I think about mortality these days. I can’t not think about it. I feel my mortality. It’s with me. I can’t seem to walk it off, ditch it or shake it.
You know me, guys. You know how I do. I like to walk along the beach, hands behind my back, pensive, doing my Nixon walk, a song in my head…
Only these days I can see him coming in the distance. Rushing toward me: Mortality. He’s breathless. And he opens his mouth. (Yes, I guess mortality has a mouth.) “Dude, it’s me. Let’s hang out.”
But, it wasn’t always like this. At one time I felt immortal. Or at least something like it. Remember that age? You know. 18? 19? You’re trying to figure it out. And you’ve got time to do it. You have your life ahead of you. And in all your young and dumb glory, you’re spending it like you’ve got an endless supply. But all that stupidity stacks up. The meter is running and it’s expensive. It costs you things. All that bopping around. It catches you. Sometimes quickly. Sometimes slowly. As the promises go.
But now, by the grace of God, my Absolut days are behind me.
And today I’m very much on tour. A couple weeks into a run out here in the Wild East. Like I say: playing is still fun. You get to stop worrying about everything for a while.
It’s been chilly. But there’s some decent weather out there this morning. And there’s a city sidewalk. I’m gonna utilize it. Go for a stroll.
Simple pleasures are everywhere. Like this pea coat. There are some jackets you slip into. And there are others that you climb into. Like a sleeping bag. Or as my friend Allyson says about wearing her Rag n Bone pea coat: “It feels like you’ve got money in the bank.”
It wasn’t long after Stephanie and I started dating that we became inseparable. She would get in late from waitressing and plop down into bed in her uniform: her white shirt/black tie, smelling like the kitchen of the seafood place where she worked. Plopped down with a plate of Saltines with peanut butter and a glass of Ocean Spray Cran•Grape® counting out her tips. For me it was Ocean Spray and Absolut. Those moments felt immortal, too.
***
I don’t think of myself as someone who lives in the past. I’m more interested in what’s going on with the present. With my work and my life and… whatever. Even this morning, all my correspondence with friends and family is centered around what’s going on. The nowadays. What’s on the horizon.
In spite of it all, I find myself studying the rearview mirror.
I can’t say there’s any one reason. Maybe it has to do with this whole mortality thing. I certainly don’t come from a family that is big on keeping stories alive. My mother prefers to leave the past in the past. Fair enough. Isn’t that one of the parts we tend to skip over when reading a biography? “My great granddaddy was a blacksmith…”
Snooze…
Not that long ago, my old friend Patti who herself is adopted and is way off into genealogy and the rest, gifted me an ancestry package. At first, I pretty much ignored it. Those Ancestry dot com commercials are relentless. Who cares? Hell, I’m not really interested in knowing my sleep number either. But before too long, (it must have been a slow day around here) I clicked a link. And with that one click, I jumped into the deep end. Up until all hours reading old newspaper articles. My mother’s family in Kansas and Nova Scotia and my dad’s distant uncle who was one time Mayor of New York!
I shared it in a group text with my sisters and they were fascinated. My mom was annoyed. In fact, a little while back at the start of the pandemic, I wrote about the Dustbowl and weaved (wove?) her childhood into it. She got very annoyed. And wanted it taken down.
Where am I going with all this? I’ll let you know when I get there. Stay tuned. But be patient. The next installment of Chuck Does Introspection & Looks Back While Saying He Doesn’t Like To Look Back might be a week or two. Did I mention that I’m on tour?
Onward,
– CP
P.S. Here are some behind the scenes photos and video clips taken by our tour manager, Daniel Strickland –