Painting

A couple: Adam and Eve; Paolo and Francesca; Laurel and Hardy. Frick and Frack - who were they again? Cain and Able and Ted and Alice; Bonnie and Clyde. The place: Hope Springs Eternal; the crossroads of Vice and Virtue; the friendly skies.

The address on my birth certificate

The address on my birth certificate is next door to Susan's place. In the last week I've gone through slides my dad took between 1956 and 1967, and I discovered this slide of my mother standing in front of the door on the stoop. I took a photo of the slide through the slide viewer twice: one photo has good detail, the other is aligned with my posture in the bottom photo. From the photographs I can tell that the mailboxes have changed and different screen doors were installed. The front door is the same though painted white now. Shutters have been added to the windows.
My mom, as the middle images give some hint, is pregnant with me.
And so there's a repetition to Jami and me standing together on the stoop in the top picture.
This place is not far from the seminary and over the last four years I've thought how intriguing it is that my life is bracketed, beginning and middle, by this place: how I've gone to seminary almost at my mother's suggestion on a car ride through Decatur 37 years ago, where she pointed out the seminary and we drove by where we used to live.
For dad staying in Decatur would have been helpful. Driving 5 miles into downtown every day for thirty years is very different from driving 35 miles into Atlanta from the country and back again for thirty years.