Father's Day

I have been very busy these days. Busy sowing seeds. Memory seeds. Shiny, fuzzy, happy memory seeds.

I'd had all these grand plans to blog while traveling since I got back to the States, but I have been one great big ball of perpetual motion. (And when I say "great big" I mean it. I have gained 10 pounds in the past two days, no less the past few weeks. But I'll touch on that later.)

Anyway, I figure the best way to try and make up for this lack of activity is with a bunch of short bursts of reminiscence. People, I have had such a remarkable, soul nourishing journey since my plane touched down on May 28th. You can't begin to understand how much I'm enjoying it, and how much I've needed to reconnect with friends and family.

The picture above is clearly the highlight of my sojourn, the main reason I'm back in America for a few weeks. This is my nephew, James Stewart Jones, a 22-year-old recent graduate of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. How I came to have a nephew old enough to graduate from college remains a mystery to me, but whatever.

Anyway, I will be forever grateful that I could witness this particular rite of passage for James. I wasn't there when he graduated from high school; work got in the way. And I wasn't there for him 7 years ago, when his father, my brother David, made his sad, lonely choice to opt out of life.

I gotta tell you, sitting there in the Cal Poly Stadium, I struggled to keep myself from crying. I was soooo happy that James had worked so hard and succeeded in earning his diploma. But my heart almost broke thinking of all the possibilities. And I suspect that James felt the absence a 1000 times more than I ever could.

But in part, I was there to stand in for David, and for Julie, who adored "Jamey." I was there to make peace with the past, and look forward with hope and optimism. And I was there to congratulate a remarkable young man who would make any father burst with pride.