Thoughts following a high school graduation;
Lauren and Her Best Friend

I Guess I Must Have Blinked
Thoughts following a high school graduation

“Try not to blink,” a friend told me.
“Don’t ever close your eyes.
Your girl will grow up if you do.”
His words seemed awfully wise.

But on the day our baby came,
I blinked away the tears.
I stroked her fingers, kissed her nose
and marveled at her ears.

Her features were so miniature,
so perfect, soft and pink.
I blinked again. My cheeks felt wet.
My eyes had sprung a leak.

Again I blinked, and magically
the years sped by and then.
She was a preschool graduate.
Good Lord! I blinked again.

In no time she was sweet sixteen,
the Barbies put away.
I closed my eyes in disbelief.
When did my hair turn gray?

Last night I watched my little girl
process in cap and gown
to clutch that prized certificate.
My baby’s college-bound.

 Amazed and proud, I closed my eyes
to drink in what I’d seen.
My baby, now a young adult,
a beauty, tall and lean.

This master of the silver flute
has really learned the score.
Life’s symphony awaits her now
as soon she’s out the door.

When did she leave her jungle gym,
the soccer field and rink?
It seems like only yesterday.
I guess I must have blinked.

Lauren and Her Best Friend
A tribute to the graduate and her gift of music

You held that shiny silver wand
when you were ten years old.
You cradled it and coaxed a tune.
First timidly, then bold.

And with that magic wand, my child,
you dazzled and amazed.
A gentle kiss. A puff of breath.
And silence turned to praise.

That two-foot pipe became your friend
so many years ago.
And though you gave your heart to it,
I had no way to know

the way your friendship would evolve.
The time you two would spend.
Your play dates caused my heart to dance.
I prayed they’d never end.

With sheer delight before my ears
you two became as one.
The sounds of Heaven filled our home
and I to them succumbed.

I realized you two were more
than afterschool playmates.
Together you will make a life.
It’s obvious. It’s fate.

It is a gift you two enjoy.
A gift that must be shared.
For God sings through the two of you.
That’s why you have been paired.

And soon you’ll head for school out east
along with your best friend.
The music in our home each night
will cease. But I’ll pretend

to see you in the other room
beside your music stand.
I’ll picture you with your best friend
held gently in your hands.

* Lauren Star Asimakoupoulos, the youngest of my three daughters, graduated from Mercer Island High School in suburban Seattle last night. That is the same school President Obama’s mother graduated from in 1960. Lauren is a gifted musician headed to Wheaton College Conservatory of Music to pursue a degree in flute performance. My wife and I couldn’t be more proud. If you’d like to hear a clip of Lauren in concert, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TljZ9YdUQ2k

A tribute to Jack French Kemp;
And God Created Mothers

A Man Named Jack
A tribute to Jack French Kemp

The “passing Bill” in Buffalo
passed bills in Washington.
And Jack passed on his legacy
before his life was done.

In an unkempt world
where moral trash
consistently litters the landscape
of a decaying society,
Jack was Kemp.

In an unkempt culture
of careless commitments
and sloppy thinking that contributes
to rampant irresponsibility,
Jack was Kemp.

In an unkempt society
where family values are wrinkled
and the definition of marriage
seems up for grabs,
Jack was Kemp.

In an unkempt and too-often
divided Republican party
where lack of leadership has resulted in
unprecedented chaos and clutter,
Jack was Kemp.

Jack French Kemp
was a stabilizing influence for our time
who brought order and focus
to a nation whose vision for the future
is blurred by a myopic fascination
with tolerance
and a tendency to turn a blind eye
to truth.

This JFK
(unlike another celebrated politician
with the identical monogram)
was a principled man.

For fifty years he invested
in a committed marriage
to the Main who watered the garden
of his heart.
In Joanne he found the mate
for which his soul longed.
He was a contented man.

He was a wealthy man
whose worth and possessions
could not be adequately accounted for
by stock portfolios and real estate alone.
He was well aware of his worth
in the eyes of God.
This amazing man also owned
the love and respect of two sons
and two daughters.
What is more,
he claimed the undying admiration
of seventeen grandchildren.

Here is a man to whom also belonged
the gratitude of countless Americans
whose lives are richer and more significant
for having lived in a country
indelibly marked by a man named Jack.
And I am one.

Peace be to his memory!

And God Created Mothers
A special Mothers’ Day tribute

On the eighth day of creation,
once the Lord God had His rest,
He created what (in retrospect)
we call His very best.

This new species He named mothers.
Adam’s better-half with child.
Grace incarnate, strong yet tender.
An oasis in the wild.

And the Lord equipped this species
with a sixth sense and a heart
that can break, but keep on loving,
when sweet kids become quite tart.

Mothers see both front and backwards.
They survive on little sleep.
And when life may hurt them deeply,
you will rarely see them weep.

They persist though feel like quitting.
They forgive before they’re asked.
They deny themselves routinely
rarely sidelined by a task.

When the Lord created mothers,
it was hardly just a whim.
His main purpose was to emulate
the love we find in Him.

Why America’s independence is a relative situation

My grandma and my uncle
share a birthday. It’s today.
My father’s mom died years ago,
but Sam’s alive, though gray.

I celebrate his birth each year
with fireworks and fun.
But lately I’m concerned his days on earth
may soon be done.

I fear my uncle’s health is poor.
He’s looking gaunt and thin.
He doesn’t stand for much these days.
His plight has crippled him.

Where once he claimed to trust in God,
my uncle’s waffling.
He trips a lot on tolerance.
His step has lost its spring.

His apathy’s begun to spread.
He can’t feel much these days.
He’s blind to things that moved him once.
He’s deaf to virtue’s ways.

His heart is weak. It doesn’t race
to see “Old Glory” fly.
His feeble hand can’t reach his chest
when veterans floats pass by.

He doesn’t quite know who he is.
His memory isn’t good.
He can’t recall what made him great.
Oh, how I wish he could.

He’s very sick. He just might die.
But Sam’s a tough old bird.
I’m praying for a miracle.
Do you think that absurd?

My birthday wish for Uncle Sam
is that he will survive.
At two-hundred-and-thirty-two,
he’s not too old to thrive.

* Yes, it’s true. My All-American paternal grandmother, Margaret Stradley Turley, was born on July 4, 1897 in Bland County, Virginia. She married Haralambos Asimakoupoulos, a Greek immigrant in northern Idaho, who would later change his name to Harry Smith. From what I’ve been told, Grandpa Smith wanted a new name that reflected the heritage of his new homeland. On August 13, 1969 our nuclear family asked a Chelan County judge in Wenatchee, Washington to reinstate our ancestral name. We strongly believed that America’s greatness is best observed by celebrating our cultural diversity and ethnic pride, not reducing the varied tastes of our rich backgrounds to a common flavor.
 
** The above poem was written against the backdrop of recent changes in our national identity in which the United States is no longer viewed by the rest of the world the way it once was. The poem is a personal hope that “Uncle Sam” will not succumb to the pattern described by the noted British historian Arnold Toynbee. He observed that the average age of the world’s great civilizations is only 200 years and that these nations progressed through a similar pattern.
 
“From bondage to spiritual faith. From spiritual faith to great courage. From great courage to liberty. From liberty to abundance. From abundance to selfishness. From selfishness to complacency. From complacency to apathy. From apathy to dependence and from dependence to bondage again.”
 
What a sobering cycle and timeline given the fact that our nation appears to have followed this process and this very day celebrates its 232nd birthday.