Memorial Day, 2011: the big water battle; flowers at roadside memorial; we feast

On the final night of Kalib and Jobe's final Memorial Day weekend visit with us, Jacob and Lavina came out to sleep at our house. On Memorial Day morning, we went to breakfast at Denali Family Restaurant. I fear that I am shifting my loyalties from the old Mat-Su Family Restaurant to Denali. It is the hash browns, that is why.

Hash browns have always been a gamble at Mat-Su. You just never know - they can come fried to a crisp, reduced to mush, or cooked just right. So far, they have been cooked just right at Denali every time - and it sure seems that they are fresh cut and not taken from a package. They are as good as any hash browns I have ever eaten, anywhere.

Denali Family Restaurant hash browns are superb!

Mat-Su Family has long been a place of morning refuge for me and I feel kind of bad about shifting over, but that's what excellent hash browns will do.

I will still go to Mat-Su, sometimes - if for no other reason than old times sake.

Later, in the early afternoon, Margie and Lavina went to the store to do some shopping. After awhile, I went out to see what the three boys were doing. Jimmy came with me. We found two of the three boys watching a butterfly pass overhead.

I am not certain what the other one was into.

Then Kalib turned on the faucet. He began to fling water around.

Soon, both boys were getting a bit wet and muddy. Jobe was most interested in the process.

Kalib got the idea that it might be fun to spash his brother, so he did.

After taking the blast of cold water, Jobe turned and momentarily fled.

In just seconds, he fully recovered, and began to laugh. He laughed so hard he blew the snot right out his nose.

Dad joined in the fight, allying himself with Jobe.

Oh, it was a battle insane!

Jobe was most amused.

Kalib checks his ammo as Jobe strategizes.

Jacob knew that he had to get the boys dried off and cleaned up before Mom and Grandma came home.

Jobe didn't stay clean very long.

As all this had been going on, Jim had found a patch of dirt to roll around in. Only his face remained undusted.

Jim then trotted off into the woods. I cannot let him go there alone, so I followed.

So did the other three.

Then the ladies came home. We guys mentioned nothing at all about the battle that had taken place. The ladies can find out when they read this blog. Jake will be in big trouble then.

The boys and their dad lay down to nap. I took off to ride my bike. I found a broken scooter on the Seldon Road bike trail, just lying there, abandoned.

I wondered what the story behind that was?

If I had the time, I would write a novel based on this mysterious scooter. It would be a best seller. I don't have the time. If you do, feel free to steal my idea - go ahead, write a novel based on this image.

When I reached the corner of Church and Schrock Roads, I was reminded that although Memorial Day was established at the end of the Civil War as a holiday to honor and mourn our military dead, it has also become a time that people take to honor all their dead, to bring flowers to graves and memorials.

This is not a grave, but is the place where where three people were killed in 1999 in a collision caused by a drunk driver - a woman, a teenaged girl and an unborn child. 

For years afterward, loved ones kept memorial crosses atop this pile of stones, but vandals repeatedly tore down the memorials until the loved ones gave up and settled for just the pile of stones.

On Memorial Day, someone had brought these wreathes and placed them here. 

Let us hope that respect and compassion can now replace ignorance and cruelty in the hearts of the vandals.

I stopped on the bridge over the Little Susistna River. These two came by as part of a carvan of four-wheelers.

I have crossed the bridge a number of times since I began biking again, but I had not gone down to the river itself. Today, I did - and symbolically put my front wheel in the water.

I do not know what this symbolizes, but it must symbolize something.

On the bank and in the shallows, people frolicked.

When I returned home, I found Margie and Lavina repairing the picnic table.

Inside, I found the boys napping. I then went off to buy some iced drinks and to fill the tank with expensive gas. When I returned, the boys had not moved at all.

Lavina began the cooking by roasting bread on the barbecue.

If one studies all the faces in this picture and then gives some thought to it... it is just incredible to think about, to ponder the history, the sorrows, the changes, distances covered, the links from then until now.

Lavina kept the grill going.

And then we ate - but Kalib was napping and Caleb was sleeping in prep for his night shift.

And then, somewhere between nine and ten PM, it came time to say goodbye.

Margie and I had enjoyed the rapidly enlarging little ones for three days, but now they were going.

Caleb missed everything. He slept through breakfast. He slept through the water battle. He slept through dinner. But he awoke in time to say goodbye.

And then off they went, the people in the car and Muzzy running alongside, all the way back to Anchorage.

Well, I exaggerate a little. Muzzy would only run to the stop sign, about 200 yards away. Then he would trade places with Jacob and drive the family home while Jacob ran alongside the car - all the way to Anchorage.

Don't worry. It's okay that the dog drove. Muzzy has a license.

I then found Margie in the back yard, cleaning up.

"It's too quiet now," she said.

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They'rrrrrrre baaaaack.... in the blog: Jobe, Lavina, Kalib, Jacob and Margie - in that order

How long has it been since this face has appeared in my blog? Six weeks? Something like that. And look, in this, the very first frame that I shot of him upon our reunion, he is just standing around. STANDING around. Not wobbling shakily. Standing.

As though it is no big deal at all. As though it is just something that a little kid would be expected to do.

Jobe. 

Standing around.

And he walks around at will, too.

I was worried that after all this time, he might have forgotten his grampa. Remember how he loved me? How he adored me?

Has he now forgotten me?

After a brief period of study and contemplation, he walked right over and sat down on my lap. He had not forgotten.

And then he went out to play with Martigny. Martigny did not not want to play with him. Maybe it was the "woof" on his shirt that scared her away.

I'm afraid Jobe has been sick the past couple of days. Respiratory infection. 

Jobe needed rest.

Still, he gets up and moves happily around. He is getting better.

Then Jacob called, to say that he and Kalib were coming home from their walk and would soon reach the nearby park. I went out to see and this is the first frame I shot, right after they came into view.

Last time I saw them, there was a still a good amount of snow here. Now the leaves have come out.

Kalib went straight for the slide. As he started down, he looked up at his dad to see what his dad would do.

His dad came sliding after...

Kalib threw some pebbles into a slide chute and then watched as they tumbled and slid back down.

Then he ran off and his dad chased after.

Soon, they were in the house, eating popsicles. When offered a variety of colors, Kalib chose the green one. Then he saw his mom pick a red one for herself and decided that the red one would be better instead.

I also had a red one.

The red ones are best.

Although the green is pretty good.

It was about 10:30 PM now. Margie's flight was scheduled to arrive at 1:38 AM. I had come in early just so I could finally see the boys, but Jobe was now asleep and the rest would soon join them.

That meant I had three hours to wait.

The prospect horrified me.

What I could I do with all that time?

I could go sit in a bar and sip root beer, wink my eyes at honkey tonk women and say stupid things as they danced and sauntered across the floor.

Instead, I laid back on the couch. I sank right into it.

I closed my eyes. The lids were so heavy, I did not feel like I could ever open them again.

I fell asleep right there. At 1:09 AM, I forced myself to get up and go. I drove to the airport and picked Margie up. Her plane had come in half-an-hour early and she was standing there waiting when I pulled up, so I stopped, she put the one bag that she had left with in the back plus the other that she had bought and filled in Arizona and jumped in. 

I took off without even taking a picture.

As regular readers know, it is our tradition to go out for breakfast the morning after either one of us returns from a trip.

So this morning we went to Family Restaurant - no, not Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant but Denali Family Restaurant, just a few miles further up the Parks Highway.

I would not have even known about this brand new restaurant had I not gone to Fairbanks to cover Katie John's graduation, but I saw it as I drove home.

If they had named it, "Mckinley Family Restaurant," I would never have tried it. I would not have walked through the door. I try never to patronize a business that bears the name, "Mckinley." I stick to "Denali."

Inside, it was very much like Mat-Su Family Restaurant. The decor was similar, the menu similar, the food similar and the plates exactly the same. Even all the staff that I could see, including the waitresses, were staff I recognized from Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

So I thought maybe it was an extension, built by the same owner to compete with him/herself.

No. It wasn't. It was built by a competitor and the staff that I could see had all been hired away.

Breakfast was very good - the hash browns cooked just right and, I hate to say it, better than at Mat-Su. 

I will still continue to patronize Mat-Su. It is a bit closer. And Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant has helped me bear some extremely hard mornings. Very hard mornings. Mornings that followed nights of turmoil and grief, nights without sleep.

So I will keep going to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

But I will patronize Denali, too. Good hash browns are a big draw to me.

Margie enjoyed it, too.

It was the first time she had drank coffee in weeks, she said. 

She stayed with her sister, who remains a pretty active, decent and abiding Mormon. She allows visitors to brew coffee for themselves, but Margie did not feel like brewing coffee for just one so she abstained.

Tomorrow, I will discuss a recent NPR story about the health benefits of coffee - particularly for the prostate - and will thank a generous, almost not-anonymous lady who bought me a coffee at Metro the other day.

Margie is glad to be home, but she says it feels cold here.

"I have come back to winter," she said.

This, even though the leaves are sprouting out here and it snowed three inches at her sisters house 6000 feet up in Arizona her final morning there.

Still, it was warmer there than here.

Which it ought to have been.

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(warning - slideshow contains additional photos of Jobe and Kalib not seen in the actual post)

All alone at Family on Easter Sunday morning

Margie has been gone for just about a week now and I have breakfasted out altogether too often, so I had resolved that on this morning, both for the sake of our pocketbook and my health, I would stay home and cook oatmeal.

But when I woke up for the final time, buried in cats, I did not want to get up at all. I certainly did not want to get up and cook oatmeal. So I lay there, thinking about it, and it suddenly occurred to me that it was Easter Sunday. I did not think it right that on Easter Sunday, I should get up, cook oatmeal and eat it all alone on the couch.

I decided that, fiscal prudence and dietary health be damned - on both counts, I am pretty much hopelessly lost, anyway - I was going to have my Easter breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

Had Caleb been around, I would have invited him, too, but even though we sleep under the same roof - I sporadically at night and he through astoundingly long hours in the day - I rarely see him. He was off, somewhere.

So off I went to Family, alone.

"Do you need a menu?" Connie asked, knowing full well that I wouldn't.

"No," I answered, "I'll go with the omelette today."

"Denver, with mushrooms, hash browns lightly cooked, twelve-grain toast on the delay," she filled in the rest. Normally, she would have been 100 percent right, but today, instead of toast, I decided I wanted pancakes.

A bit later, Norman came walking by, carrying coffee and water. 

I got to thinking about my grandsons, who I have not seen now for a couple of weeks. They will spend today with Margie, her mom, their parents, Lavina's mom, sister and other family members from both the Apache and Navajo sides of the family at Margie's place of birth - Carrizo Canyon, on the White Mountain Apache Indian Reservation.

It will almost certainly be warm, and they will gather seasoned oak and make a cooking fire. On that fire, they will cook Apache bread, slices of steak, hot dogs, and multi-colored Apache corn.

The adults will hide colored eggs here and there and then the little ones will go find them.

Some of those eggs will be hidden in plain sight and the bigger little ones will have to leave these eggs be.

These eggs will be for Jobe to find.

And yes, since he left here two weeks ago, Jobe has become a full-fledged walker.

In my mind, I can just picture the gleam in his eyes and his bright smile, as he toddles excitedly about, grabbing eggs with his chubby little hands. Maybe with a little help and guidance, he will then place his eggs in whatever type of basket he has been given.

And I will miss it.

I, his grandpa, who first photographed him only minutes after his birth, who, despite my wandering ways, have tried hard to document each step of his life as he has moved alone, will miss his first Easter Sunday Easter egg hunt.

Kalib, of course, will now be an old pro at Easter egg hunting. I hope he enjoys it, anyway. I hope he and cousin Gracie have a good time, gathering eggs.

I do pretty good alone. Better than most people, I think.

Yet, I felt awful sad and lonely, as I sat right here, in Family Restaurant, eating my Denver omelette with mushrooms. And yes, as I do throughout each and every day, I thought of Soundarya, too, and wondered how she and Anil might have spent the day, if they had but survived.

Even though she was Hindu, Sandy was very much up on all the Christian holidays.

Then along came Meda, refilling coffee cups. I had not seen Meda before today. She is new on the job - four or five days, she said. She said she loves the job, it is "awesome."

She was a little bit shy and slightly coy, but very friendly and warm and when she poured my refill, I felt a little better.

But still, I needed Jobe... and if not Jobe, at glimpse at that magical beam of the spectrum of life that Jobe currently occupies.

I looked around, and could not see a single child in Family Restaurant. I knew there would be plenty of children later, when families began to drop by after church, but I could see none, now.

And then, just as I finished my last bite, I heard a little squeal, accompanied by the sound of tiny foot-falls pattering rapidly across the floor.

A tiny girl, right about Jobe's age, scampered out of the large dining room beyond.

It was Molly.

Just Jobe's age.

On Easter Sunday morn.

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Margie, the fork, and Jim

As you can see, I caught Margie with a fork in her hand, ready to eat Jim.

"No!" I shouted. "Don't! You can't! Jim is my buddy! And he'll give you indigestion!" Actually, Jim is very healthy and he would not give anyone indigestion. I just wanted her to think that, to discourage her from doing it.

"Oh, my!" she answered in shocked voice. "What did I just about do? It's because I'm so hungry I can't think straight. Jim is my buddy, too! Oh, poor Jim! What did I just about do?"

I gave her an orange. She ate it. 

Everything was okay after that.

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Breakfast, a dog and coffee

Short and brief today: as noted yesterday, after Charlie won the beard contest I had to drop Margie off at Jacob and Lavina's to help care for Kalib and Jobe. Kalib was a bit ill.

Naturally, in the morning, with my family absent, I took breakfast at Family Restaurant.

I would have preferred to sleep until after noon, but I had a significant task that had to be completed by lunch time, so I got up early, before daybreak. Not so long ago it was easy to get up before daybreak. One could sleep late and still get up before daybreak.

As the days lengthen, it gets harder and harder.

Soon, it will be impossible, for day will not break. Day will just be there, fading into and out of itself.

In the afternoon I took a little walk. I soon came upon Taiga and Tony.

Taiga. 

We simply are not getting much snow this winter. To the north of us, Fairbanks, a normally very dry city with not much snow, is buried. South of us there is plenty of snow. There is snow to the east and west. Lately, there have been some big blizzards on the Arctic Coast that I am told have buried all kinds of things.

Here, at the end of February, the entire winter accumlation adds up to little more than a dusting.

When I stopped at Metro for coffee, Carmen was very excited. Some new people had moved into the neighborhood from Ketchikan. They were now coming to Metro Cafe every day and loving it.

So Carmen called the Ketchikan people to come over from the table where they were comfortable drinking their afternoon coffee and to pose for a Through the Metro Window study.

So here it is:

Through the Metro Window Study #7,656: Carmen with Ketchikan relocatees

Ketchikan is a rainy city - over 200 inches a year. It never gets very cold in Ketchikan. But once, a long time ago, I went to Ketchikan to cover a Tlingit and Haida meeting for the Tundra Times. The Ketchikan airport sits on an island a bow-and-arrow shot away from the city, but with no famous "Bridge to nowhere" one must cross over by ferry.

And on that day, a long time ago, it was raining and wind was blowing hard and I was sitting on that ferry with little protection from the elements and it felt darn cold.

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