With her long white hair twisted into a loose knot on her
head, joy emanating from her face, she grinned back over her shoulder and
called back, “Survivors!”
It had been years since Dave and I spent time with Charlie
and Joanne. We’d met in 1988 when
our sons Tucker and Jake became friends.
Back then, Joanne wrote a column for the Greenwich Time and was
re-decorating her house. I was
into quilting, crafts, and animal rights.
Our husbands loved playing guitars together, two aging hippies strumming
Rolling Stones and Beatles songs.
Hm. I say “aging,” yet we
were still in our thirties. Ah
well.
A lot has happened in the intervening years.
Dave and I moved to Easton. Terrorism took out the Twin Towers. Joanne got breast cancer. Charlie had a heart attack. Our kids grew up and moved on to their
own lives. I got breast
cancer. Joanne and Charlie moved
to New Hampshire. And finally,
over the 4th of July, we were able to accept their invitation to
visit them in their now not-so-new home.
One afternoon during our stay, I sat on the dock with
Jake. His cousin Lauren was eager
to rent a stand-up paddleboard. “You better try it early on,” he said, “before the boats and
Jetskis make it too rough.”
I scanned the crests and troughs of water circled by
pine-fringed shores and the mountains beyond. A few boats dotted the lake, but surely not enough to stir
the surface to this degree. “But
those boats are so far away…” I said.
“Yes. But you know how it is when you drop a pebble in still water,” Jake said. “The ripples just keep on going.”
Ripples. I have
always loved the possibilities, literal or not: a line in a book that resonates
and leads to a new direction. A
random observation that sparks an idea and generates invention. Small acts of kindness or valor that
change lives or a world. My friend
Joanne, struck with cancer, coming through it, and helping me make it through
my own…and now the two of us, jubilant together, sending ripples cascading in
our Jetski’s wake.
On the morning of the 4th of July parade, along
with Charlie and Joanne, their kids, their kids’ spouses, their adorable
granddaughter Abbey, and assorted siblings and cousins, we staked out spots
with blankets and chairs under a spreading maple on the lawn of an antique
colonial. Nearby, an old
retriever, the coppery fur of her muzzle gone to white, panted in the scant
shade cast by her human companion’s beach chair.
Vintage cars, fire engines, farmers on John Deere tractors,
a troop of little girls in gauzy skirts and fairy wings, and, on roller skates,
an aging majorette in spangled attire, glided past, some tossing candy to the
small children who scampered to the road with hands outstretched.
A skinny scrap of a guy in a straw boater and patriotic vest
stood among his fellow WW II vets on a float draped in red, white and blue
bunting, and lip-synced Jimmy Durante songs. With the cock and shake of his head and a distinctive fake
nose, he had Jimmy nailed.
A convoy of vintage WW II vehicles rolled by followed by a
float bearing the old men who’d once driven them. I thought of Uncle Jack who, during his service in North
Africa, drove an ambulance much like the one cruising past. Dave’s father, Colombo, served in Italy
in that war, and the third brother, Uncle Phil, was posted in the Pacific. Miraculously, they all came home, but
Cam, their sister, said of Jack, “He was too sensitive for war. He never spoke about it when he
returned, and he was never the same.”
“Always remember the soldiers,” Colombo once said to my
daughter Casey.
With pride and a tug in my heart, I ran to the roadside to
take pictures knowing the three brothers would have gotten a kick out of this
day, and out of the role they played in giving us this opportunity to
celebrate; extraordinary ripples from the sacrifices of brave old men - once
brave young servicemen – waving as their floats drove by.
