Hand to Mouth

In Mrs. Matney's sixth grade science class, my schoolmates and I pressed seeds half an inch into potting soil ... and waited.  A few days later the bean plants sprouted, and within a week our little seedlings were spilling over the top of the Dixie cups.  It showed me just how strong the life force is, and it instilled a reverence for gardening.  Even now in the spring, I still thrill to see our tiny suburban garden come to life, and my wife Susan and I always reserve a spot for more exotic fare than those simple beans I nurtured years ago—Purple-Podded Pole Beans and Dragon's Tongue Bush Beans, among others.

Spring seedlings, mostly heirloom tomatoes, waiting to be planted

These days we plant an expanding variety of herbs, greens, and vegetables—parsley, cilantro, sage, arugula, Swiss chard, kale, peppers, cucumbers, watermelons, and tomatoes (to name a few).  Glorious tomatoes, heirlooms, take up the greatest section of our tiny yard.  Earlier this year we planted twenty-four such plants, filling every available inch in the backyard and (in pots) on our deck.  And they yielded a bountiful harvest.  From May through late July, we had a steady supply of tomatoes and prepared more than a dozen different dishes, sauces, and condiments, including puttanesca (a spicy entrée named in honor of prostitutes), homemade pizza sauce, and salsa.  We never got tired of adding tomatoes to our meals.

Pasta salad primavera with pine nuts

There's something reassuring about walking into the garden to harvest a few herbs for dinner, and because the weather in Houston is so mild, Susan and I can keep all kinds of plants thriving year round.

Herbs, greens, and (edible) flowers from the garden

There are few activities more soothing, more relaxing, than working in the garden, even if it's just deadheading blooms or pulling weeds.  The garden gives back so much more than it demands. 

Deadheading a butterfly bush

One of Susan's great ambitions is to build a garden that is big enough to meet most of our produce needs.  Part of the appeal is to limit the number of people who come between us and our food sources.  One way we do that now is through a subscription to Wood Duck Farm, a local CSA (community supported agriculture).  Every two weeks we pick up a box of produce from a delivery location near our house.  The offerings vary from season to season, but the quality of the produce is consistently good, and the quantities of fruits and veggies we receive are generous.

A summer share from our CSA

Between CSA seasons Susan and I also frequent the Urban Harvest Farmers Market in Houston.  It's a good place to buy produce, much of it organic, and a good way to support area farmers and ranchers.

Susan at the farmers market

One of our favorite springtime activities is picking strawberries at Froberg's Farm in Alvin.  On more than one occasion we have filled our buckets with more than ten pounds of berries.  Last spring we visited Froberg's four times.  It is also a great place to buy dried beans; because they are fresher than those you find at a supermarket, Froberg's beans cook more quickly and have a better texture.

Picking strawberries at Froberg's Farm

Susan loves to bake strawberry shortcake—not the sweet, spongy cup-shaped things I mistakenly called shortcake for years but, rather, a lightly sweetened biscuit-like pastry.  To celebrate the arrival of strawberry season this year, Susan baked a gorgeous upside-down cake, the recipe for which she found online.

Strawberry upside-down cake

We have a friend who has a decades-old fig tree that produces beautiful fruit that we are invited to pick every summer.  On numerous occasions we have endured 100-degree heat and swarms of mosquitoes to harvest sweet, sticky golden figs.

Picking figs in July

We have baked figs in muffins and on top of pizzas, and every summer we put up jars of preserves to get us through the rest of the year.

Homemade fig preserves

A final way Susan and I maintain close proximity to our food sources is through foraging.  There is a park near our house that has undeveloped tracts of forested land, and when the spring rains are plentiful, we can expect a bumper crop of wild dewberries.  They are plump and tart, nothing like the tamer varieties found at the grocery store, and you really have to work to pick them.  They grow on thorny canes, and you can expect to give a little blood (and walk away with scraped hands and arms), but they are worth the time and trouble.  (For more on foraging, check out the Foraging Texas website.)

A gallon of foraged dewberries

Even in bad years Susan and I can always find Muscadine grapes in the remote sections of the park.  They look like concord grapes but pack a much stronger flavor.  I've never developed a taste for them fresh off the vine; their high acidity burns your fingers, so you can imagine what they can do to your lips.  Susan, on the other hand, has learned to suck out the pulp without touching the skin to her lips.  Mustang Grapes make for a tasty jelly, and their tartness effectively contrasts the sweetness of the added sugar.

Susan eating Muscadine grapes

There is something rewarding in knowing that a stretch of wilderness is a mere stone's throw—or a bayou's crossing—from our home.  Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, yet wild fruits manage to thrive in isolated pockets; you just have to be receptive to them.  They are a testament to that powerful life force I learned about years ago in Mrs. Matney's science class.

The Flexitarian Shuffle

When most people hear the word diet, they think of sacrifice and self-denial that still may not yield the results they desire.  I went on such a journey many years ago.  During a routine exam during which I learned that my cholesterol and triglyceride levels had spiked, my doctor gave me an ultimatum—begin exercising and lose weight, or he would "pill" me.  I took his advice to visit a dietitian, who put me on a strict diet of 1,700 calories a day.  I accomplished my initial goal—losing ten pounds—in a mere two weeks, so I stuck with the diet for another seven months.  At the end of that time, I had lost a total of forty-five pounds, or one fourth of my body weight.  

It was time to rethink the concept of diet.  I couldn't continue to watch every calorie, count every slice of cheese, and weigh every cut of meat.  I needed to adopt a sustainable diet that was more than a weight loss program.  The word diet comes from the Greek diaita, which means "a way of life."  It was time to redefine the way I lived.  

Pear, pecan, and arugula salad with apricot white balsamic vinaigrette

I have come a long way in the twelve years since I stopped obsessing over calories, and my palate is much more sophisticated than ever.  I eat much more varied and adventurous fare than I ever imagined, while cutting way back on my intake of meat.  I'm not sure where I first read that "your plate should look like a crayon box," but it is a notion I learned to appreciate.  All those bright colors signify antioxidants, which are essential to maintaining good health.

Broccoli pine nut pasta salad—a "crayon box" entrée

Another dictum I live by is Michael Pollan's famous seven words of advice from his book In Defense of Food: "Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants."  This might be a good time to mention that I did not make these monumental changes by myself.  My wife Susan has guided the process every step of the way—buying and reading dozens of cookbooks, planning weekly menus, and encouraging us to be adventurous in our eating choices.  Initially, that meant weaning ourselves off red meat.  This was not just a conscious decision but, rather, a natural extension of what we had been already been doing.

Tacos prepared with black beans and tofu meat substitute

All but eliminating red meat might seem like a strange thing to do for a woman who grew up on a cattle ranch, as Susan did, and our early forays into meat-free entrées often resembled their traditional counterparts, as is the case with the meatless tacos pictured above.  Not that there's anything wrong with those tacos—they are delicious—but there are endless ways to prepare a meal around vegetables.

Roasted ratatouille tart with goat cheese and mint

And there are so many foods that are more more satisfying than meat, which often tastes dry and flavorless to me now.  The sandwiches Susan and I eat are much more interesting and varied than the predictable cold cuts with mustard and mayo we knew so well.  Take, for instance, the sandwich pictured below: avocado with sliced tomato, Swiss cheese, arugula, and basil on seeded bread.  Finished off with black cherry balsamic vinegar and cracked pepper, this light lunch is tart and spicy.

A sandwich like no other

What makes the sandwich even better is the fact that the tomatoes, arugula, and basil were harvested from our own garden.  Early last spring we started twenty-four plants from seeds, and as a result we had homegrown heirloom tomatoes from May through July.  Moonglows (like those pictured above), Black from Tula, Cherokee Purple, and Green Zebra are a few of the varieties we grew.

Heirloom tomatoes—an early summer harvest from the garden

In addition, Susan and I receive produce most of the year from a Houston-area CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture).  Every two weeks we pick up a box of produce grown by a local farmer; we pay a subscription fee up front and in exchange receive our "shares."  We are providing financial support for local agriculture, and we are closer to the source of the food we eat.  It's a great trade-off.

A typical summer share from our CSA

The challenge has been to find creative and varied ways to prepare meals from the fruits and vegetables.  After being part of the CSA for a year and a half, Susan and I feel committed to the program.

After all this talk about vegetables, I feel it's only fair to mention that we still eat eggs, fish, and (oh-so-rarely) even meat.  We're not strict vegetarians but like to think of ourselves as flexitarians, which means we eat mostly fruits, vegetables, and grains.  And, of course, we still enjoy desserts.

Tres leches—rich but surprisingly low-fat

Susan made this amazing tres leches cake for friends, and while it is decadently sweet, it is a fairly low calorie dessert, having only 300 calories per serving.  

Shortly after I had lost weight, my mother asked me, "Don't you miss food?"  Her question struck me as strangely funny at the time, but I knew that her attitude was not uncommon.  Many people still subscribe to the notion that maintaining one's weight has to involve struggle and sacrifice.  In a way, I guess that's true.  I can't eat just anything, and I have to be aware of portion size, but I never feel as though I'm missing anything.  What I used to struggle with was what to prepare for my next meal, but I now enjoy the process of planning, cooking, and eating.  My diet—yes, diet—is richer than ever, and as a result I am healthier and happier.

"Green Is Good, Baby"

Other than playing an occasional round of Putt-Putt, I have never been interested in golf, but shortly after Hurricane Ike hit Houston in 2008, my wife Susan and I began spending time on an abandoned course, the old Clear Lake City Golf Club. which is a few miles from our home.  The course opened in 1963 and closed in 2001; from 2005 to 2011, it was tied up in litigation, as competing interests vied for ownership.  The company that bought the property in 2001, Renaissance Golf Group, planned to resell it for commercial development, but local citizens and the Clear Lake City Water Authority (CLCWA) were working to preserve the space as a park and (once the CLCWA came on board) a water detention facility, something the flood-prone Bayou City badly needed.

Which brings me back to Ike.  In the aftermath of the storm, Susan and I took up bicycling as a reliable way to run errands (since gasoline was not readily available for several days), and we began riding on the old golf cart trails as an alternate route to the grocery store.  Long after the hurricane and its aftermath, however, we continued riding bikes for pleasure and following legal developments surrounding the fate of the course.  More about that litigation later, but first, let me describe the 200-acre space.

The photo above shows how the course looked when we began riding on it in 2008.  The cart trails were showing signs of neglect, but they still provided a stable riding surface. Tee markers, ball washers, trash cans, and (non-functioning) restroom facilities were still visible along the fairways.  (Once final ownership was established, all of those features would eventually be removed.)

And, of course, there was the clubhouse.  The building had been boarded up for seven years and vandals had nearly destroyed it, and in April 2011 it burned to the ground.  The photo below shows what the clubhouse looked like three years earlier.

Even in its undeveloped state, the green space attracted hundreds of people to its ponds and dense woods, unexpected discoveries in a city of more than two million people.  

And then there was the wildlife.  The park provided habitat for egrets, herons, hawks, woodpeckers, and turtles.

Some people spotted alligators in the old water features.  The space was beautiful year-round, rich with crimson and yellow leaves in the fall.  But looks can be deceptive. While Chinese tallow trees (like the one pictured below) produce vibrant fall foliage, they are an invasive species that needs to be eradicated.

The park was even more alive in the spring as bees and wildflowers took over.  The sand traps were overgrown, and when the fairways were not mowed for a month or more, they exploded into robust urban meadows.

Of course, things couldn't stay this way.  In addition to the owners of the property, who were growing impatient to sell the land, the CLCWA was pushing to acquire it—initially through purchase and, failing that, through condemnation proceedings—and area citizens were trying to save their beloved green space.  None were more active or vocal than the homeowners along the fairways.  Signs proclaiming "Keep Green Space Green" began sprouting up in front lawns, and one industrious homeowner put up a giant banner that declared, "Green is Good ... Baby!" 

Indeed it is, but what exactly to do with the old golf course remained unsettled.  Some citizens wanted to keep the space as it was, to let it thrive as a mostly undeveloped park, while others desired more active civic involvement and investment, as was eventually provided by the CLCWA.

After failing in a bid to purchase the property outright and later losing its case to acquire the land by condemnation, the water authority won its suit in appeal in May 2011.  Shortly thereafter, the CLCWA authority took over maintenance of the green space and began investigating options for development.

One controversial move involved clearing trees around the ponds.  While dozens of citizens volunteered to thin trees and brush along the banks, some property owners asserted that indiscriminate clearing would actually make the ground more susceptible to flooding since the natural growth, particularly the tall willows, absorbed much of the run-off.  As it turns out, hydrologists and landscape architects have devised long-range plans that will create a much better detention system for run-off water than the current water features can hold.

External factors soon impacted trees in the park, none more than the severe drought that plagued the Gulf coast in 2011 and 2012.  Beautiful oaks and pines began dying at an unprecedented rate.

As a result, the CLCWA contracted to cut and remove more than one hundred trees, like this twenty-foot-tall magnolia.

As competing visions for what to do with the green space continued, the CLCWA pushed ahead with plans to develop a water detention facility, and in early 2013, a landscape architecture firm, SWA Group, unveiled its master plan during a community meeting.  The first phase of the plan has already been implemented, and the fifty-year-old golf course is now being transformed into a space that provides hike-and-bike trails, natural wetlands, and a major detention facility capable of diverting flood waters.  When the park—tentatively called Exploration Green—and detention facility are completed over the next twelve to fifteen years, the original waterways that run through the park and feed into Horespen Bayou will be cut much deeper than the one pictured below.  These new waterways will require additional tree removal, but the tree canopy on the outer banks will be preserved and expanded, and native grasses and wildflowers will be introduced to create a habitat requiring less maintenance than the fairway turf.

While the CLCWA plan has its detractors, most notably a group calling itself Save the Old Golf Course, most Clear Lake citizens support the work of the water authority and are pleased that its efforts will preserve and enhance 200 acres of green space in the Clear Lake City area.  In these times of increasing urban sprawl, any victory for natural habitat is a major accomplishment.

"The Tonic of Wildness"

My connection to Palo Duro Canyon is so deeply embedded that I cannot remember the first time I was there.  It must have been early in life; I recall playing in a picnic area when I was no more than four years old, and about the same age I first rode the Sad Monkey Railroad, a miniature train ride that was part history and geology lesson, part amusement park ride, part hokum.



Postcard image of the Sad Monkey Railroad in its heyday

Riding the Sad Monkey was always fun, and it was an experience I repeated well into adulthood.  Unfortunately, the train stopped running in the 1980s, and the only signs that it was ever there are the ghost patterns of the rail bed that now serve as horseback riding trails.

Outlines of the Sad Monkey rail bed

I snapped the photo above a few years ago when my old hiking buddy Rick, my wife Susan, and I were spending a weekend in the canyon.  We were standing on a table rock overlooking the amphitheater where the summer musical Texas is performed.  The rock is also at the end of a hiking trail that traces the route workers used when the state park was developed in the 1930s.  That's when the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built the roads, picnic areas, and stone buildings in the park.

The point just beyond the table rock 
is the top of the Sad Monkey formation.

It's been almost three decades since I lived in the Texas Panhandle.  That's where Palo Duro Canyon is located—twelve miles east of the city of Canyon.  I still visit the canyon when I travel to see family and friends in Amarillo, and it pleases me to see that the park is still being developed.  The CCC Trail is one of the most recent additions.  The legendary Red Spicer, a great supporter of the canyon, reestablished the trail in 2006, a few years before he died.  Susan, Rick, and I were fortunate enough to meet Red one August morning when he was hard at work, pickax in hand.

Red Spicer working on the CCC Trail

It's the trails, the hiking, and the exploration of new territory that have always appealed to me.  From the time I was a kid, I always enjoyed striking out into new territory, and the CCC Trail is one of those great places to explore.



Rick and me hiking a section of the CCC Trail

The most challenging trail in the canyon doesn't have a name, but it runs from the sixth water crossing (the park road cuts across the Prairie Dog fork of the Red River) to the western rim of the canyon.  Rick and I dubbed it the Mesquite Park Trail for the flatland above the canyon that we explored for several months, searching for a rock formation called the Kneeling Camel.  For an extended chronicle of that and additional Palo Duro Canyon adventures, read my other blog, Gecko Hill.

The rim below Mesquite Park

The most famous trail in the canyon is the one that leads to the Lighthouse and a lesser-known formation called Castle Rock.  It's an open, mostly unshaded trail that gets brutally hot in the summer, but it leads to a spectacular payoff, a dramatic view of those two imposing hoodoos, columns of sedimentary rock with capstones.

Castle Peak and the Lighthouse

I first hiked the Lighthouse Trail when I was a teenager, and I have revisited it many times in the intervening years.  When we were in graduate school at West Texas State University, Rick and I organized a Saturday morning hike to the Lighthouse, led by one of our favorite English professors, Dr. Russell Sparling.  When we reached the end of the trail, he read aloud from Walden, by Henry David Thoreau.  It included this famous passage: "We need the tonic of wildness ....  At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature."

This "tonic of wildness" has always appealed to me—the sense of nature untamed, of human beings' fragile hold on this earth.  Strangely, I take comfort in recognizing my own insignificance in the grand scale of nature.

The Lighthouse, as seen from the western side

Readjusting the View

One of the first posts I wrote for this blog was about my father. I titled it "Adjusting the View" to reflect the shifting but ultimately elusive perspectives I had of a man I saw only sporadically in my childhood, a man I barely knew. I later wrote about my mother's struggle with Alzheimer's disease and how her illness changed the dynamics of our relationship. More than a year later, she is still fighting a myriad of ailments, but her decline has grown more pronounced. As one parent continues to slip away, another unexpectedly reappeared in the lives of my brothers and me.

Last summer I saw my biological father for the first time in almost thirty years. There is a strange kismet in the way all of us reconnected, but the details of how it happened don't really matter. The important thing is that my father and I reestablished ties and now have a much stronger relationship and a better understanding of each other.

When my brothers and I met at our dad's house last summer, I was reminded of just how adventurous a life he has led. An avid outdoorsman, he recounted his many trips to Mexico, where he used to spearfish, and weeks-long treks to remote islands in the Gulf of California, ventures he undertook by himself. He told us about Blue Hole, New Mexico, where he taught SCUBA diving.

Growing up, my brothers and I shared much tamer weekend adventures with our dad, camping and fishing at the lakes of the Texas Panhandle and eastern New Mexico, hiking in Palo Duro Canyon, and riding motorcycles along the Canadian River. Those experiences shaped my love of nature, and it was a joy to talk about the dozens of places we have explored—and continue to explore—as adults. I marvel at how similar my dad and I are—in interests, tastes, and sense of humor—despite our limited contact. We talked about our love of northern New Mexico, particularly the mountains near Santa Fe.

We also talked about family history and the paths our lives have taken in the thirty years since we last spoke. Spending a few days at my dad's house, I saw dozens of objects that I had forgotten about, including an old trunk from Germany, carved wooden figures, and a cuckoo clock. This latter item I didn't notice until I heard it chime, but it immediately took me back to the many times I had heard it as child, awakening on Sunday morning, knowing it would soon be time to return to my routine life at home and another week at school.

The older I get, the more I appreciate how precious time is and how quickly it passes. Last May when I told some of my friends about the upcoming reunion, one of them asked if I intended to inquire about what had caused the estrangement, and another thought I should get an apology. I neither expected nor wanted an apology and knew there was nothing to be gained in asking questions about the past; my suspicion is that there are no easy answers about what happened.

The only time that really matters is now—this moment typing away at a keyboard, listening to Debussy in the background, watching the cold January rain hit my window. In this moment I am thinking about the father I once lost, then found, about the last time I saw him, which was less than a week ago, and about the next time I see him, which, no doubt, will be sooner than I can imagine.

Are You My Son?

In one of my favorite photographs, my mother is standing in front of a 1960s-model Kelvinator, wearing a black evening dress, a large corsage pinned to her collar. "Dressed to the nines" is how she would describe herself. Strangely, she is balancing a plate of butter and three eggs in her right hand. I have no idea what she intends to do with them, but there is something beautifully incongruous about the image. I'm fairly certain she and my father were about to leave the house to attend a Beta Sigma Phi Sweetheart Ball, probably the year she was nominated as her chapter's sweetheart.

I'd like to think those eggs were for my two brothers and me, that she was helping us prepare supper. My mother taught me many valuable lessons when I was growing up—how to scramble eggs, for instance. My brothers and I were latchkey kids. Because my mother worked full time for as long as I can remember, she ensured that we could take care of ourselves.

She also taught me how to play cards. Not content with Go Fish or Old Maid, she started me with Crazy Eights and then moved on to Hearts, Spades, Gin Rummy, and Canasta. She wanted to make it worth her time, after all, and she wasn't about to go easy on me. Once after complaining about losing several hands in a row, I asked why she never let me win. "What good would that do you?" she responded.

She won for a simple reason: she memorized every card as it was played. My mom is as smart as a whip (one of her favorite phrases), and even as she approaches the age of eighty (sorry for divulging that detail, Mom), her long-term memory is remarkable. Last month while I sat beside her hospital bed (as she was recovering from knee surgery), a clip from the 1958 film Auntie Mame flitted across the TV screen in the corner of the room. "That's Rosalind Russell," my mom noted. I pulled up the Internet Movie Database on my phone to verify her claim. She was right, of course.

It's not that I would normally doubt my mother's veracity—she used to remind me that she was always right—but these days she would be the first to admit otherwise. For the past few years my mother has suffered from Alzheimer's disease, and it has progressed most noticeably in the last six months.

Millions of people struggle with the disease, and even more friends and family members struggle with the effects. I have watched others deal with dementia, but there is something poignant and sobering about witnessing your own mother slipping away. During a recent physical therapy session, someone introduced me to her doctor as her youngest son. My mother, who was sitting in a wheelchair in front of me, turned around and asked, "Are you my son?" After reassuring her that I was indeed her son, she reached up to hug and kiss me.

For a long time my mom has confused me with her grandsons, and she has not remembered my birthday for the past two years, so it didn't surprise me to hear her ask who I was. Yet this incident continues to stick with me … and not just in a negative way. There is something sweet about the way my mother continually lives in the present. In some ways she is much more aware of the details around her than the rest of us. When she was in the hospital, for instance, she picked up on snippets of conversation outside her room and tried to connect what she heard with where she thought she was, her own home. And when she goes on a car ride, she is mesmerized by the clouds sliding past the window. "Aren't they beautiful?" she asks, as if seeing the sky for the first time. It doesn't matter that she will marvel again at the clouds five minutes later or that she will rediscover her youngest son every time I come to visit. Her emotional response is always keen, always fresh.

I wonder how she processes memories. Do those snippets of knowledge—names of film stars, rules for playing bridge—commingle with details of life experiences? Does she remember being the young mother self-consciously posing in front of a clothesline? Could she recall where she was living at the time or who gave her the wristwatch she is wearing? I think I know the answers to these questions, but I'm still curious to understand her thought processes.

I still see vivid glimpses of my mom the way I've always known her—a sly, mischievous, and playful gal (another of her favorite words). What's different now is that those qualities appear in sudden but fleeting bursts—in a facial expression, a non sequitur, or the sound of her laughter. And her expressions are often exaggerated. She sometimes imitates people, almost mockingly, mirroring what she sees because original expression doesn't come as easily as it once did. Such moments are filled with raw, unfiltered emotion.

As the mother I've known all these years slips away from me, I've been thinking a lot about person she was long before I came into her life. I can almost step into another of my favorite photos. She is walking down Polk Street in downtown Amarillo, holding the hand of her grandfather (her beloved Dapta). She squints in the bright winter sun.  She is wearing a Betty Boop jacket with a leopard print collar, and a matching felt beret rests jauntily on her head. There she is, a little girl in white boots, clutching a tiny zippered bag. She is out on a stroll between two world wars—her entire life ahead of her—without a care in the world.

Adjusting the View

This is how I remember my father—he is standing next to a 1950s-model car with my mother, who, in turn, is holding my oldest brother.  The image is blurry, but I can tell that they're all squinting in the bright sunlight.  They appear to be heading out on or returning from a summer picnic.  My parents were nineteen years old at the time, and their faces beam with joy and optimism, neither of which held up, given that the marriage unraveled within ten years. 

Of course, I don't really remember my father this way at all.  Since my parents separated before I turned three, I have no memories of living with him, but this image is fixed in my mind because of the snapshot, a relic I discovered as an adult while rummaging through my mother's cedar chest, looking for new details about the family history.  Until I was in my thirties, my mom revealed very little about the years she lived with my dad, not wanting to taint my relationship with him or to sugarcoat things either.  Theirs was an unhappy marriage, and over the years I have gotten only glimpses of what it must have been like.

So the blurry image is especially appropriate.  Growing up, my two older brothers and I would occasionally spend weekends with my dad, going on camping or fishing trips or hanging out at his modern split-level house with his second wife (who was always sweet and welcoming).  But even as a child, I never really got to know him.  I liked him.  He struck me as a guy who was really, really cool—in all respects.  He was hip, good looking, and smart, and he was emotionally detached.  He was also a charmer, a quality that stood out in some of the old photos from my mother's cedar chest.  One picture, in particular, always amused me.  It was taken at a costume party.  A leggy young woman (not my mother) is sitting on my dad's lap, and she's wearing mismatched knee socks.  He's smiling bigger than I've ever seen him smile, and his glasses reflect the camera's flash so you can't see his eyes.

That detail about the glasses is revealing.  In all the years I visited my dad, he invariably wore sunglasses, even indoors.  I once asked my oldest brother why that was, to which he replied, "Because he has no eyes."  We both laughed but we knew it was true—not literally, of course—but our father never made eye contact, never connected with us.  He rarely expressed any emotions, good or bad.  He was simply there.  Admittedly, it was an awkward arrangement for all of us.  He was our part-time dad, but we were his part-time kids, and he probably never knew how best to relate to us.

I last saw my father twenty-eight years ago when I was in my mid-twenties.  I had just gotten married and had taken my wife to meet him.  After that visit I decided to let my dad call if he wanted to talk or get together.  He never did.

So here I am, sorting through a box full of old photographs.  Two pictures stand out because they were taken by my dad.  The first was snapped a year or two after my parents got married.

What's striking is how young and pretty my mother looks, and she must have looked equally beautiful to my dad.  There's also something disorienting about the image.  My mother has never been what you would call a lover of the great outdoors, but there she is standing at the base of a mountain in Colorado or New Mexico, doing her best to enjoy the kind of experience my dad most certainly loved, a fishing trip.  She's even wearing waders, perhaps for the first and last time.

The other photo my dad snapped was taken at Christmas, the last one we all shared under the same roof.  My cousin, my brothers, and I are sitting on the floor after the presents have been opened.  My oldest brother is wearing a shiny new pair of cowboy boots and has a transistor radio pressed to his ear. That's me pressing my bare feet against my other brother's new boots.

What stands out most is the hi-fi set behind us.  That stereo was my dad's pride and joy (he was quite the audiophile, especially when it came to his jazz records), and when he moved into his new house not long after this photo was taken, he devoted a room to his stereo.  Don't ask me how I know he is the one who snapped the photo.  I suppose it could have been my mother, but there's something about the blank looks on our faces that tells me our father was on the other side of that Polaroid camera, one knee on the floor, left eye shut, right eye pressed against the viewfinder.