A woman came up to me as I sat in my red camp chair watching Blue Alchemy play at a concert sponsored by the Friends of Irving Circle. I had not been long settled into my chair when she approached me. Without preamble, she asked me, “Are you coming to the porch after the concert?” I responded with delight: “I hadn’t planned to, but I am now!” I called my youngest daughter, who was at the home that we now share, and told her that, after the concert, I was going to the porch. My granddaughter was spending the weekend with her father, so I invited her mother to come to the porch with me.
Ken Collier-Magar’s lovely bride Gaynell remembered me from the last time I had visited her porch after a previous concert on The Circle. I have had a semi-frequent correspondence with Ken since the time he reached out to tell me that he was also from Western Pennsylvania (specifically, Braddock). His office is near the Coal Yard Coffee Company, and I have visited him with my granddaughter, who was, at first, not charmed by him. She has not responded well to men who were neither her father, nor me. In recent meetings, however, she has forgone the screaming and just gives Ken the intense stare, while checking to make sure I have her 14-month-old back. On a recent pram-push with her past Ken’s porch, I noted the twin flower urns that bordered his walk, and considered ways to get Myah a flower, and to leave a thank-you note, a bit of casual banditry that I confessed to Gaynell that night on her porch.
My daughter managed to find me sitting alone on the green, watching the band break down their equipment. I stood and collapsed my lawn chair and we proceeded the few steps necessary to reach the porch, where a gathering of Ken and Gaynell’s friends was already in full swing. Ken was ensconced on his throne at the left rear of his porch, his head wreathed in cigar smoke, while his queen sat near the front door, her hair brightly backlit by the light from the front window as she overlooked her granddaughter’s Animé sketches with a Pigma Micron pen in a notebook. I introduced my daughter to those I knew, saying “This is Myah’s mother,” since most of the people in my micro-hood know my granddaughter. (I joke that my two daughters are now my “grandchild delivery devices.”) Lauren laughed, used to being upstaged by her child, and sat down near Ken.
There was this, that night: laughter, learning, singing, sketching, sharing and caring. Gaynell and Ken have a great group of friends, and my daughter and I were comfortably included in the circle. Ken discovered that his grandson was a schoolmate of my daughters, and at the Ken-end of the porch, they laughed about cats and dogs and Myah’s fascination with both. At the Gaynell end of the porch, I worked hard to ingratiate myself with the artistic granddaughter, who graciously allowed me to sketch a quick caricature of her (which she insisted that I sign). Lauren and I left the porch in a soft mood, happy to have shared in the kindnesses of friends and strangers.
At home, Lauren and I rummaged for a photo that Myah and I could leave as a gift for Ken and Gaynell the next time that we passed their house on the way to iced tea and lemon muffin at Coal Yard Coffee. We found one, and we will say “thanks” to Gaynell and Ken.
cjon3acd@att.net