The Russian Immigrant boy who loved Willow; Royce; the grandmother who prayed for a coffee shop; horses; ravens; musician; a warm Pistol

On December 29, I devoted my entire post to a series of pictures of children of Russian immigrants as they sledded down Tamar. In that post, I recounted a bit of a story from years before when a young, freckle-faced, Russian boy with red/blond hair used to happily come out to greet the dog Willow and I whenever we would come walking by.

I wrote about how he would follow along, but just for a little ways, because he knew that his parents would not want him too.

This is he, on the left, Ruvum. I hardly ever see him now, but today I did, carrying a snowboard on his back, accompanied by two girls. The third girl declined to be photographed, but she happily recalled how she used to see me with Willow.

As it happens, I meant them right in front of the house where they lived back when Willow was alive and walking with me. Today, they live on the other side of the block, although I am reluctant to call it a block because it is much bigger than the typical city block. 

Much bigger. But it is square shaped, as blocks are.

Both he and the girls were very polite and courteous, if reserved, and their faces seemed to tell me that they are decent people, good kids.

I miss those old days, when they would come running out so eager to see Willow, when Ruvum would follow along for just a little bit, and then turn back.

Compared to how he was last weekend, I think Royce is doing quite a bit better. He is still heartbreakingly thin and light. When I pick him up, I feel bones, not meat or fat, beneath his fur, but he is eating well, seems to have energy that belies his appearance, and the prescription food mixed with Metamucil seems to be doing at least part of its job.

He's dropped some healthy looking turds into the litter box lately.

Now, if only it will do the rest of job and put some weight back on him.

Through the Metro Window Study, #Three billion-two-point-five: As I have mentioned before, a dog wash used to sit on the site now occupied by Metro Cafe. Then one day, the dog wash went out of business, the property went up for sale, the property was sold, the dog wash came down and construction began on a new project.

Nearly every day that I spent home and not somewhere else, I would pass by the construction scene, either in my car, on my bike, or sometimes on foot.

I, and the other members of this family were all most curious to see what rise in place of the dog wash.

We weren't the only ones. See the woman on the left? That is Carol, pictured in this magnificent study with her granddaughter, Serenity. Carol lives in the apartments right next door and she, too, was most curious. She would peek out from her window and sometimes she would sneak through the trees, hoping to get a close look, to see if she could figure out what it was going to be.

"I prayed that it would be a coffee shop," she says. Most of the time, she is on foot and there were no coffee shops in walking distance for a woman whose cane testifies that she is feeling the wear of this life. She wanted a good coffee shop, where she could go and sip a delicious cup as she sat down at a nice table with her granddaughter and enjoyed the company of the proprietor, and of other friendly people seeking the same pleasure that she sought.

So she prayed, and her prayer was answered, affirmatively.

When I paid Carmen today, I offered her the usual dollar tip, but before she could take it, the wind grabbed it and sent it flying down the drive-through. I could see a vehicle coming from behind, so I pulled up away from the window, got out of the car, grabbed the dollar bill and walked it back to Carmen.

As I did, a pickup truck pulled in and parked not far away. I began to walk back to the car.

"Oh, it's those cute girls!" I heard Carmen exclaim.

I turned back and saw several little girls pour out of the pickup and run laughing towards the coffee shop. They all looked to be Native, and all were happy. I could not take a picture, because I had left my pocket camera sitting on the passenger seat.

I got back into the car and thought about driving around and back to the window, so that I could do another study shot of those girls through the Metro window, but that seemed to me to be cheating.

Plus, from the tone of Carmen's exclamation, I knew that they were regulars.

I must trust that one day, before too long, I will pull up to that drive-through window when the cute little girls are in the coffee house. I will then make them the subject of a Through the Metro Window Study.

I wonder what number I will be at by then?

In order to give myself a chance to hear a little news, I took the long way home. Not so long ago, it was pitch night at this time and one could barely make out the forms of these horses against the snow - if one could make it out at all.

Look at it now.

The weather remains unrealistically warm. It feels like spring.

But what do you want to bet that it's not?

As I headed down Schrock, I saw a group of Russian Old Believers walking alongside the road. Before I could reach them, they turned and disappeared down a trail into the woods.

Further along, I saw some ravens, flying off to my right.

The ravens flew on.

Then the ravens crossed over the road, and flew to my left.

Then they drifted off in the direction of the Talkeetna Mountains.

As I neared home, All Things Considered began a story on Gil Scott Heron, the singer/songwriter who, in the 1970's, did a very angry and excellent piece titled, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Some says he is a father of rap. He has come out with a new album title, I'm New Here. It was mighty bluesy and damn good. I pulled into my driveway about half-way-through the story, but I could not get out of the car until the story ended, until Gil Scott Heron quit singing.

This would be a good album to have. So would The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

I shut down the car and the radio went off. I stepped into the house and there, by the door, sat Pistol-Yero on a chair, looking at me. He was so thrilled to see me he could hardly contain himself.

I'm not joking, either. I'm serious. I know this cat. He was thrilled to see me.

Royce update, Through the Window Metro Study #6,899,043; the long way home

Royce did not smell nearly so foul this morning as he has for the past two days. So I figured that maybe the leaking had stopped and that he had cleaned himself up in the way that cats do. This was not pleasant to think about, seeing as how just the odor had made me sick to my stomach.

I kept the appointment anyway. To be on the safe side, Dr. Nance drained his anal glands (although I know that smell, too, and what was coming out of Royce was different than what I am familiar with). Royce was put on a scale, where he weighed in at nine ounces less than the first visit.

And when you are only a few pounds, nine ounces is a tremendous loss.

Dr. Nance suggested that I try some expensive, very moist, high-caloric, prescription food that is not available in pet stores and that I add a quarter teaspoon of Metamucil to it, as the old orange boy was packing some hard turds.

Royce has to come back in another week for some more blood work. Depending on what that shows, and whether or not he is still losing weight, the dosage of the thyroid medicine that he is taking might be increased.

There is another treatment, "the gold standard treatment" that actually destroys the thyroid and then its function is replaced with medicine.

But that treatment is not available in Alaska.

We would have to put Royce on a plane and send him to Seattle, or some other southern city, where he would have to be quarantined from our contact for a full week.

I don't think we are going to do this.

Plus, he could still be suffering from kidney or other problems that have not yet been detected.

The yellow thing beside him is the carrier that I brought him in. He doesn't like it.

All the way to the vet's office he made a fuss in that carrier. On the way home, he got out of it and I let him be. As I neared home, I looked in my rearview mirror and this is what I saw.

No - I am not a person who drives with a cat or any kind of animal on my lap. That is simply too dangerous, to both the cat and me and the occupants of other cars. But, as I turned onto our street, he crawled over the seat and onto me. There was only about 300 yards to go and no traffic at all, so I let him stay.

At the usual time, I headed to Metro Cafe, where I found these kids, who were very happy to become the subjects of Through the Window Metro Study #6,899,043. Or something like that. Their names are, left to right, Justin, Jake and Ashley.

This was their first time ever in Metro Cafe, and Carmen was very impressed with them. "They're nice kids, good kids," she said. "Really good kids. I hope Baranson grows up to be good like that. When they came in, they said, 'thank you for welcoming us into your establishment.'"

As I took the long way home, I saw these three in my rear view mirror.

This rider was traveling with two others, all of whom appeared to be having fun.

He came walking through my town in the snow; Royce setback; an accident, a horse and a few teenagers

As I have written a few times, I keep experiencing odd coincidences. This has been going on for years now and it happened again today. When I took this picture, I had A Prairie Home Companion on the radio and a Utah Phillips song was being performed by Robin and Linda Williams:

I'm walking through your town in the snow,
I'm walking through your town in the snow,
I got no place to go, all the trains are running slow
And I'm walking through your town in the snow

I carry my home on my back,
I carry my home on my back,
But the police only frown, every time I lay it down,
And I'm walking through your town in the snow

The train track was just across the street and the Wasilla Police station just ahead. The man wasn't carrying a pack, though. He was pulling a piece of rolling luggage.

So we finally got a modest dropping of snow to coat the old stuff. Nothing to brag about - six inches, maybe. Still, I was glad.

I suspect that this fellow could have just as soon gone without it.

I wonder why he was walking through my town in the snow?

I'm afraid Royce has had a couple of bad days. Something is leaking out of him and it stinks terribly. It has almost made me barf a couple of times and has left me feeling sick to my stomach, but different than the usual way. I haven't yet figured out how to describe it. Yesterday, I gave him a bath, but it all came back and I fear it would be too hard on him to have another bath right now. I have made a warm place for him and try to keep him off the furniture, because whatever he comes in contact with stinks, too, but he managed to slip by and get onto the couch. Once he did, the damage had been done.

I did not have the heart to make him move until he was ready. 

I called the vet this morning, hoping to get him in. They could not get back to me until nearly closing time (they close early on Saturday's). I explained what was happening and they had a couple of theories, but did not see it as an emergency.

So he is scheduled to go back to the vet Monday morning at 11:00 AM.

We may have to postpone, because I think Lavina is likely to be giving birth at that time.

Two snowmachines coming down Wards.

Pickup truck on Seldon. The ISO control on my pocket camera had inadvertantly slipped to 2500. I don't care. It just gives the picture a different feel, that's all - more contrasty and grainy.

Ditto.

Minor traffic accident near the corner of the Palmer-Wasilla and Parks Highways.

Horses on Sunrise.

Through the Window Metro Study, #9701. These numbers are completely arbitrary, because I cannot remember them from one post to the next. The tall man is Nick and he used to work at Northern Air Cargo in Anchorage with Carmen. That's his son on the left, but they had already moved on when I got the ID's and his name had slipped out with him.

A group of teens caught in my rearview mirror.

Skating on Wasilla Lake; a wayward puppy goes beneath my car; Kalib; full story of the dog that almost killed the rabbit at the corner where the chicken crossed the road and the rooster got shot

I was driving by Wasilla Lake when I noticed some little kids skating, and two bigger ones practicing hockey. So I decided to stop for a few minutes and take some pictures.

This is Shane, one of the older two. He is in the seventh grade and played on a hockey team for four years - in Kansas. After his family moved to Wasilla a few years back, he stopped playing organized hockey, but still enjoys getting out, skating, and knocking a puck around.

This is Shane's older sister, Amy, a freshman at Wasilla High. She plays for the Mat-Su Ravens, a high school team that combines girls from schools throughout the valley, as no single school has enough interested girls to put together a team of it's own.

She is doing a face-off with her brother to see who will get the puck.

And off they go - brother and sister, fighting for the puck. My camera battery was dying and I needed to get back home, so off I went, too.

I should note that they both like Wasilla way better than Kansas. No offense to any Kansans who might read this.

Their mother Lisa watched as they skated. "Oh, yes," she agreed. "We love it here."

This was the first picture that I took when I stepped onto the ice, just before I met Shane and Amy. The man is Gregory and he is photographing his daughter, Korynn - the one who is still on her feet. The one who has fallen to her knees is Korynn's friend, Roslyn, and this is her first time on skates.

It's Korynn's second.

Roslyn climbs back up, takes hold of the walker and skates just a few inches. "I think I can do it without the walker," she says.

Roslynn leaves the walker behind.

She soon falls, but she smiles about it and then gets right back up. Had I stayed longer, I feel confident I would have seen her skating with confidence.

As I neared home, I saw Becky, Danny, their mom and their little dog, Toby. I stopped the car and tried to take a picture through the window, but my camera battery was dead. So I pulled it out of the camera and warmed it up in my hands, to see if I might coax one more shot out of it.

I did. One more shot and then it died again. I had to bring it home and recharge it.

Melanie and Charlie arrived in the early evening and they had Kalib with them. They were baby-sitting him so that Jacob and Lavina could go out with some friends who had returned from Outside for a short visit. Charlie stepped out of the house to get some firewood. As he was loading up his arms he thought he heard someone crunching about beside him. It was a moose.

After Charlie returned with the armload of wood and the moose report, Melanie went to the window and quickly spotted the moose. She called Kalib over to the window to see.

"Moose," she said.

Kalib peered out the window.

"Puppy!" he said, excitedly. It seemed that the poor little kid was confused.

We then had a debate about what to do for dinner. There was really nothing in the house to cook, so we decided to go out and grab something, somewhere. I auto-started the car so it could warm up. After a bit, Charlie went out and strapped Kalib into his car seat.

Then I climbed into the car and waited for everyone to get seated. "Dad!" Lisa suddenly warned. "Don't back up! There's a puppy under the car!"

Sure enough, there was. This little fur ball. And I might have squished it, had not Charlie spotted it and then pointed it out to Lisa.

Now we faced a quandary. What to do? I decided that the puppy should go into the garage until we got back from dinner. So we put the puppy in the garage, but then the cats freaked out. Their main litter boxes are in the garage and I did not want the puppy to scare them away.

Charlie had temporarily traded his car for Jacob and Lavina's Tahoe, as it has a car seat for Kalib. Muzzy rides in that car all the time, so it is already rich in dog odor. Lisa went into the house and came back with a flattened carbboard box. She put it in the back of the Tahoe and then puppy was put in on top of it.

And then we all went off to eat, Melanie's treat, at Señor Taco. Of course, I took pictures and got some good images, but this blog has had many eating pictures lately and so I will not post them.

We probably would have lingered longer at Señor Taco and visited more, but we had to get back to that puppy. I feared that the night was going to be long and miserable - disrupted by the combination of puppy whines and cat paranoia.

After we returned home, I sent Charlie walking one way down Sarah's Way and I walked the other. I knocked upon door after door and then showed whoever answered the picture of the puppy on the LCD of my pocket camera. Nobody knew where this puppy belonged.

I returned down the other side of the street and then walked up Brockton just a short ways and then turned back. Now, there was just one nearby house left to check: the corner house - the one where the chicken crossed the road, the rooster got shot; the one where lives the dog that nearly killed the rabbit.

I did not really want to knock on the door of that house. Shortly after the family that lives there moved in several years ago - long after the drunken ice cream lady had crashed her good humor vehicle on that corner - I walked by to find the woman of the house outside with a beautiful orange cat.

I stopped introduced myself, told her I was a photographer and loved to photograph cats. She was happy to have me photograph her's. I then told her that I photographed not only cats, but all kinds of things, from life in Rural Alaska to what I saw in Wasilla and the neighborhood, children playing, whatever.

She reacted with paranoia. "You can photograph my cat," she said, "but don't you dare photograph my children. That's just weird, that you would photograph children."

After that, if I walked by that house and the children were out playing and they spotted me, they would shout a warning to each other: "It's the camerman! The weirdo!" Then they would flee.

If they had friends over and saw me coming, they would shout to their playmates, "That's the cameraman! Watch out! He's a weirdo! Run!" And then, just like when they were playing alone by themselves, they would flee. When the husband would be out in the yard and I would walk, he would glance at me with cold, hard, eyes. He would not return my nod, nor my smile, but would turn away.

When you are a photographer whose pictures of children have been published and enjoyed far and wide, in newspaper, book, and magazine form, including National Geographic, it is quite a thing to be labeled a weirdo because you like to take photographs of children.

Then they got some chickens, including the one that crossed the road, and a rooster. In the summertime, when it never gets dark, that damn rooster would crow all night long. There was no getting a good night's sleep. It just couldn't happen.

I began to get desperate for sleep. I knew I had to talk to them about the rooster - but my experience so far with them did not leave me feeling optimistic about how that conversation would go.

Then, one day, before I could find out, I answered an angry knock upon the door.

It was the woman. "Someone complained about our rooster," she said angrily, "was that you?" It did not prove to be a moment of calm and reasoning.

The rooster crowed on for about three, maybe four weeks after that. Then, one morning, about three or four AM, as I lay awake and aggravated in bed, that rooster was crowing away shrilly as usual. Suddenly, I heard a gunshot.

The rooster never crowed again. No ruckus was ever raised about that gunshot. I do not know, but I had a feeling that it was not taken by a neighbor, but by an occupant of the house who choose a gun and not an axe or a wring of the neck in order to make a statement to the neighborhood, to whoever had complained about the rooster.

I could be wrong. But that was what I suspected. Maybe it was an aggravated neighbor who shot the rooster, but I don't think so. Had it been, I suspect all hell would have broken loose.

Instead, immediately after the gunshot, the neighborhood fell into peace and quiet.

Then, a couple of weeks after I fell, shattered my shoulder, lost it, and got a titantium one instead, I had just turned the corner by that house when I saw the dog that appears in yesterday's post, happily running around a rabbit pen with a single rabbit inside.

I could also see the children at the side of the house, laughing and bouncing off of a trampoline. They were completely unaware of me and of the dog, running around the rabbit pen. Then, somehow, that dog found its way into the pen.

Looking as happy and ecstatic as a dog can look, it grabbed that rabbit, carried it out of the pen, took it across the street and then began to maul it to death.

My shoulder was extremely fragile and I was helpless to intervene. I could not pick up a rock, I could not run and chase the dog off the rabbit.

I shouted at the kids, as loud as I dared. "Your dog is killing your rabbit!" Even the effort of shouting brought added pain to my already hurting shoulder. The kids continued to bounce and laugh. They did not hear me. In sheer delight, the dog continued to maul the rabbit. 

I walked as fast as I could, but that was not fast. "Your dog is killing your rabbit!" I shouted again. The kids bounced on, laughing.

I walked a little closer, shouted again, same result. A little closer... finally the kids heard me, but they did not understand.

They quit bouncing and looked at me. "What?" one of them shouted back at the man who their parents had taught them was a dangerous weirdo. 

"Your dog is killing your rabbit!" Finally, they understood. The girls and younger boy started to scream. The oldest boy, who had been truly vile towards me in the past, charged over, and drove the dog from the rabbit. 

The rabbit was limp and still. It looked dead. The girls and the smaller children were weeping. The mother came out, saw the rabbit and looked at me suspiciously. I told her what had happened. She told the children to gather up the rabbit and they would take it to the vet.

Then, an amazing thing happened. One of the girls walked up to me, looked up into my eyes and said, "thank you, Cameraman." Then, one by one, each child - including the oldest boy who had been so vile toward me, walked up to me and said the same, "Thank you, Cameraman." 

The mother watched, but said nothing. She did not smile. The suspicious look never left her face.

And from that day to this, those children have continued to avoid me. And although the First Amendment to the United States Constitution gives me the right to photograph anyone and anything that I can see in public, I have taken no pictures of those children - even though I have seen wonderful ones, ones that I knew that parents would have treasured.

But it just wasn't worth it.

Yet, the kids and I - we did have that one moment, right after the dog almost killed the rabbit.

I decided to knock on the door, anyway - just in case they had gotten a new puppy.

They hadn't, but when they learned my mission and I showed them the picture of the puppy on my camera, they reacted in a friendly way. The husband told me that he had seen it, running with a big dog that lived on a corner three blocks away, where a tire swing hung from a tree.

So I walked back to the house, got the puppy, Melanie joined us and I drove to that house.

And that's where I took this picture, right after I reunited the puppy, Kuna, with this man, who had been very worried about it. "You little turd!" he said, affectionately, as he tousled Kuna's fur.

If you look closely at Royce's chin, you will see that there is a bit of drool smeared into it. Even so, he has been a little better today than he was last night. Melanie, who had not seen him for two weeks, was pleased with what she saw. "He's definitely gained some weight, Dad," she said.

So maybe the situation is not as grim as it seemed last night. Still, he is light and frail, but Melanie is certain that he is doing better than when she last saw him, before I started giving him his medication, before I began to feed soft food to him.

The two buddies, Kalib and Royce.

Kalib, Royce, and Melanie.

Lisa and Royce. See the drop of drool on his chin?

Still, this was a good moment for him. You could call it "a good quality of life" moment.

People just keep feeding me; another dog charges into traffic; Green Terror swims into the house; Kalib returns to play golf, study properties of light

It used to be that Caleb and I would go to IHOP together just about every Sunday - at least those Sunday's when I was home. Then it just stopped happening. Sometimes I would ask, but he would decline - usually because there was a game he wanted to watch. For awhile, he had a girl friend and tended to prefer her company to mine. I didn't mind. Last night, he asked me if I wanted to go to IHOP with him this morning.

When I got up, after spending a long, hellacious, night battling with Squarespace,* Kalib was once again battling opponents from all over on his video game - but he broke away and off we went. Melanie greeted us happily and sat us down. She was not our waitress, but just the same, she brought our food to us.

For reasons that I do not fully understand, we both ordered off "The All You Can Eat Pancakes" menu. "I love IHOP pancakes," Caleb said. "IHOP just has the best pancakes."

Later, he added this, "I'm beginning to hate that video game. It's just addicting, especially when you play online with other people."

I told him that, based on some comments left on this blog, he just might open the door one morning to find one or more girls ready to snatch him away from the video game.

He claimed not to be interested. All he wants now, he says, is for the snow to melt so he can get back out to the golf course. That won't happen for awhile.

He made it sound like it had to be golf or girls, but not both together.

This made me think of Tiger Woods, but I did not utter these thoughts.

Caleb bought my breakfast. That was nice.

Later, I headed out on my walk. I had barely stepped out the door when I saw the dog that nearly killed the rabbit at the corner where the chicken crossed the road, the rooster got shot and the drunken ice cream lady crashed her good-humor vehicle.

"Dog! Dog!" I once again found myself shouting as I saw this hapless, unsupervised, character charge straight into the path of this car, on Seldon. The dog turned away from death at the last possible instant. I don't know if my call had anything to do with it or not.

Maybe.

The driver of the car did not slow down - not by one mph.

The sky was laced so beautifully with high cirrus clouds. An airplane flew through it. (Sorry, Norman Maclean.)**

You will recall that yesterday, as I dealt with a loose dog, Margie called to tell me about Uriah getting caught in the explosion at the White Mountain Apache Sunrise Ski resort.

Well, my phone rang as this dog, Tequilla, was barking at me. It was Margie, with good news about Uriah. He was on his way home from the hospital in Phoenix. He is going to be okay. He will need to lotion his second-degree facial burns and try to keep the direct sun off of them for awhile, but the scarring should not be bad at all.

As Margie updated me, Tequilla followed along. She barked at me throughout the entire conversation.

Then this guy came along, running with this dog. Lucky and Dale. Lucky is the dog, Dale the man. Dale is Lucky, too. He wound up in my blog, just because he ran with his dog.

Then this boy came by, on a four-wheeler. I believe he is a child of Russian immigrants.

Further along, I found the headless stuffed turtle that the black lab had been carrying when it almost got run over yesterday.

I stopped at Pet Zoo today and bought this little Green Terror to put in the 90 gallon tank with my old parrot fish and the baby yellow peacock that I bought a couple of days ago.

I have had two green terrors in the past. One was so mean that I eventually had to clear out all of his tank mates and let him have a 55 gallon tank all to himself. The other was docile, and never went after another fish.

I will never let this guy beat up my parrot. The parrot is too big for the Green Terror to bother now and I hope that as he grows, he will just accept the parrot.

If he doesn't, then I will have a problem to solve.

Green Terrors are very beautiful fish and they are smart, too.

My mean one really liked Lisa. Whenever she would come into my office, he would get excited and swim to the glass to greet her. She liked him, too.

Right now, this little baby is about two inches long. It should grow to eight to ten inches.

About 4:30 in the afternoon, Lavina called to tell me that she, Jacob and Kalib were on their way out to see me and they wanted to take me to dinner. I was surprised, because she is still experiencing contractions, although much lighter, and I did not think that she would want to leave Anchorage.

All week, she has done nothing but stay at home and get bed rest. "I just had to get out and go somewhere," she said.

On the way out, Kalib fell asleep in the car, so they took the long route through Palmer to give him time to snooze. 

Here he is, just waking up. He is not happy about it.

They took both Caleb and I to Jalepeno's. Another free meal for me. The little girl in the background is named Raeligh.

Jerry, the manager and a member of the owner family came along, to admire Kalib and to speak Spanish to him. Once, a couple of year's back, I came here by myself and ordered a meal that cost $14.00 plus and paid for it with my debit card. The next day when I checked my bank account online, $1400 plus had been removed from my account.

It was an honest mistake. Jerry quickly had the money transferred back into my account.

When we returned to the house, Kalib and Caleb resumed their ongoing golf game.

Lavina gave Royce some love. I'm afraid Royce had a hard day today. His progress seemed not only to stop, but to reverse itself. He almost fell off the couch twice. He shook and shivered for awhile, even though the fire was warm. He did some drooling. He walked stiffly. Although he begged to get it and dug right in, he left much of his soft food uneaten in his bowl.

Early in the week, Lavina had been convinced that new baby would come before the week ended. Now, she feels it could be a few days yet. If its not here by the eighth, the doctor plans to induce it, for medical reasons.

That is our little grandchild who she holds.

Kalib manipulates a "This American Life" ap on Caleb's iPhone.

I'm not quite certain what Jacob was up to, but he was in the back, rummaging through this and that. Then he came out with this - a wedding invitation. The couple pictured is Margie and me. The invitation is to our wedding - 36 years ago. Jacob said he was going to keep it.

To see Margie standing there, beside me, in that picture... see how beautiful she is? She chose to go with me. How did it happen? How could it not have happened? Someday, perhaps I will tell you more of our story, how we came together. But not right now.  

I don't know why the decades pass so fast, but they do. Not so long ago, it was she and I who were making babies and it was our parents who so eagerly waited to meet their new grandchildren.

Now, save for Margie's mother, our parents are in the grave and it is us, Margie and I, waiting to meet our new grandchild.

And here is the first one. He is experimenting with a flashlight. The world remains a new and exciting place to him. He wants to learn about everything.

Kalib helps Caleb put his clubs back in the bag. Then he leaves with his parents.

There was certain desperation evident in Royce tonight, the intensity of which I had never before witnessed. He seemed desperate to communicate something to me. He kept looking into my eyes like this and when he was close enough, he would reach out with a paw and touch me, and look at me this way. His motor control was not good. His claws would dig painfully into my skin.

He was trying to tell me something. What? It made my eyes water, just a little bit.

*That battle continued tonight. Problem not solved. Hours wasted. Eaten up by Squarespace - the nightmare blogging program from hell.

** Author of A River Runs Through It.