The push-me pull-you magnetism of the desert

Tucson's brilliant high contrast blue skies, black shadows and pink adobe represent simultaneous allure and fear for me, a northern girl with an allergy to the sun.  Look at that alien cactus highlighted against that wall! (allure).  See the stripes of sunlight like burning coals between the shadows! (fear). I have a huge-brimmed hat and walk around in my light sleeveless linens with my arms wrapped tight around my shoulders, hugging its shade, attracting odd looks from the deeply tanned (and -- may I say it? -- leathery-skinned) Arizonans.

We are in Tucson, Arizona for an abbreviated visit (overnight).  We are here to attend the memorial service for beloved Aunt J-, who died last month. HomoDommi and Girl-child arrived as planned on Friday night; Mater, Peaceable and I (after a cancellation and scramble to find new plane tickets) arrived about half way through the service. But we came here for the people more than the ritual, anyway.

Mater and Uncle B- are now the last remaining members of the hearty and extroverted generation of my father's large family (aside from Aunt C-, still alive but unable to travel from her home in Indiana at the age of 98). Uncle B- was Pater's closest sibling (arguably -- it was a close family), the next youngest and nearest in age. Pater had to repeat second grade after missing half of it to stay in the hospital with Uncle B- as company with an extended bout of scarlet fever.  B- has the unique relation of being the baby of the family, still (at 82) referred to by his childhood sobriquet (B-by) by Mater and us, which makes him laugh.

I watched Uncle B- see Mater across the Fellowship Room at the church at the end of a long reception line after the service. The expression that crossed his face, the way he raised his arms high and wide in greeting, were the features and motions of my long-dead father. The rest of the day and evening, I followed him around like a puppy.

Over the hours, the resemblance faded -- the quantity of charisma is the same, but the quality is different. This is Uncle B's way of telling a story, rambling and funny and soft, not Pater's crowing punch line, accentuated with a sharp finger poke in the air.  We children thought of Pater as a twinkling sun in the sky, and Bis a more distant satellite -- the warmth is there, but he doesn't burn as bright. It crosses my mind that I'm not sure I remember how Pater would have acted in such a circumstance, and a wisp of panic shadows me -- can I possibly be forgetting him?