Kissing My Astro Goodbye

Yesterday, before leaving to drive our youngest of four sons to his first year of college, my husband told him, “Be sure to go through the van. We might not see it again.” Now, on this dark, early morning, another son, Peter, is about to drive our 20-year-old metallic green Chevy Astro from Lake Tahoe to Gonzaga University, over 800 miles.

Peter and I had packed the van the night before. Now a junior and his first year out of the dorms, he needed furniture, so in addition to the double bed we got a dresser in there. And three guitars, a piano keyboard, a ukulele, two sets of speakers, a PS4, a computer and a few useful things, like a mini-fridge, clothes, and a down comforter.

As the body of the van sank lower on its tires my concern over its age grew. It was clearly exhausted, having over 250,000 miles on it. I hoped a highway patrolman wouldn’t pull Peter over for the cracked windshield, whose original line had sprouted off-shoots so that now it resembled a map. My husband reassured me that it was fine to drive since the cracks were below the sight line. We never expected the van to be breathing at this point and had stopped throwing money into it beyond the minimum to get it through our youngest son’s 2-mile drive to high school.

Yesterday, I didn’t actually kiss the van goodbye, but we had a moment when I found in a seat pocket, a well-leafed Mad Libs book, the paper kind, where you fill in the blanks to create entertaining stories. Mad Libs was a staple on our road trips, ten years ago. Now, of course, nearly all their entertainment is electronic.

As I stand in the driveway wearing my robe, the van’s interior light is on as Peter runs up to fill his water bottle. I gaze at the mini-fridge in the passenger seat. When I told Peter to buckle it in, he laughed and gave me a mooooom look. But he did it. I had morbid thoughts, like if he crashed, he’d be killed by his stuff—surrounded and done in by things. My mind flits to the suicide this summer—a classmate of my youngest son—two months after high school graduation.

At 5:00 am, next to the loaded van, I embrace Peter. I’m happy to have this tall young man in my arms. Our hug lingers and I wonder about his state of mind. He’ll be okay, I tell myself, as he climbs in the driver’s seat and I head into the house.

I stand at the window and wrap my arms around myself to ward off the chill in the empty house. After a moment I see the van’s headlights illuminate the neighbor’s yard as the van creeps into the street. Peter brakes at the T in the road, and I hear the familiar squeal. I watch the red glow of the taillights, waiting to see if he’ll use the blinker. He does, and somehow I am reassured. The humble, paint-chipped Astro has always delivered.

I Knew a Pigeon: Haiku Entertainment in Quarantine

Isolation is uniting my scattered family of six like nothing else. Our 24-year-old son, James, who lives a few states away, led it off with a family group text titled: “Quarantine Haiku #1.”

I’ve gotta tell you. I’ve been waiting for this. My heart goes out to those parents quarantined with young children. I can’t imagine. Actually, having four sons, I can. There were days I tossed them out in the Tahoe snow at 9:00 am and let them back in at 5:00. Before you get all judgy, I put food out for them around noon. And maybe hot chocolate, to keep it fun.

Thankfully, my sons are older now and I’m experiencing the delightful value-added part of having grown children. Following the 5-7-5 syllable haiku pattern, James texted: Pundits on pulpits, Bully repetitiously, Captive audience.

Not sure I fully appreciate the depth of that. Doesn’t matter. I’m thrilled that he came up with the idea, acting on his creative impulse and thereby bringing a welcome respite from our world’s serious hardship. I was mighty proud of him and his brothers, who jumped right in. More importantly, I wanted to play!

But it was John’s turn. He’s the oldest at 25, and lives with us. Which is fine, really. I like that we’ve gotten to know him better. In fact, we were so distracted raising his three younger brothers that when John headed off to college, my husband and I looked at each other with shared surprise that he was gone. We were sad to be done with the daily interaction.

But it’s back. Now in a big way with this lockdown. And he can skip his night of doing dishes after his haiku, which I had no problem understanding: “I am unemployed, Have not washed hair in two weeks, Save on laundry though.”

I ha ha-ed his text, but tried to contain my excitement, not wanting to scare off other potential poets. Of course, I had to participate: “Concerned for TP, Should have hoarded small white sheets, It’s not how I roll.” 

We grew possessed, our regular conversation now in haiku. Entertaining, yes, but the syllable constraint did confuse me at times. For instance, when Paul, the youngest, who’s still at college, wrote: “’Rona closed kitchens, 4 worthless pasta boxes, Longing for pesto.” I texted, “Who’s Rona?” I’m sure you know the answer: “coronavirus.” Duh. That word spreads itself over an entire line.

After two days of haikus, the third son hadn’t contributed. I texted: “Where o where is a, Peter haiku? O where o, Where can it be-ya?” John objected to my using “ya” to add a syllable. He’d taken on the role of haiku police because he also complained when I repeated the same word five times. Having learned our sons might not qualify for the $1,200 aid, I’d written: “Twelve hundred dollars, Easy come, so easy go, Sad sad sad sad sad.” It all but erased the pain of my 36-hour labor with John when he haiku-ed his objection: “I feel like using, The same word for a whole line, Is kinda cheating.” My heart swelled.

And the third son? Peter did eventually break his silence and respond to my prodding. He wrote: “I knew a pigeon, And I think his name was coo, So I said “hi coo.”

Captives of Fashion

I love it when my body delivers, like when a casual leap over a low wall turns out to be just that. This isn’t a thing only now that I’m over fifty. It was a thing back in the day. The worst was having to run in middle school PE. I remember the field at Moore Junior High. It wrapped around the world. We wore ugly snap-up one-piece baby-blue gym outfits, probably from the fifties, the 1850s, which always packed the threat of a mean girl grabbing the front and yanking all the snaps open. Buttons would have been much safer, or even a zipper. 

Wearing that we had to run. It was probably a mile, but it felt like a decade, like we had to run until we were twenty two, still in the same outfit, we’d probably have outgrown, our feet would ache, but still running…one more lap…and a chain-link fence containing us all, with a brown worn path along it from eons of kids forced to lap the dry patchy southern California-baked field again and again and again and again, like dogs, wearing a path along the fence holding them captive and being way out at the far, far corner of the field, where no one would naturally have traveled, not even the kids up to no good. No one went out there, except when they had to run for PE class.

My mind ran, too, thinking about boys, the weird ones who gave me too much attention and the cute ones, none, except maybe to say “thanks” when I passed out a paper to them. But they weren’t talking to me. To them, I was the calendar stapled to the wall. My lungs would yank back my attention, now that they’d filled with cotton. Air.

Then there’d be a break in the fence, but we were expected to continue past it, as if it weren’t there, but it was and I’d think about ducking out, just one simple side step and I’d be free from class, free from not being picked for a baseball team, free from the mean girls commenting on my stick legs not filling out the leg openings of my uniform. Then I understood the uniforms. No one would be caught dead in the civilized world wearing one. So I ran, tomato-faced, past the break, my skinny legs delivering me to the end. Not first, but never last. Thank God.

Furry Purrfection

I look at my cat’s face and know there is a God. It is perfect. A symphony of triangles. Her eyes are inverted right triangles, her nose, an isosceles. Her ears and head, more triangles. She’s a plush toy brought to life. How can she not be a gift created for us to love and to be loved by? Endearing playfulness and curiosity, impressive cleverness and agility. Entertainment and beauty elegantly married into life. Then she barfs. 

Ladybugs in My Cilantro

Now that there’s hardly a trace of snow, I’m wondering about the fate of a ladybug I found in my cilantro two months ago. Actually there were two of them. After putting the first one outside I saw the other one, its tiny legs desperately working the green contours underfoot. I was fairly certain it was the wife looking for her husband because I could feel her desire to vent. “Charles! I told you we should have asked for directions!”

I put her out with him, feeling kind of bad about it because when I removed the cilantro from the fridge they’d probably thanked God that the cold snap was over. They’d also survived my chopping off the stems and the torrential downpour as I cleaned the bunch. I’m sure they breathed tiny sighs of relief after making it through all that, not to mention their likely misadventures traveling from field to Raley’s produce section.

But I put them out in the frigid Tahoe air. Tell me, though, would a truly heartless person have thrown a sprig of cilantro after them? Doubt it. Besides, they're proven survivors of refrigeration. They’re fine.