In addition to reading this poem, I was asked to speak a few words about family. Mike was my uncle.
This poem speaks to me of finding and accepting who you are, because of (or in spite of) the face, the name, the family you are given. It is about acceptance.
There is a famous quote by Leo Tolstoy. I think it is the opening line of Anna Karenina. I am paraphrasing: "Every happy family is exactly the same. But each unhappy family is unhappy in its own unique way." I like this quote. But I don't really think it's true. I think ALL families are unhappy in some way. But that doesn't make them bad, or wrong. It just makes them real. It gives shape and contour to the mask of the face you are given.
When I was a kid, just a child, we had some pictures of Mike around the house. Not many, but a few. By the time I was in grade school, Mike had already embarked on his adventures to the great Pacific Northwest. But he is family, so there were some pictures around, stuffed in drawers here and there... of the revered Uncle Mike A. Ball.
My favorites, of course, were the ones with me in them, as a toddler. Mike, a handsome 20-something guy in the late sixties with big black rimmed glasses. Us on my grandparents living room floor. Mike trying to teach me to take a football handoff at the age of two.
As I became an adult, these images of my mythical Uncle Mike loomed large in my mind - in my imagination. Mike the Potter. Mike the Artist. Mike the Adventurer. Mike.... the one who finally escaped Texas. And then, after 20 years of mythologizing Mike in my mind, I came to Duvall. To know him. To meet all of you, and become a part of this community. To take my own voyage with him. To accept the offering of my family - which makes me who I am - that gives me this face.
And Mike embraced me. He gave me purchase on this limb - lifted me high into the branches of my family tree, and guided my feet as I climbed. And then he let me go, to see where I might fall.
Mike is/was/became the waves of my voyage, carrying my ship across the decades of time to meet and know my own family. He pointed me towards the rings of my own family tree.
His brothers - my uncle and father.
His father and mother - my grandparents.
His grandparents - my great-grandparents.
These are all parts of the face I was given, the mask of myself which I have chosen over nothingness. Embraced through pain. Triumphed over emptiness. His face - Mike Ball's face - is my face, which like an old watch I will carry wherever I go.
And as I continue my own Journey, Mike will always be floating down the river with me.
I love you Mike.