Looking to the sky...

Let me start off by saying, I was a gypsy child. My parents moved me around. A lot. Until the 3rd grade, I went to a small church owned christian school in pleasant grove. For those of you not in the know, Pleasant Grove is sort of a suburb of Dallas, but still part of Dallas itself. Its a weird place man. Over the years it has gotten rougher, but until 3rd grade, it was just a place to live. That all changed one night when someone decided to break into our house. You see, we had window unit air conditioners around the house. Someone started pulling the duct tape from the sides of the A/C unit in order to either A) steal it, or B) steal me. Anyway, we decided to move to Caddo Mills, Texas. Yes that is right, Caddo Mills. We almost moved to Fate, Texas, and that sounds rather off in itself. So here we are moving for the first time in my short lifetime.

My parents were not rich by any means. In fact, they were kind of poor. I did not know it, but apparently they were. I thought all families had beans and rice for nearly every meal. I dunno, maybe mom was a horrible cook, and since dad was a vegetarian, it...aww we were poor. So when it came time to move, dad borrowed a truck from his work, and we started loading everything into white trash luggage (black hefty bags). I remember it seemed to take forever to my impatient young mind, and knowing the miles now, yeah, it would have taken forever.

It was a cold and dreary night that we were moving our stuff out to a much larger, if not much more in disrepair, home in Caddo. I remember thinking that there would be cattle running through the streets, which would be made of dirt and dust. I could see something out of Gunsmoke. I was so wrong, there was not a saloon to be found. Anywho, we were moving our stuff in this single cab Silverado truck, driving into the darkness, when something shifted in the truckbed. I remember seeing things falling from the sides of the trucks, like someone had shoved it all out. There were chairs, and boxes and plastic bins going overboard like rats on a sinking ship. So here I am, 7 years old about to get my first adult task assigned to me.

I was running along the side of the two lane blacktop "highway" looking for displaced cargo. A box here, a bag there. It started to rain, a heavy drizzle that only made the situation more pathetic. I remember carrying a bag of somthing that sounded like kitchen ware back to the truck, and handing it to dad to load. Running back down the pavement, there he was.

I had a 9 inch Han Solo figure, we had found in a garage sale. He was missing the belt, the blaster, and whatever else he was packaged with, but I still loved the hell out of that toy. He used to stomp through my room, stepping on the smaller action figures. He terrorized many a village of snoopy, GI Joe, and whoever else was around.

So there was Han, laying near the center stripe of the "highway" looking skyward. The rain was starting to fall a lot harder, and I remember seeing poor Hans eyes staring into the heavens, water pooling into the unblinking eyes. It was as if he was asking an unseen force how he managed to be in this position after so many victories, pirate runs, and shootouts, only to be fallen by a lopsided cargo hold.

I grew up a lot that day. It might have had something to do with knowing I was mature enough to sprint down the highway, chasing a house full of dreams and fallen memories. It might have been because a new stage of my life was starting, and I was going to have to figure out who I was. Or maybe it is because Han Solo showed me that its ok to look skyward, but that I need to remember to blink, or I might drown.