An hour later sweaty and hot I was finishing buffing up, Beth appeared at the front door asking if I wanted a cold drink, I said I’d love one as I w...s almost done. She stood a moment staring at my bare torso, sweat running down my front and back then told me to come inside when I was done. Ten minutes later I was sitting next to her on her leather settee sipping at a tall glass of diet cola and ice. “ Thanks for cleaning it Steve”, she said, “I hate having a mucky car, old as it is,” I told her. It was the reality of where that hand was that shocked and thrilled me.Mother's eyes were again tightly closed, her head threatening to fall back upon her shoulders.I spoke firmly and directly into her ear, "Spread your knees again mother!"Even as she gasped in response, "No... it would be wrong...", her knees spread further than they had been seconds before and her torso fell backward into my own, leaning into my chest, her head as if lifeless had fallen to my wide strong shoulder.My second. "Shhhh... easy now, lie back down, relax, it's ok," she says in a soft reassuring voice. I ease back into the reclined position I was sleeping in. I look her in the eyes; I must have a scared expression on my face. She has a calm, reassuring expression. She is cooing, "It's ok, everything is going to be ok," over and over again. I want to say something, something like what I'm thinking: 'But Aunt Kathy, you're my Aunt!' But I don't, I'm frozen. Somehow it starts to make sense and I feel it is. Before he knew it, the children were leaving home, then returning, then leaving again, several times over. He remembered the emotional traumas of their relationships, the highs as they progressed, the lows as they failed. Learning by experience is the most powerful and most difficult of all modes of learning. His children seemed to choose that as their primary learning mode. It seemed only like yesterday that his children married and then most had children themselves. He reduced his workload,.