With both parents gone, we left the Compound and moved to a smaller setting that we refer to as The Cottage on the Ravine (I swear, there is a gully creek bed.) There was a sadness, but now we love our new digs. I used to be a healthcare executive. I don’t miss it. Before that, I worked in radio and cable TV. I miss radio most of all. Radio has to be the most hilarious and fun place to work. Now I do some writing and give my attention to Dave and Dixie, our seven-year-old Shih-poo. My parents were with us for thirteen years. Dad passed away November 19, 2018, and Mom died June 24, 2022. We still miss them. I garden, cook (a lot), clean, play anything with a keyboard, and believe in the power of Love.
It seems that everyone is happy to be rid of 2016. I’ve seen memes with sledge-hammers taken to those twelve months, some with a boot in the bottom of the 6 in 2016, and several that begin with “Good Riddance!”
I’m wondering if we shouldn’t just ask for a do-over. I just can’t stand this feeling of sweeping dirt under the carpet or the notion that some of that bad air will blow again just when we think it’s gone. But then, they say that hindsight is 20/20, and I suppose that’s true. Maybe the best we can do is to work for the best–the right stuff–in 2017.
So I’m going to tell you my hopes for the New Year. And when I tell you what I’m hoping for you, I hope you know I’m talking to me, too.
I hope that you know that you are not alone in your struggles. There is someone else who thinks they failed, someone else who thinks things aren’t going the way they’d planned, someone else who sometimes thinks we get just what we deserve, someone else who wishes they could get a do-over. I hope we all find each other and that we can all support each other.
I hope you feel worthy in 2017 and that you treat yourself with respect and gentleness. I hope you know that you can do what needs to be done, even if it’s just figuring out what you need most. I hope you find strength. When you want to say no, say no. When bad feelings come to call, invite them in for a visit and then let them go. When the body says to rest, give it a soft spot to land. When the mind says it needs time alone, take it to your quiet place.
I’ve made some plans for 2017, but I let somebody else make resolutions. I want to take the time to be organized, because I know in order to really listen to myself, I need some kind of order. I want to write more, and to write more, I have to listen to myself asking for order. I want to nourish the physical and nurture the soul, and that means I have to be careful how I feed them both, so I’ll have to listen well to my body and my mind.
I believe we all want peace–peace everywhere–so my biggest plan for 2017 is to work for peace. I can’t do that without peace within. Peace doesn’t mean “do nothing.” Peace requires action. For me, it means acting with the best of intentions, from the best place inside of me.
January is almost over, and when it is, 1/12th of 2017 will be gone! It won’t be long until we’ll be saying, “I can’t believe this year is almost over,” and asking, “Are you ready for Christmas?”
I hope we can all say, “I worked for peace this year.”
When I shook my top in the bathroom this morning, a full serving of Cap’n Crunch and olive oil crackers floated to the floor. I crave something crunchy; we only thought of carrots and celery today. I managed to sit on the toilet, sort of spread-eagle, and picked up three cereal pieces and half a cracker. I brought them with me to the den. These days I’m popular with Murphy.
I miss cooking. Tomorrow, Dave is going to put a roast in the slow cooker. I’m going to coach him, step by step. And I miss painting. I have a first coat of chalk paint on some chairs and a dresser, and there’s a full lineup of walls, furniture, and cabinets begging for attention. I suppose it will all wait until I can be on my feet, and that’s going to be a little while.
I sit in the one comfortable, one-sided position. I list to the right, then prop up an elbow with a pillow and stick out my left leg. Sometimes the leg wants to rest laterally on the couch, sometimes it would rather hang over the side pointing toward the door to the porch. It’s a humorous picture.
Lying down is much more unreliable. Sometimes there just is no way to stretch out that works. So I just assume my contortionist persona and sit up. Reminds me of Rosemary Woods, Nixon’s secretary who somehow erased eighteen minutes of the tell-tale tape in the Watergate case.I have a much more honorable intention. It’s not necessary to sit or lie pain-free, only to reduce the hurt to a manageable status.
So Dave says I’m a demanding patient. I suppose I am. I have that man stepping and fetching as never before! He feeds me, cleans up after me, and even helps with a shower. (It’s really amazing how unnecessary it becomes to shower daily. I have found I can go four days without that rigamaroll–and, amazingly, I don’t stink!)
Who takes over my management duties for The Compound? Dave. He’s taking on CEO, CFO, and COO all at once, and all of that is more demanding than I am, personally. The man’s a saint.
But now I want to cook. I have to cook. I don’t know for sure what I’m going to make, but I see there are some spent bananas on the counter just begging to redeem themselves in some banana bread–with nuts. Now, if Dave will retrieve the the flour, and the sugar, I’ll be shaking walnuts out of my clothes by bedtime.
I’m back. It’s been a while. I see my last post was in January. It’s not that I haven’t written anything. It’s just that most of what I’ve written needs to be saved for a later date. I became reluctant to write about Mom and Dad, and our life here On the Ravine, kept waiting for something big that I could write big about.
So, about my back. I’ve hurt it. I saw the confirming MRI this morning. It looks like another disc blowout in my back, this one at L-4/5, aggravated and probably caused by arthritis. This isn’t the first time. I ruptured at L-3/4 in April of 2001, just rolled over in bed one Sunday morning and couldn’t walk. However, two nights before, I had taken down tables to clear a room at church–and it caught up with me. It took me a week that time to put any pressure on my leg. Then I followed with pain medication, physical therapy–including daily paddling around in the pool, and multiple visits with a fine neurosurgeon who never operated. Two years of recovery—but no surgery.
Dr. K says next step is cortisone injections. I did this last time, to no avail. After that, the next step is micro-surgery. Yayyyyyy for micro-surgery! I say, “Bring it on!”
This is the fifteenth day that I haven’t walked without help. I don’t get around much, but when I do, I push a little old rolling walker with two baskets that I’ve used all summer as my “garden cart.” I paid $5 on Craigslist because I thought Dad might enjoy it for gardening help. No, he didn’t like it. Yes, I think it’s a lifesaver!
The pain of a spasm is unmanageable, although the gabapentin that Dr. K prescribed seems to help the chronic ache. Today he added a muscle relaxer to try to calm the spasms.
I want to be over this. Now. And I know it’s not going to work that way. So, for now, I’ll just pop a gabapentin, down some of those Italian crackers with olive oil that have become my weakness, and pour a glass of cabarnet.
We’re pressure-washing the porch rails today. Last Sunday we might have used the pressure washer to de-ice the driveways.
January 24. Cabin fever, ah, yes. This sickness will make a girl jump up on the tables at the local Pizza Hut and cut loose a wild frug. I didn’t have cabin fever last week, but I do remember it from my winters in Montana. We don’t usually get a socked-in amount of snow here in Nashville, but last weekend, oh boy! I loved it–just like I’ve loved the sunshine and warm temperatures this week.
But there are some people on the other side of that opinion. Okay, go ahead, all you weather-haters. “Snowed in!” Yell it–like Edwin Starr singing “War!” back in 1970.
SNOWED IN! Huh, yeah, Good God, y’all, What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
Now hear my opinion. Here’s what snowed in is good for:
Sledding. Christmas gifts for the local grands were four-foot $10 plastic sleds (I’m sure they were made in China). The boys got blue and Carly got hot pink. We put the sleds on the porch instead of under the tree. Our Christmas this year sported 70-degree temperatures. Jaxton ran around yelling, “Come, look! I got a swed! I got a swed!” (He’s three.)
Jameson and Carly took on the hill above their front yard. Jameson’s blue wonder eventually cracked when he hit a bump.
Reading. I confess I haven’t done much reading during these snow days, but if I could stay awake in the afternoons, I could knock a few off my list. Instead of reading, I’ve been….
Napping. Oh, how cozy it is to bundle up on the sofa. If you have cats, gather them around you. We only have an outside cat and he’s not quite tame enough to cuddle. However, he has enjoyed curling up in the rocker on the porch.
Movies. Or binge-watching a series. I finished the first season of The #1 Ladies Detective Agency at no charge and was disappointed to see that Season 2 was not On Demand. I guess I’ll have to rent or buy. This HBO production is based on Alexander McCall Smith’s books about a female sleuth in Botswana. Don’t expect a lot of violence and kinky sex, just culture, scenery, and sweetness (except for, uh, the mambas.)
Projects. I am famous for having almost as many projects stacked up as I do book titles, but today, I have two less! I painted a picture frame. I’m trying to take a page from one of my daughters-in-law and get all the frames in the house one color.
This is Mom’s grandmother, Ada Shoemake. She was a hoss of a tiny woman, revered by both sides of my mother and father’s family. She looks so much better in black.
And these are the Pizza Hut chairs I painted and upholstered for The Cellar. Bought these two years ago for $10 each, or was it $5?
Cleaning. (I was led to this topic by the mention of “projects.”) We are fortunate around the Compound to have bi-weekly housekeeping help for the regular stuff, but there is always something deeper that needs attention. I cleaned off three-quarters of my desk, does that count? Wait, wait, I also dusted the shelves beside the TV in The Cellar. Wow. By the time I make my way around the other book “wall,” the ones I just cleaned will be ready for another swipe.
Eating. Soups, for sure. Chili, beef stew, New England clam chowder, vegetable soup. There’s always something on the stove. And then everybody gathers around one table, sort of like Blue Blood’s Reagan family at Sunday night supper. (Or maybe they spread out on chairs, couches, blankets, and pillows in front of the TV.)
Birdwatching. The cardinals adore the snow. They are all over the branches and at the feeders. This morning, I trained my eye on a red-headed woodpecker working his way up a tall elm rooted in The Ravine. My peripheral view included chickadees, more redbirds, purple finches, house wrens, and…a robin! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a robin in the snow.
Get outside. Walk in the snow. I recommend you wear boots. We don’t buy a lot of snow boots here in the South, but if you have boots for rain, they’ll work. Or if you have everyday boots that you don’t mind pushing through the powder (hard powder by now), use those. I surveyed the ravine while out with Murphy.
Always have your camera handy–or your phone, and don’t forget to take the dog with you. Murphy loves the snow. She digs in with her face and plows.
Help a neighbor–or be helped. A post by Heather Corum Powell on our neighborhood Facebook page on Friday reminded me. “If anyone on Hilson has chocolate chips, I’ll make the cookies!” She got the chips, made the cookies, and then started delivery for those too far away to walk to get them. Since Dave and I are, ahem, watching the sugar, we asked her if she could take them to a single mom, or maybe a senior who can’t get out. Frankly, I didn’t feel that good being so altruistic and I’m a bit jealous of some old codger grinning over my cookies, if you know what I mean. <Sigh.> At least I know I did the right thing.
About that soup. If you’re like me, you always have an extra bowl (or pot, in my case) of soup. Since my neighbors have already foundered on my multiple pots of turkey soup this year, I haven’t reached out with the grub. Now I’m reminded that I need to.
The “be-helped” part. I’ve been a single mother in my past, and fortunate enough to know enough willing helpers to write at least fifty different stories. Every once in a while, I think of some of these people, and I write a note, but not nearly as often as I should. (Maybe some note-writing would be good during this in-house episode.)
If I were without Dave, I would not be able to drive the van up the driveway hill. I know that any one of the five closest neighbors would heed my call. First I’d try Saleh because he wants to help the most. Then Don–He’s the most vocal about my soup. Then I’d go for Steve. Maybe I should try Steve first. He’s from Upstate NY. Then Patrick or Chris since they’re younger, and therefore braver, than the rest.
Neighbors have volunteered all kinds of help on our Facebook page, not to mention the most helpful posts about street conditions from those who’ve been out. (See, there is some good in Facebook.) I feel inadequate to help. Dave did shovel all around the house, paths in both driveways, the ramp, and around the back doors, but I wouldn’t allow him to try the same thing for another house. We have become the older ones. Note I did not say “elderly.”
My dad is always saying, “Let me do what I can, and then help me.” I think we should translate that to “I’ll do what I can, and then, if I need help, I’ll ask for it.” My second goal would be to always think of something we could do for somebody. I think I’m about to put on another pot of soup.
Sure hope Dave gets the porch rails blasted and they dry enough for me to caulk and paint tomorrow. This good weather is only going to last three days, they say. That means on Tuesday or Wednesday, I’ll be looking for things to do inside–and there may not be any snow to play in!
So here’s something to do that requires nothing but attention: Poetry. Yes, I know that is reading, but it’s almost, well, not–at least for me. I am fond of Mary Oliver (who isn’t?) so I’ve taken out all of her books that I have on a shelf and I carry them with me, upstairs and down. Here is just a little bit of a poem that stayed with me from last weekend.
Look it up. Read the whole thing. First Snow. You’ll be ready for it next time you get snowed in.
I was making final plans for the Nevada trip with Mom and Dad just a week later. A friend described it as my plan to drag two old people across the continent and back. I ordered a waterproof travel bag big enough to hold three Kindles, extra Depends, three bottles of water, snacks, cough drops, and my medicines. Mom would take another large bag to hold their medicines. Actually, mine was a red print diaper bag, plastic-lined pockets all around. I took both parents for pedicures. Dave took Dad for a new pair of shoes. I took Mom shopping for paint–her sister-in-law had agreed to paint the kitchen while we were gone, cabinets included.
When I noticed that I had a dental cleaning scheduled on one of the days that we were to be gone, I called to postpone the appointment. Val surprised me when she said she had a cancellation for the next day.
“Are you having any problems?” my tiny hygienist asked.
“Just this one tooth.” I pecked on it. “It’s the same one I was having trouble with last time.”
“Getting worse? Hot? Cold? What hurts it?”
“Heat. And pressure. Pressure hurts, but since it’s where it is, I don’t get a lot of pressure there.”
After I was all shined up and x-rayed, Dr. Williams said I needed a root canal.
“Fine,” I said. “That’s the tooth that anchors my bridge. I surely don’t want to lose it.”
“No, no, I don’t either. Let’s send you to the endodontist. Don’t you already have somebody you like to see?”
“Terryl Propper,” I said. “I’ll call her.”
So on Monday, while Dave took the folks for flu shots, I got a root canal. Dr. Propper is always entertaining. I’ve enjoyed–yes, actually enjoyed–all four visits with the woman who reams out the roots of a tooth while cracking inappropriate jokes or relating embarrassing personal stories. She looks like a cross between Roseann Barr and my hilarious ex-sister-in-law Sheila, so my expectations are always high.The best story involved a cruise on the USS Maasdam, wherein Dr. Propper got to visit the morgue. Her stories may be funnier because of the gas, which could be the reason I can never remember the whole story later.
Dr. Propper expects give-and-take as she carries on a conversaton while working and, in spite of the load of rubber and cotton she’s shoved into my mouth, she understands every grunt I make as my side of the dialogue. I remember that she was a bit sedate this time. We talked mostly about these new-fangled shoes that are actually slippers with removable soles. When you need to go outside for your newspaper or the mail, you just pop those soles on your indoor slippers, trip down the driveway, and then flip them off once you’re back on cleaner ground.
“I hearda dem,” I said. “Moo-ble toles. Foles.”
Neither one of us could remember the names of the slippers. I knew the name started with an M.
“Tart wif ehn,” I told her.
“Starts with M. Yes, it does.”
“Lite hah…lite dah hah rah.”
She said, ” Oh, I just bought a pair. They’re not cheap–ninety-nine dollars–but I think I like them. I’ll email you the name when I get home.”
She patted me on the shoulder. “Okay, I’m done here, honey. We’re just going to do a couple x-rays to make sure we got it.”
She breezed back into the room to view the pictures just displayed. “Well, looka here. What is that? Huh. I missed a branch. You’ve got a branch that’s behind a tooth that is lying on the roof of your mouth. Did you know you have a tooth up there? It’s an eye-tooth.”
“Oh weah,” I said. ” ‘s been dere frebbuh.”
“I’m surprised some dentist didn’t try to take that out.”
“He dee-uh.”
“And you wouldn’t let him?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I don’t blame you.”
She pressed around the rubber to re-isolate the tooth. “You know, these days we could just band that tooth and bring it right down into its proper place.”
“Uh-huh. Dat fwah he ted.”
“Well, hang on, don’t talk, I have to clear this one little branch.”
She chided the newly discovered root, “….hiding from me, you Now I’m going to fill in the hole, okay?”
She pressed filling into the tiny hole drilled through the crown of #12. The assistant cleaned up. Dr. Propper’s face appeared in front of me again.
“Okay, dear, we’re about to turn on the oxygen and clear all that good stuff out of your head. You want some pain pills for tonight?”
I shook my head. She loosened all the props and pulled the materials from my mouth. “Now I’ll prescribe some Vicodin or something like that if you think you’ll need it…”
“No need. I dot pwenty dat tuff. Probbwy dust tate suh i-b-frofen.”
“Tell Dr. Williams thank you for sending you over to me. I’ve been meaning to get by to meet him.”
“He dent thend me. I tame my own fwee will.”
“Are you okay to leave?” the assistant asked.
Dr. Propper joined in. “Are you sure?”
“Wep. Dust tan’t talt pwain.”
***
Dr. Propper called the next morning to tell me that the name of those slippers. “Mahabis.”
I said, “Oh, yeah, I knew that.”
She laughed. “You kept trying to convince me that they were maharashis.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You don’t remember me saying that a maharaja was like a king or something?”
“No. I remember talking about that tooth on the roof of my mouth.”
“Right. How is your tooth, anyway? That’s what I really called about.”
“It’s still there.”
“Not the one on the roof of your mouth, the one I worked on.”
We were having some trouble finding a date for the annual Holiday get-together. This bunch is a busy lot: Dad having surgery on December 10 and the endless accompanying doctor and lab visits before that; Carly (of JJVC*) dancing in four Nashville Ballet performances of The Nutcracker and her dad John traveling for work; DDE* leaving for Montana on the 19th; JAJS* on a constant run with two demanding jobs and two little ones. We finally decided that we’d all get together after Carly’s matinee performance on the 5th and that we’d each bring a snack-y thing to share.
They checked in one-by-one: DDE to bring “secret ingredient” meatballs (I know the secret, by the way), JAJS spinach dip and a dessert, G’ma & G’pa sausage balls, and, of course, Dave and I (DD) haven’t decided yet. We don’t have to because we’re the hosts. With the mosts.
All was finally set when Vicky emailed yesterday afternoon for her family, JJVC.
On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 1:51 PM, Vicky Graham wrote to the group:We’ll bring an antipasto platter (minus the olives—cause I just can’t do those) and gingerbread cookies.
It only took Jade a few hours to respond.
On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 8:20 AM, Jade Graham wrote:No olives!!! I may just have to protest…which seems to be the trendy and fashionable thing to do these days. I may even consider staging a hunger strike (likely not for very long though). You people are prejudiced against the olive…and olive eaters like myself. This is very disconcerting. I tell ya…someone should be losing their job over this…and someone should have to make public apologies….perhaps I’ll contact my Congressperson and demand some new olive discrimination legislation. We should make it a hate crime to not include olives in the antipasto platters. I’m going to put the thought police to work on this whole olive thing….shame on you people and your anti-olive ways…it’s hateful and scandalous.
Grammy jumped in to settle everyone down.
From: Diana Blair Revell Sent: Monday, November 16, 2015 8:57 AM To: Jade Graham; Vicky Graham; Anjie; Revell, Darrin; John Graham; Dana Revell; Dave Revell; Ernest Ethel Blair Subject: Re: Revell/Graham/Blair Holiday Gathering!!!
hahahaha Okay, okay, don’t start a ruckus. I already have some olives–black and green (can I say that)?
I’m your mama. I’m the one who will give you what you want. Just remember that at voting time, okay? And don’t go voting for some cockamamie stiff-haired swaggard.
Daughter-in-law Vicky would not leave it alone.
On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 9:41 AM, Vicky Graham wrote: Ruckus on! I fully own my olive discrimination. I might even rethink my stance on gun control if we could just do something about the olive situation in this country. To really make America great again, we must eradicate them from our society. I say build a wall around all the Mediterranean countries. Until then, we should triple the olive tax. Olive eaters should be forced to register and wear a cardboard sign in public stating their past sin. I will go ahead and put out there that John has relaxed his stance on olives. He’s even gone so far as to not remove them from dishes at restaurants. He is the father of my children and the provider for our family, but I won’t silently sit by like some “Tammy Wynette standing by her man”. I’m interviewing lawyers. If any of those olives so much as even touch my antipasto platter, so help me……
Jade Graham ended it all.
12:49 PM (1 hour ago) to Vicky, me, Anjie, Darrin, John, Dana, Dave, Ernest
That’s funny…I don’t care who ya are…that’s funny.
He’s right. It’s funny. And now you know why we just love getting together. Of course, Vicky’s probably saying she backed him down.
Here’s the code break:
*DDE = Darrin, Dana, & Evan *JJVC = John, Jameson, Vicky, & Carly *JAJS = Jade, Angie, Jaxton, & Savvy *DD = Dave & Di, also written D&D
My asthma has been kicking me around a bit this spring, and I’m tired of it. Tired of wheezing and congestion. Tired of limiting my activity. Tired of staying inside when I want to be out. I remember my trip to ASAP, Vanderbilt’s Asthma, Sinus, and Allergy Program, the one where they stuck me with a hundred needles, trying to find my special and personal allergens. They didn’t find much. The one thing that would even suggest that it might elicit a response was cat hair, and my reaction wasn’t strong enough to be called an allergy.
The nurse practitioner sat in a chair facing me. “I would have sworn you’d have ten or twelve of these just off the chart…and there are none.” She told me about the cat hair. Her final summation was, “Diana, you aren’t allergic to anything, but you are highly irritated by oh, so many things.”
I answered her with true sincerity, “You. Have. No. Idea.”
In the Compound, it’s hard to make any room for irritations that might get me down. I don’t want to go down–and if I have to, I want to come back up kicking and screaming. Actually, I want to be up and at ’em all the time. I want to dig in the dirt and shove boxes around in the garage. I want to redecorate rooms and paint furniture. I want to be a good partner for Dave, and to be (cheerfully) available to Mom and Dad. I want to do more Grammy-ing.
We have a new grandbaby, one Evan Gabriel Revell, son of Darrin and Dana, and we have another on the way, Savannah Grace Graham, to Jade, Anjie, and big brother Jaxton. I’m longing to see Jaxton. I’ve babysat Evan once now, and am in the process of sewing a three-tiered ruffled crib skirt for Savannah’s room. The “old” grandkids, Jameson and Carly, haven’t been here for Grammy Night in more than a month. We’re all missing that. And then, we’ve started planning for a possible summer visit from the Montana grands, Bri and Zack.
Evan was a big surprise early in March when Darrin and Dana were chosen to be his parents. He came into our lives with a wallop to all our senses. Evan is African American. We’re all white…sort of. There are those three little boys we got in Montana, Jimmy, Jerry, and Johnny Wong, three brothers of a Chinese father and a Native American mother. They’re certainly not white. They’ve been men for a long time now, their years adding up at 56, 57, and 58. We tease Jerry that he’s getting old. He’s good-natured about it.
There’s more I want to do. I want to do more writing. I want to be able to put the pen to what I feel and think, clearly and kindly, but without timidity. Facebook posts just don’t get it. I’ve never seen anyone’s mind changed by either an email or a Facebook post. Most of the time, an opinion expressed on Facebook makes somebody mad.
I’m not mad, but the posts about Baltimore are getting to me and my visceral response is less than pleasant. The first two things that confound me: 1. The most viral post seems to be the one where the mother of one of the kids on the street doing what we all wish the kids on the street wouldn’t do grabs him up and lays into him with her hands. 2. The most immediate response to the rioting and looting is a name-call, “Thugs!” I keep wondering if there couldn’t be some story, some meme, some editorial somewhere that could help us all to think, and then to do what needs to be done to make sure there’s not as much reason for a bunch of our people–Americans–to be this desperate.
The Compound bunch has a long cumulative history of working for civil rights. My dad and I both got in trouble more than once in the 60’s. But don’t get me wrong, the residents of The Compound here are not unbiased. We can’t be. We’ve had privilege for so long that there are instances where we couldn’t find its resting place to exhume it for identification. We’ve called rioters thugs. We’ve asked, “Why would they destroy their own community?” A couple of us even cheered that mother on, one of us saying that’s what mamas should do and then Baltimore wouldn’t be going through this mess; although, the other said this wasn’t discipline, but a mama doing anything in her power to get her black son out of danger.
All of us here remember what it was like to live in Montana when the Wong boys were kids. Dave was not part of our family at the time, of course, but he was born and raised in Montana. Native Americans were low on the social strata, to say the least. And when some parents realized the Native American side of the ancestry, “those Indian kids” did not get invited for playdates. It always hit me as a bit odd, even rude, when some person asked my dad, “What are they?” What are they? They’re kids! It floored me the day I came home from work to find my mother teaching my youngest brother to deliver a right-hand punch. They’re calling them names and grabbing their things at school. Nobody is doing anything. They’ve got to learn to take care of themselves.
One of my little brothers went to a Tennessee prison when he was in his forties. I learned a lot about the justice system during the fourteen months he spent in a county jail, waiting for court action. At the end of that time, he was given a plea deal and began his prison career. He started out at a special-needs facility in Nashville–because he is mentally challenged–and served five of his five-years-and-eight-months there. I was his frequent, Monday-night visitor. I learned a lot about the prison system during both the first five years and the last eight months. I learned that most of the prison population is minority, predominantly black. My brother fit in a class somewhere between black and white, more toward the black end of the structure. One night, while we played Old Maids, he assured me that he was “better than the Mexicans and Mexicans are better than the blacks.”
He learned to cast his lot toward the white end, in spite of his very dark skin placing him squarely as a man of color.
Do I think he would have served prison time had he been white? Maybe, but the statistics say he would have been less likely to be arrested in the first place, less likely to be convicted, might have been offered a better plea bargain, less likely to serve time, and, if he did serve time, likely to serve less time than what he got. His mental challenges just upped the stats.
I hugged, kissed, and cuddled Evan yesterday while his dad went to the dentist. He is warm, sweet, squeezable. We’ve been so blessed that Evan has joined our crazy family. He’s new, but he’s already pretty much like all the rest of the grandbabies when they’re new–loved, welcomed, and doted on–and, in the next couple of months, Savannah Grace will jilt him out of his newest baby place for her ride in the latest-baby sun.
He’s like all the rest…except that he’ll cause me to ask questions that would never come up for the ones with whiter skin and straighter hair. I’ll wonder how his parents will teach him about his ethnical heritage. What a big job! I’ll wonder how he might develop pride in his blackness. I’ll wonder how much privilege, how many points, he’ll gain for growing up with white family. And I’ll always wonder about those times when someone looking at him doesn’t know Evan ‘s heart nor his family and sees only someone “less-than,” someone to stay away from.
I’m always going to be thinking about how to keep Evan safe.
In the midst of trying to explain how I feel, I came across an essay in Salon by a mixed-race woman that so resonated with me that I must encourage you to read it. I hope you will, if for no other reason than to help me understand myself.
It’s hard to be writing about December and January when Dad is out in the yard. He put on his overalls, an orange plaid long-sleeved shirt, and his farmer’s hat. He’s already got his garden going, with a row of cabbage, He came to The Cellar door to ask what he could do for me in the flower beds. I put him to work pulling weeds in the lower garden. It’s the largest one and the weediest, too! I see now he’s swapped the plaid shirt for a grey t-shirt and the overalls for his shorts and kneepads.
I always turn Dad loose in my gardens at my own risk. He doesn’t see well and sometimes he gets aggressive about the weeding and happens upon a perennial that he doesn’t recognize as a good thing. It’s no disaster, I just go find some more and call the amount I lost “entertainment.”
Speaking of disasters, I left this story last time on December 22 at a restaurant in Mt. Juliet where Jaxton introduced us to his sister who is set to arrive in June. We left the restaurant in two vehicles to go to Jellystone Park’s Christmas Lights and Village. Jade and Anjie were in front of us. Darrin and Dana rode with us.
We knew we were in a bit of trouble when we saw the long line waiting to get off the interstate at the Opryland exit, the path to Jellystone. We chatted back and forth on our cell phones a few times, and I took a picture of a tree we could see from the interstate. The line finally started to move, but it wasn’t going fast. I surmised that each time they let in the quota to the park, the line moves and then it stops until that bunch comes out of Jellystone. I really don’t know if that is accurate; I do know we sat there–and crept forward a little–for a long time.
I heard whispering from the back seat. “What?”
“I’ve got to go to the restroom,” Dana said.
“Oh me, we’re not in any position to get out of this line,” I said.
She decided she could hold it for a while. We crept forward. Dana only complained one more time. “I have GOT to go.” Didn’t sound good. Dave told the story about the time that we were halted on a drive to North Carolina and spent two hours waiting for a lane to open through one of the mountain tunnels.
I was in Dana’s shape. “I can’t wait any longer. I’m going to just hike out there beyond those bushes,” I said. “Nobody will see me there.”
I had a good start on the tromp across that dry, grassy rock field when a man in a car behind us called out, “Miss! Miss! Watch out for the snakes!”
I turned around. “Snakes?” When he didn’t answer, I yelled, “I’m not really afraid of them. I’ve got to go….” I started toward the bushes again.
His reply was just one word. “Rattlesnakes!”
I spun around and got back to our vehicle much quicker than I had made my way toward the makeshift toilet. I no longer had to go.
Then he told the story about his college summer job of surveying on the Wyoming-Montana border. “We found seventy-five rattlesnakes, and I bet I found sixty of them.”
“That’s because that one bit you,” I said.
“Did you get bit by a rattlesnake?” Dana asked.
“Yeah, on my calf.”
“What did they do?” she asked.
“Oh, they had a snakebite kit, so they lanced the bite, and I took anti-venom and they took me on to the hospital.” He paused. “I hate snakes.”
We told more snake stories. Dave finally asked, “Why are we telling snake stories? I hate snakes.”
As we finally got closer to the exit, going right instead of left looked so much more attractive. Left would take us–maybe by morning–to Jellystone Park. Right would take us toward Donelson and the interstate. I think we all spoke at the same time. “Let’s go right…. Let’s quit this sh*t…. Let’s go home…. Go right, go right! Somebody call Jade and tell him we’re getting out of line to go home.”
Jade had come to the same conclusion.
I told Dana we’d stop as soon as we could find a bathroom. Up popped McDonald’s. Yayyyyyy! The whole van-load cheered for the golden arches. I’d barely claimed a parking spot when Dana bolted. Somebody suggested that we drink milkshakes since there seemed to be a fine special–and then there was the ambience!
The McDonald’s was an unusual one, with a lovely and homey seating area in front of a fireplace, in addition to the normal dining room. We perched on the couches and chairs and slurped up our chocolate slurpies and congratulated McDonald’s for such a fine gathering place. Who should walk in but Jade? We laughed. “So you had to go to the bathroom, too?”
“Oh, man,” he said.
“We decided to stay here and drink milkshakes–they’re two for one. I bet Jaxton is asleep.”
“Oh yeah, he was gone by the time we got in the line. I better go ask Anjie if she wants a shake.” She did.
“What’s the status of your repairs?” Darrin asked.
“Oh, they’re done. I mean, the plumbers are. The flooring is supposed to be installed January 8.”
“How about the van?”
“It goes in the shop Monday–or is it Tuesday….”
Now that we’ve had some separation time, we think it was December 23rd, whatever day that was. A young man from Enterprise picked me up at Service King to take me to the lot to get a rental–which insurance was paying for! Dave and I agreed to get the largest vehicle that we could without paying extra.
They put me in a Toyota Prius and taught me how to drive it. Actually, the little guy taught me how to start it and tried to sell me extra insurance–just in case something happened while I was driving it.
“Oh, by the way,” he said, “there’s no gas in this car! Somebody returned it empty, I guess. Well, you just drive out of here and turn left into that Exxon station. I do think I’d get some gas before going home.”
I did as he suggested and finally managed to load fifteen dollars’ worth in the little thing’s tank and started to go home. It was cold and it was dark. I couldn’t tell who was behind me, or liable to be behind me in a couple moments. I finally got out and looked before I pulled out.
“This is crazy,” I thought. I turned right instead of left and pulled back into the Enterprise lot.
“Can we help you?” the nice girl at the counter asked.
“Yes,” I said, “I don’t think I can drive this car. I can’t see out.”
“You can’t see out where?”
“Any place, front or back. What else can you rent to me?”
“Well, we have some larger vehicles but you’d need to pay the amount that the insurance won’t pay.”
What they wanted for a one-level upgrade was exactly twice the insurance provision.
“You don’t have anything in this class–what is this, mid-size?” I asked.
“No, that’s our full-size [or maybe she said ‘intermediate size’–either way, it’s a stretch] …and we just don’t have anything else.”
It was cold. It was dark. I wanted to go home. “Okay, fine. It’ll be a wonder if I don’t kill myself in this thing,” I mumbled.
The first thing I said to Dave when I got home was, “Oh, Lord, Dave, you won’t believe this.”
No, he did not want to learn to drive the Prius. After all, he wouldn’t be able to drive at all after his shoulder surgery on January 5.
Surely to goodness we’ll have the van back by January 5, I thought.
The first time he rode shotgun with me, he said, “I don’t know how you see out of this thing.” The first time we pushed Mom and Dad, rump first, into the Prius, I wondered how we’d ever get them out.
Mom said it like she thought it, “This thing is a tin can.”
***
Christmas Eve–and Day–were uneventful. We still did some traditional cooking, but both days were quiet. “Not like Christmas,” I said.
All the women exchanged emails about a possible redeux for the Festivus/Christmas Vacation party. “We already have the meat,” Vicky said. “What if we do it New Year’s Day? Somebody’s going to cook that day, anyway.”
So we all got our “bring this” assignments and planned for our big day. Some of us decided to wear costumes, most didn’t. Mom wore her Mrs. Senior Smith County tiara and sash. I wore Tonto and took some extra clothes.
Jerry Wong wanted us to guess. “Who am I?” he asked. He insisted he was dressed in costume. We couldn’t see it.
“Well, I should be the one to wear that Tonto stuff,” he said.
“You mean it would go with your costume?” I asked.
“Give up, I’m a half Chinese, half Indian.” Family joke, I guess. Jerry and his brothers really are half Chinese, and half Native American.
When Jameson saw that GrandmaMA and I were costumed, he announced he would be back in a few–and went to prepare himself.
He stepped back into the room as Cousin Eddie.
Carly had fun opening birthday presents. Several of us pooled our pennies to buy an American Girl doll, this year’s ballerina, Isabelle. We also got the barre and some other totally necessary supplies and equipment. And for that, she let us have some of her Rice Krispy Treat Cake.
We discussed the year’s activities. John and Jade have an insurance company, Graham’s Insurance, in Lebanon. Jade runs it while John works for himself in recovering overpayments to healthcare providers.
“We’re doing well,” Jade said of the insurance agency. He moved toward pensive. “We would have made good money this year if it weren’t for family.”
Dave said, “Our roof was last year.”
“Yeah, we put a roof on Anjie’s mom’s house, and then y’all have that big claim for the leak, and then the van…” There was more. Much more. I don’t want to expose anybody.
John summed it up. “What we need is some more clients that are also total strangers.”
***
We made away with a fabulous beef tenderloin dinner and pronounced the day a rousing success–especially since the sick were now somewhat well, and we had finally got some quality celebrating under our belts. We loaded the Prius when Dad started looking tired.
“Everybody buckled in?” I asked, as usual. “Dad, move a little to your right. I can’t see.”
He did.
Cru-u-u-u-u-nch. “Oh!” and “Uh-oh” and “Oh, shit, I’ve hit Jerry Wong’s car!”
Jade was the first person out of the house.
The **** Prius.Jerry Wong’s car. Apparently something happened to the wheel bearing, too. Hm.
I drove over to Enterprise the next day to give them the latest scoop.
The nice young woman in management smiled. “Oh, dear. That’s why I always suggest that extra coverage.”
“Well, here’s what I would like to suggest. I think you ought to have something on the lot in every class that a normal person could drive.”
The discussion that followed was, um, amicable, but it ended with “Well, no, I wouldn’t recommend you to anyone. I think if someone drives back in and says, ‘I can’t drive this vehicle,’ it would behoove you to come up with something different.”
I turned toward the counter. “Do I need to pay anything today?”
“No, we’ll settle up when you return the vehicle. You can drive it, can’t you?”
“Well, IT will drive.” Then I added, turning to leave, “I told you before I couldn’t drive the damn thing.”
Not much discussion about Jerry Wong’s car, in spite of my long rendition of how it all happened, but I suppose Enterprise really had no dog in the Wongster’s hunt.
***
Service King was slow to finish the work on the van, what with holidays and a flu epidemic in Nashville. I drove the wrecked Prius… and I drove the wrecked Prius some more. Every two days, Service King sent a text promising me “we’ll have your car ready soon.” I prayed for an end to my torment.
One day, I stopped at Lowe’s to choose some moulding for the flooring. (Someone from Lowe’s had called to leave a message on the home phone. It seemed that my original choice was no longer available.) I parked the Prius in handicapped parking–Yes, I know that I am not handicapped, but I do have Dad’s tag in the pickup truck and Dave’s tag in the van, and I am not afraid to use them when I need to. I made sure I carried the one from the van in the Prius.
In the flooring department, I once again had to converse with Mike. This time was more successful than others. You see, Mike is hard of hearing, wears two hearing aids that obviously do not relieve him of his problem, and we had some difficulty during the first two meetings. By now, I knew to tap him on the shoulder and look directly at him when I spoke. We finished in fifteen minutes.
The Prius…at Lowe’s
I walked toward the Prius facing me at the Exit door of Lowe’s. My heart began to race when I noticed that the front of the vehicle was wrecked on the front of the passenger side. Someone had made a large dent and scrape while I was in the store. It also looked like part of the headlight was missing.
“No-o-o-o-o,” I wailed. “No-o-o-o-o.” I set my purse–a big one–on the ground, just couldn’t hang onto it while I pitched what I knew was going to be a major hissee. I was stomping around saying, “Shit, shit, shit!” when a man with a long, grey ponytail stopped in front of me. I pulled my phone from my jeans pocket and snapped. The man folded his arms. He was so calm.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m looking at this place where somebody hit this damn vehicle.” And, at that precise moment, I realized that the white Prius with the wrecked front side was his vehicle, that my “damn vehicle” was in the next row.
I did not explain. I just picked up my purse and got in my own wrecked Prius; well, Enterprise’s wrecked Prius. He didn’t even shake his head, just got into his car and drove off.
***
The van was not ready when the crew came to put down the new flooring, a vinyl plank that always looks old and dirty. I figured it was the best solution for the place where everyone brings in dirt and mud from the gardens. It looked fine when they finished the installation except that the vanity was about two inches out into the floor–not bumped up to the wall–and the workman just casually applied the moulding to the out-of-place vanity. Another fix-it, I thought.
I called Lowe’s to ask if the installer could come back out. “I signed off on the work,” I said. “I just didn’t see it at the time.”
“We’ll have to charge you an appointment fee,” the guy answered me. “It’s fifty dollars.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “Never mind, I’ve got to have some other work done, too. I’ll just make sure I put this little tidbit on my evaluation.”
He was so cheerful. “Okay, well, thank you for letting Lowe’s provide your flooring.”
Huh.
Two days later, the van finally came home and the Prius went, well, not exactly where I’d told it to go so many times. The Service King guy who picked me up from Enterprise chuckled when I told him about the damages.
“You know what?” he said. “We’ll get a call about twenty minutes from now, and I’ll come back over here and pick up that Prius and take it to our shop to fix it.”
I just nodded. I was shed of it. I had to learn to drive the Sienna all over again. It felt like a Greyhound bus, but it looked wonderful.
Enterprise, Service King, and I eventually settled up. Jerry Wong’s car was totaled (something about that wheel bearing, I think…). Our friendly MetLife paid everything except for deductible and, lo and behold, the credit card company (Chase) covered the deductible! Who would have ever thought of that? (My husband.)
Thanks to the snow and ice of February, our friendly neighborhood landscaper and handyman came and re-did most of the moulding, tightened up the drop ceiling and replaced broken tiles, replaced the door to the bathroom, and hung a new light fixture and mirror. It took him days.
I still haven’t painted the bathroom but then, there are several holdovers of things I need to do in The Cellar. Things that go in the laundry room are still in the garage. Things that go in the bathroom are still in the garage. Shoes that go in the big shelving unit in the laundry room are still…scattered around. I have yet to re-organize the garage storage. I mean, garagES.
But I’ve done a hundred loads of laundry, cooked a few dozen meals, and hand-washed dishes galore down here in The Cellar. I haven’t really cleaned the new floor, either. I figure if it’s supposed to look old and dirty, I’ll just let it do its best job for a little while longer.
We’ve had no more insurance claims in 2015…yet. Maybe Graham Insurance will send us a thank-you card at the end of the year! (Do you think our premium might go up a little bit?)
***
The new floor
Painting the paneling, changing the color scheme, new mirror….Someday I’ll finish all the painting!New floor–and new toilet (which, in the South, is a “commode”)
The blue one was cheaper than the silver!I followed instructions, what few there were.I used a magnifying glass to find how to contact support. Then I rooted around until I found Technical Support FOR THE INSTALLATION, which is different from Technical Support. I explained that I could get the little thing to turn on, but….well, “The lights are on, but no one’s home.”
I went back to the Quick Set-up. Do you see any place it says “battery” on the diagram? That’s because it’s a factory-sealed battery!
The battery that we can’t get out because it’s factory sealed???
So he’s sending me a box for a computer that I don’t intend to send to HP for repair. And I’m not supposed to send the battery. I called the store to tell them I’d be in either Sunday or Tuesday, don’t know which. They’re more than willing to replace, or refund. Now I’m thinking about setting up the new Dell desktop.
Let’s start back in mid-December. So these huge fans ran all weekend. And dehumidifiers. And blowers. I think there were three different machine-types. On Monday, I found out that it wasn’t CON’s guys who brought the drier-outers, but a “water restoration” company. I don’t understand that naming. Wouldn’t restoration indicate that somebody was going to “restore” that water? I didn’t want the water restored. I wanted it gone.
Monday morning, the restoration guys packed up the roaring fans and their friends–after we’d paid $1800–and said CON’s guys would be here in about an hour.
Rabbit from CON showed up in less than fifteen minutes. I wondered if he’d been waiting down the street for the “come on down.” He said he needed to make sure the concrete was dried out. “Bet you’re glad those fans are gone,” he said.
“They didn’t bother me much. I stayed down here and worked at my computer most of the time.”
“That horrible noise didn’t bother you?”
“No. It was actually somewhat soothing.”
“Guess what,” he whispered.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“You’re nuts.”
Really? I thought. Like he had made a discovery that might hold the key to the universe.
I was reminded of a friend of mine, a statuesque and overweight young woman, who went to see a new internist, a female, one Dr. Kia. Let’s call my friend Gritti, named for her mother’s hopefulness of having a daughter who would not only stand up to males, but might even help to move culture into a new age of gender equality.
Dr. Kia, well-known for her quick opinions and sharp tongue, said to Gritti, sitting naked on that hard table, legs swinging as they would not touch the footrest, “Miss Gritti, I’d like to talk to you about your body BMI.”
Gritti chuckled and almost interrupted, so as to put this horror show to rest. “BM’s? Oh, they’re fine. Regular as clockwork. Well, maybe a calendar. I have at least one a day.”
“If you’d quit giggling and let me finish, you’d know I was talking about the Body Mass Index.”
“Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h,” Gritti answered, “you mean….”
And now who was interrupting. “Yes, if you look at the chart over here on the wall, you’ll note that your height and weight places you in the category of morbidly obese.”
“No-o-o-o-o,” Gritti answered, as she slid from the table, missing the footrest, the paper cover floating away toward the hateful chart. “Get me a mirror!” Gritti called as her bare bottom hit the floor. “I didn’t know I was fat!”
***
“Rabbit, get me a psychiatrist, I didn’t know I was bonkers!” I didn’t say it. I was afraid he’d start apologizing and I’d have to tell him how much his opinion meant to me.
“This next step is where the noise is,” he said.
“The jackhammering?” I asked.
He nodded slowly and crept around the basement area. After maybe a quarter-hour, he announced that his guys would present themselves in just a few minutes and then he left. I stayed downstairs to greet them. I sat at my desk and laughed about Gritti, then I began to dawdle. I got on Facebook–same thing as dawdling except if the dawdler is drunk. Then it’s called yammering.
However, I call what Rabbit was doing “yammering,” and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t drunk.
I left my desk to make some diet Swiss Miss with some of the water I’d brought downstairs in a gallon jug, since we couldn’t use any plumbing downstairs, and sat back down. It was almost eleven o’clock. “Dang,” I said out loud, “another hour and they won’t be getting here this morning.” The truck pulled up just as I started to stir.
The driver stepped out of the big truck’s cab and said, “Sorry if you expected us earlier. This was the morning we went shopping for the Christmas angels.”
“Like, the Salvation Army Christmas angels?” I asked.
“Yeah, we paired up and the company give one kid to every two of us. You wouldn’t believe some of the things we got.”
“I bet it was fun,” I said.
“Oh, yes, ma’am, it’s kinda the highlight of our year.”
“Speaking of ‘the year'”, I said, “we’re winding up the year with a big project.”
“Yeah, that’s what I hear. Well, we’ll get right to work. I’m Harold. I’m the lead.” He pointed to his mates. “This here’s Thomas, and that’s Dickie. Dickie, he does most of our hammering.”
“Jackhammering?”
“Yeah. Well, we’ll take care of you. You just go on about your day. I wouldn’t advise staying down here with this racket.”
I stayed upstairs. I just couldn’t watch the destruction–but I could hear the jackhammer very well. It wasn’t as obtrusive and annoying as I had imagined it would be. It didn’t drive me nuts; but then, Rabbit had already said I was nuts. I had no facts to support a counter argument.
Around one o’clock, there was a lull in the GRRRAKKA KKAKKAKKA KKAKKAKKAKK AKKAKKAKKAKK. Maybe they’d gone to lunch. No, the truck was still there. I stepped into The Cellar and walked around a short wall. Harold leaned against the door from the bathroom to the laundry room. Thomas and Dickie were on the cement floor, scooping rock and block from a large L-shaped hole that started in front of the toilet and wrapped three-quarters of the room.
“Here’s your leak” Dickie said.
The Great Hole of The Cellar.
He plowed around in the middle of the floor, knee-walked a couple of feet and said, “Here’s another one.” It was right next to the mountain of rock, dirt, and concrete they’d shoveled out of the hole.
I pointed toward the pile. “What will you do with that?”
“Aw, we’ll put it back in, don’t worry,” one of them said.
I bent over the leak nearest me. “That sure doesn’t look like cast-iron pipe.”
“It’s not. It’s PVC. It just separated.”
“What do you mean, it separated?”
“Well, nothing’s busted, no holes in the pipe, but they used some kind of sealer on this line that’s not for sewer. And it finally just wore out.”
Harold piped up. “There’s one more, too.”
“In the laundry room?” I asked.
“No, it’s over here at the corner of where the vanity sits.”
“Huh,” I said, which is what I say when I don’t know what to say.
“There’s no leak in the laundry room. The reason it was wet in there is because your drain overflowed.”
Dickie took the reins. “See, what happens is, wherever the leak is, the ground takes on as much water as it can–and it’ll spread it out across a wide area. I seen three rooms wet from one leak. But when the ground can’t take any more, that’s when your floor and your carpet, or tile, whatever, that’s when that gets soaked.”
“What happens now?” I asked.
Harold answered. “Well, now we leave this open to dry. We’re gonna go to lunch, and leave some heat and fan on this.”
“But you’re coming back?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. We’ll be back after dinner.”
“Dinner,” I said.
Harold nodded. I figured dinner meant lunch to Harold.
They were back–after lunch. They declared the hole ‘dry enough’ and proceeded to mix concrete. The great hole, a mini-me of the ravine behind The Compound, was all filled in by the time they left for the day.
All filled in!
“We’ll be back tomorrow to check and see if that concrete is set up. I sort of doubt it getting dry enough, but when it is, we’ll set all your stuff back in.”
I went upstairs to report progress. Dave was amazed. “You mean they found the leak and fixed it and got it covered with concrete? All today?”
“Yeah,” I answered.”I don’t think they got it smooth enough for somebody to put flooring on it.”
“This cannot possibly take two weeks. Didn’t Rabbit say it would take two or three days for the concrete to set up?”
“Yep. And they’re thinking they’re going to put the toilet and vanity back in there tomorrow.”
“Well, that means, let’s see, instead of fourteen days, this is going to take six or seven days max.”
***
Author’s note: I’m tired of telling this story. I suspect my readers’ eyes are a bit glazed–if any are still with me. And if you and I both are tired of this story, neither of us wonders why I might abridge the rest of this tale.
***
The next morning, Harold, Thomas, and Dickie were back. They parked their big white truck in the usual spot several feet from the back door to The Cellar. Dave pulled out of the garage and eased the Sienna between their truck and the house. I went downstairs to see why I didn’t hear activity.
Harold explained. “We don’t think it’s dry enough to start setting things back in,” he said. “Tell you what, we’re going to go check in on another job while we run these fans a little longer, and we’ll come back right after dinner to get you squared away.”
I heard the truck stop in the driveway below and looked out the dining room window. They were back a little earlier than expected. Dave was just returning from his workout. He eased the van toward the garage the same way he went out, between the truck and the house.
He heard the scraping but didn’t stop; after all, he knew he’d driven the van through that same spot earlier. What he didn’t know was the guys had left, and come back, and this time, the truck was a wee-e-e bit closer to the walls. When he came out on the other side, he got out to survey the damage.
Harold came out the door. “Did you just hit the truck?”
“Yeah, but it’s not hurt–unlike my van,” Dave said.
“I just have to report it back to the company,” Harold said.
Dave nodded.
***
We’d just sat down for lunch, Harold’s version of dinner, when Rabbit called from downstairs. Dave told us to go ahead with lunch and went back downstairs to meet him. We’d passed around everything on the table and picked up forks when we heard voices. My friend-almost-family dined with us. “I have never heard Dave talk that loud,” she said, “and that is from downstairs, isn’t it?”
“I think they’re outside.” I paused, and then added, “Yep, that’s Dave.” And his end comment was, “I was willing to pay you $14,000 for a 14-day job. I’m not willing to pay you that for a 3- or 4-day job. And I don’t care if I have to go to court.”
I started down the stairs to tell Dave he was preaching to the entire Whispering Hills neighborhood. He was coming up the stairs to eat, said he was finished, said Rabbit was going to talk to his boss.
The next morning, Dave and I decided the Toyota’s scrapes and dents were too prominent to leave as is, so he called our insurance man to report the latest accident. Our agent is my son, Jade Graham. He and his brother have this insurance agency in Lebanon, Tennessee, named Graham Insurance.
That afternoon, acting on Jade’s instructions, Dave took the van to Service King, one of the “concierge vendors” for MetLife, to get an estimate. They scheduled our repairs to begin on December 23, just one week later. Insurance would pay for a rental car–a little rental car.
Rabbit came by in the evening to report on his talk with his superior. The end result: Dave agreed to pay a little over $9200 and informed Rabbit that was still way too much.
I shopped for flooring. The Lowe’s installation scheduler called me two days later to ask if they could begin on January 8. “Why, of course,” I said. “I’ll be here celebrating Elvis’ birthday.”
The girl on the other end of the phone was too young to know that or to care much about it. All she said was, “My grandma loves Elvis.”
I said, “Huh.”
Before I-Day (Installation Day), we had some other celebratory events to attend to. The first event was our family Christmas event December 21 at John and Vicky’s house (Jameson and Carly, too). We voted not to exchange gifts this year, in favor of some event to attend. John and Vicky offered to host a party and assembled an entertainment committee. Vicky planned a cross between Festivus and a Christmas Vacation and everyone was to attend in costume. If I couldn’t think of anything else, Dave and I could wear our Lone Ranger and Tonto outfits that we made for a New Year’s Eve party about ten years ago. Dave’s outfit was constructed from a heathered brown Hanes sweatshirt and pants. He was Tonto. There was really nothing funny about me in a cowboy suit and hat with a gun on my hip, but I have to admit that Dave rocked that feather attached to the shiny black mullet on elastic around his head.
Before I could utter the first Hi-ho, Silver, John and Jameson came down with the flu, closely followed by Vicky and Carly. The Graham-Revell-Blair Christmas party was off. We’d just have to figure out another time–or skip it.
We’d also planned a caravan to Jellystone Park’s Dancing Lights and Christmas Wonderland at dusk. Darrin and Dana, Jade and Anjie, and Dave and I decided not to waste that opportunity, so we all arranged to meet for late lunch/early dinner in Mt. Juliet and then drive over to see the lights. Jade, Anjie, and Jaxton were already at the table when the four of us arrived. I took a corner seat next to Jaxton, and across the table from Anjie.
Jaxton was wound up and talking a mile-a-minute. When the server brought three beverages, she asked us new folks what we’d like to drink.
“What’s that you’re drinking, Anjie?” I asked.
“Milk.”
“Milk?”
“It’s for my heartburn. I’m having bad heartburn,” she said.
My lips were pursed for “You’re not pregnant, are you?” but, fortunately, I slammed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, uttered a quick “I’m sorry,” and ordered a Diet Coke.
Congratulations flew across, and up and down, the table. Anjie received a big promotion the week before; this was the first chance any of us had to congratulate her in person.
When everyone had begun to eat, Jade asked Jaxton if he wanted to show off his shirt. He stood in his high chair. The green and red print showed, “I’ve got a Christmas surprise!” Then Anjie turned him around (which he did not want to do) and the back of his shirt read “I’m going to be a big brother!” He told us that Mommy had a “sitt-ter” in her belly; Anjie introduced us to Savannah Grace Graham.
We hurried to text all the sickees.
Next, Kristmas Gone Kerflooey; the Wrap-Up of the Mis-haps of 2014!
Sledding. Christmas gifts for the local grands were four-foot $10 plastic sleds (I’m sure they were made in China). The boys got blue and Carly got hot pink. We put the sleds on the porch instead of under the tree. Our Christmas this year sported 70-degree temperatures. Jaxton ran around yelling, “Come, look! I got a swed! I got a swed!” (He’s three.)
She was a hoss of a tiny woman, revered by both sides of my mother and father’s family. She looks so much better in black.
painted and upholstered for The Cellar. Bought these two years ago for $10 each, or was it $5?
This morning, I trained my eye on a red-headed woodpecker working his way up a tall elm rooted in The Ravine. My peripheral view included chickadees, more redbirds, purple finches, house wrens, and…a robin! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a robin in the snow.
Murphy loves the snow. She digs in with her face and plows.
So here’s something to do that requires nothing but attention: Poetry. Yes, I know that is reading, but it’s almost, well, not–at least for me. I am fond of Mary Oliver (who isn’t?) so I’ve taken out all of her books that I have on a shelf and I carry them with me, upstairs and down. Here is just a little bit of a poem that stayed with me from last weekend.
On the Ravine 