Brooke's Blog

I didn’t know about the happy ending on my horizon. But this was queued up on a cassette tape a couple of years before when my very young sons got off in a car pool line at a Montessori School we could not afford but their Mother insisted on. So we entertained, at volume, the young lady escorting the kids from car to school.

It was the stuff we do to distract ourselves from the stuff we don’t want to face. And before our group sing along ( same company car and cassette player) with John Prine on visitation weekends during I-71 transits. The line from “Please Don’t Bury Me” that ends in “Kiss my Ass Goodbye” was a crowd favorite!

Been at my current address for nearly 11 years. Today, on my post chore and before dinner walk, I saw two Blue Bird pairs. And I mean Blue.

25 years in North Carolina and it was a first. Had no camera so made no photographs. Nor did I have an oxymoronically named “Smartphone” to hijack my attention.

My step became lighter and more agile. It is, I think, simply a matter of looking about. To see what’s there.

WCPE broadcasts Opera from The Met on Saturday afternoon and recorded Opera on Thursday evenings.

So Thursday nights, when I finished teaching photography at Page-Walker and got all my gear hauled out, it was my radio accompaniment driving home.

Understood not a word. Tonight, Orphée et Euridice. Which is different from Taylor Swift tonight at La Defense.

Sorta.

That, I’ve discovered, is the head & heart time tolerance budget of a cathartic, decluttering of a life. Or maybe it’s just mine.

Exit strategies are not, an American perspective. But necessary.

Luckier than most my age, health and money wise. No show stoppers and no need to be cooking squirrels under a bridge.

So yesterday, two hours of deciding what’s going and disassembly. Today, two hours of deciding and loading my pickup for a trip to the 4,000 PSI compactor at my nearest Wake County Convenience Center.

We’ll do it again tomorrow, Habitat Donations and a Metal Recycling Center.

And for awhile yet. And so it goes.

The annotation on the back of this photograph is wrong. I was in Grade 3.

Spent Grade 4, in a “Public School”, after begging my parents. My Dad had a modest paycheck, which explains the home haircut, ill fitting hand me down coat. Losing Catholic School Tuition was a probably a big help with weekly groceries. The askew, clip on bow tie is my fault

Public School was relief from, as Paul Simon sang, “Pledging Allegiance to The Wall”.

More importantly, it was freedom from Sister Mary Edward and her varnished yardstick, liberally applied to my open palms after being caught in the sin of defending myself from a play ground bully.

I’m a rough old cob, nine years Submarine Navy, father of two Marines who said I was the meanest father on the block. Been divorced and widowed.

Some memories don’t fade.

In the dozen years that I had the privilege to be the photographer for the Cary Ballet Conservatory, I was keenly aware and worked hard to keep the young people at arm’s length. “Hi” and a wave in the lobby was it, unless I knew Mom & Dad. And with them.

I would give up body parts, before I knowingly harmed a child.

So today, “Stormy Daniels” aka Stephanie Cliffords testified in NYC. And I read about her being abused by a man. When she was nine years old. Nine!

And I cannot get that out of my head or heart.

I’d have taught the perp an entirely new, Biblical level, of “Smote”.