Requiem

The year is winding down.  And I've noticed that '11 turned out to be a time to reflect on the past a bit for random reasons, time to think back to what it was like to be part of a family in the last century.  Feeling a little antique here, but it's been good to remember.

Remembering those people.  Kind of fun, kind of tender.  One memory leading to another.  One person to the next.  One photo offering up a disappeared world of smiles that no longer light up this one.  Those priceless long ago faces.  Faces that didn't linger around nearly long enough.  And wouldn't you know they belonged to some of the best people!  Isn't that the way it goes?

As a young girl, I remember my Mom wistfully mention her cousin Dale, recalling how he was the absolutely nicest guy in the world.  Too nice, apparently, for his own Father's world at that time.  So he got professional help for Dale in order to adjust some, I guess, toughen up.  Man up, Dale.  Who knows what pressures a gentle soul could face, especially back when?  In his early 20s Dale had a little accident while cleaning a gun, they said.  My Mom's eyes got faraway and her voice soft the few times she ever mentioned his premature death.

But I was young and so were MY cousins.  We had never known him, so what did that have to do with us?  Not much. Too busy playing, too busy living.  We didn't grow up spending lots of time together, but we'd horse around a few times a year---at Grandma Lukey's for Christmas, for instance, at Grandma Lucy's for Thanksgiving.  I had a handful of cousins on both my Mom's side and my Dad's side.  Just enough to keep it from ever getting dull at the get togethers.  Maybe not a Norman Rockwell painting, but then again, that's exactly what it all seemed to be to me.

Peggy was a year or two younger than me, and she was always "on" at Grandma Lukey's---witty, vibrant, all grins.  She and her older sister, Vicky, set the pace.  And it was fun!  But those days are long gone.  Life happens, things change.  Hers became complicated, difficult.  Until the smiles had nowhere to go anymore, and on New Year's Eve, a month before she would turn 40, the wit and vibrancy, the resiliency she had summoned for untold years...fled.  And she left this world behind.

My cousin Jimmy, however, made it into his 50s.   Jimmy was on my Dad's side of the family.  Such a bright kid...top of his graduating class, good solid career as an Engineer.  Grandma was so proud of him.  You could have bet a lot of money on him having a successful life.  Good odds.  Even had a family, 3 kids.  He seemed to have it all.  For awhile.  Then.  Over time.  Divorce, Diabetes, Depression.  Damn.

I look at these old photos.  Happy innocent faces.  Who knew?  I miss them.

I miss them.

When I Grow Up

JOYCE SHOLES

Sophisticated.
Intelligent.
Classy.
And so much more.
My Aunt Joyce.

She'd put on make up every day and tailored knit suits and heels and catch the bus to downtown where she'd manage an insurance office.  She was the essence of glam, in my book, the soul of independence.  And I wanted to be just like her when I grew up.  Once I figured out on paper how I could do exactly that-I'd just have to make $50/week to fill those shoes!  Dream on!

Despite being a single career woman, or maybe because of that, she had time for us kids, her 10 nieces and nephews.  Some of that would be just letting us listen to records up in her room or hide and play in the back of her mystery of a closet in the old house she shared her whole life with my Grandparents.  Maybe work a little in the yard with her.  But once in awhile she'd take one of us into Chicago to see a real live play ("Oklahoma" for me), or on a trip (the shores of Lake Michigan for a few days once, another time my first trip out West-to the Rockies!)

Besides introducing us to the magic of popular music, she loved to read and shared that as well.  Somehow when she would read "The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" to me, I remember I would get wildly  hysterical every single time about the Heffalump, and it was then and there that I fell forever in love with Eeyore.

Joyce didn't seem to have a sentimental bone in her body, at least not overtly.   I can't ever imagine her talking baby talk to a baby, but she WAS genuinely interested in us goofy kids and patient with our silly ways.  Never felt judged by her.  While she unconditionally accepted us, she still had high expectations of our minds... talking to us about ideas, books, life.  She just treated us with respect, like miniature adults.

On that trip to the Rockies, I went with her and her friend to Colorado and then on to Yellowstone as a 13 year old wannabe world traveler.  One lesson she taught me was at the Bali Hai Motel in Denver.  I had taken a stroll around the grounds that evening and came back distraught because I had heard a group of people loudly laughing at me.  Of all the nerve!  She looked me in the eye and calmly said, "They're not laughing at you.  You're not that important."  Like that, the Universe shifted.  I stopped being the center of it.  The woman had power, I tell you.

A few days later we were in the Tetons at the base of a mountain where climbers were rappelling up.  I had been in love with the idea of mountains ever since the first book I read about the West had claimed my soul, and I was thrilled just to be there.  Then suddenly it wasn't enough.  I just HAD to climb!  I don't think I even had to say a word, Joyce just nodded to me and I scrambled up like a billy goat.  No, like a mountain goat!  Racing the real mountain climbers with all their gear.  She understood somehow and didn't hold me back.  Who else would have done that?  Pretty sure I couldn't have done that any other way, at least not in such an exhilarating one.  I felt capable, grown up.  Like that, the Universe shifted.  I became part of it.  

She taught me life lessons like that and gave me those kind of gifts that last a lifetime.  I am so much the richer for having had such a woman in my life.  So unbelievably grateful.

When I grow up, I'd still like to be like her.