LOOKING BACK 2022/LOOKING FORWARD 2023

Looking back,

there were decisions I should not have made,

there were decisions I should have made,

things I should not have said,

things I should have said,

people I should have forgotten,

people I should have remembered,

situations I should have avoided,

situations I should have arranged,

jobs I should have abandoned,

jobs I should have done.

*

Looking forward,

there will be decisions I will not make,

there will be decisions I will make,

things I will not say,

things I will say,

people I will forget,

people I will remember,

situations I will avoid,

situations I will arrange,

jobs I will abandon,

jobs I will do.

*

American professional baseball pitcher, Satchell Paige's famous quote always comes to mind at this time of the year:

"Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."

And to that, I add:

"Amen, and onward."

 

LAST BLOG POST OF 2022 - PEACE, LOVE & UNDERSTANDING

 

A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS

TO

ALL THOSE OF US

WHO GIVE A DAMN

ABOUT

PEACE, LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING.

ONWARD 2023.

WHEN WE SHOUT HAPPY NEW YEAR,

LET'S HOPE SO.

TAMMY WYNETTE - THE STORY GOES

The story goes ......

...... that when Tammy Wynette told her first husband 

she was taking the three kids and leaving him,

to drive their beat-up station wagon to Nashville, 

Euple Byrd (his real and comedy name) asked 

why she was going there. 

"To become a star." 

The chronic, scathing Byrd spat: "Dream on."

With a CV of church singing and harmonising, 

and a teardrop-sob in her voice, she made records, 

hits of love, loneliness, heartache, heartbreak, divorce,

of being a woman, standing by her man, her men.

When I was a child, I wanted to be a bus driver, 

a priest, an actor, maybe a writer when I grew up, 

but I was never damned with any tight-lipped sneering 

“Dream on” dripping with sarcasm. 

My mother and several others, but especially my mother, 

encouraged my dreams as mothers do,

even though I never drove a bus, wore a collar, trod the boards, 

dreams of writer’s fame long gone.

Years after splitting, Euple Byrd asked

the famous Tammy Wynette for an autograph. 

She wrote: 

“Dream on!”