A Heart Treasure

We all have memories of the hearts that we have touched and that have touched us. These tend to pop up in the most unusual times. Times when bits and pieces of ourselves are exposed to the past and we want to walk though the garden of memories. Today I went in search of just that.

Where does one go to find a memory? I went to make it seem real again. I went to a jewelry box where I pulled out a necklace made of clay pieces and rough stones on a hard wire ring that at one time encircled my neck. The colors were that of steel and brown clay and wasn't elegant or sparkling or any of the things that one sets up as beautiful. It was rather primitive but was given to me by a person who made me feel important. One who helped me deal with the trauma of the time.

This person wasn't a new person in my life but a person who I had never thought of as a personal friend.
He was much older than I was by twelve years and even he had never thought in terms of me as an associate. We had been teacher and pupil for most of the time that we had known each other. He had given me my first nickname and that seemed strange because all my other teachers use my full name but not Jim. He was the first to call me Phyl.

So how did this relationship get reacquainted? It was at a class reunion. I had gone with my cousin and her husband as a third wheel. A lot of my fellow students were asking Jim to dance with them. I did too. He was easy to dance with. As the evening wore on, my cousin asked me if I were ready to leave or if I had a way home. I turned to Jim and said that I hadn't been invited. So he then asked if I wanted a ride home (to my parents house where I was visiting). I accepted.

The trip home encluded a side trip to a bar owned by another fellow student. We also had a retired teacher with us. At the bar, one of the other fellow students agreed to take the other teacher home so Jim drove me to my parent's home.

We sat in the car for a long time talking and then walked out to the lake in the front yard and onto the dock. Having his arms around me, he asked me what would happen if he let go of me? I told him that I would probably fall backwards into the lake. At that time there was an ad about doing something like that for a tea company. I mentioned that it would be the "Nestle plunge."

We went back to the car and talked some more. It seems that he had gone through a lot of surgery for a cancerous condition with in the last few years. I asked him if he would do me a favor. Would he write to me? He said that he would.

I never thought I would hear from him but I got a letter after returning to California at the end of my vacation. In his letter he gave me an address to write to him if I would like to do that.

I had just found out that my physical tests showing that I would need some cancer surgery too. I wrote to him and he was very supportive. We wrote back and forth for ten months. During one of these months, he went out west hunting with his sons. It was then that I got the package with the necklace in it. I was surprised because our relationship was just a friendship and nothing more. I didn't need anything from him except to know that someone else had been there and understood what was going on in my world.

After moving my family back to Wisconsin, he visited us at the cottage. The kids were doing their homework and he was upset because they didn't have an up-to-date dictionary. The next week we got another present, a dictionary.

I never did see him again but we did write back and forth from time to time. He was always ready to hear what I was doing and I learned about the house he was building and the pond that was being put in across the street for ducks. He loved birds. He belonged to Ducks Unlimited.

Today while traveling on the internet, I found his name mentioned by a national ornithology organization. I also went in to see if I could find him in Wisconsin Obituaries but haven't so far. He was older than I am so I have a feeling that he has moved on but I only hope that the understanding and love that we shared was a nice thing for him too.

Right now I am hung up on the word love because everyone would think that this means a physical relationship and ours was not that at all. He helped me through a rough patch and showed me how to deal with rough patches. There have been many rough patches since then but this was a biggy as I felt "out there by myself." He will always stand out as a treasure in my heart.