Fw: thoughts of supports...

Thanks, Jurgen


Dear Mike and Carol,
I don't have very many profound thoughts, and in the rare cases I think I do, I am sadly lacking in the language skills to express them with much eloquence. So at the risk of a foot injury I'll just shoot from the hip...

You have both been in my thoughts over the past week and I wanted to share a few of those with you. Somehow, when I think of you, Mike, I have these incredible associations with posts and columns, support, strength and determination. Beginning from your stature - strong and erect, sometimes imposing, a build a bit like a solid tree trunk.... in the past years our encounters were often at the Community Garden, inevitably you were at the business end of a shovel, perhaps you gravitated toward digging down into the earth. Just as often as not you were digging holes for posts. Posts to hold up the fences to keep out the deer, those vegetable vermin... - oh, let's not even go there for the moment...

Going farther back, you were coerced into a supporting role at my wedding. Was it a coincidence that you read/recited the piece from Khalil Gibran, talking about how a couple should stand together, but not too far apart, like trees in a forest or columns which support the arches of a temple.? Sound advice, coming from someone who embodied it.

Going back even a bit further, I have somewhat vague and hazy memories (the Maibowle was good and flowed freely) of a May Day fest at my cabin. We had all the makings of a Maypole dance - the fiddle music, the maidens, the streamers. but due to the bedrock it was impossible to sink a hole for the May Pole. You came to the rescue, holding the thick cedar post upright while the maidens danced around it, slowly but inevitably enveloping you with their streamers and pinning you to the May Pole, like the threads of a spider spun around a hapless insect caught in its web. Except that you were the one providing the support for the whole show.

I am not sure what all this means, except that it seems all too evident that you could always be relied upon to hold things up.... no, wait a minute, that's not what I am trying to say. I mean that you always appeared in a supporting role and are always a good source for wisdom and advice with strength and endurance.

I know that these days you still have that and in addition, that you are also in the receiving end of that from your family and large circle of friends. I, too am sending you what I can.

I sure hope to see both of you at this year's May Day fest, it just would not be the same without you.

with fond thoughts,
Jurgen