Jobe: Five studies shot at the conclusion of today's business trip to town

Study #1: Jobe wakes up from his nap with a tear on his cheek

First, I apologize for not getting a post up until so late in the day. It used to be that I would make my posts late at night - usually after midnight - but awhile back I switched to blogging in the morning. This is because I have traditionally used those late hours to shape up whatever projects that I have had going on and doing my blog late at night was interfering a bit with that process.

So I switched to morning, so that I could still devote my nights to my projects.

But this morning, I had to drive to Anchorage to take care of some business and I did not manage to put up a post.

After I took care of that business, I stopped at Jacob and Lavina's for about half-an-hour to see Margie and Jobe. Jacob and Lavina were at work, of course, Kalib was at daycare and Jobe was asleep.

So Margie and I just sat and talked for about 15 minutes - and then we heard a little cry from the master bedroom. Margie got up, disappeared into that room and then returned with Jobe in her arms.

This tear was slowly slipping down his cheek.

Study #2: Jobe rests upon a small spring bed

Study #3: Jobe is admired by his grandmother

Study #4: Jobe at his grandmother's feet

Study #5: Jobe, touched by grandpa's hand, just before I drive back to Wasilla

32 hours pass and I look into but one human face - guess who's? Wrap of Jobe's baby shower

Just after 9:00 PM Sunday night,  as is now the norm, Margie left here with Jacob and Lavina so that she could spend the week babysitting Jobe. From that moment up until this morning, 32 hours later, I spent my entire time, save maybe three minutes, alone with the cats. I caught not even a glimpse of Caleb. I looked into but one human face, and that for only about three minutes.

It was Carmen. She showed me this little vase from which not flowers but little hand-prints grow. It was her Mother's Day present from her four year-old son, Branson. Thus I shot,

Through the Metro Window Study, #1212 - Carmen with Branson's Mothers Day present

She was very pleased, but still she found it in her to sigh. "Pretty soon, he's going to be chasing girls, Bill. He will Bill, he will."

I should hope so.

OK. Now I back up again to last Friday. What are all these people so raptly looking at? Even that guy on the TV is looking.

Why, it's little Jobe, still tied into a cradle nap.

Jobe is admired by his aunties, Melanie and Lisa.

After he wakes, he gets passed around. Sandy takes him.

Jobe received many wonderful and exotic gifts, from cute little outfits to diapers and toys.

That's little Anna, sitting peacefully upon the floor. That's Cooper in the background. Yesterday, I mentioned that Cooper is mischievous.

Here is proof.

Cooper, Anna and Ian were all watching TV when Ian leaned too far back in his chair. 

This is Ngone and her daughter, Kathleen. Ngone comes from Senegal and has been in the US for 6.5 years, Alaska for a year-and-a-half. She does not much care for life in Alaska. "The winters are crazy," she explained. Before she and husband Dave, who wears the baseball cap in the group picture, moved here, they lived in Los Angeles. She liked it much better there. She loved getting out on the freeways to drive anywhere she wanted to go. Here, she is surrounded by big, huge country and there is no easy way to get into most of it.

She also remembers Africa with much warmth and fondness - all the little neighborhood shops and street vendors, the brightly-colored, beautiful clothing that the women sew and wear.

By comparison, everyday American clothing looks kind of drab. When she shows her mother pictures of her and others running around the US dressed in blue jeans and casual clothes, Mom is a little horrified to think that women would actually dress that way.

One thing about Jacob and Lavina's home - it has no shortage of stuffed Muzzys. Kathleen finds one and loves it.

Yesterday, did I not say that Kathleen is not only beautiful but cute, too?

And very bright, too.

She is a girl with roots in North America and Africa. I wonder where life will take her?

I know it seems unlikely, but I hope that in 20 years I am still around, still taking pictures, still writing stories and that I might come upon her somewhere. I would take her picture again, talk to her, find out how things are going, where she has been and where she hopes to go.

Kathleen - 20 years from now, if I still walk the earth, remember to give me a call. We must get together.

You met Kathleen's brother David yesterday. Well, here he is again.

What will he be doing in 20 years?

And this little beauty, Ashlyn, here in the arms of her mother, Tamara, what will she be up to?

Ashlyn also found a stuffed Muzzy to love.

Yesterday, I also posted a group shot from the shower, but there were a few individuals present, such as Caleb and Kalib, who were not in it, but they came running to get into this one.

I am not certain how it happened, but there was a beautiful young friend of Lavina's by the name of Toni in the lower left hand of the shot that ran yesterday, right there alongside Natalee and Jazmin, but she is out of the picture in this one. I tried to make certain everyone was in, but to take this picture, I stretch my arms upward and hold the camera as high above my head as I could reach and so I had a very poor view of the LCD screen.

You will note that of my immediate family, Rex is missing. He had gone to Seward to take some sailing lessons in a 45-foot boat with a pretty tall mast. One day, I hope to get pictures of him sailing such a boat.

Little Anna, Ian, Anna and Sharon are not in this picture, either. I thought this was because they had left.

They must have just gone down to the playroom to play, though, because soon they came back.

Rusty, husband of Natalee, father of Cooper. I mentioned that Cooper is mischievous. So is Rusty.

Sandy, with Andrew. The two plan to marry in September, in Hawaii. Even though I am not a wedding photographer, Sandy looked at the album that I made for Jacob and Lavina. She wants one like that. She wants me to come to Hawaii and photograph their wedding.

Again, let me reiterate... I am not a wedding photographer!

But Hawaii...?

A photographer must be flexible, right?

This post has gotten entirely too long, but, crimeny, you didn't expect me to leave Kalib out, did you?

An artist finds his place on a newly painted wall; my baby shower post turns into a preview

I simply cannot keep up with myself. I hate to break a baby shower into two pieces, but I started editing the images for this post about an hour-and-a-half ago, I'm not even close to having made my final selection, I have much to do today and I have no more time to spend on it. 

So I decided just to post this one image of Kalib's art, hanging on the wall in the dining room of his family home. Readers will remember this wall as being white. Last week, Jacob and Lavina painted most of the upper-floor walls. After painting this wall blue, they devoted this portion of it to Kalib and his art.

I will come back tomorrow to show the shower in greater detail.

Well, I suppose that if I am going to say anything at all about a baby shower, I should at least present one image of the baby for whom the shower was thrown. This is he, Jobe, with his Auntie Melanie.

Oh, what the heck - one more image, but only because there were a number of little people there, including young David, whose mother hails from Senegal. I can't decide which picture of David I should use in my post tomorrow, so I will put this one up today and that will make the decision easier tomorrow as there will be one less photo to chose from.

David has a very beautiful sister, but I already know which picture I am going to use of her. You can see it tomorrow. She is gorgeous and very cute.

So is little Ashlyn, who you will also meet, and little Anna.

Cooper is mischievous, as you will see.

As for young Ian...

This is he. As I have mentioned the fact that Jacob and Lavina painted their walls, I think that means I had better include this picture today, just to explain the paint job a little better. You might be wondering why there is such a strong cast of green light falling upon Ian, the wall and the rug.

It is because he is standing by the open door to the newly painted bathroom.

This is the bathroom, painted in its new shade of green. When you step into it and the sun is shining, as it was on the day of the shower, it is actually much brighter than it appears here. If I did not tone down the brightness a bit, it would sear your eyes.

Plus, no computer screen that I am aware of is capable of emitting a level of green brightness to match that of this bathroom.

Caleb holds a Navajo/Apache taco - the main entree of the event - which he will soon eat.

It is probably better to think about eating bean-laden tacos when you are in a room other than the bathroom.

Okay - one more - another of baby Jobe, admiring his grandfather as he is fed by his mother's good friend, Natalee. This kid receives love from many sources.

So today I failed to put up the post on the baby shower.

Tomorrow, I hope I will post it and then we can all move on with life.

A man drifts through Wasilla; Jobe, Kalib and Lavina come out; they take Margie back with them

This would be Margie's last day home before returning to Anchorage - this time for five days and nights - to babysit Jobe, so we took a short outing together in the afternoon.

On the edge of the bike trail that follows the Parks Highway through Wasilla, we saw a man, drifting by, sitting upon the ground.

Then he got up and moved on, leaving a puff of smoke behind him. A short time later, as we drove past Wasilla Lake, which on this day the ice had mostly disappeared from, we saw him again, his thumb out, hitching a ride north, towards Fairbanks, but who knows what his destination was?

It was a hard-looking scene and, had I been able to photograph it, it would have told the story far stronger than either of these two pictures. Unfortunately, I had put my pocket camera in my pocket and, given the traffic, it would have been far too dangerous to try to extract it, activate it, and point it at the man in the little time that I had between spotting and passing him.

Yet the image remains burned into my mind.

I wonder still - will that man drifting past, on the roadside, not a youth but an individual of mature years, hitchhiking to an uncertain destination, yet be me? It often times feels to me like that is where I am headed.

And if so, what will that mean for Margie?

I often times think that she is only reason that it hasn't happened yet. She is the reason why I can't let it happen.

Shortly after we arrived home, Lavina showed up with Kalib. He was feeling much better. I don't really know what was wrong with him but he was doing good now.

He was feeling good enough that he was not about to be tied down by a newspaper - not even the Anchorage Daily News...

...not when there was a whole house to roam about in.

It won't surprise regular readers to learn that his mom had brought Jobe along, too.

Margie and Lavina left to do some shopping and to get a hamburger and had given me instructions on what to do should Jobe wake up. He did wake up, but Caleb got to him before I did.

Caleb is the ultimate bachelor uncle.

Soon, Caleb was feeding Jobe - just as I had been instructed to do.

Caleb and Jobe.

Caleb can't wait for Jobe to get a little bigger, so that he can do the kinds of things with him that he does with Kalib - like play, golf, shoot rubber bands, and whatever.

He thinks Jobe is growing way too slowly, but he isn't.

He is growing way too swiftly.

Soon he will be a big rebellious teenager - not long after that, an old man who has lived his life.

I will be long gone then - hopefully, with my ashes set free to drift the planet, my molecules to help construct other organisms.

Maybe potato bugs and spiders.

I have never seen a potato bug in Alaska, but I remember them well from childhood. They were very fun bugs - the way they would curl up into a little round pellet.

It was like they were custom designed to please children.

They went into the bedroom where Kalib and his parents slept during the year-and-a-half that they lived with us. Kalib had a rubber wristband, which he pulled back, hoping to smack the ceiling with it. "Shoot it up to the stars!" Caleb encouraged him.

Not so long ago, those stars glowed through the winter nights, directly over Kalib in his crib.

Kalib removed Caleb's cap, and put it on his own head.

Then Caleb was in the living room, Kalib in the front room, ready to throw some cardboard package cushioning at his uncle.

Both of them loved this game. Kalib laughed outrageously after each toss - and there were many tosses.

Royce and Jobe. I still wish Royce would get the chance to raise Jobe the way he raised Kalib, but that is not going to happen. He is doing better on his medication and improved diet, but as life goes he is still on the declining slope.

Hell. So am I.

One thing I need to make clear - in some reader's minds, it was Royce who scratched Kalib when he was a crawler, but this is not correct. Royce would never have done such a thing. The patience and tolerance that this cat always granted Kalib, no matter how rough Kalib got with him, was amazing to behold.

It was Martigny that scratched Kalib. She did not do it out of meanness. She did it because she paniced when he got too rambunctious with her.

Margie with Jobe, shortly before they left to go back to Anchorage.

I hated to see them go, because now I am alone again for the next five days, except for the occassional glimpse of Caleb.

But it is far more important that Jobe is cared for by someone who truly loves him than it is that I have the company of my wife.

They back out the driveway, then drive away.

I go to Anchorage to pick Margie up and find Kalib ill; he eats the fish food; Tyler and his saw; Bear Meech and Diamond

Margie had spent her four days babysitting Jobe while Lavina went back to work and it was time for me to pick her up. So, in the afternoon, I climbed into the Escape and headed for Anchorage. Along the way, I passed this guy on his big Harley Davidson.

By the time I reached the house, Lavina had already returned home from work. Kalib had not gone to day care this day, because he was feeling a bit ill.

I found Lavina giving him comfort.

Margie held the sleeping Jobe, strapped into his cradle, on her lap. Lisa came by and sat down next to them. Jacob had yet to return from work.

Lavina and Kalib.

Jacob returned at about 6:00 PM. His ailing son lifted his finger and the two touched.

This caused Kalib to feel a bit better, so he got up and stood beside his father as they watched a bit of the evening news. The big story was about how the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is much worse than BP originally reported and appears to be on its way to becoming a true environmental disaster.

Shell Oil plans to drill five exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea this summer, where bowheads, belugas, gray whales, polar bears, walrus, seals, migratory birds, fish and plankton thrive.

President Obama, maybe you should give this a little more thought.

Next, Kalib dove onto his Auntie Lisa to wrestle with her. This was a good sign that he was feeling better.

Then he headed toward his bedroom to feed the fish that I gave him.

His dad handed him the cannister of food. Kalib knows that he is not supposed to eat the fish food himself, but he pulls out a stick, smiles mischievously at his dad, then shoves it into his mouth and eats before anyone can stop him.

Jobe woke up before it was time for him to wake up. He started to cry. Lavina picked him up and began to rock him back to sleep.

Soon, Jobe would return to sleep. He remained in his cradle throughout the duration of my visit.

Then Margie and I headed over to pay a short visit to Melanie and Rex before we headed home. Directly across the street from Melanie's house, her neighbor Tyler had downed a tree and was now cutting it up.

Bear Meech observed as we headed up the stairs to Melanie's front door.

Inside, Diamond chilled warmly. Poof came trilling to my lap right after I sat down. I spent more time with Poof than with anybody else, but, somehow, I don't know how, I failed to take a picture of him.

Oh well. He was the star last time.

I had a lot of work that I still wanted to do before bedtime, so soon we headed home, where I got lazy, and put most of that work off.

I guess that I had better get it done today.

And my thanks to those of you who clicked that button and contributed. This blog has a long way to go, but now it has begun to generate revenue. Thank you!