Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Observations from the Coffee Shop 5.23

Over the last couple years a rogues gallery of characters has passed through my posts here. The ones I'm probably most secretive about yet at the same time most open about are the members of my family. For reasons all my own a want to introduce you to another member of that group. She would be my aunt, my mom's sister, who to her total annoyance I always called Jay. She says I just call her that because I like pancakes so maybe you can figure the name out from there.

Like most female members of our family Jay has had a sometimes intriguing life. Among other schools she attended the Atlanta College of Art but received a degree from none of them. She lived in Los Angeles for years but says she grew bored with it and moved to New York, yes the Village. As my dad describes it she burned out after ten years in this city and moved to Philadelphia where she spent some time working at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Even though she lived in Los Angeles I'm told she didn't have a drivers license until well into her thirties. That alone says a lot about her.

She loves dogs and has always had one, usually a french poodle. Not the fluffy kind of poodle that immediately comes to mind but ones more like the retrievers which they were originally bred to be. Her poodles like to chase you around the yard, pit poodles.

Finally. when my mom became ill, Jay moved back to our ancestral homeland of CentralPa and has been there ever since. She became sort of an eccentric mom to Sean and K and sometimes attempted to be mine. At this she sadly failed completely.

There is a person in everybody's life who they wish they had or could spend more time with. It might be a family member or it might be an old friend. Jay is that person to me.

Now I'm just waiting for the phone to ring.