Not Taking A Trip; Taking A Trip.

---

Checking out the surf, 1981.

---

Duck: Very confused all day. He waited by the front door at noon saying we were coming at 12. He had his black shoes in his lap and his razor in his shoes, running. I wonder if he got enough fluids yesterday? Me: Finished Volume 12 and 11 and now am half way through Volume 10. Great pictures, but the books are falling apart in my hands. So very sad. I’m getting headaches, but almost done now. G: He’s getting Duckish. Not good. He got all involved with Duck’s latest and forgot to tell me that he’s booked us on a cruise. If we can’t afford Alaska, we can afford five days in Mexico for $150.00 each, total. Forgot a grandson’s birthday too. Did I say that? He needs some time off. He’s still my hero. Work: Padre’s 2008 Schedule. We only have to work 77 out of 84 games this year. Wow.

The sun pours in my windows, and I rush through my morning things so I can get outside and walking. It feels so good to get moving again if even for a half mile. I don’t feel silly that I have to stop often to stretch my leg, back, and hip.

Maria arrives just as I get the last of the mess tidied away. As soon as she is done moving the vacuum around in the computer room, I’m back to scanning these poor old sketchbooks I used as journals.

They are more than tired now. They fall apart as I place them on my scanner. Here are my daughters, beautiful, flawed, driving me mad. Here I am leaping in the air to click my heels together as my youngest moves to Charleston, South Carolina. Here is my youngest graduating from High School. She wears one of mother’s 1920’s dresses to her prom. Here are lifeguards, handsome, and forever young in the yellowing pages of my life. I see them win the Lifeguard Championships. Running in the sand. Pulling. Connie’s pictures are so much more than mine.

My scanner’s old now. Crotchety. Leaving a line down the middle of some of the images. Scanning, but not showing what it scans. Every so often I restart my computer, and for a while everything works smoothly. Here are my first beach doodles. Here are acres of photographs…..sand, sea, lifeguards running. Tourists marching into the sea here or there….being swept away, here or there. Greyed. Faded. Images I used to make my first one man show. Images, like bits of my mind.


Lenora and Tom, Prom night, Photo: CA