Stop running away at the sight of this title, ya scaredy-blogger.
Really. I’m done exhausting and exhuming the story of my grandma and dad. But at this point, before I move back to the usual programming of posts that detail how Jessica Alba is somehow like a Shamrock Shake–and other random pop culturized profundities that are, in truth, what actually occupy my brain–I thought I’d squeeze one more drop out of this family tale.
By now, it’s not much more than a vanity project. Interestingly, the vanity has come about because–and hold your mullet here, Wayne!–I’ve actually learned how to use our scanner, and therefore I am veddy, veddy proud of my small, delicate, “copy-button”-pushing finger, the one what has bravely helped a host of old family photos to become computer friendly. Honest to Edison, before these past weeks, when I’d use pre-2004 photos on my blog, I’d just prop them up on the counter out on the back porch and take pictures of them that way. Good, old-fashioned digitization and all.
So as long as I’m feeling flush with pride over my techno-smarts, and so long as I’m struggling to grade the work of 90 online summer students and therefore have smallish writing time, and so long as we’re pondering family and how its members resonate through the generations, I thought I’d provide this mini-album of photos.
My dad? Was talented and pragmatic and gentle and awesome. My eight-year-old girl, who is talented in her own fashion but not necessarily musically, is doing her best to occasionally hit the right note and sporadically find the dominant beat. But she LOVES her music, as did my dad. And she’s definitely pragmatic and gentle and awesome.
Look at these two Beethovens, in photos taken decades apart. Legacy, indeed.
Dad at the wheel
Girl in her first recital, last weekend
Dad, as I remember him best
Girl, feelin’ groovy
Dad, in tails, directing his college choir
Girl, taking direction and managing to use her hands and voice simultaneously
And then.
There’s Wee Niblet Paco Dinko, the five-year-old here in the house. As resident goofa$$, he is clearly mine. But how, exactly, can he be traced back to my dad and that serious branch of the family?
This might be our only evidence of a relationship.
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