Memories in Flight

The moving effort took center stage at home yesterday as my wife and I spent considerable time in the basement sorting out the debris of living in the same place for ten years. It’s incredible how much “stuff” gets acquired and then trundled off for an ignominious existence in the cellar. I repeatedly asked myself – what was I thinking when I bought this? – but of course that question needed to be asked by my favorite Panamanian in most cases.

As always with this type endeavor I ran smack dab into a lot of memories. Finding an old favorite toy of one of the kids or photos misfiled in one of those mysterious boxes that basements seem to breed. I sent one of the photos to my favorite son as part of his continuing information campaign (blitzkrieg really) trying to convince the ABFA to get a golden retriever. It showed him with his puppy Skyla back in 1996, I don’t think the ABFA stands a chance in this battle.

My Son and Skyla

I also ran across a packet of letters we salvaged from my mother’s house after her death in 2003. For some reason she kept all the letters (back when letters were still written) I wrote to her from the time I joined the Army in 1978 until the early 1980s. I’m going to read a couple each day to see what the hell I was thinking back in the day. It’s interesting to note that I was younger than my son is now when I penned these. 

Letters to Mom

I also packed up my movie library last night and was surprised at how jarring this was. Seeing the empty shelves on what was the first thing I always saw walking into the family room became a poignant reminder that we really are leaving this place.

The Jarring Empty Shelves

It must be a day for eerie photos from the past because a high school friend I recently re-connected with sent me a photo he recovered from his mother’s house which showed us back in 1961 all decked out for our First Grade Thanksgiving. I’m glad the pilgrim hat went out of style or my ears might have stayed that way.

That's Me, Bottom Row Far Right

I finished a very long book yesterday, Donna Tart’s Pulitzer prize winning opus, The Goldfinch. My extremely literary daughter strongly recommended this even though she knew it was well outside my normal reading environs. As usual, with anything dealing with the written word, she was spot on. I loved the book probably in part because it was so well outside my normal comfort zone. I really didn’t like the hero of the book, Theo, who experiences a series of childhood tragedies and yet continually finds himself surrounded by some great, redeeming people whom he then messes with. This doesn’t sound like a recipe for a page turner but that’s certainly what The Goldfinch is. It would have been boring if Theo had taken the easy way instead of his biblical level struggles.

Tart also creates one of my favorite characters ever in Boris, Theo’s maniacal Ukrainian friend. The plot revolves around an ancient Dutch painting that plays a central role in Theo’s life choices. If you haven’t heard about this book then you must be hiding under a rock but I’ll add my voice to the chorus singing its praise. It’s the kind of book that stays with you and is ultimately life affirming, despite Theo. Tart’s prose is what makes the book, dense, yet divinely entertaining, a quick passage as Theo cogitates on the meaning of life and the painting:

“Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important: whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair. But the painting has also taught me that we can speak to each other across time. And I feel I have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you. That life-whatever else it is-is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway:  wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise form the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch. For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time-so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small, bright, immutable part in that immortality.”