Sushi birthday party

When you enter Ronnie's Sushi house in Anchorage, there is a tank full of live fish close to the door.

The girl on the left - Lisa - she is the reason we gathered here. It was her 24th birthday party. H'mmm? Did I just call her a girl? Twenty-four. That must mean she is a woman - a full-fledged, beautiful, talented, woman. But she is my little girl. She will always be my little girl. My little baby girl.

Behind her, you can barely see the forehead of her boyfriend, Bryce. Bryce's parents, Brian and Lorena, came, too, as did his little nephew, Logan.

Lisa, as photographed through my glass of water.

Margie, as photographed through my glass of water.

You will remember Ryan from Rex's birthday party. This is he and his girlfriend, Jessica, as seen through my water glass. I photographed everybody this way, including myself, and I was going to post them all, but this is enough. You get the idea.

Lisa's boyfriend, Bryce, bought this sushi boat. Margie tried to pay for it, but he got to the counter first. So Margie was going to pay for everything else - and there was quite a bit else - but Charlie beat her to it.

Well, if Charlie is going to pay for a huge portion of the dinner, then surely he should be seen through my water glass, too. Here he is. This is Charlie. It's not Dan, it's not Robert, it's not Michelle. 

It's Charlie.

He is a mighty generous and thoughtful man and he lives with a great black cat named Pizzles that Melanie rescued a few years back.

Kalib told a funny joke and everyone at that end of the table laughed. I would share the joke with you, but it was rather ribald, so I had better not.

Bryce's parents gave Lisa this Chicago Cubs hat as a birthday present.

I think that it was Jacob and Lavina who gave her this pair of shoes. I could be wrong. She got a variety of gifts and I cannot remember who gave her each one. I do know that Melanie gave her a table with a yellow top and Lisa was very pleased with it.

She and Bryce have been eating off the floor and were in need of a table.

I might exaggerate the circumstance just a little bit.

We then moved to Melanie's house for the cake and ice cream. Here is Diamond. Margie and I gave Lisa the mix-master, plus a spatula to go with it.

Jacob and Cassie.

Jessica, Kalib and Ryan.

Rex carries Lisa's birthday cake to her. Margie made the cake.

Lisa blows the candles out.

After she blows them out, the candles light right back up again. They are trick candles, that is why. Kalib is very amused by this unexpected turn of events.

It takes a great deal of blowing by multiple lungs, but, after a couple of hours, the candles had all been blown out. 

And there was a lot of spit on the frosting.

Kalib, who enjoyed his cake.

Melanie, Kalib and Rex dance.

I have a couple of friends in the hospital and I wanted to stop in and see them before we drove back to Wasilla, so Margie and I left a bit early. Kalib waves to his Grandma.

Let me note that there is a new pocket camera out now, called the G11. It is much better suited for low-light photography than is this G1O that I am using, and I have been tempted to buy it. I probably will. But right now, I hate to spend the $500.

My pro-cameras would produce much finer image quality, but I do not want to carry them to such a function. I want to carry only a pocket camera.

So I come knowing that the images will be noisy, grainy, with much motion blur, because I am shooting mostly at 1/30 and even 1/15 of a second. But I don't care. I know a lot of people do, but not me. As long as I can catch a bit of the feeling and emotion, then I am fine with the noise, the grain, and the blur.

Still, one day, in time for this year's tax returns, I will get that G11. 

Margie's birthday party morphs into Jacob's congrats ceremony; a football flies through the house

Continuing on from the last post, the final car that had parked in our driveway had brought Natalie and her children from Anchorage. When Melanie, Charlie, Lisa and I returned from coffee, they were just finishing up their frybread and beans, so I guess Lavina had cooked more bread, yet.

We all signed a card of congratulations for Jacob, since he is now commissioned in the Commission Corps.

And what the hell - one day soon he and Lavina are going to move out and take Kalib with them. As I have stated before, that's why they moved in with us in the first place, so that they could save up some money for a house while they waited for the Commission Corps to accept Jacob and assign him somewhere.

Lavina was sure hoping it would be in Arizona, near her Navajo homeland.

Margie was kind of hoping that it would be, too, because then she thought maybe Kalib could induce me to move to Arizona and be closer to her Apache homeland.

But Jacob got Anchorage.

I don't ever want to move from Alaska. Not ever, ever, ever!

I would die inside.

That sounds selfish, doesn't it, when Margie wants to be closer to her homeland?

But even she doesn't want to be there in the summertime. Too hot. She would rather be here.

Only in winter does she want to be there. She is fed up with Alaska winters.

So maybe someday we can figure out how to broker a compromise.

I love Alaska winters, except for the warm ones. They say this is going to be an El Niño winter. They are the warm ones. I do not like El Niño winters

A lot of football happened today. First, 20th ranked BYU Courgars beat the third-ranked Oklahoma Sooners, 14-13, in a game that came right down to the wire.

I was glad, because I was cheering for BYU. I may be an agnostic coffee drinker who wrestles with the weight of my Mormon upbringing every damn day of my life, but it is still a fact that my direct ancestors include a man who hung out with Joseph Smith when he was held in jail and set out with Brigham Young to cross the Great Plains and BYU is still my alma mater.

Jacob's alma mater played today, too, the Arizona State Sun Devils, who crushed Idaho State 50-3. Natalie's stepson, Cooper, not only watches but gets filled with inspiration. 

Cooper dashes into the front room, ready to play football. As you can see, Kalib is wearing his Sun Devils jersey.

Jacob throws Cooper a pass. Jacob, by the way, made varsity starting quarterback when he was just a sophomore, but then he injured his knee and that was that.

Cooper fumbles the ball!

He's just starting out. The important thing is not that he dropped it, but rather that he stood right there, again and again, as the ball bounced off his chest or head, and was always eager, excited and ready for the next pass.

Royce wanders through in search of toe pets. He gets some.

Natalie and her daughter Tiana adjust each other's hair as Tony, Tiana's twin, sits on the other side.

I'm not at all certain how it happened so fast, but very soon everyone said their goodbyes. Kalib gets a goodbye hug from his Auntie Lisa.

Then Kalib watches as his Auntie Melanie climbs into the 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire with Charlie to begin the drive back to Anchorage. Note all the leaves that have already fallen from the trees. Note, too, how dark it is even though it is only 9:15 PM.

It was a beautiful, beautiful, warm, sunny day, but summer is over. Fall has begun. There won't be many more days like this. One maybe, two perhaps. Wouldn't it be something if we got three? Dare I bid for four? 

Oh, we'll get sun, radiating down brightly upon golden leaves.

But the air will feel crisp.

Wonderful in its own right.

And then Kalib watches as Lisa drives away.

It always comes to this. I don't care what it is. It always comes to this. Every time my kids come out, they soon leave. Kalib will soon leave and move elsewhere. Very soon, I will leave Margie to go back north and I will hate to say good-bye. I will miss her every day that I am gone. And when I again leave the north to come back here, I will be sad to leave the Iñupiat community behind. When I again return here, I will miss them and their harsh, hard, sprawling, deadly, life-giving country every day, just as I missed them today, just as I also missed Sandy and all my Indian family and their hot, steamy, crowded, teeming, naturally abundant, country today - even as I reveled in the celebration of being here in what, weather and companion wise, was probably the most pleasant place on earth.

And then one day, very soon, even if I beat the odds and live to be 100, it will all be over. I will be dust, drifting in the wind. I will become the flesh of other creatures, the fiber of plants and all those whom I love will exist no more, as so many already don't, except in the hearts that loved them, but even those hearts will die.

Some that it's better after you die, that you go to a better place.

But I like this earth, this hard, beautiful place that we dwell upon, as fragile yet rugged people, destructible mortals, more precious than any indestructible immortal could ever be, fearing and fighting death yet in the end always accepting.

Nothing will ever be better. Not heaven.

And nothing will ever be worse.

Not hell.

It's all right here, the best and the worst that has ever been or ever will be.

So brief.

So precious.

It is as though it always was and then as if it had never been.

It's late. I should go to bed.

I wax ridiculous.

One day, I will state it better.