1916

"How long did you live with us?" "Five years minus four months and three days. I am doing the math and this all seems to square. Kenny disappeared-I can no longer say he died-just three days before Christmas, December 22, 1996.  I had recently turned twenty.  he came to live with us, when?  Three days, would have been the twenty-fifth.  Plus four months, January Februrary, March, April.  Yes, the tulips were in their full glory the day he came to live with us.  "you were twirling in an abandonment of rapture at the sight of our tulips the day you came to live with us." "Are they still there?" "They didn't survive longer than a couple of more years.  We kind of let the garden go, I'm afraid." "Oh Christopher, you and Jim, between you must have had twenty brown thumbs." And he always referred to Dad, not as your dad, but as Jim.   "Where was your bedroom?" "Second floor next to yours, and we shared a bathroom." "Where was the bathroom?" "Both our bedrooms were at opposite ends of the hallway.  The bathroom was in between" "What direction faced the bathroom?" "From my bedroom door it was on the left."  Do I pass?" "In spades, baby, in spades!" "Oh darling, you know how to set a girl's heart aflutter!"  And now we are all laughing and Kenny and I are laughing the loudest and the hardest because those were classic coded lines in our friendship that we often used.