Where We Came From

(That's my mother, first girl on the left, shortly before the family moved from Taiwan to Brazil)

Pictures are invaluable, probably because our own brains don't make them. Storage takes space, even in human memory, and so our efficient brains save only fragments. Thus, every time we "remember" something, we are really piecing together the fragments into a completely new picture, each time filling in the blanks with whatever information and inferences seem most likely at that moment. So it is that, the older I get, the more unreliable my memories of my childhood.

I was raised by young parents. Logically, I know this. In my earliest memories, they must have been younger than I am now, but my mind tends to misremember them as older, filling in the early gaps of memory with more contemporary data. How wonderful, then, that someone had the foresight to take some pictures, so that I might have my memory refuted by reliable evidence that they were once young, their lives still ahead of them, the seeds of their greatness still growing within them.

(My mother and her father)

My sister Michelle recently found a trove of family pictures, each one a new discovery: Here is Dad, a tow-headed little boy in a hand-sewn Halloween costume. Here is Mom, a bright young woman full of Brazilian joie de vivre. Here they are together, newly married, each a complement to the other:

In this life our parents are ever ahead of us, never to be caught, and so we are denied the opportunity to fully know them as peers and contemporaries, courageously walking the labyrinth as we do. Mortality, lived in a single direction, obscures our true selves like a fog, making more poignant those hopeful words of Paul:

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (1 Corinthians 13: 12)

In these old pictures, I see my parents and know them better than I did before. And look at her, my young mother! Isn't she beautiful?

(Me, Mom and my big brother Bob)

Marco Polo

For the better part of a year K. and I toyed with the idea of getting chickens. We live in a semi-rural neighborhood, and it would teach the kids responsibility, and the more K. read about food production, the more it sounded nice to get eggs from chickens that weren't living in misery. We went down to the state fairgrounds to look at actual chickens and attend seminars on breeds, coops and feed, and were starting to warm to the idea when we learned that we would need a full acre just to keep three. So much for that. So the next weekend we got a cat.

The morning before General Conference we took the kids to the pet store to look at strays, and the choice came down to a black, white-booted scamp called Battlestar Galacticat, and a gray and black tabby called Roadster. The aptly named Battlestar was adorably combative but, knowing how rough our kids can be, we finally settled on Roadster for evidencing a more mellow, patient disposition. So far, he has been quietly playful yet devoid of most of the normal cat neuroses, so any lingering doubts about our choice have been dispelled. After some brainstorming, we decided "Marco!" "Polo!" would be funny way to call out to a cat, so Marco Polo he shall be.

It's been two years since we buried Curio under our maple tree, and I like having an animal in the house again. Cats are only nominally domesticated, and their primal immediacy is a welcome counterpoint to the affairs of men. Aslan, we are reminded, is not a tame lion, and that is seen as one of his virtues.

Still, sharing our home with a feral cat will take some getting used to. Like the other night, Marco was darting down the basement stairs, then tearing back up, then dashing down again. Then he would do weird things like jump into the bathtub and pace around. At bedtime I caught him pawing the bottom of the downstairs bathtub, the same way a cat will scratch around in the litter box and, sure enough, he had peed in the tub. It's hard to get mad at a kitten, but later we went down to the basement and saw that the door leading to his litter box had been closed. He had tried and tried to use the litter box, and finally relieved himself in the tidiest way he could think of. Good kitty, good kitty.

Love and Affection

Age Twelve

I wrote this when I was 12 years old, freshly after reading the "7 Habits" for the first time, which my dad had enthusiastically recommended to me.  It's poignant and amazing to read again now, when I'm nearly three times that age, and recognize the eternal self that I was and still am.  This statement touches on deep hopes and desires that I still have, to know and be known.  

I'm a little hesitant to share this on the blog because it feels so personal, but it's been pressing steadily on me to post it ever since I ran across it in the attic a few months ago.  So, here it sees the light of day again after two more decades of an incredible life that I've been privileged to love, learn and overcome in.

The Kids' Devices

...As in, leaving them to their own...

They got out the paints, one of those free local papers, and the camera, and documented their own creativity.

In case you can't quite read it (we couldn't), the one poster's subtitle says "because he's awe-some".  

And fitness center lady also has really beautiful, delicately painted nails done by Sage, but I guess they didn't make it into the photo.  

They really were the crowning touch though, so try to imagine a glistening row of little red paint dots on the newspaper image of a hand.

S. and I have tried pretty conscientiously to give our kids practice in entertaining themselves -- by taking them on 11-hour car trips (without DVDs or iPods, folks) and not having any TV channels or video game systems, among other things.  They don't get outside in the yard as much as S. would like considering that's he strapped down by the mortgage for that yard, but overall they're finding good old-fashioned ways to thrive.  

Including, apparently, decking out Elvis impersonators to look like romantic French heroes.