That was one of the songs they played at my dad’s memorial service, Fire and Rain.  And I was reminded yesterday that only with a forest fire do the tightly wrapped redwood pinecones open to spread their seeds.  We need both fire and rain to transform, it seems.

The family transforms.  Reconstruction on the house down the street is to add rooms for their kids.  Pounding and hauling, busy workmen, and piles of remnants make it a mess.  Shifts in families do that.  Loud huge garbage and recycling trucks block the road while they slowly lift off the streets what we do not want to keep.

So I leave on the street of my life that which I no longer want to keep: resentments, hurtful stories, debts, awkward moments, misunderstandings and years lost without connection.  The renovation of the family trucks in new children, bright open eyed faces that help us look forward instead of backward.  Photos of my mom as a child appear out of nowhere and I can add stories to her beauty for my kids.  Dad was good at adding details to the facts, which, he said “were not quite good enough by themselves.”

Dad had a million stories, if you could count them all.  Some burned up with him, and some will be nourished with thunderstorms of tears and rain.