There’s Nobody Quite Like Jim

When we last met Deb and I were hanging around Tampa attempting to figure out the advantages to living in a place with high humidity about ten months of the year. About all we could come up with for an answer was an endless supply of drinking water can be wrung out of your t-shirt. So, it was probably a good thing when we finished a wonderful Cuban dinner last Friday and headed for Savannah on Saturday.

Yours truly, Deb, Judy and Jim in front of the fountain
at Forsythe Park in Savannah.

Riverboats along dock in Savannah.

Now, when you leave Jacksonville and head north on I-95 with a zillion Spring Breakers returning to places like New York, New Jersey, Vermont and Pennsylvania, you’re glad that you really do have Georgia on your mind as the state’s welcoming sign says. As we made our way across a corner of Savannah and onto Tybee Island I could feel my pulse race with the excitement of seeing my oldest and dearest friend. All right, so Jim is actually family. His paternal grandmother and my maternal grandmother were sisters, making us second cousins. But, when you grow up around the corner from each other,  hang out on the playground and carpool to school together, you’re more like close friends than ordinary cousins.

Old cotton mills are now shops and
cafes along the River Walk in Savannah.

 As I remember it, Jim was a little heavier, rounder and slower than me growing up. His response was always a bit slower, too. A mutual friend and I would always count the seconds after everyone had laughed before Jim would announce with a smile, “Oh, now I get it.” It was always with his inimitable smile.

Somewhere along the road of life a change took place. Jim was the first to get married, and he and Judy have remained married for 40 years. He left the cold north woods first, too, and built a thriving business as a photographer. When we would get together he was the faster one on the tennis court leaving me breathless as he cruised to victory. A dozen years ago, after raising two beautiful children, he became a teacher and moved to Tybee. Five years later Judy and he built the house we pulled up to last Saturday.

We're still the same kids who played on the
playground at Grantosa Drive Elementary.

His eyes reflected the joy I felt when he opened the door and greeted us with his inimitable smile. No doubt his measured pace had long prepared him for the immense battle he faces each day. Debbie said she forgot how funny he is when he delivered one of those punch lines he had trained us over the years to patiently wait for him to deliver. Even the bobbing head and twitching fingers that were not present on Saturday, but would return on Sunday, so much a part of what we associate with Parkinson’s, seemed to fit with his rhythmic movement. “It is what it is,” he would say. Those more astute than me, like our maître de at Huey’s, the café along the River Walk where we had lunch, added his smile and moved along with Jim in his dance of life.

I told Jim this blog is satirical, but within the satire there is always some element of truth. The truth is it took me a long time to understand what my younger cousin—he’s six months younger—and dearest friend understood all along. So, while I will never be able to get the smile quite right, it gives me great pleasure to say, “Oh, now I get it.”