A pleasant evening
home with my family
————-
Matt’s Notes
By “home with my family,” Papa must mean he visited or hung out with his sister Clara or his sister Nettie and her daughter Rosie.
Papa must have been an unequivocally adoring uncle to Rosie. I wonder if she picked up on his vibe, if her early childhood memories of him are as soothing and important as mine. Check out how blissed out I am in this picture of me and him in 1971:
My wife says this is probably as relaxed as I’ve ever looked in my life, which may well be true. Papa was sick here, struggling with a combination of leukemia and Parkinson’s. Maybe he knew he wouldn’t be around for the next summer’s crop of photos, or maybe he still remembered the lonely winter of ’24; whatever the reason, he enjoyed this moment as much as I. A sunny little memory for us both to take along, for however long we had.
