God, what a family. And I thought this was the easy part! It’s taken three trips to Tucson this summer to teach me I’m not doing it right, and that’s a hell of a way to learn I haven’t let go yet.
Part of the reason is that the double-wide in the desert is the closest thing to a family home I’ve ever known. The place my parents lived the longest. Their “permanent address.” The only place besides my own where I could open the fridge and eat anything I wanted. Even though the house itself was horrible for all the screaming and crying soaked into the walls, there was a certain rightness in my showing up from time to time. I closed the old man’s eyes there. An old sharpening stone from his father is still sitting in the shed.
When my parents settled there, my mother picked the only lot that looks west into trees and cactus on both sides of an arroyo. Right in the middle of the trailer park, you can see coyotes, javelinas, rabbits, squirrels, lizards, snakes, and many different kinds of birds. The doves wake you in the morning before the sun comes up. If it weren’t for the fact that the heat melts your brains so they run out your ears, a steward of nature could find much to care for. If he could also get past the facts of life in Tucson, that is, especially a trailer park for senior citizens. I may qualify, but the only way to get me to stay would be to slice me open and wrap my intestines around the mailbox.
This last visit was the worst yet. We arrived to find that my brother had taken it upon himself to steal and sell the refrigerator from the second trailer—not the nicely situated one by the arroyo, but a wretched single-wide my mother bought three years ago to live in for a time. That in itself was proof of madness, but it took three more years to have her declared incompetent and put her where she’s safe. My brother is another story. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, I really don’t. But he singlehandedly rendered the second trailer all but unsaleable by his action, which included busting out the metal railing that was anchored to the concrete steps. The refrigerator, stove, and oven were a matched set of a size no longer sold today, and the ruined kitchen was the place’s only selling point. I’ll be selling it for the value of the lot now, minus what it will cost someone to haul the wreck away.
That second trailer was the one I’d hoped to clean out and get ready for sale first. This direct blow against the family—and he’s still not said he’s sorry—essentially wrecked my week and left me puttering around the “big” house, sifting through the artifacts, trying to stay sane amidst the intolerable heat outside. And this is what I mean by not letting go: there’s nothing to be gained by looking for something to keep, but I persisted as though there were. As if my father’s battered ukelele might yet hold a little love, as if the old wooden toy chest was just waiting for me to come take it to my own non-existent home.
If there’s a sadder tale than this, it’s that I have to go back again. But the poignancy is mostly gone now, and I can call in the pros.
No related posts.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Well, what a family! Everytime I decide to put my nose in your private life there’s something “exotic” happening John. The question is this: does everybody in Taos have families like that? And second: since “things” run in entire families you could beat your little brother by selling that sweet and mellow kitty cat to a Vietnamese restaurant…
haha… Mauro.
No, not everyone in Taos has families like that! I am singularly cursed, it seems.
Doublewide In The Desert sounds like a great title. Love the visual of the arroyo with trees and cactus on both sides. Arroyos are my favorite magical places. Good luck to you tho after reading you for many years I know you can handle most anything.
Well, thank you! We shall see… And it’s good to know you’re still there reading this stuff. There’s a lot more coming.
It surprised me to hear that both your father and mother had chosen this place in Tucson to end their days. While it seems to have had some virtues, as you describe it, it was in the end a trailer in a trailerpark. You should write more about what brought them to that decision. I thought of you and your parents as upscale – at least in the West Texas context, which was the only one I knew. My father had been an enlisted man, and after the war was a guy who kept getting fired and ended up toting a mailsack. Your father was a guy with some brass on his shoulders, who had taught at universities. Your mother was an artist. You lived in the better part of town in those days. How did your parents end up in a trailer? That would be a story worth telling.
Sorry if I ask rude questions, but with the passage of time I find I don’t care much about anything except understanding the past.
The old man never “taught at universities.” That would be ROTC at what is now Virginia Tech, nothing more. He retired a lieutenant colonel, but he never actually finished his B.A. degree. My mother was an artist, but never a professional one, at least in the sense that she took herself as seriously as she needed to, although she did sell work in shows.
But where they ended up wasn’t what you would normally think of as a “trailer park,” rather a “mobile home retirement community.” You have to be at least 55 to live there, and all the houses are single- or double-wides on individually landscaped lots. Some of those places sold for well over $100K before the bust. It’s actually a rather classy sort of place. No “trailer trash” type folks, and most residents own their homes. It’s in a beautiful area, etc. etc. So not quite what you might think.
There never was much money, though. I’m not sure why. More of an attitude rather than actual numbers.
Thanks for that, John. I think you’ve got it in you to write a family saga. All families are mysterious, crazy, unimitatable – and the only real subject matter for art.