Dream Angel

There is a tune is by Ruzsa Magdolna, but it could have been sung by Evelyn to her daughter, my sister, an angel who was taken from us at such a young age.
The song, a mixture of sadness and promise....

Evelyn and Richard Blackburn

Evelyn Marie and her husband Richard, in happier times, obviously.
Richard, formerly known as George, intelligent, handsome, self-confident, he was going places, and he knew it.
He could take it and he could dish it out.

Evelyn was a young beauty, but she didn't think so, or modesty kept her from saying so.
She was intelligent too,  but of a different kind than Richard.
Richard could see a blueprint and extrapolate a supersonic aircraft.
Evelyn saw poetry in everything.

She took to motherhood with a warmth and natural eagerness.
As a young child, when everything, including our father, seemed slightly unfamiliar and confusing,
the warmth and love of the perfect mother was waiting at home.

I remember her taking Patrick and I to school, and feeling sorry for the other kids, and wondering what it must be like to have a mother that wasn't beautiful, like ours.

George Andrew Blackburn, Jr. with Evelyn Marie Blackburn

George still had the body of a middle-weight boxer, which he had been.
He was the Tri-State Golden Gloves Champion, according to Marie Blackburn, his first wife.
Evelyn Marie Blackburn had done some modeling, and probably would have done more, but she fell in love.
She disappeared from the life of her family in Texas.
She left a husband behind.
George left a wife and 5 children.
Was it biology that controlled them?
Was it Kismet?
They started off tragically.
George's wife, when I spoke to her, still loved her husband.
After 30 years she hadn't divorced him.
I never spoke to Evelyn's first husband, but from whart she told me, he was deeply, passionately in love with her.
They started off tragically, but the sparks were there, the love and passion and happiness were there too.
All life ends in death.
We all die.
It's just a question of when.

Liver for all!

Michael came home from Kindergarten, he was excited, "Mom, I learned the pledge of allegiance!"
"Let's hear it, " I respond.
He recited it and did quite well, until he got to this part, "One nation, under God, with liver, tea, and justice for all!"

By Evelyn Marie Blackburn

Liver for all!

Michael came home from Kindergarten, he was excited, "Mom, I learned the pledge of allegiance!"
"Let's hear it, " I respond.
He recited it and did quite well, until he got to this part, "One nation, under God, with liver, tea, and justice for all!"

By Evelyn Marie Blackburn

Happiness

By Evelyn Blackburn, circa 1950


I am floating; suspended in fluid, I  am warm and full and happy, I want for nothing.
I turn, stretch, kick, from sheer delight.
I am alive, the most supremely content human in existence. I do not cerebrate, I absorb sensations, and there are no unpleasant ones. I utilize oxygen but I do not respire. I receive the most ample nourishment
yet I neither masticate nor swallow.
One thing there is which never happened before. This recurrent impression of tautness, surely it should not be, it has been occurring with regularity and increasing frequency, as the the wall of my domain were tightening, closing in, as though ( I must be mistaken) I were being forced out.
But there can be no "out"-what is it? I will not be ejected, help me, help, I am being propelled now through a moist red canal,  save me, something of hard bone and flesh is holding my head!
By my feet I am swung aloft, my lungs inflate to contain my first breath.I release it in a mingled scream of rage and terror as I perceive my tragedy.
This is the World, and I have entered it, I have just been born.