Google Earth

My sister threw my parents a party to google earth them through the cities of their lives.

Who could resist google earth? Deen loves it. Ene Enry, the husband of my sister, pored over it an entire day long. Me, I got tired just remembering the places I had lived. My sister remembered more of them than me: Suffren, Tronna, places in Woodge, NYC, Chicago, lots and lots and zooming in and out and all around the terrrain of memory taking shape.

My parents sat and stared and said nothing.

"I would have thought they would be so excited to see all the places they had been, Paris, Buenos Aires," my sister related. "But they had nothing to say. 'Oh, alright.' That was all they said. They were not interested at all."

Travel was all we had. Travel was all we were. My father would always ask for a map to pore over, to track the changes, to plot the houses. I was not trained in values except adapting to them and we lived by change of address. We were all about new maps and new applications, vying for visas and documenting cargo. And now they had nothing to say. Not a wow between them.

Will I be interested in the topography of my life at 75? I wonder now, so close to ditching the scrapbooks and finding no company to zoom along the past with. What will I remember, and more importantly, what will I love being reminded of enough to clap my hands and pour a martini?

I should never end a blog on a question, so that means I have to art an answer.

Well, the Grand Canyon for sure. Hands, heads, lives down, the Grand Canyon.