Coastal Confessions

 Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” Well…at least he is alleged to have said it. Truth is, there is absolutely zero evidence that he uttered this phrase, but it usually is attributed to him. The guy was so good with words that anytime something great is said and no one knows who to credit, people just default to Mark Twain.

I, despite forty years of practice, am not as good with words, which is why I often borrow from better writers and just add my own seasoning. Reminds me of another well known saying that’s attributed to everyone from Pablo Picasso, to T.S. Elliot, to Shakespeare, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

Tonight I’m sitting comfortably in my bed, after a very long day of driving, reflecting upon what is in contention for the best week of my life. I say in contention because who can honestly choose the greatest day or week in a life that spans half a century. I’ve been blessed with many dozens of unforgettable days and memorable weeks and I’m grateful for them all. Instead of trying to rank which one is best, I like to think of them all as exhibits in the Hall of Fame of my life. They aren’t meant to be compared and ranked, but reflected up and celebrated. That being said, this week had so many rhymes it seemed like a song.

For those who are unfamiliar, the tiny little family of three — Randy, Martha, and Brandon — that was planted in 1975, has grown exponentially in recent years. As of this year, there are a total of ten — and soon to be eleven — of us firmly rooted in the clay soil that is our Chicken Creek farm — Randy, Martha, Brandon, Jade, Reese, Valerie, Ryker, unborn Marley, Kase, Cidney, and Magnolia. Our four households, containing just shy of a dozen people, literally lie within 75 yards of one another, and three of those homes are within 25 yards of one another. As if that isn’t close enough, we decided it would be a good idea to take this show on the road for a week and put it all under one roof for a family vacation to the Emerald Coast. I’m sure I’ll have much to say about this week in the future, but tonight I want to take a very specific trajectory. History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.

This morning, as we all gathered on the balcony to watch our last sunrise over the sea, I found myself staring West instead, down the beach about 300 yards to the motel where I had my first look at the ocean. As the 1970’s were coming to a close and my adventures on this earth were just beginning, my parents brought me to Panama City Beach, Florida and the Bikini Beach Motel. The ocean really isn’t something you can describe to a child. They have to see it with their own eyes, taste the salt water in their mouth and feel the unstoppable power of the waves as they first crash against, pushing to the shore, and then pull their tiny bodies back toward the deep. From the first look I was captured by the ocean, and when Jimmy Buffett music showed up in my life a decade later, I was hopelessly obsessed. This morning I stood on the balcony, taking turns holding, first my granddaughter, then later my grandson — who is about a year away from how old I was — looking down on the Bikini Beach Motel as their first trip to the ocean came to a conclusion. History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.

On our way out of town and back to the real world, we stopped at Waffle House for one last meal before we began the long haul home. The ten of us, crammed into two tiny booths, quickly became the center of attention for anyone walking in or out of the restaurant. Not that the other eight of us are quiet, but when you have a two year and ten month old in your party, you tend to make a lot of….we’ll call it music, more heavy metal that classical. Amplifying the sound was the fact that a speaker was directly over our heads blasting country music. To appreciate the following description, you need to know a little backstory. For most of my sons lives, the four of us — Brandon, Jade, Reese, Kase — have spent a significant amount of time in a car traveling. When you combine us living four hours from home in Memphis, then eight and nine hours from home in South Georgia and Lake City, Florida, along with my job traveling to preach and fundraise for Latin American Missions, we spent A LOT of time in the car. My boys have always been troopers and old pros when it comes to traveling, but in the teenage years they developed a game to help pass the time. Bear in mind this is in the years when you connected your iPod to the car stereo via the auxiliary cord. Their favorite game became “Make Daddy Cry”. The game was simple, while I’m navigating the NASCAR event that is interstate travel at 70 mph, without warning they play a song that they think will move their increasingly emotional daddy to tears. Whoever could play a song that made daddy cry would win. This morning, sitting in our clan of chaos at the Waffle House, I heard the familiar chords to Alan Jackson’s “Remember When”. I have no idea what the music video for this song looks like, I’ve never seen it, but I saw it in 3D this morning.

Before I go into any of the lyrics, I need to further set the stage for what was playing in my mind. This Waffle House was just a quarter mile down the beach from where we spent this week and where I spent my first week at the beach. It is also directly across the street from the Edgewater Condominiums where we vacationed when I was 13 and my Big Mama was 68. We brought Big Mama with us on vacation that year. By this time I was Gulf Coastal vacation veteran, having stayed here many times, but for Big Mama, this was her first time seeing the ocean. What I witnessed before Kindergarten, she would not see until she was almost 70 years old. Sitting in that booth, looking across the street at the Edgewater, I could see Big Mama, standing waist deep in the Gulf of Mexico, laughing like a child as the waves slammed into her repeatedly, taking all her strength, along with my parents and uncle Lloyd, to hold her up. Something I’d already come to take for granted at 13, she experienced with a childlike joy in the last era of her life.

As I looked across the booth I could see my 66 year old parents, almost the same age as Big Mama was back then. Next to them sat my son Kase attending to his baby girl and wife. I remembered his senior year of high school where we would meet for breakfast each Friday morning before school, so that we could talk about life and the future and I could try to pass along whatever wisdom I’d picked up along the way. Across the table from me sat my oldest soon, who also was taking care of his wife and little boy, and I remembered the years we spent in Florida where I didn’t know where he was, and the best I could do was maintain a spiritual connection to him by eating breakfast at the Waffle House by the interstate with homeless, often addicted, teens whose dads didn’t know where they were.

Right next to me was my Honey, who spent the better part of a year separated from me in Florida, so that she could take care of her sick mother in Tennessee. During that year, everyday they would leave the cancer center and eat breakfast together at Waffle House before driving back to Pulaski to deal with the repercussions of chemotherapy, radiation, and an advancing disease. This is the video playing in my mind when Alan Jackson begins to sing:

Remember when I was young and so were you

And time stood still and love was all we knew

Remember when we vowed the vows, and walked the walk

Gave our hearts, made the start, and it was hard

We lived and learned, life threw curves

There was joy, there was hurt

Remember when?

Remember when old ones died and new were born

And life was changed, disassembled, rearranged

We came together, fell apart

And broke each others hearts

Remember when?

Remember when the sound of little feet, was the music we danced to week to week

Brought back the love, we found trust

Vowed we never give it up

Remember when?

Remember when thirty seemed so old

Now lookin' back, its just a steppin' stone

To where we are, where we've been

Said we do it all again

Remember when?

Remember when we said when we turn gray

When the children grow up and move away

We won't be sad, we'll be glad

For all the life we've had 

And we'll remember when.

My family was eating, laughing, talking and I was sitting in the midst of them, but emotionally, mentally, a thousand miles and several decades away, fighting for my life. I don’t know how, but no one seemed to notice the wall of water building up in my eyes. Lying here now, typing these words, the tears are coming in waves just like the ocean from this morning.

History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, the Muses had one more gift for me on the way out of town. As I synced my phone with the car audio and pulled out onto the highway, the Spotify playlist randomly played Jimmy Buffett’s “Coastal Confessions.” That song was the crescendo to our family vacation — a week where I got to witness and share in my grandchildren enjoying the beach for the first time — and it’s the perfect crescendo to this essay, so I’ll leave you with this. 

Well, I'm a tidal pool explorer

From the days of my misspent youth

I believe that down on the beach, where the seagulls preach

Is where the Chinese buried the truth

So I dig in the sand with my misguided hands

And if I dig deep enough, hell, I just might dig it up

Talking about treasure, talking about pleasure

Talking about love

They say that time is like a river

And stories are the key to the past

But now I'm stuck in-between here at my typing machine

Trying to come up with some words that will last

It's so easy to see that we live history

And if I just find the beat, I know I'll land on my feet

I always do, hadn't got a clue

Does it come from above?

I know I can't run and hide, but just hang on for the ride

There will be laughter and tears as we progress through the years

But still it's fun, hey, I'm not done

Gonna dance 'til I fall

And I don't know what I'm supposed to do

Maybe invent me a story or two

I've got coastal confessions to make

How 'bout you, how 'bout you?

Let's go to church

History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes.