Blue Rodeo

My sister Ana sent me some pictures last week I had never seen, from my two visits to El Salvador when I was 7 and 11. She got them from her aunt Marta, who lives there still. Thanks to both ladies.

Freaky, because since then, my only recollections of those months were in my head. I had only one vision of a toddler Ana, and so I figured we didn't see each other much. But there were two family pictures with us in them, and one with her and I. Carrie thinks from looking at that latter picture that Ana really loved her older brother. Any new pictures of my dad are always cool, too.

Lo and behold, I had misplaced some pictures of me and my Dad from when we lived in San Francisco and Carrie found them tonight while looking at some of her old pics. I will scan every one of them--wait until you see 1) how chubby I was as a baby, 2) how much the 3-year-old me looks like Gavin, and 3) my mom's late-60s hair and fashion. She was a looker, no doubt, though.

Ana and I had exchanged photos back in October when Maggie and I visited, but to my dismay there had been none from my time in El Salvador. Now, with Carrie's discovery, Ana can see some pics of her dad she had never seen as well.

So strange to look with my kids at pictures of him--and maybe she and my brother Jose have the same feeling--and tell them that's their Grandpa, dead nearly 20 years before they were conceived. Funny, too, when they say my name as they look at a picture of him, or Gavin's name when they see a picture of me as a little guy.