To put it as simply as possible, I was extremely lucky to have had Mills in my life, though of course if it was up to me I'd have had much more time with him. Much, much more time. But that’s a different conversation.
So, I'll just pick a couple of stories, since I could go on and on otherwise:
When I was maybe six or seven, I was terrified of riding a bike without training wheels. Lloyd came up with a great solution - he took me up to the top of Eastway, which to me at that age seemed like a pretty long, steep hill; he held the bike as I got on, steadied me, then gave the bike a good hard push and yelled, “Just steer straight and don’t fall over!”
And I made it nearly all the way down to Northern Road before I wiped out and tumbled onto somebody’s lawn. After that, I wasn’t as afraid, and it got steadily easier.
Fast forward from bicycles to cars....Lloyd’s mom Flo had a Le Mans, I think a ‘68, maybe? Anyway, pretty close to new. He got to take it out one night right before they opened up the new Sprain Brook Parkway, and we thought it would be cool to push the barriers aside and take the Le Mans for a high-speed ride on as near to a perfectly smooth surface as we’d ever find. With no traffic. And no cops. We were too stupid to think about the possibility that the road may not have been completely finished, or may have still had construction materials or machines in the roadway. We just rode. Fast. Like 130 miles an hour fast. And it was so QUIET. I will admit I was a little freaked out, but I looked over at Mills and he looked like he was born to be behind that wheel. And I felt OK.
No wipeouts that time. We took that luck for granted.
Then there were all the times that Lloyd was just my guardian. A bunch of you will remember that the late ‘60’s was a time when if you were a guy with long hair, it was like an open invitation to get punched in the face. Mills was one of the people who stood by me and said, “I don’t think so.”
Years passed; I went upstate to college then moved out West. While I was gone, though, after Flo and Bernie moved to Florida, Mills took care of the Northern Road house, and he also helped take of my parents two houses down, who were not getting any younger - when they needed a new stereo or TV hooked up, or a chair repaired, he was there for them.
When he moved out of the Hartsdale house, he and I lost all touch for a long while. I was busy with my new family back in California, and I didn’t really know how to go about looking for him, even if I’d had time on my hands.
Then, Facebook. BAM. Lloyd - and many of you - were suddenly back in my life. I was as happy as a kid in candy store, for real.
The Sudden Reunion of 2009 came to be - through the hard work of a bunch of people. You know who you are, and I thank you. I got to spend an exhilarating two days with people I hadn’t seen for as much as forty years, but most importantly, I spent a lot of time with my lost brother, and I can remember nearly every moment, so clearly.
We talked for hours and it was like no time at all had passed since we last hung out. And of course, he still took care of me - my luggage had been lost on the flight in, but he drove me back to Westchester Airport right before the reunion supper and literally talked a guy into opening a locked office where - surprise! - my bag had been the whole time.
Since then, we kept in pretty good touch, by phone and email. I mainly wanted him to fly out here to Oakland, to meet my family, walk with me in the sun, and eat my wife’s great food.
I wish we could have had that visit. What can I say.
2 comments:
Post a Comment