West Texas

Tragedy struck the small west Texas town where Jeff grew up this past week. One of his classmates lost his father to long-time illness. Another classmate's younger sister unbelievably and unexpectedly died in childbirth. In a town of fewer than 1000 people, one death in the community makes an impact, but two rocks it to its core. Even though Jeff hasn't returned to Wink too many times in the last few years or kept in close contact with most of his classmates, we felt strongly that we needed to be there for these two memorial services on Saturday. So, we left the kids with Jeff's parents early Saturday morning and headed west. It was wonderful for Jeff to have an opportunity to reconnect with the people and places of his past and for me to get to be there with him, though we would have much preferred to do that under different circumstances.

Between the memorials, Jeff took me on a comprehensive, street-by-street tour of Greater Wink. And later in the day, after leaving Wink, he took me out to the Monahans Sandhills State Park, which proved to be a special, unexpected treasure.

We are hoping to plan some sort of reunion with Jeff's class of 26 sometime soon, and we hope to take the kids out there, so they might also might have an opportunity to connect with these unique people and places that are indirectly shaping their lives in some ways.

Silhouettes in the sand

The Sandhills

Meanwhile, the kids enjoyed some time in the redneck pool at Mimi and Grandpa's house