Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#7)

She didn't know because she'd never asked. At least, not until she found me in the garage. "What are you doing, Steve?" she said. She was dressed for bed; the strap of her nightgown hung down over her left shoulder. She looked nice with her eyes sleepy like that. "Is that your dad's gun?" I looked at her. "Yes," I said. She frowned. "The same one?" We both knew the answer to that. "What are you doing with it, Steve?" I wanted to be silent, noncommittal. "Why would you, Steve?" I looked at her. "I'm not my father!" I yelled.

_____

I shut the door and ran into the bedroom and picked up the phone. I wasn't sure of who to call, though. Nothing had happened, and he doesn't have any family. I got my bathrobe and went outside so I could look through the garage window. He just sat there, his back against the car. I still had the phone. Then he got up, put the gun away, and started back into the house. I ran inside and climbed into bed. "You're wearing your robe," he said when he lay next to me. I clutched the phone and stayed silent.

Slice and Dice

Out riding my bike fairly recently, I let the gears and chain make noise, and I let my mind wander. It's funny how that wandering can go in so many directions from one gear change to another. Click-click and there's a change. This time I wandered into writing; specifically, I wandered into a novel I've been looking on for much too long (writing, not reading). 

There's a certain segment early on that has always troubled me because it takes too long getting to where it needs to go. I've tinkered with it a bit, and then the night of the ride I found the answer: cut it out like some benign tumor. So, I did: I sliced just over a one-thousand words, stitched some things back together, and sent the book into recovery. It was a good thing.

Then, over this last weekend while far from home and without external distractions, I started again, this time cutting more bits out, fixing many typos, making some things make sense. I've not had such an extended time for such stuff in a long time, and I felt fortunate. I've looked at this book many times, and I'm still amazed (and frustrated) at how many things need to get fixed. And this time, I even realized I need to add a new, minor character to take some burden off another, less-minor character. It's like an implant, and augmentation, which isn't a bad thing. 

I hope to finish this final revision sometime soon, but then I have to decide on what to do with it. The tome isn't necessarily literature, but it's as good as some of the pop fiction I've read. What the book and I need is someone to take a look at it--someone who's not a good friend or a family member; someone who'll notice the the flaws and tell me about them. But, that's not likely to happen. Rather, it'll go back under the floorboards again, its heart beating while I try to sleep.

Skipping Out and Skipping Town

With my grandmother returned to ashes and dust, and boxed up and sent home with my aunt, I escape the local geography of grief and head west, then north. There are things to do at work, things to do at home--but it can all wait. Earlier this year while in Yosemite, I wandered into the chapel there one day when nobody else was present and walked up to the pulpit, where the bible was opened to "Song of Solomon" and I read (and wrote in my notebook) this verse: "they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept." That's it, I thought as I drove--I've got a biblical reason to leave.


There's something about getting--and being--on the road that settles things down a bit. If you do it right, you stay in the right lane and let the commotion worry about getting ahead. You packed a bit of food, you put the beer in an ice chest, you loaded the thick biography of Charles Dickens into you bag, and you left home.


It has been awhile since I made this trip. Two years, actually. The drive takes longer than expected, but it ends just about the time my no-longer-medicated lower back and right shoulder start to complain loudly. "It hurts," I say to nobody, but then I think of my grandmother and know that things could be worse. When I stop at the borrowed house it's still an hour before sunset, so I move my things inside, open one of my six beers, and sit in a chair in the meadow. The air is clean here and, as my yoga instructor always reminds her students, I let myself breathe.


The next morning I awake early glad to not be driving to the office. I have worked in much worse places much farther from home, but I am happy I won't be in the staff meeting even though the topics are important for a new project. By 9:00 I have read part of my book, drunk my tea, and walked for a good 3 miles. I think of Kominski and what is basically his recent retirement, how he says that "Monday lasts a week"--the idea that, without commuting and deadlines and days full of obligations, time takes on a different tone. Have you ever felt that? I have, especially during long vacations when there are no commitments to anyone or anything. Two of my brothers-in-law, both of whom retired in the last few years, say that "every day is Saturday." I'm doubtful that I'll ever experience that, but it's a nice thought.


I choose not to drive anywhere this first day just to let my back and shoulder rest. So, I read some more, I walk some more, I watch a movie, I try once again to sketch something all the while thinking of the artists I've known to could draw and paint and design. Bereft of all artistic talent, those artists--and the singers and musicians and dancers--are the ones I've always admired. I eat when I want to, I drink a beer in the middle of the day, and I do very little else.


The second day I'm on the road again, heading farther north to Fort Bragg. I wander around a bit, I buy some beer at the local brewery, I stop in the art-supply store and, for no good reason, buy a new sketchbook and 2 new pencils. It is hopeless, I tell myself--nothing worthwhile will ever be drawn by these hands. But I've always been a sucker for good paper and good writing instruments, and I figure there are worse things I could spend money on. I also stop at the Mendocino Cookie Company and buy 2 "backpacker" cookies, both of which I enjoy. Headed south again, I stop for awhile in Mendocino, where I stop in the bookstore (but don't buy anything), and drop into the wine shop where I talk to a fairly surly man who seems less than interested in talking to me about the wine itself. I find three inexpensive bottles to take home,


Farther south, I detour toward the Point Arena Lighthouse for some coastal photography, and the wind is so strong I can barely hold the camera steady. As with other things artistic, I'm not a good photographer, either, but at least I have a chance of getting one good photograph out of hundreds. Here's the lighthouse:

Then, after driving awhile longer, I stop at the Evergreen Cemetery, which I just happen to see to the east side of the highway. Cemeteries can tell us a lot about places and people, I've always felt. This cemetery needs some work: overgrown with weeds, neglected. Still, I find probably the best grave marker I've ever seen, one that tells us about life rather than death--bicycle rim on a post. It looks like this:

If my grandmother were to be buried, I wonder what she would choose as a marker. Golf clubs and a bowling ball from her younger years, maybe, or fishing poles and tackle from her days in Michigan and Canada. 

Almost back to the house, I stop again at nearby beach for some general hiking. The wildflowers, like this one, are wonderful (not easy without a macro lens):

The wind is still strong over me and the water:

Finally back at the house, I relax again in the meadow. The wind is chilly, but being outside is nice nevertheless. I let the stars come out, and I let myself sit deep into the chair. I think of my grandmother, of course, and all that she has left me, how my cousins and I both complain and laugh about family traits we've all inherited: don't be a complainer; don't be a braggart; don't be a show-off; don't be fool. And, except for the last one, at least for tonight I can let the other ones go. In couple of days I'll be home again, and I can become the others once again.

Time to Send Her up

Many years ago my grandmother called me and asked the definition of "recidivism." She said she thought that I would know that definition, but I'm not sure she wasn't surprised that I actually did know. Around the same time she gave me her Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, which has 4,798 pages of words and pictures and was published in 1957. She said that, of all her grandchildren, she thought I would appreciate it. She was right, of course, and it's the type of book I would've spent hours with as a kid (I've always dealt better with books than I have with people). Fairly recently, though, I thought it was time for the book to go, and as I flipped through the pages on my way to the trash bin, a pressed flower corsage fell out. I can guess that the corsage is older than the book, and it must have been my mother's or one of my aunt's. I held it in my hands and wondered about it, about its occasion, about who wore it. The book, of course, remains with me, its corsage safely pressed. She also gave me a box full of memorabilia from her 2-week trip to Europe in the early 1980s, after my grandfather had died. In the box are postcards, a journal, even her plane tickets. The first sentence in the journal is this: "Betty and I barely slept all night because we were 'ready to go!'" As with the dictionary, she thought that I would appreciate what is in the box.

When my grandmother died very early this morning and after I'd called my sisters, I thought of how glad I am to have seen her just a few days ago. She was lucid enough for 99 years old, and she was witty (and perceptive) enough to call me fat. I thought of playing golf with her, of how she would visit us when we were kids and bring us Hostess cupcakes, of fishing with her and my grandfather in Ontario, Canada, when I was twelve.

There's a certain routine you go through with home hospice care: you die; the hospice people come over to make sure you're dead; someone calls your relatives; someone else calls the funeral home to take you to whatever you've arranged for. Then, whoever is left at home tries to watch the TV shows they always watch on that day, or they answer the phone a lot to talk to people who weren't called earlier. If you're lucky, you've got a large family that, for at least awhile, is collectively thinking of only you. 

The thing is, my grandmother's hospice care started only a couple of days ago, so nobody was quite prepared for the speed of things. Even the inevitable can surprise us. When I spoke with my cousin this afternoon, she gave me the specifics, and she told me how my aunt seemed to be putting off calling the funeral home. I can understand that. Hospice workers and funeral home people are nothing if not efficient and methodical, and watching them work can be difficult. In fact, my own father couldn't watch as a hospice nurse smoothed the sheets around my mother before the gurney was taken through the front door. A few months later--19 years ago this week--my father, too, would die, so I got to watch him carried away. 

As my cousin said she told my aunt, though, "It's time to send her up."And I can think of my mother's sisters, the dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the in-laws--all thinking of my grandmother tonight.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#6)

Marla was easy to look at but hard to work for. She was in charge, and she knew it. William (never "Bill"), her husband, was a doctor who operated on old people. Marla had won an Emmy producing local news years earlier. Once, after a few beers, Wayne, from the mail-room, told her that everyone in local news wins an Emmy at some point. Wayne was the only one who didn't know Marla slept with the company's CEO. He was fired two weeks later. And Marla? She was the only one who didn't know her husband slept with his nurses.

---

I delivered the mail. I pushed a cart and dropped things off in people's offices. I made two runs a day: in the morning, then again early in the evening. The morning run took longer because I'd talk to people. I got to know them as they told me about their lives. Marla, our communications director, never talked, and I knew she thought I wasn't worthy of conversation. I learned about her anyway because I'd see her stay late and slink into the CEO's office where the two of them would laugh. My job was menial, but I knew things.