early Thursday evening

Sometimes evenings from 7H porch or my chair, I watch birds fly past, always west, toward the sun as it closes the day. Usually pelicans, sometimes flights of a dozen or more, more often just two or three, finally as if bringing up the end, a lone bird. And then after a wait, maybe another. The ospreys don't do this like other birds do, from here just the gulls and pelicans.

Watching a lone bird fly past, for a person in grief, sometimes symbolizes the last goodbye of a loved one who has died. Once in a while, to end a funeral, kin or the undertaker may release a dove that flies away. It can be strong symbolism, especially in that Christians identify doves with the Holy Spirit. But it might be any flying creature in nature, a bird, a butterfly or moth, a dragonfly, a creature that's here and then gone.

Anyway, it's happening as the sun goes down this evening - - the last of the pelicans leaving their daytime fishing spots and flying past, usually very low just skimming the surface of the Bay, but often at our level here, passing almost touching distance! They're on their way to "Bird Island," I think it's called, it's there west of the Port's West Terminal, just a white smudge of a hump in the water, you can see it from Hathaway Bridge.

Not waxing sentimental, just that it happens this Time almost every day.

This would be the season, too, when I saw my first flight of geese heading south. High overhead, I'd have missed them except for hearing their honking and looking up to marvel! It was autumn 1966. We had just returned from three years Navy duty in Japan, and Linda's father, as a realtor, had contacted a realtor in Northern Virginia for us, to ask about houses for rent. No doubt all is different now, nearly sixty years on, but they found us a house on Wakefield Chapel Road. It was just outside the Washington Beltway about a mile west on Route 236, which may have been called Little River Turnpike, I'm not sure.

It was a nice house with a huge front yard, the house way back from the road, which was a quiet, wandering two-lane blacktop road that made its way up and down little hills as it headed south past peaceful houses!

Straight across from our house was a huge empty field that had been farmland or dairyland. We liked to walk across the road and wander in the field. The old brick farmhouse was up a slope to the north of us, looking out toward the Turnpike. By the Time we left two years later, Northern Virginia Community College had mowed down the field and started construction of a campus there.

That autumn 1966 day I may have been by myself, or Linda and the kids, Malinda and Joe, may have been along. We walked Brucie the Dog there, where he could run loose. We also "walked" Tiger, the cat, a large yellow neutered Tom, who would go crazy wild insane tearing out of sight, then return heading for me at full speed and run up my pants leg. Fun for the cat, bloody leg for me, not good for the trousers.

That cat had adopted us in Japan, and, much loved, he flew home from Tokyo to San Francisco, waiting for us in his cage when we landed some hours later. We flew back DOD charter Flying Tiger Air Service, the cat flew first class on PanAm. When I walked into the kennel area to get him, he was meowing loudly unceasingly, until he saw me. Happy Cat.

At SFO we picked up a rental Dodge sedan and headed east, first for Phoenix, where Linda's parents had relocated for Linda's father's health; then to Sherman, Texas to visit ancient and dearest family friends, then to Panama City for a few weeks of leave before heading for my new duty station in Northern Virginia.

Tiger was part of our family until shortly after Tass was born in 1972, when we lived in Columbus, Ohio, on the corn field of another former farm, where Tiger used to wander off and show up back at the house proudly carrying half a rabbit. Unfortunately, usually the live half, still trembling. It was good hunting grounds and you can't break a cat of his nature.

But birds, geese honking high overhead, in v-formation, flying south for the winter. I got to watch the geese flying south in the fall and back north every spring. I loved that tour of duty, and, except for the bitter winters that lasted into piercing, icy April winds, we loved living in Northern Virginia. We lived there from Summer 1966 to Summer 1968, when the Navy transferred us to Newport, Rhode Island, the Naval War College.

Linda and I had started our marriage in Rhode Island, about this Time of year in 1957, while I was at Navy OCS. Cold winters, summers like living in a windy refrigerator, lobster, clams, history, Rhode Island is a place of my heart that I will love until my dying day. Malinda and Joe still remember. We lived in Navy officer housing at Fort Adams, going to sleep at night listening to the sound of the bell on the sea buoy in the channel of Narragansett Bay. Everybody made nice friends there, and when it was over, a couple of the officers went to San Diego ships in the same squadron as mine. PhibRon something or other.

The Navy returned us to Northern Virginia summer 1974, and we bought a house in the same area, a couple miles further down the Beltway from our 1966-68 adventure, off Route 50. Brucie the Dog was still with us, but not Tiger. In that second place our house was on a bluff that led down to a heavily wooded creek, vegetation loaded with poison ivy. Stormy rainy weather would cause the creek to overflow noisily and the water rushing over the sandy, rocky creek bottom would turn up gun shells from Civil War fighting in the area. That was our only house with a built in swimming pool in the backyard, looking out down the sloping bluff and over the treetops in the lower part of the property.

What do I remember there? Too many memeories to call up. Brucie the Dog died there. My first Navy tour in an O6 captain's billet as a commander 05. In the lower part of the back yard I unwittingly ran the lawnmower over a wasps' nest and was more careful thereafter. Malinda had her first car wreck there, driving on Route 50 on a snowy day, a one-car accident, the car skidded and slid into a road sign. I asked, "It's snowing and the road is icy, how fast were you driving?" She said, "35." I asked, "Why were you driving so fast on a slick road?" She said, "The speed limit sign said 35."

I love my girls. And Joe. When a child is in a car wreck and drives the car home to show you the damage, you are so relieved the child is okay that you may faint.

Joe may remember differently after hitting a pothole and slightly messing up that new 1978/79 Chevy Camaro Berlinetta, but I don't think I ever expressed any upset when our children crashed cars, my anxiety was about their wellbeing.

That car was my light green 1970 Olds Cutlass. After Malinda crashed it, I took it to Earl Sheib, walking distance down the highway from my office in Crystal City, had them repair the fender for $100 and paint the car yellow for $29.95. Or maybe I got the deluxe paint job for $39.95; but I think they left the doorsills green.

Those were the days, my friend, I thought they'd never end.

But here I am 89&c.

T fer Tom

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Thursday, busy, went to the dermatologist and got another piece cut out of my high forehead.

Chat with close friend, oldest living friendship of my life. Eighty-two years ago, we went to each other's 7th birthday parties at our homes on Massalina Drive. I've known Robert longer than any other living human being except my brother Walt. We are due for breakfast soon, my birthday, Robert owes me.

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Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom. Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.

Jesus, remember me, when ...