The restructuring continues and memories abound as i sort through the stuff i’m putting back in different places and for once, i’m actually tossing a few things away.

Timely, you might say, was yesterday’s reconnect. Nancy Orr Winkler Schwarze turned 80 yesterday. She is more of another sister than a cousin. Florida. She moved there from Red Bank in Chattanooga in the late 50’s. She’s been there ever since. She is a marvel. She is also beautiful.  My birthday wishes for you yesterday were perfunctory but heartfelt. i wish we could have been together like we were around the mid-40’s. In a much earlier post, i mentioned i was the first to be a dinner guest at her home in Florida in 1960. Being her first dinner for a visitor, we had about six courses. There was the meat, then the peas, then the potatoes, etc. or something like that. As always we had a wonderful laugh about that, and it has become a part of our family lore.

Happy Birthday, sister Nancy.

As i recently noted, we continue to reel from our home improvements. About time, you say? Yeh. Thirty-one years this September. When we really, really, really chucked any ideas about relocating or buying down, we started this stuff. Copper re-piping, done. Dry wall repair, done. Paint, done. 13,000 square feet slope reinvented, done. Bath and half-bath re-do? It started with planning today.

And i’m still moving back in my office and cleaning up my garage. Yeh, it’s my garage…for her car and all the stuff of mine she doesn’t want in the house. Love it.

But you know what? Good things can come from upheaval. For example: after clearing out my treasured large bookcase and my office closet and taking everything off the walls, i had to put them back up. It is taking me a while. i keep running into things that demand some reflective dreaming. Like yesterday, i ran across a box originally for a dozen golf balls. Inside were treasures like:

On the left, my cousins, Myrtle and Joann Jewell, c. 1932. Two beautiful women who also happened to be some of the nicest folks around. They and their younger sister Shirley made their parents, Aunt Alice and Uncle Jesse proud.

On the right, their and my uncle George Martin doing what made him happy. He was not only my father’s brother-in-law, they were cronies in everything, and his son Maxwell followed in his footsteps.

For now, i’ll end with this other treasure:

Maureen’s office, Parron-Hall Office Interiors had a party on a ship in the bay, San Diego Bay. It was a great time. i remember how we wowed them with our dancing to old time rock and roll. i moved pretty well back then, but she was marvelous.

And i’m still going through this stuff.

What’s next?

One hundred and four years ago, my mother was born as World War I was entering its final stages. She was born in Lebanon, a small county seat smack dab in the middle of Tennessee, far removed from the war in Europe.

She lived in that little town for just shy of 97 years. She pointed out her eventual husband to her mother from a house porch on North Cumberland Street when he was walking down the street from an afternoon job working with his father. He was eighteen, having lost three years of school because he contracted yellow fever when he was seven. They were in the same sophomore class, 1932-33, at Lebanon High School. In 1938, they were married by her grandfather, Bishop Joseph Webster at the First Methodist Church, inside because the plan for an outdoor wedding was abandoned due to the day long rain deluge. It was her father-in-law’s last public appearance. Hiram Culley Jewell died months later of tuberculosis.

The marriage lasted for just over seventy-five years. He died in August 2013, just forty days or so shy of 99. She followed him nine months later about a month shy of 97. They are gone but i think of them every day and both of them continue to teach me how to behave as i reach that part of the path they have already walked.

i have written volumes about her. Today, i walked up my hill to change the hooks on my flagpole, which had deteriorated over the years.  i accomplished my tasks. As usual, i scanned the view to the west. Navy ships moored at rest in the Naval Station, the Coronado Bridge, Point Loma, and the skyline of San Diego. Then i turned eastward and checked out Mount Miguel. Finally, i looked down on our backyard and noticed the empty chair outside our kitchen door. i often pull it from the patio set to tend to my grill when i have cooking duties.

It dawned on me that was one of the places she loved to sit. When they would come out for their winter sojourn, they stayed in their fifth wheel in an over-50 RV park at the southern end of the Silver Strand but spent the entire day and evening at our home, doing miraculous projects to make the home better.

When the Southwest corner sun would complete its swing across the southern hills and mesas of Mexico, it beamed its warm rays onto our backyard. Often Mother would stop whatever task she had taken on for the day and walk out to that patio and sit in the chair i had placed there. Unaware anyone was watching, she would sit down with the chair facing the sun, 70 degrees, no clouds. She would lean back, raise her head to the sun, close her eyes. And rest.

She was the picture of some one at peace.

i remembered, standing on that hill looking down this morning. Her smile with her eyes closed spoke volumes about contentment.

i think of her love for her husband, children, grandchildren, relatives, and countless number of friends. i’m sure sitting in that sun on what is now an empty chair, she was contemplating her love for them..

i suspect she is enjoying that sun now, loving the warmth, loving all of us.

Happy Birthday, Mother.

Photographs were allowed to be taken.

i did not. To do so, would have put something between me and the event. It was not for capturing the moment. It was the moment.

i wished for so many folks to be with me to share. Maureen, Blythe, Sarah, Sam, you too Jason, and many others. But this one was mine, all mine.

Tonight, at 7:54 P.M. PDT, or as mariners are inclined, 0254 GMT, the sun set. i was up at the top of our hill overlooking the Naval Station with its ships moored to the piers and the city of San Diego to the west.

i was there to lower the flag at sunset. The wind had finally tattered the ends. Tomorrow morning, i will raise the new flag. This was something i did every night for quite a while quite a while ago. That’s when i had this lab. His name was Cass, with a registered name of Ike McCaslin, like the young man in Faulkner’s The Bear. Each night at sunset, Cass and i would climb that hill and lower the flag. We would descend and i would fold the flag according to the flag code. The next morning, we would retrace our path for me to raise the flag at 0800, according to military tradition. Cass and i would then walk down the hiking/horse riding trail through some steep hills where he would chase coyotes, jump rattlesnakes, roll possums while i enjoyed my morning workout.

But times changed. Folks in the neighborhood spoke of how they liked seeing my flag in the morning. So i configured some lighting that would allow me to keep the flag up all night according to the flag code. The praise from neighbors made it a good choice. Cass was gone. i no longer trekked up the hill at sunset nor ascended in the morning.

But tonight, i saw a green flash. No kidding. i’ve seen about a half dozen. The first was in 1979, when i was running the flight deck before the evening mess on the USS Tripoli (LHA 7), aboard as a member of the amphibious squadron staff. It was in the doldrums of the South China Sea. i paused my running at the sunset and saw it. i had read a James Jones novel  about such an occurrence, but thought it was imagined. It wasn’t.

I have seen several, about a half dozen, since. There was one in the Pacific, one in the Indian Ocean, one in the Caribbean, and one in the Mediterranean. and a couple right in the place i was tonight. But not like the one tonight. No. Not like the one tonight.

i stood in silence for almost five minutes. It took me away from all that ails us. i saw beauty. i saw nature in her glory. i saw peace.

As with all things, it did not last. The sun set.

But you know what? i shared it. Cass’ ashes are buried beneath that flagpole. There is an inscription on a plaque attached to the base: “To Cass, a good dog gone. 1984-1999. To your and our freedom.”

Yeah, i’m corny. But i felt him. He was there.

And unlike my time in Market Time across from the  Army  piers  Qui Nhon, South  Vietnam, i didn’t  take  a picture.

To be honest, my shortfall in writing posts since we returned from our Tennessee, Atlantat, Asheville trip back to the Southwest corner is not according to Hoyle.

i was going put a super Herculean effort into finishing my book edit to send to my editor. i have at least a half-dozen posts unfinished that i hope to still put here.

Then chaos visited the Southwest corner. The developer who built our home thirty-one years ago chose to put in “quest” piping (PVC) rather than copper to increase his profit margin with no regard for the new homeowners, aka us. In discussing a renovation of one of our bathrooms, Maureen was advised by an expert to change out the quest with copper.

We were lucky. Several places in the piping could have burst at any moment, and since we are on a slab with the piping in the attic and crawl spaces, many not crawlable (and yes, i know “crawlable” is not a word but it works for me), such a burst or leak would have caused some devastating damage and cost…well, a bundle.

It is over, but for more than two weeks, living at our home has been akin to living on a Navy ship during a major overhaul, which i can tell you is not a fun experience having experienced it four times. Back then, i found it interesting and sometimes laughable. This time at my age, i found it depressing.

So i spent my time on home tasks, not writing. After all, the most impacted room in the house was my office and my normal escape space in the garage was the set up area for the re-pipers.

Now, we have the painters coming to paint all the holes in the walls, covered and textured by the re-pipers, not painted. But i turned my focus back to the book. It feels good, But i haven’t posted anything much here.

However, something happened Saturday that gained my attention.

As you should know, i have turned my wife into a baseball fan, specifically a San Diego Padre baseball fan. We watched the Saturday game the Padres played in Washington, D.C. against the Nationals. In between the top and bottom halves of the sixth inning, the world stopped acting normally in Nationals Park. As the Padre manager, Jayce Tingler, was talking to the umpire while our Padres positioned themselves on the field, gun shots were heard throughout the stadium.

Those shots came from outside the stadium in a gunfight between people in two cars (maybe people: i’m not sure what you call people who are that small and stupid), but the shots sounded as if they were inside the stadiums.

Panic ensued. Fans began stampeding toward the exits only to be told by the stadium announcer to remain inside the stadium. The Padres were directed to go to the dugout except for the relievers in the bullpen who were ordered to stay in place.

Then heroes of a different kind stepped up, even though they were baseball heroes, superstars with mega salaries. i’m going from the reports i have from the San Diego media and today’s excellent article in the San Diego Union-Tribune sports section. Therefore, i have no comment about the Nationals players but am sure they reacted admirably.

But the Padre superstars? Fernando Tatis, Jr., the new poster boy of major league baseball who this spring signed an absurd $330 Million contract for 14 years was one of the many young men who stepped up to a next level. After he got to the dugout, not knowing where the shots were being fired, ran down the left field line, grabbed two children and sprinted back to the dugout. After depositing them in the safer confines of the dugout, he repeated the run and brought two more children back to safety. His efforts were duplicated by Jurickson Profar, Wil Myers, and Manny Machado who were also making rescue efforts. The team opened gates from the stands onto the field and ushered as many fans as would fit into the dugout.

Tatis’ quotes in the U-T story, are worth repeating:

“There were little kids…I felt like somebody had to go get them. I felt the safest place was the clubhouse. I was just trying to get the families and get to a safe place.

“…The situation changed immediately.” There was no longer player and fans. I feel like everyone was people, just human beings out there.”

There are other stories of players and their reaction to the crisis, but you can find them, and i won’t repeat them here.

But i gotta tell you, Tatis and the other Padre players have moved up a notch or two in my appreciation of them. Baseball is a game with the media pushing statistical heroes. But Saturday, the Padres had some real heroes on the field.

Note: i told Maureen this morning i wondered what the reaction would have been thirty years ago before mass shootings became a constant in our lives. i don’t know but i suspect it would have been significantly different.