Missing Texas

                        Welcome back My Dear Readers to The Other Shoe. I hope that everyone enjoyed my article of earlier today, ‘My Problem With President Obama’. That article was difficult for me to bring to paper. Difficult for me to share, and difficult for me to allow my passion to show. It is not that I have difficulty pointing out the shortcomings of Democrats, be they Congressmen or Senators of even Presidents. It is difficult for me to criticize a sitting President. On more than one occasion I have chastised; friends, Facebook posters, and followers of The Other Shoe for being too openly critical of a sitting President. I, often, point out that when you openly grind on a sitting President you run the risk of openly disrespecting  the office of President of the United States.

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Little can be, genuinely, gained in so doing. As well, I feel that when people (writers, bloggers, TV personalities and radio talking heads) grind too much, and too often, on a sitting President we weaken our President in the international community. We weaken his ability to hold the leaders of other nations to task. We weaken our ability to build coalitions to fight oppressors and tyrants and weaken our hand in international trade agreements. This harms our nation, as a whole, and harms our standing in the international community.

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There, I got that off my chest. Now, on to the real reason for this late-in-the-day posting. It is 8:45PM, here in California. So, it is nearly 11PM in Texas. Therefore, most of the people that this article is meant for… will not read it until tomorrow… at the earliest. That’s fine, there really is no rush. The feeling that I will do my best to communicate, in this article, is that I miss Texas. This has been building, now, for several… months… yeah, months… I’ll stick with that… right. I may have tipped-off some of my more astute readers, earlier this week, when I wrote that I was denied attendance to my own mother’s funeral.

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I mean, I had never heard of something like that… before. An elder brother, telling his younger sibling that they were not welcome at the funeral of their mother… or father. I mean, I have read a lot in my lifetime and never before had I read of anyone being denied access to a parents funeral. If I had to come up with a Funk and Wagnall’s human definition of the word harsh? I would submit “refusing the younger brother from attending the mother (or father’s) funeral”. That, and I just have to say, IMHO that seems lot like an abusive action… by the elder brother.

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Me writing that, putting that into an article here @ The Other Shoe surely could have been a tip-off that I was missing home. Now, there are some of My Dear Readers that will giggle or laugh… at me referring to Texas as Home. I have been, here in one part of California or another, off and on for the past thirty-four years. That means that I have spent more, of my adult life, within the borders of California than I spent in Texas. All the same, I still do consider myself a Texan.

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If I ever win any kind of award, and I am at the award ceremony and give an acceptance speech I will mention “being a boy from a small town in Texas…”. If ever asked in an interview, I will always tell that I was born and raised in Southeast Texas. I am proud to be a Texan. It does not matter if Texas is, outside of Texas, popular or not at the time. I am a Texan and not a ‘fair-weather Texan’. I have been missing you guys a lot, of late. I read your words, on Facebook. See your posts and sometimes recent pictures of you. It is just not the same. I have to really strain to remember; how you speak, how you walked, how you laughed and how you felt when shaking my hand… or giving me a hug. I think, most of all, I miss that.

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Another reason, I think, that this may be coming up? Next week is my 56^th birthday. Just a stone’s throw from Sixty… and all that that entails. Yes, I am pretty sure that the upcoming 56^th birthday could have a lot to do with these feelings of… home sick. Just now, when I was running through what I was going to type next, I thought of the word home sick and (of course) the very first time I did feel home sick. It was Church camp… some place called “Peach Creek’. I think it was Peach Creek. If anyone, reading here today, went to South Park Baptist Church in Houston, and you went to Church Camp while attending SPBC? You would remember… if that was the name. If I got it wrong, don’t be shy. Either here at my blog, or on Facebook, please correct me, K? Tell me that I remembered wrong, and do me a solid and remind of the name of the Church Camp. K?

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Anyway, that was the very first time in my life that I ever felt home sick, was the first year I went away for Church Camp. So, I am pretty sure… that is what I am feeling, now. I know that it is not just the birthday. It is also the growing pain, in spite of the increased pain medications. It is the swollen lump at the base of my spine… on the left side. The increased white cell count, for the past six months. Yes, it is all of those things… combined. So, I just wanted to say… to all of you… in Pearland, and Houston.

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            “I miss you.”

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As always I am deeply honored that you come here and read my work.

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Thank you!