Here

Why is it that love makes us so dumb?

It’s like in cartoons where the baby crawls out the window, miraculously onto the beam, and almost falls into the cement mixer. Fortunately for them, there’s this other character scrambling to turn the beam, often at their own peril, just in time. I am always the other character, chasing that fucking baby.

Fuck the baby. LOL. Maybe I want to be the baby.

No, not really. I don’t want to be the baby or the other character, but I do want that security. That care. I think we all do. And not for someone to save us from ourselves. See, we don’t really need that. We don’t need someone chasing after us, keeping us from harm 24/7. And we don’t need to be that person for someone else. That’s not really love — that’s attachment, which is a different thing.

We need someone who helps us grow into the person who can do that themselves. The person who helps us discover, “Hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t crawl out this window in the first place.” The person who challenges us to grow.

The next man-baby I encounter is getting punted straight into that mixer (sips cocktail).

That version of Trey is gone.

We aren’t out here chasing cartoon babies down beams on a crane anymore. Thirty-seven is driving us down a different path. Yeeesh — soon to be 38. Although, I find I’m not afraid of 38.

I’m not afraid of what lies ahead so much anymore.

I’ve spent too much time wishing I was different, or something else, or somehow better. So many wasted minutes — instead of just pausing. To just be present, or to be grateful, or to be where I am. And I know that sounds stupid and like some “hippy-dippy” bullshit, and maybe it is. I know because that’s the kind of thing I used to think.

But you see, there’s this thing that happens. I don’t know — maybe it’s trauma triggers, or chemicals in the food, or depression, or God, or microplastics, or aliens, or an awakening, or a breakdown, or whatever we want to call it — but at some point your eyes open. Not for the first time. That’s cliché and tired (stick with me).

But they do open in a new way.

They open like when you’re in the passenger seat of the car. You can drive to your parents’ house a hundred times, but when someone drives you there, you notice things you would never have seen if you were driving. You’re aware of the new buildings, or the neighbor’s ceramic flowerpots, or that a Taco Bell went in across from Kroger. You can see that the Whiteheads sold their farmland. Your eyes are open to the changes happening around you.

That’s what I mean.

You can see beyond your trajectory and be present in what’s happening all around you.

That’s where I am right now in life. I’m in the passenger seat, with the window down. Some classic rock on the radio — maybe the Doobie Brothers are singing. The volume is high. The smell of autumn leaves and a hint of chicken litter are in the air. Daddy’s driving with his arm out the window, singing. The air is cool and crisp, and I’m safe, and I can see the world around me.

And I don’t know where we’re headed, but I know we’ll get there.

The hay bales are rolled tight like spools of gold shining in the field, and in the pasture next door the cows are lying down. If she could see them, my Meme would say, “The fish are biting, dahlin’.”

And me? I’m just here.

Here with my daddy, ridin’ down the road, cool wind on my cheeks, and “whoa-whoa, listen to the music.”

-Written at 37-