Mrs. Teabody Greets the Day

"You can't help getting older but you don't have to get old." Jeannie  celebrating her 95th birthday with family. On Tuesday I looked up from my weekly cleaning at TYF to see the engaging smile of a young man I hadn't seen in easily thirty years. Nonetheless, I knew him and instantly felt the old rapport. We passed a couple hours  catching  up and drinking tea and inevitably our talk turned to travel. That's what happens when you tete-a-tete with a fellow tumbleweed. Later in the evening I tossed a couple items in my "Ireland suitcase" and that started me thinking about journeys past and in the offing, about  meticulous planning, about wanting to put one's best foot forward, about learning, about intelligence and wit and about style.  I thought of Jeannie Greathead Hutchinson. Jeannie looking chic while eating chocolate ice cream outside her cabin on a Bahamas cruise. In 2014 the Teabodys took a little cruise in the Bahamas w

I Our last happy time together, August 2016   I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades Forever and forever when I move. - Tennyson Perspective alters everything. Stand far enough away from a building and many of its imperfections vanish. Stand far enough away from your own personal history and those years between ages 18 and 29,  when all the world was new, seem almost the stuff of dreams, especially when filtered through the sieve of nostalgia. Such is the case this morning as I look back over the years in order to capture the essence of a friendship. “What do you say about a beautiful girl who died . . .” is the phrase which begins the 1970 novel by Erich Segal called LOVE STORY. That question kept insinuating itself into my waking hours following the fateful call from a voice from the past. "Hello? Is this H? Maybe you don't remember me, but this is Laren. . ." I on