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RUST ON MY SOUL (A Novel) (Published by Bridge Press in 1985 & Distribued Internationally) (A new Series that began on this Tues April 13th and will continue every Tuesday thereafter until finished) (Thursday & Sunday will continue to cover a variety of subjects as in the past)
INTRODUCTION (Repeated for those just joining series)
In an old loose leaf notebook, Thomas Kettering wrote when there was a cry from his heart. He wrote when his inner longing spilled over into the reality of his days. He did not write every day, only when he felt he must. How often he wrote or when is not important. The journey is what counts, for it is a diary about all of us, to all of us. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” and even a stumble is a step.
Early morning (New Material)
A diary? Teenage girls write them in the throes of passion or as depositories for adolescent secrets. But not Tom Kettering, age forty-nine. I’m neither the right age nor the proper sex. I am in the right mood, however.
All trussed up with anxiety and mathematically behind the emotional eight ball.
Why?
Because I’ve got more questions than answers.
Whether I like the terms “mid-life crisis” or not, it’s a fair name for a miserable experience.
I will not write daily. I’ve neither the time nor the patience for it. But long or short, twice a day or not at all, I must put down how I feel and where I am and where I have been and why.
“There is a teacher inside you, Tom Kettering. Give him reign.” For as long as I could remember this was a constant and underlined musing from my inner me. For nine months it was a fulfilling reality but toward the end of our first year of marriage Nancy began to harp, “For a while I can live like this, but not a lifetime.”
Come September I had joined the marketplace. Neither of us enjoyed price tags as priority reading matter but we were hooked on acquiring things. Nancy more?…me less?..I’m not really sure anymore.
Though it was wrenching to worship the almighty dollar we adapted easier than I thought we would. Nancy was ahead of me but I was catching up. And yes, my skills easily translated into dollars and more dollars and well now…we can hardly be called poor these days.
If I cannot teach and it is obvious I will never be a teacher. I will write in spare moments.”
After all, “ Tom the teacher” was a youthful, optimistic promise that lost out to reality. “Business” is a stern mistress, a gobbler of energy and time. So I retreated, compromised, gave up the scholar, buried the philosopher, went pell-mell and full scale into making money.
And I’m good at it.
But the chasm, the wound from what I wanted to be and do and have not, is dark and deep and it hurts. I have never really forgotten the man I once dreamed I’d be.
This diary may be an outlet in more ways than one.
Noon
I attended Jim’s funeral this morning. Some of the neighbors did, some didn’t. I only went because Nancy said I had to. I didn’t really care. He’s dead and it makes no difference to him whether I was there are not.
My lack of caring bothers me. But I’m only practicing what I’ve inwardly preached for a long time. The safest way to live is not to care too much. Caring makes you vulnerable. Rust on my soul? Corrosion might be a better description.
Evening
I am not prepared to grow old, but being ready has nothing to do with the passing of the years. Inevitably they build up and out toward the stretches of eternity. A lifetime is so brief a candle, all brightness and flickering and shadows.
There is a pattern for viewing, it’s called looking back. There is a pattern for doing; it’s called looking forward. I am trying to meld these twins, trying to make some sense of marble games and fights and a little blonde girl who captured all our little-boy hearts.
And wind that came swirling in from the sea bringing grey clouds tired with their baggage of rain. And school years adding until graduation and all the lives splitting off shouting, “Eat my dirt,” because the shouting masked the fears of little boys and little girls who were not little anymore.
Some of us prolonged the playing for four more years, but when I twirled a tassel for the last time and stepped out of the final graduation line, a new generation of experience met my dreams. New rules, new customs, all part of an adult culture I’d only looked out at and toward before.
Our dreams didn’t all explode and suddenly disappear. Rather, they were absorbed by that reality again, bit by bit by bit until they just weren’t anymore. Some were paid more for the losing of their dreams than others.
Some were paid hardly at all. A few won their dreams but nonetheless remained foolishly unaware and nowhere as thankful as they should have been.
I’ve never been one to let my tomorrows drift lazily on an open sea. I need to put them in order, to make them sail as a unit toward some port. I don’t like it when too many surprises take over, making me realize that I should have made more careful plans. Well, there was a time in my teenage years when this wasn’t so.
“Planning destroys the spontaneity,” I’d argue to dad. Not that he’d ever argue back. It wasn’t his style. But I could see a worrying in his eyes.
“One day you’ll have to plan, Tom, you know that.” That’s all he’d ever say and the subject would shrivel up and go away.
I don’t really remember exactly when I crossed the line. I drifted toward college. I eased toward a major. But sometime during my senior year, with the real world just over the horizon and Nancy and I beginning to talk of homes and kids, just plain fear made me buckle down.
I’m in another kind of senior year now. At least there’s more of my life behind than ahead. I don’t really believe I’m being morbid, but the grey hairs, the bifocals, the stiff knee all say final exams could be any time and I’m afraid not to be prepared.
TO BE CONTINUED
(Complete book available on amazon.com) (great prices)
Neil is also the author of THE SPIRITUAL ABRAHAM LINCOLN (His last book)
Another of Neil Wyrick's books
“LETTERS TO 21st CENTURY AMERICA FROM CHARLES WESLEY, Hymn Writer Supreme by CSS Publishers.
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