Thinking about whether to try to drive to Southern California for the memorial service for Lottie next week -- and about how to fill in the time between now and then.
There was the AYUSA young people whose program I was prepared to participate in by conducting a walking tour of the historic Nystrom District of Richmond, but that seems to have disappeared from the matrix I received today, and now I can choose between attending a commemorative event at Mare Island in Vallejo (the site of the Port Chicago mutiny trials during WWII) -- a follow-up to our Port Chicago Day of Remembrance last week -- and the annual Kite Festival on the Berkeley Marina with Dorrie on Saturday. And just maybe I've had enough of remembrances and memorials and am hungry for a day of simply lying on my back in the tall grass watching the antics of a thousand kites of every shape and size against the blue sky. Actually, I'd like to be alone in that crowd -- not having to speak a word ... maybe I need to admit that I'm feeling emotionally spent and soul weary ... .
Except for the fact that there was an email yesterday from a 19 year-old cousin who found me on the internet through a family search, and Taylor Charbonnet Brown, a philosophy major at St. Marys College in Moraga, California, is anxious to meet soon. She's lived within a few miles of my apartment without my being aware of her for all of her life. What a time to be alive -- when the Internet brings such magic without warning.
Then there was another email from Jason Allen (maternal line), another young cousin whom I've never met, but with whom I've been corresponding for a couple of years. I saw him through his enlistment in the armed forces; a tour of duty in Kandahar, Afghanistan; and now his safe return home to Florida. Life does have a way of pressing us into the future whether we're ready or not. And maybe -- after a few hours of lazy kite-watching ... the future won't appear so threatening.
The truth is that tomorrow and tomorrow are the "future," and no one on earth can make any promises about how, if, or what they will hold. My tomorrows will surely be as surprising as my yesterdays.
Today is all there really is, anyway, and that, my friends is more than enough, especially if there is even the hint of kites over the next horizon.
