I am not a social butterfly. I’m more like a South American snow leopard. They’re so reclusive people aren’t sure they really exist.
Last Sunday we had folks over for dinner. It was great fun, it always is. Monday, my sister came to town and we celebrated my brother Bill’s birthday. Also great fun. Dinner with most of the larger family the rest of the week because Margy was here. All good. She left town on Thursday. She came into town to help Mom get the yard ready for summer; weeding, planting, cutting down volunteer maples…it was her Mother’s day gift to Mom. So it involved a trip back to Minnesota for Margy…we do what we can for our mothers, don’t we?
Thursday evening we attended a fundraiser for an old friend. He has run into some severe health issues so his friends have banded together to help out as they can. The party took place at Darby’s downtown near Target field. The day had been warm and sunny and the evening couldn’t have been better. On the deck, overlooking the train tracks, I approached a table of three familiar looking women.
They all graduated from Southwest the year before me and I hadn’t seen them in 35 years. They all looked just the same. Becky, Jenny and Diane were some of the reasons my brother JP became an actor. Back in the early ‘80s, he took a dance class just to see them in leotards. They all asked me to say ‘hi’ to JP.
I saw another familiar face in the crowd and couldn’t place him.
Turns out, he’s a cousin!
I have a lot of them. In fact, Mary, another cousin, arrived soon after I did.
Later in the evening, the three of us were reeling about on the deck, arm in arm, singing a song about cousins that we made up on the spot. Mary ended the song when I got to the verse on world domination…she reads a crowd much better than I do.
It was a fun night.
Joe, the brother of the guest of honor, is another guy who graduated with JP. I’ve known Joe since high school but I’d never met his wife, Carrie. She was lovely and delightful and when Dean arrived, he leaned over to me and said “Is it just me or does she look just like Martha O?” ( Martha is another SWACer we’ve known since the 70s)
Yes! Joe’s wife looked just like Martha! We all agreed and told her so and someone pulled out their phone and showed Carrie a photo of Martha.
Carrie humored us and took the phone.
“Oh shit!” she exclaimed, seeing her own face looking back at her.
A half an hour later, Alix arrived. She came over to her table, did a double take and yelled “Holy cow, I thought you were Martha!”
This went on all night. It must have been very weird for Carrie but it was hilarious for the rest of us.
I drove us home later on with the top down. It was a bit chilly but fun. Jay, who was over the limit, told me that if he died suddenly, he thought I should marry Dean, who happens to be a widower.
I like Dean. He’s a good friend, a good guy and he’s good looking.
But I would never do that to him.
Jay doesn’t seem to know that while I may be the perfect wife for him, I would be a terrible wife for anyone else. Terrible.
I don’t cook, I rarely clean, I barely do laundry, I don’t entertain and you can’t take me anywhere, as I am mostly unfit for public consumption. Jay tried to take me to Las Vegas a few weeks ago and I wouldn’t go.
Yesterday afternoon I joined Jay and his Friday lunch pals at Upper Lake Harriet Park. Jay and a handful of high school friends have lunch every Friday. It’s not always at the same place but when the weather is nice, they like to meet outside. Craig, a brilliant musician who’s MS now has him wheelchair bound, is the center of this weekly ritual. I had been meaning to tag along for a while. It was a beautiful spring afternoon and hanging out near the lake is always great. There was a school outing happening at the park, too, so we were surrounded by tiny kids, parents and teachers. It wasn’t as peaceful as it could have been but I didn’t mind.
My lunch companions made jokes about the kids but I kept thinking “these are the people we expect to pay our social security checks in about twenty years; we should be grateful to them. They’re also going to be the ones who decide whether to pull the plug on us in about thirty years so we should be nice to them.”
The night before, at the fundraiser, someone mentioned how the Europeans do such a better job on health care than our system.
Obviously, they don’t read the Daily Mail or Mark Steyn.
And they haven’t read this book, which details the philosophy of the Big Government state.
Nationalized health care doesn’t result in magically provided care for everyone who needs it. It results in long wait times, rationed care and ruthless abandonment of the old and the terminal. But you can’t tell someone that their friend is a 60 year old man whose economic value has peeked and therefore why would the government pour resources into prolonging his life?
It is only Judeo/Christian philosophy that values human life even when old, frail and sick. Modern Humanist philosophy all contend that the most ‘compassionate’ thing is to end suffering quickly and it is therefore the most moral way to deal with both our friends Tom and Craig would have been an overdose the day they were diagnosed.
This is the direction in which all governments trend, as it is both easy and cheap and they can cloak themselves in false morality.
Last night, we attended another birthday party! Our friend Mark turned 50. The party was at JD Hoyt’s our favorite place. There were about two dozen of us in the private party room. The food was served family style, from crudité plates to salad, followed by huge platters of meat, shrimp and sausage bowls and pots of macaroni and cheese…so delicious! There were three kinds of cake for dessert and the chocolate was some of the best I’ve ever had. Throughout the course of the meal, different friends stood to tell stories about Mark, who in addition to being a good friend and coach, is one of the world’s best uncles.
It was a great celebration with a layer of added poignancy, since Mark suffered a stroke two years ago that nearly (should have) killed him.
So that’s three friends who wouldn’t be here if the nightmare of nationalized medicine were a reality.
I have another celebration to go to tonight. It’ll be great fun but I’m exhausted. I just want to get up to my office, paint my mind clear and stay home for a few weeks.