We were on our way to the library. Sheila asked, “Have you thought any more about what to take Sue tomorrow?” We have been invited to lunch at Sue’s house.
“Yes,” I said. “I thought we’d take a nice chilled bottle of that ChocoVine.” She grimaced sourly. “What?” I exclaimed. “You don’t like it now? You sure acted like you did!”
“It’s ten dollars,” she said glumly. “I know,” I replied, thinking “What isn’t?”
“Ten,” she grumped. “It’s the new one.”
I’m lucky I didn’t break something. I was alone in the house, dustbusting the rug in the living room, when I did a side-step on my flip-flop and sloooowwwly fell to the floor, hard. On my $50,000 hip replacement. I always wonder, is it better to fall on your titanium hip replacement, or on your regular 66-year-old hip? I’m sure the official answer is “it depends.”
Anyway, I lay there for a few minutes with the dustbuster humming away on its green back and out of reach, thought about the above, and mentally checked over my body parts. She’s cousin Shannon, who is a number of years my junior, fell recently and sustained a terrible shoulder injury. I thought about her, too. I thought about how shocked She would be if she came home an hour later and found me lying there all broken with the dustbuster, now quiet and battery-dead. You never know the time or the place, as She is fond of saying.
But I’m okay this time. Just sore and not laughing quite as heartily as I was about She’s recent visit to the funeral home. She went with her friend Mary, who is 87. Mary had a stroke last month, so she was nervous about not having her “Plans” finalized. They went to get some information.
“So whajuh find out?” I queried later that day. She sat on the couch with her pocket folder from the funeral home. She had a look of determination on her face that made me worry. “I want to get this paid for,” she said. It’s $50.00 down and $101.00 a month for 36 months if you get this insurance policy, and if you die before it’s paid up, that’s all it costs.” “Such a deal,” I snorted. “Where are you going all of a sudden? It would sure pay to die early!” She drew herself up defensively. “This covers quite a lot,” she said, starting to read some of the included “services.” “Three hundred ninety-eight dollars for a bath, comb-out and makeup.” “What!!” I yelled. “I thought you were being cremated!” “Well, it’s for visitation,” she said patiently. “Medical examiner, $50.00.” “Why do you need their medical examiner?” I screeched. “It’s required,” she replied somewhat venomously. “You mean after your own doctor has provided a death certificate, this other guy says ‘Yep, she’s dead’ as you roll past on the conveyor belt to the furnace? Boy, I could do that job,” I snarled. “I am not going to talk to you about this anymore,” she snapped, slapping down the folder.
The next day, she talked things over with the other volunteers at the hospital. When she came home, she’d decided that the funeral home thing was a big rip-off. Of course I had to point out that I was the one who recognized the scam-like schtick right out of the folder, and I made some snarky comments about the snake-oil funeral dude. But we agreed that having our Plans in place was a good idea, and vowed to work on it.
I thought about that when I was lying on the floor. Life comes at you fast, and you never know the time or the place. (That’s another reason for not pre-paying, I said earlier today. How do you know you’ll die in Virginia? Maybe you’ll go to Wyoming and be eaten by a bear. You wouldn’t even need a bath or a comb-out.)
A typical “conversation” in our house this morning:
She (shouting from the bathroom where she has just gotten out of the shower and is looking out the bathroom window to the back yard): “There’s a cat in our yard but I don’t know if it’s one of ours or not. I don’t have my glasses on.”
Me (shouting back from the office where I was sitting down, now looking out the back door to the yard): “It’s Miss T lying in the grass. She’s probably watching for rabbits.” (Miss T has never caught anything in the 7 years she’s lived with us, but she still has lust in her heart.)
She (still yelling from the bathroom): “No, I think they are usually out around dusk.” (Pause.) “I’m a rabbit expert.” (Slightly longer pause.) “I should have a TV show. Rabbits At Dusk.”
Sheila went back to jail today. What’s that all about, people have asked, and we’ve enjoyed playing coy with some. But it’s serious. She has joined a prison ministry through her church. From what I understand, nobody is trying to get converts or thump on the Bible or lecture anyone on their sinful ways. They’re mainly visiting the prison to listen and to provide a measure of quiet comfort.
Today there were about 15 women and 6 men making up the two prisoner groups; Sheila and one other person providing the ministry. What do the prisoners talk about? Well, a lot of them talk about how much they miss their children. They talk about what’s good in their lives and what’s not. They talk about the better choices they hope to make when they get out.
Sheila worries each time (but a little less each time) about how well she will rise to the occasion. I’ve been the beneficiary of her listening ear and her quiet comfort countless times, and I tell her not to worry. She’s the right person for this job. Last time, a prisoner seated next to her sobbed and sobbed. Sheila handed her a Kleenex. Then another. And said, “You’re going to have to stop crying. I don’t have any more Kleenex.” If you knew her, you’d smile to yourself and you’d know that it’s all part of her ministry, and her gift.
Since I last posted here, a few non-routine things have happened. I lost part of a tooth. The result is that I will have to have the tooth “crowned,” and I absolutely understand why it’s called a “crown.” It costs a fortune.
Our darling new greyhound, Carmen, got out of the yard during a distant thunderstorm and wasn’t found until the next morning. We were sure we would never see her again, or that if we did, it would be her dead body at the side of a road somewhere. I thought during the search, “Our lives will never be the same, and they will never be good again.”
A couple of dozen people helped us look until late at night. Some were complete strangers; others were good friends and close neighbors. Our friends were back at it early the next morning, but as it turned out, we were all looking in the wrong places. Carmen had run a long way, and when found by Animal Control near the Country Club (we’ve heard some jokes about that) she was almost unconscious, with mangled paws. Now it’s been a little over two weeks, and she is fine. She is fine! Two dear people fixed the low spot in our fence, and we don’t take our eyes off Carmen when she is in the yard, but she has not shown any interest in jumping again.
Oh, and two nights at the Emergency Veterinary Hospital cost about the same as four crowns.
In the middle of the Carmen incident, I got a call from my high school reunion committee. I thought it was someone calling about the lost dog flyers. Our 50th—gah!—reunion is in 2012, in California. I have not attended any of the reunions so far, and only keep in touch with one person. What do you think? Have you been to your high school reunion(s)? Good idea or bad idea? (I weigh about 70 pounds more than I did in high school, have chins and would have to use a cane. Is this important or unimportant? It suddenly seems like it is.) Experiences, please!
That’s the news from here. Stay well and keep in touch.
When Sheila got home from the jail this afternoon (ah, but that’s another story) I buzzed over to the grocery store where we spend a good part of our lives and our money. I had just a few things to pick up, mostly for the sweet onion pie I am making for dinner tonight, and the chicken piccata I am making for dinner tomorrow night.
I had scrawled a list of the few items I needed on a green post-it note. As always, I started in the produce section on the right, and then moved farther and farther to the left around the store. About halfway around, I consulted my list to see how I was doing. I read:
Ritz crackers (check)
Ched cheese (last aisle)
Vidalia (sweet onions—check)
Bread crumbs (crossed out—do not need)
Lemon (check)
Walnut pieces (check)
Ice cream (last aisle)
Asp (?????)
Asp? What the hell?? The image of a dying Cleopatra surfaced in my mind. What? What in the world had I meant by “Asp”? I didn’t need aspirin. Must be an old post-it note from when I did need aspirin, I thought. I couldn’t imagine.
I breezed over to the self-service checkout. Not everyone is smart or clever enough or brave enough to use it, but I am definitely above average, tech-wise. I confidently scanned my items, bagging them quickly. When you have produce, the screen asks you to type in the item, and then it shows you some pictures and you select the right item. Usually it only needs the first two or three letters of the item. I typed in oni and selected Vidalia sweet, lem and selected lemons, and asp and selected asparagus, which I had thought would go nicely with the chicken piccata.
Oh.
For a number of years, I was a divorced working mother living from paycheck to paycheck, and not doing the financial thing very well at all. When Willie Nelson’s “On The Road Again” became a hit in 1980, I started singing it every time I deposited a paycheck in the ATM that would temporarily save us, and I continued singing it through somewhat better times at the end of the workday every Friday until I retired.
I loved the Willie Nelson song, and I also loved books about life on the road, starting with Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley, and including Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Blue Highway, Walk Across America, and the several Bill Bryson books. But although it was published in 1957 and I was an English major in college in the 60’s, I never read Jack Kerouac’s iconic novel On The Road. As of today, I still haven’t read it.
This week I was at the library and spotted in the featured/new book section On The Road: The Original Scroll. Turns out it is the “legendary first draft—rougher, wilder, and racier than the 1957 edition.” Why not, I thought, and picked it up. If I don’t like a book, I never feel obligated to finish it, so no skin off my nose to take something home from the library. I scanned the scholarly essays that introduce the book. Scholarly essays seldom convince me that I need to read something. I flipped to the end and read this last paragraph:
“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old brokendown river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all the raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the evening-star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks in the west and folds the last and final shore in, and nobody, just nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody beyond the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Neal Cassady, I even think of Old Neal Cassady the father we never found, I think of Neal Cassady, I think of Neal Cassady.”
I cried when I read this, because the writing is so elegant and true, because I was so grateful to be reading Jack Kerouac before my reading time in this life is over, and because it is always such a relief and a blessing when somebody expresses so perfectly what you have thought about passionately and tried your best to say in your own words.
Yes, I went back to the beginning of On The Road: The Original Scroll (not including the scholarly essays) and am loving every word in it. Maybe someday I’ll read the novel it became.
My blog friend Isabelle posed a question on her blog not long ago: “What were you like when you were nine?” I loved reading about Isabelle’s nine-year-old self, and I’d like to write about that, too. But not today.
Today my blog friend Laurie listed three good things she was thinking about, and that sounds like an excellent practice.
My three good things for today are:
1) Iced coffee with half and half in the afternoons. Summer must be almost here. Just make it yourself with leftover morning coffee. No trip to Starbucks necessary.
2) Sunflowers. Tara sent us a bunch for Mother’s Day, and they are still fine and fresh, the happy things.
3) The book I’m reading right now: Birdology. The author is Sy Montgomery, who wrote another book I own and love called The Good Good Pig. Now mind you, I would never even briefly consider owning a pig, but I laughed and cried over Sy’s pig. Birdology begins with “The Ladies,” Sy’s hens, and although not particularly desirous of owning birds either, I have been known to fall in love with parrots, owls, eagles and falcons from a safe distance. I love Sy’s ladies, and am hanging on every word of her search for a cassowary in the wilds of Australia, leeches and all.
4) Gotta make this four things because we just came back from dinner with a friend at a little gem of a new Greek restaurant in the neighborhood. If you have never had pizza with Greek sausage, pepperoni, salami and freshly made feta, you haven’t been anywhere or done anything. And if you have eaten such a slice of Heaven and then stopped in at Boyer’s for coconut ice cream, and then you sat down in an old leather booth and savored your scoop(s) with full-on lust, you are one lucky devil indeed. And you know it.
Happy Friday, everyone. Shabbat Shalom, too.
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