Why Black Lives Matter. Some reply "Don't all lives matter?" Of course, that's a given. But we as a society and a government have acted for far too long as though black lives matter less. It's in our Constitution as Article I, Section 2 where it counts negro slaves as 3/5 of a person. American White people have considered black people beneath them because of, first, slavery, then poor education, and then many jobs that black citizens were forced to do. White people have white privilege. I have it and I did nothing to earn it. I know, I've heard it said. "I haven't ever had white privilege." Have you been stopped by a police officer for driving through a white neighborhood? A black neighborhood? Been asked to leave a store because of the color of your skin? Got a dirty look for being anywhere because of the color of your skin? Did someone call the police on you for having a barbecue, sitting, swimming? Going into your own house or apartment? There's a long list of things you can't do while being black. You can do all of them while being white. We must emphasize that black lives matter every bit as much as white lives, as much as brown lives, as much as anyone else's life. Until black lives matter as much all other lives we cannot honestly say all lives matter. Black Lives Matter.
Monday, March 1, 2021
Monday, August 19, 2019
Payne in New Mexico
Payne in New Mexico
My doctor asked me how I was feeling and I told him I was still using my hands. He said, "No, I mean how do you feel inside?" I told him that inside, I kind of felt like a mouse at a cat convention. He said, "No, I mean your state." I said, "Right here, Oklahoma." He asked if I had any Paynes and I told him, "Sure, whole bunch of them." He asked me where and I told him mostly in New Mexico. He said, "You have Paynes in New Mexico?" I told him that I did. He asked if I still had them when I wasn't in New Mexico and told him yes, they're still there, even when I'm not in New Mexico. "Especially in Santa Fe" I told him. "Curious" he said. "Anywhere else." "Yep," I said, Albuquerque too." "It's funny that they occur in Santa Fe and Albuquerque and nowhere else." "Oh no," I told him. There's some Paynes in Farmington too, and Taos and Angel Fire." He said, "Have you ever considered just not going to New Mexico?" I told him, "Well, no, I haven't but I've been asked by a lot of them not to come back." He said, "And you continue to visit there?" "Well, of course," I told him. "How else am I going to get to know the Paynes if I don't go to New Mexico?" "It's curious that you want to know the Paynes. That's very unusual as most people seem to want to avoid Paynes." I told him I had noticed that too but I thought it was genetic, just something we had inherited from our grandparents since they had had a lot of Paynes too." He asked if I had ever sought psychological help for all of this. I told him not for this but I had met with a couple of psychiatrists. He was shocked when I said a couple and he asked if it might have been at a clinic and I asked him, "How did you guess that?" He just smiled then. He pulled out his pen and notebook and asked me if I remembered the name of the clinic and I told him "Sure, because you don't spend that much money on new clubs and golf lessons at a clinic without remembering the name of it." He seemed puzzled, confused, then I guess the next question he thought of came out because he asked me how much sleep I got a day. I told him I got about 5-6 hours sleep a day. He asked me why I got so little sleep a day and I told him that they always woke me up at the end of my shift and told me it was time to go home. They just don't make doctors like they used to. This one was crying when I left and that after he had been asking me if I knew any good psychiatrists. Last thing I said to him as I left was that the red-headed one with the black beard told us that he had a six handicap. I think he was lying though because he walked as well as any of the other golfers who were with us. I was thinking maybe I should look for a new doctor but after I got his letter on Saturday, it turns out he's going to find one for me, which I thought was just awfully nice after the way he had broken into tears like he had. I guess he got attached to me pretty quickly because even my mom didn't cry that hard when I left to go in the navy. Funny though, my recruiter was so happy to get me that he started crying. I wish I could remember the name of that red headed golfer with the black beard so I could pair them up.
Sunday, September 10, 2017
Suicide is Painless
“Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see...
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please” Music theme from M*A*S*H
Those who take their own lives, those who commit suicide, do not take that action to upset, irritate or frustrate other people. They do not do it to leave messages behind nor to teach other people a lesson. Suicide is driven by pain and that pain can be physical, such as in the case of cancer and other terminal diseases. That pain can also be emotional/mental and it can be a combination of physical/mental/emotional circumstances. We can probably never really know how much pain another person is in and we can probably never translate our healthy state to their state of agony and claim that we understand it; we don’t, nor can we. Suicidal people become suicidal when they have lost two things: Hope and fear. They lose hope when, to them, there is no solution and none to come--ever--in their minds. A total loss of hope leads to a total loss of fear because--to them--there is nothing left. Some suicides send out a message and when they do, they are asking for help. These are people who are not sure, hesitant, and hoping that the thing that causes the pain will change. They still have hope and because they are trying to ask for help, their attempt is clumsy and we often rescue them, for a while. Most completed suicides are not a first time attempt. Completed attempts are usually the result of people who tried more than once and got better at it, and in the process, lost more hope and more fear. We can not talk to those who completed a suicide so research remains sketchy and we learn only from those serious attempts who survive, and at some point become willing to talk about it, or to write about it. And if you are successful at interrupting a serious attempt, do not expect them to be grateful to you for stopping it. You view it as saving their lives, they view it as you interfering and they are angry with you. Is that hard to understand? It should not be. We are thinking with our mindset, they are in a completely different, and foreign to us, mindset. We see it as wasting a life; they see it as ending pain. A life is ended, yes, but so is pain and it is extreme pain. Why is it so difficult to get help? For one thing, it is our upbringing. Most of us are taught from early on that suicide is a sin and we are often even told that we will go to hell. Some churches will not allow a suicide to be buried in their cemeteries. Oh, and it’s embarrassing. It creates a stigma. Right. Someone driven to suicide is not worrying about what the family thinks. We often just try to hang on so hard, to keep the person alive and we ask standard questions: Why? Why didn’t we see it? Could we have prevented it? We can never know why unless the person tells us and often they don’t know why. We didn’t see it because we don’t know what to see, for one thing, and we have a problem believing and accepting it. Could we have prevented it? Probably not, not for the most serious cases. Suicide has such a stigma about it that we can’t talk about it. If we tell someone we have had thoughts, they feel compelled to tell someone and in many states we can wind up in some kind of protective custody, and with a label. In Oklahoma, if you check the box on the form for a new doctor saying that you are suicidal, the medical professional has to report that to the state and you can possibly wind up in a difficult situation and it can become public and lead to problems, such as involuntary hospitalization. When we see people with a cast on their arm or a with a broken leg, we open doors for them, we carry packages out for them, we stand back and let them pass. There is nothing we can see that tells us that someone is in so much pain that they may not survive it. We never know how fragile the state of another human is. I worked with a man who was well liked but went through a strange period where he did not feel liked. He said that to a few people but always with a laugh so that it was taken as a joke. On a Saturday evening as he left the pool hall early a friend asked him what he was going to do and he said, “I think I’ll just go home and shoot myself.” He said it with a laugh and that was how it was taken, a joke. But he did just that. He went home and shot himself with a .22 pistol and died from it. I attended his funeral later in the week and everyone was saying all of the standard things we say to get ourselves through it. Why? Couldn’t see it. Could we have done anything? What could we have done? None of us who knew him knew that he was in depression, that he had great pain. I knew him only casually and only from work so I never felt any guilt about him but there have been others that I had those same thoughts. Those of us who lose someone because they take their own life have to let it go. If we spend all of our time agonizing with our questions, we will drive ourselves crazy. If we did not directly impact them and make them take their own life, then we could not have helped. We can look back in sorrow and try to see what happened, and we do that, saying that we can prevent the next one. We can’t, because the patterns are similar but different. Who could have foreseen the death of Robin Williams? Here was one of the funniest men on earth and yet his pain was so intense that he could not stay here with us. It was like the story of the song “Vincent.” “On that starry, starry night, You took your life as lovers often do but I could have told you Vincent [Robin] This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.” My son died in 2003. He had been diagnosed with type I (juvenile) diabetes at age 14, which meant he had developed it while he was still 13. We did everything we could with his treatments: insulin, monitors, diet, doctors, and he functioned well for a long time. Over time, in spite of everything we did, and he did, his diabetes claimed more of his body and his life. His eyesight began to fail, eventually leaving him blind. His kidneys slowly failed, which resulted in him being placed on dialysis. He eventually decided to end his dialysis treatment knowing that it would end his life. Is that suicide? It depends on how you want to interpret it for fools who understand nothing and are narrowly defined will jump to a quick “yes”. But consider the pain he suffered as he watched himself slowly die. He had long and strong discussions with his doctors. Will I get better? No, Stephen, you know that. Can you give it to me straight? Yes, but..The young doctors fought so hard to want him to live, not for him, but for them. I should mention that he had had a heart attack which removed him from the transplant (kidney and pancreas) lists. Hope dwindled for him while his pain, both physical and emotional increased. Suicide is painless he said at times, meaning that the pain would stop. A young musician died recently and everyone asked the questions again. Why? Until we get more honest, more open, more willing to address and acknowledge mental and emotional illness, we can’t answer any of the questions. But know this. You didn’t cause it, and if you don’t blame yourself for someone shooting another person, don’t blame yourself, or anyone else, for someone else taking their own life.
When you lose someone you deeply love, especially a child, the pain of loss can be excruciating, overwhelming, and even difficult to overcome. By difficult to overcome, I mean that it becomes difficult for us to want to stay here ourselves without the one we lost. Things that seemed important yesterday now have no meaning and you wonder what it was all about. Pain never fully leaves us after the loss. Pain does not heal, ever, but time and distance from our loss can help. Pain changes its form from an excruciating black nightmare into some kind of acceptance and we gradually are able to move from an incredible numb feeling to being able to function--again, in some way. I lost my son in 2003 when he was 36 years of age. Time has not healed my wounded spirit but time has made it easier for me to live with. There are things I do that I have always done such as love and care for animals and to give to others what and when I can. Losing my son did not change that. His loss did not start me on a path to try to improve other people’s lives. It did start me on a path to try to let other people know my feelings, to try to let other people understand how we all share the same feelings about the important things in life. The important things are not houses and cars and jobs and all the wealth we possess. The important things are family and friends--and love. The earliest part, right after our loss is the hardest part, the struggle. It’s hard to stay here when you hurt so bad. I have a friend who told me how much he hurt when he lost his son and for days he thought about taking his own life. What kept him here? As he began to see through the fog he saw that there were other people here who needed him, so he stayed--for them. The years have gone by now, many years, and the good he has done for other people is without measure. But none of the people, young and old, whom he has helped, would have been able to have helped others if he had chosen to leave us. He and I still grieve for our lost sons, and sometimes we grieve together. But we also celebrate that we had those sons and what has been really important to us has been those sons, and our friendship, and the people he and I have known and loved together. Time helps, that is all we can expect from it.
Monday, December 16, 2013
What Christmas Means to Me
What Christmas Means to Me
First things first, my age. I am sixty-nine years of age and will soon be seventy. That means that the meaning of Christmas has evolved and changed for me over the years and over my lifetime. I was raised in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, and the first Christmas seasons I remember occurred after we moved to 543 Prudom, a mere block from Union Grade School where I attended for six years. We had lived near the cemetery in a very small house, then on Gerard Street, and I have memories of those houses, but not of Christmas in them. Perhaps I was seven for the first Christmas that I remember.
I was a boy and so my wishes for Christmas were for toys, trucks, cars, erector sets, chemistry sets, a Daisy BB rifle, sometimes football or baseball equipment, all those things of boyhood. I usually got all of those type of things I asked for. Most of my friends got what they asked for as well. Does that mean we were affluent? No; most of us were kids born near the end of World War II, children of children of the Great Depression and our parents had been shaped by both. After the war, the world was changing and the American economy was providing a living for our parents, but not much more. Our parents drove Fords and Chevrolets, often purchased as used cars, struggled every month to meet the costs of food and rent and worked long, hard hours. For whatever reason, most of them wanted us to have a good Christmas, even if they could not provide much more than that.
My mother was a single mother although my grandmother lived with us and helped in many ways. My grandmother didn't work so she was available for the routine of the households. My grandmother was a fantastic cook, my mother could not cook. But my mother went to work every day, often with miserable hours, to provide us our basic needs. To my knowledge, we were never on any kind of state aid but we did have some family members around us who chipped in a few times when money was scarce. As I've gotten older I have heard more stories from a few people who said that they helped us when we did not have money to buy food, but all of that was when we lived by the cemetery in a small house known as Labell's. I think a family named Labell owned it and rented it out because I have never met anyone of my generation who did not know about the little Labell house. I do not know how the name Labell was spelled so I am using my best guess. I remember the house some, perhaps in part because it stood for many years and I could ride or drive by and get a mental picture. I was never in it again once we moved but I know it was very small, perhaps a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bath. It was what I came to know as a shotgun house. A shotgun house got the sobriquet from the idea that you could fire a shotgun at the front door and the shot would pass all the way through from front to back without striking anything else. I'll skip our living at Gerard Street and go to 543 Prudom.
I don't remember a single Christmas but perhaps several blended together but I remember something about one in particular. It was very cold, damp but not snowing, and my mother Bettie Payne, worked at the telephone office as a telephone operator. She may have been about thirty years old then, give or take a year. She was young and junior so she drew the very worst shifts and the worst shift was known as the split shift. The operator would go in, work four hours, have four hours off and then return for the second portion of the shift to get in her eight hours. We had a large Christmas tree set up by the one big window of the house, so it could be seen from outside, in detail if you were standing on our front porch. If you were just walking by, you could see it well enough to know that it was a well appointed Christmas tree with strings of lights and an angel atop. My favorite lights were what I called bubble lights. There was a round base with a bit of a flying saucer shape to it, then a long tube that rose above the base. After they warmed up a bit, bubbles seem to flow through the top and give the light an eerie, yet magic effect. I would look at them for long periods of time. The remaining light strings were the standard small bulbs in multiple colors of red, green, blue, yellow. My grandmother, known as Louise Lessert, had been very good with me all day and it was Christmas Eve so you can imagine my excitement, being then seven or eight years old, as I waited for my mother to come home with the promise that I could open a few of the packages under the tree with my name on them. My name then was "Stevie" for Christmas and birthday purposes, and probably most of my friends called me that then too. I had set aside a couple that appeared to be something I wanted. All I remember is the excitement of waiting for my mother to come home. We had no television then, only a large Philco radio and a record player so however I passed the evening had to be listening to the radio or reading. I don't think I had been outside playing, due to the cold and the darkness. I remember her coming home and in the door. She had a large yellow coat that she liked to wear and she had walked home from work, as she always did, since we had no car then. It is funny to me that today, I remember her walking in the door, the cold of outside lingering on her coat as I greeted her, whatever my greeting was, whatever my shouts of joy to see her. I thought it was about opening my presents but it was really about seeing her that night for whatever I did made her seem happier than I had ever see her before in my life. I opened two, possibly three presents, no more, and though I must have loved them, I do not remember what they were. But I remember her coming in, cold, yellow coat, frozen, the cold air lingering on her coat and her smile in spite of the misery of the cold that night. She kept the coat on for a while, until she warmed. That was the happiest Christmas of my life and I only learned why in 1992.
Bettie Brave, her name after she had married my stepfather Art Brave, in 1961, was in a nursing home in Bartlesville, Oklahoma in 1992, and the local newspaper had interviewed some residents, my mother being one of them. I did not see the story but several of my coworkers did and talked to me about it. The paper asked: What did Christmas mean to you? My mother told the story of this Christmas eve, wanting to come home, share Christmas with her son, feel the joy of watching him open a few presents and celebrate Christmas. She talked about her joy and happiness in it. The reporter asked why it was so special and my mother said, "Well, when I was a little girl, growing up in Oklahoma City, we did not celebrate Christmas and I always wanted to feel it the way other kids did." There was a pause and then Jane, my friend asked me, "Why did they not celebrate Christmas Stephen?" The answer lay long buried in me, I knew it but I had never voiced it and I said, casually, as though she had asked me how I felt and I had replied, fine. "Because they were Jewish." Then I understood why that Christmas was so important to her, and to me. It was not my first Christmas, it was not her first Christmas, but it was her first Christmas when the girl who still lived inside of her could have a Christmas like her friends had when she was my age then. It was the Christmas I felt something more than just gifts for me, food, friends and Santa Claus.
There have been many Christmas since then, many very good, some not so good, and I remember things from them, especially my own family and the year we got my son Stephen William Payne (1967-2003) a small dog named Sam. Christmas Eve, I had to enter the hospital when my left leg failed and I was in over a week. Sam opened the Christmas presents and destroyed a good number of them while my four year old son watched on in laughter. The young baby sitter watched television and talked with her boyfriend while Connie sat by my side at the hospital waiting test results. I hated missing that Christmas Eve at home with him but the puppy was his real Christmas present so everything worked out right.
What does Christmas mean to me? Memories; that more than anything. I remember my mother in her yellow coat with her joy on that frozen night sixty years ago. I remember my friend and neighbor Bobby Hughes coming over one Christmas to bring me his gift and pick up his. He was so funny with his flat top haircut and cute little jacket with a bow tie. His sister Kay probably tied it for him. He stayed long, we visited, told jokes, had great fun, and the memory is here today though Bobby has been gone from us twenty years. Every Christmas I see him again that day. He ate fudge, divinity, cookies, everything offered him, as though he had not eaten at home. I did not like hard candy and I always gave him mine. That Christmas may have been 1955 and we spent a lot of time together as kids. We were both friends and enemies, for all our time in school.
I am not good at giving and then keeping my mouth shut about it. I gave my waitress $50 in cash last week, I gave the girl who filled in for her $50 cash too, not tips, just gifts. I gave my waitress in Owasso a gift card for $50 for her son, for I learned she, like my mother was, is a single mother. I told her that my son died ten years ago and I can no longer give Christmas to him so I wanted her son to have something. It's not about the money, it's about the memories. This isn't much, but it's unexpected, from an acquaintance, not a family member, and it will give someone else a memory, a good one I hope, one like I have of my mother and her Christmas that I gave her without knowing that I was doing it.
What does Christmas mean to me? Giving, much more than getting. I love the season, although sometimes I become very depressed during it, perhaps because I still expect too much from it. I love those moments of giving when I don't have to and giving a memory, a moment to someone else. Those make my Christmas, make me feel good about the moment; not about myself, mind you, but about the joy someone else has, if for only a moment.
I have to tell a story I only just learned. As I said, I am from Pawhuska, Oklahoma and I went to Union
Grade School. While I was there, I had two friends who were brothers, fraternal twins, and I was close friends with them for several years. They also had a younger brother and since he fell in with us, I was friends with him too; we are even better friends today. One Christmas, probably 1952, their mother who worked at the tent factory in Pawhuska was buying a bicycle, one bicycle for the two boys to share. She was a single mother with four children, a low paying job and difficult times. Each week, she went down to the Oklahoma Tire and Supply Store (OTASCO) and paid down on the bicycle. As Christmas was approaching, she asked the manager if he would let her go ahead and take the bicycle and finish paying it off. He agreed and she had the bicycle for the twins. Then, as often happens, the tent factory closed and this struggling, caring, single mother was out of a job. She had to pay rent, get food, clothes, school expenses, and she missed payments on the bicycle. One day, the man drove up to their apartment in his pickup truck, stopped and took the bicycle from the boys. My friend told me that he watched as his two older brothers resisted crying out, "No, Santa Claus brought us that bike!" He took the bike back to the store. My friend said, "That's what Christmas meant to me." He's a good man and I love him so I hope it has gotten better for him.
My memories, fortunately, of Christmas are better than his, at least of that time. What Christmas means to me is memories, my own, and those I hope I help create for others when I do something to help me feel better about life. I kid my friend who is a Santa Claus every year. I ask him, "Where's my pony?" He tells me I have been bad again and I'm always grateful for that. Being a little bad is part of having fun. This year, before I turn seventy, I'm finally getting my pony. I bought it myself, a Melissa and Doug stuffed pony, so I can show my Santa friend, but I can't keep it here, so I'll be sending it on to the Fink Ranch in Tennessee where I know my pony will be well cared for and enjoy its days, perhaps giving some little girl memories, maybe her mother and father for now.
My son was a musician, guitar picker extraordinaire, singer and songwriter. For Christmas, as for his birthday, I place guitar picks on his gravestone in Pawhuska Cemetery with the hope that people will take them, that in some way it keeps his memory alive and the pick brings them luck or joy. If they stop to see his name there, the guitar on the stone, maybe it keeps his name and memory alive. He was a good kid, gone to soon. He wasn't perfect but he was my son and I loved him.
Do memories light the corners of our minds? If they do, then we should put them out for others to see for memories should light the spirit of the world, with light, brilliant light of all colors, with the red, green and blue of Christmas and mostly the light and color of love, especially memories of Christmas.
Stevie Joe "Red Boots" Payne
My mother was a single mother although my grandmother lived with us and helped in many ways. My grandmother didn't work so she was available for the routine of the households. My grandmother was a fantastic cook, my mother could not cook. But my mother went to work every day, often with miserable hours, to provide us our basic needs. To my knowledge, we were never on any kind of state aid but we did have some family members around us who chipped in a few times when money was scarce. As I've gotten older I have heard more stories from a few people who said that they helped us when we did not have money to buy food, but all of that was when we lived by the cemetery in a small house known as Labell's. I think a family named Labell owned it and rented it out because I have never met anyone of my generation who did not know about the little Labell house. I do not know how the name Labell was spelled so I am using my best guess. I remember the house some, perhaps in part because it stood for many years and I could ride or drive by and get a mental picture. I was never in it again once we moved but I know it was very small, perhaps a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bath. It was what I came to know as a shotgun house. A shotgun house got the sobriquet from the idea that you could fire a shotgun at the front door and the shot would pass all the way through from front to back without striking anything else. I'll skip our living at Gerard Street and go to 543 Prudom.
I don't remember a single Christmas but perhaps several blended together but I remember something about one in particular. It was very cold, damp but not snowing, and my mother Bettie Payne, worked at the telephone office as a telephone operator. She may have been about thirty years old then, give or take a year. She was young and junior so she drew the very worst shifts and the worst shift was known as the split shift. The operator would go in, work four hours, have four hours off and then return for the second portion of the shift to get in her eight hours. We had a large Christmas tree set up by the one big window of the house, so it could be seen from outside, in detail if you were standing on our front porch. If you were just walking by, you could see it well enough to know that it was a well appointed Christmas tree with strings of lights and an angel atop. My favorite lights were what I called bubble lights. There was a round base with a bit of a flying saucer shape to it, then a long tube that rose above the base. After they warmed up a bit, bubbles seem to flow through the top and give the light an eerie, yet magic effect. I would look at them for long periods of time. The remaining light strings were the standard small bulbs in multiple colors of red, green, blue, yellow. My grandmother, known as Louise Lessert, had been very good with me all day and it was Christmas Eve so you can imagine my excitement, being then seven or eight years old, as I waited for my mother to come home with the promise that I could open a few of the packages under the tree with my name on them. My name then was "Stevie" for Christmas and birthday purposes, and probably most of my friends called me that then too. I had set aside a couple that appeared to be something I wanted. All I remember is the excitement of waiting for my mother to come home. We had no television then, only a large Philco radio and a record player so however I passed the evening had to be listening to the radio or reading. I don't think I had been outside playing, due to the cold and the darkness. I remember her coming home and in the door. She had a large yellow coat that she liked to wear and she had walked home from work, as she always did, since we had no car then. It is funny to me that today, I remember her walking in the door, the cold of outside lingering on her coat as I greeted her, whatever my greeting was, whatever my shouts of joy to see her. I thought it was about opening my presents but it was really about seeing her that night for whatever I did made her seem happier than I had ever see her before in my life. I opened two, possibly three presents, no more, and though I must have loved them, I do not remember what they were. But I remember her coming in, cold, yellow coat, frozen, the cold air lingering on her coat and her smile in spite of the misery of the cold that night. She kept the coat on for a while, until she warmed. That was the happiest Christmas of my life and I only learned why in 1992.
Bettie Brave, her name after she had married my stepfather Art Brave, in 1961, was in a nursing home in Bartlesville, Oklahoma in 1992, and the local newspaper had interviewed some residents, my mother being one of them. I did not see the story but several of my coworkers did and talked to me about it. The paper asked: What did Christmas mean to you? My mother told the story of this Christmas eve, wanting to come home, share Christmas with her son, feel the joy of watching him open a few presents and celebrate Christmas. She talked about her joy and happiness in it. The reporter asked why it was so special and my mother said, "Well, when I was a little girl, growing up in Oklahoma City, we did not celebrate Christmas and I always wanted to feel it the way other kids did." There was a pause and then Jane, my friend asked me, "Why did they not celebrate Christmas Stephen?" The answer lay long buried in me, I knew it but I had never voiced it and I said, casually, as though she had asked me how I felt and I had replied, fine. "Because they were Jewish." Then I understood why that Christmas was so important to her, and to me. It was not my first Christmas, it was not her first Christmas, but it was her first Christmas when the girl who still lived inside of her could have a Christmas like her friends had when she was my age then. It was the Christmas I felt something more than just gifts for me, food, friends and Santa Claus.
There have been many Christmas since then, many very good, some not so good, and I remember things from them, especially my own family and the year we got my son Stephen William Payne (1967-2003) a small dog named Sam. Christmas Eve, I had to enter the hospital when my left leg failed and I was in over a week. Sam opened the Christmas presents and destroyed a good number of them while my four year old son watched on in laughter. The young baby sitter watched television and talked with her boyfriend while Connie sat by my side at the hospital waiting test results. I hated missing that Christmas Eve at home with him but the puppy was his real Christmas present so everything worked out right.
What does Christmas mean to me? Memories; that more than anything. I remember my mother in her yellow coat with her joy on that frozen night sixty years ago. I remember my friend and neighbor Bobby Hughes coming over one Christmas to bring me his gift and pick up his. He was so funny with his flat top haircut and cute little jacket with a bow tie. His sister Kay probably tied it for him. He stayed long, we visited, told jokes, had great fun, and the memory is here today though Bobby has been gone from us twenty years. Every Christmas I see him again that day. He ate fudge, divinity, cookies, everything offered him, as though he had not eaten at home. I did not like hard candy and I always gave him mine. That Christmas may have been 1955 and we spent a lot of time together as kids. We were both friends and enemies, for all our time in school.
I am not good at giving and then keeping my mouth shut about it. I gave my waitress $50 in cash last week, I gave the girl who filled in for her $50 cash too, not tips, just gifts. I gave my waitress in Owasso a gift card for $50 for her son, for I learned she, like my mother was, is a single mother. I told her that my son died ten years ago and I can no longer give Christmas to him so I wanted her son to have something. It's not about the money, it's about the memories. This isn't much, but it's unexpected, from an acquaintance, not a family member, and it will give someone else a memory, a good one I hope, one like I have of my mother and her Christmas that I gave her without knowing that I was doing it.
What does Christmas mean to me? Giving, much more than getting. I love the season, although sometimes I become very depressed during it, perhaps because I still expect too much from it. I love those moments of giving when I don't have to and giving a memory, a moment to someone else. Those make my Christmas, make me feel good about the moment; not about myself, mind you, but about the joy someone else has, if for only a moment.
I have to tell a story I only just learned. As I said, I am from Pawhuska, Oklahoma and I went to Union
Grade School. While I was there, I had two friends who were brothers, fraternal twins, and I was close friends with them for several years. They also had a younger brother and since he fell in with us, I was friends with him too; we are even better friends today. One Christmas, probably 1952, their mother who worked at the tent factory in Pawhuska was buying a bicycle, one bicycle for the two boys to share. She was a single mother with four children, a low paying job and difficult times. Each week, she went down to the Oklahoma Tire and Supply Store (OTASCO) and paid down on the bicycle. As Christmas was approaching, she asked the manager if he would let her go ahead and take the bicycle and finish paying it off. He agreed and she had the bicycle for the twins. Then, as often happens, the tent factory closed and this struggling, caring, single mother was out of a job. She had to pay rent, get food, clothes, school expenses, and she missed payments on the bicycle. One day, the man drove up to their apartment in his pickup truck, stopped and took the bicycle from the boys. My friend told me that he watched as his two older brothers resisted crying out, "No, Santa Claus brought us that bike!" He took the bike back to the store. My friend said, "That's what Christmas meant to me." He's a good man and I love him so I hope it has gotten better for him.
My memories, fortunately, of Christmas are better than his, at least of that time. What Christmas means to me is memories, my own, and those I hope I help create for others when I do something to help me feel better about life. I kid my friend who is a Santa Claus every year. I ask him, "Where's my pony?" He tells me I have been bad again and I'm always grateful for that. Being a little bad is part of having fun. This year, before I turn seventy, I'm finally getting my pony. I bought it myself, a Melissa and Doug stuffed pony, so I can show my Santa friend, but I can't keep it here, so I'll be sending it on to the Fink Ranch in Tennessee where I know my pony will be well cared for and enjoy its days, perhaps giving some little girl memories, maybe her mother and father for now.
My son was a musician, guitar picker extraordinaire, singer and songwriter. For Christmas, as for his birthday, I place guitar picks on his gravestone in Pawhuska Cemetery with the hope that people will take them, that in some way it keeps his memory alive and the pick brings them luck or joy. If they stop to see his name there, the guitar on the stone, maybe it keeps his name and memory alive. He was a good kid, gone to soon. He wasn't perfect but he was my son and I loved him.
Do memories light the corners of our minds? If they do, then we should put them out for others to see for memories should light the spirit of the world, with light, brilliant light of all colors, with the red, green and blue of Christmas and mostly the light and color of love, especially memories of Christmas.
Stevie Joe "Red Boots" Payne
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Saying Farewell to a Friend
I write this blog, PayneStakings, and I also write Pawhuska Trails. In Pawhuska Trails I try to write about Pawhuska and I vary in what I write. But within Pawhuska Trails I state that in PayneStakings I undertake a more personal writing. I wrote about David Meriable earlier today in Pawhuska Trails and as I read it again, I wondered, was it too personal? It had the touch of melancholy you might expect when writing about losing a friend but, it also had our history of friendship and some nonsense about mischief. I tried to make it about David. This is about me, or my feelings I should say.
I had met David's children long ago when they were little but tonight, at the funeral home in Tulsa, was the first time I had seen them since then. As I walked in I was greeted by David's daughter Dawn who recognized me from photographs. I actually thought my Red Boots were the give away but she said no, that it was from other things. An old friend, Francis, was sitting nearby, obvious that she had been crying. We exchanged greetings and I spoke to a few others and then I moved closer to the open casket. As I did, strong feelings rose in me and I said aloud, "This is hard but I have to do it." I removed my hat, a Pat Garrett, and moved closer. A young man asked, "What is hard?" I replied, "Saying goodbye to David." God it was harder than I thought.
I stood for a moment in silence and I looked at David, lying before me and tears began to flow from my eyes. My lips trembled and I'm glad no one asked me anything or made me talk. I needed a moment alone, in the room with people there, and by not turning around and facing them, I took it. I was so focused on David that I was not understanding words behind me. I was hearing the voices, yes, but not grasping what they said. I did not want to turn around, just yet. I wasn't the only man who cried, but there is still that old thing in me that says we are not supposed to cry, that crying is reserved for women. But I cry at some things.
I'm older and tougher now, yet what is the tender side of me is more tender now. I've always had a problem with movies about dogs, cats and horses. I can't stand to see them hurt, abandoned or killed, even though it's only a movie. If I watch "Hondo," I'm fine until the scene where Hondo's dog is killed. I don't cry but I feel such sadness inside and it hurts the movie for me. Friends have told me what a great movie "The Warhorse" is and I'm sure it is; but I know it must have frightening scenes of animal abuse, injury and death, and I'm afraid that I can' make it through them. Worse, I fear having nightmares from it. So, I'll probably never see it.
I've been present at the funerals for many friends and I've even been there when my son Stephen William Payne was laid to rest in Pawhuska, and that, my friends, was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. I made it through his death, arranging the funeral, putting up with criticism from friends of Stephen's mother who had no vested interest in our family, the journey from Tyler, Texas to Pawhuska, but closing the lid on my son's casket was just too much for me. But I was fifty-eight years of age then and maybe I was tougher in that tender side. David and I both said that we had been to too many funerals together. I cannot recall all of the names: Bobbie Hughes, Ray Roberts, Mr. Arnold are among them but there are many more.
But saying good bye to David was hard. I asked his daughter if the casket would be open tomorrow and when she said no, I walked back for what I knew would be our last moment. There will be others, yes, that's in my beliefs, but they are down the road, in another place, in another form. But in this place, here in Oklahoma and on this spinning ball we shared, this is was it; the last chance to say good bye. I'll say good bye tomorrow, in a public place with many people, but this one was personal. It was the one I felt most. And I know I am grieving and others allow me to grieve, in my own way, personal, yet public.
Does it hurt? Is it painful? Yes, of course, but its more the deep sadness and sense of loss that I feel. It's a feeling that I can not put into words, nor can I paint nor photograph it. It has color but they are somber shades, purples and muddy colors, mixed together in a smeared way that leaves no one color, not a color to love, nor one to hate. Just a muddy, dark, mixed color, and a cacophony of streaming memories.
And regret. I hope David knew that I cared for him, that I felt joy to see him again when I did, and warmth when we talked about our boyhood home and we remembered friends. We talked a little about The Big Indian who left us in 2008. They were joyful memories but I felt that were tempered by the fact that Jess was no longer here and no matter how much we laughed and how much better the stories got in telling, we always stopped our remembrance with a feeling of sadness.
As I said, this is personal and it's about me. It's about my feeling of deep sadness right now and how powerful it feels; how small I feel in its presence and how powerless I feel to deal with it. It will lessen, it will get better, but right now, I want to grieve. Not to feel sorry for myself, but to grieve and those two feelings are different. We feel sorry for ourselves when we've lost a competition and someone got what we feel we deserved. When we've lost our girl to the other fellow or some unqualified person got the job we should have. But this is different; it's not sorry for myself, or even for us. It's the loss of a friend, of someone I knew and had known a long time. I calculated it today; fifty-four years. There was then, of high school and just after, and then now, the present and all the years in recent time we have known each other. I knew little about years in between. Yet the connection is there.
I'll be alright, but for now, I want to grieve, I want to miss David, I want to think about him and to miss him. And if there is a lesson to be learned, I hope I learn it. I have those friends yet who are so dear to me, and I hope I find the strength in me to tell them, in person, how dear they are to me, how much I value them. If I just say it one time, at least I'll know that I did not fail to make sure that they knew I cared for them.
But if they read this, by chance, since I'm only posting it and not mailing it or putting it on Facebook, well:
Ronnie, Terry, Cherri, Peggy, Judy, Jackie Sue, I love you and you mean the world to me.
I told you it was personal.
I had met David's children long ago when they were little but tonight, at the funeral home in Tulsa, was the first time I had seen them since then. As I walked in I was greeted by David's daughter Dawn who recognized me from photographs. I actually thought my Red Boots were the give away but she said no, that it was from other things. An old friend, Francis, was sitting nearby, obvious that she had been crying. We exchanged greetings and I spoke to a few others and then I moved closer to the open casket. As I did, strong feelings rose in me and I said aloud, "This is hard but I have to do it." I removed my hat, a Pat Garrett, and moved closer. A young man asked, "What is hard?" I replied, "Saying goodbye to David." God it was harder than I thought.
I stood for a moment in silence and I looked at David, lying before me and tears began to flow from my eyes. My lips trembled and I'm glad no one asked me anything or made me talk. I needed a moment alone, in the room with people there, and by not turning around and facing them, I took it. I was so focused on David that I was not understanding words behind me. I was hearing the voices, yes, but not grasping what they said. I did not want to turn around, just yet. I wasn't the only man who cried, but there is still that old thing in me that says we are not supposed to cry, that crying is reserved for women. But I cry at some things.
I'm older and tougher now, yet what is the tender side of me is more tender now. I've always had a problem with movies about dogs, cats and horses. I can't stand to see them hurt, abandoned or killed, even though it's only a movie. If I watch "Hondo," I'm fine until the scene where Hondo's dog is killed. I don't cry but I feel such sadness inside and it hurts the movie for me. Friends have told me what a great movie "The Warhorse" is and I'm sure it is; but I know it must have frightening scenes of animal abuse, injury and death, and I'm afraid that I can' make it through them. Worse, I fear having nightmares from it. So, I'll probably never see it.
I've been present at the funerals for many friends and I've even been there when my son Stephen William Payne was laid to rest in Pawhuska, and that, my friends, was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. I made it through his death, arranging the funeral, putting up with criticism from friends of Stephen's mother who had no vested interest in our family, the journey from Tyler, Texas to Pawhuska, but closing the lid on my son's casket was just too much for me. But I was fifty-eight years of age then and maybe I was tougher in that tender side. David and I both said that we had been to too many funerals together. I cannot recall all of the names: Bobbie Hughes, Ray Roberts, Mr. Arnold are among them but there are many more.
But saying good bye to David was hard. I asked his daughter if the casket would be open tomorrow and when she said no, I walked back for what I knew would be our last moment. There will be others, yes, that's in my beliefs, but they are down the road, in another place, in another form. But in this place, here in Oklahoma and on this spinning ball we shared, this is was it; the last chance to say good bye. I'll say good bye tomorrow, in a public place with many people, but this one was personal. It was the one I felt most. And I know I am grieving and others allow me to grieve, in my own way, personal, yet public.
Does it hurt? Is it painful? Yes, of course, but its more the deep sadness and sense of loss that I feel. It's a feeling that I can not put into words, nor can I paint nor photograph it. It has color but they are somber shades, purples and muddy colors, mixed together in a smeared way that leaves no one color, not a color to love, nor one to hate. Just a muddy, dark, mixed color, and a cacophony of streaming memories.
And regret. I hope David knew that I cared for him, that I felt joy to see him again when I did, and warmth when we talked about our boyhood home and we remembered friends. We talked a little about The Big Indian who left us in 2008. They were joyful memories but I felt that were tempered by the fact that Jess was no longer here and no matter how much we laughed and how much better the stories got in telling, we always stopped our remembrance with a feeling of sadness.
As I said, this is personal and it's about me. It's about my feeling of deep sadness right now and how powerful it feels; how small I feel in its presence and how powerless I feel to deal with it. It will lessen, it will get better, but right now, I want to grieve. Not to feel sorry for myself, but to grieve and those two feelings are different. We feel sorry for ourselves when we've lost a competition and someone got what we feel we deserved. When we've lost our girl to the other fellow or some unqualified person got the job we should have. But this is different; it's not sorry for myself, or even for us. It's the loss of a friend, of someone I knew and had known a long time. I calculated it today; fifty-four years. There was then, of high school and just after, and then now, the present and all the years in recent time we have known each other. I knew little about years in between. Yet the connection is there.
I'll be alright, but for now, I want to grieve, I want to miss David, I want to think about him and to miss him. And if there is a lesson to be learned, I hope I learn it. I have those friends yet who are so dear to me, and I hope I find the strength in me to tell them, in person, how dear they are to me, how much I value them. If I just say it one time, at least I'll know that I did not fail to make sure that they knew I cared for them.
But if they read this, by chance, since I'm only posting it and not mailing it or putting it on Facebook, well:
Ronnie, Terry, Cherri, Peggy, Judy, Jackie Sue, I love you and you mean the world to me.
I told you it was personal.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Now I See
Now I See
Larry Jones (photographed December 6, 2018)
I have a close friend named Larry Jones whom I met in 1982. We did not hit it off at first, not for any real reason, but just because we have different personalities. Larry is quiet and I tend to talk, even to be boisterous at times. Also, Larry and I have a fundamental difference. He is quite a bit less tall than I am and I am five foot seven inches tall.
Larry and I worked together some as he was located in Elk City, Oklahoma and I was temporarily in Oklahoma working out of Bartlesville but on my way to North Dakota for my permanent location. He was an experienced mud engineer and when I could, I learned from him and his experiences. Over the next year I saw him only at our company meetings and we greeted each other like gentlemen and talked about business but we still had not yet grown into a deep friendship.
One day, about two years later, we were to have a sales meeting at Lake Conroe, Texas. We spent our first day at the airport Double Tree Hotel and the next day departed for the conference and as luck would have it, Larry wound up riding with me, just the two of us in my company car. Larry was in the market for a new car and interested in a Volvo so he asked me to stop at the dealer. Larry said, “Stephen, when he comes out, he will walk over to you, shake your hand, offer his card, ask how you are and all, and he won’t even see me.” I felt bad that Larry saw the world this way but I could think of nothing to say. The young man, good looking, well dressed, smiling, and warm rushed out to meet us. We both got out of the car and the young man bypassed Larry, rushed to my side, shook my hand warmly, asked how I was and offered me his business card. He did not say hello to Larry nor even see him. I said, “Sir, my friend here is the one interested in your cars.” The young man blushed, embarrassed at his blunder, and then he turned to shake hands with Larry, finally realizing his error. It was not Larry's first experience with this behavior.
For the first time, I had a glimpse of life through a black man’s eyes, a sobering glimpse. I had known black kids, boys and girls, and I had had some acquaintanceship with black people. We called them colored then. I did not have the same depth of friendship with any black kids as I did with my white and even Indian friends and Indian friends included my cousins. I had never had a black friend close enough that I stayed the night with them; I have never asked a black kid to stay the night with me. I did not think I was racist or biased in any way. From the day I saw that happen to Larry, I began to watch my own behavior and that of my friends. I am not nor will I be perfect in this life because, try as I might, I still see color between people. I wish I did not because I want a better world for everyone and I know it won’t arrive until the election of a black woman or man, or just about anyone who is different, is seen as just another election, not an historical one as was John F. Kennedy (The first Catholic), and all the others that have been different.
One day, in a fast food restaurant, I saw a family that had two half-sisters, one a white child, the other a child who was half black and half white. She looked more black than white because her skin was dark and her features were more towards some of the black children I have seen. It was obvious they were sisters and that they loved each other. The grandfather with them loved them both too and that was just as obvious. Since the day of the Volvo, I began to watch what I say. I have told few jokes that involved black people since then, because if I did, my little small voice asked, “Stephen, would you tell that story in front of Larry, in front of Deborah (his wife), in front of Cody (his son)?” The answer was always “no,” and I began to see how I had contributed to the way life was, and is, for black people. I try to make my small contributions now, and they are small, but when someone tells one of these stories, I try to find the courage to speak up in my own gentle way and tell them that what they did was not right and I ask them, “How would you feel if you had a half black child?” I think of the things my grandmother went through when she was called a squaw in a derogatory fashion and when she told me that there were places she was not allowed to go and that some people would not speak with her or sit with her because of her dark skin. Sometimes, in front of my grandmother, I said something stupid about an Indian and I would see her reproachful gaze and I learned to respect my Indian relatives, who were more Indian than I and who got the bulk of any statements from other kids. Jess Tomey, a Pottawatomie Indian, was one of my best friends and we kidded about things such as our differences and he used to joke with me and David Meriable, an Osage Indian, saying, “Payne passed for white when we went into the restaurant.” There was big laughter from Jess and David but I cringed inside because there was a sobering truth that I was both Indian and white and I did, not only pass for white, but get mistaken for white when I wanted to be close to my Indian cousins and friends. My whiteness kept me out of the Indian culture that was my grandmother’s and that I wanted to be a part of. These things work both ways. I learned, that if I have to preface what I am going to tell Larry with, “I hope this doesn’t offend you,” I should not say it because that in itself is offensive and it is beneath me as the person I want to be, that I try to be and sometimes I fail to be. I try to be a better person than I was growing up because I was ignorant of feelings of many others. I met a woman from the civil rights movement, she being then a Black Panther, and she said she hated white people. I was stunned and then she said, “Can you imagine how I felt when I had my first half white grandchild?” She told us she loved that child and all that came later. Again, I saw through a black person’s eyes, this time a woman and one who had been vocal in her disgust for white Americans. How we live is a choice. How we are born is not. I was born with my racial mix, slight as it is. And I can’t change it. It also makes me who I am, just as my friend Larry’s does. Larry told me once that every morning he saw a black face in his mirror. All he meant was that he knows he is a black man and no one needs to tell him or remind him. Sometimes he has spoken against bad behavior of another black man and our managers would respond to him in wide agreement, seeming to say, “You’re one of us Larry. Yeah, right on!” He told me, “I’m not.” He gets treated differently, even in the positive sense because of his color. He is a fine man, filled with character and I’ve seen him help others in so many ways. When my friend Dennis lost his daughter to a horrible car accident, I called Larry and asked if I could stay with him so I could attend the service and help Dennis. “Come on,” he said, “We've got room for you.” I spent three days in their Houston home as a guest. I shared my ship and quarters with black sailors but never in their home. I had the courage to ask and he had the graciousness to offer. Maybe I don't see, not as much as I believe I do, but at least I begin to see.
Stephen
Monday, September 14, 2009
Progress on My Project Goal, September 2009
One of the young marines who has passed through the Bartlesville recruiting system, completed basic training, and was briefly on leave before moving on to his next duty station. I photographed him in several poses, most better than this one, and I gave him five or six 8 1/2 by 11 inch color glossy photographs, suitable for framing. In my project of giving one hundred marine bibles to the marines, I have so far delivered twenty bibles and need eighty more to complete my first goal. This particular marine, unaware of my project, had purchased his own marine bible. What do I mean by first goal? I mean that my goal is to give the marines one hundred of the marine bibles; once that goal is accomplished, I'll continue to buy and give them to marines whenever I can. I just may not have a number of them in mind; or I may set a second goal. That is something I will see after I reach the first goal.
Staff Sergeant Ocasio told me that he had given one of the bibles to a retired marine, then as he talked more, he defined the marine as a former marine and a friend of his, from his church in Collinsville, Oklahoma. I asked him if the marine friend had seen the marine bible before and he said no, that he had not. He said a woman overheard them and told Staff Sergeant Ocasio that her son is a marine, so he gave her a bible to send to her son, stationed in Twenty-Nine Palms Marine Corps Base, California. It doesn't matter because my goal is to get the marine bibles into the hands of marines, and I know that one marine will tell another, show his bible to others, and some of them will want a bible for themselves, or for a son or daughter, relative or friend. My goal is just to get marine bibles into the hands of marines; it doesn't matter if they are serving now or have served. They are still marines.
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