I can’t remember the last time I flew into an airport where snow was reported hitting the airstrip. Maybe once on a trip to Washington DC, but I can’t remember exactly – there were issues with the landing gear retracting/extending correctly to remember much else going on, meteorologically.
But there I was, in some of the worst conditions possible, tail of the plane tracking sideways at times, pitching up and down other times, heavy blunt flakes pelting the portholes and the hull.
Given the circumstances, the captain landed the plane well – much better than other pilots in better conditions at Lambert International.
Christmas was a bit rushed by my arriving on the very day, and although the flight was cheaper – and it was the first direct flight to STL for ABQ for me in almost a decade – without the usual buildup, the holiday didn’t quite seem the same. It was wonderful, but very different from other Christmases. It was a snowy one, which makes me a bit nostalgic for old white holidays from childhood. It was fun to feel once more. Also, my mother repainted most of the house while I was away this year. My sister’s room still has much of my childhood furniture – two bookshelves and two bookcases – and my mother elected to paint the four walls a slightly lighter blue than what was once a overarching motif of navy blue in my room all those years ago.
The treble blow of remember-when came when my mother produced three carousels of slides from what is left of my father’s photographic output. She wants to minimize, to clean out a bit more to make room for other things. She thinks there are still slides in these carousels that are not up to snuff, that can be excised for the sake of higher quality. I agree with her, on one level – there are so many pictures of aspens in northern New Mexico that they quickly all look the same, be lighted in the same way. There is a huge side of me, though, that resists this semi-annual rite of homecoming. I want to keep them all, even though I know some are not of quality, or worth keeping. They are dear to me, still, and the only way I have now to see my father through his viewfinder.
(Occasionally, after a long summer day, my father would pull out the projector and these old carousels and we would revisit they two week trip through the southwest in the early seventies. With the lights off and the automated hum of the ventilation fan on the projector drowning out even the ruckus of the air conditioner, we sat in rapt attention to photos of a landscape I could only vaguely remember, on the trip myself as a barely one-year-old blond-haired, blue-eyed toddler. It was like a homecoming trip of a different sort. The click of the slide pulled up from the bulb, and the subsequent drop of the next slide, the slight recovery of the fan speed from the drop in voltage to move the slides, and the few seconds of quiet interlude before my mother or father would offer some narration was always a fond memory of childhood for me.)
Tonight I streamed a sneak peak of Laura Veirs’ new album – an album she wrote during a period of writer’s block, seeking out new guitar tunings to bring new energy to her recording – and found myself looking back again while in St. Louis.
