Category: Family
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Forever and a Day
Absolutely nothing lasts forever. Nothing lasts forever. There may be some things that last forever. One thing lasts forever. You’re waiting for me in the cafe. The place beside the old church and next to the cemetery. The only place in the city where I can sit next to the fire and feel warm…on…
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The Pink Flamingos of the Pacific Northwest
I asked my daughter, Erin, about her opinion of pink flamingos. “They have their place,” she answered, without taking more than five seconds to think it over. That place was in a front yard, several blocks from her home in Orting, WA. My wife and I were walking back from a brief shopping trip to…
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Let It Be
I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea Sometimes I turn, theres someone there, other times its only me… –Bob Dylan “Every Grain of…
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A Watercolor Found
My father never said much about his life. He did have his favorite stories that he would tell us when his four boys were…little boys. Some of the tales were family jokes, like this one: “We were so poor, one Christmas we got a pair of roller skates. We had to wait until the next…
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Coal For Christmas
My father grew up poor. Not the kind of poor where he would walk through ten inches of snow barefoot or go from house to house asking for bread. Just the kind of poor that would keep his father one step ahead of the rent collector. His parents provided the best they could, but, by…
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Not Just Another Skyscraper
The Empire State Building has been linked to me, in one way or another, since before I was born. That may sound a bit confusing…but stay with me. I am an American male, raised to hide emotional reactions. But, I can say that the building has made me cry on more than one occasion. When…
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Two-Tree Island (How Do I Live Without You?)
The physical geography of the place can be hard to describe. One has to see it from the air…from the height of a soaring hawk or eagle, or, better yet, from the seat of a kayak or canoe. But one can get lost in the words…just as easily as one can get lost in the…
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Waiting For All Hallow’s Eve XVI: “Is My Childhood Home Haunted?”
Sometime in 2005, I handed the keys of my childhood home to the new owners. That action was very difficult for me. This was the only home I had ever known from birth to the time I went off to college. But, even in the years since 1965, when I hopped into a car and…
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John Tumbledown’s House
I pushed the button on the camera and heard the shutter snap. I captured my son midway through his pirouette in the field, in the field in front of the old farmhouse. Something caught my eye just as the mirror flipped up in the camera. Something in the farmhouse. I lowered the Pentax slowly from…
patrickjegan 