Adira Amram – Mom Song from Jim Turner on Vimeo.

Last year I posted this at GOS(i’ve since deleted this one) & also  here at dd….

This is my dads story & just one of the family stories that run through my head at the mention of Pearl Harbour Day.

Each in their own way highlights a facet of why/how i became just exactly who i am.

(my theory is who you are is in (large) part determined by others expectations of you…& how you respond to those expectations……& their expectations/who they are is based on those before…)

from last years essay

My Dad is a Great Guy, his experiences varied and many… in a ‘Big Fish’ kind of way. He served in WWII and later became the fencing coach of Columbia University in the 1940’s-50s and was an early advocate of civil rights in sports(see 1948), eventually retiring to California. Not long ago Columbia University honoured him with a lovely (ceremony-dinner-function-thingey) More about this can be found at Columbia’s web site, I think.

anyway….

also in tillamook county….

Napper said the tide had receded around Proposal Rock on Saturday when the couple began to walk to it. He planned to propose and give her the ring he carried in his pocket.

this essay is mostly a re-post from last year, with minor up-date editing.

When I was growing up my Dad was in the Air Force; we moved around… a Lot. Most holidays it was just us, no extended family. I guess in some way to make up for this perceived lack, Mama and Daddy always had ‘orphans’ for the holidays: cadets who couldn’t get home, officers just posted to the base whose family hadn’t yet arrived, young wives whose husbands were overseas and later stranded college kids my sibs brought home.

    Mama always put on quite the  feast…we weren’t allowed anywhere near the kitchen for several days before each holiday. It became a running joke. “She’s doing this on purpose, you know” Dad would stage whisper several times, “Starving us so our appetites will be immense & we’ll declare whatever slop she dishes out as food of the gods.”