The Longbow Papers

This picture is of the sand and sea grass in front of our family home in the bright light of a cloudless mid-day. I haven't a clue what that colorful thing sitting there is; but the color juxtapositions are magnificent, so I can only assume that Sylvia, who is a most accomplished artist, put it there for that very purpose.

This wonderful picture from inside the renovated beach house features several terrific themes: the beauty of what my sister did with the old house, which was built in 1893; Sylvia's lifelong love of critters of every kind; and my niece Reagan's love of same, but also her profession; my so lovely niece is a very distinguished veterinarian much in demand. I like the bird myself, though we never met. On the far wall, right beside Reagan's sweet face, you will notice a "good luck and good harmony" Chinese woven-and-braided ornament we gave to mom on our first visit back to the states from China--would that it had worked.

Here we see more of the family room and kitchen of the house, Sylvia, Reagan, the bird, and in the far right my mother Wilma Bosco, who turned 80 this past May. Mom was a Florida bathing beauty that could stop traffic for blocks just by crossing a street. On the wall, just above mom, hangs one of Sylvia's finest paintings. Very few artists alive today can paint with such realistic precision, but also an almost perfect sense of abstract form and color that requires no contextual narrative--Mr. Wyeth comes to mind, but very few others. It was lost forever in Katrina's walls of water driven by locomotive winds of such force they literally changed the topography of a piece of land that had withstood everything thrown its way by nature for centuries, long before the white man came in the 17th Century.

This picture is just before dusk and features Sylvia and my nephew Julian, the second son from the marriage of my sister to Ricky Davis, one of the best running backs and all around tough-as-nails football players the Ocean Springs Greyhounds ever had. He was one of the 2 or 3 closest friends I had in life in those years so long ago, along with being a teammate who could hit you like a freight train, spin and be gone. Julian, like his father Ricky, is a very successful engineer and businessman in Atlanta, Georgia.

This extraordinary photograph is of Reagan sitting on the seawall in front of the house at dusk. No other description is needed.

This picture is from only a short time later, with the sunshine all but gone completely from another beautiful day in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, which, if there is a God, he or she must surely call home.

This photograph is from that night when Julian, and a lovely young lady whom I am embarrassed to say I do not know, are enjoying the hot tub Sylvia designed and placed in what was once the corner of the screened in porch where she and I would play Monopoly games that lasted for days.

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It breaks my heart a little more each day that these people whom I love are not only so very far away from me in distance, but that because of my politics, disbeliefs and lifestyle, I am heretical to them. Most surely it also is the fruit of an old-time bigotry and intolerance of anything one cannot hold firmly in gripping hands because it means having the courage to change one's mind almost daily. That is how fast the world and our knowledge of it changes.

This inability of nimbleness of thought is something that will never leave the south substantially in my lifetime because of the poverty of its schools and the poverty of intellect in its political leadership. Consequently, my blood family--other than my son, thank God--are mostly estranged from me and have been for years. Sometimes quite bitterly; this is just another one of those many times--but it depresses me more each time because it grows increasingly ugly with each turn of their baiting, ignorant screw.

Although, I must say that nothing can ever truly separate me and my sister; we are only 22 months apart in age and almost every good memory I have from the first two decades of life includes her prominently. She is 'Sis,' I love her unconditionally and without end. Now that I am alone in China, I miss her and Reagan, who is so much like her, more than ever with each passing day. While it is not equally reciprocated as often as I would like, that love and respect is there and always will be, and I know it.