How is the day already over?

Before I begin my daily writing, I like to check my email and then the news on Yahoo. Today, I caught up on how close Russia was to the Ukraine border, how COVID vaccines would be given to my great, great, great, great-grandchildren, and I read about Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph's mental state with regards to Ben's not yet declared retirement. 

Then I saw that Louie Anderson and Meatloaf had died. 

Me: "Whoa. Meatloaf died."

Oleg: "Meatloaf?"

Me: "Yes."

Oleg: "Is that a rapper?"

Me: "You don't know Meatloaf?"

Oleg: "I do not know Meatloaf."

Immediately, as I do when singers die, I popped on Amazon Music and started playing Meatloaf's hits. Oleg had heard I'd Do Anything For Love but not Two Out of Three Ain't Bad. He went back to his Zoom work. I went back to work.

Well, that's what I should've done. Instead, I began playing my oldies playlist. I started with 1970's country hits, and when I realized that the first ten songs were all by now dead artists, I looked them up on the Internet. I wasn't sure about some of them. I knew the status of Glen Campbell, Charley Pride, Eddie Rabbitt, and Kenny Rogers but wasn't sure about Johnny Paycheck, Jerry Reed, and Crystal Gayle. 

FYI, the first two are dead. Crystal Gayle, and her sister Loretta Lynn, are still alive and kicking.

But I was fascinated to read that Crystal moved and lived in Wabash, Indiana, that Johnny Paycheck had a sexual assault charge against him, and that Jerry Reed married his wife of a zillion years when she was seventeen, and he was twenty. That led to me checking out the others' married lives. Most of them were married only once and still with their spouse when they died. 

I investigated the lives of Olivia Newton-John, Donna Fargo, Luther Ingram, and Marie Osmond. From Marie, I was horrified to see that Dan Seals had died. I'm sure I knew that since he died years ago, but I was still bummed. But then, in reading about his life, I learned that he was ENGLAND DAN!

I did not know that. Nor did I know he was the little brother of Jim Seals from Seals and Croft.

England Dan and John Ford Coley! That was a name I hadn't heard in years.

So, I had to play all of their hit songs and sing along. Poor Oleg. We share a workroom. He is good about indulging me when it comes to my music. 

Then Darcy's friends showed up to visit her from a distance outside. I had to know if they'd heard about Meatloaf.

Me: "Did you guys hear about Meatloaf?"

Them: "We don't know who that is."

Darcy: "I know! He died. Poor Meatloaf."

Her friends immediately got online because if Darcy knew who he was, why didn't they? My youngest knows how to play the game. She hadn't a clue who Meatloaf was, but she'd read the news. Thank god, Madison arrived home from work because she knew Meatloaf and Two Out of Three Ain't Bad. We proceeded to sing it for the crew.

Wait. How is Madison already home from work? Is it already 4:00 p.m?

I headed back to the computer to write. I put on my Dan Seals Greatest Hits album to compare his shift in personas. From there, I switched to my 1980's country hits playlist where Barbara Mandrell sang about how she was country when it wasn't cool. When she said she put peanuts in her coke, I stopped typing.

What?

I had to look that up. How have I never heard about this living in Florida? Now, I just want to try it. I mean...right?

When John Anderson started swinging, I wondered what famous person he'd married. Turns out, that wasn't true. But he's from Apopka, Florida! 

It's now 5:00 p.m. I'm supposed to be wrapping up my day because I have to be at dinner at 5:30 p.m. I've been at this since noon, and I can honestly say that besides the above information, I have nothing to show in my romance writing.

Okay, not true. I have jotted down a somewhat romance plot based on Meatloaf's song. Whew. 

Lois 2021

I think I was four years old when the Smiths (Karl, Lois, Kim, and Steph) moved in next door to us. The story goes that I wasn't exactly welcoming when Kim appeared to introduce herself, and whatever I said sent her home unhappy. Her mother, Lois, marched next door to confront my mother, who'd recently given birth to my brother--and was probably the cause of my four-year-old rudeness--and my mother thought, oh boy, what do we have here?

Apparently, something wonderful.

That meeting was the beginning of a friendship that still beats fifty-three years later. Our parents remained friends, keeping in touch even after we moved, a feat managed during the age of snail mail and costly long-distance phone calls. Through their committed friendship, we kids stayed in contact. To this day, I count Kim and Steph as my golden friends.

Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other's gold.

Our families vacationed together. We alternated holidays. We shared the good times together as we did the hard times. 

Lois died today. It wasn't unexpected, but it was still a shock. I just saw her two years ago, before COVID, where we talked about age, longevity, and death. While she was unsure about staying in her home, she enjoyed her family, friends, and activities. She was in reasonably good health and in no hurry to join her husband or my parents. 

Unfortunately, life took a turn in these last two years. 

Today is also my birthday. I can hear Lois now, in her distinctive voice with her signature "tsk" and "oh," lamenting how she should've planned that better. Waited a day. Or left yesterday. 

"Oh, I didn't do it on purpose. You know that. Right? O-h. I would never-- Oh, Cara."

It wasn't enough to share November as our birthday month? Yeah, yeah, you wanted to make sure I never forgot you! That's what I said to her--aloud--when I heard the news. I liked to kid Lois. She was always good for a reaction. 

Lois was just a second mother. I shared many firsts with her. She was with me when I got my period, took my first plane trip alone, and through my wedding and the birth of my first daughter. Kim and I lived with Lois' father and stepmother when we first moved to Florida. I was there years later when both of them died. 

In the summer of 1976 when I was eleven, my parents went to the Olympics. I was sent to PA to live with the Smiths for the summer. Lois had me do everything that Kim and Steph did, putting me on their swim team, and then advocating for me when I won my races and the other team complained. I remember her kindness when I got my period. How she showed me my hygiene options and then secretly reached out to my parents to make sure they'd call me later that night.

At the end of the summer, Lois walked me onto the plane, gave me a gift to open when I got into the air and talked to the flight attendant. She left and returned twice, much to the horror of the flight attendant. Both times were more to reassure herself than for my benefit.

Lois was a doer. One of those people who had to keep busy. If she wasn't volunteering or reading, she was sewing. Her upstairs sewing room was a thing to behold, and my brother and I loved that she included us in every sewing project. I still have stuff she made me: my first book bag for school, a purple octopus I spread out each morning in the middle of my bed, clothes, a pillow with my name on it, and a keepsake box that holds all the cards I've received over the years. I also have the giant Christmas stocking she sent Kim and me when we lived in our Florida apartment.

Getting a Lois gift in the mail was the best thing ever. One year she made us all tall, cloth dancing partners that fit on the end of our feet. Mine was a boy with red hair and a bow tie, and my brother had a lion with an unruly mane. Lois sewed snaps on the thumbs to hold their arms in place around our waist or neck while we danced. I wished I'd kept that guy. 

She was a thinker. A problem solver. She liked to make lists, and if people weren't busy, she assigned them jobs. My dad and Karl always had honey-do lists, whether on vacation or not. In the summers, she'd leave circled newspaper ads with activities or jobs we might be interested in. She emailed us those when we moved to Florida, and two years ago, Kim and I were given the task of removing paint that her granddaughter had gotten on the backseat of her car. 

One was never idle when around Lois.

But she was also a worrier. Not just with her children and family, but with the state of the world, the future, the neighbor's kid running around barefoot. Worrying came naturally. As a kid, I didn't think too much about it. It was just a part of Lois, and while it drove her daughters nuts, I was pretty oblivious. It did, however, keep her from sleeping. I would always tip-toe on my way to the bathroom because it was right next to her bedroom, and I didn't want to be the reason why Lois didn't get a good night's sleep. We talked about it recently. How motherhood upped the ante and how it wasn't easy to turn the worrying off. Not sleeping was a huge downer for her. 

Lois was an avid reader. She volunteered at the library and always told us not to bemoan when we had overdue books because the fine was needed and went to a greater cause. I passed that on to my girls and recently repeated it to my husband when he griped about paying my library fine. Books were another great gift from Lois. 

She had a lot of faith, which was a bone of contention between her and my mother. I think she tied quite unsuccessfully to sway my mother toward the light. When that didn't work, she did her best to see that I at least made a valiant attempt at seeing things through a different lens. My mother swore Lois took me to church to irritate her, but I enjoyed the dressing up part and the attention.

After we kids got married and spread out, we didn't see much of one another, but Lois kept in contact. She was a huge fan of this blog. She'd read my stories, send me emails with comments, and she always kept me abreast of the Smith happenings. 

Lois also kept sending me articles that pertained to my interests. Some came via mail, others via email. I recently came across some Steelers articles she'd cut out of the local newspaper. She was a sports fan but got a kick out of my Steelers obsession.

Until a few weeks ago, I still received articles or links to podcasts or websites she thought I'd be interested in reading. 

In 2006, my mother and I took the girls and traveled to Pennsylvania. It was a chance to introduce the grandchildren, my girls, and Stephanie's son, and we spent a wonderful week visiting and catching up. I tried to explain the importance of our friendship. To convey how the Smith house was so much a part of me, but I'm not sure my children understood the connection then. 

Lois and I had some meaningful written communication, especially after Karl got sick. I could relate because I'd gone through something similar with my mother, and I'd been with Lois when she'd made the decisions for her own father. It was an interesting dynamic to come full circle. To go from a child and surrogate parent relationship to one as two adults.  

Today, in thinking through the last fifty-three years, I'm so grateful I made the trip in October 2019. As I got older and lost my own parents, those relationships meant more to me. Lois was the last of the parents. I really wanted to let her know how important she'd been in my life. 

I'm so glad I did. It was a much-needed balm personally, but also a good trip down memory lane and a reminder of how important friendships can be when people work at it. We told stories and laughed until our stomachs hurt. We talked about death and the future. Like my mother, she hoped to go out on her own terms and when she was ready. Her kids made sure that happened.

I will miss beating her in Words with Friends. I will miss her emails. Most of all, I will miss that voice, her frown, the wrinkled brow and pursed lips when I said something nutty, and that tsk and her drawn-out, exaggerated "Oh. Cara--. What do you think of that? Can you believe she said that?"

I now have a Birthday angel, watching over me every year. 

H. Davis, my neighbor next door

Several years ago, during the big housing boom, Tom suggested we get a bigger house. I emphatically disagreed. I didn't want to leave our neighbors. All of my life, in every home I've lived, we've had wonderful neighbors--the kind who become a part of your family. There was no way I was leaving those neighbors.

Today, I received the news that the best neighbor ever had died. Howard was 99 years old. My heart is broken.

The first day that Tom moved into this house (a year before we married), Howard performed first-aid on my MIL. She cut her finger on something. We had just left to pick up another load at Tom's apartment, so Mary Anne went next door for help in staunching the bleeding. She informed us the neighbors were top-notch. She was right!

There was no one like Howard. He was the epitome of goodness. He never had anything unkind to say about anything or anyone. He and his wife Betty embraced us "young people," and they were a part of our lives from day one--literally, where my daughters were concerned, having been there since before they both were born.

Yesterday, before I knew Howard was gone, I texted him. After some health issues, Howard moved to Texas to be close to his daughters, but we kept in touch. I was sitting on our porch with Elliot, thinking about how Howard would've come over to sit with me if he'd still been next door. He was 99 so not getting a response from him was always a worry, but I think I knew when I texted. I hadn't heard from him on Easter. He died on April 14th. 

• Howard was one of the first people I told when I got pregnant. I was coming home from walking the hood, and he was outside. He greeted me with a joke about exercising, and I just had to spill the beans. He and Betty were so excited. Betty thought I was having a boy.
• Howard and Betty were the first of our neighbors to meet Madison when we brought her home from the hospital. They also were who we called the night I went into labor with Darcy. They came over until my MIL could get to our house. Betty knit both children a layette that is in their keepsake boxes today.
• They would leave the sliding door open to their screened porch so they could listen to Madison and her friends play outside. Howard told us Betty loved to hear the voices of children in the neighborhood.
• Howard was great at neighbor tact. When our bushes got too high, he'd offer to trim them. When our back fence rotted, he helped Tom replace it. In doing that, the neighbor behind us came out and yelled at Tom because she wasn't sure that the fence didn't belong to her. Howard calmly reversed psychology by exclaiming how he just knew she would be happy this rotting piece of wood was finally coming down. Years later, when we put in yet another fence along the back and side, we did not replace it between our house and Howard's. In typical Howard fashion, he got us not to do so by talking about his enjoyment in seeing the neighbors, the kids, the trees, etc. This year we finally finished our fence line along that side, and every time I see it, I think of Howard.

• Howard's house was the first house my kids would go to every Halloween. Even if we went to other neighborhoods or parties, they both insisted they had to show Howard their costumes first.
• Every Christmas, he hung out his decorations early so he could enjoy them before he headed off to spend the holidays with his girls. Every year since he left, I missed his lights on the fence in front of his house.
• He had fake flowers in the planter by his front door. I knew then I liked Howard and Betty because I had done the same when I moved into my first apartment. We made a lot of jokes about tending to them and watering them.
• Howard made us a set of wind chimes for our front porch.
• Howard and I once drank too much ouzo at our Greek neighbor's funeral. The dead man's wife kept pouring it into our glasses. She laughed about that for months.
• He had more social engagements and went to more parties than we did. 

• While Betty would often balk about "bothering us" if we invited her to dinner, Howard always accepted happily. After Betty died, he attended every birthday and celebration we threw. He knew all of our family and each one of our friends. Everyone always asks about him still today.
• He took Betty's death hard. I never forgot him telling me how they had held hands that morning in bed because "we old folks still did that." I sat with him in the hospital after she'd had her stroke. I promised her we would take care of him.
• He told me the secret to a long life was having a cocktail every night. Or, as he liked to call them, a "corktail." He would have us over for munchies and "corktails," and he always had stuff for the girls. They associate ginger ale with Howard. I associate rum and coke with Howard. He always put more rum than coke and assured me it was fine.
• After Betty's died, he would call me to ask me how to do things. Every time I try to fold a fitted bedsheet, I think of Howard. That was one of his questions, and I told him if he learned the answer, to pass it on. We worked hard at trying to come up with the best solution, and every time we failed. He finally told me he'd decided we could wad it into a ball and shove it into the closet. 

• Howard was a photographer. He loved when I posted nature photos to my blog, and he'd give me pointers. 
• He helped me paint Madison's bedroom when she was five. I don't think he had faith I could do it by myself. It was a pale lilac, and he kept asking me if I was sure I wanted to paint a room purple. I didn't know then that he was color blind.
• When we were picking out paint for the outside of our house, I bought different samples and painted a stripe on one wall. After I had a collection of them, Howard asked me if I wanted him to paint over them. I asked him why it bothered him, and he said it was too many colors for one wall. I reminded him he was color blind. 
• When he called me on the phone, he always said, "Hello, Cara, this is ole H. Davis from next door."
• Every month he'd come into our yard, sit on an overturned bucket, and trim the leaves from his bush that was creeping through the chainlink fence onto our side. We kept telling him he didn't have to do it, but he insisted. I'd bring him water or lemonade.

• Howard's birthday was in October, two days before my neighbor across the street's big day. For his 80th, I threw a dual party for them. Howard cried when we sang Happy Birthday. I told him if he lived to a 100, we were coming to Texas.
• After Betty died, he came to dinner once or twice a week. He always brought a bottle of chilled white wine. 
• A couple of times, we went to his house and attempted to teach him to cook some of his favorite foods. He eventually gave up on that moved in a female friend. He was worried about how we would take it, which cracked us up.
• In Texas, he had another female friend. They went on a cruise together, and he told me they had separate cabins because she was a "good gal." 
• Howard was one of the few people still in my life who knew my father. He attended my FIL's funeral and my mother's memorial service.

• The first dog Howard got scratched Betty, so he returned her because he told the breeder he had "a little girl next door." His second dog was Penny, and when she died, he got Nickel, aka Nikki.
• When Nikki escaped, Howard knew to come to my house. He always came to the front door and peeked in like a kid asking to play with the neighbor. Elliot really missed him when they moved.
• He was not a Steelers fan but he'd pretend he was for me. He always yelled, "Go Steelers" when he'd see me during football season, and later after his move, he'd text it to me every Sunday.
• One year for Darcy's birthday party, we had a detective theme. Darcy's pinata had been stolen, and they had to find the culprit. It was a hunt where they had clues that led them to the next object with another clue. Each object had a letter, and they had to unscramble all of them to find the answer. It spelled Howard. He was so excited to be a part of it that he went out and bought himself a disguise!

• Howard loved his daughters. He talked to them all the time and would give us updates on their lives. He always gave all the credit for how they turned out to Betty. 
• Howard was a sailor. He sold his boat not long after we moved into the neighborhood. I always forgot that he was as much of a water person as I was.
• I've lost count of the things Howard helped us build, repair, or maintain. 
• Howard was very tech-savvy. He mastered computers, the iPhone, and the iPad. When he needed help, he called Tom. He piggy-backed off our wifi for years, and he and Tom would laugh when I'd get worried we'd all get in trouble.
• We always hid our Santa gifts in Howard's house.
• The last time we Facetimed him, we were joyful for the entire day. That's how he made people feel. His happiness was contagious. We were also just thrilled that he acted and sounded just like Howard.

• Howard told great stories, and he was an excellent listener.
• He offered to teach me how to play bridge after I told him I wasn't getting anywhere learning from a book Tom got me. I told him that despite being a card shark, that game was just beyond my capabilities. He never believed that.
• When I decided I should learn to sew, Howard lent me Betty's sewing machine while I mastered dresses for the girls.
• Once, he was hospitalized at the same time as his live-in friend. They were on different floors. I hopped back and forth between them as their communicator.
• Howard was gentle, kind, and sweet. Everyone loved him. You couldn't help it. Many times when I'm annoyed, I think, how would Howard handle this? When I told him that, he scoffed and laughed. "Well, I don't know about that, Cara. I'm just an old man with none of the answers."
• He loved the theater, had season tickets to our local group, and he always wanted to attend the shows my MIL worked on. 
• He also attended productions and sporting events that the girls participated in. He was a great cheerleader to many.
• We still call the house next door Howard's house. 

The day he moved was one of the worst days in our lives. I knew when I hugged him that I wouldn't see him again. Our family mourned for weeks. Just knowing he is gone and unreachable will be hard. I'd come to rely on those short text exchanges--a little everything is all right in the world because Howard is still in it.

After Tom processed the news of Howard's death, he told me he'd liked knowing that Howard was out there in Texas, and he'd wished he could just keep thinking that. 

He was a wonderful man. His heart was big enough to fit everyone he met in there. A rare gem in a world that is topsy-turvy. He was 95% positive and 5% thoughtful when he was down, always working to turn his frown upside down. I'm a better person for having known him. He will be missed more than he ever expected.