Reunions

Reunions are unique chances of catching up...I've had a number of reunion opportunities recently, more precisely a family reunion a couple of weeks ago....my cousins who I haven't seen in years, and then the next day, a reunion of the guys I worked with.
In each reunion, there was an instant connection with all of these people....
When I met my cousin Mike, I remembered the time we were throwing balsa wood airplanes around when I was 5 and he was 11 or 12....When my airplane would crash I would run in tears to him so that he could fix my plane...even then, I recognized that Mike wasn't an ordinary kid who would just go "ha ha".....No, even then I could see he had kindness...he said 'Hey, don't cry, let's fix it like this..." and he would fix my little plane and it would fly again. My cousin is still this great guy.
He had an unenviable task lately of holding a garage sale from his late parents. During that day, I got to see my old cousins who showed up there, who I grew up with, as a kid...we were all 'kids' then. And, I was amazed at how naturally we eased into the banter we all had way back then, because we grew up together, we just knew each other that way, our voices, our mannerisms....
We have lost touch over the years, my cousins and I don't keep in touch as cousins should, but we all went on to our own lives. But it was wonderful to see them all, and I felt the bond of 'family' with them.
The next day, I attended another reunion, the guys I used to work with in one of the boldest ventures we all engaged in at the time, a game development company and we all had bright ideas and dreams.... unfortunately that failed, for many of us...
But seeing those guys, wow! It was like we had never been apart! the instant 'Esprit de Corps'...the jokes, the gags....We were like old friends again who lamented the demise of what was a good thing...again, very comfortable in each others' company, because we had spent so much time together.
And now, another reunion is coming...an even bigger one...from another 'sunken ship'....but yet it's the crew members that I care about seeing again.

My Animal Pals

In a previous post, I wrote about my pal Gus, that poor little chihuahua at the gas station, well as it turned out, someone did bring him in, and I do hope he's in a good home, and in a safe place. This led me to think of the best friends, in the truest and most natural sense, are the animals, the pets, the dogs and cats (and even others!) I have known and lived with.

NICKY - He was a male Beagle, when I first met him, I was 9 years old and he was only 10 weeks old, but he became my 'brother' as he became part of our family. Nicky was a very smart dog, and, as a hound, he would escape all the time and just roam....sometimes he would be gone for days at a time, and as a family we would worry....I remember crying at night, wondering if he would ever come back...but then he always made it back home.

SHASTA - This was an Australian Shepard who was basically our 'mascot' in our house in Chico during college days, EXTREMELY smart, as that breed is, he would stop at street corners and wait until we signaled him that was okay to cross. Shasta was my good buddy in college, and I was happy to hear after I had left, that he fathered puppies that carried on his traits.

YURI - An Alaskan Malamute, with all his wolfen characteristics when I moved in with Jeff in Pleasant Hill around 1986. Yuri was basically undisciplined, but nevertheless a sweet, and very majestic and beautiful animal. His howling, his endless licking of me when I went outside to read, and his catching of birds in the backyard was like living with a tamed wolf.

JAKE - When Yuri lived with us, my roommate got a little golden retriever pup named Jake. he was a bundle of enegy and I watched grow up before my eyes. He was so playful, we would have our little 'games' we would play. When I sat outside, he would endlessy go chase his tennis ball and bring it back to me, but wouldn't just give it to me, I had to snatch the ball because he would dodge his head away. He could play catch for hours. He would also pop his head up at my window and I'd throw him a biscuit and he'd catch it. He also liked to play tug-of-war with anything. When I moved away, I went back to visit a couple of times, and there was Jake, ready to play.

SIMONE - She was my best pet ever, a cat that survived the Oakland Hills Fire of 1991, she was a refugee, so I adopted her and took her in right after that when I lived in Oakland, and she immediately became my best pal. It was obvious that she was a 'princess' always climbing on my shoulder when I picked her up. I had never before owned a cat, I had always thought of cats as being aloof, but Simone was a wonderful and affectionate kitty. We spent 12 years together, through thick and thin...and then she finally died in my arms...it was heartbreaking to let her go....

HARRISON - I remember when he was 8 weeks old, a tiny little puppy who streaked around the living room, Harrison was a Corgi who was a very intellegent and somewhat sensitve dog, when the telephone would ring, he would retreat to a corner, knowing that the attention would no longer be centered around him....but what a wonderful little dog he was! He was my buddy!....He succumed to a dibilitating condition in which he needed a wheelchair. Even in his final days, It was good to see the 'Tacohead'....
I just wish they lived longer...

GABBY - This kitty has had a hard road, she was chased away from her original home, and had some hardships...I took her in last year, and she and I became instant buddies...she's got some 'street' in her, but she is a definitely a sweet kitty, and now she has a safe place to live, and to eat and sleep, and when she hops up on the bed and purrs, she knows she's with a friend.

The Ceiling

I have spent my mornings, and some afternoons staring at the ceiling. Like when I first wake up I stare....and stare...
At my old house the ceiling had a stucco finish, which provided an endless myriad of patterns, shapes, and images that presented themselves anywhere I looked. It was amazing, I would see faces, cartoon characters, mountain ranges, you name it....But mostly I saw faces, most of the time cartoonish. And then I would try to remember where to find a particular face, but would lose it in the endless sea of stucco, but would continue to find other faces. I wish I had a special camera that could record my hall of fame of ceiling faces. I attribute this endless search for faces with an endless search for direction in the past couple of years.
Like, 'where do I go from here, and what are the necessary steps to get there, how to get back on the boat?'....
These days, there's a new bedroom ceiling I look up at, but the finish is smoother, so there's not really any patterns to form discernable shapes. But there is a ceiling light...and it has a face in it, sometimes it looks like the Apollo Lunar Lander, but mostly I see a face somewhat like Yoda's...so maybe as my ceiling search narrows, so will my other searches.

My Grandma

Today I was reminded of my ol' grandma...and all the stories about her. Let me say that I loved her very much, because she loved us, with much affection. During her funeral, my cousin referred to her "endless refrigerator"...that is, whoever showed up at her door would get fed, that's what she did. She was a good soul.
She was born in 1903, and married very young, and had four kids, the youngest was a girl, who was my mother.
Grandma married a very tall and forceful man, who owned his own automotive business, and then in the 20's and 30's they had children.
They were Arthur, Robert, Carmen, and Sally.
Arthur, or "Uncle Toody" as we called him as kids, was a veteran of WWII. He flew B-17 missions over Germany and dropped bombs and came back in one piece, but also with a certain hardness in his character that they all seemed to notice, and later seem to explain why he never visited that much.
Robert "Uncle Bob" he was my favorite uncle ever, he was a sensitive boy who loved to read. He was too young for the war, and he caught hell from his dad for that, but I think he was the most brilliant of the bunch, he became an engineer at IBM....but....in our generation it was his kids that have had problems...my cousins Bobby and Suzie....
Aunt Carmen, she is the one who has her father in her...a dominant presence...
And then my mom, she was the baby of the family...she just went along with it...I love her the most, not just because she's my own mom, but because she has the most kindest and gentleness among all of them.
But during all these things, we are a very close family, and through it all, it was our Matriarch, who we always called "Grama"...
Sure, she didn't understand things like flying in a plane, she looked out the window and thought another plane on the same glide path was standing still in midair! She just didn't "get" those kind of things. But she sure got other things, like in her 'endless refrigerator' and her unconditional love for her family.
She was old school...in other words, very naive....but she had a heart of Gold.
It was at Grama's house that we would gather for Thanksgiving, Christmas, at her wonderful house, with a ton of food.
Grama's house was a wonderful place.

Gibt est einselzimmer frei?

"Do you have a room available?" That was what I asked over and over when I visited Germany over twenty years ago. Tonight I had the pleasure of meeting a very charming family from Munich, Germany. Hearing the almost musicality of a language I don't understand, I was immediately brought back to those days, with nothing but foreign tounges in the air, I was a fish out of water.
And it was an adventure of a lifetime.
Hearing them speak, I completely remembered roaming from city to city on the train, and then from country to country. When I crossed into France, or Italy, it was the same process over again...re-adjust to the local language, and local customs...but one thing I was reminded of tonight, as I realized when I was there, that these German folks are the same as us...just nice plain folks who do the same things we do, and who want the same things out of life. They go to work, they go the mall, they take vacations, they do the same things we do..... I thought back then, that people all over the world just want the same things, and in spite of certain cultural differences, we are all the same.
Yes there will probably always be wars between countries, and antagonisms, especially these days like in the Muslim World, but among regular everyday citizens all over the world, we are all the same, we are all human beings.