I just read Eva’s
contribution and fell all
over in love with her again. She is such a positive influence on me
that I may
almost be able to survive Grinchhood. Like the family dog, Coco, who
is almost
72 dog years she tells of the family car with great reverence. It took
me back
15 years to the day we brought little Sam home in a blue blanket in a
Toyota
Celica and realized our life was taking a big turn and we would need a
Soccer
Mom van. Although Sam recently vowed
he would never,
ever drive such an uncool set of wheels, I think he will eventually
come
around. He is getting big, really tall, especially for us pint-size
people who
have spent our lives around folks of our own size. The Good Book states, “Judge
not, that ye not
be judged”. This of course is a warning not to be critical, but I find
it a
challenge at my age not to be impressed with the people I have chosen
to be
surrounded by. To put it another way, I am really impressed with the
people I
am surrounded by. I feel I live in the center of a “Fount of every
Blessing”.
Within a one mile radius I have met cowboy poets, a Navy Seal who set
the
charges on the beach at Normandy, a corporate security agent who
negotiates hostage
releases all over the world and sports weapons James Bond would be
proud of. I
helped write the memoirs of a man who designed, built and flew a flying
wing
and who consulted with John Northrop to build the Stealth bomber using
a
similar design. In addition to that, the
musical talent in
this neighborhood is incredible. Like the Osmonds, there are families
here with
great musical talent. The last Ward adjustment brought us one family
with three
violinists ages 4, 6 and 7 who fiddled Christmas music, plus enough
extra
string players to make an 8 piece string orchestra for Thanksgiving. The Christmas program today
was enough to
bring tears to my eyes. One of our neighbors, a mother with four
children
fiddles and sings in a Blue Grass country band known as “Strings of
Fire”. She
also plays piano and this morning accompanied by a cello and herself on
violin
sang “Oh, Holy Night” in a sweet clear operatic voice without a mike for a full house plus overflow
congregation. I so
appreciate music now, even as my hearing is deteriorating. I am
thrilled by
people whose brains are musical. I can remember in grade school that I
could
not tell the difference between pitch and volume and I am still not
much better
at it. I am so thankful I still have my eyes, or at least one good one
that
lines up with a camera viewfinder. I treated myself to the newest Nikon
camera
and was able to use it for the most recent photo phone directory for
the
church. I love making good clear images of happy looking people. This was the
year of passing over for many people we know. Some I have already
mentioned. My
Mother finally shucked off this mortal coil and was freed from the
indignity of
mental demise which lasted 10+ years before her physical demise. I look
upon
the future with fear and hope. I am so fortunate to be surrounded by
younger
people, most notably by my beautiful wife Eva. Then there is Sam, that
has
unwittingly fallen in love with technology and is beginning to
experience some
of the things that drew me into my life’s work. He is being plunged
into
technology he will master in months what took me many years to discover. The plus side
of getting old is that all the women are getting more beautiful and
some still
have a little girl in their smile. Some of the fruits of aging are that
your
dreams get more sophisticated and intricate and sometimes the
experiences are
so pleasant and real that you just don’t want to leave whatever state
you are
in. Speaking of states you are in, I had to go back to Texas to
complete the
internment of my Mother. The people who knew her were very supportive
and
remember Mom as the one who taught them to dance and helped them with
their
problems. I went back to the old tamale factory in Ysleta and it was a
third
world country. Although there are some sparks of the beautiful and the
wonderful, the area is dying and the human vultures are taking over.
The new
wealth of the Southern Border is drug related. There are murders by the
thousand and the violence has eclipsed the major US cities of New York
and
Chicago combined. The family-owned funeral home and cemetery where my
parents
are buried have been purchased by Mexican National Cartels and have
been given
Mexican names and symbols such as Funeraria del Angel (pronounced
ahn-hel) with
a winged angel flying on a black limousine. They also surprised me with
a $1600
bill for picking up the casket at the airport six miles away. To
paraphrase an
old country song, “Happiness is seeing El Paso, Texas in my rear view
mirror.” Oh, and the tamales were good but not as good as I remembered. See, the Grinch part only took one paragraph. |
|
Eva |
Leon |
Sam |
Albums |
Leon's
Web Page |