The next couple of days will be different. I have to attend a funeral for a close relative. She was ninety-seven and so I’m travelling both closer to my geographical origin and back in time to my childhood. I’ll be going back to the Catholic church I attended as a child and seeing the neighborhood I lived in. And a lot of my cousins will be there and my siblings. I probably will also see some old acquaintances for the last time on this Earth. And that is a thought that gives me pause. This is the second death of that generation in the last few weeks. Those folks had a lot of vitality. All of them on that side of the family have reached their nineties. I’m not exactly sure how I feel about that legacy. It’s not an unmixed “blessing.”
I’ll look over the old neighborhood. Last time I was there it had become a Southeast Asian enclave of one sort or another. I’ll be interested to see if the homeless and the illegal aliens have shown up to any degree. I suspect things will look worse than even it looked a decade ago when I passed through. The only thing that seems to have endured since my childhood is an old-fashioned Italian bakery that somehow has endured. The family still runs it and from what I’ve been told they still make crumb cake and crème doughnuts that are worth buying. So, after the wake and the mass I intend to stop by that store and buy some pastries to bring home to Camera Girl. She’s partial to good crumb cake and I like it too.
When I get back, we’ll have some good coffee and enjoy some pastries while I tell her what the old neighborhood looks like. And I’ll tell her who showed up for the funeral and who didn’t. What everybody looked like and any family news for good or bad. And hopefully, there won’t be any new feuds breaking out to report. At this point in the cycle, I’m hoping everybody is looking to let bygones be bygones and go quietly into that good night. But you never know. I come from some pretty ornery stock. There are old feuds that go back well over a hundred years that I’ve heard about and as far as I know are still being honored. But hopefully those folks won’t be showing up for this family gathering.
And in fact, I know of at least one party who will attempt to spark a gathering of the clan for a summer party sometime in the summer. I used to have one every summer about a decade ago at the Compound but people got older and travelling became more difficult so it subsided. Maybe this will revive the custom.
So, I’ll see what I can do to keep this site active while I’m on the road. At the very least there will be pictures and quotes. I’ll see if I can get one more post scheduled after this one to fill in the gap. But we’ll see.
Well, back I go.