Raices y Ramas

  December 20 th is my Dad’s birthday.   Every year I try to write a little something different about him on this date.   I thought this year I would use something my younger brother Tom wrote in his “journal” that I found when he passed away in 2001.   I’m amazed at the detail Tom uses when reminiscing about Dad.   This story described Dad in a nutshell.   From cooking tacos (or tamales) to good-naturedly cussing to being there with an alternative answer to a problem, that was Dad.   Even though Tom and I didn't have Dad around relatively long growing up (Tom was 13, I was 16), it was apparently long enough to impress our young minds and help to shape our characters for the rest of our lives.   December 20 is also the date Mom and Dad got married in 1941.   Please pray for both of them today, won’t you?   Thanks! With all of that being said, here’s what Tom wrote: (the illustration above was also drawn by Tom) "WHO NEEDS A FISHIN...

  Lily turns 12 tomorrow!   She’s no longer a ‘little girl’, but a ‘young lady’.   I thought it might be interesting to recall my memories of that day.   It was quite an adventure for me!   My mom and I had made plans to travel to Simi Valley so Mom could stay with my brother Bob and his wife Marilyn for the holidays.   I was just going to drive her down there, maybe have a bite to eat, go to Mass, then return home, because Alicia was due to deliver Lily at any time.   If I didn't feel like driving all the way back that night, my intention was to stay at the apartment that U-Haul had set up for me when I worked in Bakersfield, then drive home in the morning refreshed. Everything was going as planned and we were on our way on time.   We thought we could stop every couple of hours to stretch our legs and grab a water.   Highway 5 would be the quickest way to get to Simi.   We got as far as the Westley rest stop outside of Tracy when I ...

  My Mom sent me and my brothers the following e-mail on Saturday, October 17, 2009. Do you know, my family, what tomorrow is? It is your sister, Dorothy Anne's birthday!! Even if she wasn't alive on this her birthday (she was stillborn), I have been thinking about her all week!!   What would she have looked like now, what kind of a person would she be, would she be a help or otherwise to me? But we won't know will we, until we see her in Heaven!   Yes, she is definitely in Heaven (because she was baptized by the nurse at the time of delivery) and so she can pray for all of us struggling here below! She is up there with Our Lord and our and her Blessed Mother, and her Grandmother Batty, with whom she shares her birthday!   Tomorrow or tonight when you say your prayers or tomorrow (or tonight) when you go to Mass remember her for me will you?? Love, Mom Mom’s letter got me reflecting about a deep subject that’s easy to describe but extremely difficult to com...

This picture was taken the year after this story takes place! March 13th is my brother Tom's birthday.   For some reason, I thought of this incident today when thinking about how to honor him.   One day, when I was about 10 and my brother Tom was about 7, he and I had a knockdown, drag-out fight about something.   I don’t remember why, and it’s not important to the rest of the story.   But Mom suggested we spend the rest of the afternoon playing at separate friends' houses, to let things calm down.   Tom and his friend went down to the end of the alley that was behind our house to pick pomegranates from a tree that hung over a fence and were easy to get to. (It was a different world back then.   As long as we stayed “on the block” and checked in often, we’d be OK.)   A bully that he knew from school happened to come by and started to give Tom and his friend a hard time.   Because our mother didn’t raise no dummies, instead of getting i...

My “little” brother and “baby” of the family went home to God on February 5, 2001.   Please pray for him and his family. There was a five-year gap between me and my older brothers, but only a 2 ½-year gap between Tom and me, so we had a different, slightly closer bond with each other like our three older brothers had.   As small children, we had to share a bedroom.   This meant we had to share a lot of other “things” was well, like our books and toys, etc.   Sometimes one or the other of us would say or do something to the other that would cause Mom to send us to our room to wait for our Dad to “punish” us.   (The wait was usually punishment enough).   One particular time though, we were absolutely convinced we were going to be spanked when Dad got home, and Tom was inconsolable.   He eventually fell asleep sobbing, and I felt really bad for him.   I think I must have been about 6 or 7 years old and Tom about 4 or 5.   Tom wasn’t sl...

Here’s another edited version of a story Mom told on her own blog about 10 or 11 years ago.   She sure had a sense of humor!   I guess she had to have one to raise 5 boys!!!   “I don't know why some boys and girls are more prone to accidents. No one could beat my son Bill though (except Tom, but I’ll write about him at a later time)!   I remember when Bill was pretty small the neighbor boy across the street told him he would give him a ride in a wagon. The kid pulled on the wagon and out went Bill, right on his head!   He cried for a while and I comforted him; it was quite a while later that we found out he had fallen on a board and had what seemed like a boil on his rear end!   He said he couldn't sit down without it hurting.   When I looked, he did have quite a sore.   I pulled the skin from away from it and what I later described as a two-by-four sliver, popped out!   We put some medicine on the sore and it healed up fine. ...

Today is the 5th anniversary of my brother Dick's return to our Creator.  I have written this anecdote before, but I wanted to post it on this blog, as well. As a kid, I used to hate fishing. It might have been different had I been able to catch fish. To top it off, I was jealous of my brothers Dick and Tom, because they always caught something. But my older brother had that something special when he fished, because he always caught the fish he was angling for . It was almost a vocation for him. He bought the books. He bought different poles and different reels. He learned what each of them was for and how to use them to his advan tage. He’s fished and hunted in many different parts of the world. When he was fishing or hunting, no matter where it was, he was in his element. As I grew older and—I’d like to think—smarter, I began to realize what he saw in the sport. I also realized that it wasn’t the catching that was important—it was the fishing. When I do go fishing,...