2000-10-27 - 21:20 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

String Of Pearls

Things happen stirring good memories and creating waves of contentment and joy, with a little sorrow mixed in here and there.

With me it started when I RSVP'd for a dinner party to celebrate my only male cousin's 80th birthday. I can remember now the haggle between -- us way back when, "I'm older'n you," he would say, and I would reply, "Yeah, but I'm bigger'n you." There is approximately six months difference in age -- then to me it was a huge difference, and I didn't like it and didn't like the fact there was no way to reverse the situation. Gradually over the years the difference seemed to narrow.

The two of us used to do the, "Red Skelton type of things, "If I do that I'm gunna get a whippin' - - - - - I'm gunna do it anyway." We were pretty deft in dodging the swats from the strop his mother wielded and acted very remorseful and cowed. We never tried any of that stuff at my house because my Dad usually seemed to know what we were going to try next and was a jump ahead, him, we could not dodge.

Cousin and I were in the same junior lodge, each of us holding an office therein and brothering together, going with the crowd of guys from our lodge and, remarkably behaving fairly well and having a good time. For a short time we even worked at the same place before life put a fork in the road.

World War Two put us in different places - he on the west coast working for, Lockheed I think and later being sent to North Africa, while I spent the War here in Denver working for the railroad. Returning from there he went to the Maritime (or whatever it was called) school and became a Merchant Marine and I worked on the railroad yet. We both married and had kids, the celebration for mine was very low key, and his kid was born while he was asea -- of course when he came home that called for a joint dad's celebration which started at the east end of Colfax Avenue and proceeding from bar to bar, drunkenly going west, we had fun and almost got to the west end of town out in Lakewood before giving up and going home to get ready for the huge hangovers we knew were looming over us like vultures.

He went back east for a few years, married his second wife (his first wife divorced him because he was afloat and not home all the time). While he was living back east his wife died and there was not much anyone could do for him but be there. Heather and I had our brood and stayed busy with them.

Then Heather, the kids and I spent ten years out of state and on our return not much visiting took place. He was an engineer and headed some of the power plant building in those days.

Lately (in the last five or six years) we began visiting again. There are three of us in town, him, his sister and me. We would visit and show each other pictures as people with kids do and have a good time catching up and having a pleasant gathering. A year or three ago there was a huge family reunion celebrating his sister's eightieth birthday, so he remarked that ours was not too far away and I asked him, "Did you ever think that we would get even this old ?" His reply was something like, "Didn't look like it for awhile."

So on that slender string of small family my pearls of friendships were spaced along the way. Friends came and went according to the whim of the world, very few ever returning but of great value on the string of family that held my world together behind me. The string was there but the beads would change now and then.

Then later tonight on Al Schroeder's - Nova Notes - forum a question was asked about what made us over emotional. I answered it and then disproved my answer by becoming what I would describe as over emotional and crying just a bit more than I thought I should. I counted the pearls on the string and remembered through the years while polishing each one and gently placing them in my memory treasure chest. The next time I open my treasure chest and look in there will maybe be one or more new beads on that pretty String Of Pearls.

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