My father later in life ... reprise

I was talking today with my professor about my blog.  She wanted to know why I had started it and who read it.  I started the blog in May 2007 just after the end of the college softball season.  I intended to write but needed to have somewhere to start.  I thought I would try this new blog thing,  Kind of like instant publishing, you could write whatever you wanted and maybe somebody would read it.  I called it "AZURE, Sandy's view of the blue blue sky."  My starting idea was "Does a 50ish women living just outside of Seattle have anything interesting to say?"  I also intended to include pictures.  I soon realized that I could take a picture and write something about it or I could find a picture to match what I wrote about.  I have jillions of pictures and jillions more throughout the internet.  For a long time, I considered it a discipline to write an entry every day.  The last year or two, not so much, but I'm not ready to give it up.

I went back and read my first entry .  I titled it "My father late in life."  He had only recently passed away.  April 19, 2007, age 80 on my birthday.  Not that old, really but he had been in poor health since 2001.  My mother once said to me, haven't I been doing this for at least 10 years?  No, I replied, do the math, it just seems like 10 years.

I wrote a lot in that first entry about his withdrawal; he probably was glad I had come visit but did not show it.  They lived in Rockford IL, the epitome of the midwest.  But he was unable or unwilling to really interact with me or my siblings. He saw his relationship with me as a control battle to the end.  He was just sure that I was taking control of his life and he wasn't going to allow that.  sheesh.

This picture was taken on an earlier visit.  This picture is from their 'independent living' place in Wesley Willows.  Really quite a nice place.  Naomi has the coffee table in the background in her apartment.  To the left of this picture was their nice cherry dining room chairs covered with needlepoint.  I took the table and chairs and recently retired them.  With all due respect to my husband, that table and chairs never did really work in our dining room.  Maybe I have the lamp on the left.  Nothing else in this image survived.

He was a difficult guy late in life.  He sulked, bickered and fumed.  But all in all, a good man, a good provider and attached to his family.

His name was Allen Ginsburgh.  The same name as the poet.  In fact, they were born on the same day June 3, 1926.  I always meant to get them together but never did.