"When everything else has gone from my brain ... what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that." Annie Dillard
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Sunday, June 19, 2011
A Day, A Weekend, A Father
Sometimes the old brain is too full to process what it has stored. Today is one of those days. A high school reunion, the wedding of a dear friend's son and now Father's Day have all run together this weekend to create a mass of memories, thoughts and impressions. Should I write about dancing last night with people I haven't seen in decades? Or the tears that surprised me as I watched Jean's son kiss his bride?
A second ago I showed my dad photos of his father that my cousin had posted on Facebook. The kitchen of my Dad's boyhood home on Idlewild Court — a home we're about to see on a sentimental journey through the streets of Dad's past — came alive again in one of those pictures.
The multiple layers of meaning in that event — layers of nostalgia, wonder and mystery — are about as close to depicting this weekend as I can muster.