There is all this stuff happening in my dad's pictures I keep finding, things going on that he was probably not even aware of, didn't even see at the time.  A man with a hand on his hip, wondering how on earth he is going to get through one more winter without putting up aluminum siding.  Asking himself how on earth he'll get through the rest of the day without a drink maybe, or without yelling at the kid or telling off the wife, taking it out on somebody, whatever it is.  Meanwhile my dad's focused on taking a picture of me and my sister.  From the look of our outfits we are headed to church, which is more than you can say for the man in the background.

This is what spring looks like in Western Pennsylvania.  Or did in those days. 

This morning I got the truck washed, picked up Bianca and drove out to Venice.  Stopped at a gallery, took a few pictures, walked to Small World bookstore on the boardwalk where I got a discounted biography of J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan  premiered in 1904) from  Bonnie who's worked there for years, then lunch at James Beach, then took Main Street and a couple turns and stopped by the place Bianca used to live and wanted me to see, the place she liked living the best and foolishly gave up for the worst of reasons (a man), the second floor apartment in the back; we pull into the lot next door and she gets out.  A young girl is on the balcony. She invites us up, in.  She's cleaning.  She's having a party tonight.     

When we are inside I see what she means about the light, about the windows; I have seen the pictures but now being there, seeing it, I see it the way a friend sees something you loved before you were friends.  Now I see where she was and stop to remember where I was at the same time, to compare.  We do the math.  I was very near.  Right over there.  When she was living here I had just moved to California for the worst of reasons (a man) and would drive all the way from Los Feliz out to Venice and the beach on Sundays and go to the cafe in the next block and sit and scribble away at the novel I was going to finish and publish which as soon as the finishing and publishing happened would justify all the anguish and struggle and would vanquish the fear and the uncertainty in that way we have of thinking the future will make the present pay off, which it rarely does in the way we imagine it will.    

We didn't know each other then.  So in that time back then I would have been in the background, part of the view she had from the window that faced in that direction, in the apartment where she had been happy, the apartment with the great light and with the bee lights strung around the beams of the ceiling so you could lay on her bed, she tells me, and imagine the ceiling was a roller skating rink, like in Days of Heaven.  I have no idea what this means but it sounds beautiful.  She was happy then and I was scared and sad then.  And now neither of us is in the place or frame of mind we once were.  Neither of us is in the background of the other, fighting some kind of battle the way everyone you meet is doing.  

I get home and talk to friends back east.  It is getting dark there.   In the background the kids are asking to go outside and light sparklers for which adult supervision is required.  In the background I can hear them asking the grown-ups to hurry up and get off the phone.  There is urgency in youth because your frame of reference is smaller; you're working with less time so each moment can feel like an eternity.  I have no idea why they need to light sparklers on a spring night.  Perhaps I should have asked.  But even not knowing, I have to admit it sounds beautiful.