THE COMPANY OF OLD MEN
This was my last Friday with my old male friends before leaving for three weeks away for my trip to Germany and the Netherlands. As usual I don’t remember what we talked about. For most of my life work and then family activities filled my days. I enjoyed my way of teaching, which was all class discussion and no lectures. In fact I never could see the connection between my monthly paycheck and my time in the classroom. For some reason I was having a good time listening and talking with students and also receiving a paycheck, almost a guaranteed annual income for having a good time. I even got paid to take groups of students on trips to Sri Lanka and India for either two months or four months at a time. For a while one quarter of my teaching time, one semester out of four, was in India at someone else’s expense. My daughter was my assistant leader so I had my family with me.
And at home Kathe, my wife, and my children were fun to be with. For 45 years my days were filled.
But in retirement the presence of students vanished although I continued to travel to India for two months at a time every second year. But my kids had moved out of the house with families of their own. I began the weekly get togethers with my male friends while Kathe had a much fuller social schedule with her women friends, probably because women are more social than men (and maybe live longer because of that).
And then Kathe died of cancer and I was alone. The meetings with my old male friends became the high point of the week. I began to travel, four or five countries for a month each, every year. And finally I moved to the little town Marshall where soon I was connecting with people and activities almost daily.
I will only miss three Fridays with my men’s group, nothing remarkable, group members often have dentist appointments and visitors that keep them away. Three weeks are but a blip. But somehow the dislocation of going a quarter of the way around the world makes it seem like I am saying goodbye for an extended period which I did on Friday.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 