Gentle Breezes

I have met so many people in my half-lifetime. People from all over this country and some from other continents even. People of color, creative people... hundreds, really. I have gotten to know a great many of the people I meet, too. The ones that I have been thinking about lately are those of age. My dad has always said that if you want to learn anything about anything talk to old people. I inherited his facsination with listening to old people talk. Only lately has it occured to me that he is one of them now.

This got me thinking about my favorites. I am not ashamed. I play favorites.

Ma Gould was a gentlewoman of 83 when I first met her. The mother of a drama director I once worked with. A sweet Jewish woman from upstate New York transplanted to Northern California to be with her two children and her grandchildren. She was so prim and sweet she reminded me of a decorated cake. I asked her lots of questions about her younger years because it seemed to be her favorite thing to reminisce. She'd get that moist look in her eye like the memories carried her back in time and she'd be gone for a little while, lost in the past but enjoying it all over again as if she were there. She always thanked me and made me promise to be a good girl. Her birthday was on May Day, I remember.

Opal Berry at 88 was my landlord for 8 months during my college years. She spent her whole time either in the kitchen cooking for her sister-in-law Louise who lived with her (they were both widowed by that time) or in her chair on the screen porch looking out on the street and talking away to whomever would sit and listen. She and her husband were the last to deliver newspapers by wagon to the towns around the lake where they lived. Her mother taught her how to bake bread at such a young age she had to stand on a step stool to reach the counter to knead the dough. Her parents graves were flooded when they moved the town to make the lake. I used to clean out her cutters and trim her hedges in exchange for baked goods. Her sons and daughter were lazy folks and she was always grateful for the help. I was the only person Louise would allow to trim her townails.

Charles Crockett was my dearest friend's grandpa. I liked to think he was my grandpa from time to time. I learned to do so many things watching him. He'd give me the sweetest hugs. I can clean horses hooves and cut lambs and cast a line and track a wild animal all thanks to him. He never really said much to me but he always had this way about him that made me feel like crawling up in his lap and drifting off to sleep.

There are so many, I don't hardly remember them all. I never kept in touch. It occurs to me, though, that they are gone now. They live in my memories but sometime when I wasn't paying attention they slipped off like the hint of a scent on a gentle breeze.

I miss them, yet.