Bittersweet anniversary

Twelve years ago today (it was December 3rd in 2000) Tal and I drove to Atlanta.  There we met Whitby.  He was a personality from day one.

William, Tal's grandson, had married earlier in the fall and his new mother-in-law raised miniature Schnauzers.  The newly-weds had driven to Ohio to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with Robin's family.  While there William called and announced to his grandfather and me that he was holding our new dog.  Its most striking nine-week-old feature, according to William?  He looked you straight in the eye and held the gaze.  That he did.  Always.


This is Whitby's first portrait made on Monday morning, December 4th.
From that day on he was my favorite subject!

He made the trip from Ohio to Atlanta with Robin and William that Thanksgiving weekend and we went to fetch him the next.  He captivated us from the very start.  Without question, our hearts belonged to him.

Today marks six weeks since Whitby disappeared.  Twelve years minus six weeks.  Wherever he ended up our hearts are following and searching for him still.  Sigh.  But, how we laugh as we reminisce.  With nearly 12 years of memories to draw on we won't run out anytime soon.   

Thanks for everything, buddy.

Oh, and you can come home anytime now ...

Six degrees

There's an idea, called six degrees of separation, which suggests that everyone of us is only about six steps away in terms of acquaintance from any other person on the earth.  Sounds far-fetched, maybe, but I understand that in many instances it works.  We've all had the experience of meeting someone who knows someone we know.  We've all though or even said, "It's a small world."  And, now with the likes of Facebook ...

In this post I am not referring to that theory.  Rather, the six degrees has to do with the difference between the temperature inside and outside our house.  It's late afternoon and we're still waiting for the HVAC technician.  He has called several times.  Sounds pretty frazzled.  We're mostly cheerful.  But, it's 90 degrees inside and 96 degrees in the shade of the screened porch.  Only six degrees of separation. 

It's not the most pleasant Saturday we've ever had.  We have stayed quiet.  The less movement the better.  All our meals have been cold.  The best part has been our mutual reminiscing about childhood and the unairconditioned summers we've known.  Good memories, funny stories. 

A very warm, but satisfying day.  We can survive another one if we have to.

I scream!

It's not what you think.  I'm not having a meltdown kind of a day.

My brother shared a photograph on Facebook.  That's what set off this one-thing-leading-to-another line of thought.  The title of the image is "Ice Cream!"  So, the title of the post could be nothing else, could it?

My siblings and I didn't grow up with this being a sight we beheld or an experience we had often. But, when we visited Mom's parents in Milford MI each summer, we came to recognize the sound of the ice cream truck long before it appeared.  I'm thinking "Turkey in the Straw," blaring tinny and ever closer.

Most evenings after supper thin dimes (how many depended on how many grandchildren were present) appeared on the kitchen table.  One for each of us.  That's all it took in the late 1950s.  Waiting on that paved driveway (a big deal to my mind, a paved driveway) was such a time of anticipation.  An ice cream truck just had to be one of the wonders of the world!

Children have their own wonders now.  I'm too out of touch to know what they are.  But, I hope some old photograph -- in whatever form images take, say, 50 years from now -- or a few bars of a song will transport them back to a simpler time the way this fuzzy picture did me. 

I returned to a sweet scene in my memory -- the street where my grandparents lived and where my mother grew up, a street where there were other children to play with, a street where, even though I was a visitor, I felt known and welcome. 

I returned to a moment of sterling security when the sight of dimes on a kitchen table equated to permission, to invitation and to unquestioned love.

Thanks, Paul.

Reintroduced

When Sarah called this week to remind me that the sunflowers at White Oaks were in full bloom, I had a moment.  It was more than a just moment.  For a vivid split second I felt myself -- I was -- probably younger than five and standing near my father's fenced garden.  So tall sunflowers bloomed along the fence.  Dad's voice was saying something about how large the flowers are and how they keep their faces to the sun.  Before I recognized what was happening I was back.  Wow.

Early memories are few.  I do in a vague sort of way actually remember the garden and the sunflowers and my father's explaining.  It must have been very early.  Time for leisure activities like a vegetable garden and sunflowers didn't last long in my father's life.  But, after that encounter I could recognize a sunflower when I saw one.

So, today, while on errands along "the Ridge," I stopped at White Oaks to make pictures.  Alone in acres of yellow saucers, loudly a-hum with bees, I let the 55-or-so years compress, stepping back and forth between locations, realities, looking at sunflowers as though I'd never seen one before. 

Wondrous.  Simply wondrous.

Uncle Ed

Before we left home this morning bound for Chattanooga and the reunion of Tal's 3rd Army Reserve Rifle Team I checked on our cardinal nest by the screened porch and spent several minutes reveling in the first of our Asiatic lilies to bloom, large and brilliantly white.  As we were settling into our room at the Chattanooga Choo Choo some six hours later my cell phone rang and I knew who it would be and the nature of the call.

My mother's younger brother and only sibling, Edward, after a long illness had died.  It struck me that during the same hour I looked one last time at that wary, protective female cardinal with her two helpless chicks and stood speechless at the beauty of new flowers at the front of the house this dear man I've known and loved all my days was making his mighty transition from this life to whatever comes next.  It seems only fitting to offer this morning's photograph to his memory.

Edward P Johnson

07 December 1934 - 06 May 2012

May your rest this day be in peace and your dwelling place the paradise of God.

The power of memory

It wasn't the Grande Mariner, but it was the Maid of the Mist.  And, in the scheme of things today, that distinction made all the difference.

I had a wonderful time doing the touristy thing, the boat ride with Tal and our group.  The whole process -- filing off the bus to being herded to the dock to receiving the blue, hooded poncho, to boarding the boat -- was completely organized.  There was no possibility of going the wrong way, being separated from the group, missing the boat.

Once on the Niagara River and as we approached the falls, I was very nearly overcome.  The water was one thing -- thunderous, surreal, baffling.  More important than the obvious for me was the power of memory -- insistent, clear, touching.

Was it the summer of Lucia's infancy or was she a year and a half?  I don't remember.  Either way she was in a stroller.  On our annual family vacation that year we traveled as usual to see Mom's parents in Milford MI.  The plan had been for Lucia to stay with Grandma and Grandpa while the rest of us went to Niagara Falls.  Grandpa, though, had been ill.  Mom and Dad determined that leaving Lucia would be too much to ask.

Forty-six or forty-seven years ago the set up at the falls and going on the Maid of the Mist was different than now (and I think, too, we were on the Canadian side, but I'm not at all sure).  Mom and Lucia had stayed on the rim, missing out on the adventure.  Dad had the three of us in tow descending to the level of the river.  There were dressing rooms.  Dad and Paul went one way.  Joyce and I had custody of each other.  When we all emerged, we were clad in heavy, yellow raincoats, duck-tail-looking, yellow hats, galoshes, having left our own footwear in shoe check.  Strangely, it was that part -- the dressing room procedure that I remember the most clearly of the whole experience.

Anyway, as I stood on the deck of the Maid of the Mist this afternoon, deep inside the cataract carved by the water, the three falls pouring forth, the sound near huge, the mist almost heavy as rain, my knees seemed to want to give way and my eyes made a pretty heavy mist of their own.  The words were so clear.  I was a pre-teen again.  Dad's voice was shouting to us over the roar of the water, "Look for your mom. Wave to Lucia and Mom." 

Grief does work its way in at the most unexpected times.  My dad, gone 13 months this week, was right there.  Without doubt.

I waved.

Thanksgiving and remembrance

My mother, Tal and I have arrived back at Mom's home after spending a portion of this week with my brother and his family in Mechanicsville VA. As I took my turn driving today, I kept my mind busy trying to recall how many Thanksgivings I've had the good fortune to spend with the Virginia Tarboxes.

Although I couldn't arrive at a firm number, as many of the family as could began gathering with them in the fall of 1989, when my sister was living in New York City, I was at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria and our parents were still at Brookgreen Gardens here on South Carolina's Waccamaw Neck. It was the perfect place to rendezvous. So, more Thanksgivings than not during the past 21 years.

The numbers who sat down for the Thanksgiving meal over the years grew and diminished depending on the year. When the nine of us circled up to offer a blessing before yesterday's feast, however, the sadness which mingled with our thanksgivings was palpable. Not only is this the first major holiday since my dad's death, but three others who were part of the early gatherings in that household are also gone: my mother's father and both of my sister-in-law's parents.

The sadness did not overwhelm the occasion. First of all, new to yesterday's circle is my nephew's darling girlfriend. A new generation is coming into its own. Second is the influence the four who have died had on everyone who held hands in that circle yesterday. We are who we are at least in part because we knew those four people; we are better for having been part of their lives.  Each of them played a role in giving that circle life.

Thanksgiving was not the same without them. But, they are not entirely gone so long as we hold them in memory.  Our remembering gives them life.

... who from their labors rest

The message waiting light was flashing yesterday afternoon when we arrived home from Columbia. A colleague needed to arrange supply coverage for tonight's All Saints' Day liturgy. At the time we talked he wasn't certain he would need to be away, but he wanted to have everything ready if he did. So, I agreed to be on call and began thinking through a sermon.

A flood of memory. A long night. And, that hymn* -- William Walsham How's words and Ralph Vaughan Williams' music, Sine Nomine -- that monumental, soaring hymn in my head.

All Saints' Day, the day the church has set aside to commemorate and remember "all the saints, who from their labors rest." For years and years that list, my personal list, has included four grandparents and an array of people, family and friends alike, who played a part in my life during their days. I always listed them for the prayers offered during liturgy. I always let mind have free reign, recalling each one, a sweet and sad process on November 1st.

This year I added too many names to my list, among them my father. He rests from his labor this All Saints' Day and I miss him.

I just heard from my colleague. He's going to be able to officiate tonight. The sermon doesn't need to be finished. But, my remembering can go on.


*Hymn #287, The Hymnal 1982, Church Publishing

It's only a building

Spent a few damp minutes mid-morning today as I struggled to take in the news of the chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria -- lost yesterday afternoon in a catastrophic fire. No one was in the building at the time, blessedly, and none of the other buildings on campus were affected, thanks to the determined efforts of Alexandria firefighters.

The photographs here are all borrowed, the one of the chapel's interior (immediately below) from a photograher identified only as Ronnie R on flickr and those of the building as it burned from the online album of an individual who witnessed the scene, known on Facebook as bcramey.









The most stark view, however, and what brought the building's loss into deep reality for me is from the iPhone of Dr Stephen L Cook, professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. His steady, silent movement from the vicinity of the library toward the chapel, the only commentary footsteps through the dry fall leaves and the wail of approaching emergency vehicles, chilled my blood and brought on the relief of tears.

Click here for Dr Cook's video (it's a safe link): Biblische Ausbildung: Fire at Virginia Seminary!#links#links

While it is only a building, it was a place of refuge, of comfort, of challenge, of inspiration, indeed, a memory-maker for many thousands. Everyone of us will grieve the trauma of its destruction.