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We are here in Colorado -- my sister Susan and her family, our mom, my son Charlie, his friend Lee, and I. Charlie and Lee have known each other since first grade, when the G and H of their surnames first soldered their bond in an alphabetically seated classroom. The link has been tight at times, and looser at others, but they've kept their friendship solid for 13 years now -- even after Lee began attending a different school in tenth grade, and despite their college choices being 800 miles apart.
Lee was last with us up here -- six? seven? -- summers ago, and another week in July a year or two earlier. Back then, the tops of his and Charlie's heads barely reached my shoulders. The boys lollygagged through hikes, preferring to play on the boulders outside the cabin where my parents always stayed.
This summer, we'd no sooner arrived than they were talking about doing a major hike. Less than 36 hours later, we started out on a build-up six-miler called Twin Owls. But at just about the one-mile mark (which meant Charlie and Lee were about twice that far), we heard thunder. So I, the self-designated hike master (admittedly relieved because I could see the boys beginning to clamber up rocks) opted for a scamper down the path we had worked fairly hard to ascend.
By the time we reached the trail head, of course, the thunder was barely a faraway echo, and the sky crystal clear. But in the interest of time (my niece Julie needed to leave for the airport to pick up her boyfriend), instead of attempting Twin Owls again, we hiked to Gem Lake -- a steep, shorter, and too-familiar hike not far away.
That almost-four mile jaunt was just fine for me. The boys, though, weren't satisfied. The perceived taste of the top whetted their appetites for -- if not the Twin Owls apex -- that of a tougher, longer, steeper, above-the-treeline actuality.
That's simple to understand, really. It's like anything you come close to grasping -- then catch yourself at the cusp of letting yourself think you already have. The love you've waited for all your life, maybe. Or a perfect pesto, or that driest of martinis. If you're a surfer, maybe you can all but feel that wave of serenity under you, the one that holds you aloft while the ocean roils below.
Until -- if ever -- you truly taste on your tongue whatever you are reaching for, until you feel it on your fingertips, until you see it even when you close your eyes, it absorbs you and holds you rapt.
Charlie and Lee decided to sate their craving by climbing a mountain called Flattop. I've done that hike with each of my sisters and also with a cousin years ago, and can vouch for its breathtaking vistas, its oxygen-deprived air.
Neither of the boys slept well the night before the hike. Lee told me in the morning that he'd woken up at 2 a.m. and decided he might as well get up and make his peanut-butter sandwiches. (He also packed a baguette and a box of Twinkie knock-offs, but that's another story).
He and Charlie reached the summit -- 4.4 miles from the trail head -- in two hours and 30 minutes. Even before they glanced over their shoulders and saw that last vestige of trees, the boys said they had a hard time moving their legs because the oxygen was so thin. But what they saw -- and you know it must have been astoundingly beautiful for 19-year-olds to say this kind of thing -- made every gasped-for breath worthwhile.
Before beginning this hike, they had decided that they -- along with the three other classmates who had spent time in Colorado with us through the years -- would climb Longs Peak together the summer before their senior year of college. At 14,259 feet, Longs is the highest point in Rocky Mountain National Park. Its name evokes reverence; those who have climbed it, awe.
After ascending Flattop, the idea of Longs became more than words strung together, more a possibility than a lark, more an adult aspiration than a daydream shared between childhood friends.
The route up Longs is 6.2 miles farther than Flattop. Getting there takes 12 hours at the very least, so hikers are strongly encouraged to begin around 2 a.m. to ensure they're off the summit when afternoon thunderstorms begin. Flattop was way above the tree line, but Longs would bring them 2,000 feet closer to the sky.
Although Longs, quite honestly, holds no great appeal for wimpy me, I understand its allure; I appreciate its invisible but very real bridge that connects childhood to adulthood. Which is why, ever since they shared this with me, I'm crossing my fingers, picking pennies off the sidewalk, scanning the sky at dusk for that very first star.
My wish is a bit tangential, a sidestep off the trail leading up Longs or down Flattop. I want Charlie and Lee to remember being on top of a mountain the summer they were both 19 -- within touching distance of a thousand clouds, at the starting point of a dream. To hold close what they told each other up there where the air was almost too thin to talk, and what they promised themselves.
And in days or months or years to come, when life is crazy and Longs seems so very far away, I hope they can bring back the feeling of being on a mountaintop with a friend whose connection goes far beyond alphabetical. Of remembering what it feels like to be standing tall, high in the sky, believing with all your heart that anything is possible.
I could show you the picture my sister Susan shot of our mother's shin wound, and Mom would helpfully and happily point out where the doctor lifted the skin to show Mom the bone hiding in plain sight underneath.
The wound-causing accident occurred as Mom headed for the shower Saturday morning. She apparently brushed against the tile-and-wooden sign on a bookshelf and it fell off, hitting her poor little shin. (The sign, in a note of irony, said "Home Sweet Home." And I'm a bit mortified to realize, I gave it to her.)
Mom called Susan, calming saying, "We need to go somewhere," and Susan rushed over. I'll spare details of the crime -- I mean accident -- scene. Suffice to say there was a lot of the red stuff involved, and it wasn't pretty.
Susan drove our very calm mother to the emergency-care clinic nearby, and then the text messages between her, our sister Jeanne, brother Ben, and me began.
The first came after Susan took this picture of Mom. You can see how she's looking intently at what the technician is doing.
Susan: "Always smiling. Home Sweet Home sign fell on Mom's leg."
Ben: "Oh, no! Stitches?"
Susan: "No stitches. Open wound. Doc hasn't come in yet."
Me: "What does that mean, open wound? Don't they want to close it?"
Jeanne: "My head is between my knees. It's just as well I'm not there. I'd be the daughter in the next examining room with oxygen."
Me: "Haha and I'd be fighting you for the spigot."
Susan then sent us all the picture of the shin wound, which I will spare you (and me).
Susan: "Enjoy."
Me: "I'm going to put in stitches if no one else will. And then I'm going to throw up."
Susan: "Hahahaha. Maybe 'open wound' is the wrong term. Skin tear?"
Jeanne: "Hmm. Maybe worse."
Ben: "Looks like more of a scrape to me."
Me: "Artery rip?"
Susan: "Doctor said deep gash, some clots. Ugh. I want to go home."
Me: "Why did the doctor have to say CLOTS? I'm down for the count."
Susan: "It doesn't help that she takes a baby aspirin."
Ben: "Has Mom gotten the doctor's life story yet?"
Me: "He's coming over for Thanksgiving. And I'm going to purge the baby aspirin I just ate."
Susan: "Poor Mom. It hurts. She has no questions for the doctors, just kind comments."
Me: "Chuckles (my son Charlie) said, 'If we could incorporate Oma's personality to everyone in the world, there would be world peace.' "
Susan: "Tell Chuckles to button it. You can't imagine how deep the cut is. Scary."
There's a few more back and forth texts -- some silly, some not, including (for instance) TV doctors and neighborhood doctors, none of whom we've seen in decades, but all of whom 'each of us remembered with much amusement.
Susan: "Two docs are in there now. Mom's amazing. She's watching the whole thing. They can't sew it. The skin is 'ripping.' "
And then, "It's OK. Stitched. Just the top of the wound isn't holding together. She has to keep it elevated and iced."
You can see how the texts start out with one medical theory -- a scrape that can't be stitched -- and how that changes. Mostly though, what struck me as we were typing, and what strikes me now reading them again, is the comfort and camaraderie and amusement that comes with being a sibling in a tight-knit family. And yes, how very lucky I am.
Not long after Susan's last text, Jeanne sent this photo to all of us. 
It's Mom at the birthday party for Jeanne's grandson (Mom's great-grandson) Eli V.
She didn't stay there long -- just enough to have some cake and kiss the birthday boy. Oh yes, and to enthusiastically recount how the doctor lifted the skin on her shin, and she could see the bone at the base of the gash.
My son and his best friend ran a Zombie Race today.
For the uninitiated, that's one of those crazy who-would-want-to-do-one-of-those? activities involving mud, obstacles, water, more mud and, oh yes, people dressed like zombies who chase you around trying to steal your three flags (i.e. red strips of fabric) and thus, render you dead.
Did I mention there's mud?
Charlie spent Friday, the night before the race, with Luke. They woke at the crack of dawn and Lynne (Luke's mom and my dear friend) drove them and Laura, Luke's girlfriend, to the race site in Forney.
A day or so earlier, Charlie had offhandedly asked if I wanted to go watch them run. I hemmed a bit and hawed a little more. Probably not, I finally said. Saturdays are my mornings to run and -- especially if I haven't been during the week, which this week I hadn't -- to go to yoga class.
"Oh, that's fine," he said.
Friday around 6 though, I began reconsidering. True, maybe the glass of beer I had with a friend opened my spirits a bit and figured into my change of heart. Mostly though, skipping the chance to share this event with my son -- who was almost giddy at the idea of doing it -- gnawed at me.
In a day or a month or a year, I asked myself, which would I remember? Surprising Charlie by showing up, and then getting to watch him race? Or going to a yoga class that yes, though beloved, would probably blend with all the other yoga classes? (Unless, of course, this would be the one where I actually did go crashing to the ground instead of merely anticipating I would).
The answer was embarrassingly obvious.
Charlie and Luke signed up for the 8:30 wave (race lingo for a group that starts off together). When I saw them talking to Lynne and to Laura, I called Charlie's name. He turned, looked surprised and oh so happy to see me. He gave me his big smile, and hugged me hard.
He and Luke trotted off to the starting line. We took our places by the last mud pit and waited, amusing (and ooking out) ourselves by watching people crawl on their bellies like slime-encrusted reptiles through gnat-encircled muck.
We finally saw Charlie and Luke a field away, running toward us.
They reached the mud, flopped down on all fours without hesitation, and made a valiant slosh through the final obstacle -- yeah, smiling even. Then they climbed a tower, slid down into a rather filthy water trough, were chased by a few more zombies, and got their well-earned medals.
They didn't shower right away, instead recounting their journey and making plans for the next. Heck, Lynne and I got so caught up in the moment, we even started talking about doing one of these.
We all stuck around for awhile, not wanting to leave this oasis of mirth and music. A giant screen showed a video of the Village People singing YMCA, so what choice did we have but to join in?
All this happened
hours ago. I came home, swam some laps, relived the race some more with Charlie, ate too many
pita chips, called my best friend, and haven't done much of anything
else.
But the precious few hours from this morning follow me like a happy shadow. Long after Charlie's washed that last bit of mud from his ear, they'll echo in my heart, as all good decisions should.
When my father died, I stopped worrying, and began not taking myself quite so seriously. I started getting out more and sweating the small stuff less.
I turned off negative comments from people who don't really matter, and instead focused on the positive (or at least constructively critical) ones of those who do.
Or such has been my aspiration. On some days, during certain moments, amid various circumstances, I feel I'm grasping it. But on others -- half? three-fourths? a third of the time? -- I end up holding a handful of air...and holding onto it for dear life.
The turkey was my father’s bailiwick, his self-assigned, by-default duty Thanksgiving morning. I'm pretty certain he'd have rather conjured up one of what we called his "concoctions" -- an artistic jumble of whatever he found in the refrigerator. But our family's Thanksgiving dishes tended to be more basic than he'd care to tackle: green beans; mashed potatoes; dates stuffed with walnuts and rolled in sugar.
So post-sunrise found him contemplating the bird, still frozen in a sink full of water, its neck stinkily simmering on the stove. At some point during the next few hours, it thawed, or thawed enough, for Dad to cook it one of two ways: He either popped a lemon, lime and orange into its gross-the-kids-out cavity and baked it in a pre-heated oven. Or he'd put the stuffing-less turkey into a cold oven, crank up the temperature for a few minutes, then turn it off for hours.
Either way, it came out moist and delicious. Not that Dad had an opinion on the finished product. He wouldn't eat turkey, or chicken, or anything with feathers. The story goes that when he was a boy, growing up poor in San Antonio, he plucked so many feathers off his family's supper-bound chickens that he vowed once he grew up he would never eat another. Nor pluck one, for that matter. Nor, if he had his druthers, smell one.
But on Thanksgiving, he never questioned the turkey's presence -- or his role in its being there -- on the table.
This year, for the first time in more than a half-century, we won't have Dad's turkey on our table. And though each other's presence will be palpable, all of us won't be together in the shoulder-touching way that's as ingrained into our lives as gravy stains on Nana's white tablecloth.
Mom leaves for Maryland on Tuesday to spend Thanksgiving week with my brother Ben, his wife Meg, and her parents. My sister Jeanne will be hosting dinner at their lake house for her immediate family and her son-in-law's parents and sister. My little group will be at my sister Susan's house.
We won't have turkey; last I heard, my brother-in-law is grilling fish. I'm fine with the no-turkey aspect of it; really I am. I prefer fish to turkey anyway. Jeanne's having turkey, but I'll wager none of our respective Thanksgiving menus will include the ubiquitous creamed onions or mashed turnips -- staples that few but Dad devoured. The couple who always baked Dad a much-ballyhooed mincemeat pie isn't coming this year.
Thanksgiving will mark one day short of four months since our precious father died. Last November, he wasn't in the best of health, and two years ago we all brought him Thanksgiving dinner at his latest rehab facility. Still, as dad to five of us and grandfather to nine, he was the patriarch, the one who made everyone feel welcome; the generous host who said the blessing until he got too choked up to continue, and then one of us would step in.
The closer we get to Thursday, the more I am getting too choked up to continue. As Thanksgiving and Christmas approach, I can almost visualize, and all but feel the constants we've counted on for more five decades being tossed into the air from our collective cupped hands.
Some will drift down like snowflakes, landing in pretty much the same spot they always did. A few will catch a breeze and be scattered to the horizon of our memories. Others will return next year, falling like glitter onto shoulders.
And the rest? Sprinkled like stars which, if we stand on tiptoes, we can almost reach up and snatch from the sky.
AP Photo/NASA
