All In 48 Hours

A beautiful new baby  boy born to one of my favorite cousins.  A new life, new pages not yet peopled with words.  A homebirth, full of hard work, love, prayer, wonder, closeness, gratefulness, family. 

Another friend whose personality and life cannot be adequately contained in mere words, died, full of years, but none of us ready for him to go.  A space no one else will fill, and we're left longing for more volumes to his lengthy story.  When is Complete complete enough?

Possible buyer for my car that's been grounded in the garage for the past few months, (Stella) my beautiful Ford lemon with the sleek V8 engine that makes grown men swoon.  Too many repairs invested and still needed.  We'll see if he returns in a few days to bond further with her and prove his devotion with cash.

Prepare food accompanied by library DVD of an old western called The Furies.  I hate it.  So does Jack.  Finish watching the last few scenes of another DVD begun earlier, Judgement at Nuremburg...love it love it love it, unexpectedly.  I contemplate several of the dialogues in the movie throughout the weekend and the one that most sticks with me is Spencer Tracy's statement that no matter what is justified in the name of the common good, if justice is not given to the individual, it's not really justice.  That corresponded so much with what I see today being promoted as "good for the nation" but on an individual level is neither just nor true to constitutional freedoms.

Sundown, and peace descends.  A night and day of rest from our week, our shabbat of worklessness and renewal.  Feelings of loss remembering our friend, feelings of joy for the new baby's birth.  So many thoughts on this day, and time to think them.  Gentle home smells, soup on the back burner, cold roast chicken.  Chores can wait.  Torah portion to share.  Relaxed conversations, napping, sunlight throuh the cold windowpanes.

Family member of my husband phones, relates trips down memory lane.  Her mother she described as dainty and petite, tough and scrappy in early days in Cuba working side by side with her husband in an automotive shop.  Both she and Jack's mom, gone now.  She speaks of the years before I knew my husband, her childhood memories of their youth, when he first arrived here at age 11, how he concentrates when listening to someone, his fine eyes so much like her father's, the first time she saw him dressed in his military uniform waiting at the bus stop oh so handsome...snapshots past, spoken back into existence during her retelling.  As she speaks about Jack (he was asleep at the time), I understand he is part of me now, my setting for every new scene --his face I have memorized, every inch, my familiar foreground.  Her words sketch in blank spaces and a background unknown to me emerges.  I fill in some more recent missing years for her, our newer history in which we've grown our marriage of over 5 years, knowing each of my words will be weighed and dissimenated far afield -- pumping whatever gossip, gleaned from our quiet life, like an arterial lifeblood to the most distant limbs of a well-traveled grapevine.  My Jack - I guard the truth of him like a lioness.

Devoted companion, my dog rouses me from afternoon nap with insistence that something MUST be wrong if we have not yet gone for our daily errands together.  He talks to me in dog noises so human, so SURE there is something amiss.  I explain to him that if Timmy is, indeed, stuck in a mine shaft, this time the sheriff's department is on their own.  But I still get up and give Kaleb a biscuit, averting near disaster and returning to my nap with the vague realization I'm not the one really running this place...ha :)

Nap with husband.  No one explains to the young and impetuous just how wonderful this simple tangle of bedclothes and best friend really is.

Dog snores.

Day declines.

Dreams patchwork together, a piecemeal of all the above, interconnected with images of dancing reflections across a sky blue and sea green tiled room, a full sized pool waiting for me to swim.  I love to swim in clear waters undulating with azure and aquamarine.  I awaken peaceful, smiling.

After dark, we rouse ourselves and venture forth in the truck to amble down Tamiami Trail, thinking of perhaps food but steering clear of congested watering holes.  We find a mom and pop, enter to a hearty Greek welcome, eat mediocre food and wonderful bread and pots of steaming hot tea.  Just in case we haven't eaten enough carbs yet, we split a piece of chocolate cake.  Watch a waitress nearly singe her eyebrows off when doing the flaming platter bit for nearby table...Opa!

Rabbit trail to the bookstore.  Sate ourselves with armchairs and quick reads; Jack chooses weapons periodicals and I've gleaned the famine of near-empty writing books section.  Found a couple of great excerpts by Cormac McCarthy in one book (about settings)-- might look his books up at the library next time to see if I like his stories; his writing quoted in the book I skimmed was superior.  Digested some writing tips; was granted absolution for my habit of preferring frequent chopped-up sentences lacking proper subject and verb -- does hacking to bits the grammar rules count as style as long as people somewhere out there know the author's CAPABLE of correct english? 

Kept sneezing in the store, something about my nose and being in public -- it happens.  Jack circuits back around with one styrofoam cup of coffee that we share.  He's put honey in it.  Actually in everything.  I like cream, so does he, but I don't like sweet coffee.  Somehow I like the honey with the cream ok, though...strange.  My hero goes to get his maiden fair something for her nose.  He returns with a huge wadge of toilet tissue.  I sit there in my barn jacket, old track shoes, dripping nose, and toilet paper streamer.  Lone man in nearby chair has earplugs and laptop, perfectly round face.  I try not to overload him with nasal noises.  He gets up and stretches and looks at the science books about things factored X and such.  He departs.  Maybe I'm a factor X.

Home again, thoughts extend into tomorrow and the week ahead.  A best friend has left a phone message, ongoing story (we talk in installments),  the content of which provokes an urge in me to fly to California to be part Mary Poppins part Terminator and to instill personal law and order for MY FRIEND.  I resist the urge to call her back and tell her she is wearing a neon sign shouting ENABLER on her forehead...I will be gracious.  I will listen and say nothing about it.  I do not HAVE to be opinionated.  I cannot afford to fly to California, I am not Mary Poppins (just a spoonful of sugar and diabetes don't mix) nor the Terminator (not a republican married to a Kennedy, whoa is that messed up, ha!).  I will be blithe and capacious with the openest of minds, and mind my own business. 

Ok, that resolution is going to probably last me about 30 seconds.  (I can hear her laughing at the very thought of that!) Thank goodness our friendship is straightforward, valuable, long-lasting, and nothing if not Teflon-coated.

Check other phone messages and see that the same salesman has called now at home for the umpteenth time after 6 PM.  That's a lot of Eastern Standard Time nerve.  His name is Armando, and he is the only salesman persistent enough to leave different messages each time.  I have not blocked him yet since I am now intrigued at his message-varying capacity.  Yeah, we're hurting for entertainment around here.

Strange unidentified caller prompts me to hand phone to Jack.  He is asking about Jack's work site.  How he got our private number and Jack's name and INcorrect work site is beyond me.  He is asking about a key and putting Jack's name on some report.  Jack hangs up and alerts his site of something weird afoot.  Then he goes back to bed to sleep off the carbs while I go to computer and am greeted by dubious spyware threat warnings I have no idea whether to take seriously.  Cold numbs my feet from the floor tiles.

Dog's contentedly sleeping by my feet.  I remove computer threats, I hope.  The night is chill and starblown.  I am enjoying our little bit of winter while we still have it.  I head to bed now to settle into my husband's warmth until tomorrow's reawakening of joys, sorrows, the mundane and the gloriously ordinary.