My dear departed Dad, Timothy Otto Moore (our coach), stands on the far left in this photo. As for me, I didn’t last long on Bettez’s farm league baseball team. I was far too distracted by all the frogs, bugs and turtles on the outskirts of the baseball field.
The story I wrote yesterday was particularly exhausting for me to recount in the now. I am finding that the lessons gleaned from these childhood stories retold, are sometimes more illuminating symbolically than when they actually occurred. Introspective exploration of this story of three friends, riding a river on what might have been their final voyage, has surfaced a boatload of understanding for me. The first revelation I experienced through the telling, was that I have always blamed myself for putting my best friends in danger in the first place. It’s a damn good thing that I pulled them from the undertow! If I hadn’t saved them that day, I would have condemned myself to a lifetime of regret. I’m quite sure that I goaded them into taking the ride to begin with. As I stated early in the tale, I was the oldest boy in our triad, and I was also the biggest risk taker. I loved adventure, and I still do, although these days I’m a lot less likely to play chicken with the Grim Reaper. So, if I had failed in my attempt to save them, I’m certain I would have lost every bit of self-respect I had, right there on that stretch of the Pawtuxet River. Another possible outcome – If all three of us chickened out and jumped off the tube, it might have been days before our little boy bodies were retrieved from that cold, dark river. The absolute grief of our combined families would be rippling upon the ocean of Universal consciousness, even in the now. One final possibility – If I was a boy who had visions of grandeur, and I’d used that fateful float and the life or death situation we created as a promotional anecdote for my own heroism, I’m quite certain I would have never made it past the extreme self-loathing of my later teens. Or, just maybe I would have started a super successful guide business out of the event. Picture this: “Scott’s Discount Desperation Tours”!
Here in my studio, presently aware and living in the now, I have a deep and abiding gratitude for all of the friends and family I’ve loved and been loved by, during this amazing journey. Jeff and Delo will always be close in my heart and mind, as will Darlene, Kieth and Bob (of Bob’s Variety, in Hope). Through our many shared memories, we are eternally united in a way that even the river of time cannot erode.
"Grand Providentia United" 