Cousins Redux

Spending a yearly weekend with my cousins feels like being dropped into a tale told by Lewis Carroll where everything - or at least some things - are on the wrong places and the wrong sides of the wrong places - and common sense has not yet arrived, although there does exist a sort of common sensibility which twirls and swirls around all of us who are connected to each other by way of sharing a family name of Greaves and living our childhood during the forties and fifties on a Silverdale farm  where we were free to run wild in the summers from morning til night and now, now being ever since we cousins began meeting in 1996, we are free once again, to meet through the fleet form called memory which has both pleasured and scoured our futures.  Our memorys, laden with lacunea.

This past Sunday, Linda, Carolyn and I began our jouney from Poulsbo to Whidby Island at noon and arrived at our destination around three-ish.  Marily and Janet began their journey from Seattle at one o'clock and arrived at their destination which was the house where we were all to meet, at approximately ten o'clock that evening.  Certain stressors accompanied them.  Janet is nearly legally blind and Marilyn, who was driving, had recently undergone neck surgery and could not hold her head in an upwards position for very long.  Those facts, plus the fact that the GPA they were relying upon was a mechanical idiot, found them taking the Edmonds/Kingston ferry not just once each, but twice each, whle the ferry they really meant to catch was the Mukilteo ferry, which they finally took, once.

By the time they arrived at the very nice house cousin Linda had found for us, neither Janet for Marily could manage to say one word.  They just stood there, holding on to the backs of pieces of furnitures, with their knuckles bone white, staring downward and snapping at us if we so much as opened our mouths to ask  any style of questions such as how....or what happened.......    

"We just catch whatever ferry that happens to be in any dock, wherever that dock may be, and that's it," said Marilyn, who finally managed to sit herself down.  Sadly or not sadly, Marilyn's words sent the rest of us into huge gales of laughter.  How could they not?

Marilyn is on oxygen and had preplanned to have several bottles of oxygen sent to the house so that she would be well taken care of, but thre was a big difference between the oxygen bottles she was used to and the type of bottles which had been delivered to the house. Marilyn did have, or seemed to have, two of her own bottles left, but we weren't sure whether they were both full or not.  One might have been empty.  But which one?  L:inda began to tinker a bit with one of the steel levers on top of one of the bottles and suddenly the bottle toppled over to its side, came to life and began to spray a fursious loud and angry spewing of oxgen which sounded like something was going go explode.  I raced to the door, Linda ran behind the couch, Carolyn ended up in the corner, Jan went to the other couch and Marilyn just sat there and stared the exploding bottle in the face as if to say,You little bastard. Linda finally came forth and pushed the lever back down.  So then we knew which bottle was which and we stopped careening about and began to giggle a bit, partly out of relief because it really did seem like maybe the whole place might just explode and partly because we knew we must have looked so funny, all of us running for cover.  But our laughter didn't solve the problem  of what were we going to do about getting the oxygen out of the strange new bottles into Marilyn's bottles?  We needed, we felt, a pair of pliars.  But all we had was a wine opener.

It was either Carolyn or Janet who decided we must pile into Linda's car and go to the police station, which is what we did.  Certainly a police station is the place where ladies of a certain age go if they have a problem.  We sent Janet and Carolyn in and, after ten minutes out they came, staying nobody had pliars but they had called an ambulance and we were to wait for the EMTS who would come and help us solve our problem.  Finally, the ambulance arrived, an EMT man jumped out, with a key made just for oxygen bottles and then they drove us several miles out into the country side in order to get us to a hardware store where we could purchase a small crescent wrench.  At this point four police men magically surrounded us, all smiling and assuring us that if we needed anything more, really, anything at all, all we need do would be to dial 911.

On the way back from the hardware store Janet, who has suffered from child-onset diabetes all her life, took her blood-sufer and muttered, "Damn, it's 300."  Marilyn heard her say something and yelled, "What, Janet? What did you say?"  "Nothing! I didn't say anything!" called back Janet.  "YES YOU DID! I heard you SAY something!" yelled Marilyn.  "NO I DID NOT!" screeched Janet.  "YOU. DID TOO!" hollered Marilyn.  "Now What in the HELL is the MATTER?"  "I SAID I CHECKED my BLOOD SUGAR and it's THREE HUNDRED!" yelled Jan.  "Oh my God, we've got to stop for lunch!" Marilyn responded.  We've been going through this since 1996 and we usually have something, some orange juice or nuts or something, but on this day we had nothing.  Linda spotted a cafe, managed a U-turn and stopped her carwhere we started to barrel out but Janet said, "It's some kind of noodle place and I. Don't. Want. Noodles.  It's okay because I just gave myself an extra dose of insulan."  So we all piled back into the car, returned to town, found a nice cafe, ordered fish and chips, french fries, wine, then stopped at another place for coffee and ice cream.   Such is the way of the ill whom have been ill all their lives.     

Once back in town I knew what I wanted to do; I wanted to find the oldest, most formal jewelry store in Langley and look for a gold bracelet to wear next to my silver watch.  I have been longing for a few months now for such a bracelet, but no luck.  I found my store, went in alone and tried on several gold bracelets.  Too-fancy bracelets, too plain bracelets, and then the jeweler brought out a singularly beautiful bracelet from the Victorian era, shaped rather like two snakes, and it fit me, I liked it, and I bought it. Such is my way.  I rarely ask questions, other than: the price, please. and, if I can afford it, I buy it and that is that.   When I caught up with my cousins, however, there was hell to pay.

ALL MY COUSINS:  "How much did you PAY for that bracelet?  Because if you paid $500 and you were told it is real gold, it isn't, and you were duped.  And if you paid $3,000 and you were told it is real gold, you were duped again, because there isn't a stamp on it."
ME:  "I'm not TELLING you how much I paid. Leave me alone. It's real gold. Stay out of it."
ALL MY COUSINS: "Now, Kay.  You KNOW you don't ask the right questions.  You KNOW you just merrily go your OWN WAY and don't TAKE THE TIME to do things SERIOUSLY and you may have paid a GREAT DEAL OF MONEY for something that is JUST A SHAM and so you REALLY NEED to tell us WHERE THE STORE IS so that WE CAN GO THERE and FIND OUT.........."
KAY:  "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.
ALL MY COUSINS:"Yes. It's no good telling us no because you know we will find it and you know this is for your best interests, so let's go. Come on. We're going right now. It won't be so bad. Come ON. We'll be nice.  We're just taking CARE of you."

So down the street we went, me in front, walking backwards and yelling things at them, like, "Come on, come on, put some muscle into it, if you're so desperate to humiliate me, you could walk a little faster couldn't you? Come on, now let's go, let's go............."

And so we all entered the jewelry store and it is a most sophisticated and formal jewelry store which immediately took some of the hot wind out of their hot little sails ("oooooooh, I like this" and "ooooooooooh", this is a nice piece of work") and I called out, "Madame Jeweler, I have brought a small group of people who would like to have a word with you" and up the stairs she came with one of those round glass things in her eye and one of my cousins asked how many carots Kay's new bracelet has" and Madame Jeweler said, "Eighteen" and my cousins exclaimed, "Oh! That's very good!- - But why isn't it stamped?"  And Madame Jeweler explained that in Victorian Times they did not stamp gold jewelry, but there is a test that is done in order to discern what is gold and what is not and that this test has been done on this bracelet, in fact, it is normally done on all gold jewelry, whether it has been stamped or not, and Kay can take her bracelet to any worthy jeweler and find out for herself that it is, indeed gold, through and through, and eighteen carot gold, at that.

So my cousins were impressed and pleased and had no more complaints,  which is exactly the way that all good stories about gold and investments should go. And now for the rest of this blog please go on to the following blog which is titled "Cousins Redux".......................................