Moving Out: Fort Lauderdale 2012

Really, I'm not ready to write about selling the house, packing up, saying goodbye and leaving Fort Lauderdale. Not ready yet to try and put the emotion--or revisit those emotions--into words. Yet, that's what I'm thinking of this morning.

We--my wife, my two daughters and I, our cats, our dog--lived in that house for over (what?) fourteen, fifteen years. Which, I believe, is the longest I've lived in one continuous spot for my whole life. I knew a lot of people in South Florida, in Fort Lauderdale, in my neighborhood, on my street. I had great and comfortable friends. I knew the plants, the seasons (yes, there are seasons in South Florida), the insects, the birds and reptiles and some fish. I knew my palms and oaks and flowering plants, my weeds and vines, my waterways and streets and communities from Key West to, basically, Neptune Beach in Jacksonville. I knew a lot of Florida--the Keys to Pensacola--with only the Tampa Bay/St. Pete area as an exclusion. Sure, it had gotten a little stale now and then, but like I said, I was comfortable.

And then we left.

I was the last one out--me and my dog and the two older cats. (My wife's cat--my cat, too--from when I first met her, M.R., she lived with us until about 2000 before she dies at the age of 20 or 21; I buried her beneath the Royal Palm in the back yard.) Our youngest daughter was in her first year at FSU and our older daughter was with my wife up north, staying in an apartment while looking for a house.

So, all our stuff was gone with the movers and put into storage. I had the Volvo and a number of boxes of personal things plus my clothes and computer plus things necessary for the dog and the two older cats.

I had made last minute plans to go to Neptune Beach and stay with Bill, but that was only temporary. had made more concrete plans to rent the condo on Camp Street in New Orleans (where my wife had sent a year; where I had spent months on the last year) . . .

Anyway, as I noted, I'm not really ready to write about it. Though, I will say, the very day I left Fort Lauderdale--January 12th, 2012, I'm pretty sure--in a full car with three animals, by the time I was up to Daytona, my brother called and told me our mother was in the hospital (she never did go back home and died by August). And that's how the year went. By the time I hit Tallahassee to see my daughter, all the animals had fleas. I had to go to a vet there to get flea-killing pills.

But two things I remember that I will write about briefly here:

One: I stayed across the street at Billy's house after I moved out. For three days, I think. And my dog could not figure out why we slept there. She knew Billy and his house quite well, but one of the saddest things was when she crossed the street and went to the front door of our house that was no longer ours and scratched the door and looked at me as I stood watching her from across the street, and could not understand why she could not go home, why I could not open the door . . . That still bothers me and it was why I could not stay at Billy's longer than three or four days even though he wanted us to be there for as long as we cared to.

Two: Was the first night at Billy's, in his spare bedroom with a single bed, that night when it was time to sleep, the freaked-out cats, my freaked-out dog and my freaked-out self, all climbed into the bed and huddled together. There was little space but we didn't care, we welcomed the intimacy I guess; cats, dog, human. It was all we had--ourselves in that bed in that room and the bed and the room did not belong to us. So, indeed: all we had was ourselves.

Okay. I guess I ended up writing about the move to some degree. There's more. There's always more. It was not a crisis. It was not the death of my mother--which is also not a crisis, though it's more important, a deeper experience and also a certain sorrow certainly from my mother's perspective and not just my own.

My family moved out. I lost my house, my friends and neighbors, the climate and landscapes, the plants, I knew well. My kids lost their childhood home and childhood friends. I'm uncertain as to what my wife lost (though she almost lost me). I had moved around quite a bit as a kid, a lot as a young adult. I was happy having a home.

Fort Lauderdale was very much home.

Parasols: New Orleans 2012

I was living alone at the condo on Camp Street. Well, I had two cats and the dog and was in New Orleans for a month while waiting to move north. My wife had lived at the condo for about a year--working--and we, as a family, had plans to move to the city but that all fell through and, well, I ended up back in New Orleans for one final fling before we settled once again.

Anyway. I was there with said cats and dog and my good friend Francis came down from Montreal to visit (and to help with the drive north).

One thing Francis and I did was we went to Parasols, in the Irish Channel.

I'd been wanting to go there for lunch so we walked over to the streetcar stop on St, Charles and Julia, took that anachronistic transport down to Washington--the Garden District--walked to Magazine and then further till we hit the place.

Parasols has a lunch area but we went straight into the bar. Ordered up beers and some po'boys.

And more beers.

There weren't too many people there: us at the bar, maybe one or two at a table, two girls also at the bar and the bartender who was named Mike.

Mike was a youngish, redheaded, freckled fellow.

Mike was drunk as hell.

Plastered.

He was entertaining the two youngish women seated at the bar but had no problem getting us our beers and taking our order, no problem serving us our order. But he was full on drunk. He kept bringing out strange liquors for the girls to try and for him to try himself--along with shots of more established liquor. And beer. He put on a disheveled straw hat--sombrero-ish--and some old mardi gras beads and he was just staggering behind the bar, yet still operating it, taking money, making change, pouring drinks. This was all before noon, you understand.

Not that it was so unusual--especially in New Orleans--to find someone drunk before noon. I guess it was a little odd and humorous to Francis and I because we were sober and were at Parasols and because Mike was the bartender, not the drunk who the bartender serves. Anyway, there was an air of anything-goes and conviviality with just the few of we customers and Mike there and I could see how the day would play out if we stayed . . .

(A side note: When I went to use the Mens Room, that's when I realized there was a whole other part of Parasols, a lunchroom with tables and waitress and the kitchen. And in the Mens Room there was graffiti, one of which was scrawled Mike fucks chickens, or some such. And I knew who Mike was!)

By now Mike and the two women were pulling us into their orbit. Music was playing, drinks were going round, the sun shown outside, doors and windows open to the humid daylight . . . I knew if Francis and I had one more drink, we'd be sucked in to an early drunk and get nowhere else except back to the condo by three or four or five and a hangover by dinner. We had plans to walk Magazine and he wanted to look for some stuff to buy because Francis is always looking for gifts (well, not always).

It would have been so easy to stay.

It would have been easy to be like Mike.

In many ways, I wanted to see what happened, as the drinks Mike continued to pour down his gullet hadn't really hit him yet. But . . . we had to get out of there.

And so we did. Had a nice buzz for the next hour or so. Took the streetcar back (or maybe the bus, from Napoleon and Magazine). No doubt we went out that night--went into the Quarter, to the Chart Room and Harry's Corner, Lafitte's Blacksmith--my, our, usual places--no doubt with my other good friend (named Mike) who lived and still lives in New Orleans. No doubt we--that night--were like Mike.

But I don't remember that night, not as clearly as I can recall Parasols, the first and only time I've been there.

Gary, Yonkers, Des Moines

I've known a number of Garys, knew two Garys when I worked at Yonkers.

I worked at Yonkers--a department store based out of Des Moines, Iowa--off and on for a number of years when I was in my teens and twenties. I started there in the fall of 1975, I think, working for either a $1.70 an hour (or perhaps it was $2.70--no, $1.70) in the stockroom. I worked after school and on weekends and when I graduated from high school (Urbandale High, Urbandale being a suburb on the north side of Des Moines) and had no idea what I wanted to do, I eventually became a full timer at Yonkers at the Merle Hay Mall. Then I worked there now and then over the next few years--summer while I was in the first couple years of college, then briefly right after college, then maybe once or twice when I came back to Des moines because I was, essentially, broke.

Anyway, Gary.

This Gary I knew briefly. He came to work in the stockroom at Merle Hay and didn't last all that long. He was a nice guy. He was African American, heavy-set with a generally sweet personality. He sang at his church and I was told had a wonderful voice--enough so that he had made recordings. I got along with him and eventually met some of his friends and we hung out together a bit. I brought him over to my house (I was in my teens and lived with my parents on 65th Street, not far from the mall). I introduced him, casually, to my parents.

It was after the visit to my house that I was surprised. My surprise was my father's reaction. he did not like Gary. "What?" "You should keep to your own kind," my father actually said.

What? I had been brought up not to consider race, to be honest and just and fair in relations with all people. I found his objection to be hypocritical and strange but didn't make an issue of it.

I have always had a solid group of friends and then other sets of friends and then friends who were on the edge of being true friends (and then of course acquaintances and such). This Gary was not a close friend but he was a nice guy.

Eventually Gary no longer came to work. I found out he had been fired for stealing a coat. Now, we all worked in the stockroom where all the deliveries came, where we unloaded trucks and took merchandise to the different departments and all that. We had access to the big back doors at the loading dock (now I'm thinking of all the drivers and fellow workers and things that happened, like the driver going through a divorce who purposefully stepped on a cooked roast meant for the Meadowlark Restaurant and when asked about the incident I said I knew nothing . . .) and the thing about those doors is that there was no security. People could steal stuff all the time. In fact, not long after I first started there, most of the crew ahead of me were fired because they were stealing merchandise like crazy. I knew nothing about it.

Okay. So Gary took a coat, an expensive one (big mistake) that was actually pretty ugly. I was and am not motivated much by material things, so it never occurred to me to steal something like that. (And that's not to say I didn't take a thing or two over my years there, but they were small idiosyncratic thefts.) But, Gary was gone and we never became good friends. I never heard from him again.

But now, when I think back, I don't think my father's objection to Gary was due to the color of his skin. No, what I see now was that Gary was pretty obviously Gay. This was in the late Seventies, before the gay/lesbian movement and understanding of that had made headway in most of society. So, I can see now that that was what my father was concerned about though he didn't articulate it as such. Now, my father was not against gay people either (one of my brothers is gay and my father knew that, even back then), no I think he was worried that because I had befriended, or had been befriended by, Gary that I too might be gay. And maybe because of my brother, it made his objection even stronger. (I really had no idea or at least only a slight idea about Gary, but my father needn't have worried.) I think if I'd known Gary, say, ten years later it may have been a different reaction from my father.

There are so many small incidents and people and places. Pointless in the long run--but maybe not. What you thought was one thing turns out to be another and the reasoning of it all turns out to be something else . . . Just thinking of my time spent working at a mundane place like Yonkers in a mundane place like the Merle Hay Mall actually leads me to many interesting characters and small events that revealed small yet important things to me . . . and I suppose that it continues to this day. Things are being revealed in all their seemingly triviality and I'm still not smart enough to really see them for what they are.

Societal Claustrophobia: San Blas, Mexico

I didn't start out thinking about San Blas. I started thinking about this place--where I live now--and then about Missoula, Montana and then about San Blas. They are all pretty much small towns.

Small towns--or medium-sized towns, which is more apt to Missoula and this place--can be good and they can be, yes, not so good. Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say. Seeing the same people day in and out, going about the same circles and having not so many outlets for change, surprise, stimulation--that's what's not so good. Small towns, medium-sized towns, small cities, they can become claustrophobic for sure.

I'm already tired of this place.

And as I recall, I got tired of Missoula the same way.

Now, Missoula has grown some since I and my wife lived there (as has this place) and it does have the mountains, the forests, a river and other natural amenities. Has some cool restaurants and bars and people as well. Like this place, it has a university. And I would take Missoula without a nanometer of a doubt over this place But, after a while and especially in winter (like this place) one can feel quite trapped. Hence the need to go to Mexico.

So, in 1990 or thereabouts, I went to Mexico on my own. And one place I ended up was a very small seaside town named San Blas, in Nayarit not far from Tepic, on the Atlantic coast . . . And was it a nice town? Yes it was. It was a great little town and only semi-known among the tourist trade.

I believe I've mentioned this little story once before. In Missoula, I worked at The Old Town Cafe, which is not there anymore. It was a popular place serving breakfast and lunch, diner style, and then sometimes dinner. It had a lot of regulars. I mean a lot. I waited tables and got to know those regulars, whether I wanted to or not. So, some of my escape from Missoula to Mexico was to get away from the same old faces as well as routines. Ahhhhh. I had met a guy, Francis, on the trip (Francis and I are great friends to this day). So, Francis and I were on the beach after a couple of days in San Blas and I'm having a beer and it's nice and who should walk up on that beach?

A couple of regulars from The Old Town cafe in Missoula.

That's who.

Sure they recognized me. We talked a little bit. They were a youngish couple and were going to go to Guatemala, they said. Okay. Best of luck. See you back in town.

Ah.

Well, I still had fun but that was just plain weird. Societal Claustrophobia can follow you around.

I think of all of this because winter is setting in here with its cold and dark and I'm sick of this place. I never wanted to come here but I did and many times I regret that decision. If my mother had not fallen ill--had not died at the time that she did--I may have never shown my face here to begin with despite all the serious implications that would involve . . . Anyway. Recently I was in the kitchen in a quiet house slowly putting dishes away from the dishwasher and I had to stop and think and wonder what the hell I was doing.

Why was I here?

Why didn't I just go?

This is not, was not, should not be who I am. This is not the future I thought I'd signed up for.

Yes, I have no one to blame but myself for all of that, but I have only certain ways to change it unless I want to blow up the whole paradigm. And that day in the kitchen, I was thinking of how to blow up the whole paradigm. I don't know, but something is going to have to give. Or take. Or forced.

Claustrophobia of the soul, I guess.

Frost

Went out to get the Sunday New York Times and there was a little frost on the ground--well, on the un-raked leaves in the shade. It's a sunny morning and I slept in a bit.

But that made me think of my kids--my two girls--and the first time they recognizably saw frost on the ground. You see, though both girls were born in Central Illinois and had experienced both frost and snow as well as hail and ice and cornfields and soybean fields and--well, all that Central Illinois has to offer, shall we say--they didn't really remember it. Mercifully or not, they couldn't recall it because when they were very young we moved to South Florida.

So, one of the first times we were driving back to Illinois for a holiday--maybe Thanksgiving but more likely Christmas--we stopped for the night in Georgia, probably south or north of Atlanta. (We always drove not flew--some of that just out of stubborn habit.) We pulled into a Super 8 or some such place late at night, off the highway among a few other some-such-places and Waffle Houses and their ilk. Slept. Got up semi-early. At this exit there was still a stand of trees and a plot or two of land that had not been turned over to an American restaurant or motel chain and that stretch of earth and trees was just filled with frost.

The frost was thick and unexpected. It lay like silver, like crushed glass, along the hard ground and under the bare trees. Even to my wife and I it was a surprise, kind of a wonder in its way. But to the girls--who had not felt cold air, seen their breath in that air, had not seen or felt snow or ice on a landscape in all their memories--it was the most stupendous thing.

So we spent some time walking among the frost and touching it and explaining it. I think when we did cross the Ohio River there was snow in Southern Illinois and we stopped at a rest area and they played in that. But that morning in Georgia where the frost was a crystallized unknown under a morning sun, that--I think--was more exciting. Exciting for them, but also exciting for my wife and I--seeing the world again through their eyes.

Paper Route: Urbandale 1974

I never had a paper route as a kid. I had a paper route for a couple of months at the age of thirty while in Missoula, Montana--a second job, more or less, to make money for a trip to Mexico. But that's not what I'm thinking about. My friend at the time, Mark Neil, he had a paper route and I subbed for him at times.

It's early morning, still dark, the cold and wetness of October now overtaking what is left of summer. That's today. Right now. And I was up--as usual--and went outside to put the trash and recycling out and for whatever reason, the look and smell and feel of that small moment made me think of Mark and his paper route, or more specifically, of my subbing for his route.

It was a morning route. It was in a part of Urbandale I was not really familiar with at that time--from Prairie Street to Douglas Avenue, across to Oliver Smith Drive and then down to 86th Street (as best I can recall). I really hadn't quite adapted to being in Iowa--well, I hadn't really quite adapted to adolescence or high school or wha-thave-you--and any experience out of my norm heightened my senses (and I was a sensitive person) . . . Anyway, it was a morning route. It was the dead of winter. Mark walked me through the route once, maybe twice, before I took over. I was not a morning person, had never really worked before, was not used to being out on my own at that time of day. Or should I say night? because it was dark. Streets were empty. It was quiet. Snow was banked along the road, buildings, sidewalks.

There was certainly some fear on my part--fear of the unknown, fear perhaps of entering adult activities (work, responsibility, being alone, the making of money) but it was not an acknowledged fear, really and it was also the novelty of being up and in the dark with a duty to execute, it was the newness of the experience. That's what I'm thinking of and how that experience--even this morning, even a good forty years after the fact--still sticks with me. Or resurrects itself within me given the right conditions. That's all I'm really thinking of here--at least I think that's all I'm thinking of.

Yes, there were some events on that week or two I subbed for him and upon consequent ones when I did it--maybe only three times at the most. mark and I were decent friends early on in school, not so much later, and then not at all by the time high school was gratefully over with. I have no idea what happened to him other than his younger sister--who I eventually saw a few times at the University of Iowa--told me he'd gone into the military or was ROTC or some such. (I knew his mother half-way well and would see her now and then, or a few times, at the Merle hay Mall where I had a reoccurring job at Yonkers for many years.) Okay. I'm losing my thread here or making a longer one than intended . . . Events. Paper route. Dark cold mornings. Let's see: I messed up his route; delivered papers to the wrong person for a while, not delivering to the right. Mark had never made a mistake and I blew his perfect record. (Sorry, Mark!). I was once cornered by a barking dog (I had a fear of dogs at that time) and knocked on a customer's door and a man came out in his t-shirt and threatened the dog with his fist and the dog shrank away and I felt very and rightfully foolish and there were a few other things. The route started with an apartment building and I always felt strange in its eerie hallways with its too-bright lights. I don't know. I was a weird kid.

So, that's it. Another small memory of no real importance, except that it is what it was, was what it was, as best I can recall.

The Death of Your Parents

I don't really want to write about the deaths of my parents. The demise, the death (singular) of my, your, our parents. Who wants to think or write about such things, really. But, it's there.

My mother died two years ago. My father has been gone for twelve years now. I and my four siblings grew up in a tight--if not completely close--family. We were the typical nuclear family of the 50s and 60s--we had limited contact with extended family, lived away from the places my parents had grown up in, our parents did not divorce, we all had food and shelter and education and we all went on to college.

I don't want to get into the specifics of their deaths--at least not at this time, in this post, at this hour. I don't even know why I chose this topic to write about when I don't even want to. It's not that I'm upset or in denial. By no means am I traumatized by their deaths. And I know that, when parents are gone it means that, essentially, you are next in line.

That's life. That's death.

I have my own children and they too will have to cope with the deaths of my wife and I. I certainly hope that will be the case. Anyway, this is a morbid subject and again I don't know why I chose it. Or it chose me, this morning.

Maybe I'm feeling the pull of uncertainty regarding my own age--what will it be like from here on out? How much health do I have down the stretch? How long is that stretch? . . . Bah. I rarely think that way. But maybe that will change, too. I'll come back to this with specific experiences at some point in this blog, at "somewhere down the stretch" . . .

Mortality. Morality. Morbid. Moribund.

You are born to die.
Every soul becomes extinct.