Green is my Afghan

My turn came after Grandma Lulu finished the ones for my parents and older siblings.


Bright greens to match my room, the afghan lived on my bed until I moved with it to college.

After graduation, it was on to New York and then Los Angeles and, in 1999, to Northern California.

Life-worn, the afghan is courser now, a bit stained. But when I cuddle in it, I feel what I felt that first time, what I've always felt --

Hugged.




So I reached for it yesterday when news quickly spread -- Lulu had died.

Proof in The Picture

This is The Picture, the stair-step sibling shot we took every first day of school.


It's the picture we took at holidays and graduations and that summer everyone met in Sedona. And it's the one we'll take at the next family reunion.

Documented proof -- three siblings, growing older, sharing life milestones.

But ... wait: See that shadow on the left, someone squinting through an Instamatic's viewfinder?

That's who we saw in 1965, and it's who we've seen nearly every time we've posed for The Picture.

Mom, camera in hand, making sure we'll remember.

New Year's Day

Forget January 1st. For us, the first day of school is the real New Year's Day.

That school bell rings in new faces and new schedules -- wholesale changes, not just new Daytimer pages.

The largest backpack in the world can't contain the collective campus excitement of that first morning of the first day of the school year, when everyone -- students, teachers, parents, and even the vice principal in charge of discipline -- smiles.

I hugged my middle schooler and said, "Have a great day."

But what I really meant was,
"Have a great year."

Squeezably Trashed

A near-professional job, it made drivers slow, walkers point, bikers dismount.

When teens live on tree-lined streets in neighborhoods where refusing to finance ring tones constitutes "mean" parenting, rolling houses isn't an unusual boredom antidote.

But the surprise still smarts, particularly if the doorbell wakes you at 1:23 a.m.


How many families are down dozens of two-ply rolls? When they reach for those now-empty shelves, will parents connect dots and ask questions ... or ... simply head back to Costco, happy it's such a harmless thing, not like really stealing?

Time Traveled

You get more, traveling cross-country by train than by plane: More views. More meals. And more stories to tell when you pull into the station. No question, Amtrak's California Zephyr stars as my vacation's highlight.

But trains take more, too ... more time. Between here and Chicago? About 49 hours more.

So ... Tuesday I buckled into a middle seat, book in hand.

Vacation was over. School starts loomed.

There was suddenly no place like home, and no better way to ruby-slipper there than a jet.




Chasing the sunset? Just an unexpected bonus.

Family Text

Kayak, nets and buckets: What more do cousins need to explore lily pad waters, spending our summer vacation’s last lakeside day together, living a memory that will probably resurface as family story.


When they retell the tale at some future family dinner, I might throw my own stories in the mix – summer days spent in Maryland’s Rock Creek Park.



Today, though, I said nothing, happy to watch them leave cell phones in the boathouse.





Okay – so what if they text-message friends tonight?

Next week, they might just try text-messaging one another.

Off the Shelf

It was one among many vacation reads hastily purchased off the used book sales shelf at the library.

Comfort Me with Apples, by Ruth Reichl, was a potentially risky choice – restaurant critic’s memoir for non-foody me. But I liked the title.

The story quickly grabbed, holding tight until I gulped back tears at its final scene.

I might have been less surprised if I had studied book cover details –- numerous awards, notable praise.

Instead, I gambled $2 and won.

Now I'm back to the pile ...

How did you pick your summer books?

A Different Take

We call it Plum Lake, and this picture tells the story why.


I took dozens of near identical sunset photos before a boat motored mid-lake, its wake exploding the view into a watery kaleidoscope.


How easy it is to focus on the negative impact a single action can have on experience – the “if only” that proceeds “it would have been perfect.”

Yet this wake had transformed my sunset view into something that was, if not better, then equally terrific, just different.

Did the boat's captain know that he'd done such a wondrous thing?

Reading Signs

In northern Wisconsin, where lakes stay frozen through April, businesses work hard to attract summer traffic, postings signs, big and small.









But the sign that grabbed me was a two-sided country churchyard one.




It made me smile.



Then, unexpectedly, its words encouraged a drive to another local church -– my faith.

That’s where I spied this sports car parked across two front-entry spaces, including one pastor-reserved.



Perhaps the parish had voted that it somehow improved parishioner pedestrian flow.

Without context, though, the parking job read like a not-so-good sign.

Moon River Musings

Most rafters wave, but some bare their bottoms, a tradition so popular railroaders now call the Colorado . . . Moon River.


Is there a Grandpa somewhere who tells the tale each Thanksgiving -- that long-ago summer afternoon, Buddy Watson’s dare and how they both laughed so hard Buddy face-planted into the water? Or do rafting guides perched on pub stools still debate where and when Colorado train mooning began.

Either way, here’s MY question:

How does a once-upon-a-time group prank grow into Colorado River’s 7th Inning Stretch, a near daily Amtrak photo-op?


_{Editor's note: Photos taken through a moving train's windows can look a bit like five-dollar jigsaw puzzles...but the images are real.}

Tasteless in the Dining Car

The Mississippi River flooded Iowa farmland in June, drowning train tracks and curtailing California Zephyr service.

But Amtrak quickly rebuilt, this time above flood level. Service resumed, safer, only with a different view.

“Take a look at Iowa’s new beach front property,” one dining car worker laughed, as we rattled across the new tracks.



Not funny.

Cruel even.






Yet … would we have smirked if the joke had been served Letterman-style in our family rooms, our toes slipper-warm?

All I know is none of us rebuffed the comedian. Instead … we took pictures.

_{Editor's note: Photos taken through a moving train's windows can look a bit like five-dollar jigsaw puzzles...but the images are real.}

America by Train

Sorry for the silence.

I've been riding the rails, traveling cross-country Amtrak's California Zephyr style.

Roomette living. Dining car meals. Reading lounge miles.

Think Bing Crosby's classic, White Christmas.

Our song is NOT an empty promise. America really is BEAUTIFUL. But we hide undeniable realities by the tracks -- our poor, acres of broken cars, trash. And, this summer, corn fields under flood water.

Trip highlights? Many. Conversation leads the list -- new friends, Amtrak employees and, best of all, my traveling companion -- my 14-year-old son.

Details and pictures soon to follow.

Second Chance Hope

Two chairs sat curbside on Thursday, each alone, two miles from one another. Old-fashioned and life-worn, both were marked FREE, a near-prayer to entice a home.


But ... no takers.

Would they have better luck together, yet another older couple, newly coupled?

Like the widow and widower who've now aged more similar than different. The couple that laughs that they'd never have noticed one another in the City in 1951. Yet here at the Senior Village in 2008, they cuddle -- content for the first time this decade.

Happy, even. And ... loved.

M.I.A. Flash Back

The rules are clear: Pay, and OfficeMax releases the CompactFlash card from plastic-box prison.

I just didn't expect it to then jump bail.

It's weird when something disappears.

Weirder, 37 minutes and 4 miles later, when you notice and call, becoming the latest break-room joke.

But try driving back to find that CompactFlash where you never took it -- on Aisle 3, alone in a cart. Even though you asked four store clerks first.

"Someone probably thought it was a go-back," one explained.

With no plastic box?

That's more than weird.