Who was I? Who are you!
By: Nancy Adams
Tags: Fathers, Lawyers, Beer, Reunion, Stories

Annie is at her dishes, eating her curds and whey, or in this case canned and dry cat food. Judge is at his ball, pushing it round and round so the kibble falls out. I am at a corner of the sun room, under a sun curtain. The plants occupy this in the winter. It is not winter. According to the calendar it is not winter. According to the blankets on the bed, it is winter. According to the blanket around me, it is winter. The light grey purple sky announces early morning, gently. The sun is not shining.

Through the glass, I hear the birds catching up on the night’s news. Eggs, babies, worm banquets in high grass, worm soup puddles, sodden insects on leaves, wet ant caviar. Lots to nibble. Lots to discuss. A night is a long time in bird years. The hawks, the eagle, the cats, the crows provide the front page political discussions they all agree about. They steer clear of the great debates of territory, tree, bush. They leave for another time the yours, mine, his, hers. They keep to subjects like the trip up from Florida, long, wet and cold this year. And the changes, not too many. What is the same…a lot.

I sat next to a close not friend at the High School Reunion on Saturday. We have a High School Reunion here in Forestville. Rumor has it we have the longest running High School Reunion in the state. All the classes are welcome, every year. The committee borrows tables from the Fire Department. Invitations are sent out. Scholarship recipients are chosen. Landmark classes get their acts together, or don’t. A menu, a simple menu, is chosen. Everyone wears a name tag. I thank heavens that everyone wears a name tag.

It was a big day in Forestville. Not just the Reunion, but also the All Village Tag Sale. Up and down the street, kids clothes, kids toys, old furniture, cars parked by the road, tents and awnings and canopies and tarps again the rain. Or not. One poor place had an elegant dress, drenched, dripping, moving slowly in the wind.

It was a big day in Forestville. The Fire Department Boot Drive captured the traffic as it came over the Walnut Creek Bridge. A fire fighter looking proud in the all terrain rescue vehicle. Other fire fighters looking proud as they held their boots for donations. Cars stopping, laughing, dropping bills into the boots. The Fire Department chicken dinner sold out.

I sat next to my close not friend at the High School Reunion. Her father worked with my father. Her husband was the brother of a classmate of mine. She has friends who have friends who are my friends. She sort of, more or less, knows the story of my family. I sort of, more or less, know the story of hers. And not. Her husband died this year, a long and difficult dying. The noise of the room was too high to begin that subject. She began another. My Dad’s Saturday office hours, and her Dad’s, in the little law office, with two rooms divided by a safe, a huge safe, with a lock that had not worked for 50 years or so.

Saturday office hours at the law office were for the farmers. There were farms around here then. Dairy farms up every road, herds on every hill. In the good soil around here – there wasn’t much good soil – the truck farms, tomatoes, berries. Vineyards, orchards. Lots of farmers. A few of the farms supported their families well. Even then a lot of the families supported the farms instead. The moms were teachers. The dads drove school buses, or were milkmen. The kids all had chores. Heavy chores. Barn work.

Saturday office hours at the law office were busy. And messy. The boots came straight from the barns, or the fields, and the haying, and the plowing. The farmers were a tall, fair, ruddy group, mainly. Good looking, shy, stubborn. It was a vocation for the stubborn.

My close not friend’s father might have been stubborn. I think he was stubborn. What he was was an excellent audience. When someone told a story he laughed. And another story brought more laughter. After Saturday office hours were over, he and my Dad walked back her to the house. There, by the table, sat one. Over there, where the island used to be, on a stool, sat the other. Up there, on the shelf, those two mugs, came down, and two Genesee’s came out. The tops were popped and the mugs were filled, just the right amount of foam, and Dad would take a long drink, and then wipe the foam off his mustache. And sigh. And tell a story and laugh.

The stories were old chestnuts of stories, pulled out again and again, like old songs, familiar words, to be sung. No call for variety. For change. For unfamiliar. For a new story. The old stories were told again and again. Judge Fancher…the client who was half a millionaire. The ‘you ought to know, Lee, you was my lawyer’ stories. We didn’t write them down. Why should we? We would hear them again in a week or so.

«My mother wasn’t so happy that my father stayed so late on saturdays at your house,» my close not friend told me. Now that was news. A novel idea. That the kitchen wasn’t the center of the universe, the promised land, the place that if you were here, it couldn’t get any better than that? I didn’t know what to say. I did know what to say. «I wish we had tape recorded those stories,» I said, and that she agreed with.

The bird’s early morning reunion discussions are over. Tomorrow, a year in bird time, next year, a year in human time, another reunion. Only of course it will feel like tomorrow. And at the reunion it will feel like yesterday. Maybe someone will remember a story. Maybe someone else will laugh. The boots will be high with dollar bills. The chicken dinner will be sold out. The all village tag sales will have new merchandise, or maybe this year’s merchandise, trotted out again. Probably not the dress, though. The dress, at least, will be history.

Merv has poured me another cup of coffee. Annie and Judge are napping , their first nap of the day. It is still not raining! Good morning!