This day had a pleasant surprise. The cousin I mentioned a couple of days ago called this afternoon. He was pleased that I remembered the advertising gimmicks from his dealership. And I was enormously pleased that he called.

George is my aunt's son, and is a few years older than I. His mother and mine were twins. And George and I both had the benefit, as children, of having both women dote on us individually, since he was on his own when I was still quite young. In fact, the older of his two children is only a few years younger than I. George and I are both only children, by the way.

And until I was about ten years old, I hated him.

Every time I made any kind of mischief, either my mother or Aunt Rebecca would look at me and say, "George wouldn't have done that," in a most heartbreakingly disapproving tone of voice. I wondered how Saint George could stand to be in the same room with me.

But then my mother told a tale of babysitting a much younger George, who didn't want to go to sleep one night, and kept bothering her with the noise he was making. At that moment, I knew he was an okay person.

One of the nicest things George did for me was take me for my very first airplane ride. He had learned to fly, and had a small plane. One Christmas season his mother and I met him at the small airport near our home, and after we exchanged gifts, George asked me if I'd like to go to ride. I wound up in the co-pilot's seat, having been cautioned to keep my hands and feet away from control mechanisms. The three of us had a tour of the county, from the air. That was the beginning of my love of flight. It made such an impact on my that when I wrote him and his wife to thank them for my Christmas gifts, I wound up quoting "High Flight" -- since in my own way, I understood the poem. It pleases me that George remembers that, too.

Perhaps the longest single chunk of uninterrupted time I've spent with George was a drive from Washington, D.C. to my home in North Carolina. We had a really good conversation that day, which was about sixteen years ago. We came away from that trip knowing a lot more about each other than we had before.

From that day forward, George has not only been my cousin, he's been my friend.

And I'm lucky.

I have changed my archive section just a bit, to make it easier to maintain. If you've been using the archive page as your entry point to the site, please change your bookmark to come in on the index page (by removing the word, "older," after diaryland.com), since the former archive page ends with the August entries. Sorry for changing this so soon after suggesting you use the archive page as your entry point!