35 years ago today

Thirty-six years ago today, April 28, 1969, my grandfather, my father's father, died at his home in New Jersey of a presumed heart attack, at the age of 73 or 74. It was told to me that he had been found dead by my grandmother.

At the time, I was in the second grade. It was an unusually hot day for April, around 90 degrees, and. as one of the "walkers" who lived in the older center of town, I remember lining up to walk home from school, which was up on a hill near the center of town, near to which I also lived. When I arrived home, both of my parents were home.

"Boy, It's hot out there," I was starting to say. My father said, "Something happened to Grampy." I thought to myself, " Something--did he break his leg?" They had last been to see us right before their annual trip to Florida in the winter, and I thought perhaps there had been an accident. I remembered his wave from the car as they pulled out of our driveway, some weeks before, fedora on his head. "He died," I was told. I remember repeating the question and then, knowing it was the thing to do, weeping. I remeber hugging one of my parents, my father, I think. My mother was also there. They said they thought maybe it had been too much for him to take the trip to Florida. My dad said, "you're a brave boy." He asked me if I wanted some ice cream, and I remember the soothing icy vanilla shinking the lump in my throat. After that there was a funeral, but we kids did not go. I don't remember exactly what I did. Some months later, my widowed grandmother would visit my parents' home. My younger brother was seated with me and my grandmother around the breakfast table having cereal when he announced, "I know where grampy is," like it was a riddle. Everyone stared. "He's in heaven." My grandmother put her face in her hands and wept. I basically called my brother "stupid" and told him to "shut up." This was around the time of the moon landing. Some years later, in 1972, I would be facing her death. Sitting in a car on a rainy cool day in early May, waiting while my father conferred with the doctors at the hospital, with my mother in the front passenger seat. I remember crying, knowing that she was going to die, and saying in the car, "Why can't we be like computers?" In other words, why do we have to feel? Why hurt? Again, I was a "brave boy" in the eyes of my father. We got out of there in a hurry that Mother's day weekend, flying in a shuttle (back when there was still such a thing) to our major northeastern city airport. With the passage of my first grandfather in December 1971, this made 3 out of 4 grandparents, all making it past seventy. But the fourth grandparent, my mother's mother, a relative kid born in 1909, would live on, part of every family gathering, a touchstone to the deep organic past of mother of the mother of the mother, down to the very soil, until late in 1993. And prior to each of their deaths, a superstition would develop whenever thoughts of their deaths would intrude: "never mind" I would say to myself as an incantation, "Never mind!" Or, "I would not like that at all." I would literallly repeat that to myself as surety against their untimely demise.

Why can't we be more like computers? Tell me, old man, look at your life, I'm a lot like you were. Old man look at my life, I'm a lot like you were. But I'm not any more. Yet I'll get old just the same, as the alternative is just to final to contemplate.

I coined a cool metaphor today: Apples to apples, dust to dust! (mixing Apples to Apples, Oranges to Oranges, with Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust.) I also used the word "menopausing" in a sentence today.

Pinch me, it's almost May

Every year at this time, I have to step back and savor the reality that Spring is really this wonderful time of year. That balmy summer really is right around the corner. That there won't be frost, or ice or snow for months to come. May, the finest month of the year, is here. So, a little quontret to honor her!

May

Beautiful month that precedes June

June

Ah, the summer's almost here

July

Hotter than blazes, baseball, hotdogs, firecrackers

August

Will this heat ever end?

September

Were those Christmas decorations I saw at the mall?

A little ditty we used to use to choose who was "it"

'My mother and your mother were hanging out some clothes. My mother punched your mother right in the nose. What color was the blood? ' [Red] 'R-e-d spells red, and you are not the one to be "it!"' This would have been the late 1960's or early '70's in an unnamed northeastern state. If anyone else remembers this, please comment.

19 years ago yesterday

It was 19 years ago yesterday, April 25, 1986, that I met the woman who would turn out to be predecessor to the woman I would marry. This is a private anniversary but one that I choose to commemorate online.

I am

Watch your backs, gents. Who've you snubbled. Who've you looked down upon. And rubbed her nose in it? That's who. She, who is the instrument by which your karma's gonna get used up real fast. Are you afraid? Of the law of the universe? A law by which the living account themselves dead and the dead living? Who's going to care which of us chunks of tomato flesh in the blender is going to get unrecognizably mutilated and incorporated into another loop of thee karmic manifold. Oye, oye, oye. The honorable "I" is about to speak: (he-hem) I (saieth the LORD even before the wuerco who wipes your butt-crack was even born) am. I am. I am. I, the subjective eye of this all-too-objective hurricane, am, is, was. In wiping my own sordid buttock folds, I am. In sweeping the accumulated vermin and human detritus of a fortnight's negligence, I am. In reading the words attributed to masters before me, I am. I am. I am. I am.

A Good Sunday

Spent about 3 hours aboard the boats today, my wife and me in our kayaks. We load them onto the roof of our Volvo and we are off to the east side of town, where the lakeshore touches tony neighborhoods and nests of fishing shanties. We went in at our usual spot, a secluded putting-in at the end of a public street, in an unassuming neighborhood. With both kayaks in the water, and the car safely parked by my wife, we each gingerly slid our bottoms into the slightly tippy boats, and it was shove-1, shove-2, and off. A glide, a tap with the paddle on the flat water, and the boat sat pretty, waiting for its partner, my wife's boat, to join us. Now this is a big lake, about 30 miles long, and it can be rough. But today, on an unnaturally balmy and calm April day, the water was an impressionist painting, smooth, flickering spring pastel colors. And we were in that place. And no matter how deeply we went in, home was always 180 degrees away. So we paddled across the bay, to a point named for an old insane asylum, got out and stretched our legs. On the way back, it was sun, sore muscles, and the satisfaction of having nailed a solid five-mile trip on our third day out this season. A very warm, very early season for this place, I might add. Scarce two or three weeks past we were still slopping around the white stuff. And it's not too late for him to make just one more appearance, kids!