2003-04-13 - 10:41 p.m.

Birthdays And Back In Time

It is Sunday afternoon and I have the house to myself.  I have spent the day just trying to wake up.  I look around the house and see all kinds of things that need to be done, like laundry, dishes, cleaning the kitchen, vacuuming, balancing my checkbook, paying bills.  I decided to just pick one and do that.  I picked laundry.  I had to.  Otherwise I will have nothing to wear to work tomorrow but running shorts and a bathrobe.

I had lunch with my friend Kay this afternoon.  My sister had given me a gift card for a restaurant chain called Chili's so we used that.  Neither Kay nor I have any extra cash right now.  She spent a lot of money on birthday presents for her friends and I spent my extra cash on birthday presents for my mother and father.

Kay had a present for me.  She found a used copy of Time Bandits on dvd for me for $8.  I have loved that movie since the first time I saw it back in the 1980s.  It has been a while since I have seen it.  I'm looking forward to watching it again.

We talked about our jobs and recent comings and goings. I told her about my trip to my hometown this weekend for my parent's birthdays.  I bolted out of work a little before 6 o'clock on Friday.  There was a lot left to do, but I just ignored it and walked away.  Emails were coming in up until 5 p.m.  What a bunch of crap. Don't send me more work to do on Friday at 5 and expect it do be done.

So Ben and I finished up and just walked away knowing we will pay for it next week.  I drove down to my mother's house to give her a present, her birthday card and to take her to dinner.  It has been over a month since I have seen her in person. She has been taking trips lately. She and my aunt and my sister were in the island of St Maarten a few weeks ago. They described it as one of the best trips they have ever taken.  They all want to go on a cruise in August and want me to come along.  I told them I would.  I think that would be fun.  It is possible my brother will come, too.  And some of my cousins.

I took my mother to an Italian restaurant she likes.  It was really nice to sit and talk with her.  It was very relaxing and pleasant.  I kept yawing because I was so tired.  Just being away from my house and my job made me feel better.  Friday was my mother's 70th birthday and she is doing better than she ever has in her whole life.  She described how nice it is to be on her own, to not have to answer to anyone or take care of anyone else.  She has a job she loves that pays well.  I think one of the reasons she likes it so much is that she has a lot of control over how much money she makes.  She made some jewelry at home the other night and made $100 for 5 hours work.

The house she shares with her sister is open and clean and bright.  There is a lot of activity there and everyone gets along very well.  My mother and her sister love to travel.  They came by this honestly, as their father was a merchant marine who could only stay still for about six months at a time.

As a matter of fact, they were heading out the next day to the coast of Georgia.  My aunt found another great deal on the internet, a two bedroom condo on the beach for a week for only $200.  So they just started packing their bags to head out that way.  Right now there are a lot of tourist dependant resorts hurting for business. It is cheaper for them to give away rooms so that tourists will come and spend money on other things like meals, booze and tee-shirts.

So I had a very nice dinner with my mother.  I gave her a card she really liked and a stack of books.  I could not think of anything good to get her.  She said it was just what she wanted, but she always says that.  All she really wanted was to be with me.

I was so tired.  I was in bed and asleep by 10 o'clock.  I stayed over at my mother's house because the next day, Saturday, was my father's birthday.  My sister was going to drive down on Saturday morning and go over to my father's house together and take him to lunch.  We like to get there early because he is more likely to be sober.

I called his house several times in the morning but he never answered.  So after my sister showed up we just drove over there. It was about noon and my father was still asleep.  He had stayed up all night watching television and went to bed around daylight.  He came to the door all sleepy looking and his hair sticking up every which way.  We told him happy birthday and he asked us if it was really his birthday, he had lost track.  I didn't believe it for a minute.

What a contrast his house is to my mother's house.  My father's house is dark and cold and everything is covered with a thin layer of dirt.  Except in places where the dirt has piled up creating a thick layer of dirt.  And everything is kind of moldy and lopsided.  We sat outside on the porch where it was warm and sunny.  My father took a cup full of chicken feed and threw it out into the front yard for my brother's chickens.

We had a very pleasant visit with my father.  I gave him a card and a coin jar from the US Mint.  He collects coins so I figured anything with the US Mint on it was a safe bet.  Then we took him to a county cookin' place to eat.  It was, oddly, his idea.  I asked him what he wanted and he said he wanted to go to Tim's.  Then he got ready and headed for the door.  He usually hems and haws about such things, but this time he got right to the point.

While we were eating we talked about my cousin who lived next door to my father.  It is a very long story, but my brother had to evict my cousin and my uncle.  They trashed the house and took everything that was not nailed down. And there were several things that were nailed down that they pried up and took with them.  It was kind of sad.

Three years ago my aunt died.  With insurance benefits and legal settlements we estimate that my cousin and my uncle had about $1 million.  They ran through it all and went into debt and did not even have enough money to keep the lights on.  My brother bought their house from them so they would not lose it.  All they had to do was pay him monthly rent.  They never did.  He finally had to take them to court to get them out of there.

Some of the junk they left there in the house was my grandmother's pocketbook.  My grandmother died in 1986 and her daughter, my aunt, kept it.  It still had her wallet in there.  I looked through it.  There were baby pictures off all of her grandchildren.  A receipt for the Toyota Corolla she bought in 1974, her driver's license and other pieces of paper.  There was also a lipstick and a compact in there.  Now that I think of it, this wallet probably belong to my grandfather who died in 1969.  It was a man's leather wallet.  It makes sense that my grandmother would keep it.  And it makes sense that my aunt would keep the pocketbook with all of the stuff in it.  But my cousin left it on a pile of junk.  I'm glad my brother found it.  Now my father has it.

I miss my aunt.  I miss my crazy grandmother.

While we were eating I asked my father about the cemetery where my grandparents are buried.  It is in a small town called Milner and I have not been there since my grandmother's funeral.  I asked my father who has been taking care of the grave since my aunt died.  I know he would not do it.  This is not the sort of thing he thinks about.  And it would involve taking initiative.  He said my uncle's sons have been doing it.  We decided to take a drive to check on it.

My grandparents are buried in a family plot in a churchyard.  I remember this place well from my childhood.  The white clapboard Baptist church was built in 1865.  The graveyard predates the church, I think, because there was a Revolutionary War soldier buried there.  There were several Civil War soldiers buried there as well.  My grandparents are buried next to my great grand parents, several great uncles and aunts.  We picked up some leaves and cleaned up the plot and then walked around and looked at some of the older graves.

Back at my father's house we talked about his age.  He said, as he said every year, that he never thought he would live so long.  I told him that he would probably live to be 90 and he laughed and said that that would not happen.  I went off on a tirade about how he never believe me all these years when I told him he would live so long.  I told him 20 years ago, but he never believed me.  Oh, no, I told him, you never believed me.  Jimmy doesn't know what he's talking about!  I'll never live to be that old!  I'll never live to see 60!

My father listened to me for a few minutes as I went louder and louder. I think he was a little surprised because I kept hammering the point at him.  This one statement he makes every birthday describes his life perfectly.  He never thought he would be alive so he made no plans, took no action, created no attachments.

We had another argument earlier when we were talking about the local government trying to stop illegal junkyards in the county.  My father says it is nobody's business if he wants to keep a lot of broken down cars on his private property.  I told him that it makes a big difference when oil, battery acid and other chemicals seep into the water table.  He said that it just does not work that way.  I calmly told him that it certainly does. One quart of motor oil is enough to cover a one acre lake.

I could see he was trying to make sense of it.  It entered his mind and he was working on it.  The next thing for him to do is to get drunk and tell his alcoholic friends what I said so they can all explain to him how it ain't no such a thang and that I think I am smarter than e'rbody else with my book learnin'.  They will drink and drink until the matter is closed.  Then, after a year or so, my father will suddenly blurt out that I was wrong.  He will have been dwelling on it the whole time.

God help us all.

So my weekend was a big trip back in time.  I went back several generations and forward again to the present.  I can see the patterns of change as I go.  Lives settling into some sort of shape.  I can see my own life in flux.  I trust it will settle down again and for some other set of circumstances to come to the fore.  I can't help but think of all that has come before me.  All the lives lived and completed.

Tomorrow I go back to work to be caught up in the whirlwind of activity.  I hope I don't get distracted again.  But it happens so easily.

Jimmy
 

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