A trail by a river, runs through this

Last week our son Mike went back to Salt Lake to visit his sister. They went to where we lived when they both grew up. The walked the small trail behind the house on the side of the mountain. They took pictures of them looking over the valley. It brought back memories for them. It brings back memories for me just typing it. It is hard to go back. I have over the years many times gone and looked at the house that sits on the river in Pocatello Idaho where I grew up. I remember perhaps the best time I tried to go back was when I ran from our parents later home on the East side to the West side and followed the river for several blocks and ran through the old neighborhood one summer Saturday quite a few years ago. Right now I cannot remember the last time I was in Pocatello. Even so Mike goes back to a road on the hill in Salt Lake and I sometimes go back to a house by a river. Blogs are journals and diaries and even the news of the day for a few family and friends that will follow each other on a blog. It can be tempting to try to be a writer or philosopher. Easy lead in to “you can’t go back”. Course, that is not true. I have been back since I started typing. A little while ago I looked through a photo album of my Parents life and of my own earlier life that my daughter made for me. She made one for my brother and for my sister. Looking through it takes you back. My Aunt sent me an email and told me a story about my Dad. She has told me this a few times but each time she does she either brings more to the story or just makes me think more about the story. My Dad told her that he had never kissed another woman in his life except my Mother. In his later years, living alone, and with a concerned Sister in Law who cared about him he did get her Kiss as he did on the last day of his life. What is it about this picture and the rainbow over Pocatello that caught my attention? What is it that one remembers from a dirt road overlooking Salt Lake?
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I also this week have continued to think about a letter from a friend’s wife. She was remembering him. Her memories were captured in a series of events and routines that she had shared with him. Her time with him was brief but her walk on the dirt road and trip back to the river was captured in 6 pages. It was the goodness in my friend that had impacted her. The goodness in my Dad and my Mother do indeed impact me. It took my Dad many many years before he hugged me and kiss my face. I think for my Dad his dirt road and his house by the river was in part a trip to Malad and all that went with it but it was also in keeping up with his family.
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I suppose writing ought to draw a conclusion. I remember in one of the first blogs I wrote I “pondered in print” about some big issue. I don’t recall the issue but someone happened by the blog and decided to leave a comment. The person said using a profanity that was upsetting that the blank answer was obviously blank. I was surprised and shocked to see it in print on my rambling thoughts for the day. In what is getting close to a year I have seldom had anyone I don’t know leave another message. I can see who has been to the blog and strangers don’t stay on long. I do now have the ability to stop a comment made before it is posted. On the other hand you have to wonder whether you should say anything in a forum that others you don’t even know could see. With double digit, at least, millions of blogs out there the likelihood of many seeing what is posted is slim. A few of us watch for each other. The forum works. No real reason to be less that real in what is said. (Course I am not closing with a phone number)