Saint Branson

I believe I have mentioned in the past that Branson attends Catholic school. If I didn't, well he does. And as it happened, at some school function he was awarded the role of a certain saint. Carmen could not remember which saint.

To me, the answer was easy: Saint Branson! 

Well, look - it says right there in Carmen's picture - St. Ferdinand.

Text added at 4:46 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 45 and counting.

Portrait of a young hockey player, young artist

This is he, Branson Starheim, eight-year-old son of Carmen and her late husband Scot, who I promised to shoot a portrait of tonight. I didn't arrive until near the end of the game, so I did not see Branson score the first goal of a contest that ended in a tie, 2–2. He gets out there to rough it up with 10-year-olds who are much larger than him. He is also the artist who created the the brightly colored, lively, cross held in the hands of his mother in the photo I posted earlier today from Metro Cafe. I am told that at a recent game, Branson made the sign of the cross, looked up, gestured upward with his hand and then skated onto the ice to play this game for his dad, to whom he had just sent his love.

Text added at 8:57 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues.

Carmen remembers the burglary - and the tears that flowed at the last hockey game her husband ever got to watch their son play

I back up to this morning, just after Shoshana served my coffee to me. Carmen came in. I had hoped we might have a nice chat, but all sorts of people kept coming in – Amanda the hockey mom; Jay, my fellow pilot and lover of airplanes, Ollie Kent, Carmen's four-year-old neighbor who came with his mom; others whose names I do not know. Some of the talk was about the burglary, and how violated Carmen and Shoshana felt to have had someone smash his way into their space, and then snoop about doing whatever he wanted in there.

Here, Carmen describes a much more joyful moment, yet a moment ringed in a halo of deep sadness. It was Branson's final hockey game of the past season – for state championship - and the last his father would ever see him play. His father knew it, too.

Branson's team was one goal behind and the game was drawing to a close. With just seconds to go, little Branson knocked in the tying score. Tears flowed from his father's eyes – tears of joy, of pride, of gratitude; tears of sorrow and of longing for all those future games death would force him to miss. Tears flowed from the eyes of all of Branson's teammates and their parents. Only Branson did not cry. His father had taught him to be strong and he was going to be.

They lost the state championship in overtime, but this could not diminish that special moment Branson had given to his team, his mother and his dying father.

In search of freedom and mischief, boys pour out the window of Metro Cafe

I pulled up to the drive-through at Metro and boys started pouring through the window.

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Scot's funeral - the sun shone warm and bright

From the day he died until this day, May 28, the day of his funeral, I had been thinking about Scot

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