I found your Mother's Day card.

Mom-

Every weekend

when I talk with

you guys I feel

more and more happy

to be alive. Thank

you so much for this

wonderful gift

      Love,

      Brian

Thank you, son, for this gift.

White lights.

You walked these aisles
and stood at the check-out stand
looking ahead to
the next event
the next opportunity to
fill your cart to the brim
each time learning to maneuver
life's supermarket
with more ease and style.

Shiny lights reflecting
surfaces scrubbed clean
footprints
spills
written orders of importance
and sequence of events
all traces of previous lives
erased every hour
on the hour.

We live private lives in public places, yet, few traces
of ourselves exist anywhere.
Except in a mother's heart where it all started.

You liked music..

In the third grade, watching your sister play piano, you decided you wanted to learn piano too. So, we  enrolled you with Ms Galen, right there on Topanga, and dropped you off every Monday evening, right before dinner, for your half-hour lesson. The first evening you returned excited, telling Pia that in no time you and she could play a duet.

On subsequent evenings, Miss Galen sent notes home, written right on the book, with instructions to practice more. You sat and practiced when Dad or I or Pia reminded you to do so.

On your first recital, nine months later, you bowed at the audience and played your piece with confidence. You had seen such recitals for a few years, and you admired the little ones who could barely reach the foot pedals. You thought any day, the piano could be conquered.

When Michael began taking piano lessons with Miss Galen, your enthusiasm returned.

But you stopped piano when you reached Junior High, and there was nobody home by then to see that you practiced most days. It was a busy time for me, having just started my job as principal in the Antelope Valley I got home late most evenings.

In Junior High you took up flute and played it for a couple years until you needed braces, and could no longer work the flute.

Later, in college, you picked up guitar, and then got a gift of a special guitar from Mike Connoway nephew of Billy Strayhorn, the music writer and arranger for Duke Wellington. Mr. Connoway told your Dad that as long as you were interested you could keep that guitar.

Here, in this picture, I see you play with Michael, who ended up becoming a professional musician and musicologist, encouraging you to stay with music.

We were glad to find the Connoway guitar among your possessions.