Comparing Notes

I had a lovely surprise a couple of weeks ago. Kelly and his wife Jackie came from Bemidji to visit. This was only the second time I had the pleasure of Jackie's company, and I love her as a sister already. She is such a nice lady and a perfect match for my brother. And she is willing to sit while Kelly and I talk of old times. That makes her a real gem in my book!

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We spent a Saturday afternoon going through old family photos. There were many that Kelly remembered and some he had never seen before. We talked of old times and old memories, and of the stories our Dad had told us, comparing notes. We seem to talk of Dad more often than our Mother when we are together. I think that is because Kelly doesn't remember a time that Mother wasn't ill. Most of our memories of her include time spent in hospitals or other aspects of her battle with rheumatoid arthritis. Mom didn't talk of her family very much, so we don't have those memories to draw upon. But Dad was full of stories of his brothers and the shenanigans they would pull. Or stories of his life and growing up, the various jobs he held and of places he had been and things he had seen. So we talk of Dad.

I finally found out the ending to a story Dad had told me years ago, but would never tell me how he and his brothers got the Model T car up on the roof! Dad told me that "Someone, I don't know just who," had taken the Model T car belonging to a prominent man in Blackduck, and had left it on the roof of his garage. Dad many times would start a story with those words, "Someone, I don't know just who," and by the slight crooked smile on his face and the twinkle in his eye, you would know for certain that his brothers or sisters or cousins were involved, and that he probably was right in the middle of whatever happened. Anyway, the story was about this car winding up on the garage roof. Dad would never tell me how this was accomplished, but while Kelly and I were reminiscing, I asked if he had ever heard that story. He said that he had, and that Dad and his brothers took the car apart and reassembled it on the roof. Mystery solved. This proved to me just how far the Matheny boys would go for a joke.

Kelly and I love to compare notes. I am 15 years older than Kelly, and have 15 years worth of memories that he doesn't have. But he lived near Dad in the last years of Dad's life, and was able to talk with him much more often than I could. So we compare notes. Sometimes Dad would tell me part of a story and tell Kelly another part. The whole of the story comes together when we compare notes. How lucky I am to have my brother who is willing to spend time with me comparing notes and memories. I hope that before we are both too old to remember anything, we can diminish the miles that separate us and have more time to walk down memory lane and compare notes.