Being alive: Gratitude to My Father

I can't believe how lucky I am. I live in the very very very EXACT house of my dreams. I walk up to it at night after I get out of my car and I think "God, even if it ends tomorrow, thank you so much for granting me this blessing, this house for raising my kids, this house to still be living in and rattling my old bones around in, way too big for me, but such a comfort to remember the children here when they were young, and all they went through here."

Once in the sixties when I was living dangerously.... hitchiking back and forth across the country to California and back and travelling in Europe and having such a grand old time, and dabbling in religions and philosophies, I spent a few weeks back home in Pittsburgh, brazen, tanned, exuberant and flush with the thrill of being alive....My father asked me one night over cocktails how I would continue my lifestyle...and I replied "God is taking care of me!"....and my father, ever humble, ever my admirer, ever with the gleam of understanding in his eye, acquiesced....but my mother piped in..."That's not God, that's your father and the credit card he gave you that's been taking care of you." Damn! That's true! My sister and I travelled all over the USA and Europe using our parents' top-of-the line Carte Blanche credit card. (Do those still exist?)The whole family used to jokingly call it "carty blanky." I'm sure my dear mother, God rest her soul, could have had many more diamonds and cashmeres if it hadn't been for my casual and selfish abuses of carty blanky.

I remember once my dad told me he was glad I didn't end up being just some effluvia on a sheet! "Ah Dad! Noone was ever funnier or more understanding than you!"

And so we come down. And so we age and get wiser, and appreciate what we have. It was my father's money that enabled my life, for better or worse. My mother and dad were two of the funniest and most generous people I've ever known. And indeed I have paid a price for not having realized it sooner. But still I trust in God, and know that there is a higher power, an intelligent and ineffable power, that leads us on and allows us to enjoy life, if we are fortunate enough to acquire a sense of being alive, and to have humor about it.