Finally

Life has a strange way of circling around.

Growing up I lived about three blocks from my grandmother, but because I was small and streets are busy and paternal grandmothers and mothers don't always hit it off, I seldom saw her.  My cousin and his mother lived with her in a house that seemed both mysterious and exotic to me.

There was a gigantic weeping willow in the back yard and tucked up underneath it was a log cabin I yearned to play in.  The living room  sported a grand piano and huge harp that I only heard played on Christmas Eve, but they evoked a feeling of richness that fed my imagination for the rest of the year.

Grandmother's beds were big ornate pieces with kneelers that I used like stair steps on the only night I ever spent with her.  She had swords hung crisscrossed on the wall, a cozy nook in the kitchen where she let me eat doggie bones while I fed them to her four huge dogs, two collies and two English spaniels.

Dinner was in the formal dining room where we sat at the big table and made snowy mountains out of rice topped by evergreen tree peas and hamburger bears!  And even though the formality of the room and table were pretty much the same at home, the game of eating was a novelty I loved!

Her basement was filled with old things, a wicker stroller with parasol topper and tricycle from long ago.  The family den was packed with every conceivable cowboy toy in existence, from forts to real looking horses and farms. But these were my cousin's toys, not mine.  He dressed like a miniature cowboy, the sort I saw on television with tiny pearl snap buttons and boots and even a real cowboy hat.  I was both in awe and a little bit jealous of him.

I never really got to know him.  When my grandparents were divorced he moved away with grandmother and lived first in Colorado and later Texas.  I saw him again about twenty five years ago and then we lost track of each other.

Yesterday I received a letter from him!  He lives an hour south of me and is disabled.  I am meeting him and taking him to lunch next Friday.  Finally, after a lifetime of not knowing each other, maybe we can be friends. 

I am so excited.