Good Friends, Good Coffee

It's Friday in New England and we are getting pummeled with rapidly accumulating snow. This is the time of year when I ask myself what the frack I'm doing here. But Jackson is over at the neighbors sledding and drinking hot chocolate, so for him this is just a colder slice of heaven. There isn't much more to wish for than a happy child.

Thanks for all the comments on my book review. Eve made a good point, that I shouldn't be shy about my opinion. It was proffered honestly. I feel a little bad that I'm picking on a dead guy, but then again I don't have to worry about him finding my remarks and putting me on the black list with any of his publisher friends.

Janey gave me a link a while back to a list of questions to consider in a reading-group discussion on the Larry Brown book. After reading through them I felt I had missed some subtleties, of which there is no doubt. But I still didn't care for it, but perhaps it was well crafted, even if the story wasn't personally moving.

I don't know if I mentioned, but our friends Vicki and Richard visited a couple weekends ago, friends I've had since before I met my wife. They were engaged and living together, and I was the single guy who would most likely be so--forever (cue the evil laugh). But of course I did get married and had our first son before they got pregnant themselves. My wife and I became outsiders to them for a while, until they had a child of their own. Vicki gained an immediate appreciation for the trauma we went through raising a child without any help from anyone. After Vicki had her baby, she gained a new respect for us, and we've been good friends ever since.

Back in the early days before kids, we would sit in their small San Francisco apartment and play Euchre and smoke the wacky, laughing, telling stories, imitating our favorite Star Wars characters--as time raced like the Lombard traffic that roared unnoticed outside our windows.

During their recent visit, the most amazing thing happened. The kids played with one another. They didn't need us. Then Vicki said, "Hey, I know. Let's play some Euchre." Whoa. How long had it been? It took us a long time to find two decks of cards to shuffle together, but we did. And we managed to play three full games before the kids finally called an end to our foolishness. They acted like they didn't remember the rules, saying things like, "Now what's higher, the Jick or the Jack?" Yeah right. They stomped us so bad, that when we won our first point somewhere in the second game, Vicki said, "Aww Rich, that's so cute. They scored a point."

The only thing missing was the wacky that we took for granted in those days. I've said before that I don't have any way to get any here, and I'm not about to ask around.

We got a FedEx package in the mail today. Inside was a beautiful framed picture of their boy and ours, sitting together under the canopy of our play set in the back yard, a nice reminder of our time together. Richard is a photographer, and a damn fine one at that. As Jackson and I were looking at it, the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"It's Vicki."

"Vick," I said, "we just got your package. I just love the picture."

"Oh," she paused, "are you just now opening it?"

"Yeah."

"Have you seen the coffee?"

"No, you sent me some coffee?"

"Yeah, but it's special coffee."

"Like Starbucks? Cool! I just r..." Then it hit me. "Ohhhh. You mean special coffee."

"It's just a little, so don't get too excited."

"You are insane, and unbelievably cool."

"We had such a good time with you guys, and we were talking about it when we left your place that night, and we decided we had to do it."

Like I said, it's the little things in life. It's nice to be reminded that there are a few people out there that so highly of you.

The snow has let up, so it's off to plow I go. Tomorrow morning, if the weather allows, we are off to New Hampshire and Santa's Village. Then on Sunday it's Jackson's birthday.

Have a good weekend everyone.