January 24

January 24, 1938 my sister Gina Louise Weller was born. I was two years and four months old, and have no conscious memory of it, nor did Time allow for sibling jealousy or rivalry to develop, possibly because exactly a year and a half later, on July 24, 1939, our brother Walter Gentry Weller was born. All our growing up years, Gina & Walt were a team combining to happen, and happening.

Around the Time Walt was was born, being by then almost four years old, I do have a vivid memory: Mama's health being severely at risk, I was staying with my Gentry grandparents in Pensacola, and it was when my aunt Margaret Harrison Gentry, wife of mama's older brother Wilbur, died of spinal meningitis. Born in 1913, she would have been 26 years old. The image in my mind is of mama's sister Mildred, whom at the Time I called Minnie but later DD, DeeDee, took me, and my first cousin Margaret Ann and her brother Bill, into the living room of the house at 1317 East Strong Street, where Margaret's open casket lay. I remember Mildred saying softly, "Isn't she beautiful." Margaret is buried in the Gentry plot at St John's Cemetery in Pensacola. Some seventy or so years later I shared that image with Margaret Ann, asking her if she remembered, and she told me, "That's the only memory I have of my mother." A year or so later she corrected herself, "No, my other memory of her is standing at the door and watching as she was carried on a stretcher from the house out to the ambulance to be taken to hospital." In Pensacola recently for car maintenance, Linda, Kristen and I went by the cemetery and visited both the Weller and the Gentry graves, and I shared that July 1939 memory with them. Born in July 1922, mama's sister Mildred, my aunt DD, was coming up on her seventeenth birthday when that happened; she turned 100 last July.

But today, January 24. Gina was the sassy one, always "talking back" and never hidden away as the proverbial invisible Middle Child. A childhood memory that I've shared before on +Time, Gina was the one who liked to hang each icicle on the Christmas tree, versus my preference for standing back and throwing wads of them at the tree. When mama was called to intervene and settle, Gina always won that one.

In another image that holds on, that I've shared here once or twice, we are visiting our Weller grandparents' home in St Andrews. Mama is in the front room saying goodbye, Gina and I are in the kitchen arguing, GOK about what. Suddenly Gina says, "Damn you." I make the stupidest of any possible response, "I'm gonna tell mama you said "damn." Instantly, Gina runs into the living room and says, "Mama, Bubba said 'damn'." Which of course was true. Mama came into the kitchen, grabbed me and slapped me hard, as Gina watched, snickering. I didn't bother trying to explain or justify myself, but I learned a valuable lesson never again to try and outwit Gina.

Gina was a whiz at Cove School, where I had considered myself a dunce. Gina loved our teacher Miss Ruth Martin, of whom I was deadly terrified.

Years later, mid 1950s, Gina, Walt and I were in the brown station wagon, and Gina wanted to drive. I was fully licensed but she was still learning. We swapped places, she driving, me as front seat passenger. She drove east on 15th Street, then at the Tally-Ho we turned right onto Harrison Avenue. As she turned the steering wheel, I told her too fast, brake, and she stepped on the wrong pedal, speeding up, heading directly at the car that was stopped at the intersection waiting to turn left onto 15th Street. I grabbed the wheel and pulled down hard, the station wagon tipping and barely missing the other car. Scary, but a good sibling memory. Walt was in the back seat, I doubt he remembers that incident.

Gina was the family genealogist, traveled, took notes, developed relationships, and I have notebooks of family history write-ups that she labored over, duplicated a copy for me.

Over the years, Gina gave me thoughtful gifts that I still cherish. Once in midlife she had a serious problem, and I was the one she called. Family "tradition" she enjoyed meeting us at Hunt's for oysters, most recent arriving in her huge RV that was her mobile home in retirement. One Sunday not long after she died, one of her grandsons gave me a book with a note from Gina, a Dr Seuss book, "You're Only Old Once." I may read it again this morning.

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January 24th surfaces other memories, including that a dozen years ago, January 24, 2011, I lay on a gurney waiting for seemed like endless, in a hospital corridor at Cleveland Clinic, watching as heavy equipment was wheeled into an OR, and my team gathered, for my open heart surgery. Outside was a freezing winter day, inside cool unto chilly, but they kept me warm with heated blankets. I waited, clutching my bottle of nitro-glycerin tablets, and going over the memories I had rehearsed to dream while anesthetized, especially one from late summer into fall 1957, riding the ferry from Newport across Narragansett Bay to Jamestown, where Linda was standing by the green Dodge waiting for me.

Did you know that you do not and cannot dream under deepest anesthesia? In the total darkness of nonexistence, it's a foretaste of eternity. Or, as St Paul would have it, of sleeping in Jesus until the trumpet sounds.

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January 24th