Just Like Old Times in Packrat

Had a good time at the pow wow...Drummer Boy was there! My favorite dancer, and I had a huge crush for years. The head man dancer was my cousin M's "Drummer Boy", and several of the dancers there were champions from our younger days. I told Cousin M that "it's good to see some old favorites - and they ARE 'old' favorites!"

Over a decade ago I joked to Cousin M that one day the MC would announce the "Golden Age" category and cause our hearts to beat faster; that day has come!

I talked briefly to Drummer Boy and got greeted with a hug. I've wanted to tell him something for years (could have done it on Facebook, but I wanted to tell him face to face because I want all encounters face to face! haha). When the Coyote (my brother/cousin/uncle) first went into the hospital in the coma from which he would never awaken, Drummer Boy (a close friend of the Coyote's who knew how close we were) gave me his phone number and told me to call him any time. When we moved the Coyote to a nursing home, I told Drummer Boy. He told me again to call ANY time and it didn't have to be just about the Coyote but anything I wanted to talk about. "I mean that," he said.

I never did; I tend to want to do so around 3 a.m. I know he said "any time" but - at 3 a.m.? Really? I'm not calling anybody at 3 a.m. - but knowing that I could made those hard, lonely hours less lonely and gave me comfort. I told him so Sunday night.

He's a good man, always has been. He played the flute for the Coyote's funeral; he was one of the first people I called.

His presence stirred me - I told Cousin M, who had a wildly beating heart of her own this weekend, that it felt like old times in every way, although then I hoped to be noticed and this time I could approach him - although I know times have changed when I left the conversation with him for a homemade burrito!