I have probably written too much about my life, but I wanted to write one last tribute- to our daughters, who have been illumination in an often dark world. For now I will leave out our foster because she came to us at 12 years of age and there are no early childhood memories. However she is very much part of the family and no less another light.
My wife and I were extremely lucky. We had children exactly when we wanted to do so and although we would have been happy if they had been boys, we were delighted by our two bright and kind daughters. I say kind because that seems to be in their natures, but it does not mean we never had fights or agreed on everything. Still, I look back on our lives together and I realize that I never could have wished for better kids than they were and adults as they are now. It is in that spirit that I will concentrate on the many joys that we had as a family.
Our older daughter was born as an emergency Caesarian in New Mexico. When I saw her I was amazed, as she looked exactly like the baby on Gerbers products!. I was expecting a red, wrinkled, creature. Our older daughter came with us when we returned to Gainesville, Florida, where our second daughter was born, also by Caesarian, but a planned one. I was in fact in the room as our second daughter came into the world. Before she was a toddler we returned to Las Cruces. We were there this time for thirty-one years. Our kids became pretty much New Mexicans and we explored the state and Arizona with them.
One of the earliest photos I have of our elder daughter is as she was in the heaven of all toddlers- the largest sandbox in the area- White Sands National Monument. This was before we returned to Florida. She could occupy herself for a long time in such places.
We finally wound up within walking distance to Mesilla Park Elementary and Zia Middle School where both went.
We celebrated birthdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas together. I had (for a number of reasons) never enjoyed holidays that much- my dad often came home drunk in my early days for one thing. But the joy of those two little girls was infectious. How could I resist!
We went on a number of family trips together, Cave Creek in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona, Cloudcroft in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, Lincoln, New Mexico, Bosque del Apache, Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands, and a number of others.
Our camping trips were certainly memorable. Before they closed the South Fork of Cave Creek to camping, we camped there a couple of times. Once we were rained out. It rained so much that our tent bottom behaved like a water bed. We played numerous games of what our younger daughter called “Snake Rubber.” In her version of Concentration all the cards were face up! Another time, much before the floods that rearranged the canyon, we looked for Elegant Trogons, tantalizingly hearing them call down the canyon, but on returning to our camp there was a male in full view “singing” in a tree above our tent! We also found a Black-tailed Rattlesnake, which was very shy and kept hiding its head under its coils, so I never got a good photo.
We also camped several times at Herb Martyr Dam and cooked hot dogs over a grill partly immersed in Cave Creek (which delighted the girls no end!) We hiked the Greenhouse Trail near the dam to find ourselves apparently transported to a Canadian woodland, with aspens, ferns, lichens and moss The girls were fascinated. When Winn Falls was actually falling it was truly spectacular. Unfortunately two fires have burned over the area and the extended drought and paradoxical flood has altered these since, but when we were there it was as it had been for many years. We also visited Rustler Park (which was closed when I was in the Chiricahuas in 2015) with the late Willis J. Gertsch, at one time Curator of Arachnids at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. All in all the girls had a wonderful experience with the wild country.
Our travels took us to Flagstaff, Arizona for visits to my wife’s parents, and we always took side trips on these journeys- to Walnut Canyon, Meteor Crater, Montezuma Castle, Tuzigoot, Montezuma Well, the Petrified Forest, Waputki, and the Grand Canyon. The girls tried to hide from us at Walnut Canyon. At Flagstaff we hiked the trail at Buffalo Park, stopping to try various physical exercises at stations around the park.
When we traveled to Flagstaff we usually stayed in Tucson or Alpine. On one trip we visited Bisbee and Tombstone, stopping at Dos Cabasas as well. A notable stop was a pie cafe on the Black Canyon Highway where the girls had grasshopper pie.
We often hiked in the Organ Mountains. When our oldest was very young I would carry her in a back carrier. With my wife close behind, our daughter would chuckle when she would stumble. They also hiked the Baylor Canyon Trail, Ice Canyon Trail and much later the Sierra Trail with us. In later years our foster would occasionally come too. All three girls are as thick as thieves and our younger daughter later used part of he inheritance from my wife’s mother to go with our foster to England, Scotland and Wales. Our family trips were great outings and we always found things of interest. They have continued their interest in hiking and nature into adulthood.
We were fortunate in having both an elementary school and a middle school within walking distance. In middle school our older daughter was in choir and our younger daughter was in marching band. We were glad that the former was on a choir trip when the only shooting we had at the school occurred. A student had gotten his father’s .22 pistol and stupidly shot another student in the courtyard during recess. Fortunately the other student was not seriously injured, but we joined a group of parents policing the courtyard during recess for a while. Both girls went to Las Cruces High school where our older daughter got involved with drama. She also got crossways with her algebra teacher and sent him a note titled “Ninety-five theses on why algebra stinks.” This was not received well by her teacher who gave her Ds for both semesters. In truth a teacher had to have a sense of humor to instruct her! One teacher told me that she was often the subject of conversation in the break room. In any case it did not hurt her much. Our younger daughter benefited because of her sister’s reputation and nobody wanted to bother her. She was pretty much liked by the teachers and to this day has a very sunny personality.
As they got older we talked about college. As our younger daughter says we never insisted that they go, but it was implied. We were academics, through and through. Our older daughter wound up at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and lured our younger daughter there. After graduation, the older daughter went to UNC Dental School (she now has her own office as a pediatric dentist in Washington state), our younger daughter was accepted at the University of California- Santa Barbara as an archeology student, but her major professor died and she finished with a Masters, after several summers excavating a Viking long house in Iceland. She came back to Las Cruces, a second time by way of Boston where she was staying with our foster daughter. As she was having no luck finding a job in the Northeast, she got another Masters in a split major (epidemiology/geography) at NMSU. She went to Senegal to study the vectors of mosquito transmitted viruses. This got her her current position at a tech company headquartered in California. (Our foster went to United World College, Smith and Johns Hopkins and immediately found herself in government health departments, starting with the CDC, including a stay in Liberia at the end of the ebola epidemic.)
All-in-all we could not have had better children. With the younger daughter reaching 40 this year it seems like a long time since they were little. In all reasonably balanced families the parents are proud of their kids, and I can say that I could not be prouder of our daughters, including our foster. They have been our champions in these difficult times.
Please excuse this brag piece!