bompa's camel hair coat

I'm writing this wrapped in my Bompa's camel hair coat in the chill of a Taos evening. It was a gift from my brother. My little brother (who's all grown up, actually) has had the coat since just after Bompa died and my grandmother passed it along to him. The shoulders worked out all right, but the sleeves hit him about mid-way down his forearms so it hasn't gotten a whole lot of use.

While we were knocking around Madrid, NM yesterday after a long dusty hike up the Tent Rocks he asked if I would like to have it. I said yes, hugged him, and then hugged him a few more times after that. Trying not to cry.

I have two sharp memories of this jacket, a man's blazer. The first was when my Bompa brought it home, brand new, and made me inspect it with him, marveling over how well made it was, the quality of the materials. I started off humoring him, but before it was over I was convinced. He was an attorney after all -- he knew how to make a case.

But I was something else too: I was schooled. I learned something about quality and care and buying something solid that would last.

The other memory is from my Bompa's funeral. My sister and I delivered his eulogy together, a recitation of all that he taught us -- how to love Hood Canal Oysters and Walla Walla Sweet Onions and waffles and omlettes made just right (that is, made by him).

How to love long drives and silly songs about fat boys who turned the neighborhood pets into sausage (not kidding. great song. a bit morbid and not at all politically correct, but a great song.). We ended by reciting how he taught us our grandmother was the most beautiful woman in the world -- and there all the good cheer was almost destroyed by the tears.

But I choked them down and moved on to the reception where I was nearly startled again when one of his oldest friends told me story after story of all the stories my Bompa told him -- about his grandkids. How he bragged without mercy and bored his friends. Something I had no idea he was in the habit of doing. And then he said: "He sure was proud of you kids."

But I managed to keep the tears throttled back.

And it wasn't until later, when the Spring chill of a Pacific Northwest evening settled in that my brother offered me the coat to fend off the cold and I threaded my arms through its gentle drape into its ambient warmth, the shoulders a bit large but the sleeves that he had had tailored *just so* falling just where they should against my wrists; it wasn't until then that I couldn't stop the tears anymore; it wasn't until then that I slipped into the bathroom and I locked the door and I cried.