Floyd

July 18, 2016

Greetings from the bookmark,

I opened the refrigerator and a jar leapt out, made a break for freedom.  It landed neatly and rolled across the wood floor, clearly a well thought out escape.  I caught it, feeling a little rueful for spoiling the opportunity. 

I stood in front of the fridge and looked at the shelves inside, wondering again how I would find the cream for my coffee.  Or anything else that might be nested in the puzzle of food wedged there.  I smile every time. 

I haven’t seen Floyd Boon for nearly ten years, and yet there are rare few days that pass that I am not aware of his place in our lives.  I am an early riser, and many mornings as I am making coffee and waiting for my eyes to focus, I am reminded of sitting in Floyd’s kitchen. 

It might be either of us who got up first, in the misty morning hours while our family slept.  I would come into the kitchen and he would be there in his boxer shorts, usually as gaudy as the Hawaiian shirts he loved, puttering around the sink, making coffee, rinsing dishes.  While the coffee brewed he would give himself an insulin shot.  It was an oddly intimate act that I grew accustomed to after the first couple of times.

We would wedge ourselves into our places at the little table and drink our coffee and talk.  Our friendship, cemented in the first hours we met, propelled us in all directions.  We talked about the day, about our families, the weather, the food.  He would share stories about his patients, a rich well of experience in a small town like Ludington.  We would talk about the world, swap philosophies.  It was a natural flow, an effortless exchange between friends, a gift that even this morning I am grateful for.

For many years he would walk the dog, a spirited Afghan named Kaylee.  And when the dog was gone, the leash hung in the back hall, a small bookmark in Floyd’s life, a reminder of something he loved. 

He would come back in from outside with the newspaper and we would read the Free Press and cluck over the bad news and laugh over the comics.  He would get out a pecan coffee cake that Yaya had bought for the kids and cut a few pieces for us, which almost always led to another slice.  Floyd loved to eat, which inspired us all to join him. 

Summer mornings, the house surrounded in mist, hint of light from the sun fighting to turn the day into its full potential, the soft, sad moan of the foghorn from the water’s edge.  The two of us sitting near the window, two fans blowing to cool Floyd’s percolating temperature.  The time blurred and neither of us ever looked at the clock. 

Whatever else we talked about, Floyd would hover over whatever he loved.  We would talk about what to make for lunch, and that would lead to great meals we had shared.  Mention friendship and there would be stories about life-long relationships, about meeting Dorothy and starting that romance, a rare second chance in that stage of life.  And that would lead to his family, his children, and his grandchildren, some of whom were sleeping in every bed or couch or on every floor in his home.

He said to me, many times: “You’ve got some great kids. Put the kids first.”  It has been advice that has driven many choices since then.

I would get up to get cream for my coffee, open the refrigerator door, and after years of training, reach to grab whatever fell out of the chaos inside.  His refrigerator was like a Jenga game; teetering bowls of leftovers stacked on cottage cheese wedged into boxes of brats layered over a head of lettuce on top of the strawberries for the shortcake shoved in the door next to the butter near the horseradish. 

I smile every time I open my own refrigerator and a jar tries to escape.

Floyd was a kind, gentle man, who demonstrated compassion and generosity in ways so simple it was inspiring to watch.  He taught me and my children a great many lessons, not always in what he said but in how he loved us and those around us.

Floyd and Dorothy’s refrigerator was overflowing, filled beyond capacity.  It held what they enjoyed, what they knew others would like; the fruit that was good, the ice cream that made the fruit better, the cold beer that tasted best after the parade, the bacon that made the house smell like morning.  It was a symbol of the love they shared for each other and for us.

My friend Floyd took a different path many years ago, on some other plane where he and Kaylee can take morning walks.  But he continues here too, in every memory we carry around with us.  In quiet mornings over coffee, in the breeze from a noisy fan, in the taste of a brat on the 4^th of July, or the simple pleasure of a good conversation.  He is still here in the places that hold all of the chaos together in my refrigerator.

Hope this finds you overflowing,

David

Copyright © 2016 David Smith