Happy No. 46, Timm!

Can you pick out the birthday boy in this bunch of mad hatters?

Brother Will sent me the following batch of photos he found in a photo book dated Dec. 25, 1967. Will had a Polaroid camera -- perhaps he got it that Christmas -- and with it recorded our family life as he saw it back then.

Will would have been 12, me 10, Molly 7 and Timm 3. Dad and Mom would both have been 40.

The book was stashed away with other stuff, Will says; after Timm died he started going through old boxes, searching for pictures like these, as well as photos he took later on when he, too got the photography bug. (We blame it on Mom, who always had a camera at the ready, it seemed, and patiently waited for the photo she wanted to appear in the frame; most the color photos of Timm's childhood pix were taken by her).

Anyway, Timm, happy birthday with these blasts from the past. Remember, it was you who had proclaimed the permanent enchantment of childhood in the following:

RESIGNATION

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an ADULT. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an 8 year-old again.

I want to go to McDonald's and think that it's a four-star restaurant.

I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle. I want to see who can blow the biggest bubble. I want to think M&M's are better than money because you can eat them. I want to drink Kool-Aid,and eat lemonheads with my friends. I don't want to change clothes because I got a little dirty. I want to enjoy every day like it’s summer vacation. I want to return to a time when life was simple.

When all you knew were colors, multiplication tables and TV show theme songs, but that didn't bother you, because you didn't know what you didn't know and you didn't care. All you knew was to be happy because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset.

I want to think the world is fair. That everyone is honest and good. I want to believe that anything is possible. I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again, like a new Hot Wheel.

I want to live simple again. I don't want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more illness, and loss of loved ones.

I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination and mankind. I want to be in the roller derby and actually believe The Three Stooges are real.

So ... Here's my checkbook and my car-keys, my credit card bills and my 401K statements, my pager, my cell phone, my Palm Pilot, my fax machine and my DVD player, and last but not least my mortgage book. I am officially resigning from adulthood.

And if you want to discuss this further, you'll have to catch me first ...

Timm with Mom. I think this was on Christmas Day. The robes, I think, were gifts. So was the marionette horse hanging over Mom's left shoulder.

No doubt about this day. Timm, typically, hadn't bothered to wipe breakfast from his face before devouring his gifts.

A gather-round-the-pipe-organ-for-some-Christmas-carols moment. Dinner on Timm's face, everyone looking quite groomed. I'm grinning at the far left, but there is a note of wariness, wondering if brother Will's hand is going to fly back at me in a moment.

Dancing with Mom. We make quite the pair, eh? ...

... But nothing like Molly dancing with Daddy! I don't think a wider smile could be drawn on a child's face.

Timm -- or Timmy, as he was called then, with ever-present, ever-vigilant, ever-roped-into-the-picture Shep.

Molly, Timm and I with Sharon Cunningham, who was Dad's secretary when he was working with the Chicago Business Industrial Project, a church-funded attempt to get corporations to work like decent business citizens in the Chicago projects. All of that is clearly absent on our faces except for Sharon.

OK, now we're on vacation in Orlando, visiting the Hellinger's, Mom's sister's family. Aunt Flossie in the back of the boat, cousin mark, Molly, and Timm, who obviously would like to resign from all this safe, inside-the-boat activity.

Mom, Shep and Dad. Note the look of concern on Shep's face. Why are the animals always in the know before we are?

Sorry Mom! Blame it on Will, who sent the picture ... Mom here is multi-tasking in the kitchen, drying her hair and practicing folk songs she was learning at the Old Town School of Folk Music. She was quite the folkie in the late 1960s. I began to learn guitar on that one, substituting Grand Funk Railroad for Peter, Paul and Mary.

There I am in my room with my lonely accoutrements -- microscope (I loved 'scopes, also owning a telescope and stethscope), James Bond poster in the the rear and a London poster which I now can't figure out my fascination with. (Bondville?)

Timm showing off his Christmas threads.

Will sharing with Molly a sacred trust -- a round or two on the slot car course.

David, Shep, Timm. Timm and I both got the same fat in our early teens and then shot up. Much later, after we stopped getting any taller, we both got heavier. Timm lost a lot of that weight the year before he died; I keep piling it on.

Eating on TV tables before the TV. Obviously a big deal. Are those frozen TV dinners we're eating? I think we only got to eat before the TV when Mom and Dad were out for the night. I remember that milk glass in front of me, it had a 7-Up logo and was supposed to be shaped the opposite of a Coke glass. Whatever.

Molly. She was such a pretty girl, don't you think?

Timm with buddy Paul Roth, Shep, and an Eskimo kid, one of a number of Eskimo kids who were living with a nearby family.

Timm, Mom, Molly. They travelled far together.

Ah yes, that trombone. I took trombone lessons for about six months and gave up on it. I just couldn't disicipline myself to practice, and whenever I got frustrated trying to play something I would just blast as loud as I could on the thing, scaring half the house and making Shep bark.

The very bottom of a Charlie Brown poster is behind me -- you can just see Charlie's feet and some rain falling. An archetypal moment I so identified with.

Molly happily in front of a doll house she got for one Christmas, Timm happy because, well, probably because Will was shouting Cheese.

Shep with Ravel, Molly's first poodle.

Molly amid the spoils of Christmas.

Me outside with Shep. I think I got a telescope that Christmas, or a toy reel-to-reel tape recorder; because one night in the following January I went outside with both and recorded scientific observations of the night sky. On the recording you can hear the snot in my nose as I say, "The night is bitterly code ... the mood is full." Probably not much by way of a contribution to science, but my poetry sources back to such moments.

This is in Florida -- I recognize the grill in the background from our house in Winter Haven -- here's Timm quite happily aboard what appears to be a wagon.

Timm in the front yard of our Wesley Ave. house in Evanston, the morning after The Big Snow of '67, when three feet of snow fell overnight.

Timm playing in a public sandbox. Downtown Evanston, I'd guess.

A final picture of the kids plus? A friend of Will's probably. Me, Molly, Timm, Will, friend. Whenver my hair is slicked over like that I know we're doing something formal, about to. It could be a spring day -- May 4, say -- and the occasion could be ourr baby brother's birthday ... Happy birthday, Timm!