Party like it's 1975 going on 2008

This picture of Dad, Timm and myself was, I believe, taken on New Year's Eve 1975, at a small Italian restaurant over Blue Mountain from Dad's place in Pennsylvania. Timm would be 11, me 18. We were celebrating the New Year as we could, out from the rural dark of Columcille (it had only begun to raise up out of the forest) into the bright cheer of a local dig. We'd drank some champagne, slipping Timm a glass or two -- that, plus the chance to stay up with the boys, produces the happy glow on Timm's face.

This would be just a year after the family went in every direction away from Chicago, Dad to New York and then to Pennsylvania, me to Spokane for college, Timm to Florida with Mom and Molly. Probably our first re-union. We all have wounds, but the champagne makes us smile. It reminds me that there was laughter and merriment along the way.

This is a rare photo of the three of us - in all of Timm's 47 years, we us squeezed into the frame together only a few times -- yet it holds something there, diverse histories joined by blood and temperament. From what I've heard about Timm, he was a lot like Dad, a leader, speaker, organizer, a man of programs and ideas.

Like me, Timm traveled far West to build his own identity, perhaps continuing the O'Cobhthaigh Irish legacy of Westwarding evolution. (Our paterfamilias John O'Cobhthaigh sailed from Cork to Boston Harbor in 1778). And like me, Timm reached a far-enough-western state of soul to eventually look homeward. (That backward glance took a lot longer to settle on his face.)

The three of us share a love of origins - tales of beginning, whether from the stars or the sea or the native population . That love took us to very different places, but something essentially the same resides here in this photo, a shared smile, a gleam in the eye.

Later this month I'll be stopping by Columcille on the way back from a conference. It will be the first time I've seen Dad since Timm passed away, the first opportunity I'll have to see where Timm's ashes are buried in the Columcille Chapel. I look forward to singing with my father in that stone room, our voices perhaps resonant enough to catch Timm's faraway baritone. And sing together again.