Thank Your Moms and Dads

Words and music by Penny Lewton Binek

Mom and Dad, you know that I have adored you
From the moment I was born.
Imagine my dismay, when I found one day
That to your views I'd not conform!
It made me look deep inside,
And question my pride,
For with this I must not be wrong!
But what better way to see the strength of my faith--
Than have to"go against" the two of you...

These are my footsteps, my battles--

A contrast, every one,

To the Light which I see within me

Dawning as the Sun/Son.

The love that I sought was in me,

Buried beneath a film.

From the sorrows of a blinded heart

To the joys of opened eyes!


Take a bit of time alone with you to thank your Mom and your Dad--for everything, no matter where they are. I had parents and grandparents who were easy to love, but even they did things at times that had me thinking, "That's NO WAY TO BE! I'm not going to do that...I'm choosing a different way."

That, my beloved friends, is wisdom gained...

And I don't care how raunchy and horrid the part played, someone had the love and the courage and the trust to play it convincingly to the hilt for you. It's easy to play the hero--because they get all the love. Look deeper.

The stories we humans have acted out together are filled with ancestral and personal karma (an energy balancing mechanism that we all put in place to keep ourselves from getting completely lost, and to give ourselves the true and sensual fullness of experience).

That person who plays the role of abuser of you now, was probably someone that you (a different life expression of your soul) abused in another lifetime. Be quicker to forgive both of you, than to hang onto blame, guilt, victimhood, revenge. Choosing to forgive, and to be grateful for the wisdom gained from the experience, dissolves and clears all karma away. The slate is made clean, fresh--ready for new...

It's good for the human and the soul to reminisce together, as one--because it transforms even the murkiest moments of the past into a priceless gem of the present. Thank all who have been and gone before, for all the parts played--heroic and dark, vibrant and dull--because they helped to build the bridge we're crossing today...

I love a good egg salad sandwich. I helped Mom assemble them, and to bake the fork-criss-crossed peanut butter cookies that were Dad's favorite. We'd pack up the lunch to take to Dad and the boys. Bump across the fields in the pick-up. The dogs--Cricket, Pudge, Charlie, Urch--run alongside, loping off every now and then to chase a deer, rabbit, bird, gopher. I can see Dad's hands, all dusty and grimy, one holding his sandwich and the other the screw-cap cup from the thermos of coffee. There was no place to wash the hands that had greased the equipment. All that earth freshly seeded, or swathes of mustily sweet golden grain, mowed and drying in the sun, fresh air tinged with the aroma of black coffee, underneath that expansive sky-blue ceiling--the picnic--seemed to make everything taste gourmet.

I'm not a huge lover of ice cream, but I love chocolate or strawberry malts from the Tastee Freez--maybe more so the idea and memory of them than the actual imbibing in them today. Just because when we were in town for groceries and errands, Mom would stop to pick one up to drop off with Dad when he was farming land close to town. One summer day, the year before he died, Dad bought a couple chocolate malts for Laurie and me, and stopped by to visit with us while we were painting her new house. He would probably have actually helped paint, but as it was, he couldn't stay very long because the paint fumes were too hard for him to be in.

Mom made it a point to know everyone's favorites--it was usually home-made from scratch. We didn't do cake mixes or pre-made pie crusts or fillings. I inherited the knowing of favorites from her. For years, I've easily remembered things certain people like or hate--I do it without thinking about it. I do it as a way of letting them know they're important to me, that I'm listening to them, that I love them.

I did a whoopsie a few weeks ago. In a flurry of computer housecleaning, I deleted a writing about some treasured memories of my dad--totally erased them from my hard-drive.

But, he's here yet--though he's been physically gone from my perception for almost 10 years.

When I was driving our pick-up around town the other day, I suddenly felt Dad in the way I was lounging against my seat, left elbow on the support on the door while my right hand manned the steering wheel, lazily easing around potholes like I watched him navigate the creek crossings and the grassy, rutted trails out to the fields on those Sunday afternoons--when we walked into the sun, across the dormant furrows searching for treasure from ancient civilizations, in the light-glinting form of arrowheads, scrapers, hammers, and such. I realized this feeling of his presence in me happens often. When I go for walks, I find that I still search the ground beneath my feet for a special-looking rock.

I spent a lot of time in vehicles with my dad. He was a speed demon well into his middle-age years. He was known as the "Silver Streak" by highway patrols, in his Hudson convertible with the red leather seats. One of my favorite photos is of Mom posing in it--she photographed like a movie star. He went through a lot of tires in those early days of mostly gravel roads, courting Mom after meeting her while attending his one quarter of college in Spearfish.

Dad told me that, as a kid, sometime around the conclusion of World War II, when on a trip to South Dakota with Grandpa to pick up a piece of farming machinery, he'd JUST KNOWN he was going to marry a girl from South Dakota--and he did. She was an angel that even his own mother loved.

I guess they met in the laundry room. He tried to show his appreciation for her ironing his pants and shirt by literally paying her with money. Any of you who knew Dad, will recognize that part of him.

Mom laughingly told me that when she informed her roommate that she was going on a date with him, her friend's reply was, "You're going out with him? He's been out with a different girl every night of the week since he got here!"

On their first date, she had to sit on his lap, in the rumble seat of the car of the couple with whom they were double-dating, on the ride to Rapid City to see Lawrence Welk.

Mom finished school and became a teacher, but Dad chose to end his formal education and, instead, learned about life in a different way, by touring around the United States in the specially-made convertible that was a gift from his parents. In the months after Mom passed away, my dad used to lament to me (when talking about the car and Mom), "I had too much."...

He thought he'd been spoiled with the car (just a material thing), and that he'd foolishly taken for granted the ones with true value, importance and worth--loved ones like Mom. Dad--you were just so hard on yourself, and I didn't know how to fix that for you...

Mom's former students would not only talk of her--this amazingly gentle, kind and beautiful lady-teacher--with fondness, but they'd also tell us kids about the guy, her husband, who brought them candy on Fridays.

My brothers and I went from fighting over who got to crawl into his lap and blow out his cigarette match (the smell of sulfur and a freshly lit cigarette still makes me swoon a little, though I've never smoked), to who pulled the packet of gum out of his front shirt pocket. My friends always knew Dad had some Juicy Fruit gum to share with them.

Later on, I think his grand kids and their friends expected it to be either Big Red gum or quarters for the prize machine, in the glassed entrance to the Gateway Inn, that tantalized little ones.

If Dad set foot in the grocery store, there would be candy. I'm certain he inherited that from his mom--she had a bureau drawer in the dining room full of an assortment. She also had a basement with bottled pop and a freezer full of Popsicles, push-ups and ice cream bars. In preparation for weekends fishing out at the dam or for a grandchild's birthday party, Mom and Dad made sure to pick out an assortment of Brach's candy for Dad to place in a bowl on the table.

Grandpa Frank kept candy in the drawer after Grandma passed away, but it seemed to get old and hard--probably because he didn't personally eat much candy. He did, however, make us popcorn using an electric skillet. That was his specialty--and whenever a grandchild got married, his gift was an electric skillet.

Dad's few short months at college wasn't a waste--it was there, in a ballroom dance class, that he discovered his natural ability to dance. Mom and Dad danced together--a lot! My next best thing to getting the pleasure of personally dancing with either of them, was to watch the two of them work their magic together:

Passion and his beloved Compassion

glide a path together--

sometimes breaking apart,

sometimes framing the other, heart-to-heart--

waxing and waning

'round the floor of the Flagstone Terrace.

They dance through the annals of the ages,

the picture book that is my mind,

to the wildly whirling-twirling,

strangely peaceful,

dervish that is my heart,

in rhythm to

the song that is my soul...

Mom and Dad would both be the first to admonish me, "Pen, we weren't that good." And, no, they wouldn't have won a little metal statue on the latest TV show with a ballroom dance competition--they won something more...

When Dad was driving, the roads and curves used to feel like a roller coaster ride to my stomach. Mom joked that she always knew she was pregnant "again" when she got carsick with him on the way to Newell to visit her parents and brothers. I spent the first hours, upon our arrival at Great-Uncle Woody's (near Lodgepole, SD, usually to go catfish fishing on the Grand River), waiting for my land-legs to return, my bloodless lips to get their color back, and the green around my gills to go away.

I catch myself leaning against the back of my chair, leg crossed at the knee, my right forearm on the table, running my fingers and thumb over the handle of my coffee cup, nursing it so long it turns cold--unconsciously imitating all those idiosyncrasies that were his.

I feel him standing inside me with his one-legged lean and my right hand in the front pocket of my jeans.

Even when I walk across the yard, I feel his loose, flowing gait as we walked side-by-side to check out his garden that's the size of a field--he liked to see people feed themselves with good, fresh food. Dad gardened, and Mom prepared meals from it, froze corn, canned beans and tomatoes. And all of us kids and grand kids, at some point, picked potatoes--it was back-breaking labor--laughing together, while crawling around to fill buckets to dump in the gunny sacks.

...and then in the days following Mom's death, I helplessly watched Dad gasping for air as he lugged those awkward-to-hold, 100-lb. bags from his van as he delivered his love-enhanced produce to friends and customers.

And I feel him smiling into my eyes, spinning around the floor in circles with me, guiding me, every time I dance the waltz.

Kel and I have cappuccinos now every afternoon, and that reminds me of talking with Mom in the living room. She has her legs nonchalantly draped over the arm of the Lay-Z Boy, and instead of the 70-year-old great grandmother that she now is, I see the teenage girl, jeans rolled up at the ankles. She just sparkles with grand plans for her whole life ahead of her.

In her high school scrapbook, I discovered that she'd planned to have a career and travel--but she lived on a farm, instead, gave birth to and raised eight kids, often alone at night, while her husband traveled. I remember her often walking, in the evenings, the quarter mile to climb the Big Hill to see if she could see Dad's headlights coming home.

I remember him calling once while he was away--just because it was Thanksgiving and he didn't think he'd make it back in time. I felt sad because my dad might not be home with us and he'd be stuck eating pizza all alone. But, if I recall correctly, he did actually make it home. Mom's motto with him was "No news is good news."

She became a standard of living life (not an easy one either) gracefully. She loved us, unconditionally, and the slew of grandchildren and pets we brought home to her. Wherever Mom was, that was Home, our bit of Heaven on Earth.

She was the one who inspired me to decorate my home with the things I loved and cherished created by someone I connected with--dandelions picked by a yellow-nosed nephew sniffing 'em before he gives them to you, cherished rocks from another, artwork where you're the subject matter painstakingly rendered in crayon, pencil or whatever medium is available.

Whenever I was back for a visit, upon first stepping inside the door, I walked directly into her soft and so-enfolding, bosomy, heartfelt hug. And she's just...SO beautiful!...all of her!

I think I have some of Mom's sense of humor--we have something of a wind-blown look over the top of our heads upon initially hearing a joke with some naughty innuendo. Several minutes, or hours later, you'll catch us laughing out loud because we finally actually "got it," understood it.

Our beloved Max and Molly cats were the offspring of Mom and Dad's long-haired calico, Cally. It's why it was so hard for me to let them go, because they were the closest we got to having kids of our own--and they were connected to Mom and Dad. During her first year with Mom and Dad and Dave, on our Sunday morning chats, Dad used to hold the phone up to Cally, and have me talk to her to see if she would listen. Yeah, I know...but we had fun!

I named her Cally, but Dad called her Hummer. To this day, we all still think of her as Hummer--I don't think anyone else would know who I was referring to if I used my name for her. I've always thought Dad's little nickname was cute for a kitty because of its reference to purring--you know, humming a sweet tune.

It was just a couple years ago at my ripe, old-enough-to-finally-catch-onto-stuff age of 47, that my brother and husband informed me that my dad kind of secretly chuckled with mischievousness over his name for her. The only "Hummers" I knew of were an extra-wide vehicle initially used in the military, and people who hummed tunes. I did not know that Dad's name for their precious kitty was a naughty innuendo. And I'm really wondering now if Mom even knew that? I'm almost sure she didn't, because she called her Hummer all the time, too--without giggling. And I don't think she could have pulled that off with me.

As Mom and I chat away in the living room, we watch Dad comically emerging, blurry-eyed and blinking in the light, not-fully-embodied-yet, from his after-dinner (that's the term we mid-westerners use for "lunch") nap. He's pulling on each cowboy boot, smoothing his jeans over the tops of them, as he moves towards us through the hallway, combing his hair back off his forehead with one hand, while hovering his cap overhead with his other, tilting it to my left, rolling the rim around the back of his skull to the right gathering his hair neatly beneath its crown, with the other--all in a choreographically-smooth motion. And with that oh-so-familiar sheepish grin, he asks, "Ready for coffee?"

He knows it takes Mom and I a few extra moments to get ourselves ready so he heads out to his van, crawls into the driver's seat and patiently waits for us. We load up and head into the Gateway Inn.

We sit in Dad's favorite booth--the one with an indentation deeply worn into the seat cushion from his bony butt, after spending many hours drinking coffee, playing Johnson's Bar or wrap Poker, visiting and laughing with friends of all ages, and sometimes with strangers passing through. It's the side of the seat next to the window facing the door, so he can hear better by keeping his right ear (that's hard-of-hearing) next to the silence of the glass. Behind him is the coffee and water service station--the waitresses and owners may occasionally stop by and chat for a bit, when things are slow. There's a running joke, based in truth, that he's there to help open up the restaurant for the day...and probably to close it down, too, at night. He doesn't spend the whole day there, though. He comes, and he goes.

Two nights ago, his best friend treated me and my husband to supper. And as always, whenever I'm visiting with this man, whether by phone or in person, I feel my dad breaking out in a grin and laughing--simply twinkling all over the place, excited about how far we've all come in our individual lives and as a part of this earthly humanity. I feel his passion and his excitement about our world, the new one emerging out of all the pain of the old.

And all of these self-awareness moments give me the warm tingles, and a goofy grin across my face.

Yes, I know it's REALLY CHAOTIC right now, that the old consciousness energies are having a last extremely-blustery hurrah--just because that old obsolete stuff realizes it's on its way out. WE DID IT! All of us together, through the ages...

Dad's best friend (other than my mom, of course)--a man who shared his vision and passion for this world--became my best friend when I was around nineteen years old. His daughter and I were good friends all through our younger years, so I was a bridesmaid in her wedding. For some reason, her dad was giving me a ride somewhere that weekend, and he told me there was no one else like my dad--that he thought of Dad as his best friend, as a real brother.

This was from a man who has known people and heads-of-state from all over the world, people for whom wealth and power were just everyday things--some are even close friends of his, as well. But to this day, he maintains that none of them were like my dad--that his best times were sitting fishing with Dad, chewing the fat, laughing together--reminiscing of stirring up politicians, fighting greed and hunger in their own special way. These men were the ones inspiring me to live my own best life--to be a benevolent rebel.

Thankfully, my dad wasn't a veteran of a war. I honestly don't think he could have handled being a soldier in that way in this life expression. I remember him telling about his beloved uncle who'd served in World War II--how my teenage Dad remembered him staying in their home upon his return from overseas, screaming himself and everyone else in the house, awake from night terrors, as he re-lived the battle fields. Dad never wanted that experience for his own children--or for anyone else's. He valued and honored all the soldiers and the veterans, but he was not into wars as the solution for anything.

When I was deep into Freeman Education seminars and conspiracy things, I returned home to hear Mom and Dad telling me about some people in the area meeting with the intent to start a local militia. Dad told them that wasn't the thing to do.

He attended gun shows and, just like his own father did before, bought his kids and grand kids all kinds of fishing equipment and guns. He supported those who had a passion for the sport of hunting and target shooting. But, in the latter years, when he didn't have to resort to hunting to feed his family, I seldom ever remember him shooting a gun himself. He fished a lot.

Dad was looking for a way to change the world--for the better--without having to go play war. This is the legacy he and Mom left me.

Dad and Grandpa had a love-hate relationship that was difficult for me to find a place of balance within. When I was little, I overheard my beloved grandpa say to Dad, "Dean, I don't care about you..."

NOBODY, but nobody!--was going to get away with saying such a mean and hurtful thing to my dad!

And, unfortunately, that colored my own relationship with Grandpa--a man who treated me with such kindness, love and compassion. The grandpa, whose lap I found myself sitting on at the dining room table when I was a fully grown girl of 20, who'd just lost her boyfriend in a motorcycle accident. My grandmother, his beloved wife of 50-plus years of shared experiences, had just died 10 months before.

I was working at the local drugstore at the time, and he told me his own stories of working in a drugstore when he was young in the nearby town of Hettinger. He made an extra-special effort to connect with me that day, to comfort me.

As a result, I did soften some then, my heart lowered its protective gear a bit, and I realized that sometimes loved ones said, and did (myself included), mean and cruel things--but we amazingly still love each other even so.

Dad and Mom and my brothers struggled to keep the farm afloat while Dad simultaneously tried to change the world. He traveled so much that Mom was left to care for and raise the family of eight kids, while my older brothers dealt with the farm and livestock.

When he was home, he and Grandpa just seemingly clashed over everything. As an adult, I can see how they each admired, and longed for the approval of the other--they couldn't stay apart. And I think they must have liked the drama of the relationship they had going because neither of them really seemed to make the effort to change it.

Grandpa was all about survival and family, often tough on his sons and his grandsons (though, he was softer with us girls)--I think of it as a "cruel to be kind" mentality. It was a tough world out there, and you had to be aggressive and always working. Taking time out to just be with your family was precious time wasted when you had to make a living to provide for them. Maybe you even believed you had to do things that didn't feel so good inside to do, but you just sucked it up and lived with it.

He and Grandma raised a family during the Great Depression, and it was a matter of great pride to not accept charity--Dad talked of how he used to envy the kids at school who were eating oranges. Grandpa and Dad had different approaches to the federal government farm programs and hand-out systems, though, truthfully, they both viewed them as basically flawed. I appreciate that about them. It's had a tremendous influence on the way I view world issues. Empower people in themselves and we won't have to worry about us or them.

According to Dad, towards the end of his life, Grandpa walked into their carburetor shop one day, sat down, and said, "Dean--I did it all wrong." He didn't elaborate any further. He and Dad did go fishing together down at Haley Dam, just the two of them, one last time. I know Dad enjoyed it, and when it all was said and done, I think they were okay with their tumultuous life together.

And Grandpa--you never did anything wrong, not really--ever! Thank you for everything and for all the roles you played for me. I'll always hold you close and in my heart and memories, with fondness and gratitude.

My brother was telling me he remembered Dad being all about work all the time with them, too. And then one day, he just changed. He told them that was enough, that there was more to life than hard work all the time. "Let's go have coffee."

Dean having coffee with his sons was a pretty common occurrence from then on. Another of my brothers used to sign his own "get out of class free" passes from high school in order to go have coffee with Dad. Dad was a pretty talented welder, and he'd taught his sons that craft, too--so they were ahead of the game sometimes in the vocational agriculture class curriculum. I truly believe my brother got more out of those moments socializing with his dad, learning about other aspects of life, than he did in a class that probably would have just been redundant for him.

There was a sense of an inner restlessness about Dad--he came here to do great things with his life. He just couldn't seem to sit still. He loved his family--he loved people! He was so easy-going with waitresses. Shy and quiet, more of a listener like my mom when it came to social settings, I used to envy his ability to comfortably talk to and joke with anyone. Those brilliant blue "black-Irish" eyes of his just twinkled, and you knew you were safe with him.

I loved watching Saturday morning Bugs Bunny and The Roadrunner cartoons with him. My nephew chuckles, telling the story of how his grandpa used to laugh, raising his leg, and slapping his knee at at the parts he found particularly hilarious.

I remember cuddling against him, inhaling Old Spice as I snuggled under his arm, Dad holding my hand, gently squeezing my fingers while watching The Love Boat on TV. And going to the theater, crunching popcorn from the little white and red box, watching a John Wayne western.

I used to peruse the shelves of the city library in search of a Louis L'Amour western that I didn't think he'd read yet. I always looked for the shorter novels, because once he started a book he never put it down until he was finished, usually in the wee hours of the morning.

People who are able to laugh at, and share humiliating anecdotes about, themselves are the most likely to get my admiration and friendship. "Don't be an insincere fake" is a value I learned from Mom and Dad. We all had an appreciation of people who maybe seemed gruff on the outside, but on the inside--and through their actions (in place of politically correct phrases and chatter)--had hearts of melted, buttery gold.

Dad and Mom both would be the first to remind me not to put either of them on any perfect-human pedestals. I feel their delight in my reminiscences, but I also knowingly hear them reminding me:

"Pen--please make sure to tell your stories with us with integrity--be honest about all of it. We trust you, because we know you trust yourself in your celebration and gratitude and love for yourself first, and, thus, for all of us... 

And we hope that when you're all done writing, you've managed to encourage whomever reads this to laugh with us--especially at the seriousness with which we acted out our temporary roles together."

"We did all right, didn't we, Pen?"

"Yes! We ALL did..."