Moments You've Lived

It’s 5:15 in the afternoon and my stupid ass is back outside. I just checked the phone and it’s a balmy 90° with a feel like temperature of 99°f. I figured since I was hot in the room with the AC on, I might as well come outside and do same thing. Earlier I read a funny meme from my sibling on Facebook that read, “Can someone send me a hug?” copy and share. Rather sarcastically I replied, “We are not huggers , didn’t we grow up in the same house?”

Probably no truer words have ever been spoken about our lives as kids. Oh, we weren’t beaten or overly abused, we were just not raised all “touchy feely”. Not surprisingly most kids of our generation weren’t raised that way either. We were provided for in our working class suburban homes. It’s just that a lot of time wasn’t devoted to things like feelings and emotions. You were expected to tough it out and swallow those tears. I guess one place where we could let our emotions go was church. Raised during the infancy of the “Pentecostal Movement”, our parents were influenced by the likes of Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. They exposed our parents to a new kind of freedom in the spirit they couldn’t find in organized denominations.

But like most everyone of my peers I straddled the fence between heaven and hell growing up. Enjoying both the freedom of the world and the glory of forgiveness. Skipping a few decades to now, I’m just a lost heathen to some and a lost cause to most. I don’t see the point in arguing religion anymore. I got more important things to worry about, like keeping food on the table and staying cool. So I’m simply going to say, “I love you “ to my little brother and sister, and apologize for not being a better big brother. But you know the truth, often you’re no better than the moments you’ve lived.