He too is some sort of multiple cousin – distant enough that legally we could wed, but on paper the math would have us being closer than siblings, despite the fact that Doc is old enough to be my father. While I hate to give her any credit, that unscrupulous author, Ramat Sreym, did pen something clever when she wrote: ‘Oh what a tangled web they weave, when Amish-Mennonites conceive!’ Indeed, this is true. The lines on my family tree crisscross over each other in a good number of places, so much so that I have had to use bits of brightly-colored embroidered floss to represent the various links between the branches. Doc used to be a veterinarian – back in the days when Noah had his ark. He still goes by the title ‘Doc’ and keeps a few acres of pasture turned over to a lone Jersey cow named Latte and her companion, a black billy goat he calls Ramses. Until a few months ago he had an elderly hound named Old Blue who used to meet me at the top of the long gravel lane, and which, Doc claimed, could smell me coming a half-hour ahead of my arrival.
