Wednesday, May 03, 2006

TWENTY-THREE



I have no idea what he had stuck up his shirt or how he rode a trail bike with it but he was happy. This was the year he jumped out of a plane and remembered the parachute but forgot to land on his size 12 feet. The backside was bruised for a week.

He became a father again, another beautiful girl.

He had a part-time job tending the boat for the dive club. He loved to climb the hill above Cheviot Beach and watch the ocean. He was thinking about learning to dive. He'd need it for his marine biology.

It was also the year his Grandfather died. It was late when we called and the babies were sleeping so we told him to come in the morning. He came anyway, without our knowing. He sat on his bike, at the top of the street, until the hearse left. He followed it all the way to the funeral home because he didn't want his 'Grumpy' to go alone.

5 comments:

Link said...

A young Dad eh? and a fine looking man. You have cause to be proud.

R.H. said...

If I were twenty-three I wouldn't be buggering around with all this!

(But plenty do)

RH!

JahTeh said...

RH, Would you want to be 23 again?

Link, the genes there were good, his girls are gorgeous.

R.H. said...

No.

Look at the world. The sickness. The cruelty on TV and in movies. Getting worse all the time.
Twenty-three year olds might endure another fifty years of it.

I don't envy them

JahTeh said...

RH, I totally agree with you but 23 y-olds have grown up with this and don't think about it. That's left to us, the maturing-like-fine-wine types or, my case, Dom Perignon.