Shinybass journal entry 12/19/22

Holding on.

Here we are just a few scant days away from yet another Christmas; my Jewish friends are already slinging some gifts around, and you know, no matter how much we prep or plan, it never seems like we’re ready. Maybe that’s just life in general? I feel like the people who seem like they have it together are a bundle of nerves on the inside and just keep up appearances.
Or maybe, just maybe, there are a select few people out there who really have their stuff together.

Growing up, Christmas chaos was never ‘shown’ around our house. I never felt the financial burden or the decorating burden or the cooking burden that weighed my parents down. They never let us see them sweat, either. The parents did all the yelling behind closed doors. Which is good and bad; good because it makes a happy house and bad because shielding doesn’t prep you 100% for what life has in store, which, as I stated before, is just chaos.

In my innocent eyes, my Dad’s folks seemed to have it together. They didn’t celebrate Christmas, per se, so I honestly don’t remember visiting them at Christmas. I am pretty sure we did, though. The local watering hole had Christmas lights up, which could have been year ‘round decor, I dunno. I DO know that my brothers and I were warned to never go down there as kids, and as we became of age it was the first place we wanted to go after everyone went to bed. I mean, 8 plays for a dollar on the jukebox, 25 cent pool, super cheap drinks, and analog games. It was a time machine, for sure, but so is the sleepy Western Pennsylvania town of Garrett. Garrett is home to approximately 416 people and half a dozen churches in .7 square miles.

I’ve wandered off track. Back to my grandparents. Some would argue they didn’t have ‘it’ together, judging by the frugal way they lived or the old cars they drove. I would argue that they were right where they wanted to be. When we visited things weren’t a chore or a bother, and they always had plenty of food (grandma’s mashed potatoes and apple dumplings were the JAM), and I don’t recall there being huge family blowups or anything weird when we visited.

As a younger kid, going up to Garrett was always like a non-stop, boundary-less treasure hunt, with the treasure being our Grandparent’s house, the different streets and the different vibe of the town than that to which I was accustomed. The house had a dark attic, (file under creepy when you are little), a clawfoot tub, a basement; which was very foreign to me growing up near the beach, and a detached garage full of even more things to see and explore. The 5 o’clock news cast was different, and as crazy as this sounds, we weren’t really ever bored.

Or maybe we were and I just remember the good stuff. Like the snow. Whether we visited around Thanksgiving or Christmas, there was snow, which again, was not common at the beach. More treasure. There were lots of ‘old’ things in the house, with the most recent photo of me hanging on the wall was from the 3rd grade. Oh, and they had a party line. Look it up.

One summer my little brother and I stayed with my Grandparents for a week. I was maybe 12 or so. Grandpa had bikes in his garage for us, so we explored every inch of that town and then some. Much to my Grandmother’s chagrin, we waded in the creek and explored too far along the train tracks. When my Grandmother was young, that creek was a coal mine runoff creek, so I get it. Again, all a treasure hunt for us.

I used to go for long walks with Grandpa. Some days I thought I was on the Bataan Death March, feeling that we’d walked for days with no respite in sight. In retrospect, our longest walk was about 3 miles each way. I would have preferred bikes, but Grandpa took us on trails that weren’t bike friendly. He knew the way.

The longest hike took us to (Burkholder)/Beechdale bridge, a covered bridge (one of 10 in Somerset County!) built in 1870. I had never seen a covered bridge in person. We walk all this way, and we look at it for a minute and we start hiking back. During our hike off the beaten path, we crossed some train tracks (always the train tracks up there), and we spotted a deer crossing the tracks at a slight bend up ahead. I can still see the doe in my mind’s eye, just slowly walking across, not even looking our way.

I was from the ‘city’ or beach or whatever you want to call it. I hadn’t seen a deer like this wild, uncaged, untethered specimen before. The rest of the walk I was straining my eyes to look past the tree lines to hopefully catch a glimpse of another. Alas it never happened, but as the title of this entry is Holding On I shall let you in on a little secret.

Fast forward to today. There are some train tracks about a half mile from my house. The tracks cross the road in a slight bend, not unlike the tracks in Garrett near the Beechdale bridge. I cross over these tracks every day, sometimes multiple times, and you know, every single time I cross them, I am looking down the tracks with the heightened anticipation of a child hoping to see a deer casually wandering across.

I’m lucky. I get a two-second time machine portal every day. Am I holding on? I am. Holding on is what we’re supposed to do. We hold on to our memories, good and bad, our friends, our families, maybe too much stuff, not enough moments. My Grandparents weren’t rocketing through the socio-economic atmosphere. They were just holding on, a different spin on those two words. And again, that’s OK.

I’ve held on to a lot throughout my lifetime. Baggage I finally discarded, both mental and with broken zippers. I have held on to a lot of guitars, a lot of jackets (for some strange reason), and one T-shirt that I just can’t bear to part with, although the shirt looks like it lost against a garden weasel. Is holding on bad? I suppose that’s all in the question.

I want to hold on. Some days it’s all I have. I hold these kids and try and keep them little. That doesn’t work. They grow up, and as life takes hold, I try and hold on. I laugh with my wife about events we’ve shared on getaway trips, and those memories are wonderful to keep close. I’ll hold those forever. There’s no reason to keep the bad stuff. No need to hold on there. Unless you are learning from it, then hold on to the lesson.

And this holiday season, as I do every day, I will fondly look at a clock that sat in my grandparent’s house, and gaze at this lime green footrest in my home studio that belonged to a matching chair at some point that was also in a room in the treasure house in Garrett. And do you know what else? I will cross those tracks repeatedly returning to the store multiple times a day this holiday season because I certainly don’t have my shit together, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll see a deer.