Yesterday, you may have noticed there was no post. It is rare that I don’t post my daily blog. Since I started the blog, I only missed one other—Valentine’s Day. I would say, “For obvious reasons,” but it would not be an honest statement. On Valentine’s Day, I hit the wrong switch in the software and well, just missed a day.
I missed yesterday for truly legitimate reasons. My best friend’s father passed and I was with them.
Yesterday we were at their house, a place that is also an anchor in my life. Last night, we were up late talking about all kinds of things from our lifetimes, which intermeshed with one another and went back over five decades.
What a strange feeling it was to be in my friend’s juvenile bedroom. It was a place of sibling shenanigans—shenanigans which were always getting us into trouble and stretching parental nerves. We were children then, and we dreamed dreams, we learned things others did not, could not, or were not interested in (yes, I guess we were nerds).
As we stood in my friend’s bedroom talking about grownup things, now with his 25-year-old son, I looked around. As with other things in my life, at the time the room seemed large. Now, it was small.
I thought of those times from long ago; the discussions that went far beyond the topics of what typical teenagers discussed. When most teenagers were talking about sports, girls, and the mundane details of life, we discussed dinosaurs, space travel to include Mars, Saturn, and other places beyond our solar system. We talked of aerodynamics and flying and it was my friend who introduced me to World War I aircraft, creating my penchant for that period in aviation history. He also introduced me to Alberto Santos-Dumont and his creation of the Demoiselle.
My friends were all much better read than I and consequently, they were very naturally gifted writers. Much better writers than I could ever hope to become. I realized this one day when I read my friend’s composition about red sneakers stuck in a closet talking to one another…thought I had forgotten about that, didn’t you. No, I have not. Never will.
I remember when we turned 18, I introduced the boys to flying real airplanes. I can still remember the look of horror on the faces of their parents. I took their precious boys out to a place where they could learn how to fly in rickety 25-year-old steel tube and fabric airplanes. And on top of that, the flight instructor was a 71-year-old man.
Yeah, I think I was on their list for quite a while after that.
But I was always welcomed into their home.
Until we meet again, Papa…
-30-
© 2011 J. Clark
Sorry for your loss and your friend’s loss. I remember similar discussions with my best friend about what we would be doing when we were 25 years old. At that time we were 12. Now I am twice the age we were talking about and wondering the same..Where has the time gone?