may 17

so today is may 17 - my late husband's death day......over 20 years ago. not my current husband, gastone, he is here alive and doing very well. thank god.
funny how life goes on. i told my daughter rosie what this day meant to me. she looked long at me.....i know what she was thinking...she was trying to get her head around me, HER mom, actually having a life before she was born. yeah, of course she has always known my personal history, but today, age 131/2, i think this idea first hit her that it was not just some sort of made-up, make-believe fantasy, but it could possible be true, her parents, (at least her mom), were actually alive before she was born! and having some kind of life - without her.

this reminds me of something that went down into my own parents "family folklore"......they loved to tell the story that when i was about 6, i asked in all seriousness, if they were born old. like all kids, it is just so hard to fathom. (my parent had me when they were both in their early 40's, so, they were old parents).

i guess i never really got past it, the shock of it, because i have spent a lot of my life recounting their lives (my parents) before i was born in my art. my family album IS my favorite source of subject matter. it is of my parents lives in the 1940's and early 1950's- those black and white photos, that i totally adore.
all my life, i have spent countless quiet hours thumbing through the album. i especially love their honeymoon photos when they drove in my dad's awesome yellow convertible up highway 101, the scenic route, of the california coast. and they were smart to have such a honeymoon, the 101 is so beautiful and magnificent!
today, although it is overpopulated in places, it still is breathtaking.
so today, i am not depressed, no longer fixated on my late husband's death date, instead i have moved on to ponder life through the eyes of my youngest child.