Jan. 22, 2003 - 18:34 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Retro-mems

Sometimes I wonder what made me the way I ended up being -- or almost ended. Got a few left to go, seconds, minutes, days, months or years. But by now I am out of the mold and set solid in the air.

Seems as if my life and character are a combination of what I learned formally and from the people I met, rubbed up against and admired their philosophy and way of living.

Heather and I a few days ago visited a lady I knew before I met her. Heather actually was her baby sitter. Another story.

The lady we visited is Donna. Her husband and I became friends just after I started to work for the railroad during World War Two. I was a seal checker and he was a yard office clerk which brought us together maybe twice a night. We became friends enough that I was invited to his house for dinner occasionally. His wife Donna I found out when we visited the other day is only two years older than I am. At the time I met her, a married woman with two babies managing to live on the small money that was made back then seemed much older than I and of course wiser. In a lot of ways she still is wiser and the same gap remains in our ages. .

My friend died some years back and she became a widow. We managed to keep in touch periodically just to catch up, just like it always had been through the years. We had occasionally visited each other when our schedules and health permitted, in that time we had spent ten years in Florida but on our return picked up where we left off.

She raised four fine children through the travails of time and circumstance in a way that deserves a medal I think.

A little stage setting here. The family moved to a house new to them, a step up as it were. More room and things like that. At the back of the house in the yard was an old well, in disuse for many,many years topped by a slab of concrete with an opening about manhole size that one sees in the street. It had been used as an ashpit for maybe generations of folk.

The kids had been warned to stay clear of it for fear that they would fall in and get smothered in the ashes. Unbelievably it was their little girl who fell in while at play while pushing her doll buggy. Her Dad came out the back door just as she went in and rushed to see if he could pull her out. He reached down and managed to get her by the hair of her head, which was as much as he could reach of her.

She was horribly burned from the armpits down, the ashes below the cool top were still hot. For many months she was in the hospital in serious condition. Over a great period of time many pinpoint grafts were applied and finally took hold. After she got out of hospital there were times she had to go back in. The family's bill for doctor and hospital was astronomical.

We remember visiting there and having a meal with them. It was adequate nourishment, but sparse. No matter to Heather and I, it was the visiting we loved. Over the years Donna and her husband struggled to cover the hospital and medical bills. It was an amazing labor of love that Donna and her husband persued and managed to raise their kids in a loving and safe home through all the sacrifices that had to be made.

From the beginning of my friendship with Bill, Donna's husband, I looked up to him as a mentor. He was wiser, more experienced and patient with the world and circumtances. He cooled my hot head with calm advice many times. We had deep discussions on a wide area of life, books, music and of course the day to day working philosophy he had.

So to Heather and I, Donna and Bill were the role models for what we wished to become and didn't think we could even come close.

He went into the military for a time and came out with the ability to take college courses under the GI Bill to finish up his education. On his return from service they told us one day that Donna was pregnant again. A very dreadful state of affairs it seemed. But Donna's pregnancy and consequent baby in a way enabled them to knock the hospital and medical bills down to a manageable level. Her body produced enough milk to feed the baby plus a bunch and she stayed fresh for a long time enabling her to send much of her milk out to the hospital, which paid her a good amount for it and it was applied to the bills.

Bill finished College and began teaching school and in the summers he worked for the Forest Service near where they lived. In the niches of time available Bill built a cabin in the nearby mountains and they moved up there, living in the first small cabin while he built the big one a bit up the hill. All on his own. In the meantime Donna continued to keep house, raise kids and remarkably found the time to be herself and enjoy things.

The last we saw Bill was when he and Donna came to the wedding of our middle daughter at our house.

Bill of course was my idol, mentor and good friend. He died a few years ago while they were on a trip to California to visit one of their kids. Just didn't wake up one morning in the motel. Amazingly Donna made her own life, sold the cabin for a goodly sum and moved back to town.

She became friends with a man of means and when he proposed marriage she acquiesed, with the provision that it would be a friendly partnership rather than a marriage of love. He thought so much of her that he agreed and they married. Bought a condo in a high rise, combined their furniture and have lived happily ever since.

I would hope that it would be something like this for Heather if I was taken. We are, like Donna well beyond the age for breathless romance and I would wish for her to be happy with a man in her life.

Donna has aged, obviously. She has managed to age a year for every 365 days and suffers some of the disabilities of age, shingles and arthritis. She is 83 and moving around albiet a bit slowly, as I do.

So all through my more or less adult life Donna and Bill have been the folks we have tried to emulate. We still love and admire her lovely gray head and what is in it as well as what is in her heart.

So I think that they have had a great deal to do with how I came to be as I am.

Fondly I have once again gone into Retro-mems . . . . . . . . .

Blog