A Good Boy.

I have one son, and tomorrow is his birthday. He will be 28 years old. I can hardly believe it. Many of you have never met him and only know him as the guy who argues with his Dad a lot on Facebook. Others reading this have known him since he was a baby. He's quite a kid, this son of mine. And incidentally, my daughter argues with me just as much as her brother does...just not on Facebook as much!

I hesitate calling him a good boy, since that makes him sound like a middle schooler. He's a grown man, I hate to admit, since that makes me kinda old. But the fact of the matter is, he is a good boy. He's whip smart, talented and funny. He has a good heart, a pure heart, in that there's lots of room in there for his fellow man. Four years ago when he was still in graduate school, on his 24th birthday, I wrote this...

The thing I’m most proud of in my boy is his ability to think for himself. Patrick will never be bullied into group-think. He thinks things through and comes to his own conclusions about difficult problems. He doesn’t believe a certain way just because his father does. He thinks. He researches things, listens to others and makes his own informed judgment. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don’t, but I’m always proud of how he arrives at his views, through careful thought, without lazy reliance on  dogma. When his views aren’t popular, he has the courage to defend them. A father can’t ask for much more than that.

Yes, my son and I often disagree on issues great and small, especially, on Facebook. But whenever we go at it I am reminded that he learned his argumentative style from his father, so I suppose I should take it as a compliment. 

I'm very proud of my son. He's working his tail off in a city with a different time zone than mine. He has two jobs and is constantly taking on song writing and arranging assignments, all the while spending as much of his spare time as possible in volunteer music projects all over Nashville. Whenever we travel there his friends speak so fondly of him, clear confirmation to his parents that it's not just us, other people see it too. 

My son is a good boy.

A Day In The Life

Yesterday was one of those bad days right out of central casting, complete with rain and dark, low clouds. It was the sort of day one often experiences immediately after a trip away. The awfulness of this particular day centered around three things, giving it a weirdly organized morning, noon and night theme. So, if you were going to write about such a day, it would be rather easy to gather your thoughts. Here goes...

First of all, I have recently come to grips with all of the government mandated changes sweeping over my profession. With the help of my wife I have made peace with it, accepted it's inevitability, and attempted to move on with life. Despite this new acceptance, yesterday brought new revelations that make compliance even more difficult. Just when I thought I had reached the top of the bell curve of understanding, I find myself once again...scrambling up the edges of the thing. Now, a new strategy must be employed, a new, more logical explanation found to use when presenting this new reality to my clients. Yesterday was a jarring one. It felt like a setback to me. Most of my afternoon was spent dealing with this new information, trying to make sense of it. The time got away from me. Suddenly, I looked up and it was 5:00 and time to attend a memorial gathering at a friend's house who had recently lost his wife to cancer. I walked to my car in the parking lot through a misty rain.

My friend is my age. We are two months apart. His wife was Pam's age...and he had spent the past six months or so watching her die. As I drove out to their house I wondered how he would be holding up. He was struggling. He had aged since last I saw him. Who wouldn't have? He loved her in the same way that I try to love Pam, with absolute devotion and honor. Her loss seems to have cast him adrift. In other words, he looks exactly like I would look if I lost Pam. Nobody knows what to say at times like this. I certainly didn't. I mumbled something stupid and empty. He talked about her, struggling to keep his composure. Then, he leaned in close to me and whispered, "Die first..." The drive home was somber. The rain had picked up.

After sleep-walking through dinner, I settled into my library recliner and opened up my iPad. There on Facebook, my newsfeed was dominated by some guy I vaguely remember from years ago at Grove. He was a singer. Not a member of the church, but connected to it somehow. The guy had an incredible voice, and for some inexplicable reason had found his way onto my Facebook friends list. And now, after a very long and bruising day, this thirty-something year old man with a beautiful wife and a couple of kids had decided to announce to the world that he was gay....on Facebook. It was quite the spectacle, an Olympian effort of self pity. Since I came out earlier today, I've lost 134 friends on Facebook. What does that tell you, he pleaded at one point. Well, since he has over 4000 such Facebook friends, it tells me that he lost 3% of them. Not bad, actually. Then, the church where he is employed apparently informed him that he wouldn't be able to sing there any longer. His response was a drama-filled, I would cry but I'm all out of tears.

I read his posts and then scanned through the hundreds of responses. They had the effect of putting me a trance, unable to comprehend what kind of thought process was at play in his mind to lead him to think that coming out on Facebook was a good idea. Although I felt bad for him as a human being, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of day his wife and children were having. I wondered if they were out of tears too?

It was the perfect ending to a perfectly horrible day, a day that felt like something was crumbling around me.

But, today is a new day, and it owes yesterday nothing. On this day, I will move the ball down the field a few feet while grappling with change. My friend will wake up in the house that he and his wife built, without her in it. There will be a gaping hole in his heart where she used to be, but he will put one foot in front of the other and carry on. And my Facebook friend who can't quite decide if he's gay or merely bi-sexual, will, no doubt, be over-sharing his plight on social media.

This is what my world looks like today, May 24, in the year of our Lord, 2017.

All I Have Needed...

Great weekend. The Portara concert was wonderful. Everything went off without a hitch. So, today we make the 600 mile drive back home, back to our life in Short Pump.

The strangest thing happened to me in church yesterday. Patrick is a paid section leader in the choir at West End United Methodist church in Nashville. It meets in one of those old, stately buildings that feature grand stained glass windows and giant stone archways. There's that smell of furniture polish and musty carpeting so familiar to me from my childhood. The service at West End is highly liturgical, and the pulpit is hovered over by an imposing pipe organ, the kind that you feel in your chest at times. Towards the end of the service, the organ began blasting out the notes of Great is Thy Faithfulness, as the recessional. The congregation was invited to sing...all three verses.

...there is no shadow of turning with thee...

Music has a tendency, like smells, to evoke memories. As the words of this old hymn began ringing out in the great hall, a flood of them came to me...the musty taste of stale sugar cookies and kool-aid in cinderblock rooms during vacation bible school, the clink-clank of silverwear in the fellowship hall  while standing in line at a covered-dish supper.

...thou changeth not, thy compassions they fail not...

It had been so long since I had heard a crowd of people inside a church singing this old song from full-throated memory. It occurred to me that it had been one of mother's favorites. We kids would frequently hear her singing it while she did the dishes or ironed our shirts.

...as thou hath been, thou forever wilt be...

I began to feel a sense of great loss for some reason. The memories stirred to life by this hymn felt ancient, yet stillborn. They came from a place I can never again go, a time that only occasionally comes to life in a photograph or in the lyric of a song.

...Great is thy faithfulness, Great is thy faithfulness. Morning by morning new mercies I see...

Then, suddenly my voice went silent. A tightness came to my throat. My mouth moved to form the words, but no words would come. My eyes became moist. It was as if I could actually see my mother standing at the sink, wearing her apron, humming the tune until she got to these words. It was at this moment when we could all hear her rich alto sing the words that I could not...

...all I have needed thy hands hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.

The emotion startled me. Where had it come from, so powerful and intense? The second verse began and I quickly recovered, but when the chorus came back around, the heaviness in the throat returned. Once again, I couldn't form the words...

...all I have needed thy hands hath provided...

I don't pretend to understand the complexities of the human mind and the place that memory has in the heart of man. But, for me, music is often the catalyst. But, why this particular line, why these words? Perhaps because it perfectly reflected my mother's entire life on this earth.

...all I have needed thy hands hath provided...

Please. Read. This.

. Www.cua.edu/speeches-and-homilies/2017/commencement-2017.html

The above link is my blog for today. It cannot be improved upon by anything I might add. She is one of my heros, and her commencement address is so profoundly wise and beautiful, I feel it my duty to insure that as many people as possible read it. Pour yourself some coffee, give yourself fifteen uninterrupted minutes and read this. You will not be disappointed.

You're welcomed.

Getting Pumped for The Escape

Ok, today has many fun things on the agenda. First thing for me will be an hour in the workout room of the hotel. Last night, I gorged myself on not one, but TWO ginormous kielbasas. They were almost  Blazing Saddles big, so much so that I almost felt compelled to say, Auf Wiedersehen, baby to the waitress when we left! Anyway, the damage has been done, so repair work must be done, which will include at least three miles on the treadmill.

Patrick and Sarah have a rehearsal planned this morning for their Portara concert on Sunday night, so they are tied up. We have been tasked with the huge job of securing lunch from the famed Hattie B's.
Apparently, there is no hope for actually getting a table, so plan B is for us to order our food at their website, then go pick it up from the place, then meet Patrick and Sarah at his apartment so we can eat it there. What in tarnation is up with this Hattie B place, anyway? I've never heard of a restaurant where actually getting a table is considered a bridge too far. This Nashville hot chicken is apparently all that and more. I'm told by my son to not even think about getting my chicken with the hot designation. He says that I'll have enough trouble with the medium, that hot is undoable. Hmmm....

Assuming we can secure our lunch without incedent, Patrick will then take us to visit the famous Nashville Parthenon, which somehow in our previous 38 trips down here, we've managed to miss. It is essentially a full-sized replica of the Greek original and contains an American knockoff of Athena herself.

So, after an afternoon of unabashed idol-worship, we will meet back up with Sarah for another fabulous dinner in this city of unlimited culinary choice. I forget which restaurant we decided on, but I'm sure it will be amazing. After dinner, the highlight of the day will feature the four of us paying $40 a head to be placed in a locked room with four complete strangers and tasked with solving a vexing puzzle all the while a gigantic clock tics overhead reminding us how much time we have left to either solve the puzzle of die in a hail of gunfire/ be boiled in a giant vat of acid/ or succumb to instant nuclear winter....metaphorically. The game is called Escape, and it's a thing. Sounds awesome to me, but I'm nervous we will get teamed up with some loser family from Arkansas on their first trip to the big city...look Ethyl, them steps actually move, you don't even have to climb!!!! Or even worse, we'll get the group of four social justice warriors in town for the George Soros "Resist symposium"...this game blows!! It's so patriarchal! Regardless, I am confident that we will prevail, despite whatever dead weight we are asked to carry. We are Dunnevant's, after all.

Anticipation....

Thirty-three years ago today, I married the lovely and talented Miss Pamela Jean White. In doing so, I demonstrated legendary powers of salesmanship, punched way out of my weight class, got out over my skis, out-kicked my coverage, and any other sports analogy you can think of. Today, we will celebrate my "heist of the century" by driving 9 hours to Nashville to visit one of the two products of our union, our youngest, our only son, Patrick. Thirty-three years ago at about this time, I was playing full court basketball with my groomsmen, enduring epically offensive trash talk of the sort that isn't suitable for public airing. They were all so jealous of me, it wasn't even funny.

Of all the guys in the world, she picks YOU? She could have had anybody she wanted, and she picks YOU??

That's right, boys. She picked ME!!

Anyway, as the nine hour trip wears on, my back will start tightening up, my hamstrings will begin to throb. By the time we arrive at our hotel in East Nashville, I'll be so stiff and sore I might need assistance getting out of the car. However, I will be sustained during the journey by the thought of what will happen when we get there. As soon as we pull into that parking lot, my physical problems will vanish. I will have gazed at my adorable wife from across the console for over nine hours. The entire time, the anticipation will have been building, until finally, our hotel room awaits, and you know what that means...

Yep, we've got a reservation at Butchertown Hall, baby!!! Smoked meat and other delicious meats, is how Patrick described it. Driving nine hours for meat will be so worth it!!!

Getting Ready for Nashville

Today will be a day packed with trip preparation. I have a list of a dozen things that need to be done to get ready to leave for three days and nights in Nashville, Tennessee. We make a trip every spring to see our son, around the time of his birthday. It's such a fun city, with so many cool things to do and places to eat. But mostly, we get to hang out with him and his girlfriend, Sarah, who we love dearly. The highlight of the weekend will be a concert by a choir they are both in called the Portara Ensemble. We've heard them before and they are phenomenal, if you like that sort of thing...and by sort of thing I mean, gorgeous choral music performed by professionally trained musicians, who for no compensation rehearse for days in order to edify an entire room full of enraptured listeners free of charge. I rather think a love offering should be taken up at the end to give us freeloaders a chance to do the right thing, but that's just me.

So, a couple of days ago I texted my son and asked him to send us some ideas of what he wanted to do while we were in town. Part of the reason for this request is that our hotel is on one side of town, and his apartment is as far away from as it is possible to be while still being in Nashville. The reasons for this unhappy fact is a combination of several factors, primarily the fact that he lives in a weird part of town, and the hotels nearer to him are either sold out or three times as expensive as our Homewood Suites. Anyway, I thought it might make it easier to plan if we knew the locations of stuff, etc. etc... The next thing I know, he sends us a Google Doc, complete with web links to every activity and restaurant listed. He even had mapped out an itinerary...11:45-12:45 Saturday, lunch at any of the following six restaurants...

My son has slowly turned into his mother!

So, as a public service to any of you who might be interested in visiting Nashville anytime soon, here is a list of the restaurants which my soon to be 28 year old Millenial approves of, with the descriptors as they appear in the Google Doc:

Loveless Cafe (Southern breakfast)
The Pfunky Griddle (self-serve pancakes)
Hattie B's (hot chicken)
The Grilled Cheeserie (fancy grilled cheese)
Salt and Vine(lighter sandwiches and wine)
Taco Mamacita(fancy tacos)
The Harding House(at the Belle Meade Plantation)
Nomzilla (sushi)
Amerigo (Italian)
Adele's (seasonal, like Husk)
Butchertown Hall( smoked and other delicious meats) BING BING BING( we have a winner!!)
Virago (sushi)
Germantown Cafe( fine dining)

You're welcomed!