Kat's Rambling Mind

In 2016, I moved into my parents’ home. I needed a place to live, and Daddy was getting to a point where Mama could use some help, so it worked out for everyone.

Dad died in 2021, but I used to enjoy eavesdropping on their conversations. Granted, since they were both so hard-of-hearing that they couldn’t hear thunder, it was impossible not to eavesdrop. One night I was listening to them talking downstairs, and Mama was trying to jog Daddy’s memory about someone they had known from their hometown. Daddy’s memory was spotty at best–he would ask the same questions and repeat the same sentences several times a day–but he could remember things that happened in the 1940s and ’50s with amazing clarity. They had started traveling down memory lane a lot around that time, I’d noticed.

Anyway, Mama was asking about someone from way back when with the last name Eley (pronounced *E*-lee, long E). Apparently, whoever he was, he was Cross-Eyed Eley’s father, and he was some of my Daddy’s kinfolk. Clearly, I’ve never met this branch of the family, because if I’d had a cousin named Cross-Eyed, I would have definitely remembered, no matter how distant he may have been.

HEY! An epiphany from the living room–his name was Hewlett. Or Hewell. No, wait…Hewlett and Hewell were twins, and Cross-Eyed Eley wasn’t *really* cross-eyed, but he did have a lazy, wandering eye. That doesn’t carry the same panache as being called Cross-Eyed Eley. Ol’ Lazy Eye? Not the same.

This went on for a short while, with the two of them going back and forth, with “Hey, do you remember …”, until it was time for their nightly western show or movie to come on. As I recall, neither of them ever did remember Cross-Eyed Eley’s father’s name, but I sure did have fun listening to the two of them.