All Our Children

Spoiler alert… This video depicts our dog children. Our cat children will have to wait for their own vid.

When Pat and I got married in 1986, we each had children from our previous marriages/relationships. Holly was Pat’s, and Salty was mine. As time marched on, and we’d have to say good-bye to one (there is little worse than this emotion), eventually we’d get to say hello to a new child (there is nothing more fun). Sadie followed Holly, and Belle eventually followed Salty. As an aside, Belle was given to me by the Bellevue Bon Marche when I left the store. She was the most remarkable gift I think I’ve ever received – thanks so much to all those responsible. Both these guys made it to Stevenson, so many of you locals will know them. Sammy arrived right about the time Belle was in the process of leaving us. She was brother Dave’s dog, but he couldn’t keep her because of a move to Peru. Natty is the most recent addition to our household. She came to be with us in 2016 while Pat was in the throws of a very serious autoimmune illness. The pics of Natty at the beach were from Pat’s first venture out in nearly a year. All of these guys still mean to world to us; I wish I was a poet so I could more eloquently convey those feelings.

I did try to convey this emotion with the music. It – by the way – was written in minutes after my first trip to Portland during the Coronavirus lock down. I capitalized on its sad, melancholic nature to use in this project and proceeded to record it. I’ve referred to grabbing pics from the digital shoe box in the past. Well… this time I found many of these pictures in actual shoe boxes and scanned them to the computer. I truly hope you enjoy...