Families

Summer                                              Waxing Grandchildren Moon

 

Gabe and Ruth have broad palates.  Tonight Ruth ate sushi, tempura shrimp and a whole dish full of tempura vegetables as did Gabe.  They also wolfed down tempura ice-cream.  Afterward, Ruth wanted to put on a play in an ampitheatre located behind the Osaka Restaurant.  We waited awhile for her to decide on a performance, but the show, in this case, did not go on.  Maybe tomorrow in her playhouse.

Families are magical and mysterious, the vessels proven to travel through time intact.  We create them often with little realization of the long tail such action has, but consider the genetic chain linking you to the generation before you and the one before that and the one that crossed the ocean and the one that came out of Africa and the one that links you to mitochondrial Eve.

They find us at our most intimate, most troublesome, most winsome, most ugly.  The family collects bad acts and good, favors and betrayals, puts them in the alembic of an extended web of relationships and distills out the future.  Miracles are never more than this.

Our own family, gathered in part here right now, is no different, not special or unique, but no less special or unique than any other.  Ruth laughs, Jon wonders, Jen ponders, Gabe opens and closes, Grandma hugs and Grandpop writes.  The things we do, the people we are.