Proverbs 19 :14
House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers, But a prudent wife is from the LORD.

My wife has been wondering when and if she'll wind up in this blog. It's kind of weird knowing that she will probably read this. I didn't want to just post up the usual platitudes and B.S. that might be easy to say. Tonight as she and my son are sleeping in their beds, my thoughts turn to her and the peace that she has brought to my heart.What is peace of mind worth? What is trust worth? What is fidelity worth? More than anyone can ever know ever pay or ever plumb. This week coming up is my wife's 34’Th birthday. Laura is a woman that has been with me for about five years now. She has had to tolerate so much....the nutso lifestyle of a cop. The burden of being the breadwinner when I was down with three different back surgeries. Step-mom to another woman's child....and all the drama of constant contact with an ex can bring! I know that I couldn't have done it all, tolerated it all and on top of it, loved me through it all. Laura runs through my mind like a sweet cool stream through all the chaos if my mind. Somehow the thought of her keeps me calm no matter what tragedy seems to be breaking out at any given moment. Her constant love and tenderness is what has kept me so enthralled with her. I know she's always going to be there. I really thought that about my first wife as well, but underneath it all, I guess I always knew that she would be there always if: if I didn't stray away from the image that she had of me; if I didn't change from what she wanted me to be; if I didn't grow and stretch myself beyond what she could handle; if I never broke out of the mold that she had planned for me...it was those if's that are the natural evolution of a person over time. Over time I changed, and that just wasn't acceptable. It just goes to show that you never know what will happen in the future, but judging by all the things that Laura and I have been through in the past few years, I think that I can safely say that I have the room I need to grow, stretch, change, and just be true to myself and yet can be assured that when the day is over, she will still be on my side. We all need that someone to be for us, even when the world is against us. I can tell you this, I have certainly been there in the past year or so...when even the bottom looked up! When the old friends have disappeared, and phone calls stop...there are usually very few people left who are really to be all or nothing for you. I have been blessed to have Laura on my side.I guess all my life I've had some serious trust issues with women. From my mom, another long story, to bad relationships. Perhaps I've just always demanded too much and expected too much. Perhaps it's always been me, I really don't know. With Laura, everything has just been so real. No fairy tale crap, just everything open with normal expectations, tolerance for each other and the will to be committed even when things get ugly. I guess it all comes down to the saying that love is not a feeling, but an act of your will. Laura even went as far as to converting to Roman Catholicism to marry me in the Catholic Church. I never asked her to do this for me, she really wanted to, and that really floored me. At the end of the day for me, it's all about trust. Somehow I have that deep down bedrock of trust with Laura that I've never had with anyone before, and I think that I can always count on that to be there for me, whether I'm right or wrong. Some moments just simply cannot be replaced. I'm one of these guys who just doesn't sleep well, and never sleeps heavy. Often I wake in the night and just watch Laura sleeping and wonder how I ever deserved someone as honest, decent, and lovely as Laura. She sleeps the sleep of the just, and is one of the most honest and righteous people I have ever known. Here lately, I have been having dreams of me and my grandfather having conversations. I miss him so much, and he is always on my mind. My granddad and Laura have so much in common when it comes to integrity and decency. There is a simple realism there, a true blue honesty that you can feel...and that the world is starved for these days. I like to think that I have brought stability and constancy to my family, but really it's been Laura who has buoyed me through the many trials of these past few years.There really isn't any price one can pay for perfect peace of mind and trust. Sometimes I think that I am just rotten and selfish and worthless.....life can sometimes just beat a man down to the dust. How many times can a man stand up and look for the piece of industrial equipment that has just left its gigantic tire tracks across his back? I tell ya what, quite a few! But every time I have made it back up to my knees, I have found Laura was still there, and sometimes just being there is enough.

Big Brother...

I grew up with one maternal brother, his name is Darl. Darl and I share the same mother, but biologically, a different dad. When my mom was a young woman, she had some difficulties at home and ran away to St. Louis. She dated a local guy there, and became pregnant with my brother. She wound up moving back to San Diego, where she met my dad. Dad accepted Darl as his own and raised him as his own. The fact is, Darl and I didn't know we weren't full brothers until I stumbled across his adoption papers as a 13 year old. That was a bomb that went off in our home! I think my dad may still be mad at me for that. He never wanted Darl to know. I guess I can understand that. Darl and I grew up pretty close, although we fought like cats and dogs off and on as kids...but there was that bond between us that only brothers can share. We often had the same friends, hung out in the same pool halls and did a lot of the same things. As we got older, Darl joined the National Guard, and then went full time Army. He had been dating a local girl and was ready to get out of the house and get on his own. Him and my dad had been in conflict quite a bit throughout his teenaged years. The conflicts between them seemed to be getting worse and worse. It wasn't an easy time in our home life, and all the drinking that went on didn't help. Mom and dad had been looking at some property on Caddo Lake in East Texas...Uncertain Texas to be exact. Darl soon left and was posted to Germany. I was still a kid and made the move with mom and dad out to Uncertain. I went from a school of several thousand, to one of about 200. In some classes, like trig, I was the only student! It was a big shift, but I really did enjoy being in the country. I got to hunt and fish more, and I got a lot of alone time. I really missed my brother though...and Darl was facing hardships of his own in Germany. He had married the girl he had been dating, and she was pregnant. They were having problems over there, and they were isolated, and that never helps. I had issues of my own back home. Mom and dad were having fish fries and parties at our place 4 nights a week! They were still driving back and forth to Shreveport to work every day too, I just didn't see how they could keep that up, God knows I couldn't have, and couldn't now! I'd often be in bed asleep, and some drunk person I didn't know would stumble into my bedroom looking for a place to relieve themselves....most of the time, they made it to the bathroom. I was not a happy camper; it was like my house was no a honky tonk, and I had nowhere to flee from it. What's funny is, that back then I thought this was pretty normal! But, that was mom and dad's lifestyle back then...they have mellowed considerably since then. It seemed like Darl and I were replaying scenes from my dad's life.... except our parents weren't too strict, they were just too liberal I guess. I really can't criticize them too much; they were just being themselves I guess. Mom and dad always had a pretty tumultuous relationship...there was always a lot of drama to be had. I always swore that someday I would have peace in my home, and I finally do. Most of all during this time...I missed my brother. He had always been there when I was little to protect me, and now he was gone.Time would roll on and Darl and I would both be in uniform and we would circle the globe opposite each other. Our lives would circle too; we would go through a couple of bad marriages at about the same time...it's funny how that happened! Just goes to show, you can separate brothers, but they still will stay in some kind of contact, even if it's not physical. These days my brother has been living with me as we both are going to Radiology school at night. It's kind of strange going to school with each other again after all this time, but it really is nice.Last night I had the most terrible dream. I dreamt that I was with Darl near a pool or a lake...somewhere near water, and somebody had shot or stabbed Darl in the chest. I rushed to his side and kept checking his pulse at the carotid artery, and could barely feel anything. I remember looking at his wounds and panicking, because I could not stop the massive blood loss, and knowing that his blood pressure was critically low. I had the same dream about 3 times, and it really freaked me out! Darl was away this weekend in East Texas, so I called him about it. Turns out he was okay, and was on his way back to our place. Just the thought of losing him really traumatized me...you can't ever replace a brother. A brother will stand by you no matter how stupid you are, how bad you screw up, or how broke and poor you are. Brothers are for life; they share the blood that is in your veins and the history that is in your mind. We so often take these things for granted in our lives. Today when I went to Mass, I made special mention of my brother Darl, and asked that God's grace would somehow flow through my feeble body and mind to Darl and to my family. In the end, it's family that is your cushion in this world...

Psalms 107 :41

But He sets the needy securely on high away from affliction, And makes his families like a flock.

Thinking about dad.....

I remember listening to the opening of a Waylon Jennings tape called, "A Man Called Hoss". It was meant to be a musical anthology of Waylon's work. He talks about how there had been a writer who wanted to write his biography. He states how if he did an honest one....there would be a lot of divorces and bad things that would result from it...that line always cracked me up, but if you really think about it, it's true with a lot of our lives. My story is not so hard to write, there's not too much too hide in my family, and there's a lot of freedom in that. We have lots of bad faults, but it's all out in the open pretty much. None of us really try and be anything that we're not...we're just us.

My dad had always been that way, open and honest with me. I can't ever remember the time that I ever felt deceived or lied to by him. I could always count on my dad to be that picture of honesty with me, even when it seemed everybody else was a bold faced liar. If my dad is anything, he is honest to a fault...and true to his own understanding of things. He's a lot more perceptive and understanding of things than many might give him credit for. The community that he lives in now just knows him as Jim the Air Conditioning man, but they really don't know the half of it. To them he's just another 'Good ole boy', but dad is no fool, he's been to the rodeo a few times as we say in Texas. The thing that always amazes me about the old man is that even if he is wrong, and stands to look bad...he never tries to hide it. It's that transparency about dad that makes me respect him so much.

Dad grew up in Gloster and Frierson Louisiana, a pretty rural farming community south of Shreveport that has hardly changed in a hundred years. Every time I ride out there, I am captured by the beauty of the land, full of dairy farms, quarter horse ranches and miles and miles of cotton. The old rusting cotton gins seem to call out to me as I pass them by, "Wait! Slow down, take another look at me, I have a story to tell of your people from long ago.." Dad was born in what amounts to a sharecropper shack...a very small house in the middle of a cotton field in Gloster, La. My grandfather was doing a little of everything in those days from Carpentering, to doing some oilfield work, to putting in water wells. Not too long after my Grandfather bought what would be his homestead. It took about 2 years to build, and my grandfather built the whole thing himself with some help from his brothers. In those days he worked sun up to sun down, so he had to build at night...and he certainly wouldn't work on the Sabbath. I take it that my grandfather ran a pretty tight ship back then, and my dad and his brother Tommy were chomping at the bit to get out of the country and get on their own. My Uncle George Thomas Holder was about five years or so older that dad...and he joined the Navy. Dad wasn't too far behind him and lied about his age and enlisted at 16. This would take dad all over the world, but mostly in the south pacific. Dad was an Electrician's mate, and was pretty good at it. He served on a number of different ships (USS Ajax and USS Chicago).


I know dad carries a lot of scars from those days, but I believe he genuinely enjoyed being a sailor, and wound up putting ten years of his life into it. It was in the Navy that dad learned to drink and smoke, those two things would come back to haunt him later in life. My grandparents had been tea totelers never really drank at all. But both my dad, and his brother wound up being pretty serious drinkers, but in those days, I guess it was that way for a lot of people...nothing too unusual there. My dad wound up getting out of the Navy and began working as an electrician in the shipyards there in San Diego, CA. It was there that he met my mom, married, and had me. When I was still a toddler, there was a big strike in the shipyards...and dad decided to move us all back home to Louisiana, in particular to my grandparents' home. Dad then took work as an electrician for the Shreveport Times newspaper, and drove quite a ways into town every day coming home very late. Around this time there was a big breakdown between my dad and his brother Tommy. Tommy (George Thomas Holder) was a Shreveport Fireman, and was drinking pretty heavy at this point in his life. Evidently, one night he got stinking drunk and wound up at my grandfather's house. There was an argument between him and my grandfather, and Tommy took a swing at my grandfather. Dad stepped in and wore Tommy out...and after that, they didn't speak for a good 20 years or so, unless they just had to. I got to know my Uncle Tommy years later and found out he had been a pretty rough character back then. He was am alcoholic, a Klansman, and a pretty degenerate guy all around. He tells the story of how he became born again, and how he actually heard the audible voice of God give him one more chance to get his act together. It seems that he did, and has lived an admirable life ever since.

My dad has drunk pretty heavily in his life, but he has always respected his parents...and that has always stuck with me. He always called his father Sir, or daddy, and I never failed to notice that. When he stepped over his dad's threshold, he became a kid again it seemed. He so wanted to please them, and wanted them to think well of him. I remember the time once when he and my mom were in the middle of a big fight. He thought for sure they were going to divorce. The biggest thing on his mind was how he was going to tell his parents that he had failed. He shook and almost wept when he said that, and it chilled me to the bone that as a grown man, with grown children, he still was so shaped by the opinion that his parents might have of him. It just goes to show you, that we never really grow out of our parents’ houses now do we?

Dad applied for the Shreveport Police Department in the early 70's, and that's the job I always remember him having. I remember how I used to try and stay awake as long as I could at night, knowing that my dad would be coming in late. I could hear his heavy leather boots, and the creaking of his gun belt as he came in the house. It was always then that I know I could go to sleep. I could smell his Old Spice Cologne, and I knew that I was safe. I was always aware of the risks he took defending our community, and the danger that he was in. Our home was a troubled one at times, with both mom and dad drinking pretty heavily, but they loved us and tried really hard to make our lives better than the ones they had known. Dad worked extra jobs on his nights off so that we could go to Catholic school, and mom did volunteer work at the school to keep us there as well (the Shreveport school system was terrible at the time). We went on lots of fishing and camping trips, and although we had plenty of troubles and plenty of conflicts due to the alcohol....we knew that we were loved, and that mom and dad were doing the very best that they could for us.

Years later, I would strap on my leather gear, pin on my badge, and walk out into the night to work. At the end of my shift, I would come come, trying to come quietly into my house. I would hear my leather gun belt creak, my boots fall heavily, and I would remember my dad...and check on my baby boy to make sure he was sleeping safe and sound.

Like a letter in the mail from a brother in Jail...

I've spent a lot of time today thinking about family. Sometimes there are those that we go through so much of life with, that they might as well be your blood, if not closer than your own blood relatives. I have one of those, his name is Joel Thomas, and Joel and I met in Catholic gradeschool in Shreveport, Louisiana back in the 1st grade. I have no closer friend and "brother" than Joel. Joel and I seemed to always be traveling through the same paths in life. I joined the military, then he did about the same time. We had our first serious relationships at about the same time. We spent countless hours as children playing together, studying, playing football, discussing the mysteries of girls...and I'm still mystified there. There was just about nothing that we wouldn't do for each other. We both wound up in Law Enforcement...and we both went through a pretty bad divorce at about the same time. Back in 99, Joel had an alcohol related accident in which a 10 year old girl was killed. Joel had fallen asleep at the wheel after a few drinks, and this tradgedy resulted. It was just horrible! A horrid time followed, for the family of that little girl, and for Joel. He went from Police Officer to Police prisoner. Off he went to jail with the maximim sentence. Joel was pretty suicidal for a while, but after a spell, he grew to deal with the lodd of his freedom as well as one can. For the past five years he has been a model prisoner and is more penitent than anyone I have ever seen. Soon he will be getting out, in a few months, and I will be so excited to be able to spend time with him again! You just can't imagine how we close we have been throughout our whole lives, and I have missed him so much. There are a tiny few people in life that you can count on to have your back no matter what, who will always love you, always believe in you, always give you their last cent whne you need it. Joel has been that person in my life, and although he made a tragic mistake, he has so much goodness in him to benefit this world. He has suffered greatly, he's missed seeing his son grow up, and he has been humbled by hard labor and the loss of his individuality and freedom for years. Society can count on him being a truly transformed person when he emerges from captivity. Not having Joel around these past 6 years has really left a hole in my life and I have really missed having him around. God-willing, he will be able to make a new start soon, a new beginning for both of us.