saturday: fly to austin, sandwiched between two
sunday/monday: continue the packing (despite her best efforts to thwart me by insisting on trying on every article of unearthed clothing and looking at every picture). find the $10 gold piece i gave her for christmas 35 years ago that she thought she'd lost.tuesday: supervise the movers, begin the cleaning, break for dinner with the neighbors. try to tell 'em how much i appreciate their being there for my mother all these years until judy tears up and makes me stop.
wednesday: attend the closing, sign the papers, kick myself one last time for not holding out for more. wait for the thing to fund, then head north to tyler, watching ma closely in the rearview as she follows in her car. spend the night with my cousin mike and his wife kim during which we sit out on their deck until 3am, hand-feed cheese nips to the raccoons while kim and i reminisce about our days at tyler junior college and kill two bottles of really good red wine and i marvel at how easy it is after 18 years of abstinence to smoke half a pack of mike's pall malls without even really trying.
thursday: one last lunch before delivering ma into the clutches of my brother's perfect little world. we drive by my grandmother's little house on fenton street and sit there a minute, each of us lost in our own remembrances of what once was. she says, "i met your dad for the first time on that little stoop," as if she'd never told me that before.
drive the four-and-a-half hours back to austin, turn in the rental, catch the (packed) flight home, arrive at ten pm, bone-weary, debate calling an old friend when my ride flakes on me but [my birthday gift to you, noblesavage] elect instead to take the two buses necessary to reach beverly hills and cab it home from there--end of a perfect trip.
and how was your week?
2 comments:
Well, back to Tyler. It's funny how you go back to your roots. At least your Ma is.
Thanks for not calling me. I probably would not have been much good to you on Thursday anyhow. I am told there is a really reliable service call Super Shuttle that takes you to your door for a very reasonable price with friendly drivers. And, as a bonus, you get to talk to strangers on the ride home.
noblesavage: after a week of enforced proximity to people, the thought of being stuck in a confined space with even more people to whom i was expected to be civil without the benefit of alcohol (and yeah, that included you) was more than i could bear; the grubby anonymity of the bus proved infinitely preferable.
Post a Comment