My mom dressed me in my flower-girl dress, shoes, and hat. The dress was as white as the snow on Mt. Rainier and came all the way down to my ankles. It was super long and it had a big pink sash and I able to wear white shoes and a big white hat with a wide brim. There was also a wide pink ribbon on the hat that hung below the brim in the back and I even wore white gloves.
Now, my job was to walk slowly up the aisle between all the people and drop flower petals that my mom was going to walk on. We had a rehearsal yesterday and it was awful. Everybody kept telling me I was walking too fast and I was getting sad, but Dad said not to worry. He said that we would work something out later. We did.
At the wedding I held the flower basket by its handle in my left hand just like they showed me, and I walked up the aisle, the way everyone said I should. But halfway up the aisle, Dad raised one of his eyebrows at me—that was the signal.
Dad taught me to sing one of my favorite songs in my head and move to the beat. So, from halfway up the aisle to the end, in my head I was singing “Sweet Home Chicago.” Dad and I had practiced some great dancing steps. He said I could get my groove on. So all the rest of the way up the aisle, while I was tossing flower petals, I was moving and dancing and doing some spins that Dad showed me. That way everyone could see that I could keep my groove on.
At the front, I did my last spin right in front of Dad. We high fived just like we practiced. My dad is so cool for teaching me to do that stuff. Everyone was smiling, so I guess I did okay. My mom came up the aisle next and she took forever. She walked so slowly. I think I should tell her to walk to a faster song next time, so she doesn’t take so long.
The rabbi stood in front of my mom and dad—my very own dad! All three of them were under a Chuppa—that’s a wedding canopy by the way—Mom and Dad designed and built it together. Over the top of the Chuppa, my dad had spread out his new Tallis—and that is a prayer shawl—that my mom bought for him.
I heard them recite the blessing for the wine a couple of times and they had to drink wine from this neat looking Kiddush cup. They were smiling a lot, except near the end when my mom was kind of crying and smiling at the same time. I looked around the room and other people, even both my grandparents, were smiling and crying at the same time. I guess that’s something you learn to do when you’re getting to be a grown up. I think Mom calls them tears of joy, ‘cause she does it sometimes when I do something really, really nice for her.
The ceremony took a while. I was supposed to sit with my grandparents, but it was boring, so I kept my groove on and kept on moving to the music in my head. At the end of the ceremony they had this really, really long kiss. I mean, really long—and right in front of everybody! My mom and dad didn’t seem to care about that, but Nathan and I were both giggling at them. Then dad broke a glass under his shoe and everybody yelled, “Mazel Tov!” and we all sang “Simin Tov and Mazel Tov” which is one of my all-time favorite songs.
After we ate dinner, there was dancing. My mom and dad danced first, then Mom danced with Dad’s dad, and Dad danced with me. It was a slow song that Dad called a waltz, but I didn’t know how to dance slowly so Dad had me stand on the tops of his shoes so that way we both moved together. It was fun. After that, Dad danced with his mom and then I saw Nathan coming over to me. He asked me to dance with him. I didn’t want to, but out of the corner of my eye I saw my mom giving me that look. You know—the one that said I’d better act nice or the ceiling might fall on my head. I think she learned that from Dad, because he gave the look better than anybody did.
So, I said yes to Nathan. I have to say, he was a pretty good dancer, for a boy. I thought he should have asked me if I wanted to stand on his shoes too, but decided that was just for Dad and me.
I had always wondered something, so I asked Nathan. “Why is your older brother always in a wheelchair?”
“He has Cerebral Palsy,” he told me. “It means he has trouble controlling his muscles.”
“Oh. I’m going to tell my dad about that because I he can fix everything,” I said.
Then Nathan smiled at me, a really big smile. “My brother would be awfully happy if he did.”
After we danced a couple of times, I told him I was thirsty.
He yelled, “Come on!” and I followed him over to a bar.
“Two martinis, please,” he said to the barman.
“Yes, sir!” the barman said.
I couldn’t believe it. I was about to have my first martini. Well, that’s what I thought. Turns out it was just lime soda with a little cherry juice, but it was served in a martini glass and had a shiny red cherry in it.
“He always gives me this no matter what I order,” Nathan told me.
We laughed and pretended we were grownups with real drinks. It was fun.
We were standing near my mom and dad when Nathan said, “Did you know that silvery minnows are a member of the Hypognathous genus in the Cyprinid family? I thought you would want to know because Meyer told me that you have an interest in minnows.”
I didn’t understand a couple of the words he’d said—but Dad repeated them to me later—anyway, it sounded like Nathan knew what he was talking about, so I thought that was pretty good for a boy to know something about minnows. Nathan didn’t seem to be as bad as I had imagined. He could dance and knew about minnows. I’m telling you—not too bad for a boy.
My mom and dad must have overheard what Nathan had said about minnows, because Mom looked at Dad and elbowed him in the side. She said, “I think I’ll have to burn the cabin down before those two graduate high school.”
Dad thought that was awfully funny, but I didn’t get it. Why would they want to burn our cabin down? Oh well, just one of those things grown-ups say that doesn’t make any sense.
More of our cousins came over and we went and played some neat games together. Later in the afternoon, the cover was removed from the swimming pool and the real fun began as all the cousins and I went swimming in the pool.
Oh! I almost forgot to tell you about the cake. It was a whole bunch of cakes stacked on top of each other. It was pretty on the outside, but inside it had different flavors of chocolate. I heard someone say the cake was, Death by Chocolate, but I don’t think that’s true because my cousins and I ate a lot of that cake and not even one of us died.
I also heard someone one say there were more desserts than you could shake a stick at. My cousins and I thought that was rather strange, as we couldn’t imagine why you would shake a stick at desserts. But I figured I should try, so I found a stick and shook it at a couple of the desserts. Then Mom saw me and gave me the ceiling-might-fall-on-my-head expression. Well that time, the look told me that if I didn’t get rid of the stick, two ceilings would fall on my head.
Nathan’s dad seemed to be having a lot of fun, though. He was laughing a lot and kept asking the barman for martinis. He hoisted a martini that didn’t seem to have the pink color in it, like mine did, and instead of a cherry, he received an olive. Yuk!
I don’t think Nathan’s mom thought that was a good thing to drink because she told Nathan’s dad, if he reached for one more martini, she would unscrew his wrist. Everyone thought that was funny. I didn’t know you could unscrew someone’s wrist. I better keep reading books. I have a lot to learn.
At the wedding I learned about something called a honeymoon. A honeymoon is really a vacation that the people who just married get to take. They call it a honeymoon because if they call it a vacation, they have to take their kids along.
So my parents went to Mendocino, California after the wedding and I went home to Grandma and Zaydie’s house. Don’t feel too bad that I couldn’t go on the honeymoon, because at the wedding Zaydie whispered to me that the nectarines in his yard were getting ripe and I could come to their summer home in the Yakima Valley and eat as many nectarines as I was tall. If you haven’t had Yakima Valley nectarines, you should know that Dad called them God’s greatest summertime gift to humanity. And best of all, Zaydie and Gran
dma would be canning some of the nectarines, and if I helped them, I could have some to take home. That way I could eat them during the winter. Wow!
Grandma and Zaydie’s kitchen smelled wonderful while they cooked and prepared the nectarines for canning. My job with the canning was to draw a picture of a nectarine on each of the labels that would go on top of the jars. Grandma showed me how to draw a Nectarine, but after I drew a few I started adding some little leaves and a stem. They made them look better, I thought. A couple of times I drew two nectarines on the same stem. My grandparents seemed happy with this. I could tell from their smiles when they looked at my labels. They said something about my being like my mom. I don’t think so. My mom is old and I am definitely not old.
I took some of my new books from Meyer’s, ummm...Dad’s…ummm...I mean our library to their house to read to my Grandparents. I was amazed that people as old as my grandparents were so interested in my books. They were smiling and looking at me and listening carefully to my reading. That’s good because I was sure they learned a lot. My mom tells me you can always learn something new from a book. Gram and Zaydie must have been listening and looking at me so carefully because they knew they were going to learn something.
Then, when Mom and Dad returned from Mendocino, they told us about their trip. I heard them tell people that they sat and watched the sun setting over the Specific Ocean one evening. How sad for them. All the way down to California and the only thing they had to do was sit and watch the sun go down. Boring! I was glad I was canning nectarines and going for walks at my grandparents’ home instead.
So, I also remembered to ask my dad if he could fix Nathan’s older brother. He said that he wished that he could. That bothered me. His brother’s wheelchair didn’t look like a fun place for a kid. Maybe I could figure something out. At least I could try.
Chapter Eight
~ Sailing Takes Us Back
As I had promised, I bought out Joan’s business after we were married. It was now the Meyer and Joan Investment Firm and every day when I went to work, Joan was there working with me. With her incredibly sharp mind, she was catching on to my business quite quickly and even discovered things that I hadn’t thought of that made my work easier. And best of all, she was my thermometer. She had the uncanny ability to tell me when I was getting angry before I even became aware of it. If I didn’t manage to calm down, she would take over the situation for me. What more could a man ask for in a partner.
Sometime in October we decided to take the smaller of my two boats and spend a long weekend in the San Juan Islands. We had been taking Samantha on progressively longer boat rides on the lake in front of my house to get her used to the idea of being as safety conscious as possible for a five-year-old. We practiced lots of emergency drills until we were reasonably certain she would know what to do. We decided on a Thursday to Tuesday trip. It would take about four hours to cruise up there and then we would dock the boat in a harbor and explore the island and cruise around it.
On the Sunday morning before our trip, Joan received a phone call from her grandmother, Esther. She’d been living in Iowa with her younger sister for quite a few years, since Esther’s husband, Manny, died.
“She wants to fly out see us,” Joan told me with her hand over the phone.
“Fine with me,” I told her.
“Grandma, it would be wonderful if you would come out. And yes, we have room here for you to stay with us. I’ll have tickets waiting for you at the airport. Grandma, don’t worry about the money for the tickets. It’s not even an issue,” Joan said beaming at me.
After a little pause Joan continued, “Okay Grandma. You can buy groceries for us when you get here.”
“Maybe we should put off our boat ride,” I offered.
“Let’s wait until she gets here. She takes pretty good care of herself. We might be surprised what good shape she’s in for someone in their late eighties.”
Joan was right about her grandmother. She was in excellent shape physically and mentally.
When Samantha was giving her a tour of our house and showed her our library, Esther told Samantha, “I think I’ll tell your mother to move my things in here, because I may never want to leave this room.”
I showed her the elevator that was installed in case people who visited our home were in wheelchairs and couldn’t negotiate the stairs.
“That’s nice of you to have that,” she said, “but for me, I want to take the stairs for the exercise.”
She was ecstatic when we told her about our planned trip.
“Your grandfather and I took a boat trip to the San Juan Islands a few months after we were married. It was really our honeymoon. Imagine, after all these years I get to visit those beautiful islands again, but with my great-granddaughter and granddaughter. Wherever your grandfather is, he’s smiling right now.” She stood up. “Where’s Samantha? We have to look up what fish, whales, and birds we might see so we can keep a list.”
As her grandmother walked away, Joan turned to me. “Think Samantha’s going to have a great week with Grandma?”
I smiled. “I think we all will.”
* * *
Just before our family boat trip to the San Juan Islands, my parents came in from their summer home in the Yakima Valley.
“Are you ready for inspection, Meyer?” my dad asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be, Dad.”
Dad always inspected my boat before I left on a trip and would give me a punch list of things to repair or have inspected. There wasn’t much to do, but Dad insisted on helping with the one item that needed repair, tightening a seal on the propeller shaft.
Esther, Joan and my mom were making up a list of supplies to bring on the boat. While we were cruising to the Islands, my parents would be flying to Israel with friends of theirs.
“Dad,” Joan asked my father, “did you think Meyer and I were meant to be together.”
“I couldn’t be sure, but you each did little things to take care of each other that were astounding for children as young as you were. You were both aware of each other’s feelings. Remember when we moved to Maple Woods in Washington State. In the middle of the summer, Meyer hurt his ankle. He had to stay off his feet for a day until the swelling went down. You two spent the entire day on the couch in our library. You periodically put more ice in the ice bag that he had to keep on his ankle. You two read to each other the entire day. How many children at ten years of age would do that? Also, I remember the following summer that Meyer read Christina Rossetti’s poetry to you when you had your tonsils removed and couldn’t talk. He hated poetry then, but was willing to bring your favorite poet’s lines to life because of your relationship.”
“I remember that,” Joan said. “He read her poetry to me with so much feeling, that to this day, when I reread some of those poems, I still hear his voice reciting them to me.”
My mom, Joan, and Esther went shopping and loaded all the supplies onto the boat. I drove my parents to the airport that afternoon and gave them eighteen dollars for Tzedakah in Israel.
That evening we slept on the boat so I could get our journey to the San Juan Islands under way before the others had awakened. Early the next morning, I checked the oil level in the engines and generators. They rumbled to life with a brief puff of smoke. I checked the oil pressure gauges for each engine and then went out to untie the dock lines. Everything looked good so I put the transmissions in gear.
We proceeded slowly out into the lake and entered the canal that would take us to the locks and into Puget Sound. With the engines at idle, I could maintain five knots, which was just below the maximum for the channel to the locks. I was running the boat from the flybridge.
Fifteen minutes later, Joan came up from the kitchen area with a cup of coffee for each of us. We each had thick sweaters on to ward off the early morning chill. Joan put out bumpers in preparation for entering the locks. Esther and Samantha weren’t awake yet. It was a slightly foggy morning, but the sun would
quickly burn off the fog to turn it into a beautiful day with clear blue skies. As we sipped our coffee, we motored out of the locks, and I guided our boat into Puget Sound for our ten-hour trip.
Joan asked, “Have you noticed anything about Samantha’s reading skills?”
I had but I kept pushing it out of my mind. After considering her question for a while I told her, “You and I were reading at a much higher level by now and reading as much for information as for fun. Samantha just reads for fun and doesn’t have our drive to be learning all the time. And she has fun drawing, but doesn’t have your talent.”
I had Joan take over the helm for a bit while I checked the charts for a navigation reference. Then as I took the helm back, I said, “Did you notice at our wedding when everyone was dancing, Samantha went over to Jonathan’s wheelchair and while holding one of his hands, danced with him? She felt bad that no one was dancing with him. And when my cousin, Dov, took Jonathan in the pool, only Samantha played with him. She took a ball over to him. When she saw that he was trying to hold it with his hands, but couldn’t bring them together, she put her hands on the backs of his and pushed them together so he could hold the ball. Of all the young cousins, only Samantha has the patience to listen to Jonathan’s mangled speech until she understands what he is trying to say. She has complete conversations with him, whenever they’re together.”
As Joan and I were sharing a bench seat, she put her head on my shoulder. “At Samantha’s age you and I would have wanted to know the technical details of Jonathan’s condition, but that would have been it for us. We’d never have the patience she has. I’ve noticed the kids can be mean to Nathan because he’s so far ahead of them in school. One little girl was getting a bit carried away with the teasing. Nathan turned to her and said something cruel. Samantha told him, in your tone of voice I might add, that there is never a reason to talk mean. I was waiting for a verbal explosion from Nathan. Instead he quietly told Samantha she was right, then he turned to the girl he had insulted and apologized.”
Finding a Soul Mate (Meant to be Together Book 1) Page 10
