What I don't know

I am 45. I feel it in my left knee. In my eyes when I read the small print. In my back when Sadie jumps on me, with all of her 5-year-old spunk. In my brain when Rowan questions everything I say, with all of her 15-year -old rebellion. I know a of lot things. Not as much as Luther Riley, who died this morning, at 97. Luther was my mother's friend. An old man, who retired from working at the Duke University bookstore, and delivering clear and magical moonshine, in the old days, to the good folks of Durham. Luther told me, when he was 91, that he knew I went to Carolina and liked the light blue of Franklin Street. He'd forgive me. If, I could tell him about Ellicott City, Md., now. He'd visited Ellicott City when he was building warplanes in Baltimore in WWII. Your mama doesn't understand why you would live in Maryland, but I do, he said. That was Luther. He died this morning, in his little house on that little island slightly off the coast of North Carolina. I know a lot of things, now that I'm 45. What I don't know, is what I will know, when I get to that point that Luther got to this morning.

A sense of place

At a gathering of folks discussing faith, the question is asked: "tell us something about yourself." It's an icebreaker. Tales of conversion. Knowing that there is a God. Fighting for redemption. Fighting disease. My addition seems lame, but as true as I can tell it. I describe a sense of place. A knowing of a bit a land, in perspective, in finding a purpose in the geography, an old history, people gone and forgotten, people coming and unknown, all here, near the Chesapeake and the Choptank. It is a faith. The native Americans knew more about it, when land was less commodity than special for simply being. I spend many minutes thinking about "me." Not enough about faith, love, hope and what is special. Today we place a geocache in a remote place near the Choptank. A bridge once stood here. A ferry was nearby, carrying people since Colonial times. Now it is marsh and hot and filled with biting flies. The Moses for her people, Harriet Tubman used this place as part of the Underground Railroad. The pain they felt. The terror they fled. It is all here, still. The Native Americans forced to flee before them. I feel there is a remnent yet. God must know about this place. He must know about a sense of being part of a geography. It's that simple.

Mobile

I'm listening to Neil Young "Live at the Riverboat 1969." I am back to the hotel room in that fancy hotel in Mobile, Ala., two years ago. It was a late, muggy night as I landed in the airport in Mobile. The ride from Detroit was bouncy. The ride from the airport was long, me on the last shuttle, with an older African-American lady who had spent her entire life in Mobile. Mobile has the very first Mardi Gras ... "it would be good for your babies." Family friendly. I brought up my youth in North Carolina, one Southerner to another. To her, though, North Carolina might as well be the Maryland I call home now ... North. South is here in Mobile and down that long road to New Orleans. We talk. I listen, a lot. I learn that she worked in a factory that closed. She has one son, who has moved away to South Carolina with a girl. Now it's just her and a grandniece in need of mothering. "You want to call ahead when you go back to the airport, the shuttle doesn't run all the time." Good advice that saves me at the end of this trip. I tip with every bit of cash I have in my pocket. Not much, but she is overly grateful. I feel guilty for being able to tip, the dark lining in every bright cloud, that guilt. So tired, I make it to my room. High up above Mobile Bay. I see twinkling lights of ships out there in the humidity. The air conditioning is the real thing. Thank goodness. I turn on the radio. Neal Young. Turns out to be an all-night Neil Young station. "Sugar Mountain." "Whiskey Boot Hill." Stuff with Crazy Horse. New stuff. At 2 a.m. It's enough, I turn on the alternative setting ... ambient sounds. I pick Southern thunderstorm over rainforest stream. Seems appropriate. Like me, being here, right now.

Today

It's a rush.

Run.

Push.

Beg.

Plead.

Make the case.

These are hard times.

People.

Most of them.

Have a harder edge.

Me. Me. Me.

Survive.

Make it out whole.

Soul intact.

Remember the end.

Of this life.

Brings another.

Slow down.

Mother's Day

Her hands are freckled. And chubby now. Old age swelling.

She's been thin and heavy. I've seen her crawl out of bed with arthritis. I've seen her cry like the world was ending. I've heard her laugh like laughing was enough to make the difference. I've seen her crazy and sane. It's a slight shading of difference.

Those hands have shelled field peas. Threaded needles. Washed collards. Held hymnals. Spanked me. Praised our Lord.

She grew up rough. A sharecropper's daughter. A farm of tobacco, rice, cotton, corn, pigs, cows, survival. Oil  lamps. Books, once every two weeks from a library in a spot of a town up a dusty road in southeastern North Carolina. 

She traveled. Lived in Japan, Italy, England, Spain. Taught me how to read. Taught me to respect -- everyone, not just the Governor and the preacher, but that man picking up the trash, that man who could be you.

She grew up in the church. The grand-daughter of a Baptist preacher. His face is now in a tiny photo on a tombstone in a weedy graveyard next to a church he preached at. In Bladen County. He was famous in that time, long ago. A way with words and telling the revealed truth.

She is South. Her great-grandfather and great-uncle signed up and fought in Antietam, Gettysburg and surrendered with Lee at Appamatox. Signed a book saying they would never raise arms against the Union, again.  The story left from them was of hard times, dead men and hatred for the North.

She held me. My sister. My brother. She loved us. She's old-fashioned. Hard. And sweet. My mother.

Off the road

The stop in the town of Rose Hill, N.C., was one of those off the major road adventures time and destination seldom allow. But this day, time seemed less of an imperative and destination would be there.

First there was the world's largest frying pan. Having gone to a few Delmarva Chicken Festivals in my time, I not totally unaware of large frying pans. This one is big. The Chicken Festival pan is pretty big as well. But, who can argue with official signs, such as the one in front of Rose Hill's world's largest frying pan.

Next stop was the winery. Duplin Winery. World famous for its North Carolina Muscadine wine. We had the option, a tour, or sampling. We picked sampling.

The samples were variations on that unique taste of the fruit my granddaddy grew in arbors. The golden and purple globes that is America's original grape. Grandaddy made a wine from his grapes as well. Duplin's Queen Anne's Revenge came closest to Orby  Prince's wine. He would have been impressed that Queen Anne's Revenge is top of the line, at almost $30 a bottle. 

"Earthy," our wine guide said.

"Very earthy," I agreed. Almost like that sandy loam soil that granddaddy turned into peanuts, grapes and peas every year. Earthy like Grandma's Navy brand snuff.

It's hard to beat earthy when it's North Carolina earth, back-home, where-you-come-from, where-your-people-came-from earth.

Losing your fingerprints

He is checking his faculty mailbox. The mailboxes are a series of squares made of some butter colored wood, stained with years of newsprint, memeographs and fingers of professors and college students.

His expertise is philosophy. We talked that fine North Carolina autumn day about the Turing test -- some esoteric measure of a machine's ability to think and be human. It's a topic he's woven into his lecture, he tells me. 

I am 24. He is heading towards 80. 

My thoughts are, mainly, about what can I do to get ahead, make the boss happy, make a name for myself, find love. Mostly, find love. I am past college now. A fine school. 

But, I am learning now, in this conversation.

All these years between  now and then, I am in that moment. 

That lesson at a college I am not attending but working for, selling my expertise in writing, communicating and marketing. 

I am his student in that moment.

Sun comes in through the dusty  window. His glasses, plain black plastic rims and lenses, are not the cleanest. His eyes are old man eyes. Brown going steel-gray.

I wonder what he made of me in my rush to fill the faculty mailboxes with a flyer on some insignificant meeting about some not-very-important project to promote the college to newspaper reporters -- my concoction.

He's struggling to get the papers out of his box.

"You know, Mark, someday you'll wear out your fingerprints."

Today, in a meeting with farmers struggling to make ends meet, I noticed I was having a hard time handing out copies of a report I thought might be useful to them. Rubbing my thumb to my index finger I feel a definite lack of a fingerprint.

Peepers

This sound is as pure a welcome to spring as I know.

We heard it today, on a walk through Western Shore woods.

And, I wondered, if when we came home to this place east of the Bay

the Peepers would be here.

Like they always are come earliest of early spring.

They were. With moon rising and Carolina tagging Duke with another loss in that old basketball battle as we tumble toward a time when the the weeping willow takes on its green and the hard ground turns soft and mellow, again.

Soon the Peepers will be joined by a full chorus.

The Carbon Conversation

"Carbon sequestration."

"Open space."

"Less pavement."

I am in an strategic planning session. A group of very smart people from as many different backgrounds and occupations as there are people gather in this big room and discuss what can be done to improve the outlook for fruit and vegetable growers in the Mid-Atlantic. For today's purposes, Mid-Atlantic ranges from New York to Virginia. This small subset of the bigger group, some 60 of them, talks about how do fruit and vegetable farmers and the surrounding industry improve the environment and benefit from their positive environmental impact.

I've been at this work of talking with and helping farmers of every sort for almost 20 years now. 

Something feels different about this time. Somehow, all this attention being paid to where food comes from has people ready to listen to farmers and buy from and find ways to connect with the land and these stewards of the land.

In fact, in this little group, farmers are heros. They are feeding us and saving the earth, going at that carbon reduction that will slow global warming and make a commitment to a future that none of us will enjoy, but our children and grandchildren may. 

Food miles. That's an idea thrown out from a farmer. Let's get people talking about and understanding food miles and our carbon footprint. What does it all mean? How far does your food travel. What does that mean? Somehow, we all know, that closer is better. That food from a farmer who is keeping that field across the street productive and alive is better than a field across the street from someone else far, far away. It's a more complicated issue than that. But, at least people are paying attention now to where their food comes from.

This is a good time to be alive and digging this.

Being thoughtful

In  the midst of a long afternoon of interviews, I hear this one statement on describing how to be a good employee: "be a servant." A servant to the boss, to the public, to farmers.

In the list of lessons learned this day, that is at the top.

My father had a similar lesson for me, years ago. A lesson not fully learned, still.

"Two rules to follow, Mark."

"First, no matter how much you think you know or you think you've learned when you go off to college, remember to be humble and listen. No one ever gets ahead talking more than listening"

"Second, be a servant."

"Be a good servant."

The museum

We go from room to room. Stopping to take in a painting of a young princess. Sadie is dressed in the costume to look like the princess, who grew up to be a queen, married to Louis VIII of France.

This is one of our interests, art. We share it with her as much as we can. No matter what is happening out there in the world, clouds of economic crisis and war, these bits of old paint and canvas from centuries ago lift us. The common thread, desire for beauty and love and comfort and mystery. It's all in these paintings, done well.

a yellow bus

Rowan, then 12, and Sadie, then 2.

I wrote this almost a decade ago ...

How many times had we watched the big yellow bus go by? A bunch, I’d guess. Me, pointing it out, saying to her, “Some day, you’ll probably ride that bus.” Her saying, “When, Daddy, when?” Some day soon. But, “soon” always seems like it’ll be a while.

So, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, that day down the road when the little girl goes off in the big orangish-yellow school bus to be with strange children in a strange building, far away from the friends she’s been with since she was 3 and left the confines of home. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about first grade and all it’ll mean to the girl as she takes on new confidence as a “big girl.” I don’t think about it much at all. Instead, I spend my time doing my work, putting the piece after piece together that makes up a busy life with as many of the trappings of success that I can cobble together. I even stop every once in a while and think to myself that maybe I’ve achieved some of those goals I thought about the day I left the college in Chapel Hill. Not all of the goals, mind you, but just enough to say to myself with some bit of integrity that life’s working out.

But then, “soon” turns into today and the big yellow school bus is coming up the road to pick up the girl on her very first day of first grade. * * * You sit there with your little girl on the tailgate of the F-150 pick-up and watch the bus stop, lights flashing, at the big white house most of a mile away between the fields full of corn that’s beginning to lose its best shade of green. The next stop is here in front of your house. The border collie dances around, putting on a show for the little girl who has contained her excitement, barely, even now that the bus is almost here. No tears at all. Just a grin remarkable for the recently missing front tooth. * * * She kisses us both, first mommy, then daddy. The big yellow bus stops, she gets on, finds a seat one row back and waves to us. You can still see the gap in the smile, even from here next to the tailgate of the truck. Then, she is gone. And, you almost wish that “soon” hadn’t come yet for the little girl and the big yellow bus.

***

Now, the little girl is 14. I watched her, along with Tiffany and Sadie, 4, up on a stage performing Les Miserables this weekend. She seems farther and farther away now, on stage or not. 

Waylon done different

"Someday, I'll get over you. I'll live to see it all through. But, I'll always miss dreaming my dreams with you."

The lyrics go through the headphones on the Ipod. Waylon Jennings done different by a new country singer, Jamey Johnson.

Filled with loss. 

I think my daddy would have loved this. He loved sad country songs. He lived sad country songs from the sandy roads of his home in North Carolina.

What is about this music that connects me?

looking up

On my back, I am looking into a bank of lights as they insert an IV, attach electrodes and talk to each other. 

It's the weight. I know. 

"It's going to kill you someday," I've heard many times.

I've lost and gained and lost and gained for a lifetime. I'm on the gaining side of that equation now, with every bit of excuse and explanation possible. Genes, all those fat Todds; love of food; lack of time for exercise; lack of discipline.

Today it all comes to this after chest pains and feeling spacey.

All around me, the doctor and nurses are busy, doing their thing. 

I focus just left of the lights and try to remember what I said to Tiffany last, and Rowan and Sadie. Just in case. Thoughts I could hang onto.

"Am I right with God?" I think. 

I hope so. I try to be. 

It turns out to be nothing. I have a heart that skips beats and produces an irregular heartbeat every now and then. I should lose weight. I should get some rest. I shouldn't let stress get the better of me.

Just now, I remember looking just left of those lights. Seems like I have to do better. Get that health, work, family balance into something resembling plumb. This is tough.

daddy

Here I am. The big guy, with the big belly, blue jeans and all those busy thoughts of the work, the things to get done. I'm in this metal chair on this hardwood gym floor. In this line of other adults with other adult things to do and think about.

And there she is. All in pink. All about this moment on this hardwood gym floor. In tights and a tutu.

She smiles. At me.

I am transformed.

1964

My mom, my sister, Teresa, and me, about 1964. 

A passport photo as we got ready to move to Japan.

My guess is that who we are, who we are going to be is set pretty much on a straight path when we are very young. Some of who we are is born into us, a mix of genes and the divine. Some is mom and dad. Some is where we are. 

I think, it's the love, mostly that makes us who we are. Enough love from those early days will stand in you in good stead for a lifetime. It makes you cry when you know what you're missing, when it's gone. It bucks you up, knowing where you came from and that you were loved. 

Those of us who don't have that love early, spend a lifetime searching for it. That's my guess. 

Some find it. Thank God. Some, I am here to say from personal witness, do not.

If there is anything I know -- on the dark days when I don't know nearly enough to get by -- is that I was loved from the time I was born. My mom. My daddy. My brother. My sister. They all adored me. My sister died when she was 7. I was 3. She talked about me constantly. Even when she sickest.

I'd say that powerful knowledge can still carry from across those years separating 1964 from now.

I'd say, I'll never forget.

geocaching

I stumble through what I think is solid earth and find, instead, cold, semi-frozen mud over the bottom third of my boots. Sadie and Tiffany are up the slope, not in the mud. 

The walking stick helps. It steadies me, with the GPS in my other hand.

"14 feet," I say.

The GPS is good for about 10-13 feet, so anywhere around here is the geocache -- some plastic container with bits and pieces of things people leave when they find it. 

Sadie is worried about me stuck in the mud. Crying.

I  tell Tiffany, look around up there.  She finds it right away. Sadie stops crying and enjoys the treasure we've found.

This day we combine a longish hike in an area with no hunting, no fear of stray lead, with two geocaches. This one, on a wet, cold slope and then another in a field in an evergreen.  One has a "travelbug," which, we find out later online, has gone from its start in Maine to Oregon and Wyoming back to the Western Shore and now on this side of the Chesapeake.

We decide that it will find a home in geocache west of the Bay and hopefully catch a ride to some more distant place.

I think, again, "why is this so much fun?" But, there it is, undeniable. At 45, I am having a fun akin to that I had when I was 10 playing hide and seek at dusk with a group of sweaty, running boyhood friends. It is a pure thing. Like childhood.

staff meeting

I listen to their thoughts. They flow like a rapid, rushing in the spring thaw.

Idea. Idea. Idea. Idea.

Action. Result. Action. Result.

I am slower. Like some big river nearing its end in a vast sea, ocean.

My thoughts come still, but they are surrounded by precaution, the things that will stop the dreams from being real.

I listen to them. They are young. So bright. So filled with energy.

I am feeling old this day. 

The dreams are still there. I am supposed to "manage" them.

That means, I think, letting the thoughts flow to conclusion.

My addition is to point out the deep water, the monsters there.

Let them speed in the rapids.

But watch for the really big swell, the riptide that waits in the big waters.

I am amazed by them.

I see tomorrow in them.

It is strong. It's real and it's not waiting much longer.

Changing landscape

I called it 'Pizza Hut road'. Shorthand for a road going past a Pizza Hut, out of town, into Talbot County farmland, over the Choptank near a place Frederick Douglass lived as a slave, into Caroline County farmland, to a major route through farmland into Delaware and beaches on the Atlantic.

I can close my eyes right this very fraction of a second and see myself on that road. I can see the farms. The lives spent making food burst from this patch of Eastern Shore earth. 

I can feel my 20 years here. The hours I spent riding this road. The conversations I had, over there, next to that farmhouse with a governor and a farmer struck by drought; on that bench near that building with a congressman, now "retired," about how special this place is; and there with a friend hoping he could convince me to follow a different path.

Now I pass 3 new developments. Three farms gone. I see lots of new houses. New people. Suddenly being in this place for 20 years counts as a long time, instead of the requisite generations when I first drove past the police in St. Michaels in their blue Volvo station wagons, Barney Fife writ safe.

It's changing, this place.

 

Mid-life

Sadie and Rowan two years ago with a statue of 

Carolina football great, Charlie "Choo-Choo" Justice in the background

There is no crisis to this. Just accepting.

Suddenly, those my age are responsible, in charge, making decisions for those behind us.

The achievements not made weigh heavy.

The dreams not fulfilled are like so many ghosts.

The people gone are an unwelcome silence.

But, there is time, at 45. There is still time.

Maybe, just maybe, we can change the world for the children.

Spending time with them. Loving them. Voting and spending and striving not for ourselves, so much, but for them, now.

This thought is not heavy at all. It is more like a butterfly in a rainforest, glad to be home, looking to tomorrows, days of light and hope. After all.

The President

His speech struck me.

No surprise there. This man is beyond good at turning a word, dipping into history, and our dreams of what should be, all that is just out of touch.

He moved me. I'm thinking, he's my age. He knows. This is our time. "My Generation". 

I am hopeful.

I get up and go to work and think, again, maybe I can make a difference.

I hold Sadie, whose world this man is shaping, and I think, please make a difference.

Clear, dark sky

It's that bitter cold, that seems all the more bitter for the clear dark sky and the bits of Ursa Major strung across it.

This will be my 19th Eastern Shore winter, in some way or other. The 19th year looking up at that hard sky from this patch of Earth between the Chesapeake and the deep Atlantic.

The cold bites as I stare up.

I remember the times and the people in that brief snatch of history.

I remember the other times looking at that sky in the cold. Different, in some way, from the soft night sky of North Carolina.

I wonder about others who see this sky, their hearts beating, their minds dreaming, their souls longing.

It is very quiet here, just now. And, very cold.

The farmer

Today  I spent doing what I used to do most waking hours: talking to, interviewing a farmer.

This was a "project" instead of straight-up journalism. But, it was good.

I learned a bit about a man's life. Admirable things. Love of the land. Love of a wife. Love of children. Hard work. Rewards you can count on. Challenges controlled by God and Nature.

I learned, again, that no one stands alone.

His advice to those starting farming, those few: find a mentor, find some good solid minds, hearts and hands to stand with you.

Southern past

It came as an email. 

"I am writing a book on the 20th N.C. Infantry and noticed you have an ancestor who fought in the 20th N.C."

Some Web site I had searched for information.

The author wanted to check facts.

There it is, my Southern past. 

Confirmed by a man writing a dry, dusty book to be sold in all those bookstores at Civil War battlefields, tucked in with the DVDs of Ken Burns' Civil War series and medallions honoring some long ago conflict to tack to your hiking stick.

I am suddenly proud of those hours spent studying the past.  

I can talk of the ancestor he is interested in, Lorenzo Todd, a corporal in the 20th N.C. Or, his cousin, Isaac McDaniel Todd, my great-great grandfather, in a brigade of the 2nd N.C. Cavalry. Or, I can go back farther to Nicholas Prince, my ancestor from Horry County, S.C., who fought in the Revolutionary War. 

He is interested in Lorenzo Dow Todd from Columbus County, N.C. (My great uncle Dow Todd, named for him, was a big man with a flat top and suspenders who kept trying to get me to try chewing tobacco in those wonderful years before 10.)

Lorenzo, a hero, was the also namesake for my great grandfather, Lorenzo Lamar Todd, a Baptist preacher in Columbus and Bladen counties.

We exchange emails. I confirm what he mostly knows. Lorenzo fought along with the rest of the 20th in virtually every battle in that terrible war, including Gettysburg, and surrended with Lee at Appamatox Court House. After the War, he moved to Georgia, where he died a very old man and with 10 children, whose children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are all my distant cousins. 

I am removed from this past. Cotton mills, dusty farms, battles and skirmishes with British and Yankees. But it is in there somewhere.

The Todds are talkers and quick to get a temper up, so they say. My grandmother on both sides, mom and dad, were Todds. One line from North Carolina, the other Todds from South Carolina, like the Princes.

The Princes are more subtle. Prone to plowing straight lines.

The Powells are mixed bag.

Like me.

From the pew

Father Bill's homily is a discussion of symbols, meanings in life.

The Easter seal on his Stole, passed down from a priest after death. A symbol of commitment, faith, a path taken.

The renewal of baptismal vows we taken are filled with meaning, symbolic in every word. ... "Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"

The answer is always humble: " I will, with God's help."

God's help. The piece that makes the possible.

Jazz

Wynton Marsalis and his quintet was magnificent tonight.

Everything you would expect. Sublime.

Elevating.

Artists at their peak. Singing without words. Speaking without a language.

In New Orleans last February, one night returning  to my hotel,

I stumbled on a group performing in a side street. A group of teenagers, from the looks of them. Like a high school marching band without uniforms, director, formation, parade or requirements. They filled the night's chill with notes like those from Marsalis or Coltrane or Miles Davis, or the newest jazz lion, Christian Scott. 

They were all smiles for a group assembled randomly to take it in.

An unexpected joy in that late night along the Mississippi.

The dozen of them, flung not-so-expensive, banged up, duct-taped, instruments into the air. Twirled and cavorted.

The smallest of them worked the crowd with his purple LSU baseball cap looking for dollars and cents. I gave. He gave and they gave back, more.

Jazz. 

the dairy farmers

It's been 3 years ago now. "Is anybody going to do anything to help us?"

It was a good question posed to me by the wife of dairy farmer on the phone. There was anger and tears in her voice, as she talked about not paying vet bills and feed bills and electric bills and hoping that it didn't come to and end with a foreclosure.

With that question, "Is anybody going to do anything?", she transferred this to me, at this moment her representative and soon to be her advocate.

Now, it is upon us again. A conference call with economists -- the dreaded grey economists with numbers that don't bend to positive thinking and hope -- shows that it's about to get really hard for dairy farmers to survive as dairy farmers. The price of milk is dropping  like a rock, production costs are down some, but not enough.

Diners

Me, in Exmore, Va., 6 years ago! (Photo by my friend, Sonda Dawes)

Diners are wonderful places, aren't they?

It's almost the way things should be.

Simple. Easy to understand. Collard greens. Pastry. Non-Starbucks coffee. (Well, I do like Starbucks.)

But, definitely simple. And satisfying.

Make's you want more, like a tiny taste of the comfort of home and heaven.

Bits of wildness

Finding wildness, nature in its rough-cut form, is essential. A few trees, some slowly degrading wood and rock. A hawk. Any of it is a rejoiner to all the artiface that is our world. I look for it wherever I am. Today, as everyday at work in Annapolis, I walk through a small patch of trees with some 80 years of age on them. It is dark this morning and raining. I catch a glimpse of one of the chipmunks that use this area as shelter. Their lives, lived so close to mine. Theirs is outside, mine in the steel and brick and glass building nearby. Theirs is brief. Mine much longer. Theirs is primal -- food, procreation, bodily function. Mine has the essentials and art and thinking and books and God. But, I envy them their wildness.

Grandpa, first part

Sadie has a running thread of conversation these days about her "grandpa's". They tell her things. "Grandpa told me ..." You add the rest.

They are wonderful souls, her grandpas. They tell her they love her. They tell her about nature. About television and fast cars. 

Thing is, she has never met her grandpas.

Tiffany's father, Thom House, and mine, Thurman Powell, are gone from this world, except in their genes which flow into this little girl. 

Which get's me to this photo. His genes reside somewhere in Sadie and Rowan, my 14-year-old. That's Oliver Powell, all of his thin, tall self in front of his house in Cumberland, N.C. My grandpa.

I didn't know him well. I was the grandson living over the Atlantic in Europe. My times with him were short on visits to North Carolina. 

He worked in the nearby cotton mill. The house was in a mill village. I remember the house not having much furniture or "things." I remember him laughing, a lot. He died in the early '70s and is in a graveyard with plenty of the Cumberland County Powells. His father, my great grandfather. His uncle, Benjamin, who fought in World War I, according to his gravestone. His wife, Cora Todd Powell, my grandmother.

 I wish I had known him. I can't help but ask myself what he would think of me and his great-granddaughters. Our lives are so different from his.

Oh, the things he could share, my grandpa.

One of life's pure joys

She climbs onto my lap and leans back against me. She is still sleepy. I am too. I rest my nose into the messy-ness of her bedhead red hair. The smell is wonderful, like something from summer on this cold winter morning.

"Daddy, read me a book," she says.

I start to say, "I'm reading my book," but, I don't. Not this morning.

Geocaching

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure hunting game, according to Wikipedia. "Treasure" is used in very loose fashion here. Tiffany, Sadie and I spent the day with Joanne and Travis trying our hand at geocaching in Easton. Using a hand-held GPS we found several, couldn't find one off the the rails-to-trails.

Joanne and Travis are veterans, bringing newcomers into the fold.

It was fun. Something about the experience of searching and the finding, not necessarily the "treasure." And the too rare experience of being outside, rambling around with little purpose other than simply having fun was wonderful. Suddenly, I was 10 again instead of 45 with all of its slowing decrepitude. Sadie smiled a lot as did Tiffany and Travis and Joanne. So did I. That qualifies as a good day, well spent, just having fun, finding treasures.

www.geocaching.com

The beginning

So this is an odd 2009 resolution. But here it is anyway. My online journal for family and friends.

Today, I'll just give you a cool quote and a picture.

"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it." William Faulkner ... great Southern, and American, writer.