Stone tossing

We have had another cold spell and Courtney and I went to Port Ludlow to visit dad. It isn’t cold here compared to the rest of the country and our snowfall is simply a dusting, but for our neighborhood, it has been in the 20’s and that’s chilly for us.

My dad is getting his new place squared away and he invited us up to help him sort through the stuff he had chosen to take with him and find it a new spot in the new place. It’s astounding how much we acquire in our lifetime! Dad had sorted for months and parted with a great deal but still is finding unpacking challenging. After several hours on the couch surrounded by boxes, Courtney and I had opened several using my favorite organizational strategy “explosion”, and had accomplished nothing more than passing photos and mementos back and forth listening to stories and laughing. Well, that’s not actually quite true, we had made a huge mess for dad to clear up which I like to think precluded any sadness he might have otherwise felt upon our departure. We found an enormous number of photographs of people we couldn’t identify, nor did we want to they looked so grim! My goodness, what was the instruction from the photographer to elicit those expressions? Try to look deeply lost and abandoned, projecting just a soupcon of ill will? Just a touch more despair around the eyes?

I took Lew for a walk, as the day was just beautiful, cold sunshine threw shadows on the path we chose into the woods. The soil underneath crunched with our footfalls and the molehills rose like brown castles encrusted with rime. Lew visited each one in turn, showing no favorites but spending many minutes knocking on each. I found a large moss covered boulder to perch on while Lew made his rounds and the heat from my bum melted the ice on the moss quite nicely, which I carried away with the seat of my pants, how comfy.

Dad’s inlet was frozen, but he didn’t believe me, with ice shards jagging upward around the rocks. He couldn’t see clearly enough to discern frozen from flotsam and labeled it sea scum, so I found some rocks to skate on the ice to illustrate; a science experiment, if you will. Dad greets most of my pronouncements with disbelief borne from ample evidence, as I usually am wrong. But not this time! I was right and my heart rose with the opportunity to redress the imbalance. Dad had packed 4 lovely black polished stones, who knew from where or why so this seemed a good use for them. I went first and stood on his deck overlooking the shoreline and placed a small, shiny stone in my hand. I cautioned him to stand back and to the side for my windup lest my hurling prove too impressive to witness up close. I begged him be quiet so he could hear the conk as my stone smacked the ice, providing me future ballast for having once been correct. I spied just the place to home it for all to see and proceeded to hook badly to the left, winging it under a neighbor’s window planted neatly into a large sword fern. Dad took the next stone and lobbed it perfectly onto the wee tundra that spread at our feet. It sailed quite neatly and bounced 7 times then slid to it’s home in the middle somewhere. Aha! I said, See? I told you! But his eyesight and hearing had both precluded my victory so I went back inside deflated. I wanted to throw my brother next as he had been there all morning irritating my father but he wouldn’t go easily and he’s bigger than me.

Courtney and I left shortly after, leaving the living room in a state of upheaval that it had not been in upon our arrival, Dad had taken us to lunch, I had garnered a pair of bookends he had made in high school wood shop, so I felt my work there was done.

I have been rather a one note symphony blipping only dad’s move and you have all been most kind. I will turn my heart next to my grandfather’s life saga part 2 :)