Thanks are due. Today is the Third, so I s'pose I should do a little catching up. Anyone who knows me will not be surprised at the first three items on my Thankful Chart:
1. I've done a lot of dumb stuff in my life. But one day in 1970, in a dreary little house in Eleanor, West Virginia, a lonely 23 year-old sat down and made a list. How absurd is that? Your name ended up at the top of that list, and Mr. Procrastination (who is here on the couch waxing sentimental instead of working a more immediate list) acted for once. I'll always be glad that idealistic knucklehead did what he did and that you responded.
Without our mutual promise it would be hard to imagine my life at all. You know me as no one else. You have seen my best, but also my petty and angry and fearful and small-minded moments. And you still love me. I am eternally thankful to you and for you, my best friend and the love of my life, Sheila Matthews Shaw.
2 & 3. What joy was presented me on August 4, 1983 and again on July 27, 1988. I ache to see you both more, to really talk, maybe revisit Narnia or "Tanzantnia". Or follow Nick up that creek in search of a 'gator. But, in these extra innings I've been awarded, I will redouble my striving to be worthy of your little hands clasping mine thirty-one and twenty-six years ago, and all those hugs; smiles; songs; "acrobatics"; "spiders"; gentlemen, ladies, and farmers trotting, pacing, and hobbledy-hoying on my knees; plays; concerts; ballgames; trips to Mexico Beach, college-hunting trips, church youth trips. I simply love and admire each of you more than you can possibly know, Brannon Shaw & Lillian Shaw.
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