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Racing Along at Tectonic Speed, 2012, Just Before the World Ended, According to a Mexican Rock

Dan and extra-special friend, Elliza
Mike and son, Nathaniel Jao Montri Hubbard
Happy Grandma Mari, and Jao


Our delightful new Grandson, Jao (which means Prince in Thai).

Conrad and his best friend, Teresa's Seafood Soup


Once, when the world was young, ‘tho I was older still, Mari and Michael and Daniel and I drove to the Bay Area, and to Sonoma, where the world was composite, and the aroma of aged wine contented us.

It was there that Mari and I--married almost a year, having drifted together like continents come together, pushing against each other to reach an equilibrium--sat in the town square with Michael (nine years from Thailand) and Daniel (five years from more Iowa loinage).  

I knew that we sat in the sun on a fine bench in a wondrous place, a crumble-cake of continental fragments older than Adam, older than the notion of the gods themselves, having drifted there from almost everywhere--split off from Africa, and even from Asia--and I, as always, had to say so:  we four having come together, were like the crust of earth we sat on, and I was almost driven to silence.  Not Michael:  he said, “Oh”, at the wonder of it all. 

And here we are again--not in Sonoma, but in Tucson--where Mari came to graduate school, and I came to live, too--Daniel and Michael in tow--to learn computer information systems, and that some lefse is made with corn and called tortillas, not  to live in Washington fir forests or deep Iowa glacial soil, but in Sonoran Desert life.  

We came here again when I retired from a life spent learning what I wished I had known ago, and Mari to what we thought might be her last job, at the University.  But the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota proposed what seemed kinder and more supportive;  after which we returned here again, this summer. 

We think that, like the fragments of earth’s crust that drifted eventually to Sonoma, we have come here, again, to a kind of moving rest; not inert, but comfortably alongside.  Michael is here, as he was, once ago.  And now he has a son, almost ready to crawl, like earth beneath that bench in Sonoma, Thai on his mother’s side, too, with some African roots, fitted together as once the continents were.

Daniel came, also, this last week, with Elliza, herself multi-continental, to help us celebrate what it is like to be part of the drift of the earth.  

Stan and Becky are here for most of the year--they, as I, defying the San Andreas fault; going south when the coast moves north--and Mari (as ever) allowing the earth to do what it must while she sings to her grandson.  

We are like a deep and long chord of earth, hearing sympathetic tones in the our meeting, something like the train whistles over the hill, or in the chatter of the flock of Gambel’s quail when we walk to the low fence along the hillside.  

It is a lovely sound that earth makes, drifting, coming to meet itself.  And we are earth, alive.  


Mari Heltne & Conrad Royksund
4670 N Cerritos Dr
Tucson AZ 85745
Conrad.Royksund@gmail.com
Mari.Heltne@gmail.com


Our house, at Nightfall



Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 18, 2012 at 2:31 PM

    absolutely lovely letter. i didn't send one this year, as i gave a huge party in november for bob's 80th bday. and we just got back from antarctica for 10 days! merry christmas. linda and bob in austin

    ReplyDelete
  2. Conrad RøyksundDecember 18, 2012 at 8:03 PM

    Do you understand that Antarctica is the reason that we are in Tucson?

    And tell Bob that, while I am eleven months ahead if him, I am getting worried that I may lose the title of, "Tough Old Bugger".

    ReplyDelete

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