No. 515: Boys

Boys kind of lope into manhood. It starts out slowly. Cleaning up a bedroom, putting away the toys. Cutting the grass and trimming shrubbery. Digging, planting, painting, washing. Driving, working, growing into their own relationships.

Turns out they grow if ya feed 'em, too.

And even if boys are already men, or well on their way, loss of a parent turns a lope into a jolt. My family knows this from personal experiences, past and now, present.

Kurt Swager, my cousin Pam's husband and life partner for some 30 years, died shortly after the formerly gopher-cheeked boy in the drawing, Kiefer, graduated this summer from Bristolville High School. It was a sudden thing, or perhaps it wasn't actually. No matter, still a jolt or more likely, a comet impact. Kiefer and his brother Kenny miss him -- I could tell when I dropped off this picture today.

I'm a lousy visitor and not the most conscientious cousin. Kurt was a good guy who ran an excavating business and kept busy in winter plowing out parking lots and driveways -- including mine, always after I'd make a panicked phone call. I got a wave and a hello out of him during a brief glimpse at the grad party and that was fine enough. Everybody was just so busy and he was laying low. Now I understand why.

Cousin Pam and I spent much more time together, along with my brother Gerry and her sister Julie, when we were kids. We did a lot of outdoor stuff that involved frogs, crayfish and other assorted messes that drove her mother and my dad crazy -- but amused the living shit out of my mom, Linda, and her brother Chick -- my uncle. Linda and Chick grew up around outdoor lovers, smokers, dogs and cats. It was great -- how great, we didn't know until adulthood.

Gerry and I were teenagers when our mom died, and that jolted us into growing up fast (although our father held things together pretty well and remarried quickly.) I was off to college and bro was finishing high school and visiting with the local police and emergency room. Everyone reacts to death -- processes it -- in their own way. We suffered with mom for six or seven years. The boys in the pictures had less prep time, and I don't know which is worse. It's all a comet blast.

Afterward, Pam seemed to have plenty of food, lots of flowers, well wishers and the like. What she wanted was a picture of her own selection, a favorite. I could do that, and other than a lot of tinkering with those former gopher cheeks, it went fine. It's a big drawing, in a formidable frame that fit like a glove. We are happy with the result at an unfortunate time.

The boys, now men, though not suddenly, are both at home. It's a century place with plenty of land that has been in the family for generations. More family live next door. And they are all still together in that beloved spot, with the sounds of birds and other critters in the fields out back, sun on that big white house full of favorite heirloom chairs -- and a giant rhododendron by the sitting room that I'm sure is gorgeous in the spring.

It was special hanging this picture together in that big old house that holds so much life. I really need to get out there more often. I love you, Pammy Jo.