And God planted a tree in the midst of the garden

I don't mean in the Garden of Eden. I mean on the hill behind our house. This crape myrtle tree (or crepe myrtle tree, if you prefer) suddenly grew this year where one never had grown before.

Whether a seed was carried by the wind or dropped by a passing bird I have no idea. I only know we had no pink blossoms there before and now we do. It's a small miracle, an unexpected gift, and we are grateful.

For some reason I cannot fathom, the sudden appearance of the new crape/crepe myrtle put me to thinking about my Dad’s family. You remember my Dad -- I blogged about him earlier this month. When this photo of him was taken back in 1963 he was 57 years old:

That photo is cropped from a larger picture that was made on the day Mrs. RWP (okay, Ellie) and I were married. Here's proof:

Ellie's parents are on the left. On the right are my Dad and his third wife Mildred, my stepmother. My mother had died five years earlier.

Here he is at the right of another photo that was made in the mid-1930s in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. On the left are Dad's parents, Elmer and Edith Brague. The young man behind them is either Dad's oldest brother Art or his brother Leo. The woman at Dad's side is his first wife, Hildred (with an H, not an M), a woman I didn't know existed until I was an adult. My mother, Ruth, was Dad's second wife, in-between Hildred and Mildred. Ted Brague was not my biological father but he was the only one I ever knew.

Dad was the youngest of five brothers -- Art, John, Leo, Dan, and my dad Clifford Ray, known as both Ray and Ted but never as Clifford. Go figure. Stranger things have happened, I'm sure.

Here is Uncle Art's family in the mid to late 1940s. He is with his wife Anna and daughters Shirley, Peggy, Isobel, Barbara, and Sandra. The oldest child, a son, Dick, was already married by this time.

Uncle Dan died of a brain tumor at age 32. In the photograph below are Uncle Leo, Grandpa Elmer, and Uncle Dan's widow, Leila, with Dan's children Evelyn and Donald. Leila later married again and the children became Routsons instead of Bragues.

Here is Uncle John with his family -- wife Martha on the left, and daughters Elaine, little Daveen, and Trudy (really Gertrude). On the right in the traditional Ted Brague spot is Grandpa Elmer. This photo is probably from around 1938-1940 after Grandma Edith (also called Lillian) had passed away.

Here's another picture of Uncle John's girls with their mother. By the time I met Uncle John in 1962, Martha had been long since divorced and he was married to Gladys.

Here's another photo of Uncle Dan's family (Leila, Evelyn, and Donald).

And this post happened all because of this:

P.S. -- In the fall of 1966, three years after the wedding photo was made, my Dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died five months later on March 3, 1967, a couple of months before his 61st birthday. At the time of his death he weighed about 90 pounds.

P.P.S. -- It occurs to me that perhaps I have been like a tree planted in the midst of the Brague garden. Or not. I must think on this further.