older folks home
Music: Marconi Union: Distance (2006)
Sore butt and swollen right ankle, but no sex to show for it. I did manage to drive a radio-only panel van from Austin to Atlanta in two days. I had my ipod FM-transmitter ready to go, but the i-pod "froze" mid-way through a telling of Snowcrash and I had to resort to talk radio. I was surprised to find Jerry Springer has a talk show on Radio (Free?) America and he's pretty damn good. Conservative talk shows like Limbaugh and Neal Bortz irritate after a few minutes. The best listening was a local program in Mississippi on African American "black on black" crime; older people were debating whether it was preferable to beat your woman over killing her (I am serious). I had a cell phone too, and usually during such long jaunts I phone everyone under the sun, but alas: my cell is paid for by the parental units and they decided to switch plans the very day I hit the road. (I do not want a cell phone; they tried to give me one. I gave it back. They gave me another the next year, "all expenses paid." I took it). I got in one good talk with a friend before "this SIM is not registered" message appeared. So I was bored. Very bored. No cruise control. No auto books. No billboards once you get outside of Louisiana (and no friggin' rest stops until Alabama). No livestock. No pirated new Thom Yorke album to listen to.
I don't know why, but having a slight hang-over while driving long distances can help one sit still beyond normal patience would allow. I stayed over one night in Baton Rouge with a friend, and we talked about girls and the Beatles and good scotch until one in the morning.
Given the price of gas ($70 per tank, and there were 3 fills to get here), readers may ask why I am driving from Austin to Atlanta? I'm driving because I am not only a mama's boy, but a grandmama's boy. I'm here to accept her stuff.
A couple of years ago Granny had a fall and broke her arm and a few ribs. She has always had what we called "Granny's Spells," fainting and so forth. My aunt has them too. Well, we figured out this time the spell was a mild stroke. So she was in rehab and getting better. Then, my aunt Hilda was driving Granny somewhere and Hilda had a "spell" too. They totaled the car, both went to the hospital. Granny re-broke everything (it's been a rough couple of years for my folks). In the midst of this, I was interviewing at the University of Georgia (I don't recommend interviewing while you're having a family crisis--and especially don't recommend interviewing while you are having a family crisis, when the institution is where the family lives). So, we sold her house and put her things in storage. Granny cannot bathe herself, so she's hanging with my folks for a couple of weeks, then my aunt and uncle's, and back again.
Ok Josh, so why are you there? Answer: Granny wants me to have some of her things. Her bedroom suit and dining room table. Since the Christmas holidays last year she has been asking me, "when you coming to get those things? I'm payin' $70 a month to store it." She says this with a kidding tone (I can hear the twinkle in her eye). So I'm here to receive a bedroom set and dining room table. I had some difficulty explaining this to my father a couple of months ago. "Son, why do you what that junk?" It's true, the furniture is not of any economic value. But it has use value, and you know, the symbolic value is incalculable. "Pop, it's not about the furniture," I would say. It's about making sure Granny knows I went through the trouble to get it. I want her to know that I have it. I'll be taking photos of the furniture in my home and mailing them back to show her. It's a ritual gesture, a needed one, one that's good for the soul and much better than chicken soup.
Coming home is usually harder and harder every year, it's tough to explain and one day I'll do it justice. This time, thank the Lord (if there is one) I'm not here for a funeral (a frequent cause). Weathering the occasional racist comment in the family is a real, emotionally exhausting thing I have to do sometimes (last night's lovely comment was about a black Hitler), but I won't report on that tedium at any length. I will report on a hilarious conversation with my mother last night:
SCENE: Back patio porch of my mother, the gardener. Petunias explode from clay pots everywhere, it's getting dark, and there is a wayward firefly every couple of minutes.
MOM: Oh, it's a nice night. You used to love playing with the lightening bugs; you'd put them in a jar and make a lantern.
ME: I remember that; you could squish their little behinds and make glow in the dark war paint.
MOM: We didn't have TV when we were kids, you know, so we played outside with the bugs. Summer was the best, because in June we had the June Bugs [Japanese Beetles] and in July came the July Bugs [cicadas], you know, them big ol' green bugs that'd leave their husks on trees.
ME: Dems Cicadas, didn't you hear the story about the ones up north last year that invaded Minneapolis and DC?
[discussion continues about Garrison Keillor's paean to the cicada on a radio show]
MOM: Well, when we're kinds we'd get them big ol' July bugs and tie a string to one of it's hind legs, you know, and then let go and it'd fly in circles [gestures to show how the bugs became mini helicopters]. You know, and they'd just fly and fly around and around and sometimes you know we'd have one in each hand and parade around with our flying bugs until the legs fell off and they'd fly away.
ME: [laughing] Damn! That's cruel. Poor cicadas. I'd hate to know what you did to kittens!
MOM: [laughing] "Aw, not cruel. They had six legs, plenty to spare.