Like It Was Yesterday

My screened-in porch. Hard rain at  dawn yesterday  and hard rain again today but what fun I had between! Saw two of our oldest friends who said they’re never moving because they don’t want to be the ones to clean out their basement. Saw our state’s answer to that band made up of famous guys Matt Groening, Steven King, and Amy Tan.  Our guys rocked the world of everyone within earshot.Then a friend sitting on the back steps at this house concert began animatedly discussing  the worst natural disaster this nation has even seen - completely oblivious to the fact that her glass of red wine had tilted dangerously and was dripping its life out onto the concrete steps. “Speaking of OIL SPILLS…” someone said. Finally, I got to hear our nephew Matt Marotta talk at the graduation exercises of  the Class of 2010, whose President he has been all the way through.  A good 1,000 family members sat in that hot gym fanning themselves with anything they could find while some dozen of us others, mostly with white hair and walkers, watched the whole thing on closed-circuit TV from the air-conditioned comfort of the school auditorium.I sat in the front row of this near-empty auditorium and took this imperfect picture below of Matt, who invoked all their years together - all the way back to the days when "[their] teeth were too big for [their] heads, and [their] heads were too big for [their] bodies. He spoke too of the time later today  "when the sun will go down and the cookouts will  burn out."The sun  has gone down now. But earlier today, one of the school's custodians had slipped into a seat near mine in the front row of that quiet auditorium. “Do you believe this?” he said to me, his eyes never leaving the screen, “I graduated high school 35 years ago, but I remember the whole thing like it just happened!" then interrupted himself to say, “Look. there’s Courtney!” - and then more than a little wistfully added, “I just about learn their names and they’re gone.”