Ordinary

There are things that I love about this house. The tile floor in the bathroom is above the heating stove in the basement. That tile absorbs the heat and feels wonderful on bare feet.

On the other hand the tin roof....yesterday, in the still house, reading with a purring cat on my lap, the snow falling outside, suddenly, snow slid from the roof. The cat exploded, leaping from my lap, upsetting my coffee cup on the carpet  in his mad bolt for the basement. Adding to the chaos, a suncatcher fell to the floor and shattered. So that was not so wonderful. We will have to look into some sort of baffle system.

Today, we drove an hour and change to have lunch with Tim's family. Cousins. One of his brothers. One of his sisters. It was nice to see everyone. A notebook went around of genealogy notes. Much of the discussion was on the subject of their grandfather. Tim and five of his cousins were born in 1957. They are the oldest of that generation, and their grandfather died when they were all 3 year olds. 

So they were sharing their memories of him and stories they'd heard of him. One of the things was about his great love of horses.

Probably 20 years ago, Tim's mother loved our big old house in town. She gave me a photograph of a man in a fedora standing by his horse. She told me it was something that she had picked up at a yard sale. She thought it suited our house. I hung it on our wall with an old keywound clock topped by a rearing horse.

Tim liked the picture too. He thought it looked like his grandfather. He was surprised when I told him what his mother had said, but he had no reason to doubt her.

But as this man was discussed, it just began to remind me of that picture. I said, "would anyone here recognize him in a pictuŕe?" and someone actually had a picture of him. Looks like the same man in the same hat standing alongside a different horse. 

There was quite a bit of excitement about our picture as well as curiosity about how it came to be that Tim's mother failed to recognize her own father. Was her mind beginning to fail even then? I have an idea she was losing her vision. She was blind by the time she died.

But it is a nice discovery. Now that we know what it is, it needs to be brought to the new house. Copies made and shared.

I had a Reuben sandwich at luncĥ today. I never had one and always meant to try one. It was very nice. 

We drove home along country roads that Tim has driven all his life. A bald eagle swept down and hovered about six feet over the hood of the car. We marveled at the sight while it decided which way it needed to go, and then powerfully veered off to the right.

It has warmed up considerably outside tonight. It is now pouring rain. By tomorrow morning when we get out of bed, all the snow will be gone.