Birthday Reflection

My father at age three and a half months, with his mother in December 1921.

Certain dates have acquired fixed meanings in my head. Family birthdays, for instance. September 3 is one of them — my dad’s.

He died five years ago this summer. He seems to have both vanished and to be as present as ever.

The physical presence is what’s gone, of course; that person about whom we worried, who often baffled and angered us, whom we loved and felt tender toward, was gone just like that. His ashes are in the same grave with our Mom’s — she died suddenly 14 years ago last week, and I still find myself saying “Oh, mom” out loud — and with the casket of our brother Mark, who died just before he turned two. There’s a whole story about that grave site, when and why it was purchased and how three family members wound up there. For another night, maybe. It must be said in the meantime that those remains in that spot were — are — the least of what those people were.

In that sense, in the sense of who Dad was and how he we saw him in life, he seems to be right here with me. I think about him every day. Still remembering a life of light and dark moments. Still trying to figure him out. Still trying to understand the gifts he gave all of us and those that he couldn’t give.

He lived to be nearly 91. If that’s a stake in the ground — I don’t presume much about my own future, but Dad lived nearly exactly as long, within about a week, as his mother — there are decades ahead to try to work all that out.

(The picture above is a favorite: Our grandmother, Otilia Sieversen Brekke, and my dad, at their home in Alvarado, Minnesota, in late December 1921. Dad was a little less than four months old. Grandma shows a warmth and attentiveness in this shot that doesn’t come out in other pictures.)

Hot and Smoky and September

I will get back to the conclusion of the travelogue at some point this weekend. (It’s only been a week since I got back; I still remember most of what went on out there.)

But tonight the subject is the heat — it may have hit 108 here in Berkeley, which would have broken the town’s all-time heat record set 104 years ago (our local weathe record goes back to 1893).

And in San Francisco, where the previous record for September 1 was 90, the official high was 106 degrees. That bettered the all-time record of 103, which had been reached in 1988 and 2000.

But there’s more than heat to the story.

We are under a stagnant dome of high pressure. There’s very little wind at the surface, and for now, our dependable cooling sea breeze, which allowed folks on this side of the East Bay Hills to escape the severe heat wave that visited in June, is utterly absent.

The air is not only still, it’s full of crud. To be more specific, smoke from wildfires far to our north has drifted into our region. The result is a lurid kind of smoggy sunlight during the day and a waxing gibbous moon that has a persistent amber hue to it. There’s enough smoke in the air from fires that you can smell it and detect a smoke haze in the streetlights tonight.

Of course, this isn’t a disaster like the one that’s been visited on Houston. It’s not the kind of condition — persistent heat and reliably foul air — that folks in the San Joaquin Valley deal with all summer. And no, it’s not terribly humid, so it isn’t sticky and I can imagine getting to sleep tonight.

But it is warm out — still 77 degrees as we creep toward midnight– and it is strange and smoky. This day and night have made an impression.