"It's my favorite time of month", the last great Calcopo, 4/28

What's funny is that I can't remember what book we were reading that month. We had already celebrated a belated March reading group at Kopachuck a couple weeks before. That was grand. Was it the Persian Pickle Club that month? I know we covered Five Quarters of an Orange in February. I believe it was in February. I do remember listening to La Boheme with you on the couch while you finished up that volume. Didn't I go to the opera that month? Or was it March?

But April. What was April's book? We plowed into Corelli's Mandolin in May. But I don't really want to remember that month's meeting. The book will stay with me always. The movie was just okay and I know that I'll never go back and watch the rest of it. I'll never understand why I can't make anything more than a mishapen pizza, but I made two of them that night and neither one was touched. What a misbegotten night that one was.

So, what did we read in April? Ivan Doig? I just unloaded a huge stack of discarded book club books that I accumulated for us back then. I should have scrutinized them closer before I passed them along. It was a mighty big stack. I would pick them up two at a time at the East Bremerton Friend's kiosk whenever I saw titles that I thought we might like. After a while we had a ton to choose from. Each month you would rifle through the stack and pull that month's official selection. It was handy. No shopping around, no titles to put on hold. I still remember how we had to generate phantom members each month for your sake, especially when we took our meetings to town, but I also remember how you were dogged you were in reminding me that it was a group of two, exclusive membership, no other readers allowed. I know a couple times other folks expressed interest in joining...how could they not? They were interesting meetings. Supper out in town..The Boatshed, Hiro Sushi, Azteca amongst others..and the conversation witty and everywhere. But it was our time.

As you often said to me, it was your favorite time of the month.

So, when I woke up this morning, thinking about all things I had to do today to prepare my home for guests this evening, I had to wonder, what replaced that in your life?

I know that that particular day was a fluke. Our book group traditionally met monthly on the 27th. My day off was on the 28th, a Friday, to make up for my work day on Saturday. Saturday was just going to be a scheduling day at the branch, nothing major. So we both woke up that Friday morning knowing that we had a full day to goof off. Generally those meetings were pretty tame. Dinner, chat, call it a night. But that day was going to be something else entirely. Was it the weather that beckoned us outside to play? Was it because we knew had the whole day to ourselves? Or was it just that you wanted, more than anything else, to make a mark someplace, put a notch on the skin of the world that said to the universe that you were there, that you had really lived that day?

Jane, it really was all about you, kiddo, about getting away, about finding, even for a moment, some private space of your own. Those books we read were passports. Those club meets, they were like secret tree house meetings where you could be Jane, you could break away from your roles and obligations and community ties. For a couple hours you could talk and eat and play, play without rules and restrictions and constructs of someone elses making. What a concept.

So we did. Play in a big way. Took that meeting on the road. Hit up a nursery off 16 in Gig Harbor. Did a bit of shopping for sundries at Target. Went across the bridge and had a great time in the aisles of Trader Joes. Had a magnificent supper at Vuelve a la Vida on Pacific. Took a drive down to Ruston and broke out our blanket, watched the ships pass by on the Sound. We had thought about a ferry ride over to Vashon, but the night got late really quick. We had dessert to eat, things to do. We made time in way that only old fashioned lovers can.

But time had a mind of it's own that night. It was playing the role of Fateful Time, of Last Call for Lovers. It had plans for us and little did we know that what we had that day would be the last best thing we ever did. The high water mark. The Last of the Great Calcopos.

The next day was as long as it was silent. You disappeared off the radar, only to show up much later in the day on Sunday. Your talks had began in earnest that night when you got home. Life, as we knew it, anyway, was over. Endgame. On to other things.

I've tried to start book groups with other folks since then. They never really jelled, not the way ours did, and really, how could they? I now run a bookgroup out in town at the branch, but that, my dear, is a different thing altogether. I read books when I'm interested, but a book has to catch my eye, drag me in. I take recommendations, grab books off the Books to Go shelf, find titles that move fast and are well written. I read a lot of cookbooks. Pass along a lot of interesting titles I've read to The Estranged One.

But nothing compares to the thrill that I used to get sitting down and talking about books with you. That little group of ours, the Calcopo Forest to the Sea Book Discussion Group, was one of a kind.

And yes, it was my favorite time of the month, too.

Your WHMB