brrr

“Brrr” was the email title. The attachment’s subtitle was Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Inside the attachment pictures revealed a fairyland of ice-coated benches, cars and trees. However, I didn’t need to see a license plate to know it was Lake Geneva. I have walked along that spot too often and love it too much not to recognize it as I would recognize my own daughter. However after last year’s storm which turned the area near the lake into an ice palace with iced gardens, there was no walking to be done. Where the ice froze flat it was too slippery and where the wind had blown the ice into large chunks with lethal points, any misstep could have led to serious injury through impalement.

Just looking at it causes shivers, but I never shiver when I think of the sender, a pen-friend of thirty years. He started as a professional acquaintance when I began haranguing him over the ERA. Then he became a pen pal as we exchanged letters. Professional topics gave way to puns, jokes and miscellaneous subjects some light-hearted, some serious. We haven’t spent much time together but those times have been all over the map: San Francisco, Boston, Zurich and Florida.

Professionally he was my hero, not just for his competence but for his stances. If all business was run under his ethics there would be no need for law suits, and if all the world treated people as he does, centuries-old problems would melt away.

Whenever his name pops up on my email, I smile and even if there is ice outside my window on Lake Geneva I feel warm.



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