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ever dumbening
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For Monashee.
~~~
I was probably ten, or so, when the Gossamer Albatross—a human powered flying machine—and I met at McDonnell Planetarium in St. Louis. It flew across the English Channel in 1979. And some 26 years later I'm reminded. But what I'm struck by is not the wonder of the machine or the crossing itself, not the wonder I felt then as a child or now; instead, I'm reminded yet again of all the amazing things my parents spread before my growing mind. Model rockets and the physics behind them, how to make a graft on a tree, watching the slow powerful filling at Lock and Dam 26 on the Mississippi, a year and a half in Germany (with side trips around Europe, and even Israel) and everything that implies, hiking canoeing swimming sledding treasure-hunting fishing orienteering, symphony opera theatre puppetry story-telling, tennis soccer cycling running baseball (an impromtu 2-on-2 football game in some random schoolyard; Jon and I versus Mom and Dad), cooking baking sharing healing giving teaching praying singing, sewing sawing hammering cutting growing eating sun-warmed green beans two seconds from the vine. And on. And I stand in awe at the challenge. And I stand ashamed of my anger and blame and recalcitrance. And I stand humbled that we all survived and grew and thrived, and learned.
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