The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Slow motion swimming in
the blender of time

Finally having a little money in hand this weekend (Christmas bonus finally getting in-hand after 3 on Friday) and some breathing room (having gotten an obligation out of the way and getting a reprieve on a project at work) I set about doing some shopping.

Almost any other year I'd start setting Christmas presents aside back in September - possibly earlier - but not this year. Still, some online shopping this morning solved much of that, and a very loose, solo shopping day took me closer. My usual Christmas shopping mode sees me wandering the Earth, finding likely gifts and setting them aside. This late in the game that doesn't work well, and the more prosaic checklist approach is in order. That takes much of the fun out of it for me, but I've bent somewhat in that direction out of necessity.

I did at least one good deed today, taking advantage of the Blue Bell post office having some unusual operating hours on a Sunday to send something along almost certainly on behalf of a stranger's Christmas. See, my wife had ordered a CD from an online vendor, and the vendor accidentally printed out two labels with my wife's info on them. Consequently, aside from the CD she ordered Saturday's mail contained a second envelope, this one with a Tom Petty CD in it. Also inside was the name and address of the person who actually ordered it, so I put it in a Priority Mail box and sent it off to its proper destination. It's what I'd want someone else to do if they accidentally received something meant for me, so it's the only action I was comfortable with. I'm just selfish enough to hope that this counts as karmic seeding.

While I was back in my old stomping grounds -- hitting some stores I don't get to often while I wove my way back for a visit with my mom -- I found myself heading away from Bensalem towards Levittown on a road with a cemetary on one side. I've only been in that particular cemetary once, back in 2002 when the remains of a father of a very long-term friend were laid to rest back on a hot June day. I've been on that road a few times in the past two years, but generally it was with too pressing a schedule, too late in the day, and/or with one of my sons with me, so I didn't make the time.

Mr. White became close to a surrogate father to me when I was young - my own father away in the service, and then simply away - and the family even took me on some vacations back in the late '60s. During the years Bob and I hung out - we became friends when we were 5, and except for a period of a year or so where they moved too far away for easy contact - through the end of the '60s and most of the '70s before our lives took us in different enough directions that aside from a week in '83 I visited him in England (he was stationed there, with the Air Force) and then down in the Washington DC area in '84 (post-military) we've fallen almost entirely out of contact.

Old friends, childhood friends, they're ones who can become important again much later in life. At least that's what I've read from time to time. We'll see. Barring a significant change of heart and habit for one of us it would be a real Odd Couple relationship, as he developed into a smoker who in many ways went over to the Right from the Reagan era on. Maybe he'll snap out of it or I'll drop acid. Time will tell that tale... or it'll tell another. I'm not the boss of Time.

Today I found myself in the right place, solo, and in no special hurry to go into another store one week before Christmas. So, I pulled through the gates of the cemetary. I needed to get my bearings first, so I slowly wound down a few of the lanes. Most of the people scattered across the hills were in pairs or groups, but one tall woman with white, mid-length hair stood alone with her fingertips on a large family gravestone - "Ott" - crying. I still can't decide if the Western propriety that kept me from pulling over and going up to a stranger was a good thing or not, but I rolled on either way. What could I have said or done to actually help? A 6'2" or so stranger coming up to her while she was alone in a graveyard might have been less than an immediate comfort. I noticed that two names were on the marker so far - Kevin and Simon - and the story's likely sadder than I'd want to know. Not that there are many happy stories in such a place.

I wound my way around to roughly the spot where the hearse had parked back in '02, and wandered up the hill to find the gravesite. When last I'd been there it was an open, skirted grave, and I don't recall a marker. Since then there had been laid a plain, flat marker provided by the military (Mr. White served in the Pacific during WWII), and beside it a huge stone that the family had bought in the interim.

One thing I noticed immediately was that there was a 6 month difference between the birthdate on the military's marker and the one provided by the family, and looking at the birth year - 1924 - and the start of the years of military service - 1942 - I guess he lied about his age in order to get into the service sooner. A young man anxious to get into the fray and bag some Japs fits the mold of the day, after all. I'll have to ask Bob about that the next time I talk with him; it may be a story I knew but had forgotten. It could have just been another military screw-up, too.

Anyway, the date on the family's stone is most likely the right one... and then I realized.

It was December 18th.

I'd somehow chosen to visit on what would have been his 81st birthday. I don't believe I ever knew Mr. White's birthday -- with five sons and Christmas in that house that probably seemed quite enough, and I can't recall anything having been made of it while we were growing up.

Some wreaths were laid out on the grave, including one with flowers spelling out "DAD". It could have been several hours, but may have been merely minutes, but had my timing been different I would have been there at the same time as whichever family members who'd come out to let him know his birthday hadn't been forgotten.

A flag with a large military medalliion threaded onto the shaft, showing his years of service as 1942-1944, was stuck in the ground beside the marker. It was facing towards the stone, making it more difficult to see, so I took the liberty of turning it so that it faced outward for the world to see. He knows when he wore the ill-fitting, green togs, after all.

The years spin away so quickly.

In less than three months the older of my sons will be 16.

I made two more, quick stops, then visited with my mom for a couple hours. It's a fool who keeps pretending there'll always be another opportunity to do something. I've been such a fool for so many years, and will doubtless fall back into that mode tomorrow, but at least I wised up for a few hours today.