Tio Stib's Blog

 

I have an extra something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Day. I’m going to meet the older sister I never knew I had.

How could this be? I thought I was the oldest kid in the family with two younger brothers. My mother never told me otherwise. Our father disappeared before (I entered elementary school and no one else in the family ever offered a clue that another sibling existed.

But this past Spring, my brother submitted a DNA sample to a genealogy company. To his surprise, the results came back with “you have a sister match.”

It seems that our mother and father got pregnant when she was fifteen. I suspect there was family pressure on the father’s side to put the baby up for adoption. And so, the child was parented by a loving couple in eastern Washington. My mother never said anything about this to her subsequent sons.

Her name is Judee and by the sound of her voice in recent Zoom calls, she’s quite a pleasant person. My nieces say she looks a lot like their grandmother, who passed away years ago. Admittedly, I’m a bit bewildered by this sibling surprise, but I’m boarding a plane with my Benicia family on thanksgiving morning and by evening, I’ll have a face to face meeting with my long lost sister and a hug that has been waiting to happen for many, many years.

Add this to so many other things I am grateful for and this holiday is proving to be quite memorable.

May you have all the joy and blessings that thanksgiving can bring and let’s each do our best to help others enjoy the holiday.

Tio Stib aka Uncle Steve

It’s my birthday and somehow, someway, I’ve managed to make it to 77

77 years of living on Planet Earth.

Unbelievable. I’m stupefied. How could I have survived so many reckless adventures, moments of farcical stupidity, when countless smarter, more practical people have perished?

Somehow I’ve beaten the odds, but it defies logic.

Oh, make no mistake, I very much appreciate my continued existence. I drink in mouthfuls of fresh air on my morning walks along the seashore. I savor the explosion of tastes biting into Chico’s super burrito. I lie in bed before sunrise thanking whatever gods are watching over me for the blessings that keep on filling my days.

but 77. That’s a big number, a lot bigger number than I ever dreamed of saying out loud on my birthday. And, strangely, I don’t feel what part of me thinks 77 should be feeling. Yes, blindness has kept me from noticing the aging signs in the bathroom mirror so all I can measure aging by is what the body can still do without much help.

Most everything thank you, with no accompanying creaks and groans. that said, I do admit to frequent nighttime trips to the loo which were not necessary in younger years.

Here’s hoping I won’t hyperventilate trying to blow out all those candles.

Best wishes to all for a joyful Thanksgiving holiday

Yours to count on,

Tio Stib aka Uncle Steve

as morning tickled consciousness
I felt the bliss of nothingness
no cares
no pains
no trains to mis

one eye peeked out
and check the day
the sun screamed back

c’mon
let’s play

a choir of birds
sang from the trees
my only thought was
silence please

the voice of guilt
rang through my head
it’s time, your laziness
get out of bed

this voice was buried in a flash
by memories of my recent past
the years of running for the door
pushing self
do more
do more

then in a fit of selfish glee
I pulled the covers over me
I choose to hide inside my dreams

to feel once more
the peaceful bliss
of pure and simple
nothingness

tio stib

do I miss her laughing voice
yes
my heart cries out
straining to hear her call in the silence

do I miss the rose petal scent of her softness
yes
each breath aching to know her once more

do I miss the way she tossed her hair
her playful smile that said
I’m beautiful

do I miss her reaching out
to take my hand
to dance with me
in blissful oneness

yes

with every heartbeat
but mostly

I miss her whispering
lips kissing mine

mio


tio stib

struggling against sleepiness
I strain to touch you
to kiss the smile calling me
from a delirium of dreams

but you fade
slipping into moonlight mist

lost again in the scent of midnight jasmine


tio stib

at first you think
that’s strange
she must be distracted

the repeated question
the forgotten moment
it’s just not her

but things keep happening
shoes on wrong feet
pants on backwards
toilet paper wadded up in drawers
she can’t count to ten
she wants to walk over to mom’s house
but mom lives in a another country

the oddities keep coming
until
now
after days
weeks
months
of little deaths

she sits
vacant
wordless

gone


tio stib

the child stopped
looked up from her coloring book
turned
and asked her blind uncle

tio
do I need to stay inside the lines“

he stared at what he could not see
and said

how small do you want to be

she smiled
feeling free

tio stib
2015, 2025

There are doors
that want to be free
from their hinges to
fly with perfect clouds. 

There are windows
that want to be
released from their
frames to run with
the deer through
back country meadows. 

There are walls
that want to prowl
with the mountains
through the early
morning dusk. 

There are floors
that want to digest
their furniture into
flowers and trees. 

There are roofs
that want to travel
gracefully with
the stars through
circles of darkness.

Richard Brautigan, 1968

Ever since this poem by Richard Brautigan, an American counter culture poet of the turbulent 1960’s, floated through my mind, these words have been the image of my ideal American house, and I’ve even had a few homes that nearly matched this poem’s magic..

tio stib, 2016

breathing in
scents
of fallen
rose petal
secrets

Unwrapping
tied up
boxes
of lost
memories

Waiting
while tear drops
melt
the masks in the mirror

Knowing
as these layers
of delusions and illusions
melt away

my truth
is being
revealed

Tio Stib,
1995, 2018, 2025

Ego is upset today
I wouldn’t let him out to play

sometimes he thinks he is the king
and disagrees with everything

he worships his own point of view
scoffs at ideas that are new

at his worst
he’s quite the boor
and then I shove him
out the door

now locked away
inside my mind
I hope
he will become
more kind


tio stib