Another photo of me and my dad that I found in the 25 year old crumpled paper lunch bag. Although I don’t remember this photo being taken, I do remember living here as well as some snippets of childhood for which this small house on Telegraph Road was the setting.
On a summer day, it’s me, age five, hamming it up while sitting on my dad’s lap in the front yard of our house that we rented from his Aunt Hazel. I don’t remember the occasion, but it looks like a gathering of my parents’ square dancing friends…maybe a game of poker is going on up there on the front porch. I don’t know why I’m pointing at my dad’s nose…just part of the mugging process and me being me, I guess. What I do know is that my mother made that polka dot sun suit and she made it out of a feed sack. (I wore a-la-feed-sack fashions well into my elementary school years.) I was okay with the skimpy homemade outfits until the following summer when I was suddenly stricken with modesty and refused to wear them altogether. And my flair doesn’t end there. I’m also donning my mother’s signature haircut for me…short. choppy. bangs. These days I cut my own hair and have a tendency toward short. choppy. bangs.
I see my dad’s wedding ring there that is now weighty, yet gently so, on my finger, kept secure by my own wedding band. My mother gave it to me after my father’s passing, and I slipped it on for the meantime so I wouldn’t lose it. I’ve yet to take it off. I’m glad that she gave me his original plain band and not the other one. At one point she bought a second set of wedding bands, ones with beaded edges. I asked her the reason for the new set of rings—had the originals been lost or were vows renewed—no, she said, she just wanted new ones. Odd, I think, to “replace” something like that.
And it was in this house where this photo was taken.
This is the Cherry Blossom, a private charter boat owned by the Potomac Riverboat Company and docked at the City Marina in Alexandria, Virginia. It is located just to the left of here.
Go to SkyWatch Friday and find skies from all over the world. While you’re there, why not leave a link to your own skies so all can enjoy? Many thanks to Klaus, Sandy, Wren, Fishing Guy, Louise and Sylvia for hosting this most ethereal meme!
This is the view from Ford’s Landing, a townhouse development in Old Town Alexandria. Out of frame, on the left, is the shore of the Potomac and a small dog park. Usually after a dip in the waters, Lucy ventures on to the Jones Point Lighthouse, stopping along the way to play ball beneath the Woodrow Wilson bridge.
Me, with my mom and dad, seated in the small house on Telegraph Road in Alexandria, rented from my dad’s Aunt Hazel. The folks smile easily, but I warily ogle the guy and his contraption set up in our living room as he holds one of my mom’s glass figurines—an elephant, I think—moving it in a dancing fashion back and forth across the front of his face, trying to eek out a smile from me. I was a tough case, so he gave up and captured the moment as was.
The flight path to Washington National Airport goes along the Potomac River as seen here from Ford’s Landing in Alexandria, VA. This approach avoids the many no-fly zones around the area.
Sorry for the late post. The nor’easter knocked out power to our server for the last couple of days.
Go to SkyWatch Friday and find skies from all over the world. While you’re there, why not leave a link to your own skies so all can enjoy?
While we were standing on the Virginia shores, Lucy was swimming peacefully on the Potomac River, unaware she had just crossed state lines into Maryland. Don’t worry, she was only a stone’s throw away from us. That’s the strange history behind Virginia’s border with Maryland.  (Some more historical information if you’re interested.) Basically, Maryland owns the Potomac River and the boundary between the two states runs right along the Virginia shoreline (technically, the low water mark of the river).
We came across a boundary marker nearby. (We were at Jones Point, near Old Town, Alexandria.) The first photo below shows the marker with the Potomac River in the background. The second photo zooms in on the face of the marker, showing an arrow pointing towards the river, stating the Virginia-Maryland boundary is 42 feet away, which puts it right at the shoreline.
Doesn’t seem fair, does it? Hey Maryland, we want our river back!
A little background on this video, which isn’t my best. It usually occurs to me to hit record well after the action has started. Anyway, Lucy has really taken to the tennis ball lately, and will even retrieve it, but not when it’s in the water. Sunay, however, does otherwise. Here, the tennis ball floats at the water’s edge, wondering if it will be saved by Sunay or doomed to a life of drifting in the murky waters of the Potomac. Lucy is just fine with that and wants to make sure that if she isn’t saving it, no one is.
All of these shenanigans followed the first meeting of Lucy, Sunay and Posey.
This is the Woodrow Wilson bridge, featured in SkyWatch Friday No. 57, but from a different angle. It crosses the George Washington bike path, which we follow from Old Town Alexandria to the Jones Point Lighthouse on the Potomac River. Jones Point is one of Lucy’s favorite spots to romp and splash in the Potomac.
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