong genes of her family and looked like one of them, thankfully.  

My love of language, literature and education came from Mom.  She taught me how to throw a baseball and how to bake and cook.  She supported me in athletic endeavors even though she didn't understand a curveball from a free throw.  Her enthusiasm for anything her first child did was always on display.  Despite this, Mom was no Stage Mother.  If I stepped out of line I heard about it.

As I got older and things worsened with Himself, Mom and I would talk about it confidentially, always careful to do so out of earshot so as to not anger him.  We had to stay apart from one another for several years to make her life easier; any time I came around the house, he would get in fights with her about my alleged misbehavior.  I didn't misbehave; he just hated me and took it out on the both of us.

Mom smoked like a chimney for over forty years.  We tried to get her to stop but it wasn't until she had acupuncture that she was able to quit.  By then it was too late -- three years after she quit she was diagnosed with lung cancer.  Six years after she quit she died.

Among the saddest things about losing our Mom was the fact that she and Karen never got to know one another.  She wouldn't have been happy with the circumstances of our romance -- both of us left bad marriages and divorced before living in sin and then remarrying -- but she would have had a blast with Karen.  I would have been their unwilling foil for most of their hijinks, but I know they would have loved each other's company.  Karen and I talk of it often.  Besides never becoming a father with Karen, this is my greatest regret.

I am now sixty-years-old.  My Mother has missed forty-one percent of my time on earth.  I think of all the things we could have done together if she'd only been around for half that time.  I see other people who smoked like fiends who got to live into their eighties and nineties; Mom died at age sixty-four., just four years older than I am now.  

Her loss pains me every day.  I think of her often and talk with her as if she were still with me.  I'm proud to be her son and glad that she was my Mother.  I appreciate more than ever all that she did for me and think of her every Mother's Day.

I know she's waiting for me and in some ways I can't wait to be reunited.  I want her to know Karen and watch them laugh themselves silly at my foibles.  She loved me like no other until I met Karen.  With any luck Sherman and Custer have made her acquaintance and are keeping her company until I join them all.

I love you Mom.  I miss you and can't wait to see you again.

Thank you for giving my life, teaching me to live and keeping me alive.

(c) 2021 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles