Down there

He is buried in grave down there somewhere, in a grave with my name on it.

My plane had left La Guardia just under an hour before.  From the window, my eyes traced the broad Navesink River to the town in which I had grown up, and in which my father had died.  I wondered: do thoughts and emotions remain in the place in which they sprang to life?  If so, there is a patch of lawn fertilized by the sadness and fears of a young boy trying to make sense of the confusing dissolution of his parents' marriage.

Forty years and 30,000 feet removed, the boy was now in the midst of his own divorce. Not as messy, but he was trying just the same to protect a similarly uncomprehending child from becoming collateral damage.  The boy is now a man of an age slightly younger than his father had been when his heart had finally lost the rebellion against the anger and hatred that had ever defined him.  


On the turntable:  "Texas-Czech Bohemian - Moravian Bands"