Center Stage

It’s the last day of my 3 day weekend and as usual, I got very little done of what I wanted to do. I got some things started though, like pulling some things, like my shoes out of the ‘junk room’ and into my bedroom closet. I don’t know precisely how they got there, but I found several color slides – archaic artifacts of the past. The slides were of an afternoon spent in Monterey with Mommy Nancy, I, and our babies. Did I mention my baby had a tail?

Nancy had a real baby – Diego, who was 16 months old and quite a busy little guy. My so-called baby was Chiquilla, my whippet pup of four or five months old.

I remember that day well, and I know Nancy does too. We drove down to and stayed at a motel which involved smuggling Chiquilla and her little kennel into a motel that, like most motels, did not allow dogs. Ah! Those were the days. Later, Nancy, baby Diego, Chiquilla and I took a long stroll through a lush regional park. I nabbed a gopher snake and took photos of it – which were among the slides I just found.One lingering memory of that lovely spring day was how the baby that got all the attention was Chiquilla, the puppy. Nancy said she very nearly felt hurt that people who saw us made a bigger fuss over my floppy pup than happy little Diego, which brings me back to the present.

Diego is no longer the happy baby – in early November he became 18 - cast his first vote in the National election. Friday night I went with Mommy Nancy, Rick & Diego's 14 year old brother Adan, to Diego's high school to see his performance in a comedy, Moon over Buffalo. I was totally impressed by Diego’s performance as a man confronting his fiancé’s highly bombastic theatrical family. It was amazing to see Diego mold himself into a character, on stage, in front of an audience. He may not have gotten the attention way back in the day with a puppy for competition, but he sure had center stage on Friday. Even Chiquilla would have spotted Diego as a young master worthy of our admiration.