Jacob and Harold

Jacob was entering his second year of retirement. His daily routine began with an after breakfast meditative sit in a green metal lawn chair, one he had purchased 40 years earlier at the local Otasco store. Every time he sat in it he smiled, musing about those plastic webbed lawn chairs that allowed parts of your butt to squeeze through the worn out lattice of plastic. In times that no longer occurred, such as company picnics, he would see wives of friends whose cheeks seemed to jiggle uncontrollably as they walked and wonder what they must look like sans clothing after they had arisen, sometimes with spatial difficulty from one of those webbed folding chairs

His 40-year-old chair, due for its 4th repainting, had a direct line of sight to anyone walking the path around the neighborhood Park. Any walker would appear to be headed directly toward him until they made a right-angle turn and were out of sight. Sitting there on an uncomfortably warm July morning, he continued his recently incorporated habit of contemplating life. Just what have I accomplished? He asked himself. I have never won a single award or been honored by my city. I wasn't in the Army. What good was my life? Excavating deeper, he realized he had never been in the Rotary, Kiwanis, a bowling team, or played golf or tennis. He had never been married, never had children. I didn't volunteer; just what the hell have I done? I worked for forty-five years, paid my way, stole nothing, and hurt no one. But what good have I done?

Jacob didn't close his eyes as he contemplated, nor let his head drop. He made it a point to keep his eyes, if not constantly, frequently, focused on the park's paved pathway so he could wave to whoever was coming his way.

An aimless propulsion of despair propelled Harold on his daily walks. All he had to do was lean forward as if on a Segway, and off he went. Halley had died two months ago. She didn't wake up one morning, and that was it. Fifty-two years together and then naught, H and H were just H.

Down the block, up another, turn here, turn there. It didn't matter. The abyss created by Halley's death opened its door, calling to him as a barker outside a New Orleans whorehouse enticing him to enter. On this meandering morning walk, Harold encountered a raised edge of concrete placed in his path by poorly compacted soil and ended up face down, eye level with a pristine plane of spring-greened grass. His line of sight rising with his body, he noticed an intersecting sidewalk leading into a neighborhood park. One route being good as any, Harold took the newfound sidewalk into the park, past playground equipment and a four-net chain link enclosed tennis court at the end of which the sidewalk made a right-angle turn to the left; approaching the turn, Harold saw Jacob sitting in his chair with a big smile and a greeting wave. Returning the wave, Harold continued on.

In the following days, the meandering walks became purposeful. Day after day, he awaited that little lift he got from receiving and returning a smile and wave. On the tenth trip to the park, Harold did not take that left turn. Instead, he opened the fence at the rear of Jacob's yard, introduced himself, and explained just what those greetings meant to him. As Harold departed, a tear formed in the corner of Jacob's left eye and pushing over the reddened edge of the lower lid, haltingly made its way down getting caught in the protruding puffy chin.

As he sat there with eyes closed in pleasure of a compliment received, faces with pleasant smiles began swirling through his mind's eye. Faces of childhood friends, teenagers walking the downtown streets on a Saturday afternoon, His parents, church members, neighbors and co-workers. 60 years of smiling faces. I guess that's what I did with my life.