We'll keep the light on for ya !

When I was just a young boy, not a little boy, for I never was "little", I remember laying in my bed and looking up at the ceiling wondering. I would wonder about everything. I wondered how clouds were formed. I wondered how ketchup was made. I wondered why there were mosquitoes. I wondered why I had a penis and my sister had a vagina. Of course I am still working on that one. I wondered where God came from.




It made sense to me that if we were created, that we came from somewhere, and I accepted that and there was a God who started it all up and I accepted that, then He must have had someone who created Him and so on and so on etcetera etcetera etcetera. I would usually end my "wondering" with a sigh and a realization that I was still just a young boy and that I would find all that out later on as I got older. I would then turn over away from the light and fall asleep.




I always slept with the light on because I was a "frady cat". I needed to be able to see what was in my room at any given moment of the night, without having to turn a light on. I needed to be able to focus my attention to that weird creaking noise that would happen at any given moment in the middle of the night. I did NOT believe it was just the "house settling". I wanted to see that paranoid drug crazed maniac BEFORE he plunged the nine inch knife into my heart. I wanted to be able to SCREAM before I left this planet. I wanted others to hear my warning shout so that they could save themselves.




Perhaps if you had grown up at "Collinwood" you would have slept with the light on too. For those of you who don't recognize the reference to "Collinwood" it is from a series in the late 60's early 70's called Dark Shadows and the house in that series could have been the house I grew up in. You see I grew up, well until I was 16 years old in a beautiful old home that belonged to my Grandparents. We lived with my Grandparents in their 13 room mansion near the big city of Columbia SC. We lived with them because my father (their son) was an alcoholic and absentee a lot and well we would not have had another place to live if it had not been for my Grandparents looking out for us.




My Mother was the faithful, stable, responsible one who made sure we had all we needed and a lot of what we wanted. She gave up her Independence and suffered through years of "sucking hind tit" living with my Grandparents. Now don't misunderstand me. I love my Grandparents and am so blessed to have grown up around them but I understand now as an adult things I did not begin to understand or even "wonder" about as a child. She never begrudged sacrificing her happiness for us so that we could be "brought up" in a secure environment full of love. She was an awesome woman to have done that. And she never told me, not once in my lifetime that I was silly to be afraid of the dark. She seemed to understand my need to have a light on. She never spoke the words, "there is nothing there in the dark that is not there in the light" although there were plenty of others who did.




Quite frankly I don't understand what the hell that means anyway. It certainly never comforted me. The whole point was to be able to see. Also, I never was one of those who believed that if you covered your head with your bedspread that you would "magically" not be seen by whatever monster or psycho was getting ready to chop or eat your head off. I think because of the nature of my "bedroom" I was forced from an early age to adapt and "evolve" into a higher learned young man who could stand in the face, or perhaps in my case, lay in the face of sheer terror and stare it down until the fog of sleepiness exercised it's power and I fell asleep. And I am here today as a testimony to the will to survive.




I have to attempt to describe my bedroom so that you will get the whole picture. My "bedroom" was in fact designed to be a library in this home. It had many built in shelves and a built in desk in the corner. It had so many shelves with pictures and books and busts of people and pictures of family members etc that even though it was my bedroom it never really felt like a bedroom. The room itself was adjacent to the downstairs living room or "den" as many refer to it. We always called it a living room because it's where we did most of our living. Anyway, the room was about 16 feet by 14 feet give or take a few feet. It was a huge room. It had bi fold doors at four entrances. Those kind of doors that are in front of a lot of closets. Two of the doorways were blocked so that we could make use of the space. But they still had a creepy feel to me. All of the entrances had those little windows over them which looked really neat but made me sooooo paranoid that those monsters were looking in my room even when the doors were shut.




The ceilings, if you will remember at which I stared at to wonder, were made of pine. Dark wood with protruding beams and lots and lots of knots in the wood. Perfect for imagining faces in them. At one end of the room was a full floor to ceiling mirror that was about 7 feet across. BUILT IN!! And at the other was a set of beautiful giant windows that took up the entire wall and were covered at night by giant curtains that you had to pull shut at the FAR end. In other words, when you entered this creepy but beautiful room at night when no light was on, you had to go to the other doorway, which was blocked off remember, just to turn on the light. THEN you had to go to the super creepy window and close the curtains, making sure to hurry so that the homeless murderer could not see the apparent fear on your face. I mean it was just a little scary. Did I mention that there was a chandelier in the room and that the ceilings were 10 feet? Oh yeah. Now do you understand keeping the light on? I am having the hairs stand up on the back of my neck just remembering it.




Oh well, I don't know what got me started on this subject. Just needed to vent a little. I think I was wanting to talk about wondering. I think it's because my little heartbeat asks me questions that are so full of her wonder. I know that she wonders an awful lot. Currently she is wondering why Daddy yells so much and sleeps so long and cries sometimes.




I don't have to wonder. I know it's because I have left my first love and I miss Him terribly. I have been angry at Him for so long for a number of reasons. It's because of Him that I can wonder. And wander. Which He has let me do for some time now. I am angry that He directs me to the place I need to be and to learn what I need to learn. I think I am just like my little girl when she gets angry at me. She will lay in my arms and cry and grimace and I will talk sweet to her and love on her and she gets even angrier. But then after a while I can always make her laugh even if she doesn't want to. Just like me when I recall all that God has brought me through and I can laugh at this little bump in the road.




AND I know that I don't need the light on anymore but I sill like one in the other room so that it sheds a little light into our room. Of course for going to the bathroom and such. Because quite frankly I would rather not be awakened if a crazed maniac makes it into our room to send us to Jesus. I just hope it is quick and while I am DEEP asleep. Just rest assured there is a light on in this house somewhere at all times.




I hope that someone who gives my eulogy will be able to say that about me. And NOT that there was nobody home either.




CHOW!