Thursday, April 9, 2009

A Melodic Spring Day

Her name is Melody. I asked if I might be permitted to take a picture of her and her dog Baby. She said yes. Unaccountably, she called me a genius (she didn't see the pictures I took, nor did she ask to see them) and told me I ought to make a profession of photographing people with their pets. She said I just had a way about me. It was a beautiful spring-like afternoon, but it was she who made my day. Strange and wonderful how complete strangers can touch and inspire us.


























Sunday, February 1, 2009

Caption This Photo

I walked out of my apartment a few days ago and saw something--a parked car directly in front of my building--that made me immediately run back upstairs to grab my camera. If this photo doesn't beg for a caption, then I don't know what does. Note the baby seat in the back.

Monday, January 12, 2009

The Man I called Papa


There is a single photograph of my grandfather that depicts the man I want to remember. It is of him, a handsome young man, dapper in black and white, as he escorts my grandmother out of the church where they had just sealed their union, said their “I do’s.” She, a movie-star vision of loveliness looks straight out at the crowd that awaits her, smiling, bright eyes focused on the life that lies ahead. He looks only at her. He beams with pride, with the young and uncomplicated love for a woman he believes will make him the man he is meant to be. Little did he know that the man he was meant to be would become a father six times over and a grandfather almost twice that.

Before the kids, though, before the messiness and ambiguities that come with time, here is a young man full of hope and deeply in love. At that very specific moment--when the flash bulb popped—beautiful new bride on his arm, his life is just beginning and he is the star of the show, the prince who got the girl, the very face of youthful invincibility. I watched his face change over recent years, ultimately becoming a haunting and cruel parody of old age. But it is the face and spirit of this young man that I shall keep with me.

In many ways, I think he chased that singular glory in the years to come—to varying degrees of success. Competing with a houseful of 6 rambunctious children was not an easy feat. Still, he always managed to find an audience, whether in choir where he sang to his God, in musical theater where he embodied the true essence of a performer, or in his very own living room where he held court with animated, if sometimes exaggerated, accounts of seminal times in his life.

He was funny and brazen; he wore silly hats and plaid pants at Christmas. He played bag pipes on the roof—or at least that’s how my youthful imagination processed the occasion. He may never have played on the roof, but he was a master of the bagpipes, all the same.

Sometimes his logic was askew, but it always made an impact. When I was a little girl, he warned me not to put pennies in my mouth because old men stuck them up their butts. You never caught me sucking on coins after that.

He taught me how to play chess one unbearably hot summer in St. Louis, and he was patient and gracious even when I beat him. He took me on auditions when I was a young aspiring actress myself. Once when he took me to my agent’s office in Hollywood, she instantly saw him for the performer he was and signed him on the spot. I think I might have felt a little overshadowed as she fawned over him and expounded on his perfect "look" and undeniable star quality. Perhaps a slightly wounded ego, but still I was proud; he was my papa and he captured attention where ever he went.

He was a gifted writer, and a passionate lover of words. He laughed loudly and often—frequently at his own jokes.

He could strike an imposing figure. He once confronted a new boyfriend of mine with a shotgun, which he theatrically cocked while asking the poor devil, “Now what do YOU have to say for yourself?”

He went to junior high school with Marilyn Monroe--then just a quiet, homely Norma Jean--and he held on to his class picture, neatly rolled up and tied with a ribbon, even when Hollywood memorabilia hounds called and offered him tens of thousands of dollars for it. Marilyn even made mention of him in an autobiography as she recollected her younger years, before the fame, before it all had become too much. A ratty paperback version of this book is in the back closet at the Ball house, the page of note tagged with a crisp earmark. She remembered "Don Ball" for being the one in class who kept everyone laughing.

He was a keen historian and a meticulous keeper of family lore. He most certainly knew more about Baba’s family background than even she did. Baba would turn to him, forgetful of the finer points of a story, prompting him for details about, say, her own grandmother Nana’s trek through Mexico. He was never stumped and always confidently filled in the blanks. I loved these stories, still love them, and he always knew the answers to my insistent questions. He always knew because he had listened and processed and absorbed. He was a great listener, even while he was a big talker.

His ability to retain information was downright freakish. This, particularly evident in his skill at the television game show Jeopardy. At least once during every game, somebody would inevitably say, "Now how the hell do you know that?." In fact, down to his very last night in the Ball house, the night before the day--Thanksgiving--when he made his last emergency visit to the hospital, he got the final Jeopardy question right. The answer had something to do with Greek mythology and the question was “What is thunder?” Papa nailed it, in his raspy age-ed voice. I happened to be there that night--just me, Baba, and Papa, on the green couch in the TV room--in what had become a ritual with the three of us, whenever I was home. I will be forever grateful that I was there to witness that quiet moment of victory, as Baba marveled “Good, Don!.” The next morning he would sit down to breakfast and his arm would bleed from his dialysis shunt and he would be taken away, unconcious, to the emergency room. He regained his conciousness, but never fully recovered enough to return to the house he had helped design and erect, and in which he had built a family of six with his beloved wife.

At Jeopardy Baba was good too....but no one could match the triva retention of Papa. Toward the end, Baba and I took to conspiring to play a little trick on Papa. Living in New York, I saw Jeopardy three hours before it played in Malibu. So I would watch and take note of the answers. Then, I would call Baba on the sly to feed her the correct answer to that night's final Jeopardy question, particularly when it had something to do with contemporary pop culture, or Woody Allen, or the Foo Fighters. Baba would then sit smirking through that evening's west coast broadcast, quietly listening as Papa proudly spewed forth one correct answer after another until the stumper happened. At which point she would off-handedly say, while petting her dog Lucy, "Oh, I know that. Isn't that Dave Grohl?" Eventually he caught on, but Baba and I enjoyed our little subterfuge while it lasted.

There was a spirit about him, no doubt about that. That spirit kept him with us far longer than his body probably would have liked.

It’s this spirit that persisted in spite of setbacks and crippling tragedies, which I will remember—that animated talker, whose stories captured my young imagination. The husband who never let go of that powerful love for his wife, a love that was so evident from the very beginning in that old black and white photograph. The man I will carry with me is my grandfather, my Papa, the man larger than life who wore plaid pants and silly hats at Christmas and played bagpipes on the roof.