Jacob and Ava, The Scrap book

This is one of my "Friday Flash Fiction" stories written for, and appearing at Amwriting.org A fine site for writers, and for readers.

The old man Jacob sat in his rocking chair, older than dirt he thought, the both of them.

It was that week between Christmas, with all the familying whirlwinds, and New Year's Eve. It was hard to get excited about New Year's, having seen so many of them come and go. It was hard to get excited about much of anything these days. He couldn't do much anymore, felt he hadn't done nearly enough for most of his life, and now his times of doing seemed to be mostly over.

He thought about this year, and all that had happened in the world and in his life. There were so many bad things happening in the world. There were good things too. It seemed like nothing was as clear-cut, as black and white as it used to be, for him or for most other people. Nothing was certain any more, and worse, life no longer seemed to hold the hope, the magic, that it once had.

Jacob went over and over his life in his mind, remembering when he was young and thought he knew it all. He had run out of tears years ago, for all that was lost or had never been because he was such a fool. As much as he had thought he'd known, he had known nothing, not even how much he was loved, until it seemed too late.

His daughter Ava, bless her heart, had called him the other day. If he had still been able to jump he might have jumped right out of his skin. He still hated the sound of a telephone, even now, when it rang so seldom.

She wanted to come over and go through his old photos with him, build a scrap-book, she said.

He reminded her that he could no longer see very well. What would be the point?

She said it would give them something to do together, something that she hoped they'd enjoy. She would build the scrapbook for him, all he had to do was tell her about the pictures.

He thought seeing all those old photos, thinking on those times now would probably hurt as much as they'd help, remind him of chances lost, possibilities died on the vine. But still, he did want to see them again, and to show them to her to remind them both his life had not always been as it was now.

Besides, he didn't have the heart to tell her no. He suspected she was afraid he might die anytime now, and wanted to have something better to remind her of his life than the scattered pictures he kept in worn out boxes.

When she came over she seemed to have enough stuff with her to build a world he thought. Boxes and boxes and portfolios of fancy papers. Tools and gadgets and bottles also came in the door and just kept coming. When he asked her why so much she said she brought it all so she'd be sure to have "just the right stuff".

And as they labored over each page he realized she did, in every case, have just the right stuff. Not only did she build up each page of multiple layers of different kinds of paper and fabric, she added other things.

For the pictures of the beach she found sand and shells, drift wood and dried seaweed, even scents in bottles for that "finishing touch".

For the forest pictures oak leaves and pine needles, a tuft of deer fur, the smell of old trees, and finally one single pinion, the silent flight feather of a great horned owl.

For the pictures of them together she had tiny bits of fabric one or another had worn, a piece of a toy, a ticket stub from a favorite event. Ava always found just the right, no - perfect, the perfect thing to finish off each page, to seal the power of the best, most important memories of his life .

Rather than taking an afternoon as he'd originally thought, it wound up taking the entirety of the week to finish the project. Some evenings she'd stop and fix him something to eat before continuing on her own, till long after he'd fallen asleep in his chair. He'd wake to find her curled up on the sofa under one of her mother's old afghans before the fire, and he could have sworn he saw a faint shimmer, he imagined like a magic faery dust, about her hair and shoulders.

Even as she worked through this with him Ava watched his remaining strength fading, day after day, though his mood seemed to actually get better. She was sure she saw a little of the old twinkle come back to his eyes.

He was napping in his chair as she finally finished the last page. She carried the thick book, practically a tome. over to him and placed it on his lap. Gently she roused him. "Dad, here it is. I'm going to go straighten up around the house a bit, you have a look, see what you think", and she was off in the other rooms.

Ava hoped he would find it as magical as she knew it had turned out to be. She imagined him in his chair slowly turning each page, discovering not only his own memories of each event, but also perhaps a new sense of the presence of the places, people, and things. She knew there was more depth to each story than either of them had been aware of. They had captured not just his impressions, but the essences of each moment, each day, that would make them new for him again.

As she puttered around the old house she began to feel him in there. It was a talent she had always had, to feel what he and a few others felt. Tired. She felt tired, and wondering if it was her tiredness or his, she went back in to check on him. "You okay, Dad? Do you like it?"

"It's marvelous, just marvelous, Honey" and he smiled at her, really smiled, as she hadn't seen in many years.

"I'm so glad you like it, Dad. I'll just be in the other room if you need me."

The book would sustain him. The book would hold him, as in a loved one's warm embrace, until the end of days.

When Ava returned to the room sometime later she found the book in his chair where he'd sat with it as he and the book became one.

She cradled it close to her heart as she gazed at the still glowing embers in the fireplace he had built so many years ago. "Happy New Year's, Dad."

Taking Aaron to school

Aaron has been in first grade for about a month now.

The first week we started out walking together, him holding my hand all the way to his class room. After the first day I was the only first grade parent to do that.

Ours is one of those close to an elementary school neighborhoods filled at that time of morning with kids, moms with strollers, grandpas with small dogs, smiling crossing guard ladies with florescent flags... The school is about four blocks away and he would fill that time and space pointing out items of interest - "that cool racing car"(a Nissan 3000 gt)," That cat's name is Max" (one of that particular kind of Siamese who want to be in the middle of everything), "Oh My Gosh that's a huge Christmas tree!"(a Red Wood that fills one corner front yard and up about a hundred feet).

The second week we still walked together, but he didn't seem to need to hold my hand any more, preferring to stroll along on his own, pointing out kids he knows and greeting them, petting Max the Siamese cat, lobbying to take the "short cut"(about half again as long). We've had to have discussions about how most kids are freaked out by being hugged, especially at or near school or in public-it's kinda part of his boggle. He does well on those walks at stopping at corners and waiting for Dad. I only have to tell him to stop once or twice, as opposed to his usual three or four times when he's doing something at home-again, part of his boggle, hard to get his attention.

This last week he has decided it's better to drive there. The first couple of days he wanted me to park the car so I could still walk him to his classroom. Now he'd rather I just drop him off in the turn out so he can walk in on his own, like a "big kid".

I still watch him until he passes by the principal at the door, often stopping for a hug, and is in the school building itself.

Time, as they say, marches on.

I'm going to miss walking him to school.

snippet

My older brother G. used to live right next to University of Utah. One night while I was visiting him he wound up having to go down the block to deal with a noise issue. Young presumably college guys were playing loud guitars from a second floor-over the side walk balcony. He did not go to tell them to knock it off, but rather so he could tune up their guitars for them. Imagine being young college guys thinkin' yer Rockin' out cool when some old(40ish) guy comes down the side walk, stops under your balcony and says "look, if you're going to do that, at least let me tune em up for ya boys" life is full of small, cool, yet humbling moments.

Just for fun, here's video from a friend of mine -
Back Porch Buddah - Neighbors

Cleaning out the work shop

Today I was watching Don lower a green plastic drain pipe into a trailer with  a John Deere tractor. The pipe was maybe thirty two inches in diameter by twelve feet long. One end was sawed off at about a forty five degree angle. The other, the factory bell end, is the female end of a joint.They are just like the joints on a stalk of bamboo. Suddenly, I'm standing there watching Don load the world's largest cutting of Lucky Bamboo into a trailer.  I guess these days a fellow might need a really big piece of lucky bamboo.

Standing at an old work bench later. I"m cleaning off a lot of small but vastly handy tools, bits, drivers, small pressure and vacuum gauges, parital rolls of teflon plumbing tape, probably a gazillion screws, bolts and sundry other fasteners, many small bits of wire, and, and, and. There was about thirty or forty years worth of  accumulated small odds, ends, time savers and sometimes essential little things that Uncle Bill had on the back of his work bench. He died back last November.  We still do some work on boats and stuff out of there, but we also figure on having to move out of the rented space to make room for the new owners - like any time now. So....Sorting through all these small, dusty objects of utility, I can't help but hear Bill saying " you're going to want to have that right where you can get ahold of it when you need it."

Christmas gone, Playing catch-up at work, Nargles

Cousin Don and Aaron, who moves too fast for "sport" mode.

Aaron, at Grandma's Christmas Eve.

A REALLY old Santa

The Granddaughters:

Zoe, Athena & Winter, with our daughter Tiffany, Mom of two.

Christmas is done & gone. It was a good time. Good family times.

Portland has indeed gotten more snow in the last two weeks than has ever been recorded on the ground at once before. EVER.

Thankfully, it has warmed up to the mid forties (Fahrenheit) the last few days, so that snow is pretty much just a memory now.

Uncle had to go back to the hospital Sunday, just as we were getting ready to eat another dinner. a Really unsettling combination of high blood pressure, very high heart rate, erratic heart beat, etc.

They think they've got him back to what passes for normal for his system.

He should be coming back home tomorrow.

Disturbing, but unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence for him over the last couple of years. The Hospital stays are getting way too frequent. I've lost track of how many and when over the last year or two.

Most of the rest of this week will be boat head jobs(sanitation systems) and broken fresh water systems (from the cold, not adequately prepared for by some).

The plumbing/sanitation work actually pays a lot better than the less technical, less nasty work I do on the outside of boats. There's a good reason for that. They don't build these systems to be worked on. When I get into them, I am generally in very confined spaces, with very nasty stuff, that really wants to get as intimate with me as possible. Again with the "Perversity of the inanimate" as Amelia would say. I could have provided any number of detailed photo illustrations. I doubt that's really necessary or appropriate here now. Just take my word for it.

Aside from the higher pay scale, the major gratification for doing marine sanitation is in how people react when the system that wasn't working, that they knew nothing about and didn't want to get into anyhow, is once again doing it's job(usually better than it did before it broke-how I roll :-) People who might have a reputation for being less than gracious to their own employees can be downright Lavishly effusive with their praise and gratitude for the guy who fixes their boat head. Especially if it's say, the second day out on a week long cruise, fifty miles down river from home, with the wife and teenage daughter - and both heads quit working.

How did we get from cute kids on Christmas eve to mental images of stinky non-functional boat sanitation systems?...

I guess the tie-in is that it's all part of the widely diverse patterns of my everyday life.

And still sometimes it gets to be ...just more of the same. What's the phrase - "Loonnnng stretches of real boredom, punctuated by brief periods of absolute panic" I suspect that probably says a lot more about my mindset than about my circumstances..."I suspect nargles." (luna Lovegood, from HARRY POTTER and The PRISONER of AZCABAN).

Fine then, consider this my not well laid out or well organized...or even particularly lucid version of a Sleeping with Bread Monday.

I think you can figure out the parts I'm happy about and not ....

Have a Happy and SAFE New Year's Eve.

more later.....

Stuff & Nonsense(probably)

German glass, older than dirt(which didn't exist, as a word until sometime in the 1940s)

The "Indian" Angel ornament, from our first Christmas together.

Our Christmas tree Angel. Pretty old, though young enough for electric lights, from Ginny's life before me.

This is Aaron, snow angel-ing at the beginning of this, the biggest snow storm in Portland, Oregon since 1968. Um, that's 40 years for you math majors.

It's been interesting and challenging.

This kind of thing used to be a common occurrence for me in my Wichita, Kansas days. (HI Todd & Amy!)

Not so much here in the "Rose City", city of bridges, city of the ever present, nine months of the year rain.

Cleaning snow off of my lovely wife's little Ford.

Yesterday, when there was only about half a foot of snow, round two or three, after all the previous week's snow had melted.

Yesterday's depth of snow on the Subaru's windshield. a mere 7 or 8 inches.

Today's snow on the Subaru, more like a foot or so of drift. We actually only got ....well, almost a foot here in this part of town, over some ice, over the prior snow, over some ice.

The airport here has been canceling flights like the great CATACLYSM cancelled the flights of pterodactyls...

OK, maybe not with that finality.

Many people stranded at PDX.

They are saying quite a few of them won't get flights out now until after Christmas. I very much feel for them. I was once stranded by an erstwhile charter for three days in Seattle. It was January, 1976. I was 17. Some very nice retired Pacific Lutheran University Profs came and rescued me and put me up till the next Charter came to take me to Hong Kong. 'nother story.

When I go outside, to smoke(haven't quite quit yet) I always find myself looking to the sky. I've been looking to the sky, it seems, all my life. The sky here is not as big, as expansive, as the sky back home in Kansas. They Call Wyoming "Big Sky Country". I've been there. It's got nothing on Kansas for BIG skies.

Still, when I look to the sky, especially at night, where ever I am, I am always reminded of how huge the world is, still, even in this info-age without borders, compared to me....and how tiny the world is, compared to the immensities of the universe. (I sometimes go to Science/Astronomy sites just to remind me how un-fathomably huge the universe is).

I've been holed up in a two bedroom apartment for three days with my wife and our 4 year old, who is literally bouncing off the walls. It's actually been not too bad for me. Ginny has been down with migraine/nausea/low grade fever for a couple of those. She got back up to help assemble and decorate our artificial tree(economic, not aesthetic decision). Bless her holiday heart.

This season of the year I am always reminded, as I'm sure many are, of so many Christmases past. Fifty of them, on down through the years, some better than others. But...All with that more sweet than bitter feeling of belonging, of wanting the best for friends and family, of generally love and good will - at least on my part, and I prefer to think in the hearts of most.

I wish not for the Norman Rockwell fantasy Christmases so well ingrained in the hopes and expectations of our naive youths, but for the sense of belonging and of hope that comes with the Meaning of Christmas. I not much of a preacher. But, thanks God, for this and everything.

Thus endeth the nostalgic, possibly sappy ramblings of a middle aged Guy.

Merry Christmas.

wearing my brother's uncle's shirt

The above photos: Part of why I like the Pacific Northwest - Blooming Rose & Color changing oak - Same Yard - Same Day.

This is a re posting of my most popular post - ever. Interesting, because I think I've had better. Anyone out there, what do you think?

I'm sitting here wearing a shirt that belonged to my brother, and before that to My Uncle Henry, now Deceased. Whenever I wear this shirt I think of them both.

My Oldest brother, a good guy, talented guy, Very unusual - don't see him near often enough. I remember him driving me in his '47 Chevy sedan, back seat like a sofa, living room's worth of space to the front seat.

Taught me my 1st guitar cords, showed me Hong Kong on Chinese New years.

Uncle Henry, died decades ago and I never did see him all that often. Nor were we especially close. But, for several years in the mid to late sixties, as I recall, I would go spend a couple of weeks during summer with him and my Aunt Bea(yes really, Aunt Bea) in Arkansas. Ok, I grew up in Kansas. Even so, Sixties Arkansas was kind of odd, though I knew that less then than now.

Doesn't matter. What matters is the feeling I get when I wear Uncle Henry's shirt. I remember him, Not very tall, in western cut khakis, cowboy hat & big old cigar, driving me around the small town of Mountain Home, in his Ford pickup, where it seemed from people's reactions that he was King. He was a good guy. kind of guy never had a harsh word for anyone. I once saw him riding his quarter horse next to Aunt Bea on hers. They both were sitting full Silver concho'd Parade saddle in a Rodeo Opening. Very happy & proud. Easy going as always.

I have a chambray work shirt of my Dad's. When I wear it I think of him, at home back in Kansas. Dad's older now than when he wore that shirt to fix railroad electrical stuff, or fix our barn, or sit at dusk on the old rock table listening to the crickets and watching the fire flies. He taught me about tools, and fishing, and being nice to animals while in shirts like that(him not the animals). I also don't see my Dad nearly often enough. 2,000 miles is very far, made farther by the limitations of personal economics.

I have a polo shirt that belonged to my other brother. Like wise, wearing it invokes memories of him. from that last time I saw him, back to when he taught me to walk train rails, carefully balancing along the top edge of the rail road track rails that wound around two sides of my Grandpa's farm. I think I was about seven then. It was summer, hot in Missouri, hound dogs & cotton mouths....hillside caves, crawdads in a minnow bucket in the well house, the smell of the old barn......I don't see that brother nearly often enough either.

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Wearing someone else's shirt, someone you have looked up to, tends to cause one, to try to behave different. Interesting, that.

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Okay, I don't own any shirts of my Mom's that would be just creepy.

but then, I don't need a shirt to remind me of Mom(even though I forgot her birthday until four days later this year - D'oh!) ...and I don't see her often enough either...Ya gettin' a common thread here?

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I have had many shirts, bought at great prices, from a bunch of different thrift stores. I have no idea who owned them. I sometimes wonder......

The Pumpkin patch

Mt Hood Rail Road Great Pumpkin Express.......big fun for all the kiddies. It was very good with/for Aaron. About a fifty mile drive up the Beautiful Columbia River Gorge to Hood River, Oregon. Bas-xactly where they created both windsurfing and kite-boarding. BIG RIVER-BIG WINDS. lots of River GORGE(it deserves all caps). Small tourist/river recreation/ orchard and vineyard town. Old train. kid pumpkin patch excursion on Sunday afternoon. about an hour train ride each way to and from the pumpkin patch/pasture. They had a little three piece band playing everything from Old McDonald to Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and Neil Young covers, a small hay ride around the pasture, little Hay maze(it was great-Arron could see over it-no freaking out), "bouncy house"-avoided like the plague, and he didn't mind, and all the other stuff you'd expect. Aaron behaved just fine, even totally wound up - we just kinda let him go. As usual, things seemed to go better for him when he wasn't trying to interact with other kids, though he did have a great time running around the pumpkin patch and throwing hay at/with the other boys about his same age.

Hood River is one of those charming, heavy on the Artist/craftsman populace little shopping/gallery/micro brew-winery places where I would love to live - IF I could figure out how to make a living without having to commute sixty miles into Portland(the Gorge frequently gets snowed or iced in during winter)

.....and that was our Sunday - the end.

what's important

There is a lot of stuff going on in the world around us all right now. BIG STUFF. important stuff. Or is it just URGENT STUFF? One of the differentiations I think we all seem to miss sometimes.....the difference between URGENT and IMPORTANT.

Not to be too light about THE WAR, or THE ECONOMY or HEALTH CARE or, or or..........

But, in reading the blogs of these wonderfully lucid and articulate writers I follow(I hope you know who you are), I find none of those things often mentioned. Not hardly even in passing. These things are BIG. These things are IMPORTANT. But - They're not what matters MOST. Obviously, what matters most to us is our FAMILIES. Politics, Wars, Economies, etc., these things change history. But family IS our history. IS our future, our past and our present.

The election in the U.S. will happen. it will or will not change the course of many things. The economy, likewise will do it's thing. Money will be tight(I'm used to that, though it's tighter lately-ho hum). The War, which ever one you're following or not, will progress. We pray for all those directly in Wars path.

Again, What is Most important to all us is our families.

I find in that something so human, so universal(and not just of humans).

Watch people of different cultures with their small children and I think you will see that we all love our kids most, no matter who we are, where we're from, what our socioeconomic place or ethnographic. Or, watch animals with their babies....it's the same.

It does a heart good.

I thank you for the insights into your lives, and those of your wonderful families.

....and I'm still reeling over Beck's lines about her grandmother, the part about her grandmother's father, coming across the snow to meet his child - on the other side.

Is that not the epitome of what we all hope for in the end?