2000-10-08 - l7:05 MDT

October 8, 2000

First, today I do want to thank y'all for reading and taking the time to get on my notify list. ------------------------------

Hanging Pictures

While youngest daughter and her husband and kids visited us this summer, She and her Mate spent most of their time with us completely cleaning, painting, arranging and refurnishing the cave wherein I cower most of my daylight cowering time -- come to think of it though -- there is quite a bit of the time that Heather and I are going and doing something, somewhere. So, this not a 24 / 7 thing and sometimes it does extend into the night -- so "I cower under cover,in the middle of the night, like an errant lover, trying to make it all come right! Glorying amidst some fantastically new stuff which makes this a paradise for me. Here, I am Head Coward in charge of cowering.

I began to take care of some stuff that had been leaning against other stuff. The two main things were pictures, one of our middle daughter at about age five, on crutches with one foot supported above ground. Necessary to immobilize the hip on that side, to allow regeneration of the white covering of the ball joint of that hip. In the picture, she stands there in a very matter of fact stance -- just as if she had been born that way instead of having Perthe's disease. The day of the picture, taken at a nearby park, she had outrun and outlasted all the other kids -- young or old. I look at the picture and remember seeing her running from a door, make a flying leap off the porch and light running with her crutches valiantly trying to keep up with her.

The other picture is of our youngest daughter and me when I walked her down the aisle in 1984 to see her wed to a man I would have happily chosen for her if I could have had my pick. This picture taken after my comment from the side of my mouth to her, "Well I have done my job, all you kids are now raised," or some such words. To which she smilingly replied, "Not until you hold my baby in your arms Daddy," paraphrased -- the meaning is there though. This from the twenty-one year old who had wrested the "Baby Daughter" title from our "Middle Daughter." And I did, I have held two of her babies in my arms, bounced them on my knees, carried them on my shoulders and tickled their ribs, read to them and helped tuck them in many a night.

So now that I have graded well in the grandpa finals I plan to hang on to doing my job for a while longer.

Before the major upheaval I would see each picture while entering or leaving the cave -- but now they are on the wall by my desk, looking as if those pictures were taken today and run through the One-Hour Photo Shop.

It has been a super day for me, one in which I spent a little time on a very important project -- Hanging Pictures.

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