This blog post is just a short report on a personal topic. Trail Guy and I attended a 99th birthday party for his great uncle. The invitation came over the phone, so I didn’t hear the address or the time. I knew Great Uncle lived next door to a friend’s house, which I drew a number of years ago, figuring that Trail Guy had the address in his head or written somewhere.

He asked me what time we needed to leave because I wanted to do two errands while we were down the hill. I thought that because it was a lunch party that it was at noon, so I did some calculating, built in a little buffer, and said “quarter to eleven”.

After the second errand, he said, “Now what do you want to do?” I said, “We have the right amount of time to find the house, because we don’t know which side of our friend they live on”. Indeed, more than plenty, because the party was at one! Oops.

I thought he had the address, and he thought I knew the time.

So we went to CACHE and spent some time looking at the exhibits and the art.

When we decided to head toward the party, I followed my memory to the house I had drawn. Alas, it had been 15 years, and the signature birch trees which were to be my landmark were nowhere to be seen. We drove around the block, and then parked near the house that I was fairly certain was the right one. (Silly me, all that assuming, and I even didn’t look at the drawing first either—simply relied on memory). A neighbor came out on one side and asked if we were lost. Turns out that we weren’t lost after all; the party house was on the other side of the house that I remembered. By then, all we had to do was watch to see where cars pulled up with people we knew.

Great Uncle’s wife of perhaps 10 years read a sweet poem she wrote, and then Great Uncle recited a poem he wrote. What a story: engaged, then broke up because he didn’t want to leave a fiancé behind when he served in WWII. They married other people, and when both were widowed, they reunited and finally got married.

After the toasts and poetry, Trail Guy and I joined up with his favorite cousin outside. Favorite Cousin’s son had driven his mom and her husband to the reunion. He and I sat on the edge of the pool with our feet in the cold water and got acquainted. He was a delight to talk with! He said something profound, that first he attributed to Banksy, and then after looking it up (EVERYONE has a phone), we decided his version was clearer and simpler.

Everyone wants to be an artist, but no one wants to learn to draw.

-Cousin Jake

P.S. Happy Birthday, Laurie!