echoes of other things

Last weekend I’m driving down the road with my dad riding shotgun.  (I can remember switching roles like that for the first time.  Fifteen and eager to impress and anxious to receive legal governmental permission for what my dad had been allowing me to do with farm trucks since I was twelve years old.  Driving a car on the road.)

Five kids are in the back.  Every seat is occupied.  Grandpa is telling a story to the kids and introducing them to his version of classic Country & Western music in the form of Chris LeDoux.

He’s got the song “A Five Dollar Fine for Whining” blaring and he’s making that wild guffaw noise that feels like adolescent embarrassment to me nestled right up to nostalgic memories and I can’t help smirking more than grinning at my kids who are grimacing and laughing and Otto is belting out the tune and Piper is begging me to please not make whining in our home a monetarily fineable offense and I am still laughing when my brain and my heart are struck head on with a thought.

We are two adults shy.

Like – two people who should be with us are not with us.

One by death and one by choice.

It’s just me and dad and a lot of kids and our numbers are off.  They don’t add up correctly.

It’s not how anyone in the car pictured it.  I’m guessing it’s not even how the absent parties pictured it, but there’s no asking either of them now.

Sometimes the numbers just don’t match.  Sometimes the statistic knocks on your front door and comes on in uninvited.  

There’s a whole heckuva lot of life that is so out of our hands and off of our charts.

But it’s still our place to live what there is.  To ride in cars as grown ups and to teach kids silly old songs and to talk about that one summer before my older brother was married when we saw Chris LeDoux in concert following a rodeo somewhere in Wyoming. That trip where it was summer in the valley and winter on the mountain and no one in our adventuring family held any keys to what paths lay ahead for nary a one of our cowboy hat wearing heads.

And that was certainly as it should be.  

This knowledge sits on my shoulders as I camp among the ruins and I acknowledge the same encouraging/discouraging truth that was then and is now . . .

I’ve got right now.  And I’ve got forever.