our rear-view mirror

Our rear-view mirror … by Art~

 

It was a Saturday and my Uncle was driving, we were in his old 49 ford pick-up truck, headed to my little league baseball game. I was complaining about my black eye, looking at the shiner in the truck’s rear-view mirror. I didn’t get the black-eye fighting and ‘no’ I didn’t get hit by a girl. I got hit by a ground ball the weekend before. I was the second base-man when a ball came rolling at me like a runaway snowball, I layed my glove on the ground and just as the baseball got to me it jumped up and smacked me in the eye. I saw stars for the first time during the daylight hours.

“Uncle Bill, what if I get hit in the eye again?” I asked. I rolled my head side to side in order to see the shiner better in the tiny mirror. My uncle pulled into the ball park and parked the truck.

“You see out there?” Uncle Bill pointed out toward the baseball diamond ahead. I looked out the front windshield at the children that were tossing the ball back and forth getting warmed up.

“Yes sir,” I replied.

“That is the future. That is where you will be in just a few minutes.” My Uncle said as he rested his arms on the steering wheel. “And this…” He pointed to the seat where we were sitting. “This is the here and now!” Then He pointed at the rearview mirror. “That … that is a window into the past. Memories of where you have been and what you have done. Understand?”

I shook my head yes. “You can’t be ‘whole heartedly’ in the here and now if your looking into the rearview mirror, worried about the past. So when you go out there,” He pointed to the field. “If your still looking in the mirror, your gonna get another shiner. There is a time and a place to look at the future, a time to look in the mirror and if your in the here and now… your chances are a lot better of not getting hurt. Now, lets go win a baseball game.”

I don’t remember rather we won that day or not. But I remember the lesson of the ‘here and now.’ I look into the rearview mirrors now and again and have learned from the mistakes I have made in life. But mostly I look into the rearview mirror of life to remember such moments as Uncle Bill and his 49 Ford truck, for neither are alive in the here and now. I look through the front windshield and dream that one day in the future, I may see him again. But for now, I sit in the here and now, watching what is coming at me through the front windshield, while glancing back at where I’ve been in the rearview mirror.

story by Art~ 2013

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Don’t stumble over something behind you

 

a journey of a thousand miles begins by turning the key and pressing the gas

 

once the heat has past, we tend to forget the shade tree

 

Four things come not back: the spoken word, the spent arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

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allow your past to make you better, not bitter

(~_~)

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