So…

I pray for Isaac and wait. I recite some prayers by rote. I nightly rattle off names to God in case…ya know…He may need reminding that I cherish these people and want the best for them. And then I pray again for Isaac. And wait. This little boy is so full of his own world of wonder that he’s only giving side eye to the world I know. I pray we’ll be better able to share our worlds soon. And I wait. I pray prayers of appreciation that God blessed Isaac with immensely patient parents who understand his lack of understanding of the small space between our worlds that’s still keeping us worlds apart and are guiding him with gentle grace. And I wait. The connections are being made. So I wait. I pray to be at peace with waiting. And I wait..for God and Isaac’s timing.

So…

More excessively loquacious “Gee, look at my alleged wisdom” blathering… Viewpoints are interesting. Dewey and I were out at ‘the tree’ at LBJ park yesterday and a young man was there standing before this magnificent Live Oak. Being, ya know, obnoxious, I started imparting my recently acquired tree knowledge to him. I then realized he hadn’t noticed the tree he was standing beneath until I mentioned it. He listened politely, glanced at the centuries’-old tree, took a quick picture with his phone and asked, “Did you say, ‘Oak tree?” Then his focus went back to his phone and he walked away staring at it admiringly. == I see quite a few ‘regulars’ while walking in parks. One couple I see often are German immigrants who are probably in their early 80’s. They are at Live Oak Park almost every morning. Today I mentioned the usual stuff you talk about if you actually stop and speak to people, which I honestly normally try to avoid, the wildlife and the weather. Normally I walk at that park in the morning shortly after sunrise, and there are very few, if any, people there besides the regulars. Sunday, after seeing how crappy the Cowboys were playing, I went close to sunset and the park was an entirely different place. It was vibrant. Kids were playing basketball, the playground was packed, people were walking, fishing, running, barbecuing. It was like Norman Rockwell designed a park. I thought it was idyllic. So I mentioned this dichotomy during my brief conversation to this couple and the woman, who is really lovely and funny so don’t judge her for this, said, “Yah! But don’t go in that other entrance in the afternoon…a bunch of gangs and thugs.” This is why I wear earbuds even when I’m not listening to something on my phone. Dewey became insistent about peeing on a distant tree, so we rapidly kept walking. I wish I could say I trained him to do that, but truthfully he’s prescient. == There was another older couple who were regular park walkers. They held hands as they walked and would stop to admire the view at regular intervals. After the initial COVID wave…they weren’t there. Then he was. The same elderly guy. He doesn’t stop to talk about the weather. I haven’t seen him admiring the view. He walks alone…looking only at memories I suspect. Viewpoints are interesting.

So...

Today, I’m enjoying this glorious weather on our patio and thinking about moments of memory. I have only a few real memories of my father. Actually three. There are photo memories. Hundreds. He was a photography nut, but actual memories where I can feel the moment. Three. My father died in 1972 when I was 14, so it’s been 50+ years. I’m sure there were other memories once, but today there are three. Memory one. I remember throwing a marble in the air while sitting on piano bench in our living room as my father lounged on the couch. I amazed myself by catching it in my mouth. That was really cool. Until I choked. Dad grabbed me by the ankles, turned me upside down and slapped the crap out of my back. Apparently Mr. Heimlich hadn’t published yet. Memory two. I remember my Dad passed out on the lawn after stumbling home overly from the Chop House after apparently being…over-served. Honestly…I’ve come too damn close to judge from this or any distance. We all have bad days. Hell, I’ve had bad years and, at this point, decades. But that’s the second memory. Memory three. 1971 when I was 13 years old and throwing a rubber ball endlessly against the garage door playing catch with myself. Dad came out because, well, I sucked at baseball so he must have wondered why the Hell was I suddenly playing catch? It was because my Dad’s Dad had died and I was processing it. My father evidently recognized this and wanted to talk. He explained about death being a part of life and how his Dad had lived a long life. It was comforting, meaningful and has honestly guided my thoughts on life and death since, but…yeah, it also got me stop banging the damn ball against the garage door. He died the next year. Safety. Fallibility. Comfort. Three moments of memory, which shaped a life. It’s a nice day to enjoy weather and memories.

So…

So, Dewey and I haven’t been to Lady Bird Johnson Park for a while. We went this afternoon, and walking less than a half mile down the Greenway, Dewey stopped and refused (as much as a 25 pound dog can vs a 224lb - don’t judge - man holding the leash) to continue walking forward. This is not unusual, but normally it’s because he wants to go on another path we’ve been on or because I’ve dragged his butt out in bad weather. Today is great weather and there’s only one path, but..okay, we’ll call it a holiday…amd yes, he already pooped…so why not? If you can’t be lazier than a dog, what’s the point in life? Okay, I digress. So, then I saw a guy leaning against a tree whom we evidently passed moments earlier without noticing. I waved and he walked over to chat. His name is Rafa. He’s 74. Rafa was pissed off kids had graffiti’d some rocks on a parallel trail. I haven’t physically waved down anyone to bitch about the same vandalism, but I know I’ve done it here, so we commiserated a bit. Cutting it short(er)..Rafa and I had a bonding moment and started talking about the park and almost simultaneously we both mentioned “the tree.” There is a heritage oak tree at LBJ which I have also posted about previously. It’s a one of a kind remaining Live Oak and magnificent. I truly lack superlatives to describe this tree. We decided, with Dewey’s navigational approval, to walk to the tree. Along way, I estimated the tree at 400-500 years old and Rafa stopped suddenly. “4 or 5? 1500 to 2000 years old!” He declared defiantly. “This tree is a cathedral!” His reverent pronouncement admittedly made me pause and say to myself in not-so-divine wonderment, “You’re about to walk into the woods alone with an elderly man with hygiene issues whom you met while he was leaning against a tree ranting about graffiti to admire an old tree. Didn’t see that coming today.” But… Dog is leading the way, I always suspected I was dyslexic. Anyway, we get to the tree without anyone dying….no podcast here…move along. Turns out, Rafa used to own a nursery and knows his stuff about trees. He sold his nursery some years back to a Korean church which is still there…about a 1/2 mile from our house. Rafa told me about the tree and how it has wondrously survived so much. He comes there to pray. He climbs it…did I mention he’s 74? Dewey and I haven’t been to Lady Bird Park in a while. Assuming it’s okay with Dewey, we’re going back soon. I want to learn more the tree…and Rafa. They seem to be a lot alike.

So…

So, I was sitting at Sunday brunch, my granddaughter, Eleanor, asked me, “Are we real people?” She’s a surprisingly insightful kid. I spent 40 years or so sitting alone in little booths writing and talking out loud assuming someone somewhere else was listening, so she obviously believes I have an inherent inroad into insanity. Or…she may be a four-year old, with wonder as yet unsuppressed, who is exposed to an amazingly incomprehensible array of stimuli about the world both palpable and virtual…so ‘real’ is very much a blurry concept. I wish I could say I stood up, stopped the cacophony of chaos in Cracker Barrel and put the question to a Socratic debate, but between the noise of the crowded restaurant, my limited hearing, the lacking fortissimo of a four-year old, and…honestly…the need to consider the question, I had to respond with an eloquent, “Huh?” “Are we real people?” Yeah, the question didn’t go away. Are we real people? She’s four, so it’s funny… Right? Is that really a funny or an insane question? Are we seeing ‘real’ people in our current world? I suppose we could parse it. We could examine and define ‘real.’ We could certainly debate it. Not in person, of course. I’m sure I’m not alone in browsing what claims to be ‘news’ these days and thinking we are collectively far too concerned about knowing far too much about far too many people who have nothing to do with our lives. People who aren’t ‘real.’ They’re an image. A crafted image. It’s certainly easy for me to throw rocks at those created images of ‘real.’ Until I consider the reason they’re not. Yes, they’re not real. They’re reflections. … Yeah, I just assured her, “Yes, we’re real.” We went back to playing that little Cracker Barrel tabletop golf tee game without even attempting to do it right. She’s four. She doesn’t get the game. But she asks great questions.

So...

A couple of decades ago, my Aunt - who raised me for many years - asked for help getting several large boxes off a high shelf in one of her closets. These boxes had been moved from house to house since my brothers and I moved in with her and my Uncle in the 1970s.

Despite the marriages, divorces, deaths, and births pockmarking the subsequent decades, no one apparently really looked inside the boxes. The boxes simply got moved…put in a different closet…up in the latest garage or attic space. They were shoved on top of a different shelf in this new place or that.

Upon hefting them off my Aunt’s shelf, we discovered the boxes were gorged with old family photos. These were pictures taken/accumulated/hoarded by my parents who died in 1972.

There were a lot.

A.

Lot.

I mean, if photos were dollar bills I could “make it rain” with abandon in a strip club every night of every Super Bowl week of the 80s, probably the 90s, and quite possibly the new millennium.

Physical photographs, for those of you unfamiliar with…ya know…ancient history, are thin. You can cram a gargantuan glut of photographs in boxes.

Being the well-ordered, uncluttered, neat freak that I am, I hauled the boxes home to San Antonio and wedged them into a little used upstairs closet…for 20 years.

Several weeks ago, for reasons that I am now consciously opting to no longer remember like many bad choices in my life, I resolved to wade into the boxes and sort through the avalanche of antiquity.

It was a wonderful and, at times, remorseful journey.

I found a plethora of memories. Long unknown images of my parents, my brothers, my grandparents, and many others.

I also unearthed a deep chasm of questions and what I now realize will forever be a dark valley of an unrequited romance with my family history. There were mounds and multitudes of unknown faces, places, and stories. Mountains of mysteries snowcapped in puzzles with too many missing pieces.

I’ve sorted through all the boxes now, and today I finalized the process of distributing the identifiable photos to applicable family members as best I could.

I stuffed them into new boxes which I shoved into mailboxes.

There’s no real point to this little tale of wistfulness and woe, although perhaps there’s some wisdom.

Don’t stuff away your memories whether they’re physical photos or soon to be forgotten stories. Label them. Share them. Unbox them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So…

So, I’ve been trying to sort through a bunch of old family photos to distribute or discard.

Alas, there are a lot of stories entrenched in this tub ‘o memories that I’ll never know.  

This photo is of my Dad, when he was very young and single. The woman is not my Mom.  The photo was obviously torn to pieces and then taped back together.

I’d like to know that story. 

 I’ve made up several scenarios in my head.