Who are we? We are our stories.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Sisters on the Fourth, Memories, and Dance Steps

Those crazy Hanson sisters, Anita, Lorna, Linda and Joylene on the 4th of July. Bob and Florence did well. Kurt couldn't make it because he is in South America. In the evening we dug out an old slide projector and looked at slides of their life from 1959 until they were young newlyweds. Bittersweet, seeing all those young people who have been ambushed by the years, and their aunts and uncles, parents and grandparents who have all passed on. Looking at the pictures projected on the wall it seemed like yesterday, all of them happy, gathered around the Christmas trees and on carefree camping trips. But the lights came back on, reality returned and it was a lifetime of memories ago.

We live on a metaphor, a circular road to nowhere. It is not a one-way metaphor though; if on the rare occasion two travelers chance to meet head to head, grille to grille, life becomes a game of chicken or stubbornness and one of the drivers is forced to pull into a driveway and let'em pass by. Here Carolyn Chesterman uses the street to give dance lessons, while her Tim looks on in amused disbelief. I don't think this is a metaphor for anything, but it does illustrate how hectic our traffic is. In the past, basketball hoops hung over the street. Games of horse or half court were completed without ever being uninterrupted by a single passing car.

Tim and Carolyn share most of our holidays. They are technically not family, but there has been a move about to initiate formal adoption procedures. Today they packed his "new" Heron bicycle in their wagon and headed back to Stillwater. May he ride it in good health for many years. 

1 comment:

Margadant said...

Your "ambushed by the years" is unsettling -- probably because it's such an apt description of what's going on around here.

It's really good to hear that Kurt's in South America.