The question is, what happens when the deed is done? (Appropriate enough, I’d say, in this land where mountains look like the spines of beached leviathans…)
As if dealing with the wreckage of my poor sick mother’s life isn’t enough punishment, it seems I elected to do it in 110 °F heat. This always happens in Tucson, at least with my family, where no one ever had a crisis in the winter. Never mind my particular vulnerability, though. For all its good points, and there are a few, I don’t get the feeling this is a happy town.
My wife and I have taken over Helen’s old double-wide for a few days. It’s the best place to stay from the standpoint of getting things done, but I wonder about my health. I somehow have to get this trailer and another one, a horrible run-down single-wide, ready to sell to a couple of complete idiots. Hey, it might work, look where I am! Yesterday I saw a fat guy wearing a gimme cap and smoking a cigarette go by on a golf cart flying two huge American flags. Kinda puts a lump in your throat, don’t it?
But never mind Tucson. The problem I have is that this would be a huge damn job for anyone, even a well-paid outsider, but I get to do it amidst a flood of family baggage. Take those two paintings on the wall, original oils from Bavaria that my parents bought back in ’55 when we were living in occupied Germany. GERMANY! Military childhood years in foreign lands, summer camp in Switzerland and Denmark! But when I look at those paintings, I remember my parents’ screaming, drunken fights after cocktail parties. Doors slamming. Glasses smashed against the wall. Tires squealing as one or the other drove off in a rage. My brother and sister crying in their bunk beds. Yay, team.
Surrounded by family artifacts that make me want to kill, I wonder how I’ll ever vanish it all. There’s no nostalgia here, just pain and grinding stupid. It’s hard to tell what’s worse. We’re throwing things out like mad, but I’d rather use a bulldozer. Meanwhile, I just received notice of a “weed violation.” (Oh, I’ll get right on that, yessiree Bob.) At least I’ll never live like this.
My wife nearly flew the coop this morning, after just 36 hours. That’s how bad I am, and it’s got to stop. My mojo is shot, I need a new stance. What a challenge!
I’m taking combat pay for this one, and nobody better squawk.
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Just now escaping family-in-Florida. Sitting at the gate in FLL, and thinking of you. You’re getting though it, it will be over, and you’ll never have to do it again.
Meanwhile my brain is on neither coast. Our own mountain is burning…
Yah. It’s just so huge, all I can do is chip away at it, when I want to wipe the slate completely clean as fast as possible. Probably no one gets the title of this post, either: we slew the dragon, but the carcass still assaults my nostrils!
You have a burning mountain? For real, or metaphor??
Las Vegas airport. Santa Fe does. Flew by just now. Still early, smoke wasn’t towering up, just puffomg along and then the wind smeared it east over Puerto Nambe and Santa Fe Baldy. Inciweb expects another active fire day. Hit again and drier and all that.
Am grateful to be returning to the Olympic Peninsula, where it will be cool and cloudy, and everyone’s gardens are weeks behind…
Hang in there, buddy. Just do as much as you can on a daily basis. I know you want to get it done and get it over with so you don’t have to come back, but take frequent breaks and find some natural beauty to restore you soul. Remind your wife how much you love and appreciate her (this from a female point of view – what I would need if I were in her place). I’ll keep you both in my prayers.
She’s done wonders. I’m letting her go through drawers and toss stuff without even checking, and I’ve followed your advice already. Saved me yesterday (she’s still here).
Picking up the pieces, cleaning up messes, doing the needful – these are useful actions, even noble, under your particular circumstances. You may have been doing some of those things even as a kid, it sounds like. Now you may be doing it for almost the last time. Summon the stoicism that lurks somewhere in your soul, my friend. Fight the ghosts. Fight!
Doing better on that score today, and since I posted this. The “ugly” is so huge, but I usually manage to climb out of the cesspool before I drown. What an awful mess these people were, yet for many, they’d be normal. What that says about our culture and society is truly scary, or would be, if I weren’t already at least partly clued in. I have no illusions about my heritage, little sympathy, and not an atom of nostalgia.
Nothing, but NOTHING, is as important as holding to my own center and doing what I want.
You know what we all used to say in the sixties: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” I interpret that little maxim as meaning, among other things, that you’ve got to start with doing what you can do in your own place and time, among your own people and, yes, for yourself in your own life. Tend your garden! As for culture and society – leave the big thoughts on these subjects to the talking heads. At what time in human history have the subjects – and the heads with big thoughts about them – not been more or less of a mess?