May 30, 2010 THE UNFINISHED IMAGE
Most parishioners know I have a number of brothers; four of them, in fact. There is a twenty year span between the oldest and the youngest. I’m the middle of the five – a hard position in a family, to be sure. It probably accounts for the steel in my character! Ha! Well, this column shares with its readers some of the musings of brothers. Some of them are from emails; some are memories unwritten, some are snippets of conversations we recall.
Art, firstborn, lives in California. He has a wonderful gift of charming an audience. I think he’s the one who coined the phrase, “I never met a microphone I didn’t like!” Microphones and audiences like him too!
This one occurred when we were standing in a park in Duluth, MN before our Brule canoe trip a few years ago. We’d just finished lunch and were down by the shore. Along comes this elderly couple, somewhat amused, I think, by the fun we were having. Dick asked the gentleman, “Would you mind taking our picture?” “I’d be happy to do so,” the gentleman replied. Dick asked, “Good, do you have a camera?” Ha, the gentleman was stunned. Then, of course, Dick pulled one from his own pocket! Then, the gentleman was amused!
When Kevin, the youngest, was making motel reservations for the Brule trip, Elisa, a niece, asked for a room with an “ocean view.” Imagine, in Brule, WI! Kevin sent an email reply, “Well, we’ll surely try our best to accommodate you. Can someone bring a bottle of ocean water for Elisa? Then, we’ll need a bag of beach sand. Maybe you guys from California can bring that! She’ll be sharing the room with her husband, Keith, so we know there will be ocean breezes through the night!”
I enjoyed the weddings of two nieces of mine in the past year; both are Gary’s daughters who live in the Washington DC area. At the wedding dinner each guest had a place card with his/her name on it and the entre to be served to that guest identified on the card. So, mine read, “Father Robert Cook – Chicken.” I was a bit amused by it and keep it on my bedroom dresser. I emailed Gary to tell him I laugh to think the entre may be read as a description of the guest! He suggested it could be worse. “It could read ‘Father Robert Cook – Shrimp.’ Or, ‘Father Robert Cook – Turkey.’” A few days later I told Dick and Jane about our conversation. Dick suggested another possibility. “Father Robert Cook – Ham.” I got to wondering if parishioners might add, “Father Robert Cook – Baloney!” Well, there you are. I just felt like a hunk of meat all that day!