Friends and Family

The same weekend our grandson Bruce was born, friends of Mom's from Colorado came visiting. We asked them what they would most like to do and they came up with something that surprised me. They wanted to visit Alcatraz. It is an interesting thing that we don't visit local sights unless visitors lead us to do so. I've never been interested in visiting Alcatraz; I've always thought it would be a depressing experience. But we dutifully made arrangements to take our friends, Cliff and Elaine Conlon, on this particular adventure.

So on Monday, January 17th (MLK Day), we headed out early for San Francisco. We took BART, then a bus to Pier 33, where a ferry took us to Alcatraz Island. Just getting there was a fun adventure. The day was foggy at first, but opened up into a beautiful sunny day. Upon landing at Alcatraz I was surprised by the beauty of the sights that greeted us. The Island is a rocky hill but has pockets of grasses and flowers that make a lovely setting for what is now the skeletal remains of a maximum security prison, closed since the 1960s. The tour took us through the prison, located at the top of the island. It was fascinating. My conclusion is that it was a perfect place for a prison. The tides made a swim to the mainland nearly impossible. Yet the city is placed close enough to the prison to make the sight of it a daily reminder of freedoms missed. When the wind blew just right, even the sounds of the city greeted the prisoners as a regular prompting of what could have been, if their choices had been different. The thought of what could have been strikes me as a major source of sorrow. What a perfect set-up for a prison to my way of thinking. It is too bad that it is now closed and only offers a crumbling reminder of its former use. It was closed because it was too expensive to maintain, supposedly. But it seems to me it was really closed for political reasons. A shame.

In the photo on top you can see the Conlons with Layne standing in front of one of the deteriorated buildings below the prison.

We had fun with our Conlons. After they left for home I spent the remainder of that week and this past week with my daughter-in-law Dorothy, helping her with little Bruce. I lost myself in that happy mission. You can see how Bruce has changed since the picture in my last entry.

I am working on not requiring myself to be endlessly productive, but instead, giving myself permission to pace myself and be open to more spontaneous opportunities. I need relaxing, thinking and open time. It's there, I've decided. So I'm going to teach myself to grab it. Here's to spontaneity!