December 23, 2007

Sang for Herschel Ponder’s funeral Saturday morning. A rich and useful life, surely. I wondered afterward if the things were said at the funeral that he would have chosen to have said, or if perhaps we all would be astonished by our own eulogies.

Drove to Alpharetta, were my nephews are big and funny and, like the kittens, never seem to stop tumbling over one another. All seems to be well there. J couldn’t leave his computer games long enough to see me, but I understand that his concentration has made him, or at least his electronic character, a name of renown in those circles. David is solid and very handsome, and has the world on a string right now if anybody does. We had wrestling matches which I still won, though being forty years older and fifty pounds heavier is not going to be an advantage much longer. Bekka is stylish and attractive. She told me what she was majoring in, but it didn’t strike me as a real thing, so I have forgotten it. She too could have anything, and needs only to decide.

We rose of a Sunday and drove downtown to the Atlanta Aquarium, which was exactly what one anticipated, or perhaps a little more. The whale sharks and the immaculate, muscular beluga whales will be gliding through my imagination for a while. Some fish are very ugly.

Linda and I sat at Starbuck’s and talked about our father, and came to the conclusion that the passionate, rather tender man he is now is who he was always meant to be, but which he masked and covered for reasons unknown to us, and for years the only emotion he could show was anger. It is a tragedy and a sin, but it’s hard to know whom to blame it on. Society, perhaps, which expected things from him which he was not quite strong enough to fight or laugh off.

The moon rose as I was heading home, a little below Spartanburg. He was vast and full, very pale, as though he were not a body but rather a transparent pool gathered against the sky. Mars rose with him, like the gondola to a great white balloon. Now, an hour later, they still sail side by side, glittering and white, as bright as I have ever seen either of them.

The car heater revived on the drive home as inexplicably as it had succumbed.