7/2- The Wait At Bob's

Our Wednesday would come, but slowly and steadily I was starting to come unhinged. I like Bob. I like most everyone I've met so far in both Ohio and Michigan. But we got here the evening of the last day in May and we were now looking the Fourth of July in the face. In looking over some of my private journal entries from the 9th of June I was reading that I'd leave in a week or so, which would be three weeks ago now. I was aching to move on, but still feeling deep within that it wasn't time.

Nothing is more frustrating than wanting to blame something that's aggravating you on someone else and knowing that it really has nothing to do with them what ever. I really wanted to smack Todd around and say that we'd done what we'd come for, I've waited far longer than I ever wanted, let's pick up our shit and go already. The problem was that easy as it was to peg him to blame this extended stay on him, it wasn't any fault of his that we were still there. Even worse, he wanted to go now too and he also couldn't figure out why we weren't. Something was going on some where and, blind to it as we were, we were tuned into it and waiting on it to show up in our sites. It went right back to our lessons in south Jersey. We aren't the center of the universe. We need to factor our guts into conscious logic because our guts are tuned into the decisions around the corner that others are making and affecting us as well. Its a weird theory we have, but so far its been pretty solid.

After much laying about, watching TV, playing video games, drinking beer around the fire, and watching Bob and Todd play some softball our Wednesday arrived... in the late afternoon. In the midst of mulling over methods of departure, seeing if we could finagle a ride to Angola to hitch the freeway there, Todd got a response to a friend request on Facebook that he'd sent out in the middle of June. His brother Mike.

Mike was the last of the family to have any kind of story with. Pam and Kim were his full sisters, and the first ones Todd had come in contact with fifteen years ago. Shelly, obviously, we'd spent the month with. Lynn he'd been talking to online for about two months now. Skip, their full brother, had sort of made it known he was opting out of this reunion month. And his Dad he had just finally reconnected with that past Sunday. Todd had sent Mike a friend request in the midst of all these meets falling through back in June and by this time, I believe, had given up the idea of contacting him. Now here he was accepting right at a time we'd "had a feeling about" three days earlier.

There was a brief email exchange. They chatted online that night, then talked on the phone Thursday night. In a whirlwind we were set up to meet up with him, his daughter Ally, and her mom Bobbie, in Coldwater on Friday. They were heading that way anyway that day to go get fireworks for the Fourth in Angola. they offered to give us a ride.

Sit down, shut up, and listen to everything going on around you whether you can hear it or merely feel it. The world works everything out for you, you just need the patience to let it. This event did reinforce my confidence in this, but I was still struggling in a raging battle with this overall lesson in patience.

Click here for Todd's perspective.