KCSM, the Bay Area’s jazz station, played this song this morning:
I was writing a letter to my 96-year-old grandmother when the song came on. In the past, she has mentioned how much she loved my letters, and so I try to write something to her about every month with pictures of my boys in them. But she’s in decline, so I’m not sure if she’ll get each letter or if she even knows it now. She’s about the last person alive aside from my brother who remembers me as an almost continuous entity for my whole life. To the rest of my father’s family, I was a distant relation for most of their lives, someone probably not thought of or spoken of. And my maternal relations, what remains of them, were always elsewhere as well and still are.
In the letter, I told my grandmother that the oldest boy is graduating from high school in about a month, and the culmination of the slow separation will complete. I told her, and now you, that we just had spring break, but as we did not travel, the boys went about their businesses and I…. Well, I did some household projects, but around them. They’re about to launch, and I can only hope that I will have been a more lasting influence than Minecraft and YouTube. But I am not sure.
It has been a very long time since they were little buddies who wanted to be like their father and asked a lot of questions. They have changed so much. But I have not.
