Thanksgivings Past

I have a life time of Thanksgiving stories.

Dad's birthday is the 26th of November, and my Uncle Don's birthday the 27th...so not only was Thanksgiving our families favorite holiday each year since it celebrates family, food and, yes, boozing - but it was always our excuse to whoop it up for both my father and uncle's birthdays. Inevitably they would show up with identical bottles of whiskey to exchange (and sometimes try and drink them both that very weekend!). Dad, Uncle Don and Cousin Everett all like to cook and show off, so each year they'd come ready with their tastiest new recipes to impress and compete with one another. Dad was a bit hard to compete with I think because he would always build himself these amazing metal cookers - a smoker, deep fryer, wok, you name it he most likely made it for himself over the years. He made everything an adventure, everything super sized and extra tasty. We have many Thanksgivings that became somewhat infamous in the retelling, but one of the most impressive was his 50th birthday bash on the coast of Oregon in 2001. It was a three day party and food fest, complete with music, tons of friends and family, belly dancers, and theme food days. Below are some pictures of that weekend (taken by one of Dad's photographer friends), the many stories that accompanied it will have to be shared later.

Happy Thanksgiving Daddy.

The Smoker Dad Built

This was the beer battered turkey.

Cheese table (imported from NYC via my suitcase!)

The Salmon flown in from Alaska

Special Rynearson Ale

The Birthday Boy

Special 50th Shot Glasses (I love this picture with all of Dad's friends in the background)

Rhea & Ona making sushi

Yes, that is THREE turkeys, each prepared a different way.

The gag menu Rhea and I made.

Last Picture

So far as I know this is the last picture of Steve. It was taken in Baker City, Or on Oct 16. The two women are our cousins. The one to the left is Judy Baker, a granddaughter of Dearing Baker (Grandfather W.E. Baker's Brother) The one to the right is Ann Clark, granddaughter of Mary Baker Sandage, (Grandfather W.E.Baker's sister)

Steve and I went up and had lunch with these girls, as well as Judy's Brother Mike, and had a very nice day.

-Mary Tucker (taken from an email sent 11/13/08)

Two Years

Two years ago, sometime after nine o'clock tonight, my father drove off the Snake River road over a very high cliff, into the river and drowned to death. He would not be reported missing till the next morning, and his body recovered till the afternoon, and while most other family members were notified right away, I could not be reached till after 8 o'clock that night after I left work (my boss at the time did not allow personal calls of any kind). So I would not know that my father was gone for close to 24 hours after he had already died. As death anniversaries go, this one is hard for me because it is stretched across days and it always remind me of how much we will never know about my fathers last moments. Even my brother, who also died in an accident earlier the same year, and whose death I found out half a day after it happened, I still know when he died exactly because he was surrounded by his friends when the accident occurred. With Dad, we will never ever know for sure.

Over the weekend I was trying to get my head around it. Two years? How is that possible? How could time have moved that quickly. And yet I can see evidence that time has moved forward. I am nearly a year into a new (and much better) job. I am nearly complete with my AA when at the time of Dad's death I was 8 weeks into my first semester back at school. Josslyn is 3 1/2 and in pre-school. Rhea and I have started a business. So much has continued and changed in the last two years.

And that is just life - there has been all the dealings with death. We lost Grandma Edith and several long term family pets (Alphonso, Norton, Spunky, Tuffie and two of Krista's kitty's whose names escape me). Not to mention the two years of handling Dad's estate that continues although there is glimmer of an ending by possibly next spring. This past September was the 17th anniversary of my mother dying. People always say that in time you will heal. And I agree to a point. You most certainly get use to it. You learn you will continue to wake up every morning, that life carries on. You learn it is better to honor their memory by living and thriving, rather then dwelling in their death. But I also feel that it gets harder in some ways every year, to see those years tick by, quicker and quicker. It is like the life line you had attached to them is further and further away from you, there is no finding its origin anymore. And you fear just how much the edges of their memory start to blur. What is real and what is false memory? Mostly you just miss the hell out of them.

So, yeah, I miss the hell out of my Dad. There is so much I wish I could talk about with him that I am still learning who else I could possibly talk to about these wacky ideas and thoughts and observations that he would "get" and enjoy. It is sad to say, but I do take comfort in knowing others feel the same way. Dad (as is my mother and brother and others) is grieved for and missed by many. For example, an email from Brad (one of his best friends) sent this morning:

Subject: 2d Yortzeit

I drink to him.26 November 1951 - 26 October 2008

Grandma Edith

A year ago today Grandmother Edith, Dad/Steve's mother passed away. She had a pretty bad stroke a few weeks prior and was ailing so we were expecting it. She died in her sleep. She was 96 years old. Grandma had outlived a lot of people she probably never thought she would: her son, a niece (my mother - Mom and Dad were cousins!), a great-niece, a grandson, all her older relatives and all of her friends and peers. Of all the loss our family experienced over the last few years, hers was the only one that made any sense to us. She was old and ailing. She had been ready. And ready for years! Every time I say her for the last 15 years of her life she would say, "Well, I'm old and will probably die soon so wont see you again...."

We have a white gene in the family, so many of the women get white hair early and Grandma had all white hair very early, I think it was by her mid to late thirties. Basically my entire life she looked the same. A teeny little old lady with white hair who was feisty as hell, loved birds and dogs and reading, and always drove Volkswagen's. She was raised on our family ranch in Eastern Oregon outside of Huntington and lived a good part of her life on it as did my Aunt and my father when they were little. It was from this old property that Dad was returning from when he went off the old river road into the Snake River. While some of us from a younger generation have fear and resentment towards that land, it is inexplicably interwoven into our families history. Grandmas ashes are down there, and some day Dad's will be too.

Despite being raised in the literal middle of no where all three girls, Grandma Edith and her two older sisters, Gertrude and Mary (who is also my great grandmother on my mothers paternal side), were sent off to college and were well educated. Grandma went to Standford and lived in the Bay Area when the Golden Gate Bridge was first opened. Can you imagine? She once told me a story about walking across it with her little nephew Bill who was Mary's son (and my some day maternal grandfather). I just think of the world she came from and all that she saw or was aware of and experienced. I mean, she was born before women could even vote!

Most of the pictures I have of Grandma are of her after her hair has gone all white. There is something I really admire about her having never dyed her hair, that she just embraced it. I get a real kick out of older pictures of her though, as a young woman and most definitely when she was a child. She was much younger than her two sisters and there are way more pictures of her as a baby than you'd expect from that time. I love to look at these pictures and see the little girl she was. I can recognize her even though the baby her was so different looking than the grandmother I saw. She loved nature and animals and reading even then. But you also see this youthfulness and playfulness that was much harder to find later on. She had the classic snarky wit that runs in the family that was obviously very well developed by time I popped into the world. In these pictures you see she started out just like the rest of us and then shaped by the world she lived in.

Anyway, I miss my grandmother even though she was by far the most ready to leave us. On the day she died my Aunt emailed us since we were all aware it was coming. That same day one of my good friends in New York gave birth to her first child, a little girl she named Lauren. At the time I had a job that I was not allowed to check personal email during the day and I had not yet invested in a "smart phone" so it was not till late in the day when I checked and both emails, Grandma's death and Lauren's birth announcement were side by side. I thought it was very fitting and something Grandma would have liked very much.

This is Steve and his Nanny. Her name was Elsie Hodgen, and she lived near Weiser. Id. She came to live with us for a few years when Steve was a baby to help care for him. The picture was taken Aug 16th, 1961 at the wedding of Charlie and Mary Tucker where Steve was the ring bearer. He was absolutely the apple of her eye!

Cowboy Caviar

There was a recipe that uncle Steve was perfecting the last few years of his life. I remember it appearing at family gatherings for several years, but I don't recall the first time he made it. He called it "Cowboy Caviar", but I found two recipes in his things, one for "Poor Man's Caviar", and one for "Black-Eyed Pea Caviar", which I believe the "Cowboy Caviar" was modified from, based on the cook's love of his ingredients.

We made this together at the September 2008 family reunion. I asked if he needed any help, and was promptly handed a knife and cutting board. We stood side by side, me dicing, "Is this small enough?", and him mixing and seasoning. I diced the yellow, red and green sweet peppers, he opened the cans of pinto beans, white beans and black eyed peas. I diced the tomatoes, he diced the scallions and garlic. He added the cilantro, vinegar and oil. I teased him that the beans weren't getting mixed up enough, and he handed me the bowl and spoon with that exasperated look he had of, "well mix it yourself then"..... although he never said it out loud. I tasted, he tasted. He added cumin, salt and pepper. He tasted, I tasted. We agreed that it was pretty good and the seasoning was right. I was happy that the beans got mixed in. We covered it and put it in the refrigerator, so it would taste just right at supper time.

Just over a month later, uncle Steve was gone. I searched my memory: When was the last time I saw him? What was the last thing we did or said to one another? I was so grateful to find this ordinary memory of us sharing a few minutes together, doing something he loved: standing at the stainless steel kitchen, dicing, mixing and tasting.

It was the last thing we did together, stirring up a perfect batch of the "Caviar".

Happiness is a big 'ole plate of "Cowboy Caviar", some chips and a beer to wash it down!

Based loosely on these recipes:

Poor Man's Caviar
Drain two 15 ounce cans of black-eyed peas into a large bowl. Add 8 chopped, trimmed scallions. 1 finely diced seeded green bell pepper, 1 finely diced seeded red bell pepper, 1 large diced cored tomato, 1/3 cup chopped cilantro, one 16 ounce bottle of spicy Italian salad dressing and toss to combine. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight, to allow the flavors to come together, serve cold or at room temperature. Makes 8 cups.


Black-Eyed Pea Caviar
2- 15 oz. cans black-eyed peas, drained
1 yellow or green pepper, finely chopped
1/2 cup roasted red peppers packed in oil, drained and finely chopped
1/2 cup minced purple onion
1/2 cup minced fresh cilantro or parsley
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar
1 tsp. ground cumin
2 tsp. coarse-ground mustard
1/4 tsp. salt
Combine all ingredients in a medium-size bowl; stir well. Cover and chill for several hours. Serve at room temperature with pita chips. Makes 36 servings.

ENJOY!

Our Highchair

Just in case no one has caught on just how sentimental my father was, I thought I'd share this:

This, my friends, is the highchair that all four of us kids, myself (Ona), Rhea, Krista and Eric all used as babies. None of us had used it in probably over 20 years at the time of his death, but that didn't matter. It was among so many other things of his we found when we were going through everything. It was one of the things none of us could bare to get rid of although we were also unsure what to do with it. It is now going to live at Krista's for the time being. Some of my earliest memories involve this highchair, as well as some of my most amusing ones. I had one of my best gloating biggest sister moments when Eric was a little guy, but talking, and was mad that one of us was sitting in "his" highchair which then prompted the line of girls to say, "but it was mine first!" with me ultimately winning since I am the oldest. I can still remember (and laugh at!) the look on all their faces, but most especially Eric's. He was absolutely aghast. I can only imagine, but can definitely understand, the memories Dad must have associated with it, and why he held on to it.

Thats right, that is me! evidence I was the first in the chair!

The Hauling Trip

It's been a busy four months since I last posted a real entry. Working full time and going to school almost full time has taken its toll on me. Since Dad has died being so busy has often been a blessing for me - I am always occupied, overwhelmed, running to the next task. Having a new job that is a good but challenging one along with the intellectual stimulation at school and all the school work that's required and I am just completely exhausted at the end of the day. This blog has been on my mind though, and there is plenty to say - I just need the time and energy to get it out.

In June I did a big trip to deal with the estate. I finished my semester at school on the 14th and two days later I was on a plane to Eastern Oregon for a week long trip to move the remaining estate items to a location in California that would be easier for me to handle and coordinate. One of my life long friends was able to come with me for most of the trip. We flew up on a Wednesday, spent one whole day loading a 16 foot trailer and then hit the road, first going west to Eugene and then heading down to Northern California. I got next to no sleep the entire time, my insomnia rearing its unfortunate head. We stayed with family and friends along the way and attended a BBQ in Dad's honor. On Sunday the 20th my friend Jacob and I had the bulk of the driving to do in a single day. He had to fly back to LA for work on Monday so we'd arranged to drop him off in Eureka and I'd drive the remainder of the trip to Fort Bragg by myself which in the planning stages didn't sound so bad - its normally only a 3 hour drive from there.

I'm not sure how many of you have driven a large moving vehicle? But a 16 foot truck is pretty damn big and pretty damn hard to maneuver - when empty. Add in a mostly full trailer and it is dreadful. It wobbled and careened the entire trip and I had been white knuckling it the entire week already. We got stuck more than once in driveways. I normally avoid rest stops because they are often dirty and spooky but they ended up being the only place I felt save parking so I could avoid going in reverse which was always an unpredictable and dangerous experience. I knew going up hills would not be fun, but it was painful. SOOOOO SLOW the entire time. We only over heated once, just outside of Crescent City - but to avoid overheating again I had to basically go 25 or less up every hill from there till Fort Bragg.

It took forever. What should have been a 10 hr drive max turned into well over 14 hours. I ended up going over Willits Road at twilight. I had hooked up my ipod and was blasting music as I swerved around corners trying not to both drive off the road nor make myself car sick. About 10 minutes into it the significance of the trip hit me: I was alone driving at night (I have terrible night vision and go to extremes to avoid having to drive at night whenever possible) on my least favorite road in the history of roads.... on fathers day, with my fathers ashes tucked behind my seat and everything that remained of his life packed and securely retrained in the trailer behind me. I don't think I had been so sad or inconsolable than that first night after learning of his death.

As tough as the trip was, I was relieved to finally have my fathers things neatly packed into my sisters garage rather than in a dark dirty old house a 1,000 miles away. Where we can go through everything more carefully and slowly and comfortably in our own time. I'm going up there for a whole week in August to spend time with Rhea & Josslyn and so most likely there will much to relate after. Stay tuned.

Stainless brings to us...‏

the best liquid I've ever tasted:
Here are eight soldiers, one from each of the Islay distilleries. Far left in line—and left in detail—is THE ONE I told you about that Stainless tracked down, and for which he lashed out truly serious quid. '57.6% alcohol; distilled January 1983, and bottled September 1995'. {Port Ellen Distillery quit making whisky in 1984} We drank most of it on a 16 December, Beethoven's birthday anniversary, late in the last century. -brad

last birthday

I've mentioned "lasts" before. There are handfuls of them. They trip you up, without you realizing. You will find new ones without realizing there could be any more. Earlier this month I turned 32. It was my second birthday since Dad died and 17th (!!) since Mom died. And while I had friends in town to celebrate, and new Los Angeles friends who joined us, I struggled to shake my deep sadness of not being able to share my life (and aging) with either of my parents anymore.

I have always made a big deal out of my birthday. Always planning a big bash of some kind for myself, often including multiple smaller celebrations or trips throughout the month of March. My NYC friends lovingly though playfully call March my "birth-month" rather than birthday. What some don't know, or forget, is why.

My mother died when I was 15 years old after a two year battle with lymphoma that really can only be described as hard core. All these years later I am still haunted by some of the things I saw during that time. My last birthday Mom was present for was my 14th. She was diagnosed the fall of 1991, and by the next spring she was already bald and aged, close to 6 months into her chemo treatments. Several months later she was suppose to have gone into remission but the cancer came back even stronger just before I started my freshman year of high school in 1992. After several months of incredibly brutal and intensive chemo treatments Mom was suppose to be preparing for a bone marrow transplant. She went in for a final check up and was told the cancer still had not slowed down and they were sending her home to die instead. The oncologist estimated Mom had 6 - 12 months max and as a last ditch effort to prolong that time, radiation was recommended to slow the tumor growth. Mom opted for what she thought would give her more time and so went to Sonoma county for treatments for six weeks. So my mother was in Santa Rosa on my 15th birthday and it dawned on me that morning that my last birthday with my mother had actually been the year before, without me ever realizing it. Mom died that September, on the 4th (exactly six months after my birthday) just about seven months after the final diagnosis.

Mom had always made a big deal out of my and Rhea's birthday. She would wake me up every year at 6:08am, the time I was born, and tell me the story of my birthday. This always disgusted but also thrilled me. It was always so overwhelming to be that loved by someone. When she was gone, it was just awful. That year I turned 15 was the first she did not tell the story, she had called to talk to me that day, but it was late afternoon and she was obviously tired. Waking up on my birthday was so very painful after that, and so I compensated by taking what my mother had given me - the thrill of my continued life. She so delighted in my sister and me, was so proud of us. So I started celebrating my birthday big, because that is she would want: for us to feel special and important.

Part of that new approach created a tradition with Dad and me. Dad was often bad with dates, and it was not like he forgot my birthday, he knew it was early March, but he often did not send a card in time. So I took to reminding him. After Mom died, but Rhea and I remained in California in other homes, Dad and I spoke every single Sunday. I would call him collect from where ever I was living. I continued to call him every Sunday until I could afford to call him on my own dime in my 20's...but still called him every Sunday for years and years. It was only the last few years of his life, when he had so much change and upheaval and moves, that our weekly routine had altered to a couple times a month instead. During these Sundays, when my birthday would draw near, I would start reminding him of the exact number of days he had until he had to send me a birthday card before it would end up being late. Then, about 3-5 days before my birthday I would break tradition and call him midweek to re-remind him about sending me a card. This song and dance became another routine of ours, an annual one.

Every year he'd hum and hah, saying he was looking for the right one, he had been busy, it may be late and so on...but inevitably a card would show up, on time, and be the perfect one. His softness or humor always shining through. He often would call on my birthday and explain the card, why he picked it. On my 20th birthday he picked one with a blond little girl in a field of wheat, her face turned away. He told me he picked it because it reminded him of me, when I was that age. My long white blond hair, the attitude but also wistfulness in the shoulders visible in the card. Like I said, it is overwhelming to be that loved by someone.

So, as lasts go, I did not know my 30th birthday card would be my last from my father. And it was shortly before my 31st birthday, which was not even six months after Dad died, that I accidentally came across that card and cried. It was perfect and funny all at once and Dad and I had had a good hoot and giggle over it.

I am so grateful to have had parents that really loved me and delighted in me. I have friends who work overtime their whole lives to win their parents approval and I had mine before I even could appreciate it. Despite that I am devastated that I will never share my birthday with them ever again. An there are so many other things I'll never get to share with them, like a wedding day, or college graduation, or their grand children. I will always try and live my life with love and embrace living and thriving, but I will still always desperately miss my parents on my birthday. Because when it really comes down to it, there is no one who loves you as much as your parents and that overwhelming love is forever missed.

Winter Olympics

Among the countless collectibles and odds and ends of Dad we are still going through, and will be for some time, we found several dozen file drawers or boxes. These files (large envelopes) are all labeled and some even dated, but not in an order at all. Not by date, or subject. A file containing my grade school report cards will be next to one with menus from a restaurant he visited once on a trip. Some things are recognizable as important or sentimental. Some make no sense at all. I decided that I will go through them all and document the more interesting, weird, or funny things.


I thought since the Winter Olympics are currently on that this would be a good time to share this funny little tidbit. These stickers are from Chiquita Banana's that featured the 1980 Winter Olympics. Dad kept about two dozen of these, stuck them on a piece of paper, them placed them inside this envelope and labeled it with his unique scrawl, and filed it away. It might have been something he metioned, like he did with many things, "Oh, you know, I have some of those somewhere, I'll have to look for them to show you..." that I often heard him say my whole life.

I got a real kick out of these however, since I would have been around 2 years old during this period of time and Mom had used banana's as a weening method for me. She had to ween me early since she became pregnant with my sister when I was just barely a year old. She had some guilt associated with weening me so young, so any time I wanted to nurse she'd give me a banana instead since I LOVED banana's. So, our house would have always been well stocked with them which must have enabled Dad to collect these.

When Martha, Krista and I found them we laughed until we cried, which was (and is) something we often did while going through Dad's things (there is also a fair amount of cursing and true astonishment). This is exactly something Dad would keep saying "they might be worth something someday". I dont know if it will surprise you ot nor, but technically they are. I have found collectors looking for or selling them on ebay and other sites. Now, they are only selling them for a few dollars, but for a once sticker that came with your banana, that's not bad.

Eric and Dad

Today Southern Los Angeles was hit by a tornado and there have been torrential downpours, land slides and floods all over the state. This somewhat frightening and powerful weather seems adequate however, since today is also the two year marker of my brother Eric dying.

I will never forget the call I got from Dad telling me the news. It was Saturday morning and I was still dozing in bed but was initially happy to see Dad's name pop up on my phone. My happiness faded as soon as I heard my fathers voice though. He said he had some bad news and my first thought was that Grandma Edith had passed away (who out lived them both as it turned out) so when he started talking about Eric I was confused. Eric?! Dad explained that he went riding on Fridays with friends (Eric had been a big motorcycle enthusiast for a long time) and that he wrecked his bike and had died. Grief and sadness overwhelmed me. Eric was only 22 years old, and was my fathers only son. A son he had very much wanted and was very proud of. And while often we joked over the years that I was first born, so still Top Kid, even if I was not the right gender, I knew losing his only son was...well, there are no words for it. My brother, who I was just starting to know as an adult (he was eight years younger than me), was gone.

The next few days are a blur, with updates on Eric's service and funeral from Dad several times each day, and by mid-week Rhea, Josslyn (then just 10 months old), and I started the slow drive up to Oregon. Weather was not on our side. It had been raining a lot and snow was forecasted over Grants Pass so we took the coastal route, which makes the trip a good two day drive. We arrived in Portland a day before the funeral. Dad barely made it. Coming from the eastern part of the state, he and Mary were driving though snow and nearly wrecked several times, one of those times a true near death experience where Dad had to drive off the road into a snow bank to avoid being slammed into by a giant truck that had fallen on its side and the back end swung clear across the freeway. Dad said it missed them by inches.

It snowed over a foot that day. More snow in Eugene than in a long time. Eric's funeral was still packed. Eric was a recruiter in the army, and though I had struggled with this since I am not only opposed to war but of the armies recruiting tactics, Eric was well respected by his colleagues and recruits and loved being part of the Army life. It was hard to see his Army friends, these big burly men, break down and cry at the loss of my brother. Eric had always been a golden child, both literally and figuratively. He was over six feet tall, blond and blue eyed and had a smile that just warmed you. He was a show stopper when he was a baby, he could make check out women at the grocery store blush. It was evident at his funeral that he had been very loved. Army vets provide a Flag Line and Missing Man escort at funerals, something I had not seen before. I was so struck by these men (some in biker gear and leather, others in uniform) standing solemnly outside the funeral home holding flags with snow drifting down on them. It was one of the saddest things I had ever seen.

There was a graveyard service as well, and so we all made the trek out to Veneta after the service in Eugene. The graveyard that Eric was to be buried was near the lake we had grown up swimming and fishing in, on a hillside looking down. It is probably beautiful any time of year, but covered in snow that day it was just a sight, so breath taking. The service included a 21 gun salute which spooked geese that were in the neighboring field. They all took to flight, thousands and thousands of them, squawking and raising such a racket they literally drowned out the remaining part of the salute. That was the second moment that struck me and has always stayed with me. The beauty of that sky filling up with those black necked birds. It was like all of it, the weather, the birds, was either Eric's way of being present, or the worlds way of protesting his death. Standing there in that moment, I committed it to memory, of how I felt, looking down that hillside and then into the sky filled with birds while shots rang out in the sky to salute my dead brother.

Later on, when Dad and I had a chance to talk about the day he remarked on the birds and how cool he thought that whole display was, that they had really out done the intended salute. So often, Dad and I would notice and feel the same about these same things. There is a story, about the day my mother died (in 1993), that I often share and have even written about, but it was Dad without prompting who had the same experience and observation about that day. Several months later when it was Dad who died I felt especially lonely thinking about what details he and I would have discussed regarding his death and how while there were others I could share my observations or impressions of those moments, there was no one who would have already saw and felt the same way.

On this day, the 19th of January, I will always miss both my brother and my father. I will miss the charm and life they brought to everything, and I will admire this crazy weather no matter what it means, nothing or everything or somewhere in between.

Dad's Jewelry

It has been awhile since I made a post but this blog has been on my mind. There are so many more things I want to share about Dad. I finished off a busy fall semester and then was caught up in the chaos that the holidays often become. I also started a new job, and this past week the intensive winter semester started. So, basically I am saying, I will have to save a longer post for another time. However, I have been meaning to share some art of Dad's for awhile.

As many of you know, Dad was a talented welder and sculptor. He could make anything out of metal it seemed. Besides working at a sheet metal company welding and then doing design work for most of his life, he also had a side business where he made many of the famous microbreweries in Oregon their brew kettles. When he was a young man he also was a jeweler. He worked at a company that did mass production, and he also did his own o the side. I will share more later of his craftiness since friends of his have said he made their wedding rings, etc. and have promised pictures.

Here are a few examples:

In case you are unsure what this one is, its a roach clip! What can I say, Dad was definitely product of his generation! This really needs to be polished, but you can still see how beautiful it is.

This one is unfinished, it will be shiny silver once it is filed and polished. This is something Dad must have cast but did not complete for whatever reason...but kept it!

Here is a lapis ring Dad made:

Dad made this for my mother when she was pregnant with me. She gave it to me right before she died. It needs a serious polishing, but you can still see how cool it is. Of course I was totally grossed out by it when I was little however. Anyway, my mother made me promise I would give it to my first daughter some day. I figure if I do not end up having children, or have boys instead, I will give it to Josslyn.

As you have probably figured out, while this blog is centered around my father, it often ends up being as much about me and my siblings as well as my mother and other family members along the way. Family is woven together like that. Below are a few things we think my mother made but Dad kept. She had told me that she had made several castings of animals or made up creatures (much like she made them out of material her whole life) so when we found these they had a real mark of Mom's imagination.

Finally, there are my first metal jewelery pieces. Dad had always said he would show me how some day but didn't ever get to. Santa Monica College, where I am currently a full time student, has a wonderful art department and I have started adding back art classes along with my academic ones. This past semester I took jewelry design for the first time and these are a few of the pieces I completed. The stone below is a brown opal and is one of gems we found in one of Dad's "treasure boxes".