Renewal 8 - War Council (11 page)

It’s always fascinating to me how those patterns work. See an old man in a convertible Corvette with a young blonde, what do we think? See a woman in a movie theater by herself, and we draw conclusions about her life, when it could be that she’s just looking for an escape from the noise of her life. See young parents with out of control children, and what do we think? Encounter a middle aged woman with 39 cats, and... Well, you get the point.

I was raised on watching those patterns. My father was a textbook Sunday driver. All of our family vacations were roads trips, usually in a station wagon and involving family. On the highway, my dad was like a sports announcer doing the play by play. Every car we passed, he would look for clues and make a (usually snide) comment about the lives of the people within. Every nice fence was noted. Every tractor and what its brand said about its owner was spotted and reported. Every town we passed got a history and cultural report based on a single pass down main street. My chances of not noticing these things are roughly equal to winning the lottery. The only difference between Dad and me is that sometimes I tell happy stories. Plus, on the way home, he gave detailed reports on the characters we had gone to visit. Wait, maybe he should be writing apocalyptic stories.

Anyway, the pattern of people helping each other is part and parcel of the Carter experience. They hand out help and they gracefully accept help in return. They call it luck. So, with that in mind, we’re shifting gears. The Carrolls helped them through the acute crisis of the Breakdown, but that was just the fish. Now we have Sally Bean, who is self-sufficient enough to give them the fishing pole. They are moving from immediate survival to long term survival, and I’d like to think that being nice has a lot to do with the help they are receiving.

About the Author:

Creative people tend to be lousy at self-promotion, and I fit the cliché almost perfectly. After many years of asking myself why I have anything to say that is worth writing, the answer can only be that I have finally, in middle age, managed to make enough mistakes to say something solid about how not to live life. If I hold up a mirror to my own life, I get a backwards reflection that may actually contain some value. More importantly, I have been fortunate enough to know many people who may have suffered, but did so with far more skill and grace than I have, and they set a solid example for a realistic method of how to live well.

In the meantime, I live in Washington with my wonderful wife, who happens to be one of those good examples, and our five rescue dogs, who manage to encompass an entire school bus full of joyous, childlike personalities. And to add to the rapidly mounting collection of loose fur and allergens, I also share the house with two cats; one with no social boundaries, and one who is
nothing but
social boundaries.

In a difficult denial of the self-promotion bit, I must suggest that you stop by my semi-neglected blog and leave me a note. That way, I’ll be able to say that not everyone who signs up is preparing a spam attack.  http://www.jfperkins.com

Thank you for reading.

JF Perkins