What Was It Like

Listen to "What Was It Like" on Spreaker. The title instantly reminds me of the childhood book Are You My Mother? What was it like? I wish I would've spent time asking my grandparents that question. My mother's father served our nation in World War One. A determined man. He loved taking care of the land that made up his farm in Wyoming. I remember feeding slop to the pigs and watching my grandfather take care of the honeycombs placed inside the walls of his home. He loved the way bees sounded so he crafted a system that allowed them to endlessly be warm in the winter while his heart was touched by the sounds of nature. What was it like? I've asked my mother about the rotten kid I was between birth and first grade. I wish I had asked sooner. These days I get, "You had good days and bad. I don't remember." Which I believe is the reason why I've been a daily writer for twenty six years. A few months ago a very good friend asked me about a local moment. I told him that I had written about it. Took him to my journals and let him read how being there affected the way I was thinking that day. On this podcast I read from November 21 2016. I heard something from Steven Furtick, "How is God moving through you?" I don't have to ask what was it like. I was in church on the very Sunday that he brought it to us. Beyond religion the thought changed everything. Your art, your job, your relationship with friends and family... How is life moving through you? In today's overrun and extremely busy society there's so much traveling beyond us that we've developed this safety net to keep ourselves from hoarding the stuff that's going to be called on in the years ahead. Struggling with the early discovery of depression. What was it like? I wrote about it. Eighteen years later I'm learning from the honesty put on the pages. What was it like when radio stations had disc jockeys on every shift live? What was it like when we didn't have GPS? What was it like before ATMs? Bookstores sell baby journals, books for personal travel or just documenting what you think you still know. I had a wake up call a couple years back. I bought two incredibly beautiful journals. In one I'd write everything down that I remembered about growing up in Montana with my family. The other would be the stories of all ten of my rescued dogs. It started out fresh and spirited. While camping in Carolina I grabbed the journals and no words came to me. I spent the afternoon reading what had already been put there. What was it like to have five Maltese rescues? What was it like to have two Chinese Crested? I'm sure the daily writing has a ton of far out cool sentences and paragraphs. But standing here in 2020 and trying to remember puts me in the corner of reshaping what I think I'd hold onto forever.