Dearest Blog Reader
I hope this blog finds you doing well. I am doing well. We
had a bit if rain this past week. As a result, I cut the grass. Actually, I cut
the buckhorn and queen Ann's lace in a strange game of connect the dots. These
hardy species had sent their twenty foot long taproots half way to China
Bev, Grace and I went to Bloomington Indianapolis towards Bloomington
As I said, on Saturday, we were on our way to celebrate
Ben's birthday. The evening before Bev and I were playing a game of "What
do you remember about the day?" in this case the occasion for these
memories was the day of Ben's birth. Bev's memories were much sharper than
mine. Ben was nearly two weeks late. She was nine months pregnant during those
balmy days of July. Ben was our first child. The element, of the shear terror
and warnings of the sisterhood of mothers who had gone through the pangs of
childbirth, had apparently honed Bev's memory receptors to the consistency of
superglue. She remembered what bed she had slept in the night before, the
hide-a-bed. It had more room and was more comfortable. She remembered where and
when her water broke; as she sat up in that bed. She remembered that the
hospital room had no pillow; that the nurse asked the doctor what he was eating
before he was called in to the delivery. She felt bad taking for Dr. Watson
away from a shrimp dinner.
Alas, I remember wondering; can I get across the street to
the little neighborhood ice-cream stand and back before Bev notices that I am
gone? If I was sure that I could have returned with a pillow, I probably could
have pulled it off (as long as I was careful not to drip chocolate ice-cream on
my shirt front.) In an effort to recover for my poor showing in the remembering
game, I furtively, typed in historic events on July 20. I was hoping to show
that I could "remember" some grand event that happened on that day to
show that I was alive and not in some comatose state of "I'm just along
for the ride to dorkdom." Google, you let me down. Nothing.
I did see that Ben does share an anniversary date though
with an important event. Apollo 11 landed on the moon a score of years prior to
Ben landing on the hospital floor. "What Bev, you don't remember that Dr.
Watson dropped Ben? I remember it as if it were yesterday." I do remember
that lunar landing and moon walk. I remember sitting around our new color tv,
hurriedly purchased 7 months earlier for Super Bowl 3, ironically waiting on
those grainy black and white images to be transmitted across space and time to
our living room. The house was filled with high school kids from the church
group my parents led. There was food everywhere. It seemed that every light was
on in the house, and we were waiting and waiting on Neal Armstrong to make his
way down that ladder. My dad was sitting on an ottoman leaning in close to the
TV so that he could hear Walter Cronkite above the din.
A box of firecrackers were at his feet, a lighter in his
pocket. As soon as Neal had philosophized about steps and leaps, dad was out
the door celebrating to such an extent that the next door neighbor called the
police on us. This was the moment of my
father's apogee in my eyes; his giant step and leap all rolled into one. He
told the officer, "What do you mean we can't? The President told us that
this was a day of celebrating." That was the high point
Like I said, that was the high point
Ben is breaking free of that same generational orbit. It is
nearly complete. In fact, we were visiting him on the day after his birthday.
The real party was Friday night. The one where "I've never had as big a
party as that before; " a party with bands and friends and more friends;
his lovely exuberant friends.
Yes, forward forty some years from those exciting times, I
am sitting on the edge of my chair waiting for word back from a far and distant
world. To paraphrase Neil Armstrong; "Houston, Tranquility Base here, the
Eagle has flown."
Take care
Roger
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