WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU ABOUT?

Life's a winding road and as I near 40 years old I'm asking myself that very thing (title of this piece).  Are you an employee, a single mom struggling to get by?  What's your "off-the-top" answer?  A name?  You have one.  But are you a part of something?  A team, a greater wheel?  And what are you about?  What would others say about you if asked that question?  Do you run and hide?  Bow down, give up and shrink away?  Or do you stand tall and give 'em hell? 

And what's your legacy?  What is the memory you will leave behind?  When you're young you don't stop to consider this.  But I'm getting older, it's how the cards fall.  When I slow down one day, when the edges begin to fade, the end draws near, will the light I leave behind be as bright as the one I walk into.....And that's what I'm asking myself.

My family has watched me get clean and free from drugs.  My mother has watched me grow into a man.  My daughter's mother has watched me become a dad who loves my child.  I get to watch my sister's son grow into a man.  I get to walk up on him and hear him tell his friends, "this is my Uncle Mike, I was named after him." And my other sister's daughter can introduce me to her friends and tell them she wrote me letters while I was in prison.  We were pen-pals.

I met my sister Grace's boys before they were born here in the visiting park of a prison.  And I put my hand on her belly and we took pictures to prove it.  When I get home I'm going to make grilled cheese sandwiches for them and then we're going to play catch in the backyard.  And my baby sister is going to look out her back window and smile.  She's going to see her big brother, who walked to the ends of hell and back, love on her boys.

I realize now this is what life is for.  Not a million bucks in the bank, but rather a million memories with the people we love.  I get to pile up my sister's daughters, my brother's little girl and me and my daughter get to take them out for ice-cream.  All them little faces smeared with ice-cream.  I want to smear some on my face and take a picture with them all.

It's crazy the stuff you begin to think about when you know your half-way to the end.  I may even be closer than that.  All the more reason to make every second count.

Here I am in the place where people fall between the cracks.  But I'm part of a bigger picture.  My family won't allow that to happen.  They reach right in here and grab me.  Their children reach out to me in here.  Everyone in my family plays a role.

A long time ago I wasn't ready to be a Dad.  Another man stepped up to the plate and he became Dad to my daughter.  He loved my daughter as his own.  Clayton was killed in a tragic car accident and left behind his wife and the little girl she was carrying, along with my daughter.  He had raised my little girl and was taken before he even met and held his own little girl.

Thoughts of this man have inspired me to never let down our daughter, his wife or his daughter.  It's a big story but its my story.  During the most impressionable years of my daughters life, he loved her and showed her what a great Dad should be like.  He left too soon, yet what he left behind lives on.

When my time comes I want to leave behind memories of myself that touch the people I loved forever.

And so I ask myself what I'm doing.  I want to dig up worms with these boys and then take them fishing.  One day I would like to take my daughter and her little sister out to dinner.  I would like to tell them both stories I remember of their Dad.  I was merely a biological Dad at the time...He was a father.  I will always see this man as Dad to my daughter.  I give him that respect and when I talk to my daughter I tell her about her other Dad also and I call him that to her.  I hope to pass that on to the daughter of his he never met.  He gave me a priceless gift, perhaps I can show back that kindness.

That's who I want to be.  These are the things I want to be about.  I may be covered in tattoos, but they don't define me.  On first impression you may jump to conclusions but you would do good to look more closely.  While you're looking closely, I challenge you to take a look at yourself and see what you're about.