The Girls

"You know everyone's watching you?" he says as we drink beers at "The Quarter" ... Tybee Island's lone Sports bar ... which is mostly bar without much sports ... but the TV was working that night.

"For what?"

"Three little girls," he replies.

For one of the few times in my life I'm at a complete loss of words.

When Sarah and I fell in love and married it was a miraculous, Heavenly sent, timely and a wonderful gift from God ...and like most relations ... we both brought baggage.

But she was looking for baggage that went with hers.

That was me.

In addition to baggage, what she brought to our marriage was three little girls ... and they brought a lot of trash.

As a survivor of already raising three children to successful adulthood it seems I shocked people by choosing to do it again ... as an older man.

The societal norm is I should be a grandfather by now, happily loving children I can sent home whenever I tire of them.

I don't have any grandchildren yet but look forward to whenever it happens.

In the meantime I help conceive and raise three of best children ever born (up there with Micah and Amber Berry, Mandy Sayles, Dani Sadowsky ... and her brother Ryan who didn't make the Top 10 List ... or the top 100 for that matter)!

I've got parental experience.

My kids are off successfully living their own lives and I live in a house with four girls (two of which menstruate and a third is not far off).

Half of the time things are just great!

Otherwise it's like being on a never ending reality television show.

But it's like when Jeremy, Kristen and Chelsea were coming up ... when I didn't want to kill them I'd never known such deep love.

Maddie, Laurel and Cassidy remind me of that every single day!

The second time around I'm pretty laissez faire about it ...

"Sure! Of course you can ride the skate board you got for your birthday down the hill into the marsh mud full of oyster shells with the cute little pod of baby sharks ... it'll be fun!"

Sarah's a first time parent so she takes such things far more serious not understanding how little influence she really has on who her girls are going to be when they grow up.

But back to whoever's watching me these days ... the girls crack me up ... when I don't want to kill them.

We share tender moments and I get the joy of watching them discover who they are as people.

In return I help as best I can.

Laurel, the middle child, has a gross fear of dead people so I got "Weekend at Bernies" to help her process irrational beliefs.

Next up is "Wayne's World" I and II to assist in defining their relationship with God and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" to help confront their sexuality.

In return they give me lots of love and kisses ... along with numerous
opportunities to talk Sarah into letting them do things I know there's no way in Hell she's going to let them do!

It sure is fun making them think they've got a chance.

And they keep me young, laughing and are forever surprising me with really bad, putrid, suck ass music on the radio when I'm driving.

It's all good!

Back in the Good Graces

God told Samuel Adams to tell us we need to join the band again.

Samuel Adams plays damn good live music on Tybee Island whenever he gets around to it and is the founder of Bar Church.

Bar Church is exactly what it sounds like ... a church that meets in a Bar ... has breakfast for Communion ... smokers are welcomed ... flip flops are encouraged ... cussing is allowed ... sinners find an unpretentious community of fellow strugglers ... the pious feel out of place ... and the music beats the shit out of Hymns in most "Steeples".

Sarah and I spent a the better part of a year in Bar Church as members of the Band and we had a righteous and Holy time doing it.

We helped get Sean McNally and the demon possessed guitar player Stephen Groose in the band.

There was a lot of media coverage too.

We got popular so Bar Church had to move a bigger place.

As an ordained Southern Baptist minister, once paid to believe, I'm very distrustful of churches that need bigger places but we relocated from a tiny bar to a vast one with two pool tables!

Everything was going fine until one Sunday morning we all hit the wrong chords at the same time.

Now I can bear witness to many terrible things occurring during worship ... a Maid of Honor faints and falls backwards knocking one Bridesmaid after another down like dominos ... a wedding that caught on fire during a severe thunderstorm ... naked homeless men conducting hostile takeovers of the Baptismal Pool ... a young man called by God to the ministry being ordained with his zipper down while keeling in front of the congregation ... and thousands of really putrid sermons that made you throw up a little and choking it back down.

I seen lots of bad things in church.

But that day in Bar Church God told Sam to play one thing and Sam didn't tell us so we all played something different and let me tell you it sounded like the Devil really did go down to Georgia!

Right there in the middle of the service, Sam just beat his head against the microphone in front of his face.

That afternoon God told Sam to kick us out of the band ... well, Sarah, Sean and I ... but not the satanic guitar player Stephen because God still needed him.

We were cool with it.

It was time to downsize anyway.

Now God is evidently calling again which is almost always inconvenient when you're pretty happy with your Sunday morning routines, ethics, belief system, choices of music and the joys of sex on Sundays.

But it's hard to say no to God.

Or to Sam.

We're back in good graces again.

Dammit!

Visiting with my Grandma

On a bitterly cold day my Grandma Carver and I are zipping in a Golf cart through the marsh near the sea.

She's bundled so tightly I can only see the water dripping out her eyes beneath her glasses.

We wanted some time alone and there were too many people at my folks house so we just disappeared.

I was in Seminary then, working as a "Professional Christian" at the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel in Louisville, Kentucky and was home for the holidays.

My Grandmother had the incredible of laser focusing love so that you knew without a shadow of a doubt you were the most special person ever born.

She unleashed her focused love on nine children, 37 grandchildren and several thousand great-grandchildren and beyond.

Granddaddy and Grandma took the Bible seriously and then they read "go forth and multiply" ... they did!

If you asked each of us individually we'd all say they loved us the most.

They really knew how to love.

When Jesus said it's more blessed to give than receive, I think what he meant is the more love you give away ... the more you become.

I've always tried to follow my Grandparents example by giving a lot away.

I'm often told I shouldn't, at least for free, and I suppose its true though I fear I might be letting my Granddaddy and Grandma down somehow if I stopped.

Aside from tee shirts, I'm not much of a hoarder though I will stick things in the storage room and forget about them.

I don't know.

Grandma Carver's been talking to me a lot lately and, just like in that Golf cart on a brutal cold day with water streaming out of her eyes, she pats me on the leg and tells me she loves me.

Then she says how proud she and Granddaddy are of me.

"Keep doing what you're doing," I hear her plainly say sitting alone in the kitchen with Goddess fur rubbing my bare feet.

This is after she keep me up last night while I snuggled next to Sarah but Grandma's determined to tell me it's okay to stop being concerned about everybody else for a while.

"Love what you got," and I swear to God I feel her hand on top of mine resting on top of Sarah's.

"Stay focused on what you want," and I can see her eyes looking into mine.

"Give it your all," and then she takes her leave to visit my cousin Debbie, help Sheri clean a Chapel in Heaven, horseback with Ricky, fish with Uncle Fred or cut up with Uncle Bud and my Dad.

"Because that's how you get it all," and Grandma and Jesus and great crowd of others leave Sarah and I sleeping alone in what we got.

A Million Little Things

Staring at a long leaf Palm Tree, taking a long drag off her cigarette, with a steaming cup of coffee on the heavy picnic table, she sits. Darkly tanned with short black hair, the old woman seems lost in thought on a warm Caribbean morning.

Bopping down the sandy road in bare feet, I recognize her from the picture on Travel Talk though we'd never met.

She and her husband had been coming to St. Martin for years. They planned big gatherings with friends they'd collected through the years.

"Sugarae?" I ask pausing in front of her tiny concrete patio.

I love her name.

Sugarae is southern as it gets though she was born and lives in Portland, Maine. Her name combines sugar with rays of sunshine,

Flashing a crooked grin, she nods and invites me to sit.

"It's nice to meet you," I say shaking her hand. "I read your stuff on Travel Talk."

Travel Talk is a web site for those who love the Caribbean and traveling there. Categories are divided into islands. Clink "St. Martin" and I'm suddenly a member of people who love the place like I do.

I don't remember anything else about meeting Sugarae though it was with sadness that I read on Travel Talk that she's died.

Clicking to the Conroy-Tully Crawford Funeral Home website, I find her obituary and read.

"I didn't attend the funeral," Mark Twain quipped, "but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."

Sarah's girls asked, "How many famous people have you met?"

Looking for themselves reading Sandy Bottoms & Duct Taped Hearts they've noticed I've met Presidents, Prophets, Priests, Philanders and other people.

I marvel at the people who have graced my life. I'm humbled by those who are part of it now.

"Friendship isn't a big thing. It's a million little things," goes an old saying.

I sit staring at three little girls who are staring at me.

"I dunno," I answer taking a sip of wine. "A lot."

"What were they like," Laurel asks.

"Just like you," I reply.

And I raise my glass to the sky thanking God for everyone of them and for sugar and sunshine.
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Hanging Out

Back when I was a "Professional Christian" at the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel, I mostly tried to figure out how to keep drunken homeless people from falling asleep during my Sunday morning sermon.

We did lots of crazy stuff and we must have been blessed because it worked more often than not.

Once on Easter morning we covered the stained glass windows with thick brown rolling paper so the Sanctuary was pitch black. Everyone had to reach out in darkness to find a pew to sit on and of course everyone fought to sit on the back row so there were lots of giggles and curses as people plopped down on one another.

A guitar was plucked as a lone voice sang, "Anybody here seen my good friend Martin?"

A lone candle was lit in the front of the Chapel and the entire earth was silent for a second.

"HE LIVES!" Cindy Weber screamed at the top of her lungs as the paper was ripped from the windows. Light exploded in the room as though Jesus himself were sashaying down the aisle.

"Hallelujah!"

"Shit!"

"Glory!"

"Stop hitting me!"

Those are the reactions I remember being said all at the same time.

We were a crazy Church doing crazy stuff.

But the most popular service of the year was my son's Jeremy's birthday.

Everyone loved Jeremy. He was the six year old who turned the Baptismal Pool into a bathtub! Homeless guys would lounge in it with him, candles lit, a Boom Box playing Jimmy Buffett as they all achieved a peace that passeth all understanding.

On the Sunday closest to his birthday, instead of preaching a sermon ... cause enough for a major celebration ... I read a letter I'd written to Jeremy.

Homeless men would cry in joy because (a) I wasn't preaching and (b) they all loved Jeremy and his sister Kristen. She blatantly took advantage of this by getting them to panhandle enough change so they would buy her a Happy Meal from McDonalds. Once, I found her with 5 at the same time surrounded by happy men.

Jeremy was never that way. He liked to just hang out with the guys.

Now, decades later, he still likes to simply hang out. We do it pretty naturally together. He's here now, grading papers for his students at the University of Georgia as we listen to Bob Dylan wonder "what's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?"

Sarah wanders in and out. Her girls wanted to skip school today so they could hang out with him too. They're excited he's here and stayed up late to talk with him. He rode with me to take them to school and now we're just hanging out.

He flipped through my new book Sandy Bottoms & Duct Taped Hearts and said, "It's nice to read a book I've already read."

We have no real plans. There's a birthday party to attend tomorrow, some football to watch over the weekend, see his Mom and a few friends and drink some beers. We're just hanging out and I can't think of a better way to spend a weekend.
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Family Love

"So how is it?" Aunt Becky asked with bemusement on her face.

"What?" I reply uncertain of the question.

"Living with three little girls," she explains. "What are their ages?"

My Mom rolls her eyes as she flips through Sandy Bottoms & Duct Taped Hearts that I'd just given her.

"Maddie's 12, Laurel is 9 and Cass is 6," I say.

"Oooh boy," she says looking at the ocean outside of the window, as I roll my eyes at Mom.

"Becky," I continue plowing ahead. "I love being a Daddy. I'm a Kristen survivor. Nobody can throw more at a parent than my oldest daughter did and now she's the sweetest thing. She takes care of me."

"A Kristen survivor," she laughs.

"So I love the girls. I mean I could shoot every one of them at least once a day. Sometimes I'd shoot them a lot. They make me believe in the National Rifle Association and stupid things like that. But they make me laugh and they say things to me they'd never say to their parents ... including things about their parents."

"Will you tell my Mom this if I tell you?" Maddie asks the other day.

"You can always tell me anything," I answer. "Same way it is with my kids. If I think it's something your Mom needs to know, I'll tell you so you can tell her ... that way I steer clear of bad reactions."

"Hmmmm," Maddie mumbles never taking her eyes off the multiple texts she's sending from her phone.

"Listen," I explain. "I get in enough trouble your Mom. I'm sure as hell not getting into more because of you."

"Alright then ..." and she tells me.

"Yeah ... " I sigh, "you should tell your Mom."

"Alright then," she sighs as she continues to text.

The thing about being a parent is you never stop being one. My kids are adults going through all the good times and bad times that young adults go through. I do my best to love them through whatever it is and to let them know that home is always an option.

But ... they're still my babies. I don't care how old they are or what they're going through. And I'm still their Dad. It's a universal truth ordained by God Herself!

We're a fractured Brady Bunch with Sarah's little ones and my adult ones but it works somehow ... more times than not.

When we don't want to shoot each other ... family love is the best love.
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