This and That

 The windchimes I bought are put out by a company called Wind River. The particular one is Shenandoah Melody. They are musically tuned g, a, b,d,e, a pentatonic scale. They are created in a way to maximize the reverberation. The sound is so pleasing (to my ear, anyhow) and the best way I describe it is that it reminds me of something I can't quite remember. 

I have always loved windchimes, from the time I was a child. My grandmother had some glass ones that tinkled in a small, cheerful way. They hung inside in front of a window. 

In looking through Wind River's online catalog I saw they had chimes for over a thousand dollars. That I cannot imagine, and it made me feel quite thrifty.

I have been dreaming strange and vivid dreams. Peculiar things like Tim and I took my youngest granddaughter somewhere. Inexplicably, we came home without her. I woke up from that dream in a panic.

I have also been dreaming of places and people from years back...like 30 years ago. One dream intrigued me. Years ago, I was caring for a stroke patient, a wonderful man who taught me a great deal about birds and human nature. His stroke had been a bad one. 

The thing is that this man was rich. Probably the richest man I will ever meet in my life, although I will never be able to put any kind of number to it. He was sent off to boarding school as a 6 year old. He was very frightened and cried himself to sleep at night. The other boys called him 'the ghost' because he was so withdrawn and pale.

After a time, he did make a friend. This friend's father felt so very sorry for this lonely boy that he worked a deal. My friend began to spend his summers out west at the family ranch, riding horses, spending long days in the great outdoors. 

He tried to explain to me how life changing that was for him. Johnny Walker was his best friend, and his family treated him like one of their own. I laughed the first time I heard Johnny Walker's name. I was walking with my friend as he did his laps with his walker around the pool.

He stopped to look at me, quizzically. "Why is that funny?" 

I said, "Johnny Walker is the name of a whisky."

He looked at me through his shaggy mop of gray hair and said, "the boys would never make fun of a boy for how his father made his money."

I laughed. "Mike, I said, "you and I are from two very different worlds. I forget that sometimes!"

He was never mean about these explanations. He was just as dumbfounded by the fact that my father did not own a boat. His own summer home was on a huge lake and he loved sailing. 

Anyways, his daughter popped into one of those vivid dreams. What I remember about the dream the most is that polite distance. She answered when I talked but moved around taking care of things in her big house. She made no effort to initiate conversation with me. Not so different really from how it was all those years ago. She was maybe 10 years older than me. 

As laid back as her father was, she and her mother were cut from another piece of cloth. They were very class conscious. All of his kids were, really. So it was an interesting experience, working for them.

Anyways, I dreamed of this daughter.  She would be in her late 70s, I figured. So I did a bit of Facebook stalking, and found her. She had died. I looked up her obituary and was a little surprised to see that one of her daughters had died, a few months before. More shocking, of her three brothers, only one was left. She, her daughter and her two brothers had all died within a year of each other. Stalking even further, one of the brothers had been widowed at a young age. His daughter died of a drug overdose at 15. 

That is a lot of tragedy, isn't it? There are some things, I suppose, that all the money in the world will not protect you from.

I did a bit more reading about my old friend's now grown grandchildren. It was a bit of a surprise to see that they were quite a class conscious group. They were young and wealthy and nothing else really seemed to matter beyond that. 

Isn't is strange that there are people who have so much money that they essentially live in their own bubble? A world within the world that most of us live in.

I am not saying it to be mean. It is just a curiosity to me, just as, all those years ago their grandfather told me stories about his life, and I told him stories about my own. Both of us listened to each other, fascinated by things beyond our own horizons.

Anyways, time for me to hit the hay. Levi and Mattie butchered two pigs. They are making sausage tomorrow. I am going up to help and to learn something new.