Memories

I have so many.  Some of them are quite wonderful.

Take the romantic memories we all have. 

I’ll never forget the tender, loving words my dear husband used when he proposed to me. He gazed deeply into my eyes as his soft, mellow, carefully formed words on his lips caressed my ears as he nuzzled my neck:  He said, “You’re gonna have a what!?”

Charlie Rook always had a way with words. Some he borrowed from other pals, like Montana Clarence, a neighbor in Yuma, AZ, and Rotten Bob Totten, a nearly-neighbor who used to fly around the country, Alaska mostly, in a little two-seater single prop or some such rickety aircraft and rename cities and towns in typical Rotten Bob-style (Winsnatchee, Tittsburgh, Puerta Vi Orchard—you get the drift).

Montana Clarence was another character Charlie Rook was drawn to when we lived in Yuma for a short time. Clarence would call all his buddies in the neighborhood about 4:15 and announce, “It’s almost beer-thirty!” A beer drinking session would take place most afternoons in his garage-workshop (Charlie used to call Clarence the Martha Stuart of the welding torch) and a poker party on Fridays.

So now it’s usually tea-thirty time at the nursing home next door where Charlie Rook (I use the southern custom of first two names—like Billie Bob, Willie Joe, when referring to Charlie in print) sleeps these days dreaming of beer-thirty days of yore.

Funny how the years alter the way we sleep when we get past 80.  I used to don a short baby doll nightie and crawl into the feathers.  I now crawl into the flannels wearing my CPAP mask with my teeth in a cup of water at bedside, just in case there’s a fire and those cute firemen come busting into the apartment!

Ah, memories on a warm summer night at the senior apartments in Porta Vi Orchard!