few and far between

David talks about brothers and sisters; he talks about death. after a long trip down from Oregon with Randall he is sitting three whiskey's deep by the fire. His mother turned 91 this weekend. They all went to church, even Daniel, manic, but clean, slid into a cool wooden pew halfway through the service. "What more could I ask for?" David wants to know. Relief and alcohol increase his reflection and loquaciousness. He has lost two younger sisters and his father. He says that each of them died within two hours of his arrival. He had no way of knowing what his mother's condition would be when he arrived. H pinches the left edge of his mustache and looks into his drink: "I've lost two sisters, but I don't know if I could handle losing one of my brothers." I watch as a thin slip of flame blossoms improbably over a log. Like a tulip blooming midair, riding a hot flush of steam and then disappearing over and over.

It was a busy trip. He and Randall went straight to work on the house and the yard; one day, in the pouring rain, they spent five hours pruning a dangerously tilted tree. Cooking, cleaning, tinkering with the pipes. David reminded his mother that his 8th birthday was a success in his eyes, and the only birthday he still remembers. She had written invitations on parchment in lemon juice so that all the neighbor boys and their mothers had to hold them up to a flame before the message was visible. To entertain them, she had fashioned aluminum paper swords and eye patches. In their enthusiasm, the boys solved her treasure hunt in ten minutes, rather than the hour she had anticipated.

"What is your favorite memory?" He wanted to ask her. "The best moment of your life." It was hard to elicit a response, but after coaxing she relinquished a summer spent painting in Yosemite with her family when she was a girl. Someone from the valley had given her an art lesson and then she had spent the day gazing at the granite and pine walls, lost in contemplation and beauty. Now David has an old photograph of her from behind, seated before and easel and the grandeur of North America.