The missing days of the five that Kalib and Jobe spent with Margie and me: golf, Kung Fu, cloud burst, watermelon, bath, Sentimental Journey...
Saturday, August 28, 2010 at 5:00AM 
There are times when I think that I should just drop all else and call this, "The Grandpa Blog." But I don't think that I will do that. I am certain that by now regular readers have observed that, no matter what I am working on, at some point I tend to get overwhelmed, I fall behind. New things happen and so I just drop it, move on to the new and state that I will come back to it later.
Sometimes I do come back; more often, I suspect, I don't.
Early this week, I had to pull back from posting the pictures that I had been taking of Kalib and Jobe during their five days with us because other things that I was working on just took over. Still, I had the pictures, so I stated that I would come back and post them.
This time, I am really doing it. I begin with this photo of Kalib, in the back yard, golfing with his Uncle Caleb.
They got into something that was kind of like a game of catch, not with a baseball, but with golf ball and club and no one ever really caught the ball.
Caleb would chip it to Kalib...
...and then Kalib would club it back to Caleb. Golf catch.
Sometimes, when they were with us, I had to take off to go to Metro Cafe for my 4:00 PM All Things Considered coffee break. They, and Margie, were always invited to come with me, but Margie always preferred to stay home and keep them with her.
On one such break, a cloud burst caught me just as I left Metro.
It was a grand one.
A couple of times, I saw flashes, then heard thunder.
One time, the flash seemed to strike directly over my head and the thunder boomed out simultaneously.
No flash here, though.
Just rain, pouring down.
I loved this storm. It was grand.
It made Earth seem like a good place to live.
Rain that burst from the clouds to fall down upon us.
School bus in the rain. I felt badly that Kalib was not in the car with me at this moment, because he loves to spot school buses. He always points at them and excitedly exclaims, "Bus! Bus!"
Have you ever been out in the rain, soaking wet and cold, and then you get to come in and take a hot shower? You know how good that is.
Well, Jobe had not been in the rain and he did not get to take a shower. But he did get a wet diaper. Then he got plopped down in the kitchen sink where his grandmother gave him a bath - just as she did every night that he was here.
He seemed to think it was pretty good.
Jobe and me. In case either of us should drool or spill food from our mouths, we've both got something to catch it.
I went to the store and thumped a few watermelons. One gave me that perfect hollow sound, so I bought it and brought it home.
I had thumped well. I have sampled some excellent melons this summer, everywhere that I have been, from Greenland to Anaktuvuk Pass to Fort Yukon to Barrow and right here in Wasilla.
But this was the best melon of all.
Jobe was curious, but not really ready to handle a watermelon yet.
Someday, when he is older and can carry on good conversations and has had time to learn about good watermelons and bad, I will open up this blog and show him this picture.
"This just may have been the best watermelon I ever tasted," I will tell him. "And you were right there to witness it."
"I can't ever remember tasting that melon. If it were that good, I am certain I would remember. Did you share the best watermelon that you ever ate with me, Grandpa?" he will ask. "I was right there. Surely, you shared it?!"
"No," I will answer. "You were too little to eat such a melon. You might have choked on it."
"Damnit, Grandpa!" Jobe will cuss. "Now I know why I have felt this quiet anger toward you all these years. You should have shared the damned best watermelon that you ever ate with me!"
I found Kalib on the couch with his grandmother, twisting his hands and arms into various positions and making Kung Fu noises.
What in the world had he been watching?
"Eeeyaaaah!"
Kalib Kung Fu bows to an imaginary opponent.
The Kung Fu warrior grows tired. His grandma is there.
I journied past Mahoney Ranch. They were putting up hay. When you take a picture through a car window as you drive by something, you cannot really control what the pocket camera grabs hold of as a focus point - in this case, grass in front of the barbed wire fence.
Still, it seemed kind of appropriate to me that the main subject was a bit out of focus. I had Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion on the radio. A guest act was performing the World War II era classic, "Sentimental Journey."
That took my mind right out of the car and put it in an exercise room in the part of an extended care facility in Murray, Utah, where people go to die.
The person who had gone into that room to die on this night was my dad. My niece, Shaela Cook, who had largely been raised by he and mom, bought a Glenn Miller album for him and he left this world to the music of that album; he departed to Sentimental Journey:
Gonna take a sentimental journey
Gonna set my heart at ease
Gonna make a sentimental journey
To renew old memories.
Got my bag, I got my reservation
Spent each dime I could afford
Like a child in wild anticipation
Long to hear that: "All aboard!"
Seven, that's the time we leave at
- seven
I'll be waiting up for
- heaven
Counting every mile of railroad track
that takes me back.
Never thought my heart could be so yearning
Why did I decide to roam?
Gotta take this sentimental journey
Sentimental journey home.
How's the journey been so far, Dad?
Did you renew old memories?
Or did you just disappear,
into the ground, into the ether?
Is your heart at ease?
Or is it simply that it no longer beats?
So this was on Monday, just before I took off to Anchorage. Jobe came out to say goodbye.
And this is what I saw later, after I got there. An airplane. Flying over the steel and concrete canyons of that great metropolis: Anchorage, Alaska.
God, what a fortunate man I am, to live in Alaska. Even when I am in Anchorage, I can feel Alaska. It is out there, beyond and encompassing the steel and concrete, always embracing me.
The Alaska embrace can be a dangerous and deadly one.
It kills people all the time, in its great beauty it kills, without remorse.
Maybe one day it will kill me.
Yet it feels so good.
No - I could never again live in the Lower 48.
I was born down there - born into exile in the state of Utah, city of Ogden.
But even down there, at the time of my birth, I was an Alaskan. Alaska is the only place that will ever feel like home to me. It is the only place that has ever truly felt like home.
I am so glad I finally made it home.
I know - I've said this before, but sometimes I just have to say it again.
Reader Comments (8)
I adore the picture with Kalib doing the bow, they are all great of course but this one is my favorite today :)
Hey Bill!
getting nack here after a long time...but wheneva i read ur post im sure to have a quick laugh...its so much fun...so alive as though im sitting right next to you when all this happened! its so much fun to read it sitting here in India! :) I liked da Kung Fu & watermelon part da best :P
Love,
Suji
Wonderful post, Bil.
I love your blog, and Jobe is the cutest baby I have ever seen!
Aattai the little ones.
Jobe always looks the slightest bit astonished. I enjoyed your sentimental journey.
Thank you so much for doing this. I saw all the pictures and enjoyed them very much. I have a connection to the Mahoney farm . I visit there because my son lives on theMahoney farm with my daughter-in-law , who is a Mahoney. Seeing the picture on Tim doing the hay was great, but at the end, Isaw Tim on the tractor, and my son was there with him. I love Wasilla, and wish I lived closer. I miss the family, and when I,m there I visit the grotto regularly.
Ah, how I wish LA would have cloudbursts in the summer. I miss them so. Strong, summer rain. Nothing like it.
I have thought about Grandpa's final days quite often this summer. Whether it's my brain fooling me, or there is an afterlife of sorts, he still exists. It may be my subconscious recalling his presence, but I still sense him from time to time. Someday, when we are sitting over a strong cup of coffee, I must tell you an interesting story about Grandma.