Fall Season of Miracles for Me is Family and Always will be
The POSITIVE ATTITUDE for the Weary Soul group gives you the opportunity to share the miracles in your life during this fall season with a creative writing challenge. Join in on the challenge with the FALL SEASON OF MIRACLES CONTEST | Positive Attitude for the Weary Soul Group.
All of us have during our lifetimes meet many folks and have numerous acquaintances. Some of us are lucky enough to have had a few really good friends and I will not discuss what is meant by a really good friend but we all know deep in our hearts what this means. There is a line in Bob Seger song that goes”… Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends”. I relate to that line as it has happened to me many times during my life. However, Family is special or hopefully should be for folks. Not every member of every family develops a close bond or sometimes any bond at all with one or more members of their family. That really is a shame. Family has always been very special for me and always will be. I am very lucky as I had one of the most wonderful Mom’s any person could ever hope to have. I have a great immediate family right now which consists of my wife, my children, my step children, my father-in-law, our dog and our friend Pete. I never had a large immediate family while growing up to develop relationship with but there were some key members of that group that had an impact on me. One of those persons was my cousin Linda.
Linda and I were fairly close when we were young and growing up. I always looked up to her as she is two years older than me and was always very mature and oh so wise for her age. I guess as I have said to my wife many times I thought of her as the older and wiser sister I never had but wished that had and I wanted so much to tap into her whole self as a person especially when I was a teenager. When I was three years old or so I was with a group of kids at a pool with Linda. I somehow fell into the deep end of this pool and I could not swim a lick in those days. I still to this day remember myself sitting on the bottom of that pool. I was totally scared out of my mind and essentially I was paralyzed to do anything but sit there and die. Linda jumped in the pool and dived into the deep water and pulled me off the bottom. She told me to go sit on a bench on the side of the pool since I could not swim. She saved my life but she never realized that she had done this. It is her basic personality not to look for praise or recognition.
Linda and her family moved away many years ago to another state. While my parents were alive as well as my aunt (Linda’s Mom) we stayed in contact via the mostly the mail and sometimes phone calls. Linda got married to Lance when she was about 19 years old and began traveling with him as he was a musician. Linda and Lance had one child named Mindi. Over the years we had some contact but each year it got less frequent. My first wife for some unknown reason was very jealous and envious of Linda and she really did not like us having a whole lot of contact. Linda is a very attractive lady and maybe that was the main source of the issue with my first wife. We got divorced back in 1998 and I lost all contact with all of my Mom’s family and all members of my Dad’s family that were still living. This included my cousin Linda. I did not have any of their addresses or phone numbers and my ex-wife certainly was not the kind of person who would give me that information. My ex-wife as it turns out had called my cousin and told her that I just disappeared. I never ever disappeared anywhere.
Just about 18 months ago I received an E-mail from my cousin Linda who was asking if it was really me. Her husband Lance Abair found me in Katy through the internet. My best guess based on searches I have done it was combination of my web site plus probably Active Rain internet activity that led Lance to me. I was very excited to have found my long lost cousin. She and her family had moved out of the State that I long ago knew of and had moved a couple of times. No wonder I could never find her when I did searches. My cousin's Daughter Mindi had followed in her dad’s footsteps got degree in music and currently has a very successful professional career as jazz musician with her own band. We E-mailed each other and talked on the phone several times. I called my cousin last Christmas and spoke to her for a long time. Unfortunately, my lap top computer died this past May and along with it I lost most of the data I had about my cousin. Lance after a long and very successful career in music as had to stop playing due to a health issue.
Early August 2011 Mindi’s band was going to play at the Houston International Jazz Festival and my cousin contacted us to see if we wanted to see Mindi play in person at the festival. We had already bought some of Mindi’s CD’s and were very familiar with her music. The promoter was contacted by Mindi and we were able to attend her concert. It was absolutely awesome to watch her perform in person. We meet Mindi after the concert at the Hotel bar where she was playing and we stayed until the bar employees threw us out as they wanted to go home. This was the first time I had ever meet Mindi in person. We talked about how we all needed to meet somewhere and have fun together. Many times people just say things like this but do not really mean it.
My miracle this fall is that we arranged to meet my cousin and her husband in Los Angeles as they live there and then take the Catalina Express from Long Beach California to Catalina Island. Mindi Abair and her band were playing at the Catalina Island Jazz festival and she and her band were the main act folks came to see on Saturday evening. We were gone from Saturday October 22 and came back late on Tuesday October 25. Mindi’s husband Jason was also able to make the trip.
We had absolutely a spectacular time going to Catalina; enjoying the reunion of part of my lost family; watching Mindi play again in concert as her she and her band are truly talented musicians and performers; going back stage; attending the band’s sound check; exploring the island of Catalina; talking about family events; hanging out with several musicians; discovering new items the other family member was not aware of; and just enjoying life. It was truly a miracle for me as I had not seen or spent time with Linda in almost 30 years. I know in my heart my Mom, Dad and my Aunt are all sporting huge smiles in heaven right now since we were able to reconnect and truly enjoy each other. I feel blessed that I now have additional family to enjoy that had been truly lost for such a long time. My immediate family has been enlarged.
As an extra I had included a video of Mindi playing with her Dad on a cruise a few years ago.
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